Waking up, Devon felt much better, his body rested, and the crippling fatigue from the previous day had lifted completely. The small fire he'd built had gone out hours ago, leaving behind only cool ashes and the faint smell of smoke trapped within the wood. The barricade at the entrance remained undisturbed, a testament to his efforts the night before.
He focused inward, checking his reserves. The emptiness in his core was gone. He felt the familiar, distant hum of the Void energy returned, sufficient now to function and defend himself if needed. Sleep had been the critical element in his recovery it seemed.
He cautiously moved the outer layer of stones from the barricade and peered out. The forest was bright and silent. He needed to focus on training immediately. Survival didn't just mean finding food; it meant achieving the control necessary to use the Void economically, without instantly collapsing.
Devon sat cross-legged on the dirt floor. His goal was simple: materialize a Void Sphere and hold it stable, contained, and perfect for as long as possible, draining the least amount of energy possible. This was the opposite of the desperate, explosive Field he'd conjured yesterday.
His first few attempts were clumsy. He focused, willing the cold dread outward, but the energy sputtered and vanished. He forced his mind to stillness, channeling the absolute focus he'd learned on the streets. This time, a tiny, perfectly black ball, no bigger than a marble, appeared over his palm. It was tight, contained, and satisfyingly stable.
He held it for thirty seconds, letting the immense focus burn away the remaining cobwebs of sleep. When he finally let the sphere collapse, the effort felt taxing, but manageable.
He continued the slow, repetitive practice. An hour passed, then two. The small sphere grew steadily into a fist-sized orb, and the thirty-second hold stretched to a full 2 minutes. By the time the sunlight began to shift, indicating late morning, Devon was physically tired from the concentration, but quite happy with his progress, but his stomach was growling, it was time to hunt.
Leaving his shelter and walking towards the stream, fishing line and snare clutched in his hands and his stomach rumbling; the small fish from last night had been delicious, but left him wanting more. He needed a proper meal today. His eyes scanned the underbrush, half expecting, half dreading, the tell-tale click of chitin.
As he neared the familiar spot where he'd fought the day before, he paused. The air was filled with a frantic chittering and scraping. Peeking around a thick fern of some sort, he saw not one, but two more Chitterbanes. They were focused on the spot where their kin had fallen, perhaps fighting over the remaining scraps or engaging in some other territorial behavior.
This is it, Devon thought, the ultimate training exercise. They were distracted, and his Void Energy was stable.
He focused intently, allowing the familiar cold energy to pool in his hand. A perfect, fist-sized Void Sphere snapped into existence. With a great surge of willpower and remembering the heavy cost of the Void Field, he launched the sphere toward the entangled creatures.
The sphere tore through the air, impacting one creature at the base of its body, instantly erasing its entire rear section. It didn't stop there. The momentum carried the spherical void forward, catching the second creature on the side of its head and slicing cleanly through its ocular cluster and mandibles, killing it instantly.
The first Chitterbane, now missing its back half, thrashed violently, its front legs trying desperately to pull its ruined body toward Devon. The creature chittered a screech of pure fury. Even with a significant portion of its body gone, it tried to rush towards him.
Devon didn't hesitate. He quickly brought a second Void Sphere into existence and thrust it forward. The orb struck the rushing creature in the middle of its body, slicing it clean in half. Viscous, green-black innards spilled across the already saturated ground.
Devon felt a surge of energy that followed with a System announcement.
[Combat Log: Entity Designation "Chitterbane" Neutralized. Void Energy Reserves Increased.]
[Combat Log: Entity Designation "Chitterbane" Neutralized. Void Energy Reserves Increased.]
He took a deep breath, surveying the mess. Three bodies in two days, all within a few dozen yards of his fishing spot, and way to close to his shelter for comfort. The combined remains, guts, and blood would act as a massive attractant, and there was no way he could clean up the disgusting gore filled ground. He knew he had to leave, this area was dangerous and if he stayed, he was sure he would die here.
He walked back and found the spot where he had dropped his snare and fishing line. He still had at least eight hours of daylight, and the System had said that travelling in any direction would lead him to civilization. The stream, he reasoned, was the perfect navigational aid. Moving out into the forest was dangerous, but staying put was now unthinkable.
He kept close to the stream as he moved down it, scanning the rocky banks for anything edible. He spotted several clusters of Redleaf berries growing near the water's edge. He carefully stripped the leaves and gathered a good few handfuls of the berries, stuffing them into the pocket of his increasingly ragged pants. They weren't a full meal, but they provided immediate energy and tasted pretty good.
His hunt for protein was interrupted by a change in the terrain. The gentle banks of the stream abruptly gave way to a steep, black canyon. The water ahead plunged into a dark, narrow chasm that ran perpendicular to the stream's path. The drop looked to be hundreds of feet, and the sound of the rushing water was amplified unnervingly from the depths. The forest on the other side of the canyon appeared denser, almost impossibly dark. He would stay far, far away from there.
Devon tracked the edge of the black canyon, moving away from the chasm. The roaring of the plunging water gradually faded as he walked, replaced by the persistent rustling of the forest. He scanned constantly, not just for a crossing, but for anything that looked out of place, any sign of a path, a break in the sheer rock, or a bridge.
Finally, the canyon walls began to recede. The intimidating black rock gave way to more conventional, wooded slopes. As he crossed, the trees ahead thinned, revealing not open forest, but a vast expanse of crumbling stone. It was a city, or what was left of one. Buildings stood like broken teeth against the sky, their roofs long since collapsed, walls fractured and overgrown with thick ivy and moss. Statues, worn smooth by time and weather, stood sentinel over empty plazas. It looked like it had been abandoned for a hundred years, slowly reclaimed by the unforgiving nature of this world.
Devon moved cautiously into the silent streets. He spent an hour exploring a few of the more accessible ruins. He found rusted metal, splintered wood, and countless shards of ceramic, but anything genuinely useful had either decayed into dust or been scavenged long ago. There were no fresh tracks, no recent campfires, no signs that anyone, human or otherwise, had passed through here in decades.
The ruined city offered no immediate help, but it was a vast, defensible space with countless nooks and crannies. It represented a tangible landmark. He realized that pushing deeper into the unknown forest without a clearer destination was too risky. He needed to be able to backtrack if danger presented itself, or if he simply needed to escape the elements. He made a mental note of the prominent landmarks. A shattered spire, a collapsed bridge, a particularly large, ivy-covered archway, that would allow him to quickly find his way back to this place if he ever needed to retreat.
With the sun now dipping lower, casting long, eerie shadows across the forgotten metropolis, Devon decided to move on. He would follow the general direction the System had indicated, toward where civilization might be. The ruined city would serve as a critical waypoint, a potential haven if his current journey turned too perilous.
Devon followed an overgrown path that led out of the ruined city. The path, likely a major road centuries ago, was now little more than a slightly less dense section of forest floor defined by scattered, worn paving stones. He walked for another hour or two, the silence of the wilderness pressing in around him.
He knew he couldn't push much farther. The sunlight was starting to dip below the tree line, painting the sky in dangerous shades of orange and purple. Dusk was the worst time to be exposed; he needed to find shelter, and quickly.
That need was suddenly replaced by caution when he noticed a small, flickering light dancing through the trees ahead. Someone had built a fire.