I picked at the baggy rough tunic and trousers that I was now wearing. I knew that the older boy was feeling pity for me that why he had given them to me. As far as I could tell there was no malicious intent or hidden agenda with him, and I wanted to accept his offer to go to the city with them, however I wanted to be sure that there were no mind effects on me like there had been at my tribe.

I also needed to get a few more kills so I could Evolve my Far Away Hands Card. A part of me wanted to just live in the wild until I had five Epic Cards, but I also knew right now that was foolish. I was barely surviving, and while each additional Card and Evolution would make it easier that didn’t mean one day of bad luck wouldn’t kill me.

A swarm of giant spiders could charge through and devour me, or a flash flood could drown me out. Or I could trigger a trap somewhere and get a boulder to drop on top of me, and most likely I could be attacked in my sleep by some everyday monster and be killed.

I needed a home, a place to rest, and right now I didn’t have the power to make one out of the Labyrinth.

The young man and the old tree hugger would be back in a few days, barring death and them deciding to leave me to my fate. Even then I knew the general direction in which the Safe Zone was due to the boy pointing where it was.

So for the next two days I hunted more boars. I had expected to get my Evolution full by the first kill, but it had actually taken three. I practically lived in the trees during that time, only going down to stretch and relieve myself.

There was a risk of the boars stampeding from me killing so many of them, but I was fine with risking it. That was a pretty normal occurrence in areas where larger populations of monsters lived together instead of an apex predator. It was almost as if they knew they were being hunted to extinction and decided to either kill the one slaughtering them or die trying.

I felt the thrum of energy from my Meta Card, it was now full enough to Evolve one of my Cards. To me it felt as though it was half of a puzzle and it resonated with my two Common Cards as if asking them to become the other half.

Instinctively I knew what I needed to do, I removed my Far Away Hands from my Hand and placed it over where the Meta Card showed on my left forearm. I felt the two Cards asking my permission to continue, and I gave it.

The gray Common Card sunk into my arm and I could feel the energy of the Meta Card drain away and suffuse the Common Card. Bright white light speckled with color bloomed from my arm and I was sure that if it had been night time then it would have shone all the way down both pathways of the Labyrinth.

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In only a few seconds I felt the process complete and a glowing green Card slid out of my forearm and into my fingers.

-Ethereal Grasp-

-Uncommon-

-The user may summon ethereal hands up to the size of their body and manipulate them at will.-

Up to the size of my body? So the bigger I was the more hands I could summon? Well I guess that made a bit of sense, Far Away Hands had been able to hold up to my body weight so the Card might need a frame of reference for me to know how powerful it could be.

This time however there was no mention of the power of the hands or the limit in number.

So I tried to summon a hand.

A huge green hand the size of my entire body formed in front of me. Like the Far Away Hands these were slightly transparent, I activated my Smokey Hands at the same time and a huge amount of smoke wafted up off the hands. I felt my energy drain away at a great rate so I stopped using it.

I could also feel the larger amount of energy that the Ethereal Grasp took, but not as much I would have thought compared to the Far Away Hands. Usually higher ranking Cards were also more efficient in energy usage.

Letting the hand fade I used the Card again, this time focusing on the idea of two hands. As expected, two hands each half the size of my body formed. They didn’t seem to take more energy than the one hand had, and Smokey Hands worked with them as well.

After that I tried to make a single hand the same size as Far Away Hands had been. It worked easily, and the energy it consumed was much less than Far Away Hands had been.

I continued to experiment for a few hours, I tried to make the hands as small as possible, it was about half the size of my normal ones. Then I tried to make as many as possible, I was able to get ten before the burden became too much, and even then I couldn’t move them all at the same time well yet, it would take a lot of practice.

I had only just begun to hunt for more monsters when the duo of Gero and Jaharv came back.

It still wouldn’t nearly of been enough to fill up my Lotto Box or my Meta Gauge but every kill still counted.

The two odd alchemists, or maybe it was herbalists, were cautious when approaching me. Well Gero was, the old man switched between completely ignoring me to getting in my face while chewing on some random plant.

They will check your Hand when you enter. Not the Card details, but just the rankings, Gero told me with Toke.

They do that to make sure no one too dangerous enters the city unknowingly.

My lips thinned, but I nodded, my Meta Card was separate from my Hand so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue at all.

I needed to learn the local language fast, sure I could communicate to a basic degree with Toke, but I would like to speak with actual people eventually.