The forest past the village was a different kind of silence. You couldn't just walk through it and expect to go unnoticed.
The trees were too old, the canopy too thick, the creatures too aware. I moved alone, deeper than I'd ever gone before, a spool of string wrapped around my wrist and my fingers twitching to spin it loose.
I wasn't here to explore. I wasn't even here to train.
I was here for silkworms.
Yeah, I know, sounds stupid when I say it out loud. But the truth is, if I wanted my Flux to evolve, to do something greater than just stitch and spin, I needed better base material. The silkworms out here had been twisted by the Blood Rain. Now they grew in rare colonies, suspended in shimmering sacs made of silk. Their threads were strong—unreal strong—and if I could sync my Flux with that kind of fiber?
Maybe I could really do it. Maybe I could create permanent structures, armor, even constructs. Maybe I could form my own damn fighting style out of string alone.
Back in my past life, I never had to worry about that kind of thing. I was a mage with Metal Manipulation. No need to learn martial arts when I could just bend steel around my enemies' throats or drop a lamppost on them with a flick of my wrist. Now?
I was doing pushups in mud and learning to dodge falling coconuts. This life made me respect physicality. Movement had become something intimate. I wanted to see what my body could really do.
So I ran.
Feet light on the bark, I bolted up a tree, twisting mid-air and launching from trunk to trunk like I was born in the canopy. My calves burned. My fingertips tingled. I used my strings to sling myself higher, twining them like ropes and snapping forward, swinging hard.
Birds scattered in the distance. I grinned.
I was fast, like every movement was a stitch in time, weaving my path as I leapt higher into the treetops. And then the forest stopped breathing. That's the only way I can explain it.
Everything just... halted. No rustle, no birdsong, no wind.
My instincts screamed. I dropped. And thank every god I did because a heartbeat later, something massive slammed through the air I'd just occupied.
A flash of gold, spots and a blur of claws.
A leopard.
It hit the earth hard, cracking through bark and leaf with a growl that sent chills up my spine. I didn't move. I didn't even breathe. I lay in the dirt, my heart thundering, staring into eyes like polished amber. It whipped its head toward me, lips curling over gleaming fangs.
I'd found one. Actually—no. It found me.
This right here is the third reason I chose to be reborn in North New Island.
The first? The people. There's something about being born here. Everyone's built tough.. The land demands it. I wanted that. Not just to train my mind, but to rebuild myself from the bones up. I wanted to be stronger because of where I came from.
The second? The Rune Weaver's Trials.
Lilith came back from hers like a whole other person. She was damn near unstoppable. If I could survive those trials, maybe I could have that kind of power, too.
But the third?
The beasts.
After the Ashven Blood Rain, something weird happened here. All kinds of flora and fauna started appearing on this island, creatures that shouldn't exist in the same ecosystem. Jaguars, elk, zebras and now, a goddamn African leopard three meters tall.
It's like someone tried to save the world's biodiversity and just... shoved it all here. North New Island. And the perfect way to tame a beast is to give it the blood of another beast mixed with the tamer's for them to be loyal to you.
This was my shot. I had to be a bit taller and stronger for me to go to the forest all alone without anyone noticing, much less get more freedom with age where no one would be concerned where I was.
The leopard growled low, crouching into a predatory stance. Its muscles rippled beneath golden fur, eyes locked on mine like I was meat and it hadn't eaten in days.
I stood slowly, pulled the string from my wrist. I let it unwind, coiling at my side in threads ready to strike.
"Alright then," I muttered under my breath, planting my feet in the soil, flexing every muscle I'd trained the last four years.
"Come on, pretty boy. Let's see if you're worth bleeding for."
And it lunged.