In the vicinity of the Vao Vao also known as the hell on hell.

A boy is seen dashing through the forest on his four as a wild animal and black and red tentacles surrounding him.

“Han, You stupid idiot.”

“Ha… Pardun! Was it my fault if it was well hidden?!”

“And I am supposed to be the blind one?!”

“Sorry, but I think your blindness made you forget the concept through and through. I’m dotted with sight, not omnipotence.”

“Besides, it was your choice to attack them so it’s a little bit rich of you to blame me for all of this!”

Suddenly, a big explosion exploded behind us.

Glancing back I saw a horrendous monster the size of a small hill, destroying every tree on its path emerging from the forest.

That monster was closing us, at an impressive speed despite his unfitting size.

Naturally, that monster was chasing us for a reason, to kill us obviously.

“Screw you, Han!!“ Hon cursed before accelerating.

How did we end up in this situation would you ask.

Well, it all started two weeks ago.

***

It’s been one week since I started exploring with Han the Vao vao.

We were walking with no real destination in mind, just a direction, deep into the forest.

The trees around here were very dispersed, and the space between each tree was so large that a manor could be built without having to cut a single tree for space, but the landscape on the other side was far from welcoming, in fact, I will go as far as describing it as hostile.

If it weren’t for my method of locomoting and my very unique method of motility and my also atypic method of scanning my surroundings with my tentacle I would have a lot of a hard time moving around being blind as I am.

The ground is rough, bumpy here and there, and the mosses which cover a considerable percentage of the soil in this area make the landscape extremely slippery.

Concerning monsters,

I admit that it was a risky path to take, deciding to travel to the innermost reaches of the Vao Vao with little to no information about the area other than the fact that it is the last place in the forest where humanity has ventured.

So far, my knowledge of monsters and this forest has been immensely helpful, but now that I've decided to venture deeper into this place, I can say without being overly sarcastic that I am going blind in this journey.

But so far, the formula has remained consistent.

We get attacked, we kill it or them, it or they get killed … We stumble upon a monster, we kill it, it gets killed, rinse and repeat.

This section of the forest is very different from the others I've visited; the atmosphere here is more hostile.

I'm not saying it wasn't the case in the Frozen Hell and the Ivohy, but it's more pronounced here. So far, we've only encountered Magical Beasts and no high beasts.

This would appear to suggest that magical beasts are at the bottom of the food chain in this area.

But with Han by my side, the journey is much easier and smoother.

Despite his oddness, he appears to be a competent fighter; he can even use magic, similar to the one used by DeathSeeker.

Furthermore, the fact that he is sighted provides me with many advantages, though despite being able to do almost everything I could do when I was still able to see with my tentacles, there are still many things I can't do with it.

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It may sound strange, but the fact that I can see or rather sense him, even if only as a faint silhouette, is extremely helpful and somehow reassuring.

It's similar to having a small glowing firefly in the dark; it doesn't light up the entire room, but it gives the impression that you're not completely in the dark.

As I have said, I can perceive him, his every move; I don't know why or how, but I can.

I still have no idea who or what he is, and I intend to figure it out today.

“You’re finally going to explain what exactly are you?” I asked kicking onto something that let out a horrible screech.

“Can’t you tell? I’m Han, your killing partner.”

“Not that, you introduced yourself as something feeding upon the dying what did you mean by that?”

I insisted stomping on that something skull’s squirting hot blood and brain matter all over the ground..

“You said you were feeding upon what I kill, does it mean you eat that thing soul or something along those lines? Or can you usurp this thing form as you did with the DeathSeeker?”

“That’s a lot of questions.” He said tearing something screeching.

“Answer them they will eventually dry up.”

“I guess it can’t be helped then, as I said I feed upon the dying, I‘m not sure you refers to when you said soul, but in one way one can say that what I feed upon is something similar to what one could call a soul.”

“What?”

“Try guessing.”

Something similar to what one might call a soul?

“Aina?” I ventured.

After all that's what he looked like to me.

“Half-correct;”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

“Try to guess the remaining half-answers.”

“I don’t know, … mana.”

“Aaah Voilà…. It’s it. As you might have remarked this is not a physical flesh, but rather created form or to be exact a usurped form. Just like how you use aina to control your appendage, I use aina to control this form, as a vessel for my existence.”

“What exactly do you really think aina and mana are?”

“I don’t know but from what I had read mana is internal energy nobles and magical beasts produce themselves, while aina is an energy that allows oneself to perform things such as enhancing sense or one’s body toughness. But if there was one thing that I’ve learned during that time I spent in that forest is that aina isn’t that simple.”

“Exactly,... I don’t know how you perceive it, but to me, aina is a force that keeps the shape of everything, from animals, monsters, humans, or things, it all is kept shaped in the way they are through aina. There is no such thing as a thing without aina, It’s just there are just things that can’t control it.”

According to legend, what I've read and Maa's story, before the era of the Seven Apostles, there was no such thing as mana; it was only after the bestowal of the goddess of magic upon the seven that the world discovered magic.

To be honest, there was little to no mention of anything prior to the existence of the Seven Apostles in any book. From what I've read, it felt like almost everything emerged the moment the apostles or more precisely the church came into existence, with no mention of anything prior to their era.

Though it wasn't explicitly stated, it was reasonable to assume that aina had been present for far longer than mana.

What he said about aina being the energy that holds everything together is very plausible because what I was doing with my appendage was literally using that power to bend the shape of things through the use of Aina, and the fact that Aina is external energy that can be found almost anywhere reinforced that belief.

“I am something that neither can control aina like you nor produce mana like magical, instead I can steal dying aina and mana. You can see me as something using aina as a container while I’m using mana to fill that container.”

“I see… “

“By killing a magical beast you both release the aina that keeps his soul in shape and his mana; What I do is to usurp their shell as a vessel for my existence.”

“It’s still hard to comprehend but I guess it’s clearer now… Wait so I was right about you being able to take the form of any magical beast we’ve killed? Then can you use take this one appearance?” I asked lifting at him a bloodied feline magical beast corpse.”

“It doesn’t work like this… to perform what I did with that Deathseeker I need both a powerful aina vessel and mana stored, both of which you provided me graciously during your stay in the Frozen Hell.”

“I see … if you want a new shell then I’ll have to provide you a similar amount of aina and mana?”

“Not you, but Us. And yes if I’ll have to add myself another vessel I would need a similar amount as you provided me and an equally if not way more powerful vessel than that Deathseeker.”

“Wait… you can stack them? Like having two bodies?”

“Well …two forms would be the correct way to put it and yes I will be able to stack them, and swap between them if needed. Impressed aren’t you.“

“Consider I am.” I was about to cut the conversion when I remembered another question I was very curious about. “Then, what you were before our meeting? before getting this appearance?”

“I can't say much about what I was like before our meeting because I don't know what I was like,... I feel like I just appeared out of nowhere, but that doesn't matter because I don't know what I was, but I know what I want: strength. After all, isn't strength what every creature in this world strives to?”

"I guess you're right, I guess we'll have to keep this pace," I said, tossing the corpse I was holding onto a pile of corpses next to us.

I was still tempted to ask why he was able to peek and read my thoughts like an open book, but the ferocious purring noise I heard around us told me to focus primarily on them.

And I was not like I was running out of time to ask him these questions.