Chapter 3: Survival of the Fittest

Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Survival of the Fittest

The sound had been so loud that it made him tremble with nerves. Victor looked at the trees and quickly thought of something. He knelt down and opened the backpack.

’If this is a basic survival pack, it has to have rope. There’s no way it doesn’t.’

He desperately searched through the pockets. There were many things he couldn’t check because he was more focused on surviving whatever the hell that damn thing was.

Finally, he found a dark, sturdy rope.

"Eureka! This will do."

He lifted the backpack and pulled out the rope. Then he searched for the tallest tree he could find until he came across a thick, old tree. Victor ran toward it and, tying the rope around his waist and around the tree, began climbing as high as he could, using his feet against the bark to help himself up.

In the distance, the leaves of the trees trembled. He could feel the entire ground vibrating, and it made him extremely nervous. He had already died once, and he didn’t want to die again.

When he reached the thickest branch, Victor quickly climbed onto it, tied the rope around his legs and waist, securing himself to the branch, and lay down on top of it while hugging the backpack.

’If it can smell me, I’m screwed. Please, don’t let it be able to smell me.’

He closed his eyes and waited silently. He had even stopped breathing so he wouldn’t make a sound. A few seconds later, he heard voices. He opened his eyes instantly, because they were human voices and he could understand what they were saying.

’I can smell them...’

He hadn’t noticed it before because of the stench of that mysterious monster, but those scents were quite strong now.

’There are two, no, three people. One smells like flowers, and the other two smell like blood. They’re running away from that monster...’

He could hear a girl crying and breathing heavily as she ran desperately. At the same time, her companions were firing some kind of light weapon that produced a brief whistling sound; a bow and arrow, perhaps.

Victor had heard similar things during his life as a homeless man, so he wasn’t particularly frightened by that. What frightened him was what was following those people. It wouldn’t be long before they were close.

It seemed like they were all running very fast, but when they got close to him, Victor heard the girl trip. She screamed desperately.

"Don’t leave me! Help me! Please!"

But perhaps her companions didn’t hesitate to leave her behind as bait, because their footsteps and cries could be heard fading into the distance. At the same time, the girl’s screams stopped abruptly when that enormous monster stopped in front of her.

"No... No... Please! No!"

Victor closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He was lucky that the person’s screams were hiding his nervous breathing, but he stopped breathing when he heard the monster lift the girl.

She screamed, but her scream died away an instant later. After that, the monster continued on its way, disappearing into the distance with its heavy stench of death, leaving Victor staring blankly into nothingness.

He remained silent for several long minutes, waiting for that monstrosity to have moved far enough away. When he felt that every sign of movement had disappeared from the forest and his sense of smell detected nothing but the scent of dry earth and blood, he sat up on the branch and looked at the ground.

Among the dry leaves lay a large leather bag and an empty wooden quiver. Blood was splattered around them, along with a few pieces of cloth and wood, but there was no trace of who those items had belonged to.

Victor tied the rope to the tree and climbed down using it. Then he picked up the leather bag and inspected it.

"They left you behind."

Victor knew what that felt like, but for this person, it had been even worse. Betrayal by those you trusted could be painful and incurable, which was why Victor showed nothing more than a strange coldness instead of mourning the death of someone he didn’t even know.

He took everything the girl had in her bag: ropes, animal hides, dried meat, herbs, and some fruit.

"You were the one carrying the food, huh..."

Victor put everything he had obtained away and looked in the direction where the monster’s stench was fading.

’Then those guys are dead too.’

Nothing more, nothing less. By abandoning one of their companions, they had done nothing but delay the inevitable. That’s why Victor thought about telling this place to go to hell. He slung his backpack over his shoulders and took one last look at the remains on the ground.

"Thanks for dying," he said quietly.

Turning his attention toward the path opposite the monster, he didn’t feel bad about saying it, because after everything he had experienced on the streets, he hadn’t been able to feel much empathy for others for a long time.

Out there, it was kill or be killed, deceive and betray. Survival of the fittest.

"Now I’ll take advantage of that."

And so, he ran away from that place without looking back. It was supposed to be another night of survival, but soon he noticed thin strands of light filtering through the leaves and climbed the trees to reach them.

In the blue sky, cracked like glass, hundreds of eyes stared through the cracks, their attention fixed on Victor, who by then was watching the sunrise from the top of a tree with a blank expression on his face.

With the knife in his hand, he had made a new decision after hearing someone die alone. He wasn’t going to allow himself to die just to entertain others, because that was exactly what had happened during his final moments.

Then...

"They want a show, right?" he said.

He looked up at the sky and smiled, giving them the middle finger.

"Then with me, it’ll be one hell of a kick in the ass, bastards."

A prisoner in a chair at the office. A prisoner in a world that forced him to destroy his own mind for its benefit, abandoned by everyone, Victor had somehow found his place.

Before the gods, he declared that he was going to survive, but not as entertainment for the gods. He would survive just to piss them off as much as possible.

And it all started with this gacha.

[You have one Daily Summon available.]