An Unknown Place, 56 Gearro 3982

The whirling hole which absorbed me suddenly disappeared without any trace. I fell down from a ridiculous height…

“Son of a…” I automatically let out a panicked shout.

Splash! I fell down with a great splash into a large body of water, like a big rock dropped into a deep pond. For a few seconds, surrounded by water, I lost my bearing… could not understand which was up and which was down. Fortunately, it lasted only for a few seconds. The feeling of lost and panicked quickly disappeared as I managed to control my sense of sight underwater.

Once I could differentiate the shades of water, separating them into brighter and darker part, I could deduct where I should go. I immediately swam to the brighter part… the surface.

“Bwooh!” I spurted water out of my mouth, relieved that my head was finally out of the water. I took a deep breath, glad that I was still alive.

Yet, once I had looked around… the relieved feeling quickly disappeared. In the contrary, the great sense of dread started to appear in my mind.

“Damn it! How unlucky can I be?” I swore furiously.

I was teleported to one of the worst places that I could imagine. I was in… an open sea. Everything around me was water, water, and water. Anywhere I looked… it was water, stretching up to the horizon in all sides.

My shitty luck! I was not a fish, damn it!

Sensing fear and helplessness crept all over my skin; I quickly took a deep breath and tried to relax… using a unique method taught by my mother when she was still alive.

Calm down… I needed to calm down. I needed to think of the good sides of this situation. There must be at least one thing that could have been worse here… One good thing… I needed to think just one good thing…

Alright… alright…! Here was one good thing… I could swim. That should be a plus point, shouldn’t it? It would have been much, much worse for me if I could not swim. In fact, I definitely would have died, had I not possessed this swimming ability.

Yeah, there too… the weather was great. It was sunny and warm… and the sky was cloudless. Those were also good news, weren’t they? What would have happened to me, had I been teleported here in the mid of winter’s snowstorm. I would have frozen to death. I should be grateful this was not that bad. Good. That would mean that my luck was not too bad…

Wait, come to think of it, the position of the sun didn’t seem to be that much different from the time right before I was sent here. Well, that was assuming that my sense of direction was not warped by the transfer. From the position of the sun, now, it could either be mid afternoon or mid morning.

Personally, I was quite sure that it should be mid-afternoon, but I could not confirm that unless I waited for some time for the sun’s movement to be noticeable. I hoped it would be mid afternoon though, since that would mean that I was not teleported too far from my hometown. I would hate it if I were sent to the other side of the world.

Wait a minute…

I dived down underwater and looked around with eyes open. Water, water, and… ah there were some fish there, small sea fish, not sharks or sea monsters. Good! Wait! Those white-scaled fish… They were taraykane, common north-sea fish. This was great!

I returned back to the surface. At least, now I knew that this place most likely was the Northern Sea. Great! I had much higher chance to survive here. I would be doomed if this was the Sea of Monsters in the east.

Right… what should I do now?

I looked around. Nothing but water was around me. That was not good. Floating on sea water did not take too much stamina, but it would be impossible for me to keep doing this indefinitely. Sooner or later, I would sink. Not to mention… I needed food and fresh water too. This was bad… really bad…

I closed my eyes and tried to calm down my worry, again. I needed to look more carefully. There must be something out there that could give me hope. Alright! I would look around more carefully.

I opened my eyes and looked around once more… slowly this time, and more carefully. There! There was a tiny dark shape over there. It was so tiny that I almost missed it again. It could be an island… or a monster, but… Whatever! Taking a risk would be better than just staying here, floating aimlessly.

I swam to the tiny shade I saw… not in a hurry. I preferred a slow and steady movement. I needed to save my stamina in case something troublesome happened on the way.

…

It was not a short distance. The sun was almost completely set but the distance to the dark shape was still considerably far. I could see the shape more clearly now though. It was an island… a tiny island, without any sign of civilization. No ship, boat, or smoke could I see. But this was great! At least it was not a sea monster.

This distance… I would probably need, if I used the time measurement from my old word, two or three more hours to get there with my current speed. That was bad. The sun was about to set. It would be hard to maintain the direction when it got dark.

I quickened my pace, swimming faster to the island. While swimming my head was full of questions. That island was tiny. How could I see it from that far away? Was it even possible for me to see something this far?

…

The sun had completely set. I hadn’t reached the island yet. The great thing was… the half gearro moon up in the sky was bright enough to let me see the silhouette of the island I was swimming to.

…

I finally reached the sandy beach of the island. My feet finally touched the soft sands. I walked unsteadily for several steps before I succumbed to the straining fatigue… all over my body… and my mind… I could… no longer… stay… conscious…

The Unknown Island, 57 Gearro 3982

I opened up my eyes. My head was still fuzzy. I was woken up by… I didn’t know what actually. When I managed to collect myself together, what I realized was… I was lying on the soft white sand while the piercing heat of the morning sunlight bathed my aching body.

I sat up quickly. Where was this? Oh, yeah! I remembered now. This was the tiny island that saved my life yesterday. Had I not found this island, I would have died pathetically… sunk to the bottom of the sea.

I let out a relieved sigh. I escaped from death again. Great! They said that what didn’t kill you would only make you stronger, didn’t they?

Wait! This was not the time for contemplation. I needed to explore the island and scouted it for dangers and resources. But, that could wait for later. Now, I needed… food and water. My throat was parched and my stomach was already grumbling.

I looked around, searching for something to quench my thirst and fill my stomach. And I quickly found that something, many things actually… coconut-like trees, with greenish trunk, greener leaves, and more importantly… inviting reddish coconut-like fruits. I had never known there were trees like that. Was the fruit edible?

I quickly used my [Matjiwa] magic skill to analyze one of the trees. Once I used it, I instantly knew much about the tree, and its fruits. The inner flesh of the fruits was edible, and like coconut, there was also liquid inside this fruit. I needed to find a way to open it though.

Wait! I needed to get the fruit first before trying to pry it open.

I quickly stood up and looked for some fist-sized rocks. After finding some, I tried to make the fruits drop by throwing the rocks to the fruit.

Three of my first throws didn’t even hit any of the fruits. Damn! My hunger and thirst decreased my accuracy a lot.

I concentrated harder and threw the next rock. It hit one of the fruits, but it was not strong enough to make the fruit fall. I threw it again… and after three more throws, one fruit finally fell down. Great! Now, I needed to break it open.

I searched for another rock. This time, I was looking for something that was sharp enough to pierce the external layers of the reddish coconut-like fruit. Once I found a sharp enough stone. I started hacking and piercing the fruit. Damn! It was hard to do it without proper tools. I shouldn’t have thrown my slingshot blade to that warlock.

After considerable time hacking and piercing, I finally managed to make it open, only to spill most liquid inside the fruit. So unlucky!

I drank the remaining liquid inside. It tasted more like fresh, more diluted, cow’s milk, rather than coconut water. But it was still great, especially to a thirsty person like me.

After wetting my throat with the liquid, I tried to taste the pale yellow fruit’s flesh. It tasted like a raw slimy bland jelly. I would rather take real coconut flesh anytime than this one. But since beggars cannot be picky, I guessed this one had to be enough.

I used some rocks to drop two other similar fruits, pry them open, and consume both the liquid and flesh inside. It took me a considerably less time to do it, compared to the first time I did it. It seemed that I started to get used to doing this.

While having my wild breakfast, I began to think of what had happened to my home town. Despite some of the unpredictable variables that had happened, those necromancers’ attacks were well planned. If the attacks were not limited only to the library, if they had more than just one warlock, if there were some other hidden agenda behind the attack… Damn! Bhalafaeth seemed to be much more dangerous than what I had previously thought. I wondered what was happening in town after I got teleported here.

Enough! Whatever would happen there would happen. Thinking about it would not change the outcome. I needed to think about my situation here first. I would need to explore the island, scout for any possible danger, plan suitable survival methods, think of a way to leave, take inventories of what I could use… Damn! I had a lot of things to do.

After I had finished consuming the fruits, I started exploring the island.

…

It didn’t take me very long to finish my exploration. The island was very small. Most of the eastern, western, and southern parts of it were sandy beaches with lots of the coconut-like trees. The northern coast and some of the eastern part were characterized by dangerous looking rocky cliffs. It was lucky I did not hit that place yesterday.

The central part of the island was a small-sized hill with lots of trees… a small sized forest hill would probably describe it well. There was a basketball-court-sized clearing with pretty large fresh water spring near the top of the hill.

There was nothing threatening in this island... no monster, no vicious beast. The problem was… except for sea birds and insects, there was no animal either here. That meant that if I wanted to eat meat, I needed to start learning how to take down the birds, without scaring the other birds.

Well, I would have to learn how to catch fish without fishing pole too. It should not be too hard. I could probably create and use a simple wooden spear by sharpening a tree branch with sharp rock. But then, I didn’t want to eat raw meat or fish. I needed to be able to make fire too. Damn! I wished I brought my flint and blade.

I sighed. How could my life story turn into this Robinson-Crusoe-like development? And Crusoe was much better off than me. At least he could salvage some tools from the shipwreck. Oh well, at least, unlike Crusoe, I didn’t need to build a house. I had found a cave on the hill side where I could comfortably rest in case of bad weather. It was not much of a cave, but it could at least shelter me from rain… and wind if I could build some kind of door to cover the opening.

I started listing my survival necessities. Food and water… for now, there was no problem with that. The spring water would provide me enough water to drink. I could use the sea for bath. For food, before I could get meat or fish, I could eat fruits or leaves. My [Matjiwa] skill should help a lot here. I should not be stingy in using it for this matter. I didn’t want to die because of silly food poisoning.

Next… for shelter, there was no problem either. I had the cave. However, unless I faced bad weather, I would probably just sleep outdoors, on the grass, under the open sky.

For clothing? That was when trouble started to come. I had no idea at all how I could make clothing without any tool. And making the tools was also out of questions since I had no idea how to do it either. Besides, what materials could I use here? Fish scales? Bird feathers? How would I use them?

God damn it! And I was still in my growing stage. Soon, this clothing I wore would not fit me anymore. I guessed I didn’t have any choice. By the time my clothing could not fit me anymore; I would have to go into Tarzan-mode, and modified that useless clothing to cover only my vital part.

I should just forget about this clothing problem for now. I needed to go to the next concern… fire. How would I make a fire without tools? Hand drills or bow drills would be the logical choice here. I had never done any of those techniques but I knew the theory. Oh well, I just needed to apply the theory into practice and try to somehow make it work.

My next concern would be the development of my power. I needed to get stronger. It meant that I had to continue and even intensify my daily practice. For the power of my body and soul, I needed to remember that I had no one to teach me new martial art techniques here, so I had better focus on raw power and mastering the techniques I had already learnt.

For magic, well… there were many insects here. Most of them were from species that I had never seen and learned about. Using my [Matjiwa] on them should be logical. My first priority should still be the same, finding a zea-learning skill to replace the [Silly Sight] magic skill.

Alright! I needed to start working.

…

The Unknown Island, 69 Gearro 3982

Twelve days had passed. I had started to adapt to my life here in the island.

There was no lack of edible and nutritious materials from the plants here. Fruits, roots, leaves, flowers… many of those were all safe to eat and nourishing for my body. The only problem was that none of these edible parts of the plants, at least those that I had consumed, tasted delicious. They were either bland or a little bitter. I had washed them with seawater several times just to give them a little salty flavor.

I had managed to catch a fish just a few days ago, using sharpened stick. That was no easy feat. Swimming to a fish and then thrusting the sharp point of the stick to the fish was an easy thing to do. Hitting the fish was a different matter. After one lucky hit a few days ago, I had never hit any other fish.

Different from my unsuccessful endeavor in fishing, I could now easily make fire, with a simple bow drill technique. The bow drill I used was crudely made out of tree branch and vines.

For my physical development, I focused my training on movement ability in natural obstacles, bare-handed shadow fighting, and throwing skills using rocks with different shapes and sizes. All of them were not up to minimum standard that I set myself yet, but they were progressing quite nicely.

So far, I had managed to hit level eight in the domain of mind and soul, and level seven in body. I was planning to level up in body domain tonight. That was not something that I looked forward to though. It was more like… I needed to force myself to break through the level eighth layer because I had to, not because I wanted to. The pain… I sincerely wished I hadn’t had to go through that annoying pain to level up my body.

Anyway, one thing that I took special note in these twelve days was that the [Matjiwa] skill I possessed was truly convenient. Not only did it give me thorough information about edible plants, it also led me to the greatest excitement that I had ever experienced. It was… the discovery of an insect with zea-learning magic skill.

The ability that nearly brought me to tears of happiness belonged to a thumb-sized spider with black glossy color. I had never seen nor read about this kind of spider, so I simply called it a shadow spider. The magic skill appeared as strands of black threads that covered the target in a dark-colored cocoon. After about a thousand seconds, one of the target’s passive magic skills would be learnt by the spider. Since I never heard of that kind of magic, I simply called the spider’s magic skill [Empathic Cocoon].

Obviously, I tried as hard as I could to learn that magic skill. But, learning the skill was not easy, not easy at all. That was because one spider could only use that magic three times due to the limit of zea slots in it. And it seemed that unlike my [Monster Magic Mimicry], the [Empathic Cocoon] could not be used to overwrite learned skill. Worse yet, the spiders were not that common. I could only find six after three days searching all over the island.

To continue learning the magic, there was no other choice for me. I had to breed the spiders.

I said ‘breed’ but what I actually did was simply transporting all the shadow spiders I discovered to a single safe place, my cave. I provided them with other insects for their foods and hoped for the best. Luckily, it worked. There were about a hundred egg sacs scattered in my cave now. Once the baby spiders broke out of their sacs, the [Empathic Cocoon] would soon replace my [Silly Sight]. I sincerely hoped nothing bad would happen before I acquired that magic skill.

…