The 1000th Reincarnation

It was getting darker and darker. Zephyr had to make a decision. 

Zephyr leaped off the ledge and into the treetops, heading toward one of the mountains. He was brave and strong, but he wasn't an idiot. An entire group of people could easily take him down, especially if they had weapons. If he wanted to survive here for a week, he would need the three most essential requirements for survival—food, water, and shelter. 

For shelter, there was no way in hell Zephyr was just sleeping in the wild where anything could attack him in basically every single direction. If he could find some sort of small cave that formed in one of the mountains, he would be set. For water, Zephyr would need to find a lake of some sort, but lots of people would probably be hanging around a lake for water. If he wanted to explore without any worries, he would need a way to carry around water. For food, that would be a little tricky. To get food, people would need to hunt animals, but that would be almost impossible without any weapons. Thankfully, Zephyr had a dagger.

While heading to the mountain closest to him in the south, he spotted a deer.

Yes, my dinner.

Zephyr hopped from branch to branch, slowly and meticulously watching the deer. Knife in hand, he threw his knife as accurately as he could and stabbed the deer. Zephyr dropped down to the deer, picked it up, and threw it onto his back. 

Damn, this is mad heavy. 

The sun was setting, quickly. Zephyr had around thirty minutes left of the sunshine before it fully became dark. In the distance, Zephyr spotted not only a lake but a cavern that lay right next to it leading into the southern mountain. 

First things first, a fire. 

Grabbing some sticks and shaving some bark from a tree, he ran into the cavern setting up a location to put all his sticks and shavings into one place. Next, Zephyr created a fire plough to light the flame. Zephyr had lived in the wild after being a mercenary in Mystharow, so this was all second nature to him. He lit the flame and let it grow as he began to do the next most important task. He sawed off the limbs of the deer. Carefully, Zephyr searched for the deer's bladder. If he was able to dissect it from the deer, he could essentially make a makeshift pouch for water. 

Slowly but surely, he slit into the deer's belly revealing a soft, translucent sac. Zephyr reached inside the bloody body, carefully taking out the bladder making sure not to cause any damage to it. He laid it by his side, placing it down carefully, and sliced some meat to hang over the fire to cook. He grabbed the bladder and headed down to the riverside. After making sure no one was near him, he reached his hand and bladder inside making sure that every drop of deer blood was washed off. Zephyr took a couple of sips of water from the lake and headed back to his cave. 

On the corner of his eye, he eyed a monster waiting for him to return to the cave. Zephyr sighed at the idea of fighting a monster. He had already fought three people and was exhausted from carrying a deer corpse while running for thirty straight minutes. 

As Zephyr got closer he realized it was not just a normal monster, it was an elevated monster, a monster with a higher amount of dark energy than usual. The monster was called a Twisted Huskbeast, an animal that had absorbed heaps of dark energy turning them into highly dangerous monsters that could kill a regular human being in an instant. A monster covered in bark-like skin and thorny growths. One scratch of that, and it meant being poisoned to death, there was no antidote. 

Zephyr ran in, fearless. He had faced countless beasts like this in his past lives, and they all had one weakness- speed. He ran in effortlessly slicing through one of the bear-like creature's arms, making one of the sides unbalanced. He slid under the belly of the beast slicing it open, careful not to get a scratch on him. Only the bear's lower area was covered in thorny growths, the top of the monster being bare skin. Zephyr leaped up onto the creature stabbing it multiple times until it died. Eventually, the monster fell dropping to one side emitting loud snorting noise coming from out of its mouth. Zephyr sat down, gasping for air. 

Alright, now I want to test something.

Zephyr was able to absorb divine energy from stones even though he was on a different continent and sense mana as well. So there was a very high chance he was able to absorb dark energy. Divine energy was stored in the abdomen, qi was stored near the heart, mana was stored in the muscles, and dark energy was stored in the bones. Too much dark energy, and it could crumble entire pieces of bone. It was easily one of the hardest energies to try and control. But if someone managed to control this power, they're bones could obtain levels of hardness similar to iron or gold without wearing any type of armor. The most powerful dark energy wielder had a hardness of around obliviron, never mind the skillsets many could obtain with this type of power. Absorbing this was basically a high risk, high reward opportunity. Either Zephyr was going to crumble or his strength would be exponentially more powerful. He was living on the edge, betting his entire life on the body the goddess gave him. 

Focusing, Zephyr let the energy flow from his fingertip bones to the bones in his skull. He could tell his bones were struggling to keep the power inert, he could feel his bones vibrating. But eventually, the vibrations stopped and he absorbed every ounce of power the monster had. Zephyr had just gotten stronger by an exponential amount. 

Zephyr walked back in the direction of the lake, picked up the bladder, and walked straight back to his camp. He tossed a couple more branches into the flame and placed the bladder right next to the fire to dry. He grabbed a couple of pieces of meat realizing it was perfectly medium rare- his favorite kind of meat. 

"Veldris, keep watch while I'm going to sleep."

Pretending not to notice, Veldris stares into the lake his face blank with no emotion. Zephyr shrugs knowing that he'll protect him regardless and drifts off to sleep. 

...

Zephyr woke up to the sound of static in his brain. 

"RISE AND SHINE EVERYONE!" 

Ugh, it's Jin waking me up so early in the morning. 

"Welcome to day 2!"