21 Surviving The Wilderness [part 1]

Normally, the first step should have been to gather information, but Northern was not about to question a sea of dead monsters.

Irritated, he slowly moved around, having to step into the puddles of darkened blood, which was an unpleasant feeling. The disgust he felt made his heart squirm.

He might have been acting tough all the while, but he was as timid as any other kid would be.

The only difference with Northern was that he wasn't a child, and so he handled that timidity with an expected level of maturity. Compared to others, he was a mature individual.

Speaking of others...

'I wonder what happened to them.'

The teleportation circle should have transported all of them together to the same place, or so Northern thought. But finding himself here like this... he didn't even know what to think anymore.

'Doesn't that mean the former principal is overpowered?'

Magic was a sensitive subject, vastly different from what Northern had learned about in fictional comics and isekai anime. Difficult to comprehend and highly technical to use, its origin traced back to the founder who had awakened a seemingly combat-useless talent.

In the beginning, he was scorned and despised because of his useless talent. All his talent could do was light up a small ball of fire. The farthest the ball of fire could go was two meters, and its impact could not even be compared to a flicker of flame.

However, he found a grimoire called Hemab Tahab: Diary of the Spell Weaver. This book brought a transformative change to the academy founder's life. His talent never grew, but his arsenal of skills continued to expand.

He became strong enough to walk in and out of catastrophic rifts - his talents eventually grew, and he became the one who created tiers for rifts and classified them.

Armed with the Hemab Tahab, he became a Weaver himself... perhaps not as mighty as the Spell Weaver who was never a native of Tra-el, but he was the founder of spell art - a unique form of spell weaving that involved speaking words.

The grimoire was passed down to his students and their successors until Rughsbourgh's time. Hence, Rughsbourgh was undoubtedly one of the strongest humans in Tra-el. Being able to create a teleportation spell that sends people to diverse locations further proved how dangerous and powerful he is.

But this was still no good in any way.

Northern paused and exhaled deeply, looking around him. As far as the eye could see to the distant horizon, the ominous crimson sky melted into the gory earth, littered with the broken corpses of monstrosities bathing in a red sea of blood. Blood pooled around severed limbs scattered haphazardly among the countless mangled bodies, seeping into the muddy ground. Splintered bones and ruptured organs oozed pus, painting this barren wasteland with a macabre mosaic of carnage.

It was a gruesome and disturbing sight.

The white-haired boy slowly traversed this macabre mosaic of carnage, treading carefully. Catching a faint glimmer amongst the monster's remains, Northern paused, a slight frown creasing his brow.

Reaching towards the bottomless bag slung across his shoulders, his hand brought out a small knife.

'Thank goodness father gave me this.'

Northern bent down and began to part the viscera of the dead monster; most of its bones were shattered, the ones left were cracked, and as Northern's blade drove through, the brittle links broke with little effort.

He wondered what monster would have inflicted this level of damage. He wasn't familiar with the ranks of monsters, but something on the level of the black beast his father fought would have been able to do this.

Even so, he wasn't too sure.

After he was done, Northern found two cores sitting in front of him. He took the cores and dropped them into the bag, feeling the weight change slightly.

Then an idea occurred to him. This was definitely a battle between monsters... if so, could it be possible that all the monster cores were still left?

'...wait, but monsters also feed on each other's cores.' Northern shrugged. If it was a war between monsters, no monster would have had the time to harvest each other's cores. It could have been done after the bloody battle, but it's very possible that they could have missed a few.

Northern grinned.

'This is a blessing...'

He brandished his small knife with an avaricious look on his pale face.

—

Hours later, Northern had only been able to find six cores: two from another monster and two from two other monsters. After which he decided he would just keep walking and check anyone he came across.

It was quite pitiful that he couldn't absorb soul energies from soul cores, but he was sure they would be plenty of use for them.

Now, he just had to find someone, whatever way.

And so Northern began walking, and walking. Two more hours later, he was still trudging across the bloodscape, having to carefully part his way amidst the carcasses of chitinous monsters.

Finally, he reached a cave but stopped. Another Northern appeared next to him, nodded, and jogged into the cave. A few minutes later, it came out and made an 'okay' sign to Northern - exactly what Northern would have done if he was asked to scout.

Even before the clone came back with a result, Northern already knew what was in the cave. Gripping the strap of his bag tightly, Northern tentatively made his way into the cave.

It was dark, but not hard to see, yet far in the encroaching darkness of the cave, there was a dancing twinkle of flames. It was an abandoned fireplace that seemed to have been recently made. Northern's guess, immediately upon receiving the information from his clone's experience, was that someone had recently been here.

Perhaps they were teleported before him. He doubted if that was possible... but he also remembered it happening once.

Also, Northern didn't think it was possible for anything capable of lighting a fire to exist inside a rift.

He hurried towards the fireplace, and as expected, it was empty. Northern sat next to it and removed a few meats he had cut. He wasn't hungry, but there was no bad idea in skewering them for the future. Staying around the fire was strangely comforting, even though he was surrounded by a crepuscular darkness.

A couple of minutes later, he stared intently at the meat as the flames roasted it inside out, occasionally turning it around. He had first cut all the monster meat in his possession into small pieces and began to skewer them piece by piece.

While thinking about a lot of things, there was much on his mind. What was going to happen from here? Would he die? Would he live? Would the academy do something to rescue them?

As he thought of these questions, fear slowly crept into his heart. It was a familiar fear that everyone could relate to – finding yourself in a dimension filled with orders of feral evil, every corner one turns could be lurking with extremely dangerous monsters. And death could call his name any moment.

He had absolutely no idea what tomorrow... no, even the next hour held. Northern could get attacked the next second, in fact.

As if waiting to prove his thoughts right, a low growl eerily crept out of the darkness, making his ears rise with blood-curling fear.