A Painful End

It wasn't alright.

"Fuck my past self and his fucking unreasonable confidence!" Ashy cursed in the middle of the forest — got lost in both time and place, he was slowly getting furious.

Maybe a day or two passed or maybe a week. His bright and confident complexion faded away in no time after he noticed that he was lost.

"I have a fucking map and a compass, how the heck I got lost!?"

Maybe, map reading wasn't as easy as he first thought.

He was utterly lost in this thick forest that even prevented the sun lights from reaching the ground.

However, Ashy thought his destination was near.

On the way he didn't encounter any kind of undead let alone a Creature of darkness, but now he encountered a few undead animals. They were weak. This meant that he was gradually straying away from the safe area of the forest and getting close to his destination where weak undead 'lived'.

Fortunately, he wasn't entirely bound by hunger and thirst. If not, he would again starve. Though, this didn't mean he was completely free, he just had more leisure time than other people to find food and water.

"Grrrrr…"

While Ashy was loudly complaining, the sound of bushes being brushed came from behind.

"Wha—"

Before he knew it, he found himself on the ground, his back hit the ground and breath escaped from his lungs because of the force. His spine ached.

A wild beast that was nothing but skin, bones, and hair was looking at him with dark, empty eye sockets. It had thin, gray whiskers and dirty black fur.

"Argh…"

However, its strength and the sharpness of its teeth were no joke. Ashy's arm bones were being crushed in real-time while he was trying to understand what was going on.

It happened so quickly that all he could do at that moment was to instinctively put his arm in front of his face as a shield.

Fortunately, it worked.

Unfortunately, he didn't know how he could kill this feline-type undead that was crushing his shoulders with its skinny paws and his arm with its maw.

"Get the fuck off me, you fucking skinny bones overgrown cat!" cursing, Ashy swung his knee.

His knee hit the bony feline butt, it wasn't effective at all.

"Ah!"

A spark lit in his mind while his dark red blood was dripping to his face.

"You are fucking dead now!"

Ashy's height shortened rapidly in a matter of a second as the bones in his body became denser and denser.

Then he pulled his leg towards his chest with surprising flexibility and swung a kick to the feline undead's legs. Now that he was shorter, he could more easily reach them.

Claws sprouted from his feet, cutting the undead's leg from the knee.

Having no support to take strength from its leg, the undead feline lost its balance momentarily and Ashy, who took advantage of this gap, kicked the bony feline from the chest.

He could kill the undead right there with his claws piercing its heart, but Ashy chose not to.

This feline undead was stronger than most he encountered, this meant more increase of power upon absorption.

Just because he was pushed to the ground by an overgrown cat and was about to receive a very rough love bite, didn't make him lose his composure

Now being free from the skinny paws of this overgrown cat, Ashy rolled to the side and got up immediately.

Immediately, all of his claws retracted before the claw of his index finger became straight and longer.

To this move, Ashy called Claw Sword Mode.

After all, right now it looked like a pure white and alarmingly sharp sword emerging from his index finger instead of claw.

With that, the feline undead and Ashy rushed at each other.

The winner was obviously Ashy with the advantage of having a smaller, more resilient body and the undead lacking a leg.

Right when he was getting closer, Ashy rolled on the floor targeting the bony feline's knees with his Claw Sword.

Although he received a sharp graze to his back, he was successful.

And, the power increase was a lot more than he thought it would be.

As the dried feline heart crumbled into ash, Ashy felt the increase of more than a dozen thugs combined. If he were to roughly put numbers, the thugs gave one or two while this one gave 30 to 40.

"Damn right!" with a smile, Ashy sat down and wrapped his wounds.

For the time being, he decided to roam around in his current child form, after all, he was weaker when he was making himself taller than his original form. This was better in "stat" wise.

Having denser muscles and bones was definitely better than being taller and having to look like an adult.

"Sigh…"

One more day passed, or at least Ashy felt like a day passed.

On the way he encountered and killed more undead animals, however, they were at the same level as thugs.

He was gradually increasing his power. Drop by drop.

"Hmm, what is this?"

Now, finding a clear space in this thick forest, Ashy was both hesitant and curious.

"Why do I feel like I am entering a boss monster area?"

In the end, his curiosity won. As if he was a moth in front of light, he was drawn.

He was lost anyway.

Pushing the thick and dry bushes to the side, Ashy stepped into the cleared space. In the middle of the empty, dry area was a stone pillar that was carved smoothly, and beautifully. It was covered in moss and some other green plants.

A roughly shaped stone chair was right in front of this towering pillar. A figure was hunched over in the chair, their head lifelessly bowed forward. Stone spikes pierced their body, anchoring them to the chair—jutting from their palms to the armrests, shoulders, and throat to the back, legs, and knees to the legs of the stone chair.