First Encounter
Jack slowly turns his body only to see a giant wolf with glowing red eyes growling toward him. Its opened jaw reveals a set of razor-sharp teeth with two large fangs sticking out from its mandible, covered in blood. Its stance indicated that the wolf was ready to pounce on it at any moment.
It seems that Jack's previous actions had disturbed the monster's dinner party.
Jack didn't even have time to condemn the foolish act of laughing out loud in the middle of a silent forest. Spontaneously, every atom in his body is working together to find a way to survive this adversity.
His adrenalin spiked, his heartbeat quicken, a second feels like minutes in this state. When faced with the most dangerous moment in his life, Jack astonished at how calm and collected he is when choosing the most effective way to react in this situation.
When the giant wolf lowered its body, Jack tilted his body to the left to coax the monster to attack in that direction. Quickly after the monster started jumping, he moved back to the right and avoided its opened jaw before grabbing both of its front legs.
Using the momentum from its jump, Jack pushed the giant wolf to the left and made both of them fall from the branch. He uses all of his power to restrain its leg movement and keep the monster below him while falling.
Bam!
A loud sound of a cracking bone rang out as the wolf's head hit the very bottom branch, whose height is about six meters from the ground. After that collision, Jack and the wolf-like monster separated before hitting the ground in separate places.
Jack groaned in pain before trying to see what happened. He witnesses the giant wolf twitch several times before finally exhale some air when it stopped moving. Suddenly, a tiny dot of light comes out from its body and flies toward Jack.
Instinctively, Jack gets up and tries to evade it, but the light keeps following him at a faster speed than his move. A few moments later, the light hit his body and sank inside like water meet spoons.
Fortunately, Jack doesn't feel any difference or pain in his body after that. The first thing he does is open his status window to check what happened.
Level 1
When finding his experience raised by 35 points, Jack celebrates it with a dance. He felt so good about his first kill and started dancing without a care in the world, but he snapped back before long because he was worried that the dead wolf friends might join in.
Jack then looks for another giant tree to climb, one with the higher lowest branch to anticipate another attack. He climbed it, finding a comfortable place, before leaning his back toward the main trunk and exhaled deeply.
Jack can feel his heartbeat gradually decelerate. With all of the adrenaline gone, he felt his hands start shaking. The excitement from a few moments ago died, living only aches in some part of his body. He also realizes how foolish and reckless the action truly is.
Because of adrenalin loss and exhaustion, Jack's eyes gradually closed without him realizing it. When he opened it again, the sky was no longer dark like before.
Above him, Jack saw sunlight trying to enter through the gaps in the leaves, but for some reason, the forest beneath him still looks dark and gloomy like before.
The first thing he notices is how thin his hands and body are. Unkempt long hair that looks so dirty coupled with sunburned skin and yellowish-hemp clothes made him look more like a beggar than a slave. Jack doesn't even dare to imagine what he looks like right now.
Jack yawned with his hands raised high before thinking about what he should do.
The first thing he needs to do is locate where he is before deciding which direction he will take. So Jack climbs to the top of the tree he is in before looking around to find a sign of human settlement nearby, but only finds endless greens with some elevated terrain. Jack finds himself lost in the middle of nowhere.
Surprisingly, he doesn't feel anxious, afraid, or even desperate. All he feels is joy, the joy of finding an endless path of adventure. Without him realizing it, the corner of his mouth raised.
Judging by the terrain and flow of the river below him, Jack decided to travel downstream. A group of people needs water, so the probability of finding a settlement is high if he keeps following where the water goes. Or he thinks so.
While admiring the surrounding landscape, Jack also thought about the next step. Find a source of water and food. He can get water from the river. As for the latter, he has a big lump of wolf meat nearby to solve it.
The third problem is weapons. Jack must find or craft a weapon to stay alive in the middle of a dark jungle filled with monsters like the giant wolf. He doesn't want to rely on luck like yesterday. Sooner or later, he must find a way to defend himself from monsters if he wants to survive.
The first thing that came to mind is the two giant fangs that the wolf from last night had. He only needs to find a suitable tree trunk and something to tie it with to craft a spear.
When looking for a suitable tree trunk, Jack unexpectedly found something that didn't belong in the forest. A black cloth that shaped like a human being lying on the riverbank without moving an inch. After a second inspection, he noticed a tiny bit of blackish-red colored substance around its stomach.
Jack felt surprised, but after connecting some of the facts he encountered yesterday, he finally understood what was going on. The blood that dripped from the wolf's mouth yesterday most likely comes from those black figures.
After making sure that the area around him was safe, Jack got down from the tree and walked toward the corpse in black.