Ah, fuck, everything hurts. I never knew my everything could hurt like this.

I start healing myself as I open my eyes and look around. My vision is a little blurry, but I can see I’m inside half of a broken ship that was washed ashore. Did that firebomb break the whole ship? Then why am I inside instead of on top of it?

Damn, I should have made a barrier, dad was right when he said ‘you can never cast fast enough’.

Why do I feel something’s off?... Hmm… Was it always this easy to heal myself? Well, I didn’t hurt myself often, so I’m not sure. Oh right, my clothes are a little too tight… Why are there red lines on my skin? Are those claws on my fingers?

Okay, calm down. One worry at a time. First off, being inside of a ship… This ship is the smaller one with the ritual stuff... OOOH! Okay, I can guess what happened.

One of the cultists must have survived the explosion and tried using me as a sacrifice in a hurry and died, good thing i messed with the ritual, huh? Back up plans are simply divine.

There are a few things that doesn’t explain, like why wouldn’t they just heal themselves or use me specifically instead of another kid, but it’s the best explanation I have since it explains why I’m suddenly slightly bigger and with red lines all over my body like an anime character that just activated his special ability.

Boy, that sure was a close one, huh? Let’s find out my situation.

I cast a few detection spells without leaving the wreckage, stealthily of course. No humans around… Well, I’m royally fucked, the amount of monsters nearby indicates that this is monster territory.

My disguise sigil that also had a tracker function is gone, so i’m on my own on this mess.

I already don’t feel any pain, so let’s check out what my surroundings look like. Oh? When i stopped healing, the red lines disappeared. Well, they didn’t quite disappear, they just became a pale skin color, like a very thin scar. At least like this it won’t be too attention grabbing.

Dang, suddenly becoming bigger messes with my sense of balance, at least i didn’t grow too much, my clothes still fit, even if they are a little on the tight side. Good thing we wore slightly loose clothes on the orphanage.

Looking around outside the wreckage, i seem to have been washed ashore on a bay somewhere. The spell to find north points towards inland, so i’m in a place with a bay on the south coast… Well, i’m not on the Sylvian Peninsula, that’s for sure.

I’m either on an island or… I detect the tracking sigils i left on the ships. They are too far so i don’t know the distance, but they are on my southeast…

Fuck, I’m on that huge monster territory northwest of Sylvian, aren’t I? How long have i been drifting for? It must have been for multiple weeks… How haven’t i starved to death?...

… Oh well, at least now I have a reason to make an airplane… Right when i think that I see a flying monster in the distance that can only be described as a bat that tried to become a hawk and supersized his body to be as big as a cow.

Ok, no airplanes, for now.

I need to decide whether i go back by sea or land.

Making some kind of boat and going by sea would be faster, but anything with half-decent eyes would be able to spot me on open sea, so i would need to come up with a reliable way to hide and move at the same time.

Going by land would be slower, but hiding would be easier and i would be able to eat things other than fish.

I feel like going by land, but I can change my mind later if there’s a need to, for now, I need to see what supplies i can get on this wreckage and build a hideout.

~~

When I say build a hideout, I meant dig. I dug a diagonal tunnel and turned the end of it in a room and then dug another tunnel out the back of it, just in case. I used wood from the wreck to build a few supports and stored some in case i need them later as well.

I then hid the entrances with plants and spread a few enchantments to hide smells, sounds and mana coming from the inside.

I then bring the supplies from the ship to the hideout and make sure to hide my tracks and smells. What i found on the ship was food, water, a few tools, cloth (clothes and blankets, not an entire sail) and ropes, aside from the wood from earlier.

With that done, I scout the surroundings with detection spells once again. Still safe, I sigh with relief.

So I start eating. What i found was mainly a variety of preserved meats and fruits, no wheat though.

After eating enough for two adults I have to check the thing I was putting off for a while now.

What’s going on with my body?

I take a deep breath and create a mirror with an illusion.

The lines become really noticeable around my eyes, my hair took a hint of maroon on its color, but it’s just a little bit, barely noticeable. What’s really messed up are my eyes. At first, when I was digging the tunnel, I forgot to make a source of light, I only realized when I got out later that I didn’t need one anymore.

My pupil that used to be a single vertical slit now is a three-pointed star, two points above, one below… At least I didn’t grow a tail or something… Yep, just double-checked, no tail.

Am I part of a new magic bloodline? Do I have any new characteristics aside from lines and night vision? I doubt my hair color matters…

I cast several diagnostic spells. My internal stuff hasn’t changed much aside from my eye, although everything seems a little bit stronger, especially the boney parts, including my teeth and nails, or should i say fangs and claws?

Anyway, I’m perfectly healthy for someone who stayed unconscious and without food for an unknown number of days.

The lines go red whenever I move mana around too much, but after a while i got the hang of moving mana without making the lines go red.

For now, let’s make a disguise sigil to make me look like a normal Chevalier, just in case I run into someone… Let’s make another one to make me look like Leo again, just in case I run into someone who’s not a fan of Chevaliers.

It’s already night by the time I’m done with everything, so I check the stars to confirm I’m on the western monster territory.

Confirmed. I sigh, such a pain.

Well, I’m full and hidden, and I’m not going anywhere today. So back to sleep I go. Let’s hope I don’t change again next time I wake up.

~~

It’s been three days since then, my appetite is proving to be a source of trouble, so I decided to stockpile on food before making some armor and weapons, and start heading back home only after that. When I say weapon, I don’t mean swords and stuff, but of the magic shooting kind.

It’s not like I can’t use physical weapons at all (you don’t need much training to be able to hurt someone with a spear), it just isn’t very efficient while I’m so young and light. I’m still going to make a knife though.

I already started gathering food and I’ve already gathered a bunch of edible leaves, nuts, berries and roots. Now I just need meat. I’ve gotten a little bit from birds, but that won’t last long at all.

So, after spreading out a few simple traps to catch smaller prey, I’m hunting down a bipedal rabbit almost my size that moves by leaping from the side of one tree to another.

I send a force bullet It’s way while it’s in midair, but the prick twists itself and avoids a fatal wound. It tries to leap again but I pull it with a wave of telekinesis and then shoot a force bullet again, this time it’s a fatal hit.

But all that moving spread around a lot of rabbit blood, so i grab the rabbit and hide in a bush nearby while covering my tracks and smell. In the bush I look around with my enhanced senses and see nothing, so I use detection spells.

As I expected, there’s something big making its way here, so I dig a small hole to hide in with my prey. After a little while I can hear the stomping sounds approach while hiding less than a foot under the ground with a small hole open for breathing and being able to see what’s coming. I still have my camouflage cloak, but it’s better to hide just in case they have heat vision.

When it arrives, I take peek and what I see looks like a bear sized four legged crustacean… That’s a lot of meat... Might as well hunt that too.

I use telekinesis to mess with some leaves on the other side of it before sneaking closer to it.

The exoskeleton of monsters is often really tough, so if you don’t want to waste mana breaking through it, you need to either crush it or target the joints, since they are often less defended.

When I’m close enough to its left to have a clear shot, I send two force bullets towards the back of its ‘knees’ on the two right legs before leaping back. As expected, the joints were torn apart by my spells and it’s fallen to the side.

It turns its head to me and tries to hit me with a acid spit, but it couldn’t aim properly since it just lost two legs and couldn’t turn its torso properly. I just had to use telekinesis to deflect a couple drops of acid.

I’m about to hit its neck with a force hammer when i notice a lot of mana going to its torn legs. I’m curious so I hide behind a tree and cast a detection spell to make sure nothing else is approaching. All clear.

I then pay attention to its torn legs to understand what it’s trying to do, like I suspected, it’s trying to heal back limbs it had lost. This is a golden opportunity to learn how monsters do that kind of thing, so I keep watching while making sure nothing is approaching and using diagnosis spells to better understand what it’s doing.

Sadly I can’t stay idle for long, so after one minute or so, I finish it off and take most of its meat, grab the rabbit and go back to my hideout. Grabbing its shell to make armor? Maybe if I couldn’t make proper steel. Don’t underestimate steel just because it’s mundane, it’s easily superior to this guy’s shell.

But I realized something important today, this little trip of mine is also an opportunity to study magical wildlife. In this kind of environment, natural selection is cranked up to 11 thanks to the influence of magic, so only those with the best physique, mind, instincts and magic can survive and prosper.

What kind of things can I learn from centuries of magical evolution?

At least now I have something to do aside from survival.

~~

It’s been two weeks since then, and I’m finally done with my armor.

First off is a relatively thin gambeson shirt (cloth armor) and thick pants, on those I attached the rest of the armor.

On top of that I have a steel cuirass with enough space on the joints to not get in the way and with some metal covering the throat. Steel plates on the shoulders, elbows, knees, back of the gloves and top of the boots.

Between those joints I have steel splints that should help in protecting me from losing a limb without adding too much weight.

The helmet only covers the top and back of my head and a little bit of my cheeks and chin, a little similar to the roman helmet, except without unnecessary decorations. It doesn’t cover my eyes, nose or ears, can’t have that.

I enchanted the whole thing as a set with toughness, temperature regulation, weight and noise reduction, this way even the cloth and leather parts are quite tough.

Although I left out some weight reduction on the gloves, boots and forearm splints to leave room for other enchantments.

Mobility aids for boots and gloves, like for climbing and leaping. I can do that without enchantments but like this I don’t have to concentrate too much to do it. Also, footprint hiding for the boots.

The forearm splints I enchanted to be more like five little wands attached to each of my arms. To avoid confusion I had the left ones have more defensive/support spells and the right ones more offensive ones.

On the offensive side I have: Force bullet as a basic attack, force spear for those with more defense, force cut for when piercing and smashing doesn’t work very well, disruption bolt to stun those that rely on magic and fire bomb to clear up large groups.

The point of having these enchantments is to deal with sudden situations, so I don’t have to waste time making the runes for the spells. So I picked the more simple and versatile spells.

For the defensive side I picked: Barrier for blocking stuff, force push in case things get close to me or I’m targeted by multiple small projectiles or toxic gas, stun bomb to stun things (i mean, what else did you expect?), detect life and detect movement for when i don’t have time to cast better detection spells.

With that done, I made a dagger. The shape is somewhere between the modern combat knife and the bowie knife (combat knife is pretty much a thin bowie knife anyways). The enchantments are only for toughness and to assist with cutting and piercing with telekinesis, simplicity is power.

Then I re-made my camouflage cloak with cloth, leather and a few pieces of steel, and re-enchanted the whole thing to also hide smells, sounds, heat and mana.

Finally I made a bedroll and a relatively small backpack. Thanks to magic, I don’t need to carry much aside from food, water, spare cloth, string and a bed.

Most of the two weeks was spent getting the materials and making the enchantments dense and stable enough. If this was a game, I’m pretty sure I would have levelled up my enchanting skill multiple times.

All decked out like this, I feel pretty badass. Mom would be proud.

Finally, It’s time to set out.