Mary gave a sigh as soon as she woke up, without opening her eyes she knew that he still had not returned, it had been about two months since Mars had mysteriously disappeared from their lives. Mary and the girls were holding on okay, since Victoria insisted that Mars was alive and that she could feel him growing stronger at an alarming rate through the contract that bound them together."But why doesn"t he return home..?"
This was the question that races through all their heads not only Mary"s, but so far none of them could come up with an answer to the question. Mary sat up in her bed and stretched before she looked around for some clean clothes to wear while in reality her thoughts were in another place...
"Not today monkey!"
Mars dodged out of the way of what could only be described as a monkey, a monkey with long sharp claws that is. It"s long and way to big claws looked almost comical on the monkey and it would indeed be very cute if not for the reason that there was over 50 of them and they all looked at Mars while salivating as they attacked him with their long claws. Now there was a reason why Mars didn"t annihilate them with his [Energy: temperature control] and that was that he was training his senses or more precisely he was getting used to his new heightened status, before he was transported to the nameless jungle his stats were all in the high 500"s but now they all had risen to the low 800"s, Mars dodged the monkey"s claws with a paper thin margin as he had been doing for the past hour.
"...I think this is good enough, thank you all for entertaining me."
Mars activated [Energy: temperature control] and instantly the monkey"s froze, literally froze. Before they fell down to the jungle floor and shattered, Mars jumped down and collected cla.s.s 6 magic beast cores and absorbed them leisurely. After he absorbed the 50 some cores he gave a nod, his current level was 149 the prof of his hard work over the last 2 months, another thing that had changed were his clothing, long gone were the times when he wore civilized clothes as they had long since been torn to shreds. Now he wore furs and beast hides just like he once did when he lived in the Mother forest.
"Well whatever, let"s head back for now..."
Mars flew off the ground and started to head in one direction, soon he reached a really tall tree and flew up along the trunk of the tree as he breached the canopies of the other trees, after he had flown about 10 meter above the canopies he reached a hollowed out place in the trunk and landed on the edge and walked in. The inside of the hollowed out tree was his temporary home in the nameless jungle, inside the hollowed out tree were some simple furniture made out of wood with some furs as bedding, in one of the corners were a pile of bones. Mars walked in and picked up a bone on the way before he sat on the simple bed and transformed his hand and began cutting into the bone while he closed his eyes and hummed a song from his past life, when he opened his eyes a few minutes later a small figure made of bone had been created, the figure looked almost exactly like the monkey"s he had been fighting earlier.
"This will do..."
Mars gave a nod and got up from the bed before he walked over to the middle of the room where a bunch of similar figures made of bone stood on the floor on a crude map, Mars looked at the map for a few moments before he placed down the figure of the monkey down about where he had been fighting them and looked over the map while he thought out loud.
"So the radius of the jungle is about four hours of flight... The strongest magic beasts here seem to be cla.s.s 16... I still don"t know what continent I"m on, not like the s.h.i.+tbag adminisator would throw me somewhere close to Salen anyway... Most likely I am on the other side of the globe..."
Mars gave a sigh and walked over to the bed and sat down before he folded his legs and closed his eyes and started to clear his head and began to meditate as images of his family flashed inside his mind he slowly entered a state of nothingness...
The next morning Mars" eyes slowly opened, he had been meditating all night and was now somewhat refreshed. He then stood up from the bed and stretched before he walked over and picked up his adamant.i.te broadsword that stood and leaned against the wall next to his bed, before he walked out of his makes.h.i.+ft home and flew off to find some food to state his hunger. After flying around beneath the canopies for a few minutes Mars spotted some deer walking on the jungle floor and silently flew down, a few seconds later one of the deer entered his range and he activated [Energy: temperature control] and cooked it in a matter of seconds, the other deer fled and Mars picked up his prize before he flew up and landed on a branch and began eating. After about an hour of eating the remains of the deer only amounted to skin and bones as well as a few inedible organs, clearly Mars was not a picky eater.
"... Time to get to work."
After Mars finished eating he flew off into a so far unexplored part of the jungle, after flying for sometime he raised his alert level as he entered unexplored territory and slowed down his flying speed as he looked around with his [Energy: sense] activated, after a few hours of boring and uneventful exploration Mars found something interesting.
"Is that... A turtle?"
It looked more like a small hill than a turtle, its sh.e.l.l was covered by moss and even had other plants growing on it, Mars could feel that it was a high cla.s.s magic beast but didn"t feel like killing such a graceful creature and so after observing it chew on some leaves for a few minutes Mars flew onwards. Soon he found another magic beast, this time it was a pack of wolves which he had no problem in killing and so after sending out a few sword lights Mars picked up two cla.s.s 9 magic beast cores as well as a dozen cla.s.s 8 magic beast cores and absorbed them before he flew onwards, in the distance something appeared which caused Mars to slow his speed significantly before he finally stopped and landed on a branch and looked.
"That"s definitely a wall, or at least what"s left of it..."
In front of Mars was a very old wall that was covered in moss, it was half collapsed here and there but it was still somewhat standing about three meters tall at its tallest. Mars was intrigued and flew over the walls, past the walls lay the ruins of an old city, most of the buildings had collapsed but some of them still stood, Mars flew towards the center of the ruined city while looking around with childlike curiosity he remembered the time when his father in his past life had found a very old movie about a crystal skull, that movie entertained him for weeks and made him dream about exploring ruins.
"This is exciting, I wonder what"s in the center of the city..."
Unknowingly Mars showed a slight smile for the first time in the past two months as he flew towards the center of the city, soon he was able to make out a grand place or at least the ruins of one in the distance and speed up slightly. A few moments later he flew over a grand plaza and landed on the edge of a balcony before he turned around and looked at the grand plaza.
"I wonder if this is where the rulers of the city addressed the crowds?"
Mars looked down at the grand plaza with awe, the plaza was paved with tiles that formed a giant mural that seemed to be about a asian dragon eating its own tail, after admiring the mural for sometime Mars gave a nod and turned around and walked into the palace eager to see what he would find next. As he walked further into the place he found that the furniture and other objects were in relatively good condition, he even got the urge to pick up a chair or something for his temporary home but in the end he didn"t and decided just to look around instead. As Mars walked around the place he was unaware that something was watching him from deep within the palace.
"Please... Help... Me..."