Surviving The Wilderness [part 1]

Normally, the first step in such a situation would 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 stale blood, which was an unpleasant feeling. The disgust he felt made his whole body squirm.

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

The only difference with Northern was that he wasn't a child, 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 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 could be 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 he could do with his talent was to 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 sent people to diverse locations further proved how dangerous and powerful he was.

But this was still no good in any way.

Northern paused and exhaled deeply, looking around him. As far as his eye could see, in 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, before seeping into the muddy ground.

Splintered bones and ruptured organs oozed pus, painting the barren wasteland with a mosaic of carnage.

It was a gruesome and disturbing sight.

The white-haired boy slowly traversed this 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 while the remaining ones were cracked, and as Northern's blade drove through, the brittle links broke with little effort.

He wondered what monster could 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 a greedy look on his pale face.

—

Hours later, Northern had only been able to find six cores: two each from three different 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 there would be plenty of use for them.

Now, he just had to find someone.

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

Finally, he got to a cave but stopped at its mouth. 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 had 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. Farther into the encroaching darkness of the cave, was the dancing twinkle of flames. It was an abandoned fireplace that seemed to have been recently made. Northern's guess, immediately after receiving the information from his clone, was that someone had recently been there.

Perhaps they were teleported before him. He doubted if that was possible... but he 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 pieces of meat he had cut for later. He wasn't hungry, but there was no harm in roasting them for the future. Sitting before the fire was strangely comforting, even though he was surrounded by 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 of all cut all the meat in his possession into small pieces and began to skewer them one by one.

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 turned dangerous monsters could be lurking around, and death could call his name at any moment.

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

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