Rydel stored the mangled corpse and rested his back on the wall. He looked at himself and frowned. His legs were hurt, he had deep bites that reached the bone and slashes covering his entire body.

Rydel limped out of the cave and washed his legs in the river. His head felt light because of the blood loss. He took out bandages from his spatial ring and treated his wounds after drying himself. He went to the cave and cleaned the nest a bit before sitting down to rest.

The injuries were a problem, they would need a week to heal. He had removed the blood odor on his way back, so hopefully new beasts wouldn't come. He still had to eat, and rations were one of the things that he wasn’t allowed to bring.

He knew how to make a fire, he also needed to bleed the dead raccoons before dismantling them. In the later stages of cultivation, a person could absorb the spiritual energy of the environment to replenish himself but he wasn’t at that stage yet. And neither was anyone that he knew, Galather ate less than normal, but he still needed to eat.

Rydel prepared the game and went around to collect some berries. He has studied the fauna and flora of the Afrein Peninsula in his years of school. He recognized these berries as edible and didn’t hold back. After refilling his canteen, he ate until he felt full and went back to the cave.

He went to the nest and laid his sleeping bag down. He didn’t go in but laid above it to avoid staining the insides from blood. Washing blood stains was a pain in the ass and he didn’t want to do it on the first day of his adventure.

He quickly felt sleepy and decided to have some rest.

***

When Rydel woke up, it was night-time, he checked the surroundings and made a little fire with some flint and dry wood.

Rydel felt relaxed looking at the moon. He knew that no matter where he was, he’d always be illuminated by its radiance. It was his unwilling companion, it had seen him in his best and worst days, always watching without judgment. It was the most precious jewel of the sky.

Rydel sighed, it wasn’t the moment to distract himself. He had lots of things to go about. He used this respite to check his status.

Name: Rydel Elphyra

Age: 10 years

Race: Forest Elf

Class: ---

Daodrops: Dao of the Moonlight (Middle)

Traits: Moontouched

Vitality: 10

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 10

Endurance: 10

Perception: 35

Spirit: 50

Those were the hard-cap for Rydel. His physical attributes stopped at 10 a year ago, and they hadn’t progressed at all, strength wasn't his forte because of him being a forest elf.

He had the same problem with his spirit. His talent for perception was high so he could raise it to 35, but that was it. He was at the limit of his stats, only with extremely rare resources or breaking through could he take another step.

Rydel continued taking out the already bled carcasses, he dismantled them one by one. He buried the leftovers a little further away from his cave and kept the meat in the spatial ring. He didn’t forget to put the hearts in a big jar.

The spatial ring had a cubical space of 3000m³, inside were various necessities. What stood out the most were ten enormous jars placed on the side.

Forest elves had the belief that the heart was where the vitality that was bestowed by Mother Earth was stored. But only if it was your kill were you worthy of becoming one step closer to Her.

Rydel had avoided this tradition until now, he wasn’t a fan of eating raw throbbing hearts. Nobody would force him to eat them, but it would be frowned upon.

At the very least, objects inside spatial rings preserve for a much longer time. For the next 5 years these hearts would still be fresh, it was good news for Rydel.

Now that Rydel was injured and had limited movement capabilities, he could either try to think about a solution or wait for a week. With nothing better to do, he started to brainstorm.

The Dao had limitless potential, and in the end everything returned to one. At least that’s what was thought back on Earth. He has asked various people what they thought about the Dao in the clan, but the responses varied a lot. What they all agreed was that their knowledge was too shallow to claim to know how the grand picture of the Dao is.

If the Moon was able to give him strength in exchange of cursing him, would it be possible to do it the other way around? He put it to practice. Tonight was a crescent moon, a good day if something went wrong.

Rydel sat down in a lotus position and concentrated. He wished the Moon to heal his injuries. A thin fog started to gather, moonlight slowly tickled his body looking for something. They went to different parts of his body, some for his arm and chest, but the majority went to his legs.

It stung a lot, but Rydel resisted. This time, nothing snapped but Rydel noticed something was drawn to his legs. After twenty minutes, it stopped.

Rydel inspected his legs and was surprised that his injuries were much better, the skin was tender and he had some nasty scars, but he was in fighting condition again.

He stood up and wobbled. Rydel felt like a baby without any strength, he wasn’t tired, he just was weak. He had a suspicion and checked his status.

Vitality: 10 (2)

Strength: 9 (1)

Dexterity: 10 (2)

Endurance: 10 (2)

Perception: 35

Spirit: 50 (30)

His stats were decreased, Rydel panicked and focused on the parentheses.

[Weakened: Your attribute points are temporarily reduced.]

Rydel felt relieved, as long as it wasn’t forever then it didn’t matter. At least, he confirmed that the Moon was fair in his negotiations. If he wished for strength, he received a transformation. If he wished for health, he received weakness. It was balanced, as all should be.

Rydel didn’t have anything more to do and he was in a dangerous state, so he returned to his little haven to rest and see how long he would be like this.

Finally, he was back at full strength three days later. At least it was gradual, yesterday he had recuperated half of his attributes. From an injury that would have lasted a week, he recovered in a couple of minutes and needed three days of rest. It was a good trade-off if he could allow himself to be weakened. He decided to name his newest skill as Moonlight Mending, he could do a hurried healing but at the cost of his power.

He needed to think about comprehending another complementary Dao in the future. His Dao of Moonlight was pretty good, but it could only be used at night and that limited his options.

The only problem was that he didn’t know his affinities with the Dao, even if he thought about the perfect option, if he couldn’t comprehend it then it was no use. Forming a Daodrop was more about luck than other things. He could spend ten years in meditation with the wrong mentality and don’t get anything in the end, or he could randomly stumble upon the birth of a natural treasure and immediately form one.

For now, he would try to hunt at night, and sleep and scout during the day. It was morning and he has already rested for today, so Rydel proceeded with a little smile to see what mysteries he could unravel in the Leoheim Forest.

In those last years Rydel learned how to correctly harvest different plants and flowers when he was asked to gather ingredients by Roshia. So, when he saw some barbed hibiscus that were commonly used for healing pills, he used his expertise.

He carefully removed the patch of dirt that they were planted in, and used his spiritual tendrils as a brush to gently remove the leftovers. He then took a sealed box from his spiritual ring, and put them in.

Rydel was quite happy, his control was enough to do delicate things like this. His long years of boring practice were finally giving him results. If it was the past-him that had only recently discovered spiritual energy, he would have smashed the roots and the flower would have become useless.

True, Rydel spent a lot of his life training, but it was slowly accumulating into little advantages that would put him a cut above the rest at the same level.

Two days later, he was scouting when he noticed that there were a lot of hares south of his camp. He decided to look if they had a nest somewhere near and he tailed one of them when it was returning from hunting.

The hare was carrying a beast called slime sloth. Like the name implied, it was a sloth that had a slimy body.

Rydel had been wondering why animals in this world were so similar to the ones back on Earth. There were differences, like the raccoon that he previously killed had different colors and their anatomy was slightly changed. But they shared so many similarities that you could say that they were raccoons without a doubt.

There was also the thing that there were mentions of elves back on Earth. Nature was random, and the probabilities to create a species that were so close to what humanity envisioned, was close to zero. It was fine though, this just meant that there were still lots of mysteries to be disclosed.

Rydel followed the hare for a couple of hours, he was reinforcing the soles of his feet with spiritual energy to reduce the noise. After a while, it dropped the slime sloth in the ground and stood there just waiting. Rydel was curious of what it was doing, it had already rested on the way here.

Thirty minutes later after seeing that it was alone, the hare took the carcass and approached a tree. The tree looked normal, except that it was thinner, aroun ten meters wide.

The hare kept walking like there wasn’t an obstruction and entered the tree. The bark rippled like a disturbed lake for a moment before returning to normal.

Rydel didn’t expect that, he kept waiting to see if there was further movement. Twenty minutes later, the same hare exited the tree and went to the distance, more likely to hunt some more before calling it a day.

Rydel took this moment to put himself on a tree’s branch that was high enough to be inconspicuous but that had a direct line of vision with the supposed hollow tree.

Rydel even forgot about his task to survive and gain experience in this forest, his entire focus on seeing what was going on here. He didn’t know if his clan back home knew of this tree, but Rydel was happy to discover it.