Restoration Berserker Chapter 4 (Patreon)

AN: Made a slight change to chapter 3. It's not the Falna Slate that causes his Falna to update while he sleeps. I had a more in universe reason. Marik will not realize it until later.

This is also the last set up chapter before the story truly begins with Marik entering the world. While I could stretch this chapter into 20K and make it one hell of a build-up, I doubt people want to see this more than they want to see Marik eventually reach Orario. If public opinion contradicts this, I can pause to flesh this out.

Chapter 4: Adapting / Violence is always the answer / Time Passes / Growth / The Berserker (still deciding)

‘What I wouldn’t give for some toilet paper.’ What Marik had to do to feel remotely clean, he’d rather not say, but he wouldn’t ever be able to look at sand the same way again.

The first night was the worst, but necessary. Marik was sure he could only rise with the morning sun thanks to judicial spamming of healing spells.

And he was glad he did because with the rising sun came his next challengers, attracted to the scent of blood from now three corpses.

Marik considered changing locations, but some part of him knew that if he stepped back now, he'd keep stepping back throughout his path. There was nothing inherently wrong with a tactical retreat. Being logical and surgical could let him live to see another day.

However, he wasn’t happy with that answer.

He couldn’t guarantee what he’d run into, and each fight made him stronger.

If he wanted to not just survive but thrive, he'd have to give it his all. Be ruthless. Be relentless. Be merciless. Not just to his enemies but to himself. He'd have to be the Wrathful Berserker.

And a berserker he became.

Each day Marik stepped into the pit, each day he fought from sunrise to sunset with nothing but his fists and a seemingly unbreakable pointy stone, each day he crawled out covered in horrific injuries, each day he healed himself from the brink of death, each day Marik forced raw meat and blood down his gullet, each day he healed himself to sleep as his body revolted from the inside out, and each day he grew internally and externally.

The pain was almost unbearable, but the high that came with each fight inevitably led him to a new battle with little hesitation.

He came to embrace the pain. The pain told him he was alive. It told him he was winning. Each night he licked his wounds and went to sleep was a reassurance of that.

Life in an empty desert, stuck in his small corner of stone within an ocean of burning sand extending into the horizon, was odd. There were no modern comforts. No clothes to cover his nude form. No tools to keep proper hygiene and grooming. No entertainment, beds, snacks, nothing.

Even the lack of communication was beginning to get to him as his voice went unused.

Every day was survival of the fittest, leaving him unmolested in the twilight hours to ponder his situation under an ocean of twinkling stars.

He thought about his family, desires, goals, feelings, and more. He was being scrubbed raw, inside and out, as lies lost meaning and simple truths fell into place.

Marik liked fighting. He liked the struggle. The fight to the bitter end. The feeling of standing tall over a worthy foe.

Marik didn't believe in unnecessary cruelty. He found no pleasure in toying with prey. Each time he considered it, he thought back to how he felt beneath the eyes of the monster centipede and felt disgusted.

Marik liked growing stronger. Seeing the numbers climb every night, feeling his body adapt and strengthen into a superhuman quality, and studying the metaphysical aspect of the magic he had access to gave him a simple pleasure that steadied him like a boulder in a raging storm.

Marik wanted pants. No matter how strong he got, fighting with your junk swinging around was a health hazard that pierced through even the highest of his wrathful states.

Marik missed music. Life was dull without the various tunes of the modern world that could pull on his emotions in multiple ways. But in that dullness was an odd silence that made him introspective, questioning himself and bringing his true feelings to the surface.

These lessons slowly taught him the true meaning of the so-called freedom he naively wished for back in his comfy little life. A meaningless life where he ignorantly lived in a cage brutally torn away by harsh reality.

True freedom came when you took your life into your own hands, not reliant on anything but your own efforts, no matter what came your way.

That wasn't to say he didn't crave things he lost. He wished he could have said a few final words to his parents, who raised him with love. He'd kill for a cup of coffee. He wanted a bar of goddamn soap. The list went on.

But he was content with his growth for the time being.

It didn’t make sense, and he was tired of trying to make it make sense. It was, and he was happy. That was enough for him.

With nothing but his body, magic, pointy stone, spite, and the rags of his original clothes, Marik threw himself into the forge called life.

The days blended into weeks, and the weeks into months as one fight joined another.

The arena where he fought the centipede attracted all kinds of monsters from the desert, the bloody scent being carried on the wind and refreshed daily as new corpses were added to its red sands. There was never any lack of monsters to fight, from coyotes, acid-spewing scorpions, giant lizards, metallic rats, anaconda-sized snakes, elemental turtles, and the truly bizarre.

000

'No fucking way this thing isn't a monster.' Marik deadpanned at the odd addition to his arena. Rather than find a new challenger stomping around, he instead woke up to find the bizarre sight of a twenty-foot-tall fucking cactus of all things smack in the middle of the arena.

Bright green, covered in gleaming spikes, and with a cute little pink flower on its head, the plant stood completely motionless as if trying to blend in.

‘Does it seriously think I wouldn’t be able to tell?’

There were three bear-sized praying mantises the day earlier, and yet all Marik saw of their corpses was withered flesh stuck to bones, as if every bit of moisture and meat was sucked right out of it.

Marik didn't even know how to approach this one, unused as he was to patient monsters. 'I can't even tell if it's sleeping or not.'

Scratching his head, Marik shrugged. ‘Eh, strategy A it is.’ Strategy A was smash. If Strategy A didn't work, he had Strategy B, get angry and smash harder. If Strategy B also failed him, he had to start using his brain for Strategy C and figure out where to smash the hardest. 

Light on his feet, Marik approached the creature at a runner’s sprint, zig-zagging his way through piles of bones as he tried to sneak up on the plant, yet the moment he crossed an invisible threshold, the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up as his instincts flared.

But even that barely saved him.

The only sign Marik received was a tiny shiver along the cactus’s body before his eyes widened as a sound blast deafened him, barely being able to throw his arms up before the blast threw him ass over kettle with an odd prickling pain covering his arms.

When he finally stopped rolling, he not only found himself lightly concussed but with arms full of thin needles. And if that wasn't enough, he could feel each of them growing numb as he watched.

The cactus stood up, great big hollows for eyes and a mouth snapping open as it grinned mockingly in Marik’s direction.

‘This bitch.’ Flame lit, Marik growled as he bent over and picked up his makeshift hatchet between his teeth before standing tall with dangling arms. “Now it’s a fair fight.’

000

On another occasion, Marik became intimately familiar with the stone maze around his arena as he was dragged along for a joy ride.

“Ow! Fuck! Bitch! Would! You! Stop! Moving!”

A giant fucking ostrich, of all things, covered in bone armor gave Marik a first-hand account of how each boulder tasted as he swung around from one stone to another. His leg was stuck inside the twists of its bone armor, and rather than stay and fight, the bird thought it better to kill Marik through way of second-hand blunt force trauma.

"Ow! When I get out of this, I'm gonna wring your fucking neck!"

The bird had the audacity to squawk back.

000

Then there was the time Marik had been minding his own business before he was suddenly full of holes courtesy of four penguins. Fucking penguins. In a desert.

They shot out the sands like bullets from a gun, shooting straight through him before vanishing back beneath the sands.

No matter how old Marik became, he would never forget the day he experienced the most extreme form of whack-a-mole.

He took more damage from running at 15% wrath capacity than the penguins ever managed.

000

And then there were the nuisances.

“Again?!”

A massive dust cloud burst through the arena as the recently awoken Marik was sucker punched by not a monster but a thrice damned undead rising from the bone piles of his fallen enemies.

“This is the third time this week! Go back to sleep!”

None of the Undead were strong enough to actually hurt him. They lacked any ability to think or feel instinct as they simply charged him with no thought, but each and every one was an annoying prick that was stupidly durable for whatever reason.

It wasn’t a fun fight, so Marik considered them more pests than a challenge. He made it a point to not just re-kill them but throw their bones in separate directions just in case, tossing them into the far distance with all his strength.

‘Revive from that motherfucker.’

000

Marik learned more about anatomy from tearing the various creatures apart, putting himself back together, and eating whatever he considered edible enough than he did in years of biology courses.

Most monsters contained an odd purple gem, usually the size of a fingernail at the smallest and a full-sized finger at the largest. The first time Marik found one, he had accidentally bitten into it and broke a tooth, quickly spitting it out in pain.

Only when he cleaned it off and noticed its odd purple texture did he get the question in his head about others. It took a few tries, seeing as only some monsters had one, and none had them in the exact location, but he began to find more and more of the odd stones.

What they did, he had no idea. But being a professional scavenger by that point, he had decided to keep them in hopes that they might be worth something. ‘In one of those odd Chinese stories, monster cores were a big deal, right?’

With no other answers available, he simply put them aside after each day’s challenge.

The nights, however, were never disturbed. For whatever reason, Marik could sleep peacefully, unmolested by any nighttime challengers, until the sun rose once more on the horizon.

The variety of each day made every fight feel fresh and lively, feeding his ever-growing lust for battle without letting things become stale as he grew.

It took two weeks for him to stop having to fight for his life on a stone throne as his bowels emptied themselves. His immune system rapidly adapted under the exposure and restoration magic.

It took three weeks for him to start finishing his fights before the sun set, not that he could move much until he healed himself.

It took four weeks before he started getting the hang of his new physical limits, developing a brawler style of fighting instead of simply flailing like a beast. If he couldn’t outright kill his foe, he would break it piece by piece until it couldn’t stop him from bashing its head in.

It took five weeks before he got the hang of using Lesser Wards in fights confidently, blocking various elemental strikes the odd monster used on him, sometimes even deflecting their attacks towards a different monster.

It took six weeks before he got a better grasp of his healing spell, beginning to understand that the pain that came with healing came more from his lack of focus than the spell itself. The more he focused on the injured area, using what knowledge he had of human anatomy, the less pain the wounds caused as they knitted back together. Easier said than done in combat, but a lesson he took to in the evenings.

It took seven weeks for him to gather enough odds and ends from monsters to create a makeshift tent of sorts in a crack between two boulders, setting the softer and cleaner monster furs down to sleep on with walls to block the wind and sand while saving extra materials to try his hand at making clothes.

It took eight weeks before he finished his fights in enough time to not only heal his body until he could walk but also grill some meat on the sunbaked stones of the desert, the stones cooling off rapidly as the sun set. His first taste of cooked meat sent a thrill through him that he most certainly didn't tear up at.

By the ninth week, he was finally able to make a crude cloak out of a misshapen piece of fur and a crude loincloth from dried monster skins that both held up and didn't irritate his sensitive bits. The numerous failed attempts taught him that his imagination did not transfer over to skill with crafting.

It took ten weeks for him to begin to lessen his reliance on his wrath state, as he called it. The more he gave in to it, the more brutal and vigorous he became, but at least half of the damage he healed each evening was from his own actions rather than the thing he was fighting. With the growth of his stats, the monsters he fought required him to reach that breaking point less and less, allowing him to learn how to fight without a red-tinted mind.

Eleven weeks in, he felt he had a basic understanding of the patterns and constellations in the night sky to get an idea for navigation; giving various points he observed his own names and points of reference to at least move in a single direction without fail.

By the third month, his skin had darkened to a rich bronze under the ruthless UV rays and rapidly regenerating skin, adapting to the brutal conditions faster than possible under mortal constraints. His light brown hair getting bleached by sun exposure into a sandy platinum held back in a spiky tail by a thin strip of monster hide.

By the fourth month, his body had changed entirely from how he began. His gut was gone, and his body was built with one muscle atop another as his height increased to 6'5, with a girth unmatched by most who didn't lift weights professionally, yet with a waist narrow enough for dexterous movements. And with Restoration curing all but the most serious of scars, his form was mostly unblemished from his challenges, leaving the odd mark here and there to show his hardships. With the influx of monster meat, rising stats, and restoration healing, Marik found that he was still growing without an end in sight.

By the fifth month, he had tried using all manner of monster parts to fight, trying to see if anything was more useful than another. Fangs, stingers, spiked tails, sharpened shell shards, and everything in between passed between his hands. Nothing lasted as long as his original stone; nothing truly felt right to him until he stuck his trusty stone on the hardest monster spine bone he could find and made himself a rough hand axe with which to brutalize monsters.

It took six months for a change to happen, as through relentless daily usage, Marik managed to reach a plateau in his developmental abilities and go beyond.

Sitting atop a stone pillar with a steaming chunk of meat the size of his head in hand, Marik enjoyed his meal while ignoring the ever-growing pile of skeletons and corpses behind him to eye up his Falna Slate.

[Falna:

-          Name: Marik Grim

-          Alias: N/A

-          Age: 20

-          Level: 1

-          Familia: N/A

Stats:

-          Strength: G220 > B798

-          Endurance: G260 > A814

-          Dexterity: H100 > C685

-          Agility: H190 > D592

-          Magic: G230 > A840

Developmental Abilities:

-          Unique: Wrathful Berserker I > H

-          Restoration Perks I > H

Magic:

-          Restoration I > H

Skills:

-          Unique: Falna Slate

Feats:

-          Dimensional Traveler

-          Mortal Ascension

-          Blessing of XXX]

Six months raised him to a level he couldn't comprehend before arriving in the desert.

The confidence with which Marik moved, the strength he put into his limbs, the physical limits he reached, the senses he honed, none of them could have been comprehended by him from six months earlier.

Marik ripped off a bloody chunk of meat and chewed through what he could barely stomach on that first night. ‘I’m slowing down.’

An annoyed expression crossed his face as he observed his progress. 'I'm not sure how high these stats are able to go, but Strength, Endurance, and Magic have been crawling forward ever since I hit 700 in them. Dexterity, I admit I've been slacking on; it's just too satisfying to crush my foe head-on.' A toothy grin crossed his lips as his eyes lit with battle lust. 'Ever since I crushed that Rock Lizards skull in the other month, I've been pulling back on complicated strategies.'

Marik would be the first to admit to himself that he was being stupid, but after months of fighting to the brink of death, he just wasn't getting as injured. Through the throngs of foes, he sometimes fought enemies that were slower to react, weaker to his strikes, or unable to keep up with the endurance needed to fight at maximum effort. It made things less complicated as all he had to do was smash, but seeing the numbers falling behind irked him.

'I need to work on Dexterity and Agility. The first, I just need to move more in the arena, but there's not much space here for Agility.' Marik idly scratched his head and thought about a good way forward. 'I can start doing dead sprints and see if bursts of speed will help. If not, I might have to start doing dreaded laps.' He couldn't help but grimace at the thought. Marik hated running. Swimming was enjoyable, but running was his hated cardio.

Strength and Endurance grew by a few points every day at a minimum. His daily fights still posed enough of a challenge to get his engines going, even if he could demolish most challenges in minutes if he gave into his wrath state. The 15% boost doing a hell of a lot more now than it did in the early stages with his higher base stats. He even learned at one point that using the boost to surpass his limits and break his body was a surefire way to keep the stats growing at a constant pace, especially as it paired with his healing spell. The only issue he ran into was finding a worthy foe to do such a thing. He simply couldn't make himself angry enough to get past a 5% boost without a target. And the boost wasn't immediate; it required a build-up time that he could only get when being pushed.

On the other hand, Magic needed no explanation as he never went a day without draining his mana repeatedly until the edge of his limits. He'd learned the first week about the dangers of emptying it entirely, having blacked out each time for hours and waking up with headaches his healing spells were unable to cure. But through excessive, unrelenting practice, Marik learned to feel his limits. With an 840 Magic stat, he could cast any of his first four spells close to thirty times in an unmolested environment. In combat, it was a different story, as the less focus he had, the more mana he wasted, making it more like ten to fifteen spells in a high-stress environment.

However, the speed at which he recovered mana was something he hadn't been able to change, feeling it stuck at something like 1% a minute or so. He wasn't sure of the specifics, but it was an estimation.

Interestingly, each of his four spells had much more use than he initially figured.

Healing, despite stating that it healed 2% of total health per cast, had issues he had to manually correct. When undirected, the spell forcefully healed random parts of the body, causing extreme pain as healing one part likely injured something else that wasn't in its proper place. If Marik only broke a finger, the spell wouldn't be painful. But by focusing on which parts of his body he wanted to heal, the spell could be optimized to heal in a directed fashion when it had his full attention. He could brute force it just as he did the first night, but the pain and mana waste were immense.

He also learned that while his passive healing perk could keep him alive, it also couldn't heal him if his body was losing health at the same time. His life wasn't a video game; an injury doesn't stop causing damage just because the enemy's turn was over. However, the passive perk was a constant factor at a fraction of the mana cost, giving him an all-around boost he would likely have died without.

Lessert Ward, as Marik hadn't realized in his first fight since he didn't see it happen, could save on durability if he deflected a blow rather than defended from one. He could even use the deflection to attack another monster in the area, but turning it back in the direction it came from was beyond his current limits. However, once cast, his wards would only vanish if Marik willed it to, was broken, or lost its mana supply. He could keep them up to block the wind and sand or have it watch his back during a fight for any non-physical attack.

Resist Poison and Resist Disease were the ones that surprised him. Resist Disease helped immensely with eating whatever he could get his hands on, especially in his first few weeks. As his body adapted to his new diet, the spell rapidly built up his immune system toward various forms of bacteria. When it came to Resist Poison, he realized he could use it to build antibodies without dying when he was healing from the cactus monster's needles.

After realizing how deliberating it was to be poisoned, he thought about immunization. Marik used the cactus spikes and venom from a weaker snake to test it out and learned that his theory worked at the cost of extreme pain and various symptoms. Thankfully, with his ever-strengthening body and the support spells, he was able to adapt quickly, with each specific venom no longer effective on him. Having felt encouraged by the success, he had proceeded to use any venomous creature to build on it. After months of effort, Marik was, if not immune, significantly bolstered against almost everything the desert had thrown his way so far.

All four spells became a cornerstone of Marik's progress, surrounding the core that was Wrathful Berserker. Without any piece of it, Marik doubted he could have made it as far as he did as quickly as he did. So, with a great deal of excitement, he mentally clicked on the slate for the new spells.

Just like the first time, information poured into his brain with basic instructions, pushing its way to the surface of his brain as if it had always been there, and he just realized it now. 'That still isn't pleasant.' Marik grunted as he pinched his nose with two fingers, taking deep breaths to work through the sudden migraine.

Thankfully, it passed quickly, and Marik found himself grinning like a loon as the information organized itself on his slate.

[Current Spells:

I:

-          Healing - Heals 2% total health per cast.

-          Resist Disease – Boost the immune system against disease.

-          Resist Poison – Boost the immune system against poison.

-          Lesser Ward - Negates up to 50 points of spell damage.

H:

-          Turn Undead - Scales with user's level. All Undead struck by this spell up to 50% stronger than the user gains a weakness debuff.

-          Diagnose - Efficient and detailed scan of the damaged area on a target.

-          Spider’s Touch - Convert antibodies into venom through the palms/nails/skin and inflict poison damage on direct contact.]

‘Oh, thank God… er… you divine person in the sky.’ Marik shifted his thoughts, not sure what kind of deity he was dealing with and if they could read surface thoughts.

The base concept of the spells was known to him, but it took him about two weeks of testing to get the full idea, and when he did, he could have kissed his benefactor for making his life easier.

Diagnose basically had two settings. A Quick or Deep scan. The Quick scan made Marik happy, as just by casting it, it would send information to his brain on where and what needed to be fixed, allowing him to actually heal during a fight without wasting all his mana brute-forcing things. Deep scan, on the other hand, took a few minutes to cast, but it would give him a sort of mental picture of the body that outlined the injured areas in far greater detail, as well as point out anomalies he could try to target, such as an active poison.

It was an all-around support boost to his healing efforts in and out of combat.

The other two were useful in specific ways.

Turn Undead was his answer to the annoyance that were undead monsters. The things kept popping up at increasingly frequent rates the more corpses piled up in the area. Marik wasn’t sure if there was some kind of death aura accumulating that was spawning them, but they became a nuisance that irritated him to no end. Turn Undead caused the targeted undead to have its defenses, or at least its bones, become brittle. Marik hadn't had a chance to try it on an undead stronger than him, but it made the ones weaker than him practically crumble under his strikes.

Spiders Touch was different from the first two and seemed to be a result of Marik's immunization efforts. Any venom or poison he managed to build antibodies for could then be used offensively through his hands to poison a target through skin contact. When cast, his hands took on a purplish hue and condensed liquid venom. Unfortunately, while he had the idea to collect venom in a bowl, the drops he squeezed out evaporated within a minute. Marik wasn't entirely sure about the mechanic, but it seemed reliant on his mana rather than his biology and would fade if the mana sustaining it ran out. However, when it entered the body of a beetle monster, it seemed to take hold even after he pulled away. 'I wonder if it's sustaining itself with the target's mana rather than mine? Maybe it's feeding on biological matter?'

Even after weeks of experimenting, he didn't have a solid answer and left it to idle thoughts for the time being.

And finally, there was one last thing he had to test in those two weeks: the upgrade to his Developmental Abilities.

[Wrathful Berserker H - A berserker beyond reason, turning wrath into fuel for primal strength. A suicidal path to strength for all who don’t carry a healer around in their pocket. Their power grows with their wrath, granting a temporary overall boost to Strength, Endurance, and Instinct the more the berserker gives into their anger. The Will of the user will decide how far one goes down the path of a Wrathful Berserker. Warning: The further the user pushes beyond maximum physical limits, the faster the body will tear itself apart.

-          Stat bonus caps out at 15%

-          Berserker’s Roar – Challenge all enemies within hearing distance into attacking the user.

Restoration Perks H – As a user of Restoration magic, a single ability is granted per rank. Current Perk(s):

-          Passive Healing: 1% of health is recovered per minute at half the mana cost as long as the user still has mana.

-          Healing Aura - 25% additional effectiveness to healing spells effective over a period of 10 seconds after casting healing spells.]

The new perk was simple if effective. Adding a bonus of 25% healing over 10 seconds let Marik save mana and milk the benefits even while he was fighting. He was looking forward to gaining stronger healing spells and seeing said bonus grow even further.

But it was the new ability that truly caught his attention and brought him great joy.

Marik laughed loudly above a fresh mound of corpses, blood running like a river as a new wave of challengers came his way. Half a dozen types of monsters roaring, clicking, chittering, and all baying for his blood as they fought to beat their competitors to the prize.

A prize that welcomed them with open arms and a fierce smile.

The monotony of single challenges a day that had built up over six months finally shattered as Marik challenged the desert to give it all it had, laughing boisterously in the face of death as he could finally get his fix, letting his wrath out to its peak and breaking himself as he broke the monsters.

His axe rose and fell, splitting a humanoid jackal's skull down the middle just as he caught a truck-sized closing jaw with a stomp and shove of his other arm, grabbing the sandfish by its tooth as he injected it with the most potent nerve agent he had before flinging it into the charge of a kimono dragon looking lizard, dropping it in seconds as it bit into the poisoned fish.

Marik pulled his axe back in a shower of gore just in time to throw it into the side of a scorpion, stopping its lunging tail short as he moved in a blur, almost crawling on all fours as he launched into the back of a walking cactus, causing its spikes to launch in all directions.

Yet not only did they barely scratch Marik's skin, but the little paralyzing venom that managed to enter his system immediately broke down, eaten away by his antibodies like Parana's smelling blood. His legs clamped around its throat as he tore the remaining spikes off the creature, using them as javelins as he flung them with brutal efficiency, spearing whatever monster avoided the initial explosion before he twisted his torso and snapped the cactus's neck.

A giant hawk dove down faster than he could blink, throwing him down in an explosion of sand and stone with deep gashes running down his back, but before the hawk could dive in a second time, he was already up and moving, golden energy covering his form as his wounds slowly knitted back together.

His lips pulled back in a growl as he ripped his axe from the paralyzed scorpion while idly crushing its head before he charged with a bellow, tearing into the horde and leaving not but fallen splashes of paint to decorate the sands of his arena for years to come.

From sunrise to sunset, he danced a primal dance of death, stopping only to consume blood and meat raw from fallen monsters and diving back in without hesitation.

He didn’t stop, he didn’t rest, he barely let himself think. He just wanted to chase that high ever more, feeling more alive than any drug could ever give him as his body broke down and rebuilt stronger and stronger.

And when it was all said and done, it was the monster waves that broke against Marik’s stubborn efforts.

After eight months since arriving in the desert, a very different Marik stood atop the highest sand dune around his rocky home and looked down at the place that had forged him into solid metal from the scraps he started out as.

There was a sentimental urge to stay and do something with the place, but Marik knew that wasn't the answer. No more monsters were coming; nothing but the weakest newborn monsters responded to his challenge, and the current Marik would rather become a farmer in the waterless desert before he gave up seeking out a new fight.

Wrapped in his best attempt at clothes after all his attempts, simple crude leather pants, a pair of wrapped sandals that helped gain leverage on the sand, a thin cowl to protect from sunlight, a fur-lined cloak draped over his shoulders, and a monster bone crafted sled dragged behind him containing a leather bag for his extra clothes, fur-lined bed rolls, packs of jerky and pouches of blood, and a satchel absolutely bursting with finger-sized purple crystals.

He still needed to learn what they did or were worth, but they were easier to carry than monster parts he knew little about.

Marik was as ready as he would get as he turned to face the setting sun, looking out into the majestic ocean of sand, getting his bearings based on the stars. What was out there, where he was, he didn't know, but sitting in his starting zone wasn't going to help him anymore.

‘If no more monsters will come to me, I’ll just have to go to them. Give me what you got, world.’ 

An excited, if slightly bloodthirsty, smile split his face as he took his first step into tomorrow, looking forward to the journey ahead.

Chap end.

Next Chapter: Meeting a Bunny. (title subject to change)