The knife cuts smoothly the Shadow Crawler's skin around the black blade in its hand. The monster's skin has a very low resistance to sharp objects, it seems. The tendons and flesh of the monster proved to be harder to cut but I still manage to do it. Without more troubles, I manage to separate the blade-like claw from the tendons in the hand, and then after cleaning it a little in my shorts I start wrapping it with a few bandages that I took out earlier.

Then, I carefully put it in my shorts' hidden pocket. I have to be careful with it or I would cut myself with it, again. The creatures' healing saliva makes wonders, the cut in my fingers is non-existent by now. I want to figure it out later.

"Very well."

What to do now?

Maybe I should eat a little bit of meat. I mean, the Shadow Crawler seems comestible enough for me. I will need to eat some meat soon anyway, I won't be able to stay strong with only nuts and fruits. I glance at the monster's corpse, a couple of creatures are eating directly from the monster's belly and another one is munching an arm.

The legs seem meaty enough and I don't want to be bitten for being too nearby to an eating animal so I kneel at the side of a leg and grab it with my left hand. Then, I start cutting the skin with the knife on my other hand.

It cuts deeply and a little more blood gets out than when cutting the hand. However, It has been bleeding since a while ago, It must not have much blood by now.

I start to slice it vertically, not as easy as before, it seems the muscle wasn't as soft as the skin.

Clink.

I stare dumbfounded at the handle in my hand. A handle without a blade. The knife broke, I can't believe this. Never again I will buy cheap weapons... even though I didn't buy it.

It was my last knife, the other one broke during my fight the other night when everything started.

Now what?

It seems that I will be using the monster's own blade to cut it, I haven't expected to put it to use so soon.

But as always happens with the creatures until now, one of them realizes my predicament, one of the couple eating the belly. He throws me a glance and then bites the leg and rips out a chunk of meat that a second later spits in my direction.

"Uhh, thank you," I say awkwardly. Then the creature turns back to do his own thing.

I look at the meat at my feet and wince a little at the thought of the animal's saliva all over it, even knowing what that saliva is capable of.

I shrug. Better to be done with this. I won't say no to an easy meal.

I start channeling a spell.

Water.

It has the simplest of the uses, make mana turn into water, without launching or shaping it. But it's almost as complex as my summoning spell.

The Lessons, along with magic also were taught some other subjects. Among them: languages, calligraphy, and mathematics. Some subjects would change or be replaced as you grew up. Later on, I would have learned music, poetry, painting, drawing, history, combat, warfare, geography, and some specialties at the end.

The next thing we were going to learn in the magic subject was a lightning spell. Too bad it didn't happen. It would have been useful against the fast monsters around here. Area of effect spells would be effective too, but I don't know any of these either.

However, since the beginning learning mathematics along with magic helped a lot to successfully start to insta-cast the spells, understanding better the patterns. Most of the spells have a straight set of patterns, and they are only two-dimensional. The complex spells have a range of three dimensions to arrange the mana in. Insta-casting them is several times more difficult than doing it normally.

Water is so complicated because different from a common spell, the water cast won't disappear after a while, you even can consume it and not suffer a poisoning, basically is permanent in the world but the availability is dependent on the ambient. The mana cost of casting it is very high too.

There are so many theories and fears about the use of this type of spells everywhere, sadly every one of them is just baseless nonsense. I haven't found anything that dives deeply into this topic yet, there wasn't one in the library, and neither my teacher knew much about it.

For now, I rinse the meat with the water flowing from the palm of my hand. After a few seconds, I notice the green wolf moving towards me, towards my hand more exactly. It then starts to drink from the little flow of water.

The few other creatures around approach me too.

A little annoyed at the inconvenience, I cut the flow of mana at the spell and stand up. I walk a few meters away as they follow me and kneel on the ground again.

I start to dig and without much delay one of the creatures guess what I am doing and starts to help with my digging, cutting the ground with its claws with ease. Leaving it to do all the work I start chantless-casting the same spell again and wait until the hole has a good size to unleash it.

"Water"

I take advantage of a Word when activating the spell and start to fill the hole with water. When I feel that my mana pool is at half its current capacity, the amount of water filling the hole is barely four liters. I stop after adding two liters more.

"I'm not a mobile water source." I decree in reprimand while they start to drink the water I made.

My attention returns to my piece of monster meat, nobody ate it while I wasn't looking.

I have eaten raw rat's meat before, since then I have never again eaten something raw, and I won't while I have other options, at least.

Also, I am not a savage, I will cook it.

How should I start? Almost all of my spells are of the offensive type.

I suppose that starting with a fire is as good of a start as any other. I start collecting leaves and sticks in a heap and cast Flame in it.

After that, I cast another spell that I don't use much but I should.

"Ghost Hand."

I will the semi-solidified mana to take the meat and levitate it in the fire, without making it fall into it.

This spell is different from the common levitation ones I have read about. Making things float is not its main purpose. This one can be used offensively with more efficiency.

Its principal use is in combat, used to trip your opponent or make it miss its aim.

The spell matrix is relatively simple, the first patterns make the mana take an invisible but more physical form, other patterns manages the movement of the mana, this physical mana moves with mental commands.

The more force is applied against this physical mana the more consuming the spell becomes. As the meat is not that heavy I can continue to make it float for several minutes with my remaining mana.

I need to become used to a bigger repertory of spells during combat. Casting just Fireball and Earth Lance won't do, even less in this place. Maybe I will just take a little risk and experiment with my own spells.

I sigh. This is just willful thinking, it's dangerous and I will need more mana for all that, and by that time I will be able to use Summon Spirit effectively in combat. Hopefully, it will be in not much time.

I think that the meat is ready, well, even if it's half-cooked is better than nothing. I stop the spell and wait a moment for my meal to cool a little, then I start to eat.

The taste is a little bland but it's not bad, after all, it doesn't even have condiments or something else to add to the flavor. Little after I finish eating, the creatures also finish feeding on the monster. And to my surprise, almost nothing of it is left, not even bones. Just some teeth and organs, probably the ones that process the food and the poison. Must be that because these leftovers smell horrible.

Shortly after, we leave and start walking again, faster this time.

This time during the walk, I notice some small animals in the distance and insects on the ground. Some of these animals are killed and eaten, these have luck, the smaller ones are just eaten, alive. And the birds that are not monstrously big fly out of our reach.

Smiley goes out of the group often and after a while comes back and brings with him an animal or a monster that shares with everyone, some others do that too. I suppose that even they get bored.

When I got bored of gawking at the trees and the insects I started to follow the green wolf, because he, or maybe she, seems like the less dangerous of the bunch, also I haven't seen it eat anything except plants. I wonder if it is a herbivore, even if it has those sharp fangs that I imagine can pierce flesh as if it were paper.

I picked up plants that it ate and keep far from those it ignored. I started to taste the plants that he ate just to see if they were comestible for me, and well, they weren't bad, some even surprised me and I think some were vegetables or something like that. Others just tasted like grass. However, the green wolf also ate some fruits of trees but mostly avoided things like berries and when it finally acknowledged my presence or maybe it approved of me following around, it started clicking its tongue at some plants, probably meaning to avoid those. Obviously, I committed everything it avoided and ate to memory, being careful of not mixing these two categories.

During the day we stopped a few times to rest, mostly when a big corpse was brought to eat and I used the Water spell each time my mana was full again. I decided to refrain from real training until I felt much safer in this place or I had a firm grasp of my situation.

Along the rest of the day didn't take place more of those one to one battles. I don't know why these happen or why they fight like that yet.

Right now, the night is arriving. Everyone is starting to lie down near each other in this clearing that the leader, the biggest and meaner looking one, choose.

I walk to the big tree where the majority is gathered around and sit against it. I am exhausted. We were all day in the moving. I yawn and check the hour in the clock at my wrist. Spinning the metallic ring and the cover opens with a light sound. It's eight o'clock.

It seems that the creatures go to sleep just as the first signs of night falling starts appearing. I also wonder how much time I will be able to sleep. I lift my arms and bring my hands behind my head, making myself into a more comfortable position.

It has been a long day and I am still not used to the thought of all this being my new life. My old one was taken away. Regardless of everything, I think I can manage this.

Worth considering is that maybe I shouldn't be too trusting of the creatures. For one side I think that if these animals had some evil intentions they would have already done something, I am basically helpless against them, after all. However, I am still acting too naively concerning this. Better I don't drop my guard more than necessary.

I casually distance myself a little from the creatures, but still standing among them in their center. I'm not that stupid as to trust more the forest than them.

I will not sleep today, I need to at least keep an eye on the creatures' behavior until I decide to trust them a little more so tonight I will just pretend to sleep.

I squint my eyes lightly, just enough to hide that my eyes are still open and I can still see, without giving myself away.

I continue to do so for a while, as the creatures get comfy among themselves, some snuggled on others, a few climb a tree, and others leaning against the same big tree like me.

Four of them are sitting. It seems that they are doing something like keeping watch, maybe they are some sort of guards. I wonder if they even have shifts. They are of the biggest half of the pack, too. The other three animals are hidden around here too. The green wolf practically invisible among some bushes at the edge of the clearing. The others I don't see from my current position.

This place is dangerous, how much time the creatures invest into sleeping?

I am glad that that... they aren't... aren't night animals...

XXX

I hear an inhumanly loud yawn.

Huh. My bed is very hard. But it's warm, at least. It moves too much, though. It seems that I am already awake. Too bad, I want to sleep a few minutes more.

Wait a second. Now, I remember.

I wasn't supposed to sleep tonight. The toll on my body must have been higher than I thought. I yawn and stretch my arms with a groan, I feel my legs numbed, I need to stretch them too.

Huh? I can't. It seems like something heavy is above them.

Also, the movement of my bed, although rhythmically lulling, is becoming uncomfortable. Stop there. Beds shouldn't move. More important, I am in the Great Wild. I don't have a bed.

I open my eyes. The sight of a creature's big head lying on my lap greets me. And with my hands, I identify what I think is another creature, on where I am lying against.

Lifting my upper body I support my hands on the ground and slide off the creature's head from my lap.

These monsters are really sneaky, before this I considered myself to be a person with very light sleep and with very light feet too. Now I realize how naïve I was

As I wait for my legs to leave the unpleasant feeling of numbness due to less blood circulation I discretely clean the saliva from my mouth. I wasn't drooling, a creature must have licked my face. That is it.

Some creatures are already awake and are pacing around. Is still dark here. I glance at my clock. Is one o'clock in the morning. Is too early. The little illumination around here comes from the moonlight.

Another yawn and my eyes watering as a result.

"It seems that my schedule will change a lot," I murmur to myself while still being sleepy.

Better to use well the time I have until we leave away to walk who knows where again.

I take out the monster's blade, which I retrieved from its body yesterday, from my hidden pocket.

I want to turn this into a knife. With a handle and a sheath. I think I will do that with just wood. I don't know much about making even the simplest of weapons.

Well, first I need wood, cutting the bark of a tree seems very time consuming so a branch will do. I look at my surroundings.

The big tree where I slept is very tall and different from the others has many leaves and branches that are near the ground level. Convenient as I don't need to climb a tree to get a branch and those in the ground don't have the right size.

Next, I chose a branch with good width and size from the tree. I took the blade out from the backpack and unfold it from the bandages. This black blade that almost doesn't reflect light is like twenty centimeters long and it's double-edged but the sharpness decreases the farther you get from the tip. So I cut the branch a few centimeters larger than the blade itself.

I start to slowly give the branch a more even exterior, craving it with the blade. The blade can cut easily with due pressure. The result is much better than I expected, even although it is my first time doing this. At least it won't harm my skin when holding it. Next, I cut the branch in half at approximately eleven centimeters long which will be for the handle and fourteen for the sheath.

Now comes the good part. I put the soon to be sheath in the ground and take the to be handle and the blade in different hands. Then I press the tip of the blade in the place where I cut the sheath from the handle. I do it very slowly, without applying too much strength. I don't want to lose an eye after all. It isn't worth it for a knife.

I just push the blade inside the soon to be handle, being careful of not moving it to the sides. The point is so sharp that it's not as difficult as it would appear. When it reaches around nine centimeters deep, like three-fourths through the way, I stop. That is enough, so I took the blade out and reintroduce it again, this time not the point first but the opposite side.

After the first few centimeters, I need to hold it tightly so I press the point against the bark of the tree and slowly start to apply more strength, with utmost care. I do it until the blade can't go through the opening that the point did before. The knife is basically ready but still need a sheath.

I gather some thin roots and stems and tie them tightly around the handle. I would need to change them later, for ones more flexible, just in case.

I took the soon to be sheath from the ground and start to pierce it with the blade for a while until it's stopped by the handle. It's done. A crude knife but it will do the job. As It is so poorly made I think that it will be better if I use it just for stabbing and not too much for slashing.

The sheath could fall off so where should I put it in?

Oh, I can fit it between my arm and the clock. I loosen the clock, move it to the middle of my arm, and fit the knife between my skin and the clock. Then I tie tightly the clock again.

All ready.

I unsheathe the knife and test it with some random strikes and light stabs to the tree. The blade stays still in the handle. Now the knife is really done. I sheathe it again.

By now all the creatures are ready to go. A new day just started, even though it is just two in the morning.

I sigh. Indeed, there is a long day ahead.