Ze Shou could feel his body recover, the teeth marks around his skull slowly closing. Brain matter forming in their proper place, and he could also slowly start to feel movement in his disjointed limbs. Once he got full action from his limbs, he pushed himself off the sand crystals and scanned the area. Not seeing or sensing any threats to him, he moved his attention to the dead ruby hyenas that killed him. Ze Shous total kills numbered three with a blood trail leading deeper into the cave system.
Assuming the other hyena was injured, and he was currently safe, he examined the body for any useful material. Ze Shou started with the head; he studied the eyes, his finger sunk in them, and the redness seems to be tapetum. That's what seemed to make them shine; next, Ze Shou ran his hand through what seemed like fur, his hand didn't sink in and seemed to bump when he went over different creases of the ruby-like skin.
After that, Ze Shou looked around for his carving rock, going around the area he found the rock sticking out of one corpse. As he pulled out his carving rock blood sprayed out from the slit, then the bugs followed. Ze Shou tried to catch them and then stuff them in his gourds upon pulling out his line of flasks he saw that one had a deep gash that cut through it. Another one had two punctures of teeth marks, and the others were in a somewhat good condition besides some scrapes from claws and teeth.
Ze Shou plucked off the gourd and tossed it, landing softly in the sand crystals as it can't be fixed, so he pushed the bugs into the one with teeth marks as it couldn't store water any longer and the bugs were too big for the holes. Ze Shou collected decent-sized insects and stuffed them into the gourd he plugged the top with his thumb while he looked for a clustered crystal sand that could cork the hole. He started his search combing his other hand through the fine sand coming up with only loose grain and no clumps.
Ze Shous finger felt tinges of pain as the bugs tried to crawl their way out through his flesh. The insects' mandibles were only sharp enough to cut through soft tissue, so while annoying to him, he wasn't in any danger yet. After going back and forth, combing through the crystals, he took a break to take another look around the cave. Upon scanning the floor of the cave, he noticed the black stalagmites. He walked over to the closest one and pushed at the pointed tip with his index finger. Applying more pressure to the dark spike tip, with no signs of breaking, he lets off.
Ze Shou puts his carving rock to his hand-winding back his arm he smashes at the top of the formed rock causing a delicate line to run through the base of the stalagmite tip. He then presses his finger on the tip of the stalagmite; this time, it breaks loose and falls to the ground. Ze Shou picks it up and fits it to the gourd, but the base of the tip was too long and impeded his movements, so he tried again with the surrounding stalagmites to find the remaining gourd caps.
After fitting his gourds with caps, he went back to inspecting the dead hyena, due to his distraction, more bugs have infested the corpses. The bugs started to consume the untouched ones at a visible pace to the point of showing bones with bits of meat and leftover tendons that were too hard for them to chew through. Ze Shou pried open the dead hyena mouth with his carving rock to inspect the teeth as he found them sharp and useful while also painful. Prying open, the dead beast maw bugs swarmed out, and onto his carving knife, Ze Shou no longer showed a look of disgust as he calmly sorted through the bugs throwing them into his gourd.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Checking the dead hyenas' canine teeth and premolar teeth for looseness and sharpness by skimming his carving rock against them. Satisfied by the mark left by the teeth, he removed his carving rock from the jaw ad moved to the claws. The claws had more sharpness and were easy to break off with a little pressure, not sure of their durability but assured of their sharpness. He decided to keep the claws and wait for the bugs to eat the gums and flesh of the heads of the dead hyena. Ze Shou, while waiting for the corpses to be picked clean, looked around for the hallucinogenic water.
After going a few hundred meters into the nearby tunnels and finding no trace of water, he guessed he has to make a journey deeper into the system where it was more likely to condense. When Ze Shou turned around towards the back of the cave, leaving marks on the side of the cave for fun and a way to track the route, he arrived at the entrance. The corpses entirely consumed except for a few pieces of meat and tendon; they were perfect skeletons. Ze Shou lifted the skeleton head and used his carving rock to knock out his desired teeth after setting them aside with the claws he went to move outside to gather his resources again, and possible dig holes on the outside as the cave was compromised.
Once outside, he felt blistering heat attack his skin, his previously jade white ski started to show patches of red. His forehead started sweating; he looked around the sky, noticing it had turned a dark brown with clouds that hovered barely above the trees. Ze Shou started his climb down the rocky terrain, but the rocks seemed to be hot as they burned his skin every time he pressed a body part against them. Ze Shou now speeding up his descending pace to reach the basin quickly as he felt a foreboding sensation prick the back of his head. The hair on his arms raised, his heart got a sudden boost of adrenaline, his breath quickened as he scanned his soundings, not feelings any eyes locked onto him. He moved quickly to make a basket to grab other foodstuffs for later.
Making his basket, the dark brown clouds slowly got closer, and the temperature raised even more. He moved his hands quickly, but his tense nerves caused him to tear leaves, slowing his progress down to the point of needing to start over. Ze Shou got up to look for more fallen leaves to weave with, but his sense soon kicked up another notch as he sensed multiple presences heading his way.
None of them were targeting him, but they all ran in the same direction as if fleeing. Ze Shou turned to run abandoning the barley made basket and headed back towards his cave, almost halfway to the climbing rocks. The area the tree line behind him sharted to be shattered into fragments by larger animals ranging from woolly mammoths to his beloved giant red cobra with a giant ever-changing multicolored tiger only to be right behind him.
The other large animals seemed to ignore him, but his two animals locked on to Ze Shou fleeing figure. The cobra slithered towards Ze Shou but was knocked into the basin by Prominence making boiling water splash into the air forming a rainbow with the residual droplets. The cobra flailed about as its leathery skin blistered in the boiling water. It lashed out; its maw snapping at the air as it tried to snap at whatever that was attacking him. In its panicked state, the cobra couldn't differentiate between a predator attacking and a natural phenomena. While the cobra was panicked and struggling, the boiling basin prominence was continuing his chase back onto Ze Shou.
Ze Shou, now sensing a deadly focus on his back again, focused his attention and calmed himself. He allowed his body to run from cover to cover while his mind focused on trying to see 'The Code.' His vision fluctuated from the ordinary scenery to ever-changing lines of number and characters or red and black. As his vision almost went entirely into 'The Code,' his body took a sudden dive into the dirt, throwing him out of the zone filling his face with soil, then his body rolled to the right to through a group of brushes.