Both amateur adventurers continued their trek into the forest. They didn't intend to get too deep, as they would use a common hunting strategy which involved dumping an animal's guts or carcass in an open area, then hiding and taking aim.
Wild animals and Hazard Beasts would smell the bait, approach to investigate, then get jumped.
After being neutralized, the hunters would gut it, add said guts to the bait pile, and the rest of the body set aside.
As Jason and Sammy waited for their bait to do it's magic, Jason was splitting his Minds between the task at hand and meditation.
It was a novel sensation. When normally meditating, it felt like he developed, say, the sense of smell, but he can only smell in absence of his other senses. It was either sense of smell only, or all the other senses minus smell.
With [Parallel Thought] active, he has access to all his senses at once. The feeling was alien and trippy, but not enough to distract him from noticing a Giant Monitor Lizard Approaching.
'WTF?! That thing is the size of a Komodo Dragon.' Exclaimed Jason as he took aim. Both he and Sammy waited for the creature to begin swallowing the carcass before letting loose their bolts and arrows respectively.
The bolt struck first, piercing the creature's side, which caused it to jerk. Then an arrow struck, followed by another, then another. 7 arrows in 7 seconds all struck true, and the beast was downed before it could escape the clearing.
"Phew! Not bad for my first kill, ey Sam?"
"..."
" Sam?"
"You know, I still can't get over the fact you're now a super duper way better Archer than me. It makes no sense!"
"pfft! Is that what's got you acting all incredulous? It's practice. All practice, you see."
"Practice my ass! I've been 'practicing' since I was 10, and you've outdone me many times over in just a week. That explanation ain't flying nowhere, bud."
"Hehe. Guess I'm just that awesome, huh?"
"..." Sammy blinks a couple times at the response. "You know what? Screw it! I'll latch onto that and wonder no more. Now come help me gut this thing."
"Aye aye, little guy, aye aye."
Jason and Sammy get to processing the beast. The Life Core was carved out of the heart, prefered organs were stored, the Lizard's body was placed in the cart, and the rest of it's guts are used as lure.
The routine continued and at the end of the day, both dragged home their massive haul home.
1 giant monitor lizard.
3 giant hugs.
1 python.
1 land crocodile.
Half where taken by the Clarksons to be preserved and cooked, while the other half was dropped off at the guild and the two paid for their troubles.
Jason's cut was equivalent to 2 weeks of his current wages. A few more weeks of this, and he's well on his way to being independent.
"It's decided. One more month. One more month and I'll set off on my own!"
Zzzzzzz
World: 27 days.
Clarksons: 22 days.
After finishing his chores and having lunch, Jason and Sammy were called over by Samantha.
"I'm guessing you boys are going to go hunting more often, ey?"
"Yup! You guessed correct, ma'am."
"Uhuh. It was hard work, but it was worth every penny we got out of it. Why do you ask, mom!"
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"Because of the hard work portion, silly. Lugging around that cart is too energy draining and it even limits how much you can bring home. It's about time I teach you both the porting ki spell."
"Woohoo! About time you did, mom."
"Don't be too happy now, I don't know if you have enough ki control to pull it off. It's a good time as any to find out."
"So, what do we do, ma'am?"
"Well, to summarize, you have to feed enough white ki into a specific point in the middle of your forehead. Successfully doing so will awaken your Mind scape. I'll tell you the rest later, for now, try to get it done today."
"Sounds easy enough, cmon Jason, let's go getherdone."
"I'm sorry for using it in the past, I regret my actions and am reflecting, so please purge that word from your vocabulary."
"Nope!"
"For me."
"Na ah! "
"Huuu... What have I done? "
Both went to the back porch to meditate. Jason was aware of the spot on the forehead Samantha was talking about. It didn't seen like a special organ; in fact, it was no different than the surrounding, but it did give a feeling similar to ki.
It was in a state beyond solid, liquid, gas or plasma. It was there. That's all he knew for sure.
The nights of meditation were coming in clutch here. Since ki usually circulated the body using the circulatory system as a highway, his strategy was to block the ki exiting the forehead and pull in and concentrate the ki coming.
Imagine a room full of cotten candy spilling in from a door, and you are at the other door pulling it towards yourself and squeezing it into a small box... With your mind.
It was tedious and time consuming at first, but with [Parallel Thought], he was then able to multi-task and speed up the process.
After an unspecified amount of time had passed, there was a sound.
[Ding] [Mindscape ]
'Oh? Status'
---
NAME: Jason
HP: 100%
White Ki: 40%
Red Ki: 100%
ABILITIES:
[Giga Mind]
[Mindscape ]
SKILLS
[Videographic Memory]
[Parallel Thought]
[Muscle Memory]
---
'Interesting. I wasn't expecting the System to give its 2 cents. Plus its recorded as an Ability instead of a skill. If precedence is upheld, then I should be expecting to unlock related skills from it. Sweet!'
Opening his eyes, he sees Sammy still at it with beads of sweat running down his forehead.
'Poor guy. You can do it buddy!' With the subpar mental motivation, he got up to search for Samantha for more instructions. Finding her in the laundry room, as she was usually, he let her know he was done.
"What? You're done already? It's only been 3 hours."
"What can I say, I'm awesome like that."
"Huh. Maybe you are. This makes things easier, so I'm not gonna complain. Wait for me at the back porch and I'll be there when I'm done here."
Doing as instructed, Jason returns to the still struggling Sammy and waits. A short while later, Samantha shows up to resume the training.
"Here. Catch." Samantha tosses an apple Jason's way. "The next part is really simple. Just activate your Mindscape the will that apple into it."
Doing as she says, the apple disappears from his hand.
"Good. Now to check what's inside your Mindscape, activate it again, then enter a meditative state. This will move your consciousness from your body to your Mindscape. Once you're in there, and see the apple, Will it into your hand and it'll reappear."
Jason does as he's told. After completing the first part, he finds himself in a white space with the apple floating in limbo. The experience was surreal; as if he was in a lucid dream. He'd play around in here in his free time, but right now he had an apple to manifest.
"Good job. You're more or less done. Just remember that the size of your Mindscape grows with how much ki you feed into it. When I first unlocked mine, I could store the volume equivalent to a gutted horse. You should be able to store that much as well."
"Nice! Thanks for the training, ma'am."
"Think nothing of it. This works to my benefit anyway. Now you can hunt more and bring more meat home."
"What great foresight you have!"
"Hahaha!"
With the training complete, Jason returns to his room. Mindscape was an interesting thing. He remembered anime characters with Mindscapes housing inner demons: 9 tailed foxes, pale white doppelgangers, demon foster brother etc. The cultivation equivalent was the mind sea, but it seems this world does things differently.
Jason started grabbing stuff and porting them (tossing them into Mindscape). He was playing with it in hopes of finding interesting effects. As he had his fun, time flied by and dinner time arrived in no time.
"You OK lil guy? You look terrible." Jason asked his partner in crime who looked like he got out of a 6 hour meeting with the IRS for suspected tax fraud.
"Brain hurts... No talk... Eat now!" Responded the fatigued Sammy as he languidly ate his food while hunched over.
"Hehe. If you say so, buddy. "
When bedtime rolled around, Jason decided to try something out: split his mind between meditation and his mindscape. He pulled it off readily enough.
Zzzzzzzz
World: 28 days.
Clarksons: 23 days.
"Phew! What an insane night! Can't wait for tonight. This crap is awesome."
Jason took recurring quest during the weekdays: Wild Herb gathering. The town's herbalist doesn't have the time to run around gathering ingredients since they're busy cooking up their products all day.
The benefit of this, is the chances of stumbling upon prey as he works and bringing it back to eat or sell. For this, he needs Sammy by his side to keep watch and protect him.
That's why Jason took on a portion of Sammy's chores so he'll be free to assist in the afternoon. In exchange, Jason will get a bigger cut of the revenue, a deal Sammy didn't hesitate to take.
5 Days Later.
World: 33 days.
Clarksons: 28 days.
Another day off, and another Hazzard beast culling expedition with his little blond munchkin.
Both left mid-morning with their gear, weapons and cart. Despite both unlocking their porting ability, there's only so much space, so everything else has to go on the cart. At least they return home with quite a bit more than they usually do.
Another thing different about this expedition was Jason's weapon of choice: a sling. You know, that thing David used to one-shot a bear, lion, and heavily armored giant man.
He once watched in a video where they explained how these weapons were able to launch rocks at speeds relativistic to bullets. Reality confirmed that for him, and he was pleased with it.
He had bought the sling earlier that week, and wasted no time mastering it, however only on stationary targets. But thanks to his mindscape, he was able to master it with moving targets.
How? You see, when Jason split his mind between meditation and his mindscape, said mindscape transformed into a world he had complete control over when his body fell into rem sleep. In short, his mindscape contained his perfect lucid dream world.
He could do whatever he wanted, manifest whatever he wanted, and have that do whatever he wanted.
At first he created moving targets which took his skills with a sling to a new level. Then he manifested all the animals he killed thus far and had them attack him, further raising said skill.
Lastly he began having fun by recreating all his favourite ultimate moves from all the anime he remembered and kept blasting all the beasts to smithereens over and over again.
This was why he looked forward to every night. It was extreme productive and fun.
Getting to their killzone, Team Jaysam got to work. Their first victim was a terror bird. Turns out a portion of the world's fauna consists of animals that went extinct in his world.
If fact, Jason categorized the animals and hazard beast he read about into the following:
Prehistoric: dinosaurs.
Fantasy: goblins, ogres, orcs, slime, etc.
Big: larger versions of regular creatures.
Folk: Chubakbra, big foot, yeti, etc
Pantheonic: satyr, Akuma, cerberus, etc.
Special: unique to this world.
World building aside, it was time to down the big bird. Jason stood at some distance and began to twirl his sling. It was noisy and attracted the attention of the beast.
This gave the closer Sammy who was hidden the opening to let lose a bolt to the leg. It's speed compromised, Jason took aim and let the rock sour with a crack. Bullseye! The Terror Bird fell after receiving a devastating blow to the head.
The hunting continued and bodies began to pile: A testament to their effectiveness. Deciding to return after 1 more kill, the two settle in to their hiding places. However when they saw what was coming, both gasped in horror.
Tatter Town, Dakota Dukedom.
World: 33 days.
Clarksons: 28 days.