It’s a Yakiniku Feast!!

By the time I could no longer sense any monsters nearby, the rising sun had begun to paint a crimson band along the horizon of the deep blue sky, creating a beautiful contrast.

While admiring the scenery, I turned my eyes to my surroundings.

There, the dried, dark crust of old blood mixed with the bright red of fresh blood, and the stench of blood and entrails hung so thick in the air it was almost suffocating.

The stark contrast between the beautiful landscape woven by nature and the grotesque scene I had created made me feel the weight of my own sins.

I was letting myself be dragged too far into negativity. I smacked both my cheeks with my hands and headed for the river.

Once I arrived, I washed my whole body clean. Checking my injuries, I found I had a scratch on my shoulder.

Maybe adrenaline had been flooding my system during the fighting, because I had barely felt any pain.

I chewed up some nar grass that grew by the water, working it into a paste, then slapped it onto my shoulder.

Nar grass, used for healing potions, spreads aggressively and grows almost anywhere there is water. Near towns it usually gets harvested to extinction, but deep in the untouched mountains it was there for the taking.

How many monsters did I defeat? Probably close to twenty.

The smell of blood drew monsters one after another. There were moments when I genuinely felt my life was in danger, but it seemed the wounds I took were minor.

It had been a reckless and foolish thing to do.

I had been terrified of my pursuers, terrified of the monsters, terrified of the darkness in the mountains.

Like a small animal driven past its limit by fear, lashing out at a giant predator, I had been unable to endure the fear any longer and acted without thinking.

I could easily have died over something so stupid. I might have been badly injured. But it was something I needed to do, and I do not regret it.

Overcoming those fights gave me confidence. With my muscle-headed stupidity, the only way I could conquer fear was to fight through it.

And I did gain something. My level has probably gone up. My body also feels different.

Maybe it is because I kept fighting in the dark. All my senses feel sharper.

I can clearly see the veins in the leaves swaying in the wind. I can faintly hear the sound of fish swimming, mixed in with the murmur of the river.

I can pick out the distinctive scents of herbs and poisonous plants. I can even feel the flow of the wind brushing my skin.

There is even a faint taste of water mixed in with the air I breathe. Maybe it is because I am near the river. I can sense tiny differences in the taste of the air with my tongue.

With my senses enhanced, my Presence Detection has also become more accurate. Thanks to that, I can now move freely even in complete darkness.

“Status open.”

Just as I thought, my level went up. And I even gained a new skill, Enhanced Senses. Maybe this skill is what let me fight in the dark.

Was it the extreme tension and concentration that triggered the skill? Or had all the time I spent relying on my senses for Presence Detection gradually built up enough proficiency?

Thinking too much hurts my muscle brain. Either way is fine. I am just really happy to have a skill that pairs so well with presence detection.

Although, this power is a bit too strong. I should learn to control it.

Skills in this world are unexpectedly flexible, so I should practice adjusting the degree of enhancement and switching them on and off.

If I ever fall into a cesspit with Enhanced Smell active, the stench might knock me out and I would drown right there in the muck. That would be the worst ghost story ever.

After washing off the grime and tending my wounds, I began dealing with the monsters I had left lying around.

I already had meat stocked up, and I had no use for the hides at the moment. Still, killing something and just throwing it away felt wrong.

So I decided to use this as practice for dismantling.

If I was lucky, I might even learn a dismantling skill. There are no item boxes or dimensional storage in this world, so the ability to break down materials is essential for keeping your load light.

Speed to deal with numbers and careful work to increase the value of what you sell. I needed to hone my dismantling techniques to balance both.

Taking breaks for meals along the way, I dismantled a huge number of monsters.

By evening, I had finished all of it and cleaned up the rest.

I had been active straight through from the previous day without sleeping. Honestly, I was close to my limit.

Fighting off sleep, I somehow made it back to my base.

Right now, I felt like I could sleep even on that crude excuse for a bed. I had taken care of most of the nearby monsters. I had gained confidence fighting in the dark. There was no need to tremble in fear anymore. Tonight, I would finally sleep soundly.

I wake up the next morning, do my usual stretching, and get my head and body fully awake.

I grab a chunk of meat to use as breakfast and, taking my black-steel knife, head to the river. I drink some water, rinse the meat in the river, slice it thin with the knife, and eat it.

It’s good. It is good, but still…

“I don’t want to eat raw meat anymoooore!”

Honestly, I’m sick of it. At least let me have some grilled meat. My soul’s scream slipped right out of my mouth. If I start a fire, the smoke will give away my position. That’s why I’ve been eating meat raw up until now.

But I’m at my limit.

Raw water and raw meat are not exactly sanitary. I really want to use fire somehow.

I can disguise some of the smoke with a leaf filter, but in the middle of a mountain like this, smoke rising up is going to stand out.

Hmm… what should I do?

I’m a fugitive, so I should just endure it. But my mental state cannot keep up. Once I got over the fear, my priorities shamelessly shifted toward improving my living conditions.

After wavering for a while, I decided to make charcoal.

It will stand out while I am making it. Smoke will rise for hours, so there is no way it will go unnoticed. However, once it is made, I will have a fuel source that hardly produces smoke.

If I combine charcoal with the leaf filter, the smoke should be reduced to a level that is almost impossible to notice.

I will burn charcoal somewhere away from my base. That way I can boil water, and my meat will evolve into grilled meat. And not just grilled meat, charcoal-grilled meat. It even sounds high-class. I love it.

Who cares if I am a fugitive? Who cares if the smoke stands out? If it’s poor-quality charcoal, I can make it in a day. In one day, there shouldn’t be time to mobilize the territory’s army.

“Yakiniku feast! Charcoal-grilled meeeat!”

Completely hyped up, I ran along the river around the halfway point between town and my base. Even adventurers rarely come this far, but it is still closer to town than my base is.

There, I found a nicely open spot.

I could see a decent distance around me. Even if something slipped past my Presence Detection, as soon as I visually spotted it, I could run into the forest and probably escape.

I searched for dry wood to use as material. I found some fallen trees that had dried out without rotting and carried them to the spot I had just found.

For the prep work, I snapped the dry wood into suitable lengths.

Ideally, I would make a lot at once, but I do not plan on staying in the mountains that long. In primitive living, starting a fire is hard work, so normally you try not to let it go out.

But in this world things are different.

With isekai-level power, I can rub sticks together at ridiculous speed. Starting a fire actually doesn’t take that much effort. If I put the fire out frequently, I should be able to save a lot of charcoal fuel.

I gathered a reasonable amount of dry wood and made the lengths somewhat uniform. I dug a shallow hole and buried a stake about thirty centimeters long to act as the central support.

After that, I put the wood around it in a cylindrical shape, filling the gaps with branches so it was as dense as possible.

I placed the wood so it formed a dome around the support.

There was some clay-like soil by the river. I splashed water on it and kneaded it. Once it became sticky, I slapped it over the wood, covering it.

I tried to keep the thickness as even as possible and made sure there were no gaps as I coated the wood. Once the wood was completely covered in clay, I opened a few air holes at the top and near the base.

I prepared a board with a groove for rubbing sticks, some wood shavings carved with my knife, and some dried leaves crumbled by hand.

Rubbing the stick in the groove made fire by friction. I wrapped the spark in the wood shavings and dried leaves, blew on it carefully, and grew it into a flame.

I fed the larger flame into the hole at the top of the clay dome. From there, I waited for the fire to work its way down from the top to the bottom until I could see flames through the lower air holes.

Last time I made charcoal, I got greedy and tried to make a lot at once. It took ages for the fire to get all the way down. This time it was a smaller batch, so I figured one or two hours would do it.

I was bored while I waited. I could have left it and gone somewhere else, but sometimes the heat breaks the clay and holes open up.

If that happens, too much air gets in and it won’t turn into charcoal. So I needed to stay nearby and watch it.

Right. I’ll make a basket to carry the charcoal. To kill time, I twisted vines and wood fibers together to make rope.

Then I processed thicker vines into frame pieces and used the rope to weave a net to fill the gaps.

If the weave is too wide, small pieces fall through. But making a fine weave takes a lot of work.

After a lot of trial and error, I somehow managed to complete a barely functional, wobbly object that could just barely be called a basket.

From the charcoal kiln, smoke was streaming up like a signal fire. But there was no sign of people nearby.

Eventually, the fire that had descended from the top reached the bottom, and I could see flames through the lower holes. I sealed the air holes at the top and bottom with clay.

Now all I had to do was let the fire go out naturally and wait for it to cool, but if I waited for it to cool completely, it would probably take an entire day. Depending on the situation, I might need to take it out early.

Even after sealing it, there was still the danger of the clay collapsing and air leaking in. So I could not just leave it and go somewhere else.

I was bored. Seriously bored. While the fire was burning, I could just stare at the flickering flames and zone out, but now it was just a clay dome. Watching that gets old in five minutes.

To pass the time, I stayed alert with Presence Detection and dove into the sea of thoughts.

This world is warped and strange. Of course, for the people who live here, it is normal. But from the perspective of someone from Earth, there are too many abnormal things.

When your level goes up, your physical abilities go up. That much is fine. But the more your physical ability rises, the harder it should be to control your strength.

Let’s say there is something you used to pick up gently using one-tenth of your strength. Then your level rises and your strength multiplies tenfold. Now you would need incredibly delicate control, like one-hundredth power, to pick it up without crushing it.

If daily life constantly required such ultra-fine control, the stress would drive you crazy. By that logic, high-level adventurers should be unable to live normal lives.

But in this world, the people, myself included, can adjust their strength without much thought.

Nobody accidentally crushes plates in their hands, or smashes someone’s head like paste when they jokingly slap them and say, “What the heck!”

Everyone puts out exactly the amount of force they intend to, without much effort or stress. I cannot believe every human in this world is unbelievably dexterous.

No matter the situation, you can perform your intended action perfectly. I have heard of that sort of trait somewhere before. And there is something in this world that has that trait.

Skills.

In this world, it feels like skills are handling the parts of physical control that people are not consciously thinking about, like everyday strength adjustment.

Or rather, it is like the entity managing this world is reusing the skill system in order to automatically help the people here naturally control their power.

Once I realized that, I came up with the idea of outsourcing the processing that happens when I use skills to the management side.

In game terms, everyday strength control is handled by the server run by the developers, but skills like swordsmanship and presence detection are processed locally on your own PC.

Even though they are both skill processes, it felt like the personal ones were being forced onto my own machine. So I wondered if I could consciously offload those personal skill processes to the server too.

The result was a success. I can use my skills without consuming my own processing resources, and use that freed-up capacity for situational awareness and predicting the enemy’s movements instead.

I do not know if the people of this world are doing this too, or if I am the only one who figured it out. Since the gods, or management, have not complained, I guess it is fine.

Levels exist, skills exist. That much is standard. But beyond that, in the very structure of the world, I feel a game-like quality.

Maybe I was hit by a truck, fell into a coma, and have been dreaming this vivid world ever since.

Maybe in a far-future world that I thought was my real life, false memories were implanted in me and I was thrown into a VRMMORPG.

Maybe rich people are watching me struggle desperately, just for entertainment. A lot of ridiculous thoughts crossed my mind.

Regardless of which answer is true, nothing I can do really changes.

Even if this world is my delusion, even if it is VR, even if it is a world managed by beings with overwhelming resources who can rewrite our bodies as easily as editing data on a PC, what I can do remains the same.

Live. Survive. Be happy. Do everything I can right now, no matter who laughs at me or what they say. Just survive. That is all.