WIEDERGEBURT Act VI: Chapter 10

I had long since lost count of the passage of time since coming to this forest. It could have been days. It could have been months. It could have been years. When every second you draw breath is a struggle to survive, it’s easy to lose track of concepts like time. Matters were not helped by my inability to see the sun.

The first thing I learned about this forest was that it was filled with danger beyond anything I’d ever faced. Even the most terrifying Demon Beasts in the Demon Beast Mountain Range were nothing compared to the monsters lurking within this mass of trees, roots, and glowing plan life. The weakest among these creatures was as strong as the Sovereign Birds, while the strongest had already reached the Fifth State of Spiritualism, which required one to understand the higher level concepts of Life, Death, Dimension, Time, Space, Creation, and Void.

Living in this place had been hell at first. There were so many Demon Beasts stronger than myself that I had no choice but to run away, to flee like Kari and I had done during the Demon Beast Invasion in my last life. Back then, I had relied on Kari for emotional support and survival.

There was no one I could rely on this time.

At the moment, I was stalking through the forest. My arm was still missing, but I had made a better arm than my original lightning-water arm. I used the earth element to create the arm, the water element to make it flexible, and the lightning element to attach the arm to my nerve endings. It moved just like my original, though it still felt slightly awkward.

The prey that I was stocking was a large deer. By large, I meant it was three times bigger than myself. This deer was covered in bright brown fur that had a glossy sheen, possessed massive horns with jagged edges, and had glowing crimson eyes glaring at everything. It clomped through the forest, leaving deep imprints in the soil. Its tail swished back and forth as it turned its head, cautiously searching for potential predators.

This deer was one of the weakest Demon Beasts in this forest, having only reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism with the earth element, and therefore it was one of the easiest monsters for me to kill. That did not mean I could underestimate it. While it hadn’t reached the Fourth State with any other element, it did have a minor affinity for wind. Those antlers on its head could detect even the most minute of changes in the wind.

I kept my breathing still as I traveled above the Demon Beast. The branches were so twisted and interconnected that it was easy to walk from one tree branch to another. Not only did I keep my breathing still, but I was manipulating the wind element to surround myself in a vacuum that made it impossible to detect me. Since I had reached a higher state than it, the deer could not sense me, and I had every intention of keeping it that way.

The deer passed underneath a large tree root that formed a massive archway, causing me to lose sight of it, but I didn’t need my eyes to track its presence. Just like the Demon Beast, I had learned how to connect myself to the wind to sense everything around me. It was a skill that had served me well in this hellish forest.

Sneaking ahead of the deer, I floated down to the archway and waited until my prey passed through the archway. Once it appeared, I burst into action, manipulating the air currents to trap it in place, transforming into a beam of light, and appearing before the startled creature. I swung my arm, which transformed into a seven meter scythe, and cleaved off the creature’s head. It was over in a second.

I manipulated the wind again to keep the Demon Beast from falling to the forest floor. This thing was massive. If it struck the ground, it would create a small quake that would draw any other Demon Beast in the vicinity here. I acted quickly to lift the carcass off the ground and drain the blood, which I purified into water and forced to evaporate using the middle concept of vibration. I even went one step further and created a vacuum to destroy the scent of blood so no Demon Beast would pick up on it.

Now came the salvaging job.

The first thing I did was cut out its monster core. It was a large brown sphere about the size of my torso located within its chest. I had no idea how valuable this thing was, but I had learned that these cores contained incredibly pure earth elemental Spiritual Power that I could absorb. It did not bolster my own power. However, if I ever ran low, I could replenish my reserves with this.

Next came skinning the creature. Its fur was soft and fluffy, and I could use it to create clothes or bedding. My current garb was actually a basic shirt, pants, and boots that I had created from the hide of these deer Demon Beasts. Attached to the shirt was a simple blue chest plate made of segmented scales from a water dragon Demon Beast that I killed close to my current home. I had also fashioned shinguards, vambraces, and shoulder pouldrons. It was highly resistant to fire, water, and lightning elements.

Once the creature was skinned, I began creating precise cuts into its body, separating the cuts of meat that were edible from those that were inedible. Some parts of this deer were just too tough to eat. The most delicious pars were the hindquarters, backstraps, shanks, and ribs. The shoulder was also decent, but it had too much fat and gristle for my tastes.

I took all the parts I had salvaged, including the horns and bones, and traveled back to my home. It was located several dozen kilometers from my hunting ground, located high in the trees. I flew to get there, landed on a branch that could fit seven people standing with their arms spread out, and pressed my hand against the tree.

These trees were made from a combination of wood mixed with Spirit Iron. This was not the actual name for the substance, but a name I came up with myself. The metallic alloy was similar to iron, but it was far more durable and had been infused with Spiritual Power. As I splayed my fingers against the bark, I manipulated the earth element, opening a hole inside that I could travel through.

The inside of this tree looked just like a cylindrical room. Because these trees were so big, the room had a radius of about one hundred and fifty meters, or so I calculated. In the center of this room was a round table that I had created by manipulating the element of this tree. A single chair made from the bones of deers and covered in deer fur surrounded the table. Off to one side was my bed, which was also made from deer bones, fur, and the feathers of a bird Demon Beast I killed awhile back. There were no decorations, but I also had a leather rug made from a bear Demon Beast that I killed when I ran afoul of the creature.

A solid thunking sound echoed around me as I walked across the ironwood, stopping near my makeshift oven. Like the table, it had been created from the tree itself. A pot situated on a tripod sat in the middle of this oven/fireplace. There was a small vent that led out of the tree to keep smoke from clogging the room. I didn’t have anything flammable, but with a snap of my fingers, a fire sprang into existence.

I began making my meal, filling the pot with water taken from moisture in the air, adding in some herbs I discovered through trial and error. It had taken a long time, but I had eventually figured out what plants were edible and what weren’t. This undertaking involved getting so poisoned several times that even my fabled ability to purify my body with water had served little purpose other than keeping me alive.

What I made was a basic stew with deer meat as the base and several root vegetables that I sliced up into small pieces. I had a lot of meat still, but I kept it inside of a chest made from ironwood. The chest was under careful control of my Spiritual Powers. I locked everything inside of it in something similar to stasis like Kari’s storage rings, though I was not using runes but my own Spiritual Powers to do so. I simply manipulated the elements inside of the meat to keep it fresh.

Dinner was soon ready, and I was sitting at the table and eating from a bowl made from the same material as my armor, which lay discarded on the floor near my bed.

As I ate, my thoughts wandered, as always, to my wives and son. I knew they were still alive. Their presence through my connection to them was still going strong. I could feel them. However, the feeling was so faint that I sometimes wondered if this wasn’t just phantom sensations from when they were alive.

I shook my head.

I had to believe they were alive.

I would find them.

***

My life had become something of a routine. At night, I would train my Spiritualism, attempting to understand the higher level concepts. On Miðgarðr, I might be the strongest Spiritualist in the world, but in this place, I was weak, one of the lowest creatures on the food chain. If I wanted to survive and find my wives, I needed to become stronger.

There were a few concepts I believed I was close to understanding--namely the concepts of life and death. This was different from the concepts of creation and negation that the Sekbeist Overlord had been using. The concept of creation allowed people create something from nothing. Negation allowed people to annihilate anything that was created. The concept of life was the ability to manipulate life, while the concept of death was the antithesis of life. Having lived in this forest where life and death go hand in hand, I had begun to understand these concepts through my own struggle for survival.

While I meditated at night, I moved during the day. I traveled across the trees, avoided predators, and found a new location where I could make a temporary shelter within a tree. Then I hunted, made dinner, medidated throughout the night, and repeated the process all over again.

It was a banal existence.

But I was getting stronger.

As I began understanding the concepts of life and death, I learned how to manipulate the elements that composed them. I could prevent myself from dying by controlling my own life. No matter how mangled my body became, how mutilated I got, so long as I had Spiritual Power, I could manipulate my own life to prevent myself from dying. I could also do the same to others. I’d experimented on some of the Demon Beasts I defeated here in this forest.

I could also create life. Of course, I could not create life from nothing, which I believed was a power only someone who understood the Concept of Creation could do, but I could create life from already existing life. I didn’t really have much use for this ability, but I would occasionally create a creature resembling a human out of ironwood and talk to them. I would tell them about my training, my day, what I hunted, and what I ate. It didn’t matter what I talked about, so long as I kept myself talking. Anything to keep the loneliness at bay.

The concept of death was the opposite of that. By manipulating this concept, I could decide, determine, and manipulate the cause of someone’s death. For example, I could decide that a deer Demon Beast would die when it passed underneath a root via the root collapsing from decay. I could also manipulate the concept around myself to defy death. A good example of this was when I got eaten by a worm Demon Beast that traveled underground. Despite being eaten and covered in its acidic fluids, I was able to shrug it off and cut my way out.

Unfortunately, while I understood these two concepts enough to use them, there were times when they did not work. When I was fighting against a Demon Beast that had a greater understanding of these concepts, or understood another high level concept, they could prevent me from activating my own powers. Despite this, I continued to train, reaching a greater understanding during the night.

Finally, the time came when I believed I was ready to test my powers against a creature that I would have never considered taking on when I first arrived here.

***

I journeyed through the forest without rest. I no longer needed to sleep. My journey took me across the vast forest, until I reached a large mountain, one so large I could not see the peaks. The brilliant blue sky above greeted my eyes. It was not the first time I had seen the sky, but it was a rarity within the forest. Nothing grew on this barren mountain, which looked like a vision of death amidst the verdant life surrounding it.

Flying up the mountain was not a difficult feat, and I eventually reached an area that was created by several folds within the mountain. It looked like multiple plates had collided to create folding layers. Several meters against his odd fold was a massive cave even bigger than the trees I had been using to sleep in.

I landed on the ground and walked up to the cave, remaining cautious as I peered inside, though I frowned when I saw nothing there. According to my studies of the surroundings and tracing my query for so long, this was where my current prey made its home. Was it out? I didn’t think so since it only went out at night and came back to sleep during the day. It should have been here.

As this thought passed through my head, the loud flapping of wings behind me made me turn around. Intense Spiritual Pressure pushed down on my body, making it feel like gravity had increased, but I counteracted it with my own Spiritual Powers. I quickly took off into the sky. Not even a second after I did, a powerful cone of eight multi-colored rays of light over one hundred meters long slammed into the mountain.

The power unleashed by the simple backlash of this attack slammed into me and knocked me back. I exploded with Spiritual Power to keep myself from sailing off, locking myself into place even as I closed my eyes to avoid being blinded by the light. When the light behind my eyelids died, I opened them again.

The mountain was gone.

A crater was all that remained.

That, and the Demon Beast flying several meters away.

I called this Demon Beast the Great Prismatic Wyrm. Its body was shaped similarly to a dragon, but it was longer and thicker, lacking the elegance of a dragon’s powerful form. It had front and hind legs and four massive wings on its back, which it flapped to create incredible updrafts of wind. The long tail behind it was about the size of the trees I’d been living in. Every time that tail swung, it caused the air to distort as if it was cutting through time and space.

While this creature lacked the elegant form of a dragon, its body was composed of beautiful prismatic scales that captured and reflected sunlight. I thought it was gaudy. One would think that a creature would prefer to blend in with their environment more to avoid combat, but if there was anything I had learned while tracking this creature, it was that this Demon Beast was the king of this forest--or at least this neck of the forest.

The Great Prismatic Wyrm roared at me, but I did not let its imposing power hold me back. I snarled back at the creature as I raised my earthen left hand and created a Dragon’s Tail Ruler sixteen times the size of my body. This ruler contained seven different colors. White. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. Brown. Black. They were the seven elements. Then I overlayed my weapon with the Concept of Death, which gave it a translucent, crystalline sheen.

It wasn’t exactly something I’d expected from such a grim concept.

With a grunt, I swung my weapon down, letting it tear through the sky. Black cracks formed where it left. These were dimensional tears. It was like my weapon was ripping apart this dimension.

The Great Prismatic Wyrm was not about to just let me attack it. Releasing a loud roar, it fired off a multi-colored blast of Spiritual Power at my Dragon’s Tail Ruler. The eight colors of its attack were mixed with strange distortions that made it appear out of phase with this world, and when it slammed into my weapon, the explosion that went up caused the very space around the impact to rip apart. Strange distortions appeared within the air. I thought I saw odd creatures within those distortions. Cracks raced across the sky, then shattered to reveal a blood red sky before the tapestry of reality healed over.

I was pushed further back, but then I locked myself in place, transformed into light, and appeared before the Demon Beast as it was trying to stabilize its flight. It didn’t notice me at first. I used that to my advantage, creating a much smaller Dragon’s Tail Ruler as I flew near its stomach and swung my weapon.

An agonized and angry roar echoed from the Great Prismatic Wyrm as I cut into its hard scales. The scales were very durable, very tough. I was only able to cut maybe half a meter into them before my weapon was stopped. Even pushing more Spiritual Power into the death overlaying my weapon did not help, which meant this creature’s understanding over a high level concept was probably higher than my own.

I leapt back as strange crystal fragments appeared around my body, then exploded into particles of light. The space where I’d been shattered. I recognized that as a form of spatial manipulation. The Great Prismatic Wyrm had a good understanding of the Concept of Space. As I was grimacing at the close call, my foe suddenly seemed to phase out of existence.

My instincts screamed at me. I dismissed my weapon and channeled life energy through my body, my Spiritual Power churning as I manipulated the essence of my own life, and not a moment too soon. A powerful cone of energy slammed into me. My scream was lost to the howling of Spiritual Power as I was pushed back, the powerful attack attempting to erode my own defenses.

Muscles screaming as I struggled to move, I placed one hand on the cone, reared my other hand back, and threw it forward. The sound of my fist meeting the prismatic breath attack echoed like a detonation in my ears.

I had overlayed my fist with death energy. My attack eroded the prismatic breath, killing it. I shot off as the attack died, spun around to face the Great Prismatic Wyrm, and fired off several death beams. The translucent attacks struck its body. None of the attacks looked like they caused any damage, but the Demon Beast’s howl let me know otherwise.

While I attacked with death from one side, I manipulated the life beneath us to create several small wyrms from the dirt. I packed eat wyrm full of death energy, then sent them on up. They latched onto the Great Prismatic Wyrm. It tried to throw them off, but it was too busy defending against my other attacks, and so it had no defense available when they exploded.

A smile appeared on my face as the Great Prismatic Wyrm’s legs were blasted off its body. It howled and spasmed in midair, completely distracted by the pain it felt. I swooped in while it was distracted, create a two meter long Dragon’s Tail Ruler, and plunged my weapon into the Great Prismatic Wyrm’s heart.

Before I could celebrate my success, something powerful smacked me away. I flew down, striking the ground so hard my entire body felt like it had become a bruise. It was fortunate that I’d had the foresight to harden my body with the earth element and overlay it all with the death element so I could properly defy death. As I pried myself out of the ground, I looked up in time to see my query falling head first to the ground. It struck the earth hard enough to cause everything to rumble.

I walked up to the creature, now dead. It really was massive. While I couldn’t get an accurate estimate on its size, it seemed at least three times bigger than Dozziss.

As I stared at the prismatic scales that glistened in the light even after death, I wondered how I could skin this creature. Those scales were tough. Even my most powerful attack had only managed to cut into it a bit. It had taken the incredible force from my thrusting motion combined with my most powerful weapon to cut through it completely. It would make a very powerful armor.

Since I had already opened one incision when I impaled this creature through the chest, I floated up to the cut, created two large earth hands around my limbs, and pried its chest further open. Inside of a cavity past its ribs was a large monster core. This one contained eight colors like its hide. Even though I hadn’t touched it yet, I could sense the vast Spiritual Power inside of it. Not only was it filled to bursting with power, but the Concept of Space emitted from it, making me wonder if I could absorb this Spiritual Power to understand the Concept of Space.

The Concept of Space was still something that I didn’t understand. It was beyond me. How could anyone manipulate space? What was space to begin with? It was a much harder concept to learn about than life and death, which consequently made me think these high level concepts might have their own classification system.

Too bad there was no one who could teach me.

I was just preparing to reach inside and grab the giant orb, but then I sensed two presences even more powerful than this dragon approach. My body froze. It wasn’t for long, however, and I quickly hid myself underneath one of this creature’s massive wings. Hunkering down, I closed my eyes and extended my perceptions into the wind, creating an accurate sonar vision of everything around me within a 360 degree view. It was a lot like looking at the world from a bird’s eye view.

In that moment, two beings appeared from within the forest. They were tall, but they weren’t that much taller than myself. Their bodies were covered in dark gray skin that was close to obsidian. Strange glowing red marks ran along their bodies, which had spiky outcroppings on their knees, elbows, and shoulders. The one on the left had a crown of thorns jutting from his head. The other hand only had two horns, but they sloped backward in a curve that ended in sharp points.

I felt my breathing stop. An image appeared in my mind of a man calling himself Dunherr. These two might have looked slightly different, but I would never fail to recognize what these two were: Sekbeist Lords.