As the adrenaline passed, Max’s actions finally caught up to his brain. His arm was covered with goop and blood. The wet sticky feeling on his arm made him gag, but with an empty stomach nothing came up. He quickly got on the floor and found a patch of grass and started rubbing the hawk’s remains off of him. Finally satisfied with the results, Max made sure to clean the Chi-infused rock as well, it was a literal lifesaver.

Looking around, he landed in a small clearing. With the hawk laying on its back and its wings sprawled out, it took up almost half of the clearing. Beyond the clearing, lay the forest he had seen from up above. Most of the trees looked to be one to two stories tall and seemed to be very normal. If he didn’t already know this was another world, the forest could be easily mistaken as a nature reserve or state park back on Earth.

‘Well, not everything in this new world needs to be magical. One fucking car-size bird was enough for one day.’

Max could tell even after coming down the rocky path, this was still high ground There was a continued slope downwards past the clearing, albeit at a lower incline compared to the path he just tumbled down from. The cave and the cliff were sitting at the top of a very tall hill and he might be only a third of the way down that hill.

Turning back to the hawk, Max inspected it. He didn’t have a chance to take a close look at it while struggling for his life. But now looking at it, it was scarier than what he had imagined. The hawk had a hooked beak almost as long as its claws, it was also much wider than the claws. Cold sweat broke out across his forehead, if the hawk had pecked him with that even once, he was for sure a goner, especially considering his 3 HP at the very end of that encounter.

Max was still not sure what he could and couldn't Analyze, but just trying it wouldn’t hurt.

Analyzing…

FengZhua Hawk

Status: Deceased

Cultivation: Body Tempering 5th Stage

‘Shit, this guy was two stages ahead of me in cultivation. If this hawk could cultivate, it’s probably safe to assume that most creatures in this world can also cultivate.’

He thought back to all the things that Analyzed was successful on the first try; the Chi Dust, Chi-Fused Rock, and now this hawk. In the case of the dust and the rock, the common thread was the Chi that he had absorbed from the high-grade stone. It could also be argued that after he killed the hawk, some parts of it were absorbed by him through the experience gained.

Putting his hypothesis to the test, Max looked around to see if there was anything to “absorb”. Looking around, there was some moss on the trunk of the trees in front of him. He remembered reading that most mosses were edible and only a few types were poisonous to humans.

Walking up to the tree, Max took a small pinch of moss and Analyze it.

Analyzing…

Moss

Property:???

“This must be one of the stupidest ideas I ever had.”

Taking the smallest pinch of moss, Max put it in his mouth and swallowed it. The amount was so small that it practically was nothing. He also hoped that, if there was something wrong with the moss, it wouldn’t kill him at such a low dose. After a few seconds, he didn’t feel anything off, but it was way too soon to tell if the moss was poisonous.

Looking back up at the moss on the tree, Max used Analyze again.

Analyzing…

Common Moss

Property: While edible, it provides little nutritional value.

A smile broke across his face, this was a promising start. A college professor had always told him that a good experiment should have repeatable results. He didn’t want to risk trying something else just yet but was already making plans for the next test. He was on his way to answering one of the mysteries on his list.

‘Growl’

The little bit of moss must have reminded his body of the need for food. It had been a few hours since Max came to this world and he hadn’t had anything to eat.

Since the moss was right there, it only took him a couple of minutes to collect a handful. Without thinking too much about it, the moss was stuffed into his mouth.

This time after some chewing, he tasted it. It wasn’t terrible, it reminded him of a bad salad. It wasn’t something he would eat by choice, but it was good to know there was a source of food even if it provided little nutritional value.

Glancing back to the hawk, his stomach let out another growl.

‘Well, isn’t that ironic, it tried to eat me, but now I am going to eat it instead.’

Max was getting kind of hungry but wasn’t planning on eating it raw. The day was still young, it couldn’t have been more than an hour since his time in the cave, so he decided to search for some dry wood. With the forest just up ahead, there was a surplus of wood.

A few steps away, a fallen tree presented itself to him. He wasn’t a survival expert but knew that the firewood needed to be dry, if it was freshly cut from a tree, it would contain too much moisture for it to start a fire.

Doing a once over around the fallen tree and picked up all the smaller branches that had already broken off. The tree seemed to be larger than the other trees nearby which is likely the reason it fell. Taller trees would stick out, and all the wind pressure would be placed on one tree, whereas if they were all similar heights the wind would get diffused across multiple trees.

After a couple of minutes, Max had a substantial pile of firewood, definitely enough for him to start cooking; there were even a few longer branches that he could use as skewers.

Walking back to the hawk, Max started to ponder how to cook it. The damn thing was so big, but which part is going in his belly first. By the time he reached the hawk, Max decided to just treat it as an oversized chicken and his favorite part of a chicken had always been the drumsticks. This way, he wouldn’t have to deal with the hawk’s innards.

Not wanting a repeat attack, Max dragged the hawk’s body closer to the tree line, shielding him from the sky. The trees also provided him with some shade, which might slow down how fast the meat spoiled.

Max started removing the feathers from where the hawk was missing a talon. Each feather was about half the length of his forearms and unsurprisingly hard to pull out. The work was slow since only one feather was removed at a time.

Using a few of the larger branches that were collected as weights, he put them on top of the feathers so they wouldn’t get blown away. The plan was to use these feathers as clothes or bedding.

It was tedious and laborious work, but it was oddly satisfying. The work was simple, he knew exactly what his goal was and what needed to be done to achieve it. To him, this felt like the loading screen of a game. With each feather pulled, the loading bar would tick forward a bit.

One by one all the feathers were removed from the entire leg section of the hawk. Max had to stop to rest a few times. As he worked his way up the talon, the feathers got thicker and thicker. Towards the end, the feathers only gave way when his entire body weight was behind the pull.

After removing the feathers, Max could see where the hawk lost its talon. The wound looked to be relatively new, the skin around that area was still a light shade of pink. Without the feathers, the hawk looked a lot less impressive. The feathers made up a third of its bulk. Max estimated that after removing the feathers, the hawk was likely the size of a full-grown cow.

‘There’s no way for me to eat all of this before it goes bad, but better to have too much food than too little.’

Taking the Chi-Infused rock, Max started to hack into its leg. The skin was extremely tough, this made him realize just how lucky he was to score that hit on the hawk’s eye. His initial attacks likely just ruffled some feathers and didn’t even leave a scratch on the hawk. Giving up on hacking it, Max tried sawing it instead. His arms started burning and had to frequently switch them. Finally, on the seventh arm switch, the skin was broken through. After that, it was much easier to leverage the opening to drive the rock deeper and make the gush larger.

It was bloody work, but Max knew that if he wanted to survive, getting his hands dirty was the last thing to worry about. Not even half an hour after he left the safety of the cave, the hawk had attacked him. After finally peeling off a hand-sized patch of skin that was almost an inch thick, the edible meat was exposed to him. Seeing that the Chi-Infused rock was too big to cut into the meat, he went back up the slope to where he had left the smaller Chi-Infused rock. This time, the trip was uninterrupted, but still took a toll on his stamina. Max checked his status.

Name:

Max Oxford

Level:

4

Cultivation:

Body Tempering 3rd Stage

Age:

23

Progress:

24/86

Progress:

6/150

Status:

Weakened Body

Titles:

System Pioneer

Realm Walker

Cultivator

Traits:

Quick Learner

Cultivation Body

Skills:

Analyze

Common Tongue

HP:

34/49

SP:

3/53

CHI:

NA

Stats (Multiplier:1.3x)

Strength:

9

Perception

13

Constitution:

20

Intelligence:

22

Dexterity:

11

Spirit:

1

Endurance

13

Vitality:

9

Free Stat Points:

0