Burnt Bridge.

Around a month later.

GROWWWLLL

"Haaa...." Ivan sighed deeply and looked around with blurry vision. He had lost too much weight, his cheeks had sunk in, his lips had dried, his sight was off focus, there were dark circles around his eyes, he wasn't able to think straight, and his muscular structure was very clearly visible. Since he had starved for an entire month, or so it seemed, he had lost count of time because there wasn't a time when the sun rose or sunk, the world was still the same as when he had first set foot here, but there was one thing he was sure about.

'If I have my mana reservoir, I can survive....' He muttered inwardly, igniting the slightest of the hope that remained in him. He hadn't eaten anything, and because he was excited about the "mana," at the beginning because it was new, and he had even started working out while manipulating mana in his body, exactly how the mana moved in his body every time he muttered "summon," since he experimented on how, what, where, when, and why, the mana in his body was moving the way it did.

And with all of those experiments, the things he learned were the fact that "mana can move in anyway the mana holder needs it to," and how he came to know that he could survive as long as he had his mana reservoir was because he had read and learned that a "human being" could not survive for a month without food, water, and sleep.

Though there were drops of water dripping from time to time, it was enough even for a mouthful per day, and there wasn't anything he could use to drink the dripping water, so he removed his shirt, cupped his blazer, and placed his shirt on it so that it could suck in the dripping water, because he had tried to suck in the water directly from the needle-sized hole, hoping that more water would come out, but his thoughts and hopes were broken as soon as he put his thoughts into action, and he had no choice but to grip and twist his shirt until the sucked in water would drip into his mouth. He was so desperate for water that he would even lick his own dirty hands.

"The water, behind the wolf...." Ivan mumbled under his breath and glanced around in search of the pocketknife with blurry vision. His thoughts right now were very simple: kill the "scary" wolf and drink the water behind it; if there is no food around it, eat the wolf. That was it. The reason he hadn't tried to do this earlier was exactly because he felt scared of the wolf and knew that he would die if he fought against it. Since he now knew that he would die if he didn't do anything, and there wasn't any option of retreat, he moved forward.

"Burn the bridge...." Ivan mumbled under his breath and smirked—maybe because of the state he was in, but that smile on his face oozed ominousness.

He arrived at the cave's entrance with his gaze fixated on the spot where the wolf was standing, and since it hadn't even moved an inch from there, he too didn't have a hard time finding it. He took a deep breath and exhaled.

For the first time since he arrived in this "Unknown World," he stepped out of the cave he was teleported to.

Maybe because his gaze was still out of focus, but he noticed his surroundings tremble.

Without caring for any of it, he walked forward, towards the wolf, without stopping even while tumbling. Soon, he was 20 steps away from the wolf, which was at least 10 feet tall and 5-6 feet wide. It was one massive wolf. He gazed up at it because he felt something was strange because the wolf hadn't even moved an inch. Confounded by its behaviour, Ivan walked left and right, but still, the wolf hadn't even flinched nor did its muscles twitch. He kept the twenty-foot distance and walked to the side to observe the wolf's gaze with his eyes squinted and froze.

The wolf was continuously glaring at the cave entrance, even though he was this close to it. It wasn't even gazing down at him; he couldn't even think that the wolf was dead because it was still huffing, just like the first day.

"Huff...huff....huff...." Though Ivan had yet to realize, he too was huffing profusely.

"Easy, huff, meal, I guess, huff...." He mumbled while huffing and gulping. Since the wolf didn't seem to move, he walked towards it, clenching the pink pocketknife, and as soon as he was ten steps close, something felt ominous, and Ivan stopped moving in fear.

He looked down at his hands and noticed that they were shivering profusely; he gritted his teeth in annoyance.

"Why am I getting scared? Am I scared of death? Nah, it can't be, because I know that if I could die without pain, I'd gladly die." Ivan mumbled under his breath with a perplexed expression on his face.

"Since I know I'm not scared of death, then it means I'm scared of the process of dying." He mumbled. He was right, but he knew in his mind that he would die, one way or the other, he would either die of starvation, or he would die to the wolf in front of him, that seemed like it could kill him with a single bite or a single claw strike. It was then that he realised something,

"I'm scared of my life "ending."" He mumbled, and his brows ceased to furrow. Ending and death were two entirely different things; one's life could simply "end" by giving up without them even dying. At that moment, there was only one thing Ivan really understood; he had read about it countless times in books, but he didn't really think much about it back then, but now it was different.

"I'm scared of life." He said, and an old saying he had heard one day resounded in his mind: "Living is a lot harder than dying; a single decision is enough to cause one's death, but at the same time, a single decision won't be nearly enough to give you the courage to live." Or so Ivan heard an old man mumbling.

He didn't really know why he remembered all that when he would die in this instance if that wolf moved; maybe it was a reminiscence he was having before he died, but due to that, his resolve to live got a lot stronger, and unbeknownst to Ivan, his hands had already stopped shivering and his grip around the pocketknife was a lot stronger than what it was when he walked out of the cave.

"Burn the bridge." He mumbled again. Now, it really was do or die; he had no option to retreat, so the only thing he could do right now was to fight, and his eyes began to burn fiercely with the will to live.

THUMP

He took a step forward and shuddered. In that instance, though he had slightly expected it, the wolf pounced on him with its mouth wide open, as if it wanted to finish off everything with a single chomp.

Though Ivan couldn't really see because the wolf was moving too fast, he instinctively took a sidestep and saw the wolf skid past him. It seemed like the wolf couldn't properly control its speed as it was still drifting. Ivan took the chance, clenched his pink pocketknife, and stabbed the wolf in its ass, though it wasn't on purpose. He stabbed it higher, thinking that the wolf's calf would be there as it was bigger than him, but still,

"Hahaha." It made him laugh, and the wolf whimpered. Hearing that, he dragged down the pierced pocketknife until it reached his initial target, the wolf's calf.

SPLURT!

"Ugh!?" Some kind of disgusting odour hit Ivan's nostrils, and when he noticed that it was from the wolf's blood that splattered out, he couldn't help but have second thoughts about consuming it.

"Fuck." He cursed just by imagining himself eating the wolf's flesh with a disgusted look on his face.

"Argh!" Ivan yelled in outrage and pounced on the wolf to kill it in annoyance. It was quite ironic how the tables had turned.

Since the wolf's mobility had been slightly cut down, and because it was a madman who was after it, before it could move away, Ivan, the madman had already climbed on its back and had been stabbing and slashing its nape without rest, so it wasn't long before it died.

THUD

"Huff...huff...huff..." He slouched on the wolf's back with stinking blood splattered on his face and body. After a few seconds of rest, he got up and dashed towards the lake that was behind the wolf he had just hunted.

PLOP

A rock got kicked by his tumbled running, and in the next instance, it floated back above what he thought was water, but since it was dyed black, he couldn't see it with his hazy vision, and since he wasn't really in the right state to really care about anything else other than drinking water, he rushed, soon arrived in front of the lake that was filled with pitch-black liquid, which he thought was because there was no proper light, and dipped his hand into it to cup a handful of water. But as soon as he cupped the water and raised his hands near his mouth, he noticed that his hand wasn't visible under the water.

SNIFF

"Bleargh!!!!" He took a slight sniff of the water and barfed; at first, the juices in his stomach came out, but it wasn't long until he was puking out blood.

"T-this...is-isn't, huff, water...." He mumbled with an indescribable look on his face, but,

"Grrr....grrr." Light growling was heard behind him. He glanced back, thinking that the wolf was still alive, and he hadn't forgotten about leaving his pocketknife on the wolf's nape, but his entire body stiffened by the "figures" that awaited him.