Darkness, cold.
"Slurp..."
The warm, wet sensation on his face roused Xia Nan from his brief unconsciousness.
He opened his eyes to a pair of ice-blue wolf eyes, filled with worry and flickering with the emotions of an intelligent being.
"Fanny..."
Gently pushing away the Winter Wolf licking his cheek, Xia Nan spoke in a daze.
But a second later, his last memories before losing consciousness surged into his mind.
The Phase Spider he had pursued until its death, the strange Goblins and spider eggs in the nest, and... that cluster of mushrooms growing in the corner! An intense sense of danger surged through him, instantly clearing the confusion from his eyes.
He instinctively tried to rise, only to feel intense pressure from below, accompanied by faint pain.
Looking down reflexively, he saw that his body was completely buried beneath stones and slabs of rock from the waist down.
Only his upper body could move freely.
In his previous life, not only would he, an office worker who rarely exercised, have been unable to free himself, but even athletes at the very pinnacle of human physical fitness would have had no chance. They could only remain where they were and wait for rescue. But things were different now. Every aspect of his physical capabilities except intelligence had long since reached a level that could be called "superhuman."
Maintaining the calm composure his considerable strength afforded him, he briefly checked his surroundings and determined that Fanny was the only other living creature present, with no enemies around.
Then Xia Nan began freeing himself.
Pushing his exceptional perception to its limit, he took only a few seconds to analyze the arrangement of the rocks piled over his lower body, determining which ones could be moved with relatively little risk, without triggering a