Although Nate made it back to the safety of his tree hollow with relative ease, he still did not feel right. The scene of the cat stalking the pigs unseen was heavily weighing on him mentally. The thought of being hunted while not aware of the predator caused him a good bit of unrest throughout the trip back. Despite the occasional ding showing an increase in the stats, Nate still felt a lingering worry that he was being hunted until he reached the entrance to his tree hollow.

After removing his protections and climbing inside, Nate still didn’t let his guard down. The memory of the cat beast prompted Nate to place a few more protections at the entrance to the tree hollow.

In his downtime the previous week, Nate had managed to craft a pretty decent closure for the tree hollow. It wasn’t protected as much as it was built to blend into the tree. Once Nate placed the cover over the entrance, the entrance to his tree home practically blended into the rest of the tree showing no opening.

Regardless of the entrance’s camouflage, Nate managed to craft a stand to hold his two spears with the spear points facing the entrance. If a beast were to knock the cover off, then the first thing they would encounter as it entered would be the points of two spears just inside the tree hollow. Nate had hoped that if something managed to get that far, then it had the chance of accidentally impaling itself on one of the spears.

After fixing the spears in place and placing a few more braces against the entrance cover, Nate finally began to mentally relax. The strain of the whole incident had been exhausting.

“Fuck, that was rough,” Nate said as he sat down in the dark hollow to rest from his hunting trip.

With his mind settling down, Nate began to mentally sort through the day and assign tasks to himself. The first item on his agenda was to sort through the animal parts that he had crammed into his bag.

“You made a mess of that didn’t you,” Nate said to himself as he pulled the leave wrapped animal parts out of his bag. Some blood had managed to seep through the leaf wrap and soak a corner of his bag.

After pulling a fresh leaf out of a pile he had set aside in the tree, Nate set out the animal parts in a spread in front of him to take stock of his haul. First, he fiddled around with the cat beast’s teeth and claws for a while to confirm that they could be fashioned into more arrowheads. When he witnessed the claws and teeth sink into the pig so easily, Nate had almost instantly thought that the cat had strong weapons. Now that he had the opportunity to inspect his new materials, Nate realized that the claws and teeth would actually be about three-quarters of the strength of the metal shards. Nate was amazed that a beast could have such strong body parts.

After performing a few tests with the claws, Nate set them aside and moved on to the beast core. Nate had one core already and took it out to compare. The snake beast’s core was an earthy color while the cat’s core was almost black with slightly green streaks. The two cores were almost the same size, but the snake beast’s core seemed slightly larger. Nate held both cores in his hands and tried to focus his mind on drawing power.

In his recent rest, Nate had read through the “Divine Light of the Singularity” several times in order to make sense of the religious text. From a few things he learned so far, Nate was able to confirm that some of the references in the book were correct. The only issue was that the actual facts were buried in religious symbolism and ceremony. He understood that beast cores were a source of power that could be used to build upon a human’s strength. He just didn’t know how to use them properly.

After a few minutes of messing with the cores, Nate moved on to the meat he had taken from the pig. He had high expectations for the meat as a food item but was somewhat cautious due to his last experience. He also examined the broken shards of the small beast core that he had pulled out of the pig. From the few pieces, Nate was able to guess that the pig beast actually had a smaller core than the other two animals.

The reason Nate had taken some of the pig’s meat as opposed to the cat’s meat was that he was using a lesson he had learned from taking the acorns that the pigs were eating. If another animal was eating it, then it might be okay. The cat was going to eat the pig, so it must be okay. Nothing was eating the cat, so there was risk involved. He wasn’t going to get poisoned again. The logic was a little messed up, but it still gave Nate some comfort in proceeding forward with eating the beast meat. He just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

After 10 minutes of mental argument concerning risks, he decided to cook the meat since cooking had worked well with the acorns.

********************************

With his mouth-watering from the smell, Nate sat by the small fire inside the cave patiently watching the pig meat roast over the fire. His mouth watered at the sight of the cooking food. His stomach growled to demonstrate its need for the beast flesh.

After enduring the smell of the roasting pig for a while, Nate removed a chunk of meat and began eating. The hot meat was glorious as Nate feasted.

About halfway through his meal, Nate felt a sudden burning sensation from his stomach. The burning sensation grew to an intensity that was unbearable. Nate doubled over from the pain in his gut. Just when the pain reached a peak, the burning began moving around inside Nate’s body.

With panic over what was occurring, Nate struggled to deal with the pain that began moving from his stomach towards his head. Nate expected that he had been poisoned from the food but no system alert sounded. All he could do is endure the pain as a path seemed to burn its way from his stomach to his head. Once the pain reached his head, Nate felt a head-splitting pain, unlike anything he had felt before. But once the initial pain was over, the harsh sensation started to dissipate rapidly. As the pain decreased to a manageable level, system alerts began to appear.

[‘Survivor’s Need’ has increased to Level 3]

[‘Calm Survivor’ has increased to Level 5]

[‘Survivor’s Need’ has increased to Level 4]

[‘Pain Resistance’ has increased to Level 10]

[System user has unlocked energy storage function]

[Core formation in progress]

[1 unit of Energy obtained]

[98 additional units of Energy required for Core Formation]

“What?,” Nate asked in response to the system alert as the burning sensation stopped. Nate didn’t know what had happened to his body, but he felt pretty damn good. He eagerly pulled up his system status to see if what changes had happened.

—————————————————-

Name: Nathaniel Redsun

Level: 7 (Exp. 697/700)

Health: 110/110

Energy: 2/0

Primary Class: Calm Survivor (Level 5)

Class Skills:

Survivor’s Need (Passive) (Level 4)

Survivor’s Awareness (Passive) (Level 2)

Survivor’s Resistance (Passive) (Level 5)

Secondary Class: None

Stats:

Speed: 12 Agility: 12

Stamina: 13 Strength: 16

Intelligence: 13 Perception: 14

Wisdom: 13 Will: 18

Stat Points Available: 0

General Skills:

Silent Presence (Passive) (Level 6)

Dark Vision (Passive)(Level 10)

Pain Resistance (Passive)(Level 9)

Bleeding Resistance (Passive)(Level 4)

Infection Resistance (Passive)(Level 4)

Poison Resistance (Passive)(Level 10)

Burn Resistance (Passive)(Level 1)

Fear Resistance (Passive)(Level 8)

Archer’s Sight (Passive)(Level 7)

———————————————

Looking over his system status, Nate could only see one real difference. The energy stat that had always been under his health now showed [Energy: 2/0].

After considering the situation, Nate could only guess that the meat was the cause of this energy increase. He picked up a piece of the food and inspected it closer. After a few seconds of close inspection, Nate noticed some small flecks of shiny material on the meat.

Picking one of the small flecks off his meat, he inspected it for a moment. As he rubbed the gritty material between his fingers, a sudden realization hit Nate.

“It has to be some small pieces from the broken beast core,” Nate said.

He quickly went through his stuff and confirmed that some of the uncooked meat still had small pieces of broken beast core stuck on it. The flakey core pieces had to be the source of the intense pain and energy level increase.

But Nate was puzzled by his own conclusion. As far as he knew people couldn’t eat beast cores. The book had clearly talked about holding a beast core in your hands to receive its power. He had still managed to absorb some energy despite not being able to follow the book.

“Only one thing to do to confirm the idea,” Nate said out loud to no one but himself.

Although Nate was almost too excited to care for the particular reasons, he still couldn’t keep from trying to figure things out. Nate picked up one of the larger flecks of the beast core and popped it into his mouth.

After a few seconds, he felt a brief warm sensation in his head.

[‘Survivor’s Need’ has increased to Level 5]

Nate pulled up his user interface and did not see any increase in energy. He had clearly felt something happen though. He picked up a larger piece of the broken core out of his bag. With some hesitation, he popped the piece into his mouth again. This time the warm sensation was a bit more intense, but it still did not cause an increase in his energy.

“Maybe it is still not enough,” Nate said as he moved from eating the roast pig to choking down small pieces of broken beast core.

After eating several more pieces, Nate finally received another alert.

[‘Survivor’s Need’ has increased to Level 6]

[1 unit of Energy obtained]

[97 additional units of Energy required for Core Formation]

As his excitement took hold of him, Nate began to inhale the pieces of the beast core that were stuck to the meat.

**************************************

An hour later, Nate felt he had finally gotten some answers. Consuming the broken pieces of the beast core had netted Nate a total of 3 units of Energy. He did not understand the root causes of what was happening, but he could make a few guesses from what he had learned.

[‘Survivor’s Need’ has increased to Level 8]

“Just what I thought,” Nate said in the firelight inside the tree hollow.

The alert confirmed his belief that it was actually his skill [Survivor’s Need] that was allowing the processing of the eaten beast core pieces.

For the rest of the evening, Nate spent experimenting with the remaining pieces of beast core. He didn’t really gain any additional insights into the relationship between his skill and the beast's core. The culmination of the day’s events finally caught up with Nate. Drowsiness started to set in as he pulled himself out of his thoughts.

With a yawn, Nate realized that he had neglected his other tasks. Quickly, he started to get the rest of his things done. He stacked some of the acorns he picked up into a nook in the wall of the tree. With some effort, he managed to hang the remainder of the meat over the small fire to cook while he rested. He also pulled some freshwater out of a hole to clean himself.

It had been a long day.

But despite his drowsiness, Nate still couldn’t stop his mind as he laid down to rest. By his guess, a whole beast core would give him roughly 4 to 5 units of Energy. The last alert had said that he needed 97 units of Energy for core formation. He only had two cores. With some quick math, he would need around 18 more beast cores to get all the energy needed. So regardless of all the events of the day, Nate only had one question on his mind as he dozed off to sleep.

“What the hell is core formation?”