Looking at a gap he could never jump, all the thoughts and fears came to Atlas’ mind.

“No, no, no I could not possibly get stuck here, could I?” Atlas was asking himself this question over and over.

Coming closer to the gap he could see that the island was very slowly drifting away.

“Why did I not notice it! Why did I have to jump, my stupid head!” he was already blaming his every life decision. “Okay, calm down, Atlas. Now I have to think, how can I escape? I have some food and I told Bond that I might not be coming tonight.”

What is worse, is that Atlas knew that if he gets stuck here for a long time, no one will find him.

“I should’ve left a note about this place, just for this scenario”

His mind was racing with all the worries and thoughts, and what was worse, is that he could see the forest he came from. It was so close, yet so far.

Closing his eyes, taking a deep breath and exhaling, Atlas remembered the first time he went to the Planet Zero, and how he was almost annihilated. Yet he survived. This somehow gave him the confidence he needed. Slowly calming down, he opened his eyes.

Still using his ability he was looking around to gauge the situation he was in. All the floating islands were more than 100 meters apart. Some were several stories higher. But it seemed that he was on the lowest island. That meant that he could not just simply get down.

There was a forest under, but he was not sure if he would even survive the fall. There were trees, and maybe, just maybe, he could soften his fall damage if he aimed for the trees. But he knew this was the stupidest idea.

Another idea was to jump 10 meters, which was as impossible as jumping down. No one without an ability could possibly make this jump.

This meant two possibilities left. First is to try and somehow bridge those 10 meters, but there was nothing he could use.

“That means I am waiting here,” Atlas said to himself. He thought that it would be very weird if those islands just started to drift away as soon as he came here. Rather it was logical to think that they just go here and there from time to time. Like ocean waves and tides.

Taking off his backpack he thought about the amount of food and drinks he had. He had enough water to hold for a few days if he would not consume it as he would normally do.

Now taking the very warm sphere he had in his pocket, out to analyze. He was holding a horror core.

“What do I even do with it?” he asked himself “Could I get an ability from it? Now to think of, it is kinda small, compared to what I’ve seen on the internet. Does it even contain the needed amount of energy? And if it does, what kind of ability will I get? Fast digging? Big arms or a good nose?”

None of those abilities were anyhow interesting to him. That was when he started to look inside the sphere with his ability. He could see the energy stored inside. It was moving chaotically and slowly escaping, meaning that some time after it could probably lose some of its energy. What was more interesting is that he could see the energy that was escaping, slowly moving into his hand. Little by little.

“Am I absorbing it? But i don't feel anything.”

He then sat down, closed his eyes and tried to think about his body. Feel it, how he feels the energy outside.

“I knew there was more to this ability.”

Now sitting still, listening to silence he could actually feel the energy entering. It felt like a very faint feeling of tickling in his hand. Mixed with feeling warmth, it was hard to actually notice it.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

He now tried to speed up the feeling. Maybe he could absorb it faster. Concentrating on the sphere, his hand and his body, he tried to suck up the energy as fast as he could. And finally to his surprise, it was working. The energy was being drained faster than it was.

After about 4 minutes he felt like he fully absorbed the core.

He did not really feel any different. But he knew the core was probably so low level, he would not get much. He actually never heard of cores being just absorbed. They were absorbed if they contained the ability, if not nothing could be absorbed. Yet he was absorbing it, and it did not look like it had any ability whatsoever. This was definitely weird.

Standing up, he decided to examine the creature corpse to see a bit more. But when he approached it, a very gruesome sight was in front of his eyes. There were two other similar creatures, devouring the corpse of the first one.

The sight was very unpleasant. But it raised a good question.

“Why are they eating him? Well, actually, it makes sense, since we are on a floating island, it does not look like they could get much food. But then why did they not get extinct? How are they surviving on this island?” he thought to himself.

This could possibly be the key for his escape. And the second question emerged right after.

“Wait, how many of them actually are here?” right after he asked himself this question, the two eaters finished feasting and now were fully focused on Atlas.

“And now I… what, fight or flight?” Atlas nervously gulped and started to think what could be the best course of action now.

But he could not think for any longer. Two beasts jumped onto him. He easily evaded them, now that he had some experience and his ability was really helping. Taking the bat out, he ran towards one of them and slammed as hard as he could. Hitting the creature's neck, he heard a crack.

“Great, it looks like a soft point!” Atlas shouted.

For some reason he felt very excited. He did not particularly like to cause pain to others.

But something was driving him to fight, to survive. And now dodging the other creature, with a fast swing he hit it. Now the creatures were much slower, he could easily hit them without getting hit or bitten.

It took him around 2 minutes to defeat the creatures.

He took their crystals out and put their remains further from himself. He hoped that the bodies would be a good bait, in case more of them came out. That would give him more time to prepare.

Now holding two cores he sat down and started to absorb these as well. Now after two more cores, he could actually feel the difference. Not in his body or any newly acquired ability, but his existing one. It was a bit easier to detect the energy around, also to control it.

“Does the absorbed energy just go into my ability? How many more do I need to kill the stonemoles to increase its power significantly?” Atlas decided to name the creatures “stonemoles”, since those were basically moles in stones.

He did not even need to finish his thought as he could hear more stonemoles dig out of their holes underground.

----------------------------------------

After a few hours of fighting and absorbing crystals, Atlas had the method of fighting these creatures. And since for some reason they were just coming out in groups of 2 - 3, it was not hard to defeat them.

On the other hand, his bat was in a very poor state. it was bent, and had some cracks in it. It would not hold for any longer.

But now Atlas has absorbed around 23 crystals. This actually significantly improved his sense. He could now sense these creatures from underground, if they were not too deep.

And what more, he could now easily sense their movements, which made predicting much easier. What did bother him, was that whenever he used his ability, his left eye became blue and had all those weird cracks around his eyes glowing blue. Now after more absorbed cores, he could see that those cracks are spreading and now affecting his neck. A thin line of this crack was going down his neck.

But this was not as important. The main problem was that he was actually further from the forest. Now when all the islands shifted, it was easier to go to an adjacent island, rather than trying to return to the initial place.

Looking at the other islands, hoping to see something he can use to escape, he noticed one island in particular. It was pretty far from him, but he could sense a large amount of energy on it. Atlas could not really tell what was this energy source, but he could sense that it was not something he wanted to encounter.

But it was coming closer. These two islands seemed to be drifting towards each other, and after about an hour, Atlas could very precisely see what was going on.

A large pile of corpses of stonemoles. About 200 hundred of those, just lying around. Torn apart. He could visually see the energy emitting of those cores.

Firstly, Atlas was excited, since this meant he can use those to upgrade his ability. But he could not ignore the thought.

Who or what could possibly defeat that many of those poor creatures. Atlas did not had to wait longer, since the answer came right after.

Right in the middle of the pile, something stood up. A dark creature with a very strong energy output. Black fur, sharp fangs. Creature which looked like a black cougar. But it had a very weird structure around its neck. Like a large halo it was coming from its neck and going around its neck. It had spikes, and looked like it was electrified. With a black electricity or lightning.

Creature had very bright red eyes. With its mouth covered in blood, because of eating all those stonemoles. It looked like it had no problems biting and throwing their hard shells.

Looking at this picture, Atlas wanted to become invisible. To become lower than grass, quieter than wind.

Because he knew, the islands are going to inevitably collide. He is going to meet this creature.

And now he had about an hour to think of a plan.

“Please, just give me a break”