Chapter 18: New Threats

  Gaia World, Day 9 After the Shattering

  Dawn light seeped through the canopy, painting the forest in soft grays and golds. Pawel stirred beside the embers of last night's fire, the stream's gentle gurgle a familiar backdrop. His body felt stronger—adapted to the daily exertion.

  Snack hopped about on the bare ground, its hooked beak pecking idly at the dirt. Its mottled feathers blended well with the undergrowth.

  Pawel rummaged in his pack for venison scraps from a prior hunt—tough but nourishing.

  "Morning, Snack. Want a snack?" he said, chuckling at the lameness of his own humor as he tore off a small piece.

  Instead of tossing it directly, he spotted a beetle scuttling across a fallen leaf. A training opportunity.

  "Hunt," he said softly, pointing at the insect and sending a subtle mana nudge—food laced with encouragement.

  Snack tilted its head, eyes locking on the bug, then pounced with surprising speed. Its beak snapped shut, crunching the exoskeleton. Pawel rewarded it with the meat strip. The bird devoured it eagerly, sending notes of satisfaction through their mana link.

  They repeated the exercise with a spider weaving in the grass and a worm unearthed from the soil. Each time, Pawel's suggestion grew firmer, the mana intent clearer: hunt. Snack obliged happily, its movements precise and enthusiastic, cooing after each success.

  Magic served only as a medium of communication—building trust and honing the bird's natural predation rather than controlling it.

  "Good job," Pawel said, scratching its head gently.

  Satisfied, he shouldered his backpack and fastened Snack to the perch branch. The bird settled in as Pawel set out eastward, scouting for better food sources beyond the familiar perimeter.

  The forest thinned, with less vegetation farther from the water source, though shade still covered his path. The air carried the earthy scent of moss and faint floral hints from blooming undergrowth.

  He moved cautiously, hammer in hand and spikes at his belt, alert for the chattering of tadpoles that might betray prey. He heard none yet.

  The anomaly—those distant cracks in reality—had expanded sideways and upward for multiple kilometers. It was clearly visible even from here, looming over the forest like an invisible barrier filled with purple cracks. The spaces between the cracks now begun filling with a sparse purple mist emanating from them.

  Pawel glanced uneasily in its direction, briefly wondering what new dangers it might bring.

  After an hour, he followed the sound of thrashing and snorting coming from a sunlit glade. He crouched in a thicket at the edge and took in the scene: a deer with gashed flanks—jagged wounds from what looked like tadpole bites—was struggling to free itself from vines entangled around its hind leg.

  Just as Pawel prepared to circle behind the animal, the deer stepped on another vine lying on the ground. The plant sprang to life, lifting itself and twisting around the deer's other leg. Thorns penetrated the skin, and the vine tensed along its length, leading back to the main plant about ten meters away.

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  "Oops... yeah, perhaps let's not go through there," Pawel murmured. He stood up and approached cautiously, watching the ground before every step.

  Up close, he inspected the pulsating vines pulling on the poor animal, coiling tightly like living ropes. Thorns dug into flesh, holding it fast as it bucked weakly and bleated in distress. The vine tugged slowly, inching the deer toward a central mass—a bulbous pod half-buried in the earth, from which more tendrils sprouted in a twelve- to fifteen-meter radius.

  The remaining vines did not hunt actively or assist; they simply waited to be stepped on.

  Snack jumped off the perch, curiosity piqued, and hopped closer to watch attentively. Pawel opened his supernatural mana sense—no longer needing full meditation—and sent a warning through their link. Danger—move away.

  Snack lingered stubbornly, its aura brushing against his with curiosity, but after a few seconds it yielded and hopped away to a branch to observe from afar.

  Normally Pawel avoided using mana sense in combat. It was confusing: his brain tried to interpret mana flows as normal sight, superimposing them on his vision like a see-through overlay. Mana was always in motion—pulsing, vibrating, flowing—everything fought for attention and strained his brain feeling like high blood pressure.

  So he had never seen a clay tadpole's aura, or whether monsters even had them. Now he observed how mana permeated the deer and this new entity, which he suspected was a monster spawned by the anomaly.

  The vine's aura was a sickly brown—not typical earth mana. It mixed familiar nature (animals and plants), earth, and something else entirely into something new and distinct.

  But the most interesting part was the familiar orange wire growing from the plant's bulbous core, stretching far into the distance beyond Pawel's senses.

  He gaped at it until the deer's sudden yelp snapped him out of it. He turned off the mana sense.

  "Right... we can investigate later."

  This was an opportunity: fresh meat that didn't need to be chased down. He advanced deliberately, hammer raised for a crushing blow to the skull.

  The strike landed with a thud. The wooden spike glanced off bone—too blunt to penetrate deeply.

  The hammer's weight wasn't enough to shatter the thick skull or stun the animal completely.

  The deer twisted in panic, antlers slashing wildly and missing Pawel's left eye by a fraction of an inch. Pain flared in his ribs as a tine raked his side, tearing his shirt and skin in a hot, bloody gash.

  He grunted and staggered back, but the vine's hold kept the deer from charging fully. Blood seeped warm down his flank, but he pressed on, targeting the exposed foreleg.

  The hammer cracked sideways—bone splintered with a sharp snap, and the animal collapsed awkwardly, still tethered by its hind legs.

  It thrashed, kicking out and clipping his thigh with a bruising hoof. Pawel swung again and again: the hammerhead flattened muscle, the spike gouged shallow furrows into hide. The deer's prior wounds and the vine's drain sapped its fight; it weakened under the barrage, bleats fading. A final overhead smash caved in the skull, and it slumped with final nerve twitches.

  Now the vine pulsed, thorns tightening with silent creaks as it slowly dragged the carcass toward the pod.

  Pawel yanked back on the forelegs, but he wasn't strong enough to pull the heavy body the opposite way.

  "Not yours," he growled, dropping the hammer and drawing his hatchet.

  He had to enter the dangerous zone of sprawled waiting vines, careful not to step on any.

  Pawel began hacking as close to the deer's carcass as possible. The blade bit into the fibrous vine with a wet chop—once, twice. The wounded vine oozed yellow ichor.

  Finally the first vine gave way. The severed end recoiled like a wounded snake, thrashing before going limp.

  Pawel eyed the central body warily. The pod remained idle, not sending anything to ensnare him.

  Several more hits, and the prize was his. Straining, he dragged the body far enough away to avoid the predatory vines.

  From a safe distance he eyed the main plant angrily.

  "I want it dead," he muttered. "But how do I reach it? With a spear I could poke it at range... Bah, not now."

  He pulled up his torn t-shirt and inspected the fresh wound on his side. The skin was deeply torn, dripping blood and staining his pants. It wasn't immediately life-threatening, but it might become so if the bleeding wasn't stopped.

  Pawel scanned the surroundings for incoming danger, then eyed Snack.

  "You could be a good sentry," he contemplated, but the task seemed too complex to explain through the simple intentions and emotions he could send via the mana link.

  "Eh... whatever. What's the worst that could happen?"

  He sat down energetically and winced, holding his breath. "Ugh... okay, bad idea."

  Without waiting for the pain to subside, he closed his eyes to meditate and regenerate.

  Days of practice meant he could do it quickly and easily now. He had been pushing all gathered "improvement energy" into regeneration lately but had no chance to test the results.

  After about an hour of sitting still and working on regeneration, Pawel emerged from meditation with a few sharp breaths and inspected the results.

  The bleeding had stopped completely, but beneath the blood clot was only a delicate, tender membrane.

  It had cost him around half the energy accumulated over several days.

  "Hardly a superpower," he mumbled—but the improvement was evident.

  "Oh well, I'm patched up enough. Time to go before something comes to eat my loot." After a few seconds of hesitation: "Or eat me."

  Hauling the entire deer was out of the question. It weighed several times more than he did.

  So he chopped off two hind legs. With a last glance toward the predatory vine, he started back to camp, speaking in a lower-than-normal voice:

  "I'll be back."