-Six Months Later-

One Far Away Hand grasped the boar by the snout and mouth. It let out a shrill scream, one that continued to ring in my ears even from a hundred feet away. I knew that this type of monster was smaller than normal boars, but used its scream to paralyze opponents before barreling them over and gutting them with its tusks.

However my Far Away Hands were not affected by it at all and the projected hands started pumping smoke into the Boars airway. My second Far Away Hand was propelled forward by a stream of smoke, and hit the boar right in the gut. It didn’t do much damage, but it did cause the fleeing boar to crash into a tree instead of out of the range of my hands. It got up to try and continue running but the second hand closed over its eyes and blinded the monsters sight with smoke.

In the end, after a minute or two of raging through the forest trampling underbrush and smacking into trees the boar fell over. A hundred feet above the boar I pulled out a sharped obsidian dagger I had knapped and tossed it down. The second hand caught it and slit the monsters throat, then placed the dagger down and both hands held the boar up by the hind legs and carried it to a loop in the tree I had made earlier to tie it up and drain my prey of blood.

I sat on a small outcropping on the wall, not all the way up. Now that I was no longer running for my life I didn’t need to take the risk of going up there. I was lucky enough that the worst thing I had encountered were worms that wanted to burrow into my flesh and probably lay eggs in my chest cavity.

With Far Away Hands and the need to personally defend myself and hunt for my own food I was able to kill things at a much quicker pace then ever before. I had debated weather I should fill up my Lotto Box or fill up the Meta Cards gauge instead.

Both were very viable options, I needed a Body Card of some sort eventually if I wanted to live in the wilderness of the Labyrinth, but there was no guarantee of getting one even if I filled up the Box a hundred times, not that they were particularly rare or anything. That was just how the Lotto Box worked. I could also get a Card that was Rare, Epic, or even Legendary, but that was slim to none so I quelled that mindless desire.

Meanwhile I would only be able to reasonably upgrade Smokey Hands and Far Away Hands before I started rolling on the Lotto Box. Each gap between rankings was greater than the last for the Meta Card. I had found some stones that I could use to help make fires so I was more interested to find out what Far Away Hands would turn into than Smokey Hands.

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Either Smokey Hands would just produce more smoke or it may turn into a fire thingy, but it could even be something else, I had no way of knowing. What if Evolve just made it Super Smokey Hands. That would be dumb.

So I decided to Evolve my two Common Cards first. Logically a Uncommon Card should be much more valuable than a Common one.

I looked at the Meta Gauge as I called it to check how close I was to being able to Evolve my Card. There was no hard numerical value so I had to mentally feel how close it was while squinting at the gauge. It felt as though it was a cup that was only missing a few drops in order to be considered full.

I wanted to just go out there and kill a few more animals, but I needed food and my clothing was torn to ribbons. This boar would make for a shitty disgusting patchwork on my shirt but I needed it.

Once the boar was drained properly I let it down with my ethereal hands and began to skin and gut it. I would have been able to do it faster using my real hands, but I needed to train with my Cards.

I had only seen the red thread from Tario’s ability a handful of times. The last one being about a week and a half ago. It hadn’t moved too much, so that either meant he was moving so slowly that I couldn’t tell or was still on the other side of the world, but it also meant that he was still keeping tabs on me.

I didn’t know if or when he would come for me, but it was good to know that he wasn’t already closing in. After the hands finished gutting the boar and skinning it I went down to help. I began to prepare the meat to be preserved. There was a water area nearby with salt rocks that would sometimes wash ashore.

I cut the meat into thin strips and put crushed salt onto them. Then I put them in a hollowed out wooden bowl filled with water to sit for a while after using Cleanse to make sure nothing bad was in the meat, then placed a lid I had also carved on top.

While all that happened the Far Away Hands were fleshing the skin of the boar. It was a small boar, but its fur should be enough to cover most of my torso. Usually now a days unless I had a reason to stay on the ground I didn’t. That was usually times I needed space to work or was traveling.

So most of the time I spent in the trees or on the walls of the Labyrinth. There were some things like snakes or spiders with legs as long as I was tall that lived up there, but I would always make sure to check beforehand.

It was as I sat on a branch munching on dried meat and fruits that I still didn’t know if they were poisonous or not I just Cleansed them anyways that I heard noise coming from one of the pathways.

No not noise, voices. People were coming.