I held a large chunk of roasted meat over the fading coals, slowly turning it in my hands while grease hissed into the embers below.
Pork.
Well… something close enough to pork.
And yes, I had learned my lesson by now.
The flesh of creatures in this world could withstand absurd amounts of heat without properly cooking through, so I took my time with it carefully. Thoroughly.
This might very well end up being my last proper meal after all.
Starting tomorrow, the asura creatures would begin making contact.
The fastest ones would probably arrive around sunrise.
At least that was what my instincts told me.
Now… I didn't exactly have proof.
But my instincts had taught me something important throughout my life.
Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
"…pretty sure that's an original quote by me."
I frowned slightly afterward.
"At least… I think it is."
That thought lingered longer than it should have.
Because the truth was…
I couldn't remember anymore.
Not properly.
Ever since arriving here—assuming this truly was the future of my world—my memories had become strange.
At first I thought stress and survival were simply overwhelming everything else. But slowly, quietly, I began realizing the problem ran much deeper.
I wasn't failing to recall memories one at a time.
I was losing access to all of them.
The memories themselves did not feel destroyed. Somewhere deep inside me, I could still vaguely sense their existence.
But every path leading toward them had been erased.
As someone painfully aware of my own thoughts, noticing changes in my mind came naturally to me.
Which was why I realized very early on that something inside me was wrong.
I just couldn't identify what.
How do you notice something missing when you no longer remember what was taken?
That was the terrifying part.
The more time passed, the easier it became to simply live in the present. Even in this godforsaken situation, my mind felt… lighter somehow.
Quieter.
I had never felt this close to my own inner voice before.
At first, I thought it was because survival stripped away unnecessary thoughts.
But eventually I understood the truth.
The weight people carried through memories… regrets, attachments, pain, love, guilt…
That weight was disappearing from me.
And I was adapting to the loss far too well.
That was what terrified me most.
Because there were things I should never be able to forget.
No matter how painful they were.
Yet every time I forced myself to remember, the memories only became blurrier… distant in a way that felt unnatural.
Like they no longer belonged to me.
"…I can't even remember my mother's name anymore."
The words escaped quietly into the dark forest.
My grip around the meat tightened slightly.
"I think… I had a brother?"
Nothing came after that thought.
No face.
No voice.
No warmth.
I could not remember my father.
My friends.
Anything.
Only my own name remained.
Dharma.
That was all.
Yet strangely, not everything had disappeared.
I could still speak normally.
Common knowledge remained intact.
Instincts remained.
Skills remained.
But the actual life I had lived…
The people I knew…
They were gone.
And the worst part?
I still felt fine.
Shouldn't losing your entire past destroy you?
Shouldn't I feel hollow?
Broken?
Yet even after losing my memories, something fundamental inside me remained untouched.
My values.
My standards.
The invisible sense separating right from wrong.
It did not speak to me directly.
I simply felt it.
Even without memories supporting my ego… I still felt human.
At least…
I wanted that to be true.
"…agh, this really isn't the right time to spiral into insanity."
I tore another bite from the meat and forced myself to focus.
Thinking about survival was far more useful right now.
And unfortunately…
I could not see any way of surviving what was coming unless I learned how to fight with the tiger instead of beside it.
This was going to become a battle of endurance.
And Tiger-san was absolutely terrible at endurance.
Which meant I needed to do something about it.
…
I had already been thinking about a possible solution for a while now.
Honestly, I even had a rough idea of how to approach it.
The problem was that I lacked the courage to actually attempt it.
Why?
Because my partner here was definitely not going to appreciate the process.
Worst case scenario, I would probably have to attempt it while actively fighting the tiger.
"…ah hell, I really don't want to do this."
The first thing I needed was to properly understand the tiger's energy.
Simply sensing it externally with my atma would not be enough anymore. I needed deeper contact.
I needed to absorb a fragment of its life force into my soul.
And no, nobody had ever told me that I could only absorb asura energy.
Life force was still energy.
Which meant that if I successfully established a link, the tiger's energy should theoretically behave no differently.
Of course…
That also meant the tiger would probably attempt to remove my head the moment I started.
A troublesome detail.
And currently, I did not possess enough atma to maintain a strong vajra field for very long. The meat had nourished me somewhat and stabilized my strained life force, but nowhere near enough to sustain a prolonged fight.
Which meant I needed more energy first.
Asura energy.
And that meant surviving the first wave tomorrow with essentially no real plan.
"…great."
I just hoped nothing comparable to the fox or the snake appeared among them.
The second step would come afterward.
If my atma successfully understood the "structure" of the tiger's life force, then theoretically I should be able to guide my own atma into its body without causing harm.
From there…
I could attempt to establish a direct connection between our souls.
Only this time, the energy flow would move from me into the tiger instead of the other way around.
Honestly, the entire idea sounded unbelievably stupid.
There was no guarantee any of this would even work.
And I only had one real attempt.
One mistake could easily result in me dying…
Or worse.
Killing the tiger.
Because forcing foreign energy into an already complete and stable living system would most likely disrupt it far more than help it.
Still, I could not refine the plan further without first understanding the tiger's energy on a deeper level.
At the very least, I needed a proper feel for it.
"…well, if I survive tomorrow, at least I have something to look forward to."
We started moving again long before sunrise touched the sky.
Cold wind drifted through the forest, carrying the scent of distant rain.
And strangely…
I could feel the sky.
The clouds themselves carried power.
Not atma exactly… something broader.
I should not have been able to sense something that distant, yet somehow I could still feel faint pressure shifting high above us.
It was going to rain today.
I was certain of it.
No grand signs.
No mystical revelation.
I just knew.
Ignoring that feeling for now, I focused my attention back toward the tiger walking ahead of me.
My senses remained fixed entirely on its energy while I continued observing it through my atma.
No matter how closely I examined it, the tiger's energy felt strangely natural.
Not passive like trees or stone.
More dynamic.
Denser.
Wild.
Yet still deeply connected to the world around it.
And unique.
That was another thing I had realized recently.
Nothing in nature truly repeated itself.
Every living thing carried its own distinct energy pattern.
Even two rocks that appeared identical possessed completely different internal structures when observed through atma.
There were no true copies in nature.
The same principle applied to asura energy.
Chaotic as it was, the energy still possessed order.
Just not the harmonious order found in nature.
No…
Its structure felt wrong.
Like recurring fractures between reality and expectation.
Dissonance made manifest.
I still did not fully understand it.
But after carrying that twisted energy inside my body for this long…
I had undeniably grown closer to it.
And deep down, I knew nothing good would come from that.
Ever since arriving here, the very first thing I did to survive was absorb asura energy into my body.
And I had continued doing it ever since.
The loss of memory…
It might be connected.
If I managed to escape this forest alive, I planned to stop absorbing that energy entirely unless absolutely necessary.
Because something about all of this felt deeply, fundamentally wrong.
My thoughts halted suddenly.
The hornbill had not appeared once today.
Which itself was a problem.
Yesterday it remained above us constantly.
Watching.
Tracking.
Yet now…
Nothing.
Had it decided we were no longer attempting escape after slowing down?
Maybe.
Or maybe something else had changed entirely.
Either way…
My instincts were screaming.
Everything was about to go wrong.
I could feel it in my bones.