The Sinful Saint

As night crept in, Si Sheng reached the base of the mountain.

From the hill, Si Sheng stared on, the mountain looked small. But, as he stood under it, he saw it went up into the clouds and he couldn't see the peak. It was an enormous mountain covered in black, basalt-like rock.

Now that night was on Si Sheng's doorstep, he needed to find a place to sleep, otherwise he'd be eaten by those horrible beast, like the owl from the night before.

Si Sheng didn't need to hike up the mountain long as a shallow cave was spotted close to the base.

Si Sheng quickly scrambled his way towards the cave in order to take shelter for the night. When he got to the entrance, he saw it was just a shallow cave, nothing special, thankfully.

Si Sheng had been worried that monsters would be living in the caves and attack him on site. But, those fears were over now, since he secured a cave for himself.

Si Sheng had saved some of the bugs he caught back in the forest and decided to eat them now. He unpacked some branches and lit a fire before roasting the bugs. They were crunchy and flaky, although the thought of eating bugs was disgusting, they tasted good nonetheless.

Once again Si Sheng didn't gain any skills from the bugs and only filled his stomach with them.

Shortly after eating dinner, Si Sheng put out his fire and went to sleep. He had grabbed a few large leaves from the forest as a makeshift backpack, which now substituted for his bed. At least it was better than sleeping on rocks.

Si Sheng slept through the night soundly. There were no disturbances and he had a peaceful night's sleep.

***

In the morning, he got up and went outside to survey his surroundings.

The night prior, Si Sheng couldn't see much because it was dark, but now he could see the mountain side he had climbed up.

Si Sheng was about 50 meters away from the base of the mountain, pretty close to the forest. The mountain itself was barren of vegetation, so he could easily see the whole mountain side, or at least the portion that wasn't obscured by the mountain's size.

SCREEEEAAAAAAAH!

There was a sudden screech that came from the top of the mountain! An incredibly vicious and head splitting sound barreled down the mountain. As the roar passed over Si Sheng, it felt as if his head was being ripped apart.

"Aaaagh! My head, f*ck! What the hell? Whoever said migraines hurt like hell was right!"

The sound went as quickly as it came and didn't repeat, thankfully. Si Sheng recovered from the sudden shock and turned to look up the mountain where the origin of the sound was.

When he turned, he lost his balance and fell to his knees. His legs were shaking something fierce and his whole body was in a cold sweat. His heart was beating rapidly and his breath was rough. It was like he had just run for his life and finally stopped after escaping. Si Sheng had no idea what was going on, he wasn't scared in that moment, but his body was. The fear was instinctual, something that all animals would feel when facing an overwhelming precense.

Si Sheng lifted his head towards the peak above the clouds and caught a glimpse of what made the sound. There was a long, black, scaled tail slithering into the clouds. The scales looked like crystals at the level of national treasures, glittering and pure. It was a majestic form. Even the brief moment was an awe inspiring and a beautiful sight, it couldn't be called anything but majestic.

'That'd make some nice armor. Hmmm, probably would die trying.'

Si Sheng didn't know what the creature was, but he knew it wasn't anything he could even approach. He was shaking in his boots after hearing a roar from it kilometers away. There was no chance of survival if he faced that creature as he was. It would just be suicide.

After the creature had disappeared into the clouds, Si Sheng's shaking slowed and his breathing became regular. He slowly got up and walked back to the cave.

***

After calming down and drinking some water, Si Sheng decided to head out to grind for levels, disregarding the previous event.

Si Sheng had realized that the amount of experience he needed to level up was quite large given rabbits only gave around 3 experience and bugs generally gave 1 experience. He would need to kill a lot of rabbits to just gain one level, and from his gaming experience, once you level up, the amount of experience needed to level up again increases.

Si Sheng was weak and couldn't face even a slightly strong creature. He was like a normal human from Earth, he would have a slim chance of even killing a wolf from Earth let alone one from this world.

Due to the open plains at the foot of the mountain, there were many small, easy to kill creatures, like rabbits. It was a heavenly place for Si Sheng as he could kill as many as he wanted without reserve.

So, Si Sheng went and killed them, a lot of them. He took many corpses of rabbits, small birds, rodents, bugs and the like back to the cave he slept in the previous night.

"Hehehe, I'm hunting wabbits."

In the time he went out hunting, Si Sheng gained about 100 experience. Needless to say he worked hard. He killed a den of rabbits, which got him about 25 experience points. The rest were a mix and match of other animals and creatures.

When Si Sheng got back to the cave, he decided to make a makeshift knife out of stone as that would make hunting and cleaning the animals easier. He made it by using a technique called knapping which is basically just chipping away at the stone until it forms into a d.e.s.i.r.ed shape, in this case a knife.

Si Sheng baked the knife to sterilize it using his fire magic.

"Ignite!"

Since Si Sheng couldn't store the meat for very long, so he decided to skin the animals and sun-dry the meat so it wouldn't spoil as quickly.

All these techniques Si Sheng knew of in theory, but this was the first time he had actually put them to use. So, the tools were very sloppy and a lot of the meat ended up spoiling due to not being properly prepared. The skins from the rabbits and other critters were poorly removed and looked ragged.

To be fair, it was Si Sheng's first time doing this, so it was to be expected that he wouldn't be able to perfectly skin and prepare an animal, as well as make tools from stone.

Anyway, Si Sheng cooked a few rabbits and ate them. They didn't give him any new skills, unfortunately. It didn't bother him, since he thought that [Sprint] was probably the only skill these rabbits gave, as they were low level and common.

The mountain's base was a good place to level up because there didn't seem to be any predators stronger than Si Sheng around. So, he could level up in peace while eating all sorts of creatures.

***

Si Sheng stayed at the cave and hunted there for around a week. In that time he gained another 635 experience, bring his total experience up to 993 experience, almost Level 2. Additionally, he had eaten all sorts of animals; rats, field mice, rabbits, ground birds, bugs, etc. He gained a couple new skills as well. One came from a rat:

The other came from a peculiar bug he killed higher up on the mountain. It had been when he was curious what was up a little further, but after the experience with the creature up the mountain, he never went back up.

[Burrowing Mole Cricket consumed: "Skill: Awareness (Basic)" Acquired]

The skills were self explanatory, [Sneak (Basic)] allowed Si Sheng to remain undetected when moving around, it was similar to his other skill [Presence Concealment (Intermediate)] in that it concealed him from others.

[Awareness (Basic)] was also similar to the others except it was in reverse, where it allowed Si Sheng to be more aware of things around him instead of hiding from them. In essence it heightened his senses.

Si Sheng was close to leveling up and had acquired a couple new skills, so he was feeling quite happy about this. Since it was night, he decided to sleep and see if he could level up the next day.