Chapter 234: The Jungles of Rosemount

"It's definitely not ideal," Omilaena said. "The thugs weren't wearing any kind of insignia?"

Kai shook his head. "If you don't see anything on the items I have here, it was eaten."

"Probably just a gang, not a more significant group. This isn't catastrophic, just... not ideal."

He'd waited outside the city, going through his familiar exercise routine while alert for an attack. Omilaena had been the first one to arrive, wondering what had gone wrong when he didn't come back on time. Apparently Zae Zin Nim had been even more eager to go charging into the city and only reluctantly restrained herself out of caution.

At least the wait and Omilaena's cautious approach had confirmed that he wasn't still being tailed. People died fairly frequently in the bad end of the city, so his fight hadn't caused any waves. Her estimate was that the fact that their attack team just disappeared would make the gang both more curious and more apprehensive about taking any actions.

"So what do we do now?" Kai asked. "Did I screw this up for us?"

"Honestly, I think we could take the whole gang. Might even be rewarded for it." Omilaena sighed and made a gesture of futility. "But this is exactly the sort of thing we shouldn't do, if we're trying to keep a low profile. At least since you got out and didn't lead anyone to us, we should have good options, if you're willing to rough it."

"When have I done anything else? But I'm not sure what you mean."

"I didn't make progress on my own goals today, but I did learn something useful to you. We're just going to use it sooner than I expected. Here, come this way. Zae Zin Nim can meet you later with some of the stuff you'll need out here. Let me show you first."

He followed her away from the outskirts of Roseport, into the depths of the continent. To the east of the city there was a large, well-paved road that seemed to receive a lot of traffic. Smaller villages spread from it as the city sprawled south... but it didn't sprawl north. The jungle didn't seem denser here than it was in other places, so he wasn't sure quite why.

"You haven't figured it out?" Omilaena asked when she saw him looking around the jungle. "Here's a hint: it isn't that people can't settle this part, it's that they don't want to."

"Oh." When he sensed more carefully, he realized that while the overriding flow of chakra from the land was constant, mana and qi were dwindling. "It's an area with limited energy, by Rosemount standards?"

"Exactly. The chakra here is strong, but not strong enough to make up for what it's lacking, so people move out and monsters move in. It's a perfect place for you to adjust to chakra, plus maybe do some monster hunting. Assuming you're careful, you should be able to survive out here."

"And meanwhile you and Zae Zin Nim can make progress in the city. Makes sense."

"You're giving up the bath and the luxury and our lovely company for a while, but-"

"But I deserve it, I know."

Omilaena put a hand on his shoulder, for once not seductively. "That wasn't what I meant, Kai. The strong eat the weak on Rosemount. If it hadn't been this, someone else would have run into trouble. You did about as well as you could, it's just bad luck that you're the one who will have to suffer through the consequences."

"I... thanks." Kai nodded to her, probably too curtly, and she withdrew her hand.

She gave him more information about the jungle region and they set up plans to meet periodically. Maybe he was just trying to convince himself, but Kai could see the upsides. No more extremely awkward times at the inn, and this way he could focus on his training. He trusted the two of them to help him get what he needed from civilization, which freed him to take as much as he could from the wilds.

Even though this was presumably one of Rosemount's least dangerous jungles, he couldn't relax. Within the first hour he ran into a pack of monstrous monkeys, not so different from those he'd been able to kill easily even as a novice hunter. But these had been soaked in potent chakra, so they were more of a threat. They hurled pointed seeds and rocks hard enough to bruise, and when one got close and managed to bite him, it left a nasty wound that would have been trouble if not for Behemoth's Heart.

The monkeys weren't powerful enough to satisfy his new hunger, but he ate the entire pack and managed to preserve some of their essence. If he kept this up, maybe he would finally build up enough monsters to do further experimentation. Tracking down the most powerful monsters had worked for him in Krysal, but it meant that he couldn't take any destructive risks when it came time to work with his abilities.

At the end of that day Zae Zin Nim found him at the site and handed over various supplies, in addition to some qi pills and a healing potion that she claimed had been lying around but he was fairly sure that she had actually purchased for him. He was grateful for most of the supplies, particularly the fire and water stones, not to mention a cleaning stone that would keep him from smelling too rank.

He declined to take the magic tent, however. In a jungle he barely knew, it wouldn't offer much protection and might get torn apart. Instead he went back to relying on old skills he hadn't used in years, including some he'd trained before he'd even awakened his Class.

Surviving out in the jungle was oddly nostalgic, despite the unfamiliar environment. It reminded him of the old survival trips Gunjin had taken his orphans on, teaching them all kinds of skills they might need. Back then he'd been sure that he'd come of age and uncover a grand Class that would define the rest of his life, so he needed to prepare every possible skill in order to prepare for what fate would grant him.

Well, that had ultimately defined his life, just not in the way he'd expected. Now he had very different skills than he'd anticipated, and he was maybe even a different person, but he could still use these old skills. Even though he barely needed weapons anymore, he still fashioned some spears and set up a few pit traps, just to confirm the principles would work in a foreign jungle. As he regained his confidence, living in the jungle was almost relaxing.

The first night, he was nearly suffocated to death by living vines.

They'd been completely motionless during the day and he'd checked them enough he thought they were just chakra-dense plants. When they crept around him, they moved so slowly that his instincts hadn't immediately woken him. Then his hunger kicked in and he jerked awake, thrashing against the vines that sprang around him, trying to drain his strength.

Tyrant's Claw and Isulfr's Bite proved more than equal to them. Clearly the vines were ambush predators, subtle but not capable of dealing with his destructive force. Once he'd destroyed or eaten a significant number of them, the others retreated.

Kai sat in the mess of his camp, too alert to sleep. The fibrous taste of the vines was still thick in his mouth, which made him reflect on the fundamental hunger. Despite all the trappings of a carnivore, the hunger wasn't specifically interested in meat. It seemed to be hungry for everything, which he reflected was actually another strange aspect of it. Outside of the worst starvation, people usually hungered for something. Hunger was an urge that could be satisfied. Yet his hunger seemed to have no inclinations and no bottom, just an endless desire for more.

Where had that hunger ultimately come from? Monstrous Hunger had been in his soul from the earliest time he could see those abilities, but he didn't think it could have been there from the beginning. If he'd been born with it, surely it would have emerged earlier. Yet he couldn't pin it to any specific event, not like his other early abilities.

Though he could still see his abilities as statues within the island of his soul, Kai had thought he'd grown beyond that visualization. Now, in the middle of the dark and strange jungle, he returned to it and stood on the dark shores.

The island was far more filled with statues this time, so many monsters he'd eaten scattered as statues of different sizes. Those he actually held active stood in a circle around the center of the island. It seemed like there was just black sand there, and yet when he approached, he felt as though something was trembling...

Surely he couldn't be afraid or unwilling to accept himself. Hadn't he embraced his whole self as a unified being long ago in order to advance? So he forced himself to dig, seeking the vicious presence he'd felt in the center so long ago.

It seemed to rush at him, roaring in endless hunger, but the sensation vanished a moment later. For just a moment, Kai thought he saw a new statue in the center: himself. Just himself, standing on a dark plinth. That vision of him had chaotic hair and wild eyes, but it wasn't fundamentally different.

When the image vanished a moment later, Kai drifted out of his internal vision, suddenly disaffected. So the Monstrous Hunger in his soul was just himself? That almost seemed like it was the same lesson: he wasn't a human that had harnessed some monster essence, he had abandoned much of his human soul to become a sort of monster himself.

That couldn't have been the case from the beginning or every single adult would have identified it - he probably would have been killed in the crib. And after being rejected by fate so many times, Kai would have been dissatisfied if that first power had been granted to him by destiny. Yet he didn't really have an answer, or at least not a satisfying one.

Maybe on some level he'd chosen to become a monster, despite the fact that his entire life had been built around the mission of saving his home from the monster incursions. Kai sat in the darkness and wondered what that meant.