Chapter 3:

12 Days After Summer's End, 13 Days After Fall’s Beginning

114 Days After The Ra'tok Attack Amia Village

Fringes of The Mountains of The Gods

I crawl slowly through the underbrush, making sure to stay low and create no sound.

A spear is clutched in my hand, but the tip of this one is that of a pointed tooth. I stole it from a dead beast skeleton. I have found that it can go through wood with little resistance.

As I stop, I get a clear view of my prey.

It is a warthog. But it is as large as me, with 2 sets of tusks curling from its mouth. It’s hair is matted and dirty, the skin on it has the look of bark. Black eyes set under a perpetual angry brow.

The Beast is happily drinking from a small watering hole.

I have been staked out here for the past couple hours, waiting for something that I had a decent chance at killing.

Slowly, I move into a low crouch. I grab my spear in two hands, my black bandaged one gripping tightly.

The warthog pauses, sensing something is wrong.

Before it can do anything else, I pounce. My spear lances forward, piercing the thick hide around its neck with some resistance.

The warthog lets out a shrill SCREE. It kicks at the air with its hind legs, bringing its head around to hit me.

I hop back, tugging on my spear. The spear doesn’t come out, and I’m yanked to the side. Letting go of the spear, I roll, nearly getting gutted by the beast’s tusks. Coming to my feet, I sprint as fast as I can away from the beast.

It rushes after me, letting out a shrill whine. I dodge to the side, avoiding its charge.

As the beast passes me, I bring my right hand around. My hand forms into a claw. The scripts along the bandages flash silver. Then some of the black bandages unravel, snaking through the air at the warthog’s legs.

They coil around it’s hooves and thighs, tightening. The sacred beast trips, crashing into the dirt with a roar. The bandages tighten even more, binding it’s legs together and immobilizing it.

The beast thrashes violently, but I keep my arm steady.

I just have to wait now.

As I stand there, listening to the warthog's roars of rage, they start to get wetter, blood caking it’s lips and tusks. Eventually it falls silent, taking wheezing breaths of air, then it slowly stops.

Relaxing my hand, the bandages disentangle themselves from the corpse. They snake their way back up my arm, settling slowly.

I am covered in sweat, breathing heavily. All my Katra is spent, the bandages having greedily sucked my meager supply of Katra dry.

Can’t collapse now.

Cautiously walking towards the body of the warthog, I kick it in the ribs for good measure. Nothing happens and I am jumping on one foot, holding my aching toes.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea!

Once my toes stop hurting, I limp over to the spear in the beast’s neck. I have to yank several times to extract it from the warthog’s neck, once I do, a slow fountain of blood pours out.

I had punctured an artery in its neck. No steel could survive that for long, even a silver. Maybe a diamond if they had the right Katra, but there were certain points in the body that just couldn’t be repaired fast enough before the victim died.

Grabbing the bone knife from my belt, I start skinning the beast as best I can. It’s hide is thick and would make a good canvas once dried.

Once done, I start carving out chunks of its meat, wrapping them in large leaves and storing them in my bag. When I have stuffed all the meat I can carry into my bag, I start to saw at the flesh around its heart.

Extracting the heart, my hands dripping with gore, I carefully cut into the tough muscle. As I open the heart up, peeling strips of flesh away, a deep brown core is revealed.

It is a rough orb, glowing faintly with light. The color that means that this warthog had probably been cultivating some form of earth Katra. Maybe something else, but I’m pretty sure it is earth. Most sacred beasts cultivate the most common of vital aura. Like fire, water or earth. Maybe even air, it doesn’t vary much.

My arms are covered in blood up to my shoulders. I clean them off in the water, then get up and run off. I don't want to be around when the other beasts realize there is a fresh corpse for the taking.

***

Letting out a sigh, I glance up at the tree. Home sweet home.

Grabbing onto the wooden rungs, which I had hammered into the tree bark with sharpened sacred beast bones for nails, I climb up into the canopy.

While the canopy was not entirely safe, it was safer than on the jungle ground at night. I had learned early on that the higher up you were, the less the common predators bothered you. That wasn’t to say that the canopy didn’t have it’s own breed of predator.

As I pass the lowest branches of the trees, I come into a completely different world. There is a variety of mosses and a few grasses and shrubs coating the tree limbs. Bugs hum within the air, some making loud noises and others a steady reverberating sound.

I climb further up, till I reach a platform hammered between where the trunk of the tree forks. It is made of shaved down branches, creating a semi even surface to walk on. Long, thick branches act as walls, and a roof of large leaves.

With a thud, I lay down in a pile of large leaves that acts as my bed. Scattered around my one room tree house are various sacred beast parts and other curiosities.

With a tired sigh, I pick my pack back up and start taking out the hunks of meat wrapped in giant leaves. I sprinkle various seasonings on top of them, making sure they are rolled nicely.

Then I place them on a sheet of smooth rock. I grab a blue beast core and fit it in a slot in the rock sheet. The rock starts to heat up and the smell of roasting meat wafts towards my nose.

I had found this particular marvel in a ruin of what I would guess was a house once. The house was nothing but a pile of eroded blocks of stone, but I had dug through it and eventually found this weird rock in it.

I soon figured out if you powered it with Katra, it would heat the rock up. There was a slot in the side to put a power source in or feed Katra into it.

This was probably the single most important Artifact I had found. It allowed me to cook food up here in relative safety, not having to do it on the ground, where anything could sneak up on me.

The smell of cooking food wafts through the air and I can't help but recollect.

It reminds me of when I used to cook dinner with my mother in our small kitchen. I remember helping her season the food, her proud smile as she looked down at me.

Snapping out of my reverie, I flip the meat, searing it on the other side. Thick fats drip off it, sizzling on the hot stone.

Once it is done cooking, I wrap it up in the same leaves and set it out to dry. In a day or two it will become hard and jerky like, perfect for keeping preserved for long periods of time.

Cutting off a cube of meat, I revel in the juicy taste of it. The meat is chewy, but it is still good. I consume a large amount of it, a little Katra is infused in the meat, so I start to cycling.

It is still hard, I have to forcefully push the Katra through my channels, also making sure it doesn’t slip out of them and into my body. Despite my best efforts, some of it still escapes and it dissipates into my body, dissolving slowly.

Groaning at the feeling of being full, I move over to my bag. I take out the thick hide of the warthog. I unroll it and hang it on the far wall of my tree house. I methodically scrape away any muscle still clinging to the inside of the hide. Once that is done, I coat it in fat that has dripped off the meat I had cooked earlier.

I finish and leave it to dry overnight. This is about as good as I can make leather with what I have. To say the least, it doesn’t come out all that well, but I can still make something for protection from it.

As I lay back down in my bed of leaves, I look up at the canopy, pondering. I hold my bandage wrapped hand up, flexing it. The cloth wrappings unravel like tentacles, waving in the air with only the quiet rustle of cloth.

I willed the cloth to move, and it followed my command, the runes glowing with Katra. The cloth shoots tentacles off to the left, wrapping my left arm. I then try to pull it off my right hand.

I kept at it to no avail, the cloth wouldn’t unravel to a certain point, but it went far enough that my right arm started to look thinner, not as much cloth there as before. I have tried to see what has become of my hand under the bandages many times, but I can never get them to unravel past this point.

I had a sneaking suspicion I didn’t have much of a hand under all of it. I think that the cloth has completely replaced my skin, maybe even the muscles. I might not even have any bones under it.

My Katra is running low, so I cut off the flow of it to my hand. The tentacles of cloth snake back and coil around my hand. I form it into a fist. Most of the time I can forget that it’s not on my hand, it feels like a natural part of me.

With a deep breath, I start to cycle again. Once I have accumulated a decent amount of Katra, atleast for me, I open my eyes.

I have lost track of time, the days having blurred together. I know that I have spent at least more than 2 months here, maybe even 3. I'm not sure, I have no reliable way to count how many days I have spent in this jungle. But I have been counting the days since I built my tree house. I have spent a total of 44 days in here.

Over those course of days, since I my run in with Inik, I have been trying to figure out what my gauntlet can do.

I had learned the trick with the tentacles of cloth early on. It took a lot of concentration along with Katra to use, I could only control 3 separate cloth strips. I could use them to grip things from afar and pull them towards me. If I was fast enough, I could bind an enemy in place like the warthog. And the most advantageous thing about it was that if I stretched them as far as they could go, I can pull myself up onto the lower branches of the canopy.

Though, that wasn’t the only thing I know it can do.

I squeeze my hand into a fist, concentrating hard. I hold the mental image of bone as hard as steel.

The runes along the black cloth strips glow brightly. Then the silver glints and a white substance starts to form out of the scripting. It coats my arm, forming plates along my forearm. A plate forms on the back of my hand, offering protection, little ones run along the backs of my fingers and bone cappings on my knuckles. At the ends of my fingers it curves into wicked, sharp claws of bones, good for slicing.

The result is a claw gauntlet of what looks like bone, but is as tough as steel. It is perfectly fit to my hand, offering protection everywhere along my arm but the joints.

I am breathing heavily now, sweat pouring down my face in rivulets.

Then my Katra runs out and the bone plates liquify again, absorbed back into the cloth.

Curse the Gods! My Katra is too low to keep it going for more than a few seconds.

At the bronze stage, my pool of pure Katra to draw from is tiny. Extremely so. If I had a fire type of Katra, I could sit in a volcano and cultivate, growing the size of my Katra pool and going up in ranks. But because of my cripple status, I am not allowed to learn any Paths.

Paths are basically a set of techniques, disciples and a type of Katra. They were much more than that too. They contained cycling methods for Katra and all sorts of useful things, like a type of steel body.

I was not allowed to take a Path because I might hurt myself. With my Katra channels shattered and disjointed, Katra escaped into my body. If I take a Fire aspect Katra, and some of it escapes into my body, it could damage me irreversibly. Even kill me.

Pure Katra was not harmful to a human at all. It contained no attack power, or even defense. Offering only slightly enhanced regeneration and stamina.

If I could advance in rank, from Lowbronze to Highbronze, I could expand my Katra pool naturally. If I had a technique than specialized in making my Katra pool bigger, than maybe I would be okay. But I only had a basic one, given to children so that they can start to get used to cycling and learn to control their Katra.

At the rate of Katra I am making and the vital arua that I can purify, I will be about 30 when I rank up to Highbronze.

It was infuriating.

I am weak.

The only reason I had been able to survive in this jungle was because I hid from nearly everything. And if I wasn’t hiding, I was usually running. If I wanted to get any food at all, I had to hide in the shadows and wait for a animal weak enough to kill. The only reason I could kill that Lowsteel ranked warthog was because I had scavenged the beast tooth from a sacred beast corpse.

Most of the sacred beasts I had seen so far, excluding Inik, were in the diamond realm. I couldn’t even hope to put a scratch on them. One of the only reasons I was still alive is because they viewed me as too weak to even bother with. Which was true.

Even then, some still decided I might be a tasty snack.

I’m going to eventually run out of luck, and when I do, I will be eaten alive by one of the Beasts.

It was a grim thought

I hated feeling this weak and powerless.

So what can I do?

Nothing. I think bitterly. I might as well just give up here and throw myself to the devil hounds.

I think back to what Inik had said. ‘I have started you on the first step down your own Path. Now you must walk it alone.’

My own Path?

So what was stopping me from creating my own cycling technique?

I yawn wide, my eyes drooping. I am going to have a busy morning tomorrow. I have to figure out a good cycling method.

***

Pulling in a deep breath, I slowly release it. I do this again and again, my eyes closed and my mind focused inward. At my core.

A large hindrance in my cultivating is my channels. I can't effectively absorb vital arua from my surroundings and cycling it. A large portion of the arua would escape, and even more would just not go through my channels. What it left me with was roughly about 20% of the total vital arua I was taking in.

I have started the basis of my cycling technique off of that, expanding it to the idea of a near limitless reservoir of Katra to draw from. One that had such a huge capacity, that it didn’t matter about how much Katra I could use, it would never be emptied.

The theory was that I could just cycle when I don't need to fight, filling it till I have to stop making Katra. If my core had a big enough capacity, I wouldn’t ever have to worry about running out of Katra in combat. Or at least that was the theory.

It was easier said than done.

I had to come up with my own cycling technique from scratch. For the entire morning I had contemplated how to do this.

I had come up with many mental images. I wanted to expand my core. The first I had tried was a chisel hammering at the walls of my core, shattering sections and expanding it outward. It had ended in spasms of pain in my abdomen and I had nothing to show for it.

The second try was an image of water slowly eroding rock, crashing against the edges of my Core. Slowly expanding it. All I got from it was the feeling of drowning, my Core not even a fraction deeper.

And so it went.

I don't know how many I tried, but it was more than I cared to count. Most didn’t even have an effect, and the ones that did were unpleasant.

Then I found it.

I was trying out the idea of a grindstone, like ones a weapon smith uses to sharpen blades. With this image in my, I imaged a smooth, flat stone within my core. I imagined it slowly rolling around the circumference of my core, grinding away at the edges.

It felt like I couldn’t breath, so I stopped immediately. When I focused inward, I could feel that something had changed in it.

Excitedly, I pictured the grinding stone, slowly but surely smoothing out and widening my core. It felt like I couldn’t breath, a heavy weight in my chest and abdomen, but I persevered anyway.

After about a minute, I stopped, gasping for air.

The problem with this method was that it didn’t generate all that much Katra. It was still a slight bit more than my current one, but not by much.

But then I pictured having a bottomless pit of Katra to draw from. I could endlessly control my gauntlet, maybe even keep it in armored mode long enough to figure out what it did.

Ecstatic about the prospects of this idea, I try again. I keep cycling with this new method, stopping every minute or so, gasping for air. But I don't care, I keep one doing it.

I am walking my own Path.

I will make sure that I am as powerful as I can be.

More powerful than Inik or any other sacred beast.

More powerful than a god.

***

Bending down, I start to scrub my hands clean.

Then I frantically roll backwards, away from the edge of the water.

Large tendrils of water snake out of the pond, slapping down onto the ground with a whip like crack. The tentacles snake forward as fast as a viper.

I activate my gauntlet, swiping with my black cloth tentacles. The black cloth wraps around the water tendrils, binding them together.

Something dark starts to rise from the pond. An eye stays right under the surface. It’s glow of baleful red easy to spot under the water. The tentacles disperse back into normal water.

I quickly backup.

The eye stares at me for a moment, but then sinks back into the pond.

Another close call. Another thing I barely saw coming. Another way to fricking die.

Sighing, I walk away from the pool, using my spear as a walking stick. Just another day in the Jungle of The Gods.

I have lost track of how many times I am nearly killed in a day.

Looking down, I step over a Creeping Death Willow. If any of it’s poison barbs got into my skin, I would die shortly after. My low cultivation base not allowing me to walk through it unlike most other animals in the jungle.

Nearing my destination, I crouch and peer through some bushes.

There is a cluster of rubble, greenery and vines nearly obscuring it. This is a ruin. I had spotted it on one of my explorations of the surrounding area.

Seeing no beasts, I slowly walk out. As I approach the ruins, I start gathering my Katra in my hand. It takes an abyssal amount of time to gather all of it. I set my hand on a rock and push my Katra into it in one big wave.

I get a rough scan of what might be inside. Areas where my Katra is absorbed are where there are artifacts.

Since my Katra is pure, it can get added to constructs or used to power runes. I can sense where it is absorbed and used in the item in the ruins, leaving a ragged hole is my wave of Katra.

Letting out a long breath, I wipe the sweat from my brow. There was only one artifact that I could sense, which was good since I usually found none.

I walk over to roughly where I sensed the artifact and start pulling away vines and rubble. The intricate designs in the rubble had long since faded, the bricks shattered.

After about an hour of hauling rocks out of my increasing hole, I find the artifact.

I pull it out of the mud, wiping away as much as I can from it. The mud sticks to my left hand, but falls off my wrapped one, the bandages not letting any stick.

The artifact is a pristine, curved knife. The metal glows with the scripts carefully carved into the sides. Looking at the scripts, I am able to make out a anti-rust rune, a sharpening rune and a durability rune.

I dump some of my water on it, cleaning away the rest of the muck, I then put the knife in my backpack.

A pretty good find, but if I ever have to use it, I’m probably already going to be dying.

If I had to use the knife, it would most likely be up close with a beast, and that was a sure way to die.

Looking up at the sky, I can see that it is starting to get dark.

Better hurry.

I start to jog back the way my tree house is. As I jog, I keep an eye out for any predators.

Dusk was when most of the animals were starting to settle in for the night, but it was also when the predators started to prowl. There was some terrifying beasts out there.

I had seen giant footprints in the mud the other day, they were the size of my torso. I didn’t want to meet what they belonged to.

A drop of water hits my nose. I look up, dark clouds are rolling in over head.

Damn, another storm.

I start running towards my tree house. Rain starts to pelt the canopy above, large streams of water start pouring down to the jungle floor. A bolt of lightning flashes in the sky above, illuminating the world around me for an instant.

I hop over a tree root and start to climb up the ladder into my house. I grab a bucket made of one giant leaf and some sticks to keep it together. I hang it out on a protruding stick branch on the side of my shelter.

Rain starts to pour into the bucket, cascading down from the upper canopy along the giant leaves. The bucket is quickly filled and I snatch it back into my hut. Another flash of lightning and the boom follows shortly after.

Gulping down the rest of the water from my flask, I refill it from the bucket. Then I tip the bucket toward my mouth and greedily gulp down water.

Storm where a common occurrence here, but it was hard to find clean and fresh water. If I tried to drink out of a river, I might be running the risk of getting sick.

I wash my hands and face after I’m done drinking. I throw the dirty water outside and refill the bucket.

Glancing out my door, I can catch a few glimpses of the sky between the branches. I can see dark shapes gliding through the dark clouds between flashes of lightning. Two of them collide, roars and hisses resound from the sky. There is another flash and a roar of rage, then the shapes move out of my line of sight.

There are some truly terrifying creatures out there.

Laying in my bed, I listen to the rain as it pelts the roof, the thunder booming in the distance and the occasional roar.

It is a long time before I can fall asleep, and when I do, my dreams are haunted.

***

I curl my hand into a fist and push Katra into my gauntlet, all the while cycling using my new technique.

The scripting on the bandages flashes silver and the plates start to form. Slowly, my hand is covered in the bone gauntlet. I flex it, inspecting my hand, I feel no resistance, the bone shaped to perfectly fit my hand.

I keep feeding it my Katra, but I can already feel it dimming.

Closing my eyes, I focus on my arm. There is a sticky feeling miasma of Katra around it. I look past it, sensing even deeper.

There!

I can feel the scripts. It is in such a complex pattern that I can't even start to comprehend how it all works.

I pluck a string of Katra, one of the many connecting the scripts.

It vibrates, sending a spark of Katra along the line to a script. The script flashes brighter and I can feel something shift on my hand.

Opening my eyes, I watch as long spikes of bone start to form out of the arm guard. They shortly stop moving, then shrink again.

Focusing back into the gauntlet, I try to take a mental step back, looking at the big picture of what my hand has become. Trying to understand what it is and can do.

That's when I see it.

Everything is connected in a certain way, all of the connections coming from one origin point. I quickly speed towards it, I can feel my Katra running out.

I stop as I approach it.

Something feels… odd.

Looking closely at the origin point, and I think what also is keeping my hand running, I realize something.

There's something in there.

I reach out with my mind, gripping it. It try to pull it out, but it doesn’t budge.

Then I feel like something is watching me.

I turn around.

A humongous eye made of Katra stares back at me, glowing a steely gray.

“You are not welcome here.” A voice booms through the space.

Then my Katra run out and I’m jolted back. I let out a scream of terror. I scramble backwards, curling up into a ball.

Breathing heavily, I stare at my bandaged hand. What is this thing?

***

I bite into the tough meat, scanning over my rough map of the surrounding wilderness. There is a long ridge of mountains going across one side, a small cave marked, “Inik’s Nest”. There are small pictures of ruins around and a river coming down from the mountains. Many small notes are scrawled across the page.

I cap the precious ink bottle and clean my brush in a small cup of water. I have been slowly making a map of my surroundings, trying to determine where I am and the best options to survive long enough to get back to civilization.

Where I currently am is a small territory of lower ranked beasts. But any where about 3 miles out started to get more dangerous, creatures getting more numerous and more powerful.

My best guess is Inik’s presence scares off a large amount of the beasts that can sense it, providing me with an area low ranked enough to survive in. He might even hunt regularly, keeping the stronger sacred beasts out of the area.

Looking at my map, the best option I could see was to travel by river. There shouldn’t be too many water creature that would bother with attacking me. But then there might be.

It was also the fastest way out of the jungle.

Though I could hike through the forest, but I liked my chances even less with that option. Maybe if I was a Truesteel, I could have a decent chance.

None of my options were good. If I wanted to get out of this jungle, I would have to rely on my luck heavily.

Rolling up the scroll, I place it in my backpack.

As far as I can see, my best option is the river.

That means I’m going to need a raft. I will have to construct quickly, but also make sure it is sturdy enough to survive the rapids on the river.

I take in a deep breath, This isn’t going to be easy.

Gathering everything I can easily carry on my back, I survey my one room house. I would like to bring the cooking rock with me, but it’s too heavy, it will slow me down more.

I double check that I have the long strips of leather from the warthog’s skin. I would use these to help build my raft.

I’m going to miss this place.

With one last longing look, I climb out of my tree house and down onto the forest floor. I had made sure I woke up at dawn.

Taking in a deep breath, I start running for the river.

***

I stripped the tree of their limbs, cutting off any extra branches on the sticks I didn’t want with the artifact knife I found.

By the time I had done this, I was already exhausted, but I didn’t stop.

Securing the branches to each other and making sure that they would float was far more time consuming than I imagined.

The final product was not pretty, but it was serviceable and sturdy. The branches were lashed together multiple times and the raft was a long rectangle, enough for me to lay down on.

I dragged it out into the cold water, throwing my pack up onto it. With a heave, I lift myself onto the raft. Taking the branch I am using as a paddle, I guide my raft into the current.

I am going at a steady pace, making sure to not get too close to the shore and avoid big rocks.

Here come the first set of rapids. Gotta be careful.

As I approach the rocks, I slow myself down by pushing on rocks, making sure to not hit any of them. I nearly capsize when I hit a rock I don't see, but manage to keep the raft upright.

With a sigh of relief, I pass through the small rapids and continue down the river.

This part of the river is to rough for more of the dangerous river sacred beasts around. But when I get further down the river, it will start to widen out and there will be less rocks, opening up for more attacks.

I slowly and carefully make my way down the river, watching as the sun creeps towards the horizon.

Dread fills me, but I stay calm. I should be relatively safe from the predators. The only thing I have to worry about is river monsters.

I let out a bitter laugh.

The sun slowly sets behind the horizon and dark night takes the land.

Fighting the urge to sleep, I glide down the river. The stars above reflecting off the water and making it look like I am traveling on a river of light.

I look in awe at the scene, captivated by its beauty.

Sitting down, I carefully steer the raft down the river, squinting in the darkness to see if anything is out there.

I can see flashes between the trees, a multitude of color. With a start, I realize that those colors are beasts.

They watch me from the bank of the river, not trying to step into the water.

Can they not cross the water?

No, I had seen plenty of beasts walk on or through water. So why aren't they moving?

Are they afraid of something? Maybe they are curious?

I watch as a deer walks pace with my raft, glowing. Blue, ghostly flames race along its antlers and back, giving it a ethereal look.

The night passes without incident, but I don't go to sleep. A occasional beast watched me from the shore, Some would follow my raft for a while, but eventually gave up.

I stopped seeing beasts as the sun drew up behind me.

With my estimations, I should be a third of the way out of the jungle by now, but I’m not sure. I could not even be close to leaving the jungle .

Taking out a piece of warthog jerky, I munch on it as I keep the raft steady.

I better cycle for a bit.

I envision the wheel slowly grinding away at my core, expanding it. I still have to stop every few minutes now, unable to keep it going constantly. In between those breaks, I make sure to keep my raft in the center of the river.

In between one of those breaks, a dark shape rises up under me.

I snatch up my spear, shoving it deep into the water and hitting whatever was trying to attack. There is a large amount of thrashing below the water, then the shape speedily moves off.

Letting out a breath, I stay vigilant the entire day. I have to fend two more fish off, but I stay unscathed.

I travel down the river for another two days. I had noticed the trees getting smaller and thinning somewhat. I have seen less and less beasts.

Looking up at the sky, I can see dark clouds rolling in.

That's not good. The river is going to flood and become hard to travel on.

I was faced with a choice, either get off the raft and risk hiking through the rest of the jungle, or risk being swept off my raft and drowning.

Even though I believed that I was nearing the edge of the jungle, I wasn’t confident in my ability to survive long enough to escape. And I wasn’t confident in not being able to stay on my raft, if I fell off and couldn’t make it to the river bank, I might be eaten.

What can I do?

My first instinct was to stay on the raft, at least here on the river it seemed most of the fish left me alone. And in the jungle there might still be high ranking sacred beasts.

I decided.

Taking my paddle, I push my way over to the east bank, sliding my raft onto the shore.

I cinch my backpack up and grab my spear. Taking a deep breath, I hop off the raft and walk back into the jungle.