The Book of Truth

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In a forest clearing, Donald held an iron sword and cautiously made his way forward.

In a dangerous forest, human senses were no match for the naturally keen senses of wild beasts, let alone those of magical beasts with special abilities. If he didn't stay on his guard, a magical beast might leap out from somewhere ahead and take his life.

Looking down at the tear the thorns beside his feet had made in the leg of his trousers, Donald cursed inwardly. Damn this forest! Damn these magical beasts!

These were his only trousers without a hole. As the heir to a noble family, appearing before others in patched clothes would cost him every last bit of dignity. Even if he made it big someday, he would never escape the shame of today.

Although Donald was now destitute and didn't care a whit for the rules of the nobility, his pride still lurked in his subconscious, making him all the more determined to pursue wealth and power.

He consoled himself, As long as I manage to hunt a magical beast and get its core this time, I'll have everything I want. They're only trousers. Then I'll be able to have the most splendid formal clothes and hunting gear made to order!

With that thought, Donald kept watch on his surroundings and ventured deeper into the forest, one step at a time.

After driving off several groups of small animals out foraging, Donald finally spotted signs of a magical beast near a ditch downstream from a mountain stream.

Magical beasts were still beasts; they needed food and water. He couldn't take on carnivorous magical beasts just yet, but if this was a herbivore with little offensive power, he had a good chance of bringing it down!

"Talk about luck! I can't believe I've spotted Horned Deer here!"

From the direction of the shrubs on the other side of the stream, Donald, who had been keeping a close eye on the area, soon spotted a group of moving figures. They seemed to be heading for the stream to drink, so he held his breath and waited patiently.

The Horned Deer Beast was one of the most common herbivorous magical beasts in this world, though it usually lived in forest regions bordering grasslands. Green Cloak Forest extended from the Cloud-Rising Mountains, and there wasn't a trace of grassland for hundreds of miles around. So finding a herbivorous magical beast with little offensive power on the forest's outskirts was a stroke of luck for Donald. Compared to the small, nimble magical beasts commonly found in the area, the huge Horned Deer made an excellent target.

The herbivorous beasts known in this world as Wild Deer usually had no antlers. They bred prolifically and lived in large numbers, providing plenty of food for carnivorous beasts and some low-level magical beasts. Even humans raised a few, though they were nowhere near as common as cattle and sheep.

This world was filled with elemental energy. Many low-level magical beasts had evolved from ordinary beasts over thousands or even tens of thousands of years, while stronger mid- and high-level magical beasts usually inherited their power through their bloodlines. Given the enormous Wild Deer population, the odds of some evolving into Horned Deer, the lowest-rank, first-level magical beasts, were quite high. That was why Horned Deer were among the most common low-level magical beasts.

Horned Deer had evolved from the weak Wild Deer, an herbivore at the bottom of the food chain that lacked any real offensive power and could only flee when danger struck. So apart from the fierce-looking horns on their heads, Horned Deer had no other means of attack.

Even their horns were merely for show. Given their timid, cowardly nature, when danger threatened, they had no thought beyond fleeing at a run, just like their close relatives, the Wild Deer. As low-level magical beasts, they could control a little wind elemental energy to propel themselves, allowing them to flee faster than unevolved Wild Deer.

So if you wanted to hunt Horned Deer without being faster than them, you had to rely on traps and tools. Experienced hunters most often used thrown javelins and skillfully wielded bows.

The hardwood bow on Donald's back was the trump card he had prepared!

A meal's worth of time passed, but the water's edge remained quiet, and Donald began to grow anxious. He wasn't a veteran hunter who had spent years roaming the mountains and forests, and he lacked the patience. Nor was he an experienced, powerful ranger or archer. When it came to hunting, he was simply a rather clumsy beginner.

This was Donald's third time entering Green Cloak Forest. His goal was to hunt low-level magical beasts and obtain the cores inside them.

For certain reasons, he urgently needed a magical beast core for an experiment. Unfortunately, he had received only some basic swordsman training, and he wasn't particularly strong. Armed with nothing but a family heirloom iron sword, he had come back empty-handed on his first two attempts.

On his previous trip, he hadn't encountered a single magical beast. The outskirts of Green Cloak Forest were frequented year-round by visiting Adventurers and nearby hunters, driving even the somewhat intelligent magical beasts deeper into the forest. So spotting one near the outskirts required a great deal of luck.

That was why Donald had been forced to venture farther into the dangerous forest. This time he had encountered a magical beast, but it was a Long-tailed Demon Ape he couldn't handle. Although it was a low-level magical beast, its third-level strength made it one of the most powerful among them. Worse still, it was a pack animal. Donald had gained nothing and had nearly been put in danger. If Long-tailed Demon Apes hadn't generally eaten wild fruit and tender leaves, and had little interest in hunting large animals, he would have been left in the forest after they toyed with him and returned to their den.

That desperate flight and his experience of coming back to life after dying had given Donald a thorough understanding of just how dangerous this world was.

At the time, Donald had been struggling to make ends meet. Without telling his butler, who had gone out to work, he had ventured alone into Green Cloak Forest to hunt low-level magical beasts and sell them for money. But Donald had no hunting experience and had received only a little basic knight training as a boy. As soon as he entered the forest, he had blundered into an area near its depths.

At that time, the Book of Truth, carrying a soul from another world, had landed in a forest on the edge of a mountain range on a vast continent in this world. By an extreme coincidence, it had crushed a native creature to death.

That creature was a mid-level magical beast, the Gale Wolf King, which had killed the young Donald of this world.

After the new wolf king defeated it and drove it from the pack, leaving it a lone wolf, it could only roam into the outskirts of Green Cloak Forest, where low-level magical beasts lived. Hungry, it encountered a human boy who had come to hunt in the forest. As the former wolf king, how could it pass up such a delicious meal? A few lunges were all it took to tear through the boy's carotid artery.

Just as the Magic Wolf was about to carry its prey back to its temporary den to feast, a dim golden light fell from the sky and struck it on the head.