Darkness.

  Pure and utmost darkness.

  The darkness became fainter; a beige light became visible.

  The light grew stronger; the darkness was barely visible.

  The light consumed all; the darkness went away.

  Silence.

  Complete silence.

  The silence was contaminated by a faraway sound.

  The sound became louder. Was it wind? But also grass and wood crackling as they fell.

  Stillness.

  Movements were dead.

  But they resurrected. Pale fingers attempted to grab and move the soil under them.

  They grew stronger, pale fingers on pale hands passively closing and holding a smattering of dirt.

  The light. The sound. The movement.

  They joined all together in a perfect team play and intensified even further.

  Faust opened his eyes, a strong azure light piercing his vision and momentarily making him blind.

  A deep and hoarse breath was taken by him as he clutched his heart unconsciously and twitched his body in confusion.

  His eyes widened, then pinpricked, his hands dirtied by the brown soil under him. The realization of being alive was too heavy and confusing, but too real to negate.

  Looking around in desperation after sight returned, Faust took notice but did not react to the change in ambiance.

  There was no more snow. No more cold wind. No more colossal ice stakes in the earth. No more village…

  He was in a forest, lying bareback upon humid grass and bathed by the azure moon in the starless sky. Around him, rows of tall, lush trees and bushes formed a maze of gray nature. On one of the trees, his eyes landed upon a beautiful pinkish-yellow ball. As if by instinct, his vision kept focused on the colorful sphere.

  Fruit… His crimson eyes reflected the moonlight.

  …He kept looking at it, his mind dazed and struggling to comprehend what was happening, as if he had been woken from a deep slumber.

  “Fru..it…” his voice was dry and crackling, struggling to let out a single word.

  But then, he understood.

  Food!

  Scrambling to his feet, he erratically ran towards the lush tree. Nearing the tall trunk, he lost no time in climbing it. Using the crevices in the grayish wood as a path, Faust found his way a few meters above the ground.

  Twisting his body and leaping towards the fruit hanging from a thin branch, his fingers grasped it, then held, as he successfully snapped the fruit from the tree and fell to the ground, rolling with the momentum.

  Like a feral beast, he consumed the fruit. It was juicy, it was dry, it was sweet, it was bitter, it was soft, it was hard… it was food!

  Eating after so much time, even if the fruit tasted like raw meat, he might as well have said it was decent. Anything above that was divine, divine!

  Eating the divine-tasting fruit, tears rolled from his eyes as he savored the meal. Yet, even during times like these, he observed his surroundings like a newly born cub.

  Curiosity and fear sparked in his vision. Tall trees, their lush tops formed by yellowed leaves; their trunks were tall and wide, reaching over five meters, and others far more than that. The wood that gave it form was gray… grayish… no, dark… Whenever he blinked and looked at it again, their tones seemed to change slightly.

  Small bushes on the ground followed the same principle, the wood an undefined mess of grayish colors and leaves yellow as the teeth of his fellow villagers.

  One thing persisted, however: the starless sky, void of any color besides the single azure moon staying in it, hovering above all land and life. From it, a beam shot downward, far away from him but visible even through the density of the forest.

  At the same time, a weak tropical wind played against his skin, giving a warmth he had missed so much. But just now, he had come to notice he overlooked a simple situation…

  Looking at himself, he muttered, “I’m naked…” The wind played with all of his skin, warming even the areas that found this act quite relaxing.

  Then, his eyes widened as he spoke louder, “I’m naked?!”

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  Where did my clothes go...? He ran back to the place he had been lying just a couple moments earlier. Standing, he looked all around while the golden fruit juice dripped between his fingers and teeth.

  Not only his clothes, but his axe, helmet, and every other of his belongings had vanished.

  Unconsciously, he cast a gaze at his left forearm, noticing a smaller, less complex version of the sacrifice rune. At that instant, a phantom heat flared on his forearm where the rune was branded, and blurs of a crimson space assaulted his mind

  “Ahh!” He bit his lips trying to suppress the agony.

  He remembered. His skin destroyed, rebuilt. Muscles destroyed, rebuilt. Hair, follicles, pores, bones, all destroyed, all rebuilt. These memories were failed, many gaps in them like burned cloth.

  The slight recalling of these images caused him to tremble and regurgitate the content of the fruit back to nature, staining the grass with its goldenish liquid.

  He stumbled back and fell onto his butt, breathing heavily and trying to calm down.

  “Calm down… calm down… calm down… calm…”

  Clearing that image from his head was a difficult task, as once his brain clutched to it, it did not want to let go of the memory.

  After a long while, Faust managed to recompose enough to stand up. His stomach growled loud, alongside the pain. But the pain of body was better than the pain of mind. Using his hunger as a mechanism to focus on something else, Faust grabbed the uneaten leftovers of the fruit and finished the meal.

  It was not enough, but that did not seem hard to solve. From what he could tell by basic observations, every tree had at least two to three fruits, which was surprisingly few considering their small size of a human’s fist.

  First things first; later things later. After all the time spent in that frozen nightmare, Faust understood the importance of acting properly instead of purely thinking.

  Thinking alone would have caused him to turn into an ice statue back there.

  So, he forcefully recomposed himself and acted, collecting fruits from the trees and accumulating them on the ground. Climbing them was easy, thanks to his nimble nature, and yet it was somehow even easier now. In a sense, it seemed like his body was slightly stronger and fitter, though it remained pale and thin.

  In any case, after he collected the fruits, he sat on the ground and ate them while paying great caution to his surroundings. Now that he was unarmed, if any sign of danger appeared he would run like his life depended on it, because it likely did.

  Once the lasting trauma subsided enough, his mind turned clearer and sharper. He was able to roughly recall what had happened without vomiting or trembling too much, though it was still a heavy memory.

  According to what he could tell, once he threw the book holding the sacrifice rune into the campfire, he likely caused it to be activated. Whether it was the fire itself or the sacrifice rune that was activated, he was unable to tell; both were unique on their own.

  The flames produced by the great campfire held off the cold while producing no extreme heat despite their massive size. The flames were a vibrant orange that got replaced by a crimson, and then the fire consumed the whole area. From this point, everything turned hazy and confusing.

  Only glimpses of it were possible to recall.

  His body was in a crimson space, being burnt and destroyed by the flames and rebuilt in a sort of way, with a smaller and simpler version of the sacrifice rune appearing on his left forearm. How could he recognize it was the sacrifice rune despite it being somewhat different?

  Two factors played a part in that.

  First, he had analyzed the rune for so long he could recognize almost every layer and step of it, and although a simpler version, it was still basically the same sacrifice rune.

  Secondly, there was an odd, unnatural feeling that fluttered in his mind whenever he observed the rune, as if it wanted to tell him, "I am the sacrifice rune."

  In any case, after everything turned dark, he woke up here in this gray forest. Completely naked, weaponless, and with everything he owned, gone.

  Bad. That was the word that encapsulated his situation. Terrible, even. In an area he had no knowledge about, with possible dangers and no way to defend himself.

  Still, Faust had a serene expression at the moment, his crimson eyes glistening while reflecting the contrasting azure moonlight. While eating the fruit calmly, he let out a soft giggle.

  “Heh… at least it cannot get worse. Even if it could, why should I care anymore? I will just do what I can do. There is no point in stressing over ifs.”

  After finishing some fruits from the pile, he moved around uncaring of his unclothed body. His skin was lightly scraped by the bushes, his limbs caressed by the breeze.

  He climbed a tree from which he had already taken the fruits and broke off a piece of the gray wood. Using the branch as a weapon seemed the best alternative at the moment; it was better than his fists, at least.

  Faust swung the branch around, it was lighter than the axe but slightly longer. Then, he grabbed a pebble from the ground and began to sharp its end, forming a makeshift spear of sorts.

  At the same time, he pondered about the matter of his own body. The sacrifice rune was an interesting factor. It did not matter how much he scraped or tried to “clean” it; it would not change at all.

  Faust thought of it as being similar to ritual markings, which he had the opportunity to see a few times on the idols of the Forest Goddess.

  Although those were usually marked by people, while his was marked by flame.

  “Well, it was a ritual after all.” He sighed, looking ahead. “I will think of this later. For now… for now, what should I do?”

  Faust questioned himself; he had no clear goals or objectives. Initially, he wanted to die, then to survive. Yes, survival was a goal. But at the same time, he wanted to see more interesting things and find his uncle. So were these goals as well?

  They should be. Thinking of that, he listed his goals. Survive. Find his uncle. See interesting things. Not to forget, there was the goal of the dungeon itself, which had spoken to him once he first entered: “Find the forgotten temple and make a befitting offering.”

  Judging by how the dungeon had not been concluded, his earlier suspicions of the stone temple being the so-called forgotten temple were wrong. At the same time, the feeling he had back in the snow area persisted, a feeling that called him towards something whenever he thought of the goal, towards the same place the moon beacon fell upon, far away.

  Faust was almost sure this "calling" was where the goal lay, but it was impossible to reach there for now. It was so far away that it would take him months, at the very least, to get under the azure moon beacon.

  Months… Thinking of it, Faust frowned. It was difficult to tell time with precision inside this place. Not only was it hard to count, but he was unsure if time even moved like outside, since the moon was always stagnant.

  Whatever it was, he could roughly estimate how much time had passed from one event to another, and that would need to be enough. It had to be enough.

  The grim thought of being inside this place for an unknown amount of time scared him. Being deprived of such vital information was not ideal.

  Anyway, Faust was set. He finished eating the fruits and was satiated.

  With no pain from hunger assaulting his body anymore and a stick pointy enough to perforate any possible threats, he left the area and began to walk through the forest towards the moon.