After traveling alongside the lakeside for some time, I finally encountered the river and promptly started fallowing it upstream.

Going through the forest I… didn’t really encounter anything for a long time.

Which made sense because it’s a goddamn forest! But man, I could really use some structures left from an ancient civilization that was lost to time, but reality is sadly not as interesting as I’d like it to be.

So, I just continued fallowing the river upstream, occasionally climbing random trees to scout the area and to see if there were any areas of interest that I could see, or to just rest because I was low on mana.

But, as I jumped on the branches of another tree along my way to scout out the area, I saw a giant ass bee on the branch I jumped up to.

“SON OF A—” acting like any sane person would, I immediately slapped the bee that was nearly as large as a fist, digging my claws into its buggy flesh and throwing it down to the ground.

Then, as it fell to the ground it started making a weird noise which is… probably not that weird considering it’s a bug in pain.

But, not wanting to find out if it was somehow channelling a weird spell that would call a thousand bees to my position or something else, I moved my other body on the ground to kill it before it could continue or finish making that noise.

And after a few second of waiting for the bee to fall to the ground, my other body quickly got rid of it resulting in me gaining…

*ding*

Congratulations! You have defeated Big Bee (Z) level 3!

exp 3

Congratulations! You've leveled up and become level 8!

A single level, which was more than I was hoping for to be honest.

Then I quickly opened my system window and assigned my stats into intelligence and wisdom like always, not like I had any options, and ended up with this.

Mana Points: 83/112

Intelligence: 9 (2)

Wisdom: 15 (2)

Turning my attention to the now very dead bee, I started to more carefully inspect it, wondering about the weird bug that was… probably not that weird by this world’s standards.

And it seemed like just a normal bee, just a lot larger.

Which I wasn’t complaining about because I really don’t want to have another hybrid situation with a shit ton of magical creatures attacking me.

But looking at the bee made me think about something… should I find its nest?

“I mean… I could use that as some sort of a landmark…” which, I very well could.

I mean, a hive big enough to keep hundreds, if not thousands of these things would be a sight to behold! And, distinctive enough that I could remember it, or recognize it whenever I see it.

Quickly deciding on what to do, I started looking around from the branches of the tree, then I remembered the small fact that bees often fly about a few kilometres from their hives… normal bees that is, not giant bees.

“This… is going to take some time.” I said to myself, but I was also kinda bored from just going up stream for hours by now… so, I deserved a distraction, no?

But even though I deserved some me time from my exploration, there was something that was going to make it a bit problematic. My other body. It basically had no mana, and I couldn’t even increase its stats because it didn’t have any stat points!

So, every now and then, I had to just extend a mana tendril into it, reconnect my soul, and then dump some mana into it.

Which I had to do every half an hour or so because, if my body ever got caught by something wanting to take a bite out of it while it had low mana, I would just lose it. Which would be no bueno!

…I really am starting to rethink the usefulness of having multiple bodies… but at the same time, I can’t exactly just reabsorb my soul now, can I?

But no matter, I’ll, hopefully, find a better body in a day or two. Otherwise… I am going to have a few problems.

“Eh… whatever, no point in thinking about it for now. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t drop my… terminally ill body in front of a wolf or something, and everything will be fine!” I said, and quickly got to exploring from this side of the river, remembering the direction I came from and occasionally turning around so I could just return to the river if I ever decided I was just wasting time.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Then I set off into the depts of the forest to… not find anything of interest for quite some time.

But, after walking for god knows how long, I started seeing more and more of the bees and they didn’t seem that aggressive.

I mean, yes, small critters like squirrels and birds looked at them in worry whenever they came near, but that was just for a few moments. It seemed like business as usual to me.

Then, after like an hour or so of walking, as I jumped on a tree, and looked around to hopefully see the bees’ nest and I finally saw it! But instead of a bee’s nest, it looked more like a… termite nest.

It was built on the ground with various holes, small and big, dotting its surface and it was quite big. Its bottom was also really wide, making it seem like some sort of primitive pyramid-like structure made of dirt and wax, and probably some plant material too, instead of something that would be made by normal bugs.

“I wonder if these things are farmed…” I mean, maybe that shouldn’t’ve been my first thought after seeing this monstrosity, but I was really curious.

They didn’t seem too aggressive, so, unless you came too near to their nest, or attacked them, they would probably leave you alone rather than attacking you, so an experienced group of beekeepers with a really, really large plot of land could probably harvest these bees without a problem.

And yes, I am assuming the beekeepers have some kind of… calming or smoke making magic or skills because no normal human would ever think of getting near these things.

Gazing at the weird mound of dirt and wax for a few more moments, and appreciating its weird beauty, I quickly marked it in my mental map, and started going back to the river and, started wondering if I would see something that would actually give me some exp.

I mean, while I could always just go after the terror birds and the hybrids, and get exp that way, like I said before, I don’t want to cause a species to have a hard time because I just wanted to get a few more levels, or more bodies.

So, I need to find a lot of different animals around my power level to hunt, and hopefully some that are stronger than me to hunt in the future and, while I hoped that there would be all sorts of weird abominations wandering around in a fantasy forest… most animals are actually pretty normal.

I mean, yes, there is always some that seem… weird. Maybe most, if not all, animals are affected by mana, but not all animals seem to know how to use mana, nor do they seem to have any instincts to use it.

But there are a few species, or individuals, that I’ve seen that are affected by mana to such a degree that its abundantly clear that animals have the capacity to use mana, like the most notable examples like the hybrids, and the occasional vine deer I’ve seen, and the gigantic tree with the weird aura around it.

“But why don’t animals just use this… well, maybe not easily accessible, but abundant thing in the air? Are most animals just… incapable of using mana?

…Or do they need some kind of a catalyst to trigger some form of evolution?” that… was a thought, but I actually doubt that’d be the case because of one simple reason.

All the animals I’ve seen so far have been… animals. Just that.

I am yet to see a true monster filled with such a bloodlust that the only thing it yearns for is the death of others, even if the said death doesn’t contribute to it in any way.

And the only way for a true monster such as that to come about would be… the system. But then we run into the same problem I talked about just now; normal animals don’t fuck around and neither do they find out.

“Though the Hybrids can be seen as a weird case…” I mean, yeah, they are definitely weird because of their physiology, but that’s not the only weird thing about them.

In nature most creatures just avoid dangerous encounters such as attacking a bigger animal, even the king of the jungle, the lion. Because of a one simple reason… an injured animal is a dead animal.

But the hybrids have one thing that differentiates them from other animals… their whole species seems to have the touch of mana on them. They’ve been quite literally warped by it, changed to such a degree that comparing them to normal animals is just outright stupid.

Not only them! Even the vine deer I saw resting on the shadow of the gigantic tree attacked one of its attackers with a vine slash while escaping and, while you can call that just self-defence, normal deer don’t attack unless it’s the literal last option.

“So… mana must be affecting animals to some degree, but even in large quantities like in the case of the Hybrids’, it doesn’t seem to remove the instinct of self-preservation from them… but they Hybrids are only H ranked, and the deer probably wasn’t even that affected by mana that much, so… to what degree does something have to be warped by mana to become a ‘true’ monster?” while I wasn’t really sure about my… crackpot magic theory—mana theory? Fuck it, mana theory.

While I wasn’t so sure about my crackpot mana theory’s accuracy in saying that everything touched by mana has some inherent bloodlust to them, which I hoped was false, was true… it also got me thinking about my future.

What happens if I encounter a ‘true’ monster as I call it? If they are real of course.

Do I fight? Run? Act dead? What could I even do against something with a body that’s been warped, or affected, by mana to such a degree that its entire thought process as a being has changed?

Honestly, nothing. At least for now. As I am right now, I am weak. And while I am still not planning on starting my demon king arc, I need to find some way to get a lot of exp… or make some compromises with my morals which I am only leaving on the table as the worst-worst-case scenario.

“Hmm… but would something need to be so corrupted by mana to be crazy? Hell, I’ve seen some people on some high-quality glue that have gone crazy. So, there is always a case for a super plant to make some super glue that gets peoples’ blood boiling.

…And there always could be just fucking super rabies. I mean, I’ve yet to see a sick animal, so I hope germ theory is just not real in this world, and I won’t encounter a fucking dragon with dilated pupils staring at me with a foamy mouth, but I also doubt that a world without bugs covering absolutely everything could exist, so… I am just going to hope I don’t see a gigantic bear or something similar rolling out of the woods with a foamy mouth…” then, knowing that my hubris had set off a flag, I tensed up and started looking around, trying to see if something was staring at me.

But there was nothing. Knowing that I had avoided another near dead scenario, I decided to go up to the branches of a random tree, and rest for a bit.

Afterall, I still needed mana to move, and you could always have more time to do nothing.

Then, with swift movements, I got both of my bodies to the branches of one of the trees near me, but then I started to think.

“Hmm… couldn’t I just use the branches to move and not be bothered with walking on the ground at all?” which was… possible. Not sure how I’d do that though… eh, let me just test it a few times.

So, I started to test my jumping skills, first hopping from one branch to the other in the tree I was in, then moving onto the nearby branches of the other trees to test if jumping would be a safer way of moving around.

Then, as I was just about to end my testing and actually rest, one of my bodies made a slip and fell down a… not so small of a distance, but there won’t be any problem as long as I don’t see any bones leaving the body.

“Yeah… everything seems fine so—”

*growl~~*

Looking towards where the sound came from, I saw a not so happy teddy bear looking at me with… foamy mouth.

“Guess I didn’t quite dodge the flag now, did I?” not being able to understand speech, the bear instead choose to swipe one of its paws at me with a roar.

a roar.