Limit Break

Limit Break

In the end, Shien didn't choose to turn back and leave.

To avoid sleeping out in the wild, surrounded by monsters, Shien chose to endure the stench.

If anything, the smell here was so pungent that it should mask his own scent, preventing any monsters from tracking him down.

Ever since entering the cave, Shien kept his focus on the various monster reactions fed into his mind by the Enemy Perception skill, ensuring he could detect any situation where a monster might come calling.

However, as he stared and stared—

"Gurgle~~~"

Without any surprise, Shien's stomach began to roar, draining him of all his strength.

"Come to think of it, I haven't eaten a single thing all day."

Although he had gulped down plenty of water when he encountered a small stream in the forest, aside from that, Shien hadn't let anything else pass his lips today.

"I'll starve to death if this keeps up."

He had to find something to eat.

But in a place like this, what could he possibly eat?

"Don't tell me I have to go out and hunt? Compete for survival against monsters in the middle of the night?"

The mere thought made Shien feel terrible.

The next second, Shien turned his head in silence to look to the side.

There, the corpse of the Demon Dog still lay.

Shien stared fixedly at the Demon Dog's carcass. After going through countless complex psychological shifts, he let out a long, heavy sigh.

"This start to my second life is truly ridiculous!"

After dropping that line, Shien resigned himself to his fate, picked up the Holy Sword, and walked over to the Demon Dog to carve off chunks of meat.

To fill his stomach, now wasn't the time to be picky.

"Besides, the Holy Sword can grant immunity to negative status effects, so I don't have to worry about poison."

Shien had decided to go all out.

Of course, eating it raw was impossible; he would never eat monster meat raw in this life.

To roast the meat he had worked so hard to get, Shien stepped out of the cave, gathered some dry branches from the surrounding thickets, piled them up, and skewered the monster meat.

As for the fire, he didn't need to worry about that at all.

Before it died, the Demon Dog had unleashed a fierce blaze that ignited the surrounding weeds, and those weeds were still smoldering.

Shien scavenged from the site, successfully lit a campfire, roasted the Demon Dog's meat, and put it into his mouth.

"This tastes awful."

Shien's expression turned bitter; it was like chewing wax.

But with no salt, no soy sauce, and absolutely no seasonings, it seemed only natural that the roasted meat would taste terrible.

Still, chewing wax was better than eating dirt, so Shien eventually filled his stomach until he was completely full.

Afterward, Shien extinguished the campfire, buried the fire pit and the Demon Dog's remains with sand, and returned to the cave to find a comfortable spot to lie down.

Perhaps because this was the Demon Dog's lair, the temperature wasn't low; it was actually a bit stuffy, which kept Shien from freezing.

Shien lay there with the Holy Sword by his side, looking out at the night sky beyond the cave.

There seemed to be no moon tonight, yet countless stars adorned the darkness.

Watching the night sky, where each brilliant star twinkled, the heart Shien had kept taut all day finally relaxed a little.

"This world isn't entirely without merit."

At the very least, this night view was something he probably couldn't see in his previous life, right?

Even though Shien had completely forgotten his past life, with almost all memories aside from common sense lost, he still remembered that in the big cities of his previous life, you couldn't really see the stars anymore.

"And I seem to have been an ordinary person in my past life. I really don't know why the Goddess would summon a guy like me to be a Hero."

Could it be because he could cheat?

But weren't those cheats given by the Goddess?

Shien didn't understand.

"Come to think of it, I don't even know the name of that Goddess."

Recalling the beautiful Goddess who, both in fact and appearance, seemed not of this world, Shien couldn't help but fall into deep thought.

Shortly after, Shien drifted off to sleep.

The next day, waking from his slumber, Shien left the cave to continue searching for a path out of this forest.

To avoid losing his way again, Shien realized that what must happen would happen, so he stopped changing directions to avoid monsters and began to actively head toward the locations of various creatures.

Thanks to this, Shien encountered many, many monsters.

He met a Demon Boar capable of emitting poisonous miasma.

He met a Black Snake that could transform the surrounding terrain into a swamp.

He even encountered packs of monsters, suffering through wave after wave of encirclement and slaughter.

These repeated encounters meant that even with the Holy Sword in hand, Shien faced several crises.

However, while encountering crises, Shien also gained various skills as a blessing in disguise.

When eroded by the poison gas emitted by the Demon Boar, Shien acquired Abnormal Status Resistance.

When trapped in the swamp and nearly suffocated to death, Shien acquired Immortality.

When surrounded by a pack of monsters, Shien was even careless enough to have his Holy Sword knocked away, but in the end, he acquired Limit Break.

Abnormal Status Resistance

skill.

resistance to abnormal status effects.

Immortality

skill.

self-recovery ability and the effectiveness of recovery-type abilities.

a certain level of resistance to instant-death attacks and abilities.

unable to maintain vital signs, consumes magic to forcibly sustain them.

Limit Break

skill.

directly on the level of life.

used, amplifies and strengthens all abilities; the effect is determined by the amount of magic consumed and the level of the skill.

Each of these skills was incredibly useful.

In particular, the Immortality and Limit Break skills—one allowed Shien to forcibly maintain his vital signs even if completely submerged in a swamp, meaning he wouldn't die even if he couldn't breathe, making it the ultimate life-saving skill; the other was the first active skill Shien obtained, which, when used, granted him a superhuman body, allowing him to jump to the top of a ten-meter-tall tree in a single leap, which was quite astonishing.

It was the emergence of this skill that made Shien feel a power he had never felt before for the first time.

That power was magic.

It seemed to be the power used to activate skills and magic.

By consuming this power, Shien could use active skills like Limit Break and also sustain passive skills that required magic consumption, like Immortality; it was truly a dream-like power.

And through the use of magic, Shien also acquired the skills Magic Guidance and Magic Recovery.

Magic Guidance

skill.

increases magic.

increases the effectiveness of magic.

Magic Recovery

skill.

recovers consumed magic.

The appearance of these two skills finally gave Shien the feeling that he was indeed different.

Only after being able to sense magic and utilize it did Shien feel that he had truly arrived in a world of swords and magic.

This finally made Shien feel a bit of anticipation.

"I wonder if I can use magic?"

Holding onto this anticipation, Shien traveled on without further incident, defeated quite a few monsters, completely adapted to combat, and gradually settled into this forest.