A month had passed since Alex arrived in this world.

For the first couple of days, Alex focused on finding a steady water source and scouted for places with fruit, berries, and nuts. He didn't know if this world followed the rules of needing different vitamins and minerals to be healthy, but he didn't want to find out while being in the wild.

After a couple of days, Alex found a river going through the valley's center, splitting the mountain range surrounding the valley in two. In the very center of the valley was a lake where the water gathered for a while before continuing down the river.

Alex had found a humongous dead tree there and planned to create a home for himself.

Alex had already used up all the fruits he had received from the hedgehog in a spree of self-destroying insanity. Luckily, he had gotten somewhat used to the torturous training, even if he still feared it.

Courage didn't mean being fearless but being able to overcome one's fears. Alex still feared the time when he would gain another set of fruits, but he knew that he could jump over his shadow when it was time.

The taste of power was irresistible for Alex. Even if the training was horrible and inhumane, the power he gained from it was worth it in his mind.

Alex used his desire for power as fuel to overcome his fear of pain.

Was something like that healthy?

That depended on one's circumstances and viewpoints.

Would such pain change a person?

Definitely.

However, different people changed differently when undergoing such torture.

How would Alex change?

That remained to be seen.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Alex stood in a clearing, constantly swinging his sword.

After a brief run-in with another set of wolves, Alex had realized that he wasn't very good at using his sword. Alex had always only fought with his body for his entire life, never with a true weapon. This made him very unaccustomed to fighting with an actual weapon.

Following that fight, Alex had decided to train with his sword more, and just shortly after training with his sword, Alex noticed something troublesome.

His triceps and back started to hurt quite quickly.

Alex had trained his entire body, but training everything equally was not always the correct choice.

A good example would be a climber. If someone had bulky legs, a bulky abdomen, and a bulky back, they would increase the strain on their hands and arms due to the added weight of muscles.

pᴀɴdᴀ nᴏveʟ In that case, training everything equally would not only not help but even be detrimental to performance.

What about a swordfighter?

Bulkiness would increase the mass and volume of the body, slowing down the speed of the fighter. Even more, if the muscles on the torso reached a certain mass, they would even restrict the movement of the arms.

One only had to look at the videos of bulky men being unable to touch their backs.

However, with all of that said, a certain amount of power was still necessary across the entire body. Every muscle would be required in a fight. They were just used with different intensity.

Because of all these reasons, Alex decided to mainly train with his sword. He would only give his entire body a workout after every third session of sword training.

Training with a sword was not any less strenuous than training one's entire body. It simply trained different muscle groups.

After every session of training with the sword, Alex felt a huge part of his body burn with pain. On earth, someone would have long since stopped training since overtraining was just as bad as undertraining.

But here, there was no overtraining.

After Alex was done with his training, he jumped up a nearby tree and sat down in meditation.

Alex had been training like a madman, and it was showing incredible results.

He no longer needed to climb a tree. With one jump, he could easily jump two meters into the air, even with the heavy sword on his back.

Alex had already broken the physical limit of humans on earth.

This was the effect of Mana.

Some minutes later, Alex jumped down from the tree and walked to the edge of the clearing.

In front of Alex was a huge tree with a hole in the middle. The tree was nearly three-meters-wide, but it wasn't the tallest tree.

After all, it was already dead, and the cold wind had destroyed the upper part of its trunk.

Besides the hole in the tree were several pieces of wood arranged in the shape of a big doorframe.

This wasn't a doorframe but Alex's future hut. Every day, Alex would cut more wood and add to the wood. In a couple of days, he would have his very own, tiny hut.

Alex used stone for nails, but it was a difficult process to get them into the wooden boards. After all, stone was hard but brittle. If he just hammered the nails in, they would break.

Because of that, Alex had to cut out the holes with his sword and carefully insert the stone.

This made the structure very unstable and wonky, but it held up for now. As long as nothing touched the structure, and as long as the wind wasn't too strong, the structure would hold.

Alex went to a bench near the structure and grabbed his clothes.

His old clothes had long since been ripped to pieces, including his spare clothes.

His new clothes were made of wolf fur.

One would think that such clothing looked wild and powerful, but in reality, it looked poor and pitiful.

However, this set of clothing was already far superior to the previous ones. After all, Alex had gotten better at sewing.

Who would have thought that one of the essential skills of surviving in the cold wilds was sewing?

If Alex were in a tropical climate, he wouldn't have to bother that much with sewing. He would only need to remain in the shade most of the time, and if he walked around, he would only need to protect himself from the sun.

A blanket wasn't nearly as hard to make as actual clothing.

After putting on his clothes, Alex grabbed his cloak and put it around his shoulders.

Alex performed a couple of jumps to test if his movement would be impaired by the new set of clothing and realized that it wouldn't.

Alex looked at the dimming sky. He couldn't see the sun, but he wouldn't be able to see the sun anyway, even if it were midday.

Why?

Because the sky was covered in oppressive, cold, grey clouds.

It had already snowed a couple of days ago, and Alex noticed that the weather was getting colder.

The winter would soon be here.

This was a major problem for Alex since warmth would be of primary importance.

He even guessed that temperatures might even reach -20 to -40 degrees Celsius at the peak of winter.

Even if Alex had an incredibly powerful body now, he knew that he couldn't survive such temperatures.

This was why Alex concentrated on becoming better at sewing and making a hut.

However, there was one major problem standing in his way.

Dusk soon arrived, and Alex's eyes narrowed as he checked his equipment again.

Alex touched his sword to comfort himself and released a sigh as he closed his eyes.

Some seconds later, Alex opened his eyes with a determined look.

'You've crept around my camp for long enough. Sleeping has become difficult with you around, and I'm sure that you will strike soon. My hut and clothing are in danger as long as you are around. If you destroy my hut, I might not find the time to create a new one in time.'

Alex only considered his hut and clothing, completely ignoring his own physical safety.

Alex slowly walked forward as darkness took hold of the forest.

There were no stars, no moon.

There were only dark clouds above Alex as all the light vanished in the forest.

However, Alex was no longer a normal human.

The Mana had not only increased the power of Alex's body but also the sensitivity of his senses.

Alex's five senses had become several times sharper, to the point that Alex could even see a couple of meters in front of him in this total darkness.

Alex didn't know how the Mana had been able to increase the power of his eyes. After all, the Mana couldn't even reach his head for some reason.

Yet, it was undeniable that the sensitivity of his eyes had increased tremendously.

Alex walked forward, away from the hut.

He didn't want to put his hut in danger.

As Alex walked forward in total darkness, he noticed some snowflakes falling from the clouds.

Alex could still see the white on the snowflakes, even though there was basically no light in the forest anymore.

He only saw small, white crystals of snow slowly falling to the ground with a backdrop of absolute darkness.

Sssshh!

Alex heard an incredibly silent rustling of leaves, and he gazed over.

It was here.

Alex saw some white eyes looking at him from the top of a distant tree.

These were familiar eyes.

Alex touched his coat, which looked identical to the creature's fur.

Alex had named these creatures Stalkers.

This kind of creature had nearly killed him a month ago, and Alex had only won by sheer luck.

This time, things would be different.