When Ren first came into the world, he was ignorant of all things. Now, he was ignorant of the ninety-nine percent of the world he had yet to travel.

  The new people, those like orks and elves, that he was yet to meet. As well as the places and powers within this world. By whatever means he must, he was determined to find these powers hidden within the world, and like a true rogue to steal them. To take the secrets from whatever strange races of beings existed here and make their powers his own.

  Ren's first step was to accept his losses. Having Cella taken, his powers lost, and his only companion being an evil floating eye, he was nearly as lost as he was in the beginning.

  In a way, Ren felt free, for the moment only. His fate still sat in the hands of the paladin who had taken away the only true friend he had made in this place. One day, he would have to face that power. Whether they would keep her alive, or slay her for her part in all this he didn’t know.

  The near-midday sun beamed down on him, and he realized it had been quite some time since he had eaten or drank. Allowing his bodily needs to clear his mind of his boundless troubles, Ren the tallest tree he could find.

  From atop his high view, Ren looked out across the distance. Behind him, the mountains rested in a blue hue, over them nothing but vanishing clouds could be seen. To both North and South he watched as the mountains slowly faded to nothing but forests. To the East, Ren watched as clouds slowly approached him as they passed over the sun. In the far distance, he saw light reflecting from a great body of water. From a distance, he struggled to gauge its size and shape. On its other side, he saw several mountains.

  The terrain seemed odd to him, a deal wrong. Though such a place may house great monstrosities and beasts. Seeing it, his course was set.

  Ren began traveling towards the distant water. While he moved on from his tree, he tried to think about things a deal more. His strategy for fighting would have to change as he no longer could rely on his eldritch powers to keep him alive. Even using his fire-based magic would stop his amber from regenerating. If he wanted to bring the amber back to its full strength promptly, he had to give up magic.

  Solely relying on his stealth and dexterity to win a fight would not be an easy task. A large portion of his combat stats had been allocated towards his willpower and intelligence. These had immense effects on him in every way. If his stats had all gone into dexterity, endurance, strength, and vitality without much love for the two magic-related stats he would be far deadlier.

  Willpower and intelligence were not useless by any metric though. His intelligence being so high did give him a great ability to process information and make fast decisions. If a human in his old world had the type of intelligence he had, it wouldn’t have been too hard for them to end up as a genius physicist.

  Having high willpower was not a total waste either, though it was far from useless either. His willpower gave him the ability to ignore things like pain far easier. High willpower directly translates into a person’s capability to be more determined and disciplined. Though with magic this also gave one the ability to manifest that will.

  Knowing how weak he was compared to before, Ren was ready to go into stealth at any moment. Luckily for him though, his eldritch enhancement to stealth didn’t require an activation of willpower the same way magic did. Eldritch abilities did use mana, but his eyes and stealth didn’t require mana to always be burned the same way as eldritch touch did.

  Eldritch eyes could be used in an activated form to enhance them and break illusions. This required him to actively perform magic. Though the passive form of his eldritch eyes did not do so.

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  His stealth ability was one of erasure. He did not use magic to blend into the environment, he simply allowed the eldritch affinity to erase his presence at the cost of slowly consuming him as well. It did cost him some mana, but it was equal to its vitality drain. It was most heavily dependent on his stamina to keep it going.

  With his strategy for combat, more ironed out, he felt confident as he moved faster toward the water in the distance. The drain of having been burned alive and torn apart was great. Though his body no longer usually needed food and water, the physical material of his body had to sometimes be replaced.

  The exact ratios that his body required were not quite equal and it confused him. The amount of flesh and blood he had lost wasn’t something his body should have been able to regenerate, but it would logically have made the most sense to him if he had to consume food and water before his body could put itself back together. Do I have a special resource like vitality hidden away that allows my body to be replaced? He wasn’t sure, but he was not going to be the one to complain about it.

  He heard the sound of moving water in the distance and quickened his steps. Entering his simple version of stealth his body moved far more quietly. Not entirely sure of why he was doing it, he did so anyway.

  As the water came into sight Ren looked across the water and its bank in case of predators lying in ambush. The edge of a fresh body of water is always a fantastic place of predators to corner prey.

  When he could find no traces of a predator around, he approached the water and began to drink at its surface. Scooping large handfuls of water into his mouth, he hoped there wasn’t anything gigantic in the water using it as a toilet. Picturing himself sipping away at water full of a sea serpent’s waste, he smiled to himself.

  The water was fresh and relatively clean. It was browned, but to be expected of a giant river. It spanned a half mile across, and he had no way of guessing the depth. Knowing his body was far from weak enough to drown in a river, he looked for a place across the bank that was not as wide.

  Dipping his hand back into the water he looked out across onto the opposite bank. A beast forty feet long, and half as tall broke the treeline. It walked bipedally with two long arms tipped with great claws. Its body was similar to that of the dragon, though far from it in some ways. Not made of tough scales, instead its skin was a leathery brown. The head of the creature was large enough to swallow Ren alive.

  Realizing he had frozen in place, Ren retreated back behind the tree line and slowly followed closer to the creature. Is that a fucking dinosaur? Ren began to remember something from his old world before the fuzzy haze stopped his mind from remembering. Shit, why can’t you let me remember what that big lizard reminds me of…

  After his mind began to recover from his patron’s interference, Ren looked back across the water at the gigantic beast, his vision slightly blurred as the buzzing in his head remained. Using analyze, he saw it more clearly as his eyes recovered fully.

  Protomimus Lvl 23

  Protomimus? What does that even mean…

  Ren stared out at the giant lizard as it began to look around at the water before quickly moving to drink. Dipping its great maw into the water it began to tilt back its head allowing the water to trickle down its throat. The process continued as it took another drink, and then another. On the fourth drink, the beast whipped its head backward and tried to turn around.

  Jaws wide enough to tear down a cathedral came leaping from the water. A behemoth’s head followed as what appeared to be a crocodilian grasped its jaws around the head of the protomimus. Within moments the entire body of the giant lizard was dragged into the water.

  Ren sat in stealth frozen and unable to move.

  A deep redness spread throughout the water and downstream towards where Ren was watching from. He silently watched as what felt like an endless stream of blood passed him by in the river.

  Ren’s heart sank as he looked out over the water.