Suddenly, Ricardo was back to himself. He wasn't seeing anything weird or lost in his memories anymore.

He felt disgusted at the liquid covering him, not because of its smell or texture — it actually smelled good and felt nice on his skin — but because it belonged to the one who had tried to use Ashley's memory. He bashed it a few more times for good measure, dumped the carcass on the river, then cleaned the ground and himself.

What the hell had happened?

The system had called the snake-like being an Echo of a Reflection of a Fleeing Mind Eater. So, a Mind Eater was fleeing from something and it had created a reflection of some kind, which had echoed? And that echo was an actual living being?

It made little sense to him, but he could grasp it meant something like the echo being a weakened version of the proper thing. It was only at the G-1 power rank, yet the absolute fear he had felt in the beginning was visceral. The Mind Eater had likely passed close by, leaving only these echo things behind.

Maybe they were intended to feed and go back to the main body? It had certainly tried to eat him.

When it attacked, Ricard fell into a trance, imprisoned in a strange mix of past and present, incapable of distinguishing between reality and memory. Things that should be ridiculous and act as a cue to his situation, like the bowling team training with blocks of concrete, felt natural.

That some beings could affect his mind like that scared the shit out of him. He felt a shiver thinking about the Mind Handler class. Would he have terrorized other people like that if he had picked it?

And would other beasts be able to do that to him again? Were there more echoes around?

He needed a way to protect himself from it.

Well, Ashley had helped break the spell, but what exactly had awoken him? Was it his feelings for her or his anger for what had happened to her? Maybe both? He didn't know, but it clearly involved strong feelings.

How could he use it to his advantage?

A few moments later, he concluded he could only keep thinking about Ashley now and then, hoping the next mind attack used her from the beginning. Hopefully, it would trigger his danger sense enough for him to do something about it. He would also try to keep himself angry somehow, maybe keep thinking of her murderer and how he hated the guy.

That should cover both the love and the anger parts until he got a better idea.

The episode also showed he could trust his Hunter instincts. They had recognized the lack of beast sounds for the danger it represented. Thanks to it, he had hidden in the shelter. It had saved his ass.

Oh, yes, it did, no matter how close to death he came after that.

For if the echo of the reflection of the mind eater had almost killed him, what would've happened if he had encountered the mind eater itself? Or its reflection? He didn't know how close the mind eater had come to his shelter, but being out in the open even if it was tens of miles away didn't sound healthy.

That begged the question though, what was the mind eater fleeing from? It could easily affect him from a distance and through his shelter walls, so the thing that was making it run could kill Ricardo, too.

Which should he fear more, the mind eater or its pursuer?

This new Earth was too dangerous. There had been no warning, no hint of what would happen. One moment he was learning how to sense and use qi, the next his mind had been invaded.

If it hadn't been for his past, for Ashley, he would be a goner just like that.

So, he only closed his eyes and bowed his head in no direction in particular. If Ashley could see him somehow, he wanted her to know how grateful he felt once more for her presence in his life. She had saved him from becoming a hooligan in the past, and she had saved him from becoming food now.

She was the best thing to ever happen to him, no doubt.

It took him a few tens of minutes to stop thanking her with his mind and heart. She deserved more than that, but he didn't know if she was there to begin with. Also, it was five o'clock, and he wanted to use the last light of the day to look at his bridge with his new Hunter instincts and find a good place to move his shelter to. Ashley would understand.

It came to no surprise when he found he had somehow picked the worst place possible to build his shelter. If he built it ten feet to either side, there would be no puddle inside. It perfectly fitted the theme of him not knowing whether to blame himself for being so stupid or the system for putting him in such a position.

He decided on hating both. After all, hatred was good. Hatred protected his mind. Maybe.

Which reminded him of his anger against Ashley's murderer, and the warmth that Ashley brought him.

The memories triggered nothing, so he wasn't inside an illusion. Probably.

He started moving his shelter, wasting no time, looking at the streets from time to time to understand the roaming beasts. Luckily, none of his food had gone bad. Not that he noticed, at least, but some of it was inside closed packages and might be moldy inside. He would find out when he tried to eat them.

Half an hour later, the sunset was on the horizon. Juiz de Fora rested in a large valley, and strips of yellow and red covered the point where the mountain met the skies in the distance.

He ignored it at first, but it was a breathtaking view. After everything he had gone through, it was an unexpected beauty in his shitty situation. It felt like the embrace of the world, telling him it would all be alright.

Ricardo stopped his shelter-moving project and relaxed, basking in the wonders of nature.

He was a Hunter, and he was alert most of the time, but not always. A Hunter knew that sometimes, they had to just enjoy the small things in life. Constant alertness could keep him alive, but it would lead to paranoia and a twisted soul.

It didn't mean he should be indolent and let death come, but that he should have a few moments of respite now and then. Moments of inner peace and tranquility to feel the world and remember what he lived for.

His family. His friends. Humanity.

A Hunter's care for their community was one of the things that propelled them forward, and Ricardo wasn't any different. He wanted to save them, and he wanted to give them information on how to survive when they came back.

Many would die when they returned, from hunger and thirst if not from beast attacks. Without technology, there wasn't enough food to feed everyone or even transportation to take the food that did exist to those who needed it. Also, without tech, he couldn't tell the world what he had learned about how to protect themselves in the new environment. Even those he could talk to might not adapt to this new reality.

Nevertheless, he had to do his best. Often, a Hunter found the survival of the entire community on their backs. Sometimes, they couldn't save everyone.

Not that he was sure he was alone in this case. Oh, he was alone in the world, but there were the Godchildren out there. Who knows what they could accomplish for humanity?

Yet, a Hunter lived not only for others.

No, being alive was a gift in itself. Really alive. Not just existing, but being as much a part of nature as the beasts he hunted and the plants he would forage in the future.

A Hunter was part of the cycle of life.

They belonged, and this self-awareness of belonging, of being part of something greater, was the major reason a Hunter kept going. He had to. It was his purpose.

A weak mind might find despair in being just part of something greater. If it were so, they were nothing, small gears of a machine that didn't care for them. Some people couldn't find solace in mediocrity.

The Hunter knew better. For the Hunter chose to be part of that whole. The Hunter could be a farmer if they wanted, or a leader, or pursue other goals. But they weren't.

Ricardo was a Hunter because it fit him.

It fit the undeniable loneliness he felt, even when among others. It fit the desire for stability that could only be achieved by depending on his own hands to survive. It fit his need for movement, of change, of moving forward.

He found meaning in his choice, and his choice made him a part of something greater than him. A choice that gave him that feeling of wholeness, of being complete. Nature — as limited as it was in the city ruins — respected his essences, and so he allowed nature to embrace him.

Mediocrity didn't matter as long as he was satisfied with himself. Being nothing in the grand scheme of things didn't matter as long as he chose what kind of nothing he was. Ricardo was happy with his choice of a class.

He kept living because he was what he wanted. What he was meant to be. That comforted him, even in the face of the challenges ahead of him.

The setting sun took many of his fears with it.

That evening, he found peace.

Yet, a small part of him he kept suppressed whispered: for how long?

Ricardo took a deep breath, checked his toes, closed his eyes for a moment to feel the breeze of the fresh evening, then went back to moving his shelter.

This time, he made a shelter half the previous size by piling food more tightly. He did that because he needed half his ceiling for the floor. First, he covered the floor with some concrete debris, then the debris with the metal plates he had used on the ceiling. That way, if water infiltrated from the bottom, he would still sleep dry above it. Then he used most of his plastic bags to rain-proof his shelter, not caring at all that it would leave only three of them for his expeditions. He could always find more plastic bags but not recover from a dreadful night of sleep.

After he was done, he tried moving his qi again. He still needed to close his eyes to do it, but no meditation was required anymore. He had no issue feeling the qi right inside and outside him.

No problem pulling a little...

...and getting a new headache.

He stopped immediately. His gauge wasn't even blinking yellow, but the pain was a clear sign something was wrong. He didn't want to test his luck, at least not while he was so physically hurt already. It would be better to wait until he had a healthy body to withstand whatever damage he might cause to it by his ignorance.

A Hunter didn't take any chances unless he was sure the reward was worth it.

So, he focused on his skills instead.

Skills List

[# — Name — Tier — Level — Progress]

1. Mind-Cleansing Meditation — Uncommon — 1 / 25 — 1%

2. Intimidation — Common — 1 / 10 — 54%

3. Qi Sense — Common — 1 / 10 — 2%

4. Qi Control — Common — 1 / 10 — 1%

The first thing he noticed was that the system sorted skills by tier first, then probably by level, followed by percentage.

His Intimidation skill was growing steadily the more he used it. Interestingly enough, the Mind-Cleansing Meditation skill had twenty-five levels total. The Interactive Tutorial had told him before that Common tier skills had ten levels. It seemed the higher the tier, the more levels the skills had.

He checked the details of the new skills.

Skill Summary

Name: Mind-Cleansing Meditation

Tier: Uncommon

Level: 1 / 25

Progression: 1%

All is nothing.

The flavor text for the meditation was both simple and deep.

He could see how it would fit the context of the skill. His sister's talk about meditation suggested he might want to reach the point of mental nothingness where all he was, wasn't. But it could also be interpreted as if everything that existed, reality itself, was nothing.

He disliked the latter line of thought. Nihilism was all fun and games until you found yourself alone in the apocalypse and it might bring absolute despair. He would keep working on emptying his mind, not his self-confidence.

Then he checked his qi skills.

Skill Summary

Name: Qi Sense

Tier: Common

Level: 1 / 10

Progression: 2%

Particle is wave, fire is water, life is death. Qi is everything.

Ricardo smiled at the flavor text. It was almost the opposite of what the Mind-Cleansing Meditation skill stated. There was wisdom for him to meditate upon in there, and he would take advantage of it later.

The system had called qi the underlying energy of the Omniverse. In his childhood anime, qi was also said to be the most basic building block of the world. Everything was made of qi, so qi was everything.

Speaking of everything, Ricardo remembered he hadn't found the vibrating "movement qi" yet. Maybe that was the reason the qi he was taking was hurting him: incompatibility with his Primary Essence of Movement. There were loneliness and stability in his inner road, and he could find their qi easily enough, but they were supporting pillars. His was the Path of Movement, and it probably affected him more than in his class choice. That was his best guess, and he could even pursue it before he was healthier. He only had to feel the qi and could try to take it into himself after his body recovered.

The way the flavor text stated opposites were the same thing suggested that the loneliness qi he felt was the same as the stability qi, but that felt too advanced a concept for the current him. He probably needed some higher level of enlightenment to feel an all-compassing type of qi. Or a higher skill level.

Feeling kind of qi was probably the skill's end goal, not something for him to worry about at level 1. For now, he had to trust what he felt from the skill itself while he was using it, that there were different types of qi, and that some of them felt the same as he had felt when he had created his inner road.

One skill to go.

Skill Summary

Name: Qi Control

Tier: Common

Level: 1 / 10

Progression: 1%

He controlled the energy of the cosmos with his fingertips, reality with his will.

Big words for such a simple skill. It kind of confirmed Ricardo's belief that it spoke more about the skill's end goal than its actual usage, though he supposed he felt more motivated to use it and level it up if he believed it would let him control the cosmos at will.

The Qi Sense icon was a black silhouette sitting cross-legged surrounded by transparent white balls. The Qi Control one was a hand outline with traced veins on the inside, surrounded by transparent white balls, with curved arrows indicating the hand was both absorbing and shooting balls. He had concluded mastering qi would be fundamental to survival, and he had passed too many opportunities to work on it already. So, he put both skills on the grid at the bottom of his vision to remember to use them in the future.

Speaking of wasting time...

He entered his shelter, sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and tried once more to feel the vibrating qi he associated with movement.