Drew

Beast Forest

Demon King Leon Calendar, Year 478: 5th Month

•••••

Swish

It’s the sound of running water. My eyes gradually open. Blue skies and white clouds fill my vision. I stare blankly at the sky as my memories slowly come back to me.

“Ah!” I let out an exclamation and quickly sit up when I finally remember what had just happened. I immediately raise my hands up to my face and gently touch my eyelids. Phew. It doesn’t look like there’s any damage to my eyes.

As I start to calm down, my sense of relief is replaced with anger. That fucking goddess. First she gets mad at me for her own mistake, and then she pierces my eyes. I hope I never have to see her again.

I take some deep breaths to rein in my emotions and take a look around me. A quick glance shows that I’m in the middle of a dense forest with no signs of human civilization. Couldn’t that goddess have teleported me to a more convenient location? Luckily, there’s also a stream of water nearby. I won’t have to worry about dehydration at least.

I then take a look at my own body. I’m wearing brown leather pants and brown boots. They seem durable. The shirt I’m wearing is a plain grayish white color, and the fabric looks cheaply made. I check my pockets, but the only thing I find is some sort of card. It looks like an ID. I guess even in a fantasy world, one needs to carry identification. I closely examine the ID, and I see that the name written at the top says Drew Griffin. Griffin huh? Perhaps that was the name of the person that was originally supposed to be reincarnated instead of me. Sucks for him I guess.

“Hmm?” As I continue to examine the card, I see that my physical features are also written down. However there’s an anomaly, the features that are written seem to be incorrect? I take a closer look at my own body. The first thing I notice is that on the back of my right hand, there seems to be a small magic circle. It looks like an ordinary tattoo, but I can vaguely feel some sort of power from it. I also start to realize that the proportions of my body are different from before. Curious, I walked over to the stream and took a look at my reflection. I was slightly surprised when I saw the face of a lean young boy about 16 years of age. I have a different body now? My current body had black hair, and the facial features were almost completely ordinary. The only thing that stood out was that my eyes were a bright crimson color. These are supposed to be the Divine Eyes? But why do they look so demonic? Curious, I decide to try them out.

I lift my head up and look towards a random direction in the forest. I focus my gaze. Suddenly I feel my vision getting sharper. My field of vision starts to expand outward at an extremely rapid pace, and it felt like I could see for miles ahead with perfect clarity.

“Aaaaarg,” I yell out. A splitting headache assaults me, and I lose my balance and fall down. My brain couldn’t keep up with the sudden influx of visual information.

It takes a few minutes before I recover. I use the Divine Eyes again, but this time I’m able to control it better, and I slowly extend my vision. I still feel a little light-headed, but it’s tolerable. I’m able to extend my vision to about a distance of 5 miles before my eyes start to hurt.

Interesting. I continue to experiment. I look at my hand and activate the Divine Eyes again. Every single tiny pore and speck of dust is revealed. I focus my eyes even further and something happens. The skin disappears, and the muscle and skeletal structure within my body is revealed. Is this x-ray vision? When I look at my blood vessels, I can see something flowing within my blood. It’s a type of energy that faintly glows red. It’s probably my magic power. I look around me and I’m able to see inside trees and plants, but it doesn’t seem to work on nonliving things. I was slightly depressed when I saw that the normal trees contained more magic power than me.

After familiarizing myself with this new power, I decide to start moving. I should find a town as soon as possible. Humans are more likely to be around a freshwater source, so I follow the river downstream with the water on my right side.

Nothing happens until half a day later. I hear a growl coming from the foliage left of me. I look over and see a silver wolf appear. It’s big, about 6 feet in length, and its height reaches up to my stomach. However, its body looks thin and sickly. It’s old, maybe it got kicked out of its pack. But when I look into its grey eyes, I can see fierce killing intent. I don’t think I can avoid a fight. There’s a temporary standstill as we both assess each other, and then as if having made a decision, the wolf lunges toward me.

I jump towards the side but it’s fast, much faster than I expected. The distance of several meters between us has already been closed, and it rams into my stomach. My body is tossed into the air over the river onto the other side. I cough up blood, but I ignore the pain and quickly get up. The wolf jumps the river and rushes towards me again. In a panic, I activate the Divine Eyes just as the wolf reaches me.

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The x-ray vision works, but something else happens. Time seems to slow down. The wolf that was initially too quick for me to react seems to have slowed down to a turtle’s pace. And that’s not all. From the wolf, I see something come out of its body. It’s an identical figure, but it’s white and illusory like a specter. It’s as if the wolf’s soul has left its physical body. The specter reaches me and swipes at me with its left paw. However, when its claws hit my face, it disappears into mist as if it never existed.

This is the future trajectory of the wolf’s attack?

I don’t have the luxury to think about it any further, as time starts to speed up again. I instinctively duck down just as the wolf’s paw passes over my head in the exact same trajectory that was shown to me before. The gush of wind from the force of his claws tells me how close to death I was. After dodging the attack, I dive towards the left and put some distance between us. The wolf chases after me, but once again, time slows down for a split second as a white specter comes out of its body and reveals its attack to me. This time, it’ll be a leaping attack. I slide towards the wolf just as it leaps, and I’m able to go under it and appear behind it.

That’s when I notice something. The Divine Eyes has completely revealed the inside of the wolf’s body including its weaknesses. And when I look at its right hind leg, I see that the bone is very brittle. Without hesitation, I throw all of my weight into my right leg and kick the wolf’s leg. I make contact and the bone cracks.

“AWOOOOOO” The wolf howls in pain and goes into a frenzy. It turns around and starts clawing at me in pure rage. But it’s helpless in front of my Divine Eyes. The foresight ability allows me to dodge all most of its attacks, although I do suffer some minor cuts because my body’s still too weak to dodge properly. I eventually make it to the side of the wolf, and deliver a low sweeping kick to his right leg again.

CRACK. The bone shatters. The wolf howls in pain again, but this time it doesn’t have the strength to counter attack.

I back away and sit down against a tree. The wolf is no longer a threat now that its best weapon, its speed, is gone. I’m able to take a quick rest as I observe the wolf struggle to walk. I catch my breath after a few minutes pass, and I stand back up again. At this point, the wolf had given up on walking and was trying to crawl away instead.

You gotta be kidding me. You think I’ll let you go after all this? I walk up behind the wolf, and I stomp on its left hind leg this time. The wolf growls and kicks at me, but I easily dodge it. It’s too feeble at this point. However, I still don’t want to face it head on. So I decide to cripple both of its hind legs first. I continue to attack it. Crack. It doesn’t take long before I shatter its left leg as well. After that, I grab a rock the size of a head, and I straddle the wolf on its back. I’ll be merciful and end it quickly. I raise the rock above its head, and then I bring it down. With the Divine Eyes, I can guarantee a fatal blow. Thud. The wolf dies immediately.

After the wolf dies, I see energy leave its body, and then surprisingly it starts to enter into my body. I was initially worried, but then I felt my body becoming revitalized. My fatigue disappeared and my wounds started to heal. I took a look at my body and saw that my muscles were slightly stronger than before, and I also had a bit more magic power.

I absorbed the life force of the wolf I killed. I wonder if this is an ability unique to me, or if it’s a natural occurrence in this fantasy world. Well, I should be able to find out sooner or later. For now I should focus on leaving this forest. With that in mind, I start to move again.

•••••

Five days had passed since I killed that wolf. Ever since that encounter, I made sure to periodically use my Divine Eyes to avoid anything sneaking up on me again. During this period of time, I was proactively hunting beasts and monsters. I realized that I needed more strength, and the best way to get stronger was to absorb the life force of creatures I killed. Their life force could also be a substitute for food, so I didn’t have to go hungry. In addition to more wolves, I also fought wild boars, cougars, and even a slime. However, the slime was immune to blunt attacks, and I didn’t have a sharp weapon on me, so I could only give up on killing it.

After killing so many creatures, my body has gone through significant changes. My height increased, my reflexes improved, and my muscles were well tone toned. Although I would still be lacking against top level athletes from my previous world, I could definitely be considered strong now. Of course, most importantly of all is that I had greatly improved my ability to use the Divine Eyes in combat. I had grasped the exact timing of my foresight ability, and am able to dodge attacks with ease. In addition to that, I can now immediately identify the weaknesses of my opponent the moment I use my x-ray vision.

With my new found strength, I made quick progress through the forest. The river ended a few hours ago, but I noticed that I was approaching the edge of the forest, so I continued on in the same direction. Right now, I could finally see the end right in front of me. I pushed through, and my vision was finally clear of all the trees and plants.

I was standing on a cliff overlooking a grassy plain. In the middle of the plain, there was a single long road. On that road was a large carriage. It had an elaborate design with gold and silver ornaments on it. It looked to be the carriage of a noble. Surrounding the carriage were five knights in armor. None of them noticed me though because they were preoccupied with something.

“Maintain the defense line!”

“Don’t let them break through!”

It looked like their carriage had been ambushed by a group of goblins. The knights were desperately trying to hold them off, but the situation wasn’t looking good for them. There were too many of the goblins, about twenty-five or so. Goblins were the size of a human child, had green skin, long ears like an elf, but a hideous face. This particular group was all armed with a variety of weapons, ranging from swords to hammers to clubs. Some had armor, others had ragged cloth, and some were completely naked.

I had seen a pack of goblins in the forest previously, but I chose to avoid them because I didn’t want to fight a group. Looking at the fight now, I feel like I made the right decision. The knights were well trained, but they weren’t enough. These goblins looked stupid, but they coordinated well with each other and were slowly breaking down the knight’s defense. They wouldn’t last long at this rate.

Now then. What to do...