Pain

Approaching the heavily breathing boar laying on the ground, I can see it controlling the now less concentrated blue lights to gather and attempt to push me away with its now meager gusts of wind.

Pushing through the breeze and reaching the dying boar, I swiftly raised my stone knife gave its neck a clean bash, ending its life with one hit.

Breathing heavily while leaning against the lifeless corpse, I took a moment to catch my breath as I got ready to pull the corpse toward the cave.

Reeling myself in from the fatigue, I suddenly felt a euphoric sensation like a dehydrated man finding water, flowing into me from my hands, which were in contact with the corpse.

Instinctively under the influence, I attempted to control this flow, making it flow more and more into me, each wave bringing a sense of exhilaration.

"Kuhak!"

But just after a few seconds of increasing the flow, I suddenly spat out blood, feeling great pain around my heart like it was suddenly squeezed tight.

Having been brought out of my euphoria, I realized that the thing flowing into me is now overflowing and has started running rampant all over my body.

Having realized that, I quickly ceased contact with the corpse and plopped onto the ground, thinking of what to do. Multiple ideas were considered and discarded in milliseconds.

[...What should I do now? Circulate it around my body and try to eject it? Diffuse this energy into my body? Compress it down and form a core like those cultivation techniques in novels? Should I really rely on my knowledge from novels when my life is on the line?]

Strunggling to maintain my focus amidst the pain and feeling that irreversible damage would occur if I were to delay any longer, I chose the option that made the most sense to me and started trying to compress the unkown energy right where I felt the least pain, my heart.

Fumbling about trying to move the energy, I was finally able to move the energy after puking another mouthful of blood

Even though my heart felt like it was getting squeezed, the pain was less than what I felt throughout my whole body as it felt like something throughout my body was getting torn into a million pieces.

As soon as the energy started coming together, I could feel the pain I was feeling increase almost twofold, making me start thrashing on the ground like having a seizure.

[Shit, did I make the wrong choice? But I can't change my decision now that the energy has started moving together.]

Even if have made the wrong choice, I had no choice but to still continue gathering the energy together as I can feel it instinctively, deep in my bones that if I were to try and move the now concentrated energy, The energy would go back out of control and with it having been focused on my heart, the rampage would be stronger, I would explode with my blood and organs colouring the forest.

Feeling the pain increasing by folds as the concentration started getting higher and higher, the only thing keeping me conscious were the fact that if I were to stop compressing this energy, the energy would go out of control, and a gory and painful death would be waiting for me if that were to happen.

With the pain reaching a level high enough to make me want to die, I held on through sheer will, a few seconds after, the pain slowly started to subside, my last sliver of consciousness blanked, thinking that I was now safe.

____

Waking up to find myself staring at the blue sky, feeling hazy, I sat up and checked to see what had happened to the rampaging energy.

[Ugh, how long did I go out for?]

Closing my eyes and feeling myself internally, I can see the energy has been gathered at my heart looking like an extremely small gas planet at the size of a peanut being pulled together.

Seeing that I am now not in danger of having my body explode, I opened my eyes and looked around to see that there were purplish pink energy seeping out of dead boar floating higher and higher into the atmosphere with it being extremely faint when it reached past the tree lines.

[Is that the energy I absorbed? What is that? The soul? Arh, my head hurts. I should hurry back to the cave.]

Looking at the slowly waning amount of 'soul energy' it was emitting, I waited for it to stop completely.

Wiping of the blood sticking to the corner of my mouth, I carefully inspected the boar and started pulling it towards the cave.

As the cave was nearby since the boar fled in the direction close to the cave, I arrived at the cave after finding the tracks I left and following it for a few minutes.

Entering the cave, I left the corpse at a corner of the cave before stripping naked and jumping into the lake that has now been drained to the size of a large pond.

Feeling the cold water clinging onto my body, clearing my hazy mind, I thought back to what had happened in the last few hours.

[Seeing that an animal is capable of controlling the wind to a certain extent, I guess I really was transported into another world. But why me? Are there others like me in this world? Will I be able to go back? Thankfully, I wasn't really attached to anything in my old life. The only things I'll miss from that world are my family and friends. And the things that are really important are still with me.]

I thought while looking down at my prided lean and muscular body with a subtle six pack, it wasn't as exageratedly muscular as those in the movies or tv shows, but it can still be considered a beautiful art piece.

Chasing the narcissistic thoughts out of my head, I thought of the energy I had absorbed.

[I can't remember the pain I felt from that moment. I know it was painful, but my memory of it is too hazy. Was it so painful that my brain decided to wipe that memory off? And even though I can't remember the pain, but I guess my body still remembers it. ]

When my thoughts reached the moment where I absorbed the energy, my body started shaking and sweating as if it had triggered a trauma. Making me move on from the topic to stop myself from shaking.

[And thankfully, no animal attacked me when I was unconscious for that few minutes. But was compressing the energy a good idea? Did I make a big mistake already? Am I gonna be okay? Is it really the soul? Soul mana? Do I have an affinity with something like soul magic?]

Closing my eyes and looking at the small gas 'core' right where my heart is. I started thinking of what to do with it.