-Vol 5: A New Life-

-Doing it the old way-

“Hmm! It indeed looks like a giant’s shadow” Kenshin muttered as he inspected the sitting shadow. For some reason, this shadow gave him a very familiar feeling, as if he had seen that silhouette somewhere before. But try as he might, he couldn’t remember.

‘Huh! Wait, since when did I came to know a giant?’ Kenshin shook his head and got rid of that train of thought. But something about that image really nagged him, making him feel like he shouldn’t ignore it. And Kenshin always followed his gut.

“Where is this picture taken from?” Kenshin asked. Hearing his question, the PA did some research and finally told the accurate location of the place. Then he looked at Kenshin who stood up, “What are you doing?”

“I am going to look up for this image’s credibility.” As he said so, he prepared to walk away. The PA frowned and said, “It might just be a hoax or an edited image for popularity.”

Kenshin smiled at him and turned around, “If it's really a hoax, then that’s good… but if not… we should be prepared for it. I will update you if the image is real, that time, please inform this to everyone here.” Then Kenshin turned around and left in big strides. At the same time, his brows were furrowed. Right now he didn’t have the help of his system, which would make some of his skills less efficient to use, as he couldn’t keep track of the MP usage or his HP bar. At the same time, he couldn’t see his enemy’s stats. Kenshin was too used to all this in this past six months.

But Kenshin was a true hunter by heart who liked the thrill of unknown and adventuring. Despite knowing that he would be in for a lot of trouble without his system assisting him, he was still a lot more excited about the prospects of fighting like how he used to do before gaining the system.

Kenshin decided to use Burrow. Currently, he didn’t have a map, so he could only choose the general direction to move. But before that, he went to the DCB shop and bought a powerful Magic-stone powered Compass that could show one the direction despite any difficulty. It cost him 2 Gold coins, but it was worth the price. Especially now, as he didn’t have the assist of the system.

Tying it to his wrist, he first checked the location from his phone and inquired about the direction. Then calibrating with his compass, he submerged into the ground and used the skill to its limit. Sitting cross-legged while surrounded by a transparent bubble made by the skill’s effect, Kenshin traveled at unprecedented speed. He was also especially mindful of appearances of underground subways. He had to avoid them if possible.

15 minutes later…

Kenshin stopped. And decided to come up. For some reason, inside the bubble, his phone’s network didn’t work, or else he wouldn’t have bothered to buy such an expensive compass. He would have just followed the online map and arrived at his desired location.

Coming out, he found himself standing in someone’s backyard with an old man looking at him with his mouth hung wide. This old man was wearing only short pants and munching on something as he basked on setting sun atmosphere. Enjoying the view, but when suddenly Kenshin appeared out of nowhere, it startled him and nearly gave him a heart attack.

“Ah! Sorry old man.” Kenshin apologizingly waved his hands and checked his phone. Re-confirming his target, he dived in again, leaving behind a parting word of “take care” for the old man. Even after several minutes, the old man didn’t recover from his surprised state until a dung beetle entered his opened mouth.

Enveloping himself inside that bubble again, Kenshin went for the forest. According to the map, it's just a 20 km away from his current location. By the estimation of his speed, it would probably take him 12 minutes.

12 minutes later…

Kenshin came out of the ground and found himself in a dense forest. Actually, it's not a forest, rather a ruin of some ancient city with trees covering every part of it. During the great catastrophe that marked the dawn of the current world, many cities were destroyed. Either it was done by frenzy monsters or magically affected plants or earthquakes or some other natural disasters. Many cities that existed before, forever lost in the map while many new islands and places appeared out of nowhere, increasing the land to water ratio of the world.

After arriving, he compared the image to the surrounding and found the mountain surrounding the giant, but he didn’t see any such spear-wielding giants. Kenshin shook his head and nearly dismissed everything to hoax if not because his body suddenly started to tingle seriously, sending waves of uncomfortable feeling throughout his body. It was the effect of his [Dragon Sense], which would make his body feel like trembling.

“There seems to be indeed something lurking here and very dangerous too…” Kenshin mumbled to himself. He decided to go deeper into the valley and scout.

Suddenly a small green vine appeared before him, walking like a human. The moment it spotted Kenshin, it shouted strangely and hurried towards him. Two of its vines started to intertwine together, forming into a huge hammer made of pure wood.

Kenshin pulled out the sword from his inventory, which was the only thing available to him now. He held his sword in a reverse grip and made a casual sword move. An arc of pure compressed air generated from the blade of the sword and rushed at the approaching hammer. The compressed air went past the hammer, shredding it to pieces.

“Wow!!” Kenshin was speechless for a few seconds after observing this. Getting curious, he pointed his index finger of his left hand at the monster and channeled magic through it. It was not a skill, just pure magic molded at its raw. A small bullet made of reddish magical power hovered just in front of his finger. With a thought from him, it sailed across space and impacted heavily against the tree monster.

Boom!!!

With a loud booming noise, the vine monsters reduced to small particles due to his magic running rampant on its body. The effect scared even Kenshin. He knew pure magic was highly radioactive and unstable by nature, but never knew its effect would be this astonishing. Even so, shredding a tree monster that was probably above level 50 with just a mere touch of his magic power, Kenshin couldn’t believe it.

There was no prompt about him killing the monster or EXP gain. Although he knew it, Kenshin still felt disappointed. But his disappointment was shortlived when the ground where it stood started to glow.

“DROP!!” Kenshin looked excitedly. It's been a long time since he was doing it the normal way. He had forgotten this exhilaration feeling of waiting for an item to appear. Every time, his system would automatically collect them and store it inside his inventory.

Soon a small pair of boots appeared on his line of sight with a few gold coins laying around it, to be more precise, 5 gold coins. As for the pair of boots, he didn’t know what their function was, but he was sure they were not ranked items.

“Haha! I have nearly forgotten about this strange, exciting feeling… how nostalgic!!”