Power comes with a cost and Tetsu paid the cost by sleeping three to four times a day and eating twice his normal appetite. He required even more sustenance than a baby elephant, all the while fighting to stay awake.

This doesn’t seem like much, but once you consider where he had to sleep and what he had to eat, you might change your opinion.

Every time he got a new skill or new theory stuck in his head, Tetsu would use more of his mana and reduce more of his health to understand the skill.

The system has a system for giving out skills. To know its process, Tetsu tried to figure out why and how he got a certain skill. The process behind it was tedious, yet Tetsu hasn’t gained a single level from his endeavors. He sure consumed a lot of gross corpses, though.

This was the primary reason he desired the rune consume, in his arsenal. In theory, he wouldn’t have to taste the gross options available to eat and be able to recover his resources faster.

Above all of that, he just wanted to eat like Goku and the others. All those anime heroes boggling up food like some bottomless pits raised some weird satisfaction and desire to consume meat...

“No!” Tetsu punches his belly. “Don’t you dare go there!”

Once Tetsu recovers from his fatigue, he uses his new skill to find some food.

Nowadays, his schedule revolves around scavenging, eating, and sleeping. His body demanded food to run away and sleep to recover from his fatigue. Tetsu left behind all his experiments as he struggled over basic needs.

The system offered him a skill to scavenge better, but his pride didn’t allow him to pick ‘Corpse finder.’

“The wording wasn’t cool at all.”

Tetsu left his pants behind at the safe house. It weighed him down and made it super hard for a quick escape. But mostly, it served as a compass for him to get back. He still remembered getting lost not too long ago.

Tetsu hid under a rock and cried for what felt like days until the rhino came by and saved him.

For a second Tetsu thought she was there for the rock and like she wasn’t searching for him all these days.

For some reason, the clear frown on her face wasn’t proof enough.

Tetsu clung to her shield and wept until they made it back to the safe house. Turned out he was just around the corner. But Tetsu swore those humongous trees weren’t there a few days ago.

To never repeat this unfortunate incident, Tetsu uses a hack within a hack.

After testing his connection to the pants, he decides his way back is more important than his family jewels. Thus formed a new plan to use his pants as a compass.

Now, finding his way back wasn’t a hurdle, and he could head deeper into the forest, expanding his territory. Trading his family jewels for a sure way back is a small price to pay, if you ask Tetsu.

“Come to think of it, shouldn’t I ask RJ for some full armor?”

Tetsu named his friend RJ. It had nothing to do with her being a rhino or that her actual body comprised jelly. He tried teaching her English, in hopes she would understand how cool her name was, but for a level five rhino, her vocabulary was limited to spitting in his face.

“Ah well, intelligence takes time.” Tetsu pardons his friend’s stupidity.

A burnt scar over a tree activates Tetsu’s ‘Resource Radar’ and ‘Tracker’ skills.

A theory helped Tetsu find a synergy between them both. From a vague direction that his skill ‘Tracker’ used to show, now, after the synergy, Tetsu had an imaginary arrow in his head, pointing him toward the resource and his prey.

True to its rarity, the unique skill had many loopholes for Tetsu to explore and improve. There was the obvious drawback of needing a database, but that’s something Tetsu took as a challenge as it forced him to ignore his cowardly ass and explore.

Tetsu follows the imaginary arrow into a battlefield.

A wasp made up of dried leaves and white flames fought against an ugly, ugly booger.

Don’t ask me how the fire isn’t burning away the dried leaves, it just isn’t because of mana. If you want to get technical, they are called ‘Floralinix’ and have ‘lacte-flare’ and ‘Morph’ affinities.

Shocker, right? It might be my amazing deduction skill or just the fact that it literally made of those things. ‘Lacte-flare’ is some kind of white liquid-fire and morph means morph.

Its opponent is an ugly, ugly booger and also the only creature worth eating around here. It’s a disgusting mixture of the blobfish, mole rat, and star nose mole. Don’t you dare ask me its name? All my ethics be dammed. I ain’t finding out its name.

In truth, Tetsu wasn’t able to use info over this creature he calls Booger. Some knowledge is not worth the price. Tetsu also couldn’t separate his disgust from his intent to find any worthwhile information.

The wasp morphed its body to form a bigger stinger. Half of its body transformed into a stinger, while the other half transformed into tin long arms, to control and aim the stinger.

White blazing lines creep away from the wasps and onto its stinger. It aims and shoots the stinger toward the booger. The slimy, disgusting creature wiggles at a place too slow and too ugly to move.

Ugly might not be a factor, but uh, that gross slime had to die.

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Several attacks later, the wasp wins the battle. Too tired or out of resources, the wasp rests in the sky before flying away. It didn’t dare to linger closer, as the dead booger stunk up the area.

The outer layer of the booger was covered with a thick, mucous layer and, until the sun burnt this layer thoroughly, none dared approach its corpse.

In a few days, this layer will dissipate and the area will become another fighting ground for stronger monsters, wanting to claim its meat.

Unlucky for them, Tetsu was desperate.

The booger was an easy and high-level target. High-level beasts were always lurking around its surroundings. Because of this, Tetsu couldn’t conduct proper research on the booger.

From the many battles, Tetsu discerned it to be a defensive type. It never attacked nor ran. It always tanked a lot of attacks, then died by stinking up the entire area.

Tetsu stored and used its mucus to scout deeper into the forest. He even ate its disgusting body. Yet his knowledge hadn’t been vague enough to use info.

“Now.”

Tetsu dashes forward with flowers stuffed in his nostrils. These acted as makeshift nose clips, forcing the sweet scent down his nose. These were the only things that didn’t try to kill him so far, and those bell flowers too. Very useful and his reason for surviving thus far, according to Tetsu.

He didn’t understand why he had to blow over the water bubble before drinking, but when the rhino wasn’t around, he drank them with no theoretics.

“Girls and their love for drama.”

Tetsu digs through the mucus, holding his gag reflexes back. His sense of taste and smell brings back memories of his first encounter with the booger.

The flavor found its way back onto his tongue.

“Damn, my improved sense.” Tetsu curses.

He bit his lip, drawing blood. After diverting his tongue, he asks for help from his stomach.

“Now you can go there...”

He imagines a different kind of meat while cutting the boogers’ grey flesh in a zigzag pattern.

The creatures around Tetsu, except for a certain dumb jelly, have high perception builds. Almost every creature suspected a third party to be stealing their meat. Some of them even followed the stench, almost finding the safe house.

Tetsu had to take several diversions, place several fake hideouts with the booger's slime, and steal their hunt right after the booger’s death to avoid suspicion.

The mucus reeks the most after its death, so Tetsu had to time it right and steal the meat before the first six hours. Right after its death is ideal, but that meant he had to track one booger constantly and that was too dangerous. Any later than six hours and the beasts will send scouting units to keep track of the dead booger.

His window was between when the attacker left and before the scouts arrived. A short period based on Tetsu’s ‘RR’ skill.

The RR database consisted of a vague location of the Floralinix nest and its flying speed. Based on the database and his skills and intuition, Tetsu got a heads-up, on whether or not to cross said creature.

Tetsu always scouted around a dead booger before he approached, because more than once he found a scouting party keeping track of the area from a distance.

He outplayed them once by using his sudden stroke of luck and intuition. But knew better than to test his luck twice.

Tetsu cuts the bugger’s disgusting yet surprisingly tender black meat in a zigzag pattern. He wanted to imitate a beast’s bite mark, and if he says himself, he did pretty impressive work.

This imitation of some poor creature’s rigged jaw was meant to divert the blame, and it did work from time to time.

He notes the date and plans to return before the battle for the corpse begins. Every battle gave him a wide range of materials and the general power of his enemies. Even his database grew tenfold after every battle.

Many might call his technique cowardly, but hiding and peeking around for a glance when his heart permits is pure strategy in his mind.

One has to study their opponent first. Be it a drop of information now, in a year or two, you will have a bucket.

Before the battle begins, Tetsu returns to the scene of the crime and spots several scouting parties of different factions sent to monitor the corpse.

Almost all of them showed visible signs of concern as they inspected the body. Whether it was the stench, fear, or concern over some poor creature’s jaw, only they know.

Tetsu took the conclusions closest to his hypothesis and left the rest.

“See... these creatures have high intellectual minds when it comes to hunting at least, unlike someone who eats anything and fights anyone.”

Hiding and observing his masterful plan play out, Tetsu got a notification. “That’s a pleasant surprise.”

His curiosity gets the better of him as Tetsu ignores the beast's closing in and opens his system screen instead. His heart required time to build up the courage that would allow Tetsu to peek, so he planned to wait as he read the notification.

[Ding! The requirement to upgrade ‘Novice Cover’ has been met.]

[Skill ‘Novice Cover’ has been upgraded to Expert Deceit; Sometimes a cover isn’t enough. One has to divert their hunter’s attention in order to live or divert their prey to land the killing blow. Find creative ways to use nothing but your surroundings to trick and slip your target. May you deceive everyone who falls for the obvious. Level: Initiate. Rarity: rare]

“Can’t stop the banter, can you?” He glares at his system. “If it wasn’t for these hacks, I would’ve ghosted you long ago.”

Tetsu accepts the upgrade and feels the knowledge involving the minor changes in his previous skill.

The skill hides Tetsu a bit better. Tetsu didn’t think much of it while the approaching scouts zoomed past him.

Tetsu nods, understanding the basics. He closes his window and checks his surroundings.

“Huh! Where did everyone go?”

Once in the clear, he gets out of hiding and collects what’s left of the booger. He finds many tiny bone fragments and shredded meat around the battlefield.

“Such a waste.” Tetsu frowns.

After clearing the battlegrounds Tetsu-style, he had a fist full of meat and tiny fragments of broken bones.

He pops one tiny bone into his mouth and remembers all the times he wasted food. It might have just been one grain, but add one grain of rice from the entire population and how many mouths can you feed?

One needed to be forced into the system or into the wild to understand the value of food and water.

He had Kile and his dad, yet Tetsu never learned such a simple etiquette of life.

Tetsu's tears turn to anger when he sees a certain someone who never wastes a single morsel. He never even saw the damn thing poop. Why was Tetsu angry over such a person who followed the etiquette to the dot and took it to the next level...

Because it was a dumb, stupid rhino jelly who ate his portion of the meals, too.

One other reason Tetsu had to keep hunting. Okay, okay... stealing others’ hunt was because of her.

“You don’t steal from a thief.”

Tetsu throws a rock at the rhino.

She raises her head and looks at the rock decline at a distance and slowly rolls up to her.

“Wait! Or do you?” Tetsu stops and questions himself. “Not the time.” He snaps back into the game, activating his speed-boosting skill.

Without the armour, his speed reached new heights before he tripped and fell.

He completely forgot he was low on mana, using it all recently to research his new skill.

“Stop!” Tetsu screams at the rhino.

RJ ignores his pleas and munches on Tetsu’s weeks’ worth of meat rations as he crawls closer.

Tetsu kept changing his meat storage from deeper underground pits to higher tree trunks. He also placed it around that stinky mucus, and yet she found it every time. It was almost like she had a...

“Of course! It’s a skill.” Tetsu bangs his head on the floor. “Ah! Stupid.” He curses and smashes his head again.

“Leave some for me... please...” He kept crawling closer and yelling louder.

RJ tore bigger chunks of meat and chewed harder.

“Stop that! I know you don’t have to chew.”

She smirks at him and opens her mouth wider.

“No! No, no, no...”

Before Tetsu got to her, she plunged her entire gelatinous body into the pit and sucked out the rest of the meat.

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