The next morning.
He sat cross-legged on a clean slab of bluestone beside the stream, not far from the pool.
Holding a dagger in his hand, he plunged its blade deep into his thigh with a sharp stab.
He clenched his teeth as the corners of his eyes twitched uncontrollably. A low, muffled groan escaped his throat. Blood quickly seeped from the wound. Black flames surged in Merlin's left hand as he pulled out the dagger and pressed it against the wound.
The Calamity from the puncture wound was absorbed.
But the pain remained. Merlin parted his lips and breathed slowly, his face a little pale.
"Although absorbing Calamity can heal injuries, it can't make up for blood that's already been lost."
"As expected, no ability is perfect. And then there's the cost..."
Merlin looked down at his chest, abdomen, and arms, where patches of dried, dark-red blood and scars remained.
Every morning for the past few days, Merlin had come here before dawn to explore his Calamity Ability.
First, he could learn about pain through self-harm and build up Calamity Bullets.
Second, it let him train his resistance to physical pain.
Looking at his healed thigh, Merlin glanced down at the little fish and shrimp in the stream, drawn over by his blood.
The fish and shrimp, each about the size of his palm, looked incredibly plump.
He got up and went to the bank, picked up a one-meter-long slab of stone, and jumped into the water downstream. He used the stone to block a makeshift outlet that had been piled up there.
With the way out blocked, he had them trapped.
The water reached halfway up his calves.
His pupils shifted focus again and again as Merlin deftly felt around for fish in the water.
Before long, he'd caught a number of palm-sized fish and shrimp and tossed them onto the bank. There were twelve fish and nine large shrimp in all.
He was in luck today. He'd even caught a turtle as big as a human head.
Merlin rinsed the bluestone, stained with his blood, then sat on it and used his dagger to clean the fish, shrimp, and turtle he'd caught.
He arranged them neatly on the stone.
Once he was done, he opened the outlet. Soon, clear water swept the fish and shrimp guts downstream. Merlin took off the swim trunks he had left on and washed himself in the stream, where the water barely reached his calves.
Before long, he returned to the pool with the cleaned fish, shrimp, and turtle. He skewered them on bamboo sticks and set them to roast beside the fire.
"Are you done with your morning exercises?"
He'd been roasting them for only a few minutes when Yol arrived with a net bag made of crocodile hide, full of fruit. She washed it by the pool.
"Brother Merlin, look! What's this?"
Lami beamed as she proudly showed Merlin the five palm-sized eggs in her arms.
"We found a nest of snake eggs just now. They're still warm!"
Merlin raised his eyebrows and chuckled.
"Are you going to hatch these five snake eggs and keep them as pets, Lami?"
At that, Lami hurriedly shook her head and puffed out her cheeks.
"Of course not! I brought them back especially for you to roast and eat!"
She set the snake eggs on the ground, then picked up a bamboo tube and went to dig mud out of a pit beneath a tree.
Watching her, Merlin felt a little speechless. "Looks like Lami's reached the age when she likes playing in the mud."
Yol came over after washing the fruit, a gentle smile on her face. She handed him a red, pear-shaped fruit.
"Go on, eat it! If Lami hears you, she'll stop talking to you again."
Merlin took a crunchy bite. The fruit was crisp, sweet, and juicy. He spoke as he ate.
"It's fine. Give her five minutes at most, and she'll come talk to me again."
Yol watched Merlin with a smile.
"That's true. Lami's very sweet."
"What about me?" Lami came running over with the bamboo tube and asked curiously, "What are you two whispering about now?"
She scooped up a little water from the pool, mixed it into the dirt to soften it, then came over and coated the snake eggs with mud before placing them in the fire to roast.
Merlin smiled. "Yol was praising you!"
Lami grinned and raised her chin, looking proud. "What did she say? Come on, tell me to my face!"
Yol gave a helpless smile. This girl really was a social butterfly.
She had no choice but to praise Lami again.
Before long,
the fish and shrimp were cooked, and so were the snake eggs.
After they'd eaten their rather hearty breakfast, the three of them began exercising by the pool.
They started with Yoga to warm up, then moved on to basic physical training. After that, Merlin taught Yol and Lami fighting techniques, guiding them through the moves himself.
They learned how to use simple movements and the force of their bodies to strike with their fists, feet, and weapons, inflicting the greatest possible damage on an opponent.
Both of them were very attentive.
Equipped with [Lynx], Merlin gained the flexibility and agility it provided. After carefully exploring his body over the past few days, he'd gradually developed his own understanding of how to use the body's sinews and muscles to generate force.
This also gave him a vague understanding of a level of bodily coordination from the martial arts of his previous life, known as [Muscle as One].
The coordinated unity of static strength from the bones and sinews and dynamic strength from the muscles.
After all, feline predators like the lynx made extremely efficient use of their sinews, bones, and muscles.
They also embodied the principle of being as still as a maiden and as swift as a hare.
Learning from heaven and earth; learning from nature.
Human cultivation often took shape through imitating and learning from the natural world.
By equipping [Equipment], Merlin had gained some insight into this as well.
At noon, Merlin went hunting.
After a simple lunch and a nap, he continued his training.
Evening.
Yol was salting the roasted wild goat. She looked at Merlin with some concern.
"We're almost out of the salt we brought with us. Should we start using less?"
As she said this, her eyes gradually lit up. "I noticed the wild goats licking the rocks on that cliff. Could there be salt there?"
Merlin shook his head. "We have enough for about another week. After that, we'll leave.
"Life in the mountains is comfortable, but we're still human. Staying apart from everyone for too long won't be good for Lami's growth.
"And we can't spend our whole lives in these remote mountains. We're not wild people.
"Besides, Yol, you don't want to spend the rest of your life wearing animal skins, do you?
"By the time we leave, the attention we drew in Flevance should have died down."
Yol nodded silently. Truthfully, she was happy with their life here: carefree, working from sunrise to sunset.
She got to live with the people who mattered to her.
And she didn't have to face the schemes and betrayals of the outside world.
She was a woman who was easily content.
Still,
"Okay. I'll go wherever you say."
A gentle smile appeared on Yol's face. "As long as I can be with you both, it doesn't matter where we go."
It wasn't that Yol lacked a mind of her own. But after falling from heaven into hell in Flevance, then clawing her way back out, she'd developed an instinctive aversion to the outside world.
Merlin could vaguely guess at what she was thinking. He could sense her worry about the outside world, but he had no better solution.
He could only leave it all to time.
After all, time was the best medicine in the world.
Adapt—or die.
Those who couldn't adapt would be eliminated.
Lami watched the roasted wild goat over the fire, well-behaved and quiet. She didn't interrupt Merlin and Yol's conversation.
A precocious girl.
She knew when to speak and what to say.
And then,
once the two of them finished talking,
she simply took Yol's left hand in hers. When Yol glanced at her, Lami gave her a warm, radiant smile.
Yol's eyes softened as she smiled. "That's right! We can't keep trying to run away just because we're worried."
Not long after,
they finished the roasted goat and ate some sweet-and-sour fruit to cut the grease.
They drank Monkey Wine in their tree-hole home as Merlin told them a bedtime story.
After one more promise to tell it tomorrow night,
the three of them fell asleep.
With the door keeping the outside world at bay, Merlin slept reasonably well here at night.
The sun rose and set, then rose again.
In the blink of an eye, another week passed.
He put everything he had into his training every day. Merlin also noticed that whenever he hunted in the forest, he would sometimes enter a highly efficient state of focus.
Whenever he came out of that state of intense concentration, his Synchronization Value with [Lynx] and his own [Synchronization Value] would increase.
[6%→12%]
Unlike his Synchronization Value with the lynx, which had already reached 12%, his Synchronization Value with the Calamity Fruit was only 7%.
Nearly three days of training were needed to increase it by about 1%.
At that rate, it would probably take a year for his Synchronization Value with the Calamity Fruit to reach 100%.
Morning.
After breakfast,
Merlin sat cross-legged on a slab of bluestone beside the pool and looked at the Equipment Slot in front of him.
He'd been here for half a month, and he'd nearly figured out the two pieces of equipment in his Equipment Slot.
He looked down at his body and felt the power within him, far greater than before.
His black eyes were bright and alert. Every so often, a glimmer of dark flame flickered in their depths.
With the Calamity Fruit's power, and after days of practice, Merlin could now make the Black Flame appear anywhere, not just on his hands.
The Calamity Black Flame had no power to harm.
Even if it covered his whole body, it wouldn't burn off a single hair.
When one of the Calamity Fruit's effects took hold, however, it would manifest as black flames wrapping around the target's entire body.
And with his frequent, intense use of the ability on himself, Merlin gradually learned to direct the Black Flame to cover half his body through sheer force of will.
He'd also developed a strange new effect.
When Merlin activated the Calamity Black Flame through his eyes, he gained a strange Calamity Vision that let him glimpse the [Calamity] within his target.
He named this ability:
[Calamity Vision]
Eyes that could see the Calamity within living creatures.
At that moment, Yol came over from the treehouse, carrying a backpack and a suitcase. She stopped by the pool and called to Merlin.
"We've packed everything. Let's go!"
Merlin had told Yol and Lami the night before that they were leaving today.
So after breakfast, Yol and Lami had agreed to pack their things together, while Merlin was told to wait outside.
Before you continue