Rise and shine.

Chapter 2: Rise and shine.

A few days have passed since the sunny boy integrated himself into the alabaster man's daily life.

Since then, the man has learnt many new skills such as: bottle feeding, diaper changing, child entertainment, and selective hearing.

All the essentials for childcare.

He also made some more recent discoveries within the past few days.

One primary analysis the man had made, was the identity of the mystery liquid contained in the copious amounts of baby bottles, and the purpose of the endless amount of legendary mana cores.

The metallic mystery liquid that resembled gallium in both viscosity and colouration, this shiny liquid was none other than processed legendary mana cores.

For what reason, the mana cores were made to this liquified formula is simple.

For the baby to drink ...

Obviously...

How such a discovery was made by the alabaster man is a sorrowful tale of mass sacrifice.

As gallons of milk were lost to the onyx rug, that now lay scarred with the milk from the fallen bottles, the spoilt milk shall forever stain the man's carpets, his ebony matts will never truly recover from the failed attempts of the alabaster man's futile efforts, to get the small sunny boy

to drink...

Regular milk.

Oh, the battle was long and fierce,

The man could swear that the boy's mumbles toward him were a form of profanity as he held the opaque white regular milk to the boy's mouth.

He even attempted to feed the boy common mana cores, that he had stored from hunting monsters. In hopes of preserving the riches that were held in the item ring.

But to no avail, the boy refused to consume anything but the best of the cores, drinking them as though they were no different from ordinary water.

Even the man was worried that the thousands of ultra-rare cores wouldn't be able to last a year! Given the boy's insatiable appetite, the man's previous thoughts on the boy rearose in his head.

Is this kid even human?

Every mealtime, the alabaster man's soul felt threatened as he watched the rarest cores be consumed, no different from any meal.

Legendary rank cores were rare, coming from monsters that were the epitome of destruction, overlords of their lands, and rulers of their planes.

Even then, such pure cores like these were scarce, even from the strongest monsters.

Such mana cores could be used to defend nations, build airships, and cure the terminally ill, but to this kid, they were no different from breakfast.

The mighty monster's mana they gained through perilous lives reduced to baby chow.

The man sighed, as an invisible tear fell from his face.

As the boy giggled, consuming his fifth bottle of the day.

Such scenes have become the standard within the small cottage home. That appeared to have been invaded by the baby plague. No area of the house was not covered in one of the many very impractical toys.

But this brings us to the next subsequent finding of the alabaster man, the impractical heavy toys and mana-related books were, in fact, not as impractical as they seemed.

The boy could lift his heavy metal toys with much ease. As if the golden rattle the size of his head was made of air. As for the magic artifacts used to sing him nursery rhymes, he could activate them himself...

In short, he could use mana already!

The alabaster man had never been so shell-shocked in his numerous years of life. It was as though his jaw was about to fall off his face with how wide it opened.

The baby is clearly, not human. There is no way! thought the alabaster man.

Aside from what the sunny boy was priorly capable of, the nonsense mumbling from a few days ago had now become more concise.

The boy was soon able to form words that were a little bit more decipherable, though the man often felt the boy was speaking in riddles, with how long he had to think about what the gibberish words meant.

For example, his mumbled "hebblo" was now a confident "hellyo."

The man of alabaster seemed to have stopped questioning the absurdity of the child he was caring for and had, in fact, started to plan his journey.

The man knew that setting off now was not the best option. Due to the storm that was currently ongoing, it would take another month until it finally subsided.

Besides, he had one other issue plaguing his mind.

What was he to do about the monsters at the border?

If he were to leave after the storm season ended, he would have left the border unattended, leaving the empire in the jaws of the rabid mutants of the monster plains.

The man once again began to contract a chronic headache, that has been happening even more often after the arrival of the sunny boy.

He looked over to see the sunny boy on his ebony rug playing with his toys.

Correction, chewing on his toys.

The man thought not much of it, assuming he was teething.

The man then began to voice his concerns aloud in a somber tone.

"To think that so many useful mana cores would be used as baby formula there are so many better uses for monster cores…

Like. BARRIERS!"

"That's it! I could make a barrier."

The barrier the man had thought of was a rather simple defensive formation powered by cores like how a toy is powered by batteries. The only difference, they came from pugnacious monsters.

Though not a permanent solution, if he managed to make one strong enough, it might just last an ample amount of time for the man to make his journey and return.

But of course, there is one problem.

Where would he get strong enough mana cores?

He looks over to the sunny boy, who seems to have now moved on to chewing some black toy from somewhere.

Sure, he can use the baby's rations, but given how fast he was eating away at them, this would leave the man in a tough situation if he were to run out.

The man reassured himself that this decision was definitely, not affected by the man's guilt towards taking the baby's belongings.

And was clearly, because it would cause issues later in the journey if he had run out.

… I guess there is no helping it then,

I'll just harvest them myself.

The man looked to his wooden wall where in graphite was a rough drawing of the frozen borders written in the man's own, rough handwriting.

The sketch outlines the barrier between the monster's territories and the frozen lands the man inhabited. the man made a tired expression as he stood up, taking a lump of charcoal with him and drawing the line of the monster territory back a few miles.

"Guess it's about time, I go hunting."

The man suited up once again in his black Armour but couldn't seem to find one of his black gloves.

He then looked over to see that the little sunny boy was chewing on them!

The man quickly grabbed the gloves to see the boy chewed through them … how? Wasn't he toothless?

Regardless, this is monster hide it isn't some lightweight easy to damage material.

The man then picked up the sunny boy who seemed to have recently stopped his habit of drooling on everything.

The man then told the baby.

"Ahhh!"

And slowly, the baby opened his mouth to reveal a small, sharp set of teeth that had begun to grow all at once.

The man was unfazed by this new revelation.

Rather, he had already expected this child to not be human from the moment he began to use mana, and it was at this moment that all previous suspicions were found to be true.

He hoped that this would not be the case, but now it's undeniable.

The reason this was an issue is that the empire itself is a nation that believes in the supremacy of mankind. So this baby being non-human had made the already hard mode adventure a literal nightmare.

But the man had already come to terms with this, come the second day he had with the boy.

The man then continued by dressing the boy in a brown fur coat and thick cushioned dark grey pants and finished by pulling up its white fuzzy hood that seemed to drown the boy in a furry mess.

The man of alabaster then grabbed what appeared to be a handmade harness he wore that successfully became a baby carrier. If adjusted correctly, the man then grasped the red sword that now stood beside the door. This way of exiting the house had now become routine.

The man placed the sword on a holster that he wore on his left leg and went to the cliff edge, where he once again grabbed the silver spear from his spiked defences.

The wind of the storm had gotten stronger since the day of the crash. Any normal person wouldn't be able to stand, never mind walk in such fierce gales.

The man then grasped the child strapped to his belly tightly, and then he jumped from the cliff yet again. Making the drop seem effortless.

He passed the now flat plain where the wreck once lay. It had been concealed under the storm's endless flurry of snow.

The man continued sprinting further and further till he came to an abrupt halt. The pure white level lands end here.

Here, time appeared to stop the storm. The wailing winds seemed to vanish. The land split from this point on. The ground was a solid ebony black.

The man grasped his spear tightly, keeping his right hand on the hilt of his sword as he crossed over the border, stepping into the void of black that is the northern monster plains.

It was as though the thick, humid air suffocated in a fragile silence.

No other sound could be heard in what appeared to be void. Only the man's light footsteps filled the motionless land frozen in time.

the flat black land stretched a grand distance of a thousand kilometres.

The monsters never leave the plains in the stormy season. Rather, they go into a season-long hibernation.

The man often used this time to take a break and plan out his following year.

But this year, he didn't give the monster's peace a full hibernation this winter. Even the black land of the monsters shall be stained with blood.

As he walked advancing through the plains, the flat black land started to morph.

Tall black trees stood like branchless towers. These were not ordinary trees they pulsated with thick veins that connected them into an amalgamated clutter of palpitating alien fauna. The grotesque scenery was enough to make a grown man woozy.

The man, unbothered by the revolting ecosphere, continued trailing the land till he reached another wide-open space.

The man entered the not-so-flat lands. As he treaded the ground squelched, it was lumpy, covered in a thick mucus-like substance

The man made it to the origin point of the land before grasping the spear tightly.

Raising its head towards the ground. With a force of inhumane proportions pierced the still-pulsating ground.

The ground began to glow a deep dark blue as a darkened liquid of blood-like consistency spewed from the wound that was made in the now squirming floor.

A loud blood-curdling screech came from various ends of the amalgamated forest.

The man unsheathed his sword and removed his spear from the monster-infested terrain.

"Rise and shine, you ugly fu…"

The man jutted and stumbled his words, looking at the baby that was now sampling the fuzz of his coat.

"You ugly mutants."

Chapter 2 fin.