This time around, waking up naturally wasn’t to be my destiny either: something was stirring in the bushes under the tree on which I was settled. At the same time, there were strange rustling noises and sounds resembling snorting coming from nearby.

I leaned over the branch and hung my head down: my legs were secure, and my hands had something to hold on to, so I knew that I wouldn’t fall. A couple of minutes later my patience was rewarded. A mighty young hog was under the tree, sniffing around with its dirty snout. I called it a boar for a purpose of a comparison: its skin was of an amber color, covered in black blots in random spots. It had thin branched horns on its head and two small tusks. To the whole world it looked like an ordinary boar, apart from the horns and strange coloring. Its name and description weren’t available to me at the time.

I was curious: what was so delicious down there for it to be so excited? I was certain that it had noticed me: it tried not to turn its back on the tree, and its ears were trembling. So, if it wasn’t going to pay any attention to me, then I had to do the same to it. After several un-gymnastic like movements, I landed on the ground, literally ten meters from the offended boar. The poor creature understood that I had come down for a reason, and obviously did not want to share its trophy with me. The boar grimaced and showed a very angry face, which it was more than capable of, and launched an attack with a menacing grunt.

“What a joke, I can do the same you know.”

I took out my homemade weapon and, throwing it from one hand to the other, approached the creature menacingly. The bewildered hog stopped in its tracks. I could see the growing sadness in its face. It seemed unhappy about the fact that it would have to share, and it began to dig up a line in the ground with its hoofs. After that it retired to its half of the ground under the tree.

I smiled and nodded.

“Great decision, that side is yours, and this side is mine.”

Incidentally, I said all of this out loud, even without knowing why, but the boar nodded to me with a serious air, as if it understood what I was saying.

My next step was to find out the reason behind all this messing about. I began to search the bushes in search of a delicacy that had appealed to the boar. I crawled around on my hands and knees for about ten minutes without success.

“Is there any possibility that the cheeky sod has handed over the ground that it had already emptied of food?”

I moved a little further from the hog’s dividing line, and spent the next ten minutes without coming up with anything. I shook the dirt off my clothes, and went to watch my competitor’s activity: the boar sniffed the ground and would dig with its hoofs and nose in certain places. It ate what it found so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to see what it was.

After observing a couple of such finds, I returned to my side of the line. I needed to recall how, in my youth, I dug up worms for fishing. I took out the stone from my bag that I had used to get my leaf sword: today it had a different task to do, going from being a weapon to being a shovel. Since I didn’t have the boar’s sense of smell, I decided to rely on my intuition. The first three attempts came out blank. To be honest, I was digging just to give my intuition a chance to warm up.

When I was choosing the fourth place to dig, one of the areas appealed to me. I did not hesitate for a second. I dug up this site and was well rewarded! I held in my hand a blue-black fruit resembling a shriveled seed. I cleared all the dirt from it completely, and examined it more closely. The game finally decided that after so much hard work, I deserved to know its name, so I could see its description.

Ground raisins are an earthy fruit, very sweet, and a favorite delicacy of many living creatures. It holds hidden properties for some creatures. It grows in clumps, and only one clump of ground raisin mycelium can grow in the forest. From the moment the mycelium is found, new raisins will no longer grow. After all the fruits are harvested, the mycelium will move to a different location. It is used in cooking, alchemy and potions.

Now everything became clear. I had wondered why the sweet toothed creature didn’t want to share its find with me before. Clearly it was not the only boar around, so it would have to share with others, and the oldest and strongest boar would likely simply push it away from its find.

When I discovered what I was looking for and how to find it, things went much faster. It turned out that I could fit exactly thirty fruits in one compartment of my bag. In addition to this, the lines that the boar had drawn in the dirt, in my opinion, had divided the space around the tree in a very fair manner. Having finished collecting, which involved digging up almost every centimeter of my zone, I had collected seventy-four ground raisins.

As soon as my four-legged acquaintance was convinced that I wasn’t looking for anything anymore, he crossed the line he had dug in the ground very carefully, demonstrating from his attitude that we needed to talk. I had no objection to this at all. I had already guessed that for some reason the boar needed more raisins than it had found, and it was clearly not simply because the raisins were delicious.

Obviously, I had tried the very first fruit: it was incredibly tasty, but for me, sadly, it had little effect. Even my food satisfaction level rose by only 10 points. Deciding not to torment my former competitor any longer, I pulled out fourteen fruits, leaving me with two full compartments only. I pointed to the pile of fruits and invited the boar over. My Intuition which was already at 7% just screamed at me that this was the right thing to do, and I decided to rely on it completely.

The boar literally jumped onto the fruit pile in a fraction of a second, without giving me a chance to change my mind, and ate about half the fruits on offer. Soon after that, a light wave ran through the fur on its back. It changed color to a dark burgundy color, and the wild boar’s ears became elongated. It grew in height by about sixty centimeters. Its horns became dark black and grew bigger, and its fangs became thicker and forked at the ends. From being a cute young boar it had morphed into a full grown wild boar. At that moment, I could clearly see which species it belonged to:

The Mangul Ruby Boar is a unique wild boar that has been reincarnated with the help of ground raisins. Ability (unavailable).

Its name was visible in white letters against a dark green background.

Your relationship with the Mangul is one of mutual appreciation. Distance to level of Trust - 5 000.

Thanks to you, there has been a small change in the world: a unique beast has appeared. Before then there had been 49 small changes. The world likes to change and values the changes in different ways: change the world, and it will reward you.

“Wow! I still have not really left the zone for Newcomers, but I have already helped the emergence of a new unique monster. It appears that here each unique creature has its own scale of relations. The question remained: “Why?” It looked like I was about to find out ...”

During my internal monologue, the boar was impatiently shifting from one hoof to another, demanding my full attention. I gestured to show that I would go with it. Convinced that this was so, the wild boar, charged its way through the bushes and went deep into the forest. Of course, unlike the boar, I watched where I was going, but I tried to keep up.

About fifteen minutes later we reached a huge hill. For some time, the Mangul started sniffing various large stones that were laying around the base of the hill, after which, as if it had made a decision, it chose one of the largest. Then it pulled back a hundred meters, and charged at the stone at full strength, striking it with its forehead.

I wasn’t prepared at all for what the wild boar did, or what happened next. The stone rolled away behind him, and a man-sized hole appeared. Approaching the hole, the Mangul stamped its hoof on the ground, as though emphasizing that I had to go inside. Then it nodded to me respectfully, and disappeared back into the forest. It looked like introducing me to this hole was my reward for giving it the ground raisins. My intuition told me that this gift might be too much for me to deal with, but there was nothing else to be done: my curiosity never left me the slightest chance, and now my legs were inevitably leading me inside the hole.