As the sun fell over the Kingdom, a man was lying bloody on the forest floor. He moved every so often, clutching the tree roots in his hands and crawling forwards when he could. When the sun disappeared beyond the horizon and darkness spread over the trees, there was still a light that only he could see. The entire forest glowed a gentle blue, the trees giving off a source of comforting warmth that he could feel throughout his entire being. It was almost enough to distract him from the flaring pain of the arrows lodged into his torso.

The padding of small feet roused Christoph from his lapse in agony, and he turned his head to look up at the approaching creatures. Blazing with blue light, they circled around his form, the unnatural coldness he radiated halting them in their approach. Even from where they stood he could feel the heat of their mana as he absorbed what little he could.

Eventually the bravest of the beasts moved closer to him, drawn in by the sweet smell of blood. Christoph blinked to clear his blurred vision moved his head weakly. The creature that padded over to him was a small quadruped, somewhere in between the canine and feline forms. It ignored his attempts at moving and stood over him, lapping at the bloody wounds on his back. The tongue was hard and rough, and he felt his skin being sloughed away as it licked firmly at his back.

Reaching up, he closed a hand around one of the creature’s back legs. It shook its limb in an effort to throw him off, but he held on with a strength he hadn’t possessed a moment before. Could the beast feel its life force being drained away with each swipe of its tongue? Could it feel the coldness spreading through its body from where he clutched at its leg?

By the time the small mammal realized it was in danger, it was much too late. It yelped as it tried to escape, teeth puncturing Christoph’s arm and shredding his flesh, but his hand only tightened in response, another closing around the creature’s neck. The beasts in the circle shied away at the cries of their comrade, and Christoph silenced it without mercy. Leaning down onto the warmth of its corpse, he opened his mouth and began to eat.

His first bite was nothing but fur, and he spat in disgust before he realized how futile that was. The fur dissolved onto his tongue, a flavor that was somehow not that of food but still somehow tasty. He closed his teeth onto the warm flesh of his prey and bit down, a chunk of the furred beast tearing free into his waiting mouth. Each bite was more delicious than the last, each one a profoundly satisfying mouthful of sustenance. Biting down on the bones with a crunch, Christoph felt them breaking between his teeth and swallowed the fragments without hesitation.

…

The sun was high above the forest once more, rays of light filtering down through the leaves to shine over the pools of dead leaves that lay gathered in the bends of the tree roots. The trees themselves stretched upwards further than any trees had right to, their trunks thicker than many trees were tall. Their roots formed roads and paths, pitfalls and platforms alike.

It was on one of these platforms that Christoph knelt, his clothes long since torn and bloody. He held his hands up to his face, a meal clutched in his fingers and torn between his jaws. Steam rose from the pool of blood as it was absorbed by the tree-trunk and claimed by the forest. Christoph didn’t notice that the animal was still clinging to life, a pathetic mewl ringing out across the forest as it was devoured. Such was life in this place, and it had been weeks since he had taken notice of his prey’s pathetic cries. He didn’t even notice the pounding hooves of the approaching enemy until it slammed into him, throwing him off of the platform and into a nearby tree trunk.

His breath left him in a spray of blood, the meal he had held flung out into the distance and the wounds in his back tearing open once again. Pulling himself upright, Christoph glared over at his attacker before blinking and looking around. Had the forest always been so large? The beast stomped its feet before charging around the tree roots towards him, and he snapped back into the present. A unicorn? Flinging himself from the tree trunk, he rushed down another root, slipping on the wet bark and sliding off the side of the root as the unicorn rushed past him .

Rather than drop down the few meters into the pile of dead leaves, Christoph gathered his feet underneath him and launched himself across the gap onto another gigantic tree root. Standing up, he rang from the unicorn before it could navigate its way back to him across the tangled wooden walkways. What had happened to him? Even that jump was something he doubted he could have done before. The arrowheads lodged in his back still sliced into him painfully, and glancing back he could see half an arrow shaft protruding from his shoulder.

Because of how he had looked over his shoulder, Christoph was able to dodge the unicorn’s next charge before it made impact, the bladed horn slashing through the air and cutting wickedly into his left arm. Rolling to his feet, his ruined arm hung uselessly at his side as the unicorn turned back towards him. The blood he had bled onto the unicorn’s horn steamed and disappeared, and he hissed in anger when he realized that it had been absorbed.

“No,” Christoph said with an unhinged grin. “You don’t get to devour me.” Instead of turning to run away from the beast he hurtled towards it, charging it before it could charge him. The unicorn lowered its head and slashed at him with its blade, the crystal horn sparkling in the sunlight as it cut through the air. Backing up, Christoph paused for a moment to get a good look at the creature.

Perhaps smaller than a large horse, the unicorn glared down at him and stomped a hoof again, but didn’t attack just yet. Its back and shoulders were covered in crystals as well, possibly as a kind of armor, although its pale underbelly was vulnerable. The horn itself was less than a meter long, a blade which zigzagged once in the middle like a stylized lightning bolt, thin but more deadly than it looked.

Huffing, it charged towards him. He avoided the first attack, but instead of continuing its charge past him the unicorn paused, twisting and turning on the spot as it struck out at him with its horn and hooves. He barely managed to avoid the horn, taking a blow from the hooves before slamming his hand into the beast’s shoulder in an attempt to push it away. Instead of his blow being dulled by the armor, a large chunk of crystal broke off from the beast, falling to the root below. Snatching it up, he smiled as he bit down into the gemstone, feeling the energy flow into him from the crystal. His left hand twitched as the wound began to knit shut, and he smiled wider as the unicorn staggered backwards.

“That’s right,” he said aloud. “Armor? No matter what, I can’t think of those gems as anything but food any more.”

The unicorn lowered its head warily, the horn swaying back and forth as Christoph prepared to attack. He took a step forwards, the unicorn narrowing its eyes at him as he raised both his fists, clenching the fingers of his left hand as it healed. Hooves crunching on the wood beneath it, the unicorn suddenly exploded towards him, the blade shimmering through the air as it charged. Compared to the speed it had when charging from a distance, the attack was so incredibly slow. In the moment it sailed harmless past him, Christoph twisted his body, his right hand slamming up from below the unicorn’s head to plunge into the soft flesh of its exposed neck. Although he was dragged off his feet by the beast’s momentum, the unicorn joined him in crashing down onto the gargantuan surface of the tree root below. He let out a sigh of relief, glad that he hadn’t been carried off the side and into the leaf-filled holes nearby.

…

Christoph sat cross-legged before the unicorn’s corpse, pulling the crystals off of its back and crunching down on them one by one. How long had it been since Quester had shot the arrows into him? He struggled to remember the weeks he had spent in the forest so far. Finishing off the crystals, he began to tear at the meat of the beast, devouring the succulent warm morsels of flesh as he tried not to think about how ruined his only set of clothes was becoming.

He seemed to be healthier than he had ever been before, even when the arrow wounds were included. He swallowed another mouthful of meat, feeling the wounds in his back itch as they tried to heal. Christoph glanced down at his stomach, patting himself down and glancing back at the half-eaten remains of the majestic beast he had slain. Was his stomach a bottomless pit? Maybe the meat was being converted purely into mana and absorbed by his soul or something. He had forgotten to ask Regal about the existence of the soul before. Now it was too late.

Reaching for another handful of meat, Christoph pushed the thoughts of the adventurers from his mind. In the first place, he had know what would happen if anyone found out about him. Not that the knowledge made it hurt any less. He sighed as he cleaned off the unicorn’s thigh, lifting the heavy bone free from the carcass and scrutinizing it in depth. Rather than white bone, it was a semi-translucent substance, hard and shiny. Was it possible that the beasts had skeletons made of the same material as the gems? Lifting the oversized bone to his mouth, he attempted to bite down on it. To his surprise, it crumbled and dissolved just like the rest of the beast had done. No, now that he thought of it he had been eating bones this entire time, hadn’t he? Frowning, he shook his head and tried to piece his memories together.

Christoph spent the next half hour devouring the rest of the beast and pondering his circumstances. By the point where he had finished off most of the bones, he felt the arrowheads dislodge and drop free out of his back. He shuddered as he picked them up, casting them into the leaves below with strength borne from his hatred. He ate faster after the wounds had healed over fully, and soon he was left with just the head.

His inner revulsion at eating something’s face clashed against the delicious aftertaste of the unicorn meat in his mouth, and he eventually picked it up and began eating from the back. He crunched down on the bone, but found himself unable to stomach eating the front half of the horse’s head. He chewed on the bones until the brain was exposed then threw the rest over the edge as well. Inwardly, he breathed a little easier knowing he could still control his hunger to the point of throwing food away. Still, he felt an annoying urge to go after the meat he had just discarded. Pulling himself away from the edge of the root, he turned toward the last morsel he had saved.

The unicorn’s brain was heavy in his hands, and oddly hard. It didn’t seem to be made of fatty tissue at all, but was rather a giant gemstone itself! Were these beasts made of one hundred percent crystal? What was more peculiar was that the horn seemed to have grown straight out of center of the brain. Studying it closely, Christoph corrected himself. The horn seemed to have been stabbed into the brain rather than having grown out of it! He grabbed the brain in one hand, and wrapped the other hand around the parts of the skull still attached to the horn, wrenching the blade free after a moment. Biting into the brain like an apple, he looked down at the horn in his lap.

The blade was maybe three quarters of a meter long from the tip to the skull fragments. Underneath that the crystal had grown almost in the shape of tree roots, a long tap-root forming the part which had been stabbed into the unicorn’s brain. It almost looked like a sword, complete with a handle and somewhat unconventional crossguard. Thinking about how easily the horn had sliced into his arm, Christoph picked it up in his right hand, giving it a few practice swings. There was a sudden flash of blue light, and Christoph shielded his eyes for a moment before peering past them to see the unicorn horn writhing slightly as the crystal roots pierced into his bloody right hand.