When I woke up the next day, I stood at the foot of the tree...
Just staring into space for hours, poking the ground with a stick.
I thought about giving up the whole time.
My family probably already "buried" me anyway.
There's no reason to try.
Even if I came back...
I would end up here again.
Nothing changes...
Always surviving.
That's what my life boils down to.
Survival.
And zero progress...
.
.
.
I'm a joke.
That was my answer in the hours that followed.
And for the first time, I really accepted it. How many times did I joke about it? Many, really, but I still denied it.
Well...
If fate existed, I would still have someone to blame.
But no. In the end, everything happened this way because I let it happen this way.
I simply accepted everything the world threw at me.
I always managed to work it out somehow. It was easier that way.
The world hits me... And I accept it. Nice deal.
It turns out I'm simply in a toxic relationship with my own life...
Heh.
Debauchery. Sarcasm. Jokes.
I'm always making excuses.
.
.
.
In the end, I decided to wait for the next day.
But now I understood a little more why I was so attached to life.
I just hadn't lived it until now.
And there's nothing better than starting the change on a new day. Or not.
But rushing things wouldn't help at all.
Now I had something in mind.
My job now was to take one step at a time.
Of course, my goal wasn't anything that grand. I just wanted to live life to the fullest now.
And for that, I needed to make progress in life.
Not accept. Not settle anymore.
And not do anything that would cause me regret later.
Of course, I still have a long way to go to correct the existing ones.
It will be difficult, but it doesn't hurt to try. I've tried things for much less.
If it's going to be a joke, at least let it be mine.
.
.
.
The first thing I did the next morning was look for branches I could use as weapons.
Or at least something good enough to throw.
Of course, it wasn't easy. Nothing was. So that was nothing new.
I spent almost the entire morning simply looking for suitable branches, climbing up and down trees dozens of meters high. Not to mention how difficult it was because of my right hand.
Anyway...
"Going back to basics sucks. How did our ancestors do it?!"
If the branch is too thin, it breaks.
If it's too thick, it's useless.
Not to mention that, in my case, it has to be the ideal size and straight...
"Damn... This conversation isn't cool."
It doesn't even seem like I'm talking about branches.
Anyway, some were very promising but very curved. The aerodynamics scream.
I even tried to use them as throwing weapons, and it was at least something. Not promising, but not totally useless.
Their movements were interesting. Very elastic, changing direction slightly because of the curvature.
Of course, nothing absurd; with my strength, I wouldn't get very far, not to mention my lack of proficiency with my left hand, but to hit something stationary, it was definitely interesting.
So, I practiced a little. Enough to hit something, at least.
I think...
It took me a little longer to find a stone sharp enough to try to sharpen the tips of the branches suitable for improvised spears.
[Primata.]
I simply ignored that bitch's comment. She must have loved seeing me collapse yesterday.
Of course she did. Coming back with her comments only after that.
And I just ignored her.
I have better things to do.
After about two hours of sharpening my spears, they were usable. I tested the sharpness on some plants and thought it was enough.
They would break anyway.
"How I wish I could find that toothless cat now."
Jaguar kebab. Just the thought made my mouth water.
Feeling sorry for those animals is now costing me my hunger.
But it was strange anyway. Since when was this place so empty?
Of course, the Amazon was huge, so it wasn't really strange to see empty areas, or rather, the hunting grounds of predators, but apart from the toothless cat and that pig, I found nothing else.
No insects or birds. Nothing.
Empty trees.
Nothing in the bushes.
Under rocks or in old logs.
Nothing.
What was going on?
If even the insects were gone...
How was I going to feed myself?
.
.
.
Why?
Because I couldn't find anything alive in more than twenty kilometers...
I had been walking for hours, and nothing. No trace of any living thing in sight.
I entered dangerous trails.
Extremely dense forest.
I sank into the mangrove swamp I found along the way.
I swam in the rivers I found...
And the most I could find was algae.
It wasn't much, but I ate it anyway.
At least I was clean now...
.
.
.
Two days later.
Only two days later did I find animal tracks.
But they weren't just any tracks. The entire forest, for about thirty meters, had been trampled; only the trees were still standing.
All going in the same direction.
I dropped my makeshift support of vines with the spears on the ground and crouched down in the tracks.
Footprints from both predators and prey and traces of small drags piled up on the ground, growing in proportion the further I advanced.
No blood or signs of a struggle.
"What the hell is going on?"
And they weren't recent tracks.
I really wanted to go in the opposite direction now.
I really wanted to...
Something like this has never happened before, or at least been documented.
Five years since the appearance of the zones, rifts, awakenings, and constellations, but there hasn't been a single report of anything like this.
In other words, there's something that attracted all the animals...
Or something.
And I doubt that something so powerful could have been born here or settled here without attracting the attention of the rest of the world.
But if it is, I have to go anyway.
I have no doubt that there will be powerful awakenings there too.
So I continued walking cautiously, feeling the density of mana gradually increase...
Reaching an absurd level. Colossal...
My body trembling more and more in proportion to the ever-increasing size of the fauna. My breath almost suffocated.
I thought it was a zone for a moment, but it was totally different...
The mana was simply spreading in all directions, passing through me like the wind.
"What the hell is going on?!" I asked with difficulty. My voice clearly frightened, as I hid behind a tree...
The vegetation was growing before my eyes...
At an absurd speed.
Not only that, but the ground itself beneath my feet seemed to be...
Expanding?!
Not like an earthquake, but literally expanding...
My heart trembled when some tree trunks simply came out of the ground.
Not tree trunks... Following their direction...
A colossal spider!
Cold... I felt an unprecedented chill. My body shivered. It wasn't just the spider.
A titanic centipede was coiling around a tree of equal proportions... The tree was so colossal that it didn't even seem to be growing any further.
The same was true of all the other trees.
They were like mountains sprouting out of nowhere...
I had never felt so afraid in my life...
I was so small. So tiny.
Everything seemed close, but I was far away. Very far away.
I was just looking at everything out of the corner of my eye, trembling and crouching, feeling the ground expanding and the very tree I was hiding in slowly consuming my vision...
My heart sank... I was like an ant now.
Of course, even that perception was taken from me when I looked in another direction... It looked like a colossal volcano, but it wasn't...
Black ants the size of whales were coming in and out of there...
At some point, I started biting my nails without realizing it... Blood began to flow as I watched, noticing only when I fell face-first onto the ground because of the soil...
Then the answer came.
[It's the body of a constellation.]