Azelion, after briefly resting, approached the boar's corpse. His fingers touched its body.
"Seal the decomposition." He said as he felt part of the recovered energy transform into invisible silver lines that wrapped around the boar's body.
And then he tried to stand. Until he managed to get up, but staggering. He decided to return to the cave where he had awakened.
He was exhausted and felt he should sleep at least a little.
"How long has it been since I last slept? I hope to sleep for a few days…"
Azelion murmured as he slowly dragged the boar's body back to the cave.
He entered it and dropped the boar's corpse there. And then he looked at the entrance. It was completely open.
He looked at the boar's blood dripping along the path to the cave. Azelion thought for a moment. If a predator smelled the blood, he would be an easy target.
So, after thinking of something, he approached the boar and touched it.
"Seal the odor!"
As soon as he finished speaking, he felt half of his energy completely sucked away to become sealing lines. Then, he saw. Not only did the boar's body stop releasing any smell, but even all the blood it had spilled along the way was completely odorless.
Azelion briefly smiled.
"So that's how it works…"
"Seal the odor." He said again as he sealed the smell of his own body. And the rest of his energy was once again completely used up.
The flesh in his stomach disappeared entirely as weakness struck him, nearly making him faint.
But Azelion collapsed onto the boar's corpse and again only stopped eating when he felt he would no longer pass out.
"Tsk. Sealing something for more than a day takes too much from me…" Azelion said as he thought about what had happened.
It seemed that the amount of energy he used to form seals depended on what he wanted to seal, but also on how long it would last.
Sealing the boar's legs for a minute was much simpler than sealing its smell for more than a day.
And so, Azelion fell asleep in the cave, close to the boar's corpse, to warm his thin and cold body, without the fat to protect him from the night.
The next day, Azelion woke already in the afternoon with a sensation he had forgotten.
His whole body ached like hell. His weak body couldn't exert strength, and yesterday's effort had injured him without his noticing.
The cuts on his skin were open, and dirt had entered. The pain made him frown and wake as soon as the seal in his brain dissipated.
Then he felt his throat extremely dry. Without hesitation, he began eating the boar's meat again and left the cave.
At least now he could take a few steps little by little. And without needing to go very far, he managed to hear a slightly familiar sound.
"Water. There's a stream nearby." A smile appeared on his horrible, extremely thin face.
He went there, his injured feet with dried blood marking the ground.
And then, after a few minutes, he reached the stream.
Without hesitation, Azelion plunged his entire head into the stream, drinking as much water as he could.
His skin, stuck to his ribs, slowly expanded as his belly swelled with the water he drank.
He drank so much that he felt the urge to vomit, but Azelion forced himself to endure it. His body needed it. He would not waste it.
He then briefly said:
"Seal impurities."
The stream water inside his stomach was completely purified.
He sat down, resting his back against a tree trunk by the stream. As he looked at the surrounding forest.
"I… don't recognize any of these plants trees, the boar was different. Even this stream, I don't remember its existence."
"Where is the cliff where Kael and I cornered that damned boar?" Azelion said, remembering the events before falling into the endless darkness.
…
But silence was all he received.
Azelion briefly sighed. He didn't know anything now.
He didn't know where he was or what he should do. He was completely isolated. He then tried to remember. What did Azelion, the eighteen-year-old youth, dream of doing before all of this?
"I… wanted to have a huge family. Give many grandchildren to my mother. Become strong, a hunter recognized by everyone in the village."
"Thinking now… that seems so simple. Haha. Ha… I guess I should at least do that, right? So that my old self can rest in peace, so that my mother and the others have a lineage still alive today." Azelion murmured with a melancholic smile.
In truth, he couldn't feel extremely sad. So much time had already passed in that darkness that he had truly forgotten everyone. When his seal broke and he finally awakened, the memories returned, but…
Not the feelings. In fact, now he felt completely different, lost and out of place in the world. As if he were no longer human. As if the knowledge he had received, as if the eyes he now had, were completely abnormal and not something a human could possess.
And he was right. Though he did not know it.
The only thing that still told Azelion he was human was his survival instinct. That his body needed food and water to go on.
And that was the only thing that still made him human. And what limited him at the moment.
He looked at his own body. His eyes sank completely into it, seeming to see everything inside. Passing through flesh, blood, and bone, and then entering a completely unknown place. There he saw.
There were complex seals, which he knew very well how to break. But the energy to do so would make him die instantly.
But Azelion felt that when he finally undid that seal, what still made him human would completely disappear.