Viers was looking at the terrain before him, much greenery decorated the land with various shapes of trees, shrubs, and colorful plants here and there. There were places with higher or lower elevation than the rest, not as extreme akin to valleys but enough to make human movement difficult with the density of flora here.

Shrub Hills, the region was named so on the map Viers had. Unlike the woods Viers gotten himself lost before, there was enough space for wide and far line of sight. Just like the name, shrubs with the height of Viers’ chest were everywhere.

Quite pretty, nice for the eyes. Okay then, what to do? My main objective is to find something to upgrade my healing factor, but it's not like I can just eat every green that I see here… Wait, maybe I can? I just pick one leaf one tree at a time and chew on it while looking for that Red Sorrel and animals to hunt? Feasible enough.

I will focus on unusual looking flora and fauna. Like a tree with glowing leaves and a magical looking spring or something but considering this area is so close to town, every damn good thing should be taken already… but nothing is absolute, yes? I found that flower after all, both here and there were designated as green zones.

Despite my poison resistance, I shouldn't consume too much of it. Therefore I brought this for the trip, behold!

Viers took out something from his backpack, used one hand to hold it over his head and said, “Basic Plants Guide.” Viers imagined the scene of a familiar children's show with a round blue robot with a kangaroo’s pocket.

Although there was a description of Red Sorrel in the quest paper, Sherry showed him an illustration inside a book when he accepted the quest. She told him about this book when Viers asked what the book is about. It contained basic information about useful and dangerous plants in the area, the guild had several of this book so Viers asked and insist to borrow it. He gave assurances that he will bring it back but Sherry refused because of rules, if he must do so he must pay a fee.

Viers considered to just steal it but it was not realistic nor convenient. Therefore he gave ten silver coins for deposit if he hadn't brought the book back and a silver if Viers brought it back without damage, Viers agreed.

The price of a book such as this at the bookstore Viers visited during his stay at the town was around one silver. The guild's rules about a book shouldn't be that strict anyway, but Viers didn't hesitate to spend the money. The reward of this Glass-rank quest was just fifty copper coins which are half the value of a silver coin.

Sherry must have thought I'm stupid.

Viers insisted because he judged the guild’s version of this kind of book should be more detailed. He readily gave up some money because he thought this will helped him for his true objective in this trip.

The quest had a deadline of three days therefore Viers did not need to rush and finished it in one day. With him accepting the quest, Viers had a valid reason to go out of town and forage exotic food for his upgrade. If he didn't find anything on the first day, Viers was prepared to go farther and deeper into the wilds. The information on this book could be a game-changer for him because knowing and not knowing contrast is very significant.

Since I have no appraisal skill I can only do this the old fashioned way, study it. Welp, nothing I can do about it. The book is quite thick, I will just skim it and take note of the most dangerous ones then read the rest bit by bit.

Viers picked the shade of a tree to sit down and do some reading. He used this time to rest and recover his stamina although his body didn't really need it. After half an hour, Viers was ready to go.

Viers reached out and took one leaf from a shrub near him. He looked at it inspecting the underside of the leaf; after making sure it was clean, he put it inside his mouth and chew. The taste was bad and bitter, but Viers grit his teeth and continue walking.

For the next hour, Viers kept stuffing his mouth with various kinds of leaves, fruits, berries, and mushrooms. He naturally also found many kinds of insects, bugs, slugs, and so on. Viers felt a great sense of abhorrence for them, despite logic told him he should eat the little buggers, Viers refrained to do so.

IF, and that's a big IF, there wasn't anything that could upgrade me here than I doubt the crawly critters could. That makes the act of consuming them useless and I would only be wasting my sanity points. I will remove it from the menu for now.

His knowledge from Earth told him that he should stay away from anything bright-colored, flora or fauna alike. Therefore before he ate anything like that, he looked at the book. Surprisingly, it wasn't seemed to be the case in this world. It was all jumbled-up, colors were not serving as a danger indicator.

Some plants were similar to Earth's, most were not familiar to him. Whether those plants exist on Earth was a question he cannot answer. The poisonous plants and mushrooms he found, he put those in separate pouches; he was thinking to eat them slowly later. The Red Sorrel also showed up sporadically, he already had two batches from the ten he needed to complete the quest.

Shortly, Viers found a tapir. Four-legged, elongated nose, black and white furs, very pig-like. It was moving around sniffing the ground, the tapir was as big as dogs. Viers didn't have much knowledge about animals so he couldn't tell much. But he didn't put much thought on the tapir’s detail, he only thought about one thing.

Ah... Fresh meat!

Viers readied himself, he let his backpack down softly and take out the knife sheathed on his waist. It was the knife he took from the bandits. He moved slowly and closing in from the tapir flank, but the tapir kept moving around making him often cease movement and waited until its eyes moved to another direction.

When Viers was about two meters, he dashed towards his prey. The tapir startled and bolted in another direction, Viers anticipated this and went after it. The chase only lasted for a short while, Viers charged with all he had. The daily running he’d done helped him a great deal, prepared him for the chase, but the biggest factor was he managed to catch the tapir off guard.

When he closed his distance enough, he used his left hand to grab the tapir body and lunged his knife to the mammal neck. It let out a short squeal before Viers used the knife to widen the damage by opening its throat.

Done, not bad for the first hunt. it went well, lucky. Time for my spoils, I thought about this before but I won't be able to eat all of this, preparing to cook this by skinning or removing its guts alone will take too much time and I don't have the know-how about those. So it's better if I just get some meat from it.

The tapir was somehow small in size, perhaps it was still a youngling. It was no longer moving nor breathing, blood flowed from the wound on its throat and soaked the earth around it red. Viers looked at its eyes without breaking eye contact from the beginning to the end, he watched as the light of life faded from its eyes.

Sorry buddy, it had to be done. Your meat shall become fodder for my growth, while your leftover body shall become fodder for the maggots and plants around you. Such is life according to the law of the jungle, the strong eat the weak.

Viers used the knife to cut some meat from the tapir lifeless body. The meat was only as big as his fist, then went back to where he left his backpack.

There were so many stories where one got lost during the chase and didn't manage to find their way back. If that chase went long enough I may become like those sorry souls, I must take note of this… Eugh, the smell of blood is disgusting.

Viers walked while searching for possible upgrades, munch a flower here, eat some berries there. Viers ate each of his ‘snacks’ in tiny morsels, he knew he would have to eat a lot of things here. He looked at his pocket watch, it was 2 o’clock past a few minutes.

Viers saw something about ten meters in front of him. A snake about one meter long with brown colored scales was under a tree, swallowing small bird.

Hmn, is it poisonous? Most likely but it was eating now, should be vulnerable. Time to strike, swift like the wind!

Viers did not waste any more time and approach the snake. He knew snakes got sharp senses, can taste the air, can sense body-heat or whatnot but he didn’t pay that any mind. He charged full speed at it while it was in the middle of swallowing its prey.

When Viers get close, the snake seemed to sense him but its movement slowed by the bird in its mouth. Viers' left hand moved swiftly to grab the snake’s throat from its upper-side. He was successful, he could feel the head of the bird through the snake's skin. He focused on his grip while his right hand used the knife to cut its upper body.

But he was having difficulty, the snake moved around and coiled itself on his left arm. Viers changed his tactics; he let go of the knife, used the free hand to grab the snake tails. He crouched to put the tail on the ground and used his foot to step on it. He grabbed the fallen knife then stood up straight. The snake's body could no longer move. Its body was like a string on a guitar, rigid.

Without words, he severed the snake’s head from its body. The body fell and wriggled as if it was still alive. Viers dropped the snake’s head along with the half-swallowed bird. Viers checked and sure enough, the bird was already dead. He put the snake’s body on his backpack and continued walking.

Killing animals, on Earth I ate meat and fish and the like but I never killed them personally. Death felt so foreign; sometimes people I knew, family, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers died and I went to the funeral but it was far and between… Yes, foreign is the right word to describe it.

Now I have killed three people and some animals with my own hands but I didn’t have nightmares about them haunting my conscience. In the future I will kill many more animals and people too if they get in my way, isn’t this what they call sin? Thou shall not kill, wasn't it…? If there is a weight for sin, I am not feeling it. It was necess-

While Viers was thinking, he was interrupted by something heavy fall on him from above. He felt something resembling claws dig into his skin but it was not deep enough to hold. Viers fell, he made his fall into a rolling motion and he stood right up as soon as possible. He took a defensive stance while taking his knife then readied himself for the next attack while searching for the attacker.

A cougar, or a look-alike, Viers didn't care. He calmed his breathing, knife ready to strike its soft spot should it come at him. It was looking at Viers; adult cougar, deadly predator, experienced killer. Viers felt pain, caused by the claw wounds on his arm but he quickly shut them off, Viers needed to focus fully on this opponent.

It approached him slowly, then quickly pounced when it was close enough. Its first pounce didn’t successful because Viers dodged to the side, as he dodged he used his knife to wound the beast side. He heard a growl but the feedback from his hand told him the wound is shallow, he turned and faced the beast once again.

Quickly it pounced at Viers, he was ready. Viers put his left arm forward in front of its mouth to served as a sacrificial target. The pounce made Viers fall on his back, the backpack offered some cushion but it did not matter. The sharp teeth combined with the pressure from the cougar bite turned into terrible pain attacking his senses.

Fuck it huuuurrrtttssss!

He clenched his teeth, struggling to focus. The pain was great and the cougar kept moving its head left and right vigorously as if wanting to yank his arm off. The knife on his right hand moved to strike, Viers chose the throat as his target. Swiftly pierced its flesh; when the knife pierced it, the cougar bite grew stronger as if it was a reflex reaction.

Viers did not plan his offensive to end in one strike, he pulled out the knife and stabbed again furiously several times. Blood splattered all around him, particularly on his face. He felt adrenalin rush, similar to when he fought the three men he killed. Viers felt it was difficult to think, to aim at his target, he only moved his hand in stabbing motion over and over again.

The cougar soon dropped on him, its body weight pressed on the bloody kid bellow it. Viers kept stabbing it a few times before he stopped and pushed the body to his side. He was panting like a dog, but he was prepared for this, the eventuality of animal attacks. He searched his bag for some cloth, he covered his wounds on his arm with the cloth and tied it tight.

He was sure he did not need to be overly thorough for his first-aid. He cleaned up the blood on his body a bit, after that with a knife in hand he split the cougar open and took some of its meat. He decided it was time to rest.

He chose to backtrack to roughly the direction he came from because he didn’t encounter any predatory animals before; he thought it was better than went in deeper. Eventually, he settled in a somewhat higher ground. There was a big tree with wide canopy there and Viers judged the area was a good place to rest.

Wheeew, I should rest a bit, the pain stings… if I kept getting hurt would I gain pain tolerance? Heh, what now Viers? Mmm, I should cook the meat now while resting. I better get some wood for the fire, it shouldn't be too hard.

Viers sought the area around him and gathered the necessary stuff and made a little fire pit. During the search, he also found quite a bit of Red Sorrel in the area; after some thinking he decided to eat some of them. He used some long stick to skewer the animal meat, the snake's meat he cut in a few pieces. After the preparation was done, he waited for the meal to be cooked.

Viers was having doubts, the objective was to upgrade his healing factor so should he eat the biomass raw? Viers thought if cooked food is enough, wasn’t he already ate similar food from town every day? Deep inside, Viers did not expect the meat would be enough so he grilled it anyway. Viers kept on thinking while chewing some of his herbs for the quest, he sat and lay back on the big tree trunk.

Bleh… the herb is so bitter. So in a few hours, I got three animal's meat. Well, some tiny piece of it but even if I eat the whole thing it shouldn’t make a difference… is it useless after all? No, no, no, too early to give up. Besides, I can still eat monsters! They are higher life forms than animals, they have Mana or essence or whatever in their body, I just got to taste it.

Viers took one of the meat skewers and eat it, it did not taste good. The meat texture is tough and without seasoning, the taste was somewhat bland. Viers continued to eat the rest of them in silence and took a look at his wounds. It was already healed to a certain degree and no longer bleeding, Viers took of the binding cloth. He turned his head upwards and let out a long sigh.

“Hmn? What is that?”