Chapter 2
Though he had suddenly gained a companion, Jade's flustered feelings soon faded.
What mattered right now was survival, so he focused on that first.
After leaving the house, Jade plucked the Gidren grass growing around him like weeds with practiced ease.
Gidren was a grass whose powder and sap erased the distinctive human scent, so no hunter living near the Great Forest could fail to know it.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s still better than using nothing.”
Jade rubbed Gidren grass over various parts of his body and set off.
The spirit named Sylph followed behind him with a bright, beaming smile.
Since he remembered that lesser wind spirits looked something like this, Jade called it a sylph as well.
It even nodded as if to say he was right.
“I heard lesser spirits have almost no sense of self. Though wind spirits themselves are supposed to be quite expressive.”
Fwoosh! Whoosh!
If Sylph had been able to make a sound, clear laughter would have rung out continuously.
That was how frantically Sylph flew around him.
What was strange, though, was that the spirit's appearance placed no particular burden on his body.
He remembered that mana was needed to summon a spirit, after all.
‘No, this doesn't make sense in the first place. I haven't even made a contract.’
Spirits did not need to form a contract in order to appear in the Middle World.
As beings close to nature, they could cross over to the Middle World at any time as long as a few conditions were met.
Likewise, spirits and fairies of the Middle World could cross into the Spirit Realm if they fulfilled certain special conditions.
The strange thing was that, no matter how he thought about it, this situation did not seem to satisfy those conditions.
‘Still, it can't hurt. Maybe my affinity with spirits is exceptionally high.’
The original owner of the body, who had lived as a hunter since childhood, had never seen a spirit even once.
There was a legend that the fairyfolk lived in this place, the Great Forest, also known as the Monster Forest, but to Jade, it had been a story from another world.
However, if his soul had truly switched places, it made a certain amount of sense.
Jade himself had no affinity with spirits at all, but the soul that had come from Earth might be different.
‘Enough thinking about that. For now, I need to get as far away from the house as possible.’
Just as on Earth, strength was essential for survival on the continent of Arphedia.
Especially since its civilization was similar to that of the Middle Ages, he absolutely needed to possess strength.
And to gain that strength, he first had to survive.
‘At least I have something I can rely on. And I have this unexpected spirit, too.’
Recalling the ability he had possessed since his time on Earth, Jade muttered to himself.
It put a strain on his body, but it was a fairly useful ability.
“Huh?”
As he moved while using the rising sun to determine his direction, Sylph, who had been smiling brightly, tugged on his hair.
It shook its head with a firm expression, as if insisting that he must not go that way.
“You’re saying I shouldn’t go?”
Nod, nod!
“Why?”
Swish.
In response to Jade's question, Sylph changed its form.
It had transformed into a tiny wolf.
“There are wolves?”
Nod!
“Then we’ll go around them. There’s no way a wolf would be alone.”
Just as on Earth, wolves here were pack animals as well.
Nor should wolves be taken lightly.
Even if this was the outskirts, it was still a place properly known as the Great Forest.
If a creature had established its own territory there, there had to be a reason for it.
‘This body may be fairly well-trained, but it’s still just an ordinary hunter’s body. It hasn’t learned a mana cultivation method.’
The muscles he could feel throughout his body told him that its original owner had trained diligently.
But at this level, he might manage one or two wolves, while five or six would be completely beyond him.
Unless he had set up a trap, encountering them while traveling as he was now would clearly put him at a disadvantage.
In that case, he had to avoid them.
‘Survival comes first. As long as I’m alive, I can do anything.’
He also needed to find out why he had come here, and if he could return, he wanted to go back.
Though his memories of Earth were not exactly pleasant.
‘I don’t have a family, but I do have friends who are like family.’
What made it even more unjust was that he had been discharged from the military less than half a year ago.
That was why Jade absolutely wanted to return to Earth.
Life was difficult there too, but at least on Earth, his life was not threatened by monsters like this.
‘And there’s the House of Baron Leon, too.’
Jade naturally followed the path Sylph led him along.
He had also grown up near the Great Forest since childhood, so he knew the area fairly well.
But knowing the paths and being able to find a safe path were two different things.
So he moved on, trusting Sylph.
“You want me to trust only you?”
Bang, bang!
Apparently noticing that Jade still did not fully trust it, Sylph pounded its tiny chest with its hand.
As if to say that it could be trusted.
But the more Sylph acted that way, the stranger Jade felt.
Although his memories were fragmentary, nowhere in them had he heard of a lesser spirit capable of communicating this well.
‘There’s still a lot I don’t know. It’s not as if Jade knew everything either.’
Although he could read another person's memories, the ability was not perfect.
The one difference from when he had been on Earth was that the memories were exceptionally clear.
‘The backlash isn’t that severe either, surprisingly. Is it because the body is different?’
On Earth, the ability had activated whenever it pleased, yet the backlash had been considerable.
Every time he peeked into a memory, his head had felt as if it were splitting apart, but now the pain was bearable.
Jade converted that information into data.
He thought he needed to properly understand his ability in order to improve his chances of survival.
Swish!
Following Sylph's guidance, Jade repeated the process of walking and stopping.
But he never rested for long.
Thinking that he needed to get as far from the house as possible, Jade often crossed streams or walked upstream.
It was a bit extreme, but he wanted to erase his trail as much as possible, just in case.
“I think it’s about time we started looking for a hideout.”
He dealt with his meals by chewing on the jerky he had prepared in advance.
He had even spared time that could have been used for rest in order to keep moving.
After traveling well past noon, Jade opened his mouth.
Since night came early in forests as well as in the mountains, he needed to find a hideout ahead of time.
Bang, bang!
Sylph pounded its chest again, as if telling him to trust only it.
As if it knew of a place already.
But Jade no longer questioned its behavior.
Since he had not encountered a single wild beast, let alone a monster, along the way, he trusted Sylph a little more than he had at first.
“It’s a cave.”
Sylph flew this way and that, then led Jade along with an excited expression, apparently having found a satisfactory place.
Before long, Jade arrived at a cave large enough for a bear to enter and quickly searched its interior.
Yet, surprisingly, the cave hidden among the dense undergrowth showed no traces of another beast.
“There weren’t any signs of monsters or wild beasts around it, either.”
Jade had surveyed the surroundings with his distinctive sharp eye before entering.
On Earth, he had been nothing more than an utterly ordinary unemployed reservist and orphan, but here, Jade was a fairly capable hunter.
The Great Forest was a place where surviving would be difficult even in the outskirts if one lacked ability.
The fact that its original owner had survived there for so long meant he had possessed sufficient skill.
Tap, tap.
“You found a good place. Thanks, Sylph.”
Flap-flap-flap!
Sylph flew around frantically, flapping wings as cute as its small body.
It was wildly delighted by Jade's praise.
After watching it for a moment, Jade set down the backpack he had been carrying and went back outside the cave.
He wanted to gather firewood and see if there was anything he could hunt.
“Hmm.”
He still had plenty of jerky, but there was no harm in having more food.
Since he would have to keep moving until he found a safe hideout, self-sufficiency was essential.
He also took the opportunity to inspect the surroundings once more.
Both wild beasts and monsters had firmly established territories, so Jade carried a small bow and a short spear as he carefully explored the area.
‘The monsters mainly found in the outskirts of the Great Forest are small species such as kobolds, goblins, and gnolls. There are plenty of different wild beasts, too.’
Wild beasts could not be underestimated, because sabertooth tigers and giant black bears possessed combat abilities no inferior to an ogre's.
That was why he could not let his guard down from the moment he entered the Great Forest.
Tap.
He was scanning the surroundings even more tensely than when he had been traveling when Sylph touched his shoulder and pointed somewhere.
A rabbit leisurely nibbling on grass came into view.
It was a pure-white rabbit, utterly at odds with the Great Forest's infamous reputation.
“Thanks.”
The plump rabbit kept twitching its ears as it nibbled on the grass.
Watching it, Jade nocked an arrow to his small bow.
Of course, he did not expect to hit it with his first shot.
The body might have been accustomed to using a bow, but Jade was not.
Sizzle, sizzle.
After somehow succeeding in the hunt, Jade lit a fire inside the cave after several trials and errors and roasted the rabbit whole.
Since he had lived an ordinary life on Earth from birth until his death, butchering a rabbit had not been easy.
But it was something he would have to keep doing, so Jade clumsily removed the head and entrails before roasting the rabbit whole over the campfire.
“I really never expected to be living in the wilderness like this……”
Oil dripped from the rabbit meat roasting on a skewer at a suitable height.
But Jade's gaze was fixed on empty air.
Though it had been nearly a day since he opened his eyes, he still could not believe this reality.
He did not even know why this had happened.
Tap, tap.
At Jade's bewildered muttering, Sylph lightly tapped his shoulder as if to comfort him.
As if to say that he was not alone, at least.
Unfortunately, the gesture did not comfort him at all.
Swish.
Instead, something else appeared.
A fire lizard suddenly appeared from within the flames.
“Gah!”
Startled by the fire lizard's sudden appearance without any warning, Jade's previously blank face changed in surprise.
Meanwhile, Sylph stared at the fire lizard with a prim expression.
For some reason, it looked distinctly displeased.
Hiss!
Unlike the two of them, the fire lizard that had appeared out of nowhere approached Jade with an innocent smile despite its prickly first impression.
Then it rubbed its head against Jade's leg in an extremely friendly manner.
Yet despite having a body made of fire, it did not feel hot at all.
Instead, it felt warm and comfortable.
Thump!
But the fire lizard's display of affection did not last long.
Sylph had flown over in an instant and sent the fire lizard flying with what looked like a flying side kick.
The fire lizard blinked both eyes with a bewildered expression.
“Aren’t you both lesser spirits?”
Even without relying on Jade's memories, it was easy to recognize the creature because it looked so much like the salamanders in the web novels he had read countless times on Earth.
What puzzled him was that, although both were identical lesser spirits, the salamander strangely seemed to be the submissive one.
According to their known temperaments, the salamander should have been the fiercer of the two.
Hiss!
While Jade was absorbed in his questions, Sylph flew straight back to him.
It stopped right in front of his face, then began moving its mouth.
“Eya?”
Shake, shake!