A peculiar feeling spread throughout his entire body. A throbbing in his chest, an ache in his limbs, and a faint, almost whisper-like sound softly crying within his ears.

What was this feeling? Where did it come from?

Was it—

Ellis abruptly opened his eyes.

He blankly stared up at the sky. Well, rather than the sky, he was staring at the dark-green canopies that covered the forest. Occasionally, thin rays of light penetrated the foliage and illuminated the forest floor.

He turned his head. To his surprise, he was not completely alone.

Standing a couple feet away from him was a single creature. It was an ape-like beast that was at least three times as large as a regular human. Its fur was colored an inconspicuous brown that blended quite well with the scenery, except the ends of its disproportionately long limbs were colored red.

Blood? At a glance, the substance that covered its hands appeared sticky and viscous. It caused parts of its fur to mat together. No, more importantly… is that Big Foot?

The creature in front of him had disproportionate limbs. Both its arms and legs were about the same length, and most noticeably, its hands and feet were enormous. A single palm was enough to cover Ellis’s entire head. All in all, the beast resembled a certain forest-dwelling cryptid from his homeworld.

For a moment, he wondered whether he had died again and reincarnated somewhere within America’s Appalachian Mountains.

Fortunately, he had not died. The blood all around him quickly proved it.

Ellis realized that he was inside a crater. It was the same crater that he had unwittingly created during his fight with the green dragon. In fact, its corpse was right next to him. From the looks of things, the creature’s plentiful blood somehow leaked out from its corpse and pooled within the crater. The end result was a somewhat shallow pool of viscous red.

This happened to be the cause of the ape-like creature’s red-stained hands. The beast was squatting by the edge of the crater. It scooped up the blood with both of its hands and greedily drank the liquid like a dying man in a desert.

Incidentally, Ellis was inside the crater. In fact, he was floating in it. Blood was surprisingly buoyant.

He locked his gaze onto the ape-like monster. Now was usually the time to decide just how threatening of an existence this thing was, but somewhere in the back of his mind, Ellis did not really feel any danger.

This newest monster, it looked somewhat dumb. Without a doubt, it was strong, probably stronger than all the previous monsters that he had encountered before (not counting the dragon), but it just looked so damn stupid.

It was the expression that it had on. Absentminded and flaky. Tiny eyes that were too far apart and a mouth that was perpetually agape. He even saw a trail of drool leaking out from its lower lip.

For now, he chose to ignore the creature.

Ellis stood up. When his feet touched the ground, he was slightly surprised. The blood actually reached all the way to his waist. The pool was a lot deeper than he originally assumed.

The moment he moved, the ape-like creature immediately jumped in its spot. He had accidentally startled the thing, but Ellis did not care. He briefly watched as it hurriedly ran away to a distance of five meters, before he himself slowly wadded out of the pool.

Moving through blood was a somewhat enlightening sensation. He felt that it was similar to moving around in syrup, not that he had any experience in that either.

Eventually, he made it out of the pool. He then inspected the current state of his body.

He moved his legs and clenched his hands. A subconscious frown appeared on his face. His fingers, his arms, his legs, his entire body, everything felt sticky. It was the unwitting result of sleeping within a pool of blood.

He felt uncomfortable, but for the most part, he was just glad that he did not accidentally drown inside the crater.

Aside from that, his body was not yet fully healed.

More specifically, his arm was still sore and there were still some burns all over his body.

Right now, Ellis smelled faintly of burning flesh. Surprisingly, the smell somewhat resembled charcoal. Out of all of the burns that he had incurred during the fight, only about sixty percent of it had healed, and even the healed portions had not properly healed all the way. Every time he moved, the raw, still pink skin on his arms and chest accidentally grinded up against one another. It was a sensation that caused him immense pain.

As for his arm that almost fell off, it too was steadily recovering. When he tried to move it, he got little response. After some thought, Ellis concluded that the nerves in his arm had not yet properly recovered.

After noticing all these things, Ellis unwittingly furrowed his brow. How long have I been out for?

Considering the state of his body, he guessed somewhere between one to three days. Then again, he had never gotten this injured before, so who knows whether he had taken an extra long time to recover.

Also, there was that weird sensation from earlier, just before he woke up. What was that? It felt real, yet it was hard to describe. It was kind of like… a tugging? No, that wasn’t right. Beckoning. Something was beckoning him, but what?

His gaze unknowingly drifted to the waterfall. Could it be that? Was it related or was it really just all in his head?

Just as he was lost within his own thoughts, the ape-like monster from before seemingly came to a decision of its own.

Without warning, it banged on its chest and roared. Red splotches stained its torso while a look of determination appeared on its dumb face. After a brief moment of hesitation, it rushed forward.

Ellis lightly gazed at it. He looked around the ground for a moment, before he picked up a pebble. He tossed the pebble forward. His hand blurred, while the piece of broken stone zoomed through the air.

One moment, it was in his hand, the next, it was suddenly lodged deep inside the creature’s forehead. It took one last shaky step forward before it collapsed to the ground.

Just like that, it died.

Ellis breathed out a sigh. Throwing was a useful skill to learn. It was something that he had perfected during his 500+ days camping out by the lagoon. In the end, he had learned how to throw quite accurately. Unfortunately, it also happened to be a skill that did not see action very often.

When he was learning the skill, Ellis was very zealous in its use. That didn’t last for long though. After he finished learning it, he quickly reached a conclusion: the preparation for ‘throwing’ was just too burdensome.

Searching for loose pebbles on the ground was an easy enough task, but do it too often, and it becomes a chore. That was what happened with Ellis. A simple task gradually transformed into something he would much rather not do at all. As the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months, Ellis simply stopped doing it altogether.

At one point, he also tried creating his own ‘ammo’ with the monster corpses lying around. Unfortunately, he learned fairly quickly that he lacked the talent to ‘craft’. The ‘throwing weapons’ that he had created did not possess the aerodynamic qualities that he had wished for. In fact, the pebbles he picked up from the ground showed greater results than the junk that came out from his own hands.

Even the ‘handheld weapons’ that he made were similarly useless. Bone clubs and bone swords and bone spears. They were basically just jagged pieces of bone that Ellis had the audacity to call weapons. In the end, their practicality in real combat was questionable.

The truth of the matter was, his own body was just a whole lot sturdier. After every use, the weapons would always break. Creating or maintaining them was a hassle that Ellis did not want to go through. By the second month, he stopped experimenting with crafting all together.

In the end, Ellis stuck to close combat with his own body. In his mind, it was also a somewhat entertaining form of training. It got tedious sometimes, but the excitement always bounced back.

After he killed the ape, Ellis lightly stretched his arms. He felt that his body had grown stronger. It might have been something like a false impression, but it seriously felt like he had just acquired the legendary title of dragon slayer.

Probably just in his head.

Ellis approached the corpse and grabbed it by its ankle. He dragged the corpse across the ground and dumped it into the hole.

After that, he then took a look at the dragon. That thing, it was way too big to fit in his hole. Ellis was stuck in a conundrum. Should he leave it there to attract other animals, or stick it into the hole where the smell of rot became too unappetizing for them to even bother?

He thought for a moment before he ultimately shrugged his shoulders. “Even if the corpse wasn’t here, those guys would still attack. Better to just forget about it. For now, let’s check up on the fox.”

Ellis quickly washed his body in the lagoon and returned to the cave.

At the bottom of the cave, he placed his hand on the mother fox’s belly.

He immediately felt a throb.

“This feeling… without a doubt, it’s similar.” The throbbing that he felt now was very similar to the throbbing that he felt when he was asleep. “Did the fox cause this? Was it a sign that the birth was close?”

Ellis felt that the feeling that he had felt was not deliberate, but rather, incidental. He did not think fanciful thoughts like that the unborn fox knew of his sincerity so it responded in kind. He felt that such a thing was not likely. Still, this fox was certainly not normal. It had the power to attract all sorts of monsters even before its birth. Things like unconsciously sending out ‘signals’ seemed normal in comparison.

He was somewhat looking forward to its birth.

Thus, he waited.

As the days passed, his body quickly healed back up to peak condition. Again, he was under the shaky impression that he had gotten stronger than before, but still, he could not outright dismiss the possibility that it was all in his head.

In addition, more and more beasts popped up.

None of them were nearly as powerful as the green dragon, but nevertheless, they were on the stronger side of the spectrum when it came to the monsters that he had previously encountered.

Ellis had a theory for their appearance.

The beasts were being drawn in by the unborn baby. When the time of birth drew nearer and nearer, the types of monsters that it attracted also got stronger and stronger. That was not a coincidence. Even the dragon, rather than revenge, it had come here for the baby. Heck, for all he knew, the reason why the mother died may even be because of the child that was inside her stomach.

In addition, the throbbing from before, it came again. Rather, it came constantly. The throbbing grew, not only in frequency but also in its intensity. This practically confirmed his theory that everything was caused by the unborn fox.

Finally, after a week and a half of constant battle, it finally happened.

He sat beside a certain withered corpse. At this point, with the exception of the stomach. it was practically all skin and bones. The belly suddenly glowed an iridescent red. Looking past the stretched skin, he saw the faint outline of a baby fox.

Ellis waited in anticipation. A few minutes passed and the light dimmed. Shortly after, a soft cry filled the cavern.

The baby fox was finally born.