Naath walked deeper and deeper into the forest relaxing as he went in leisurely. He had been walking for about an hour now and was reasonably deep into the woods. There was no clearly marked path or trail, he simply had a direction to walk towards. For any non cultivator, this would be impossible and they would simply walk around in circles unknowingly. However, as Naath was a cultivator he had a few advantages over non cultivators, the issue of any sort of dominance of one side of his body like his dominant hand or foot had evaporated. His sense of direction and memory was vastly superior, he could not catch most diseases, and he could also move faster, exert more physical strength, and due to his soul sea being open he could even think slightly faster.

As such Naath had walked about ten kilometers in this short hour and was well on his way to the Raging River City. Still, even with all of these benefits of being a cultivator, it would take him roughly a year in order to reach the city. So Naath continued on while thinking about various matters, specifically, he was thinking about being a soul master. He wondered how runes and formations worked, he had always been curious about them in his life on Earth. He had been a computer genus when he was on Earth and wondered if he could use programming languages in place of formations. However, he still had no idea how to focus or actually use his soul energy.

He would have to wait until the rune woke up and helped him to learn, so instead, he focused on recalling the information for a programming language he was working on developing on Earth. It was his pet project and always gave him something to do, he was making the programming language in order to make a more information efficient system. He had always felt that most computer programs took up too much storage space so he designed this language specifically to take up less space and make information compression easier and have less loss. What he ended up with was a special language that was written in a spiral formation and had branching nodes.

Naath always entertained himself by writing various scripts for this language and trying to find any and all flaws. Like this, he managed to pass an entire day while thinking about programming and scripting. Once night fell he took out a basic machete from his storage ring and quickly got a fire going. After that, he pulled out some fabric and made a basic tent to sleep under. The night was peaceful and he was able to finish a small meal and lay down without worry. As he layed down to go to sleep he cleared his mind and tried to think more deeply on the True Void Arts. Soon he lost himself in thought, thinking about and trying to understand the true void as much as possible. After all, the first stage of the True Void Arts was based on understanding and perceiving the true void.

The more deeply he understood the true void and its workings as well as the cycle the more powerful his True Void Arts would become. However it was no simple task to envision nothing, how do you describe zero color, zero mass, no light, no sound, no laws of anything, no up or down. Literal and complete nothing, how does that work, how does something with inherently no laws function, and by what laws of causality? These questions are what Naath would focus on to deepen his own understanding. Soon he fell asleep while pondering these questions, even seeming to question them in his dreams.

Once the morning came Naath felt as though he had reached another level of understanding. Another level of depth to the True Void Arts, however, he felt as though he had just touched the very edge of it and wasn’t ready to move on to the next stage yet. Once he was fully awake and cleared the fog in his mind from questioning everything he packed up his tent and began to walk deeper into the forest. Like this weeks passed by and Naath continued through the large, dense forest. But as he was thinking all the time and inquiring to himself he was unconsciously snacking. He had gotten so good at simply grabbing items from the storage ring due to his snacking that he didn't even have to think about it anymore.

Now Naath went to grab another piece of jerky only to realize that his storage ring was completely out. This snapped him out of his thoughts, he focused on the inside of the storage ring and then swore aloud as he realized that he was out of food and now he would have to start hunting in order to eat. This would significantly increase the length of time it would take him in order to reach the nearest city. Naath grumbled and moved to a nearby small tree and took out his machete and cut it down to carve it into a crude bow. Then be began to carve out basic wooden arrows. He skinned off the bark and tediously wove it into a rope, tying it onto the bow.

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But when he went to fire the bow the arrow didn't go far at all, Naath cursed aloud again. He had never practiced much with making these kinds of things and thus was not very skilled at it. He could build a house sure, but that's because the raw materials were available to him. Realizing he was going to be here for a little while Naath took out the tree stump and sat down on it. He grabbed another small tree and carved it into yet another bow, this time when he went to fire it, the bowstring snapped. He had woven it wrong and it wasn't tight enough so there was too much slack, causing too much stress on the rope when he fired an arrow.

He grumbled and continued onwards carving another bow and making more bowstrings, again and again, he tried. After a while, he had a small pile of failed bows and ropes, after a few hours he finally had a working crude bow but Naath felt like it wouldn't really be able to kill any game. As he continued to make bow after bow, string after string, his efficiency, and skill level slowly increased. Soon he had a bow that could fire the arrows with enough force to go seven centimeters into a nearby tree similar to an Oak. Once that was done, Naath let out a breath and then picked up his bow and put his 200 arrows inside of his storage ring as well as his precious stump.

Finaly, he stretched and began to listen closely for possible game moving slowly through the forest. It was after he saw a rabbit and took a shot that he realized his next issue. His aim was complete trash, he had missed the rabbit by almost 30 centimeters. Naath let out a long annoyed groan as he realized he would have to practice his aim before he continued hunting. Thinking this he cut through a nearby tree and made a few targets to practice with. After two hours of practice his fingers hurt, they had sores on them and were bleeding in places but Naath’s aim had improved drastically.

He only stopped here because he heard a sudden grumbling from his stomach, if it weren't for the fact that he would scare away any potential game he would have screamed at this point. After grumbling to himself for a time he eventually sat down and focused some of his martial energy into his wounded fingers, healing them over the next hour. Once he was done with that he went out to find more game to hunt, this time a little more hurriedly. After waiting for what felt to Naath like an eternity he finally spotted another rabbit. This time when he shot at it, his aim was perfect and he killed it instantly, hitting its head. Naath celebrated and danced around shouting in joy at his kill.

He quickly dressed down the rabbit and made a fire to cook the meat over, it took a while to cook but once Naath took his first bite he wolfed the whole thing down. After that, he realized he needed even more food for the journey if he were to survive. However, it was getting to be close to dark and he had to set up his tent again and prepare to rest for the night. This time the night did not pass so peacefully, when the moon was high in the sky, close to midnight, Naath heard distant howling and swore under his breath. He quickly packed up his things and climbed up into a nearby tree. Soon after he had done so a pack of wolves came through sniffing around.

Eventually, they pawed through the ashes of Naaths old fire looking for the rabbit that they were smelling. Cursing silently Naath took out his bow and knocked an arrow back aiming at one of the wolves. He hated doing this, he had always loved wolves. In his eyes, back on Earth they were akin to a perfect predator. After killing the first wolf though the rest retreated from where Naath could see them and presumably far away. Still not taking any chances he decided to sleep in the tree. Over the next few days the same thing repeated itself, Naath hunted and cooked food, ate, and then would hear wolves later that night.

On the third day Naath decided to simply sleep in the trees from this point forward, he had also killed five wolves now. It seemed almost like the wolves were following himnow, despite more being killed every time. This immediately raised a red flag for Naath as he knew wolves were smarter than that. They would not make the exact same mistake more than twice, there had to be a reason why they were doing this. Feeling this Naath decided to follow them after he ‘missed’ one of his shots and they retreated. They eventually led him to a small clearing where there was a large completely white/silver wolf that stood about double the height of the others.

Naath’s eyes narrowed instantly, that was a magical beast. From the aura its martial energy gave off, it was only a one star bronze beast, but still, it was a magical beast. Naath slowly and quietly left when he saw this large, white wolf. And decided he would simply hurry along and travel farther than normal to leave these wolves behind him. This was in vain though as the wolves seemed to have Naaths scent. Even when didn’t cook any fresh meat and took out some he had cooked in the days prior the wolves would find him at night. This journey seemed to be nothing but frustration for Naath at this point and he firmly decided he was going to just kill off all of the normal wolves and move on.

Like this weeks passed, but the wolves seemed endless, no matter how many he killed more would show up! Finally, after a full month, he had apparently killed too many, the white wolf showed up in person at night now looking for Naath. It was surrounded by only five other wolves, presumably, the last five normal ones left. Naath’s hair stood on end when he realized that they were hunting him this whole time, not his food! He went back into the shadows and made himself as small as possible as he hid in the tree's foliage. The white wolf looked all around the campsite and started to sniff the air. After it did so it looked up directly at the tree that Naath was hiding in and it… Smiled?!! Shit!!!