While saurian cores are of great importance both for crafting and awakening, the difficulty of acquiring one is great. In battle, saurians exhaust their cores, which often crumble due to exertion, but even under the most perfect circumstances, the organ fails four out of five times.

  The obvious answer is to hunt saurians of a much lower realm, but such activity is a waste of time since the reward is worth basically nothing when fighting a realm or two beneath your power.

  — Excerpt from The Saurian Primer

  Day 54, 9:30 AM

  After three days, I more or less mastered the layout of the Summersweald Frontier Outpost One-Six-Nine, also known as Hailstown, the town I was reincarnated in. The town was named after the citadel it spawned around and later got a more sane name in honor of the long-dead townlord, Hail, who fell defending its walls and citizens from a saurian onslaught.

  With a plan to die in eleven days and a great desire to avoid Ruby during the suicide loop, it was time to check out the world beyond the walls. The Summersweald was four hundred miles away, with nothing but mundane farmland and forests from here to there.

  Eight hours later, running fifty miles per hour, I finally stopped atop a hill. I surveyed the land, the impenetrable canopy of unnaturally tall trees opening up before me. I was about three miles away from the jungle, but the Summersweald’s sweltering heat described in the books was already prickling at my skin.

  The air was much nicer outside the town. While I didn’t have a superhuman nose, the regular kind sufficed to inform me of the sanitation problems. That said, Hailstown’s sewage problem was one I planned to leave unsolved, unless I got a level up condition revolving around it. The sheer amount of logistics behind extensive public projects meant that one lifetime spent facing them was more than enough.

  And thinking of my past errors, coming to the dinosaur jungle was possibly a mistake. I could have tried unlocking new classes. I was fairly certain I could have nailed weapon master and rushed through the first several level up conditions, but the town had grown boring, and I wanted to see the world.

  Well, dinosaurs. I admit, I wanted to see the dinosaurs. Not just beasts of burden like spikebacks, raptors scavenging the garbage heaps, or sharpbeaks, the small fliers infesting the forest surrounding the town, but a real dinosaur, like a T-Rex or a longneck, something iconic instead of backdrop trash critters nobody cared about.

  Still full of wonder, which was bound to dwindle and die eventually, I reached the edge of humanity, standing in the shadow of the majestic trees, which represented the border between two worlds.

  As always, humans were sneaky. Stumps and other signs of downed giants lay everywhere as we invaded the wilderness and used its bounty for our purposes, mostly construction. But every once in a while, the wilderness lashed out, spewing hordes of dinosaurs which trampled and devoured the unfortunate residents of the disputed land.

  The rampage caused enough death and destruction to let the forest recover before another band of desperate slummers left the overpopulated cities, following imperial stipends to conquer the empty land and hoping to find better lives for themselves and their children. The irony was they needed building materials, and the timber was just there, waiting to be felled, perpetuating the vicious cycle.

  The dinosaur outbreak was long overdue, with humans pushing deeper into the jungle than ever, and I could only hope I didn't get caught up in the mess. I wasn’t interested in having a street or a building named after me, but standing where I did, I could feel the looming threat from the jungle. Leashed violence, just waiting for the chain to snap and for hell to break loose.

  With a brave step, I crossed the threshold, and with a dozen more, I entered the jungle. The place was dark, not an Everrain forest dark, but a gloomy regular rainforest. The canopy above probably stretched several dozen yards thick, with few stray rays of light reaching the bottom.

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  Several rotting logs, and scores of optimistic saplings littered the floor, the latter waiting for their chance and possibly, a well-placed bolt of lightning, which could illuminate their dark fates. The ground was wet, puddles and ponds visible in several places, haunted by swarms of mosquitoes. My gaze lingered on the ground, but even after a more careful inspection, I merely found some old prints. Each left by a creature with three toes, probably weighing more than a ton, but my experience with reading prints was poor.

  Yet another thing I needed to master.

  I advanced deeper, my skulking pace much more subdued than on the way over from Hailstown, but still faster than an adult’s jog. While examining the surroundings, I tried climbing a tree and found the endeavor easy. The bark was smooth and moist, but my fingers dug into it like steel spikes. I climbed all the way to its crown, the green world of leaves growing brighter with each upwards step I took through the thick canopy.

  Finally, the world became blue overhead and emerald all around, with multicolored pterosaurs of all shapes and sizes flying just above the tallest branches, some feasting on bugs, some snatching the bugeaters. I smiled, I could name them all. Slowly, I was integrating into the world. All it took was six hundred books on related subjects.

  Vines flowered, battling against each other with color and scent, trying to win over the buzzing pollinators. The sight entranced me for a spell before I climbed down and resumed my search for a T-Rex or another Jurassic icon, or whenever they roamed the Earth.

  I pierced deeper into the rainforest, and after a hundred miles came across something interesting. Or more accurately, they stumbled across me.

  There was little to hide behind, save for rotting logs, so I didn’t bother running from cover to cover relying on my superior perception. But the said superior perception did not account for a pack of ten-foot-tall ultraraptors sprinting through the forest, making next to no noise.

  I heard a squish as a five hundred pounds worth of apex raptor mistook a leaf-covered puddle for solid ground. My head snapped right, my brain processing the sight in less time than it took to blink.

  There were eight majestic green and black beasts, their scaly hands armed with wicked, eagle-like claws as black as night. Before I could further admire their lethal appearance, my survival instincts took over.

  Had I been armed, I would’ve fought them, but I came to the dino jungle on a safari and to die, so I didn’t even have a staff. Stupid. But, I still haven’t done basic combat training yet, since it would interfere with the scholar class.

  The rational part of me knew it was the right decision. Meanwhile, like every blue-collar, the more primitive portion of my psyche was busy cursing at the higher logic and its utter lack of basic understanding of survival.

  Showers of loose soil erupted behind me with each step I made, running from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. I ducked behind a tree, swerving to the right, when a shrill howl sounded behind my back, answered by a series of others.

  Fortunately, the pack traveled together, but they were fanning out, seeking to encircle me. Worse, they were mana beasts, they could keep up at least for a while. I guess a while was all it took for them to catch their meal.

  I zigzagged, trying to throw them off, but as the hunters spread, changing direction became a losing proposition. With some three or four second’s head start, I sprinted at the largest, sturdiest tree I could see.

  I leapt, my foot slamming against the bark ten feet above the ground, then again and again. I managed four steps running vertically before I lost momentum and had to throw myself against the trunk. My fingers dug into the tree as I scaled it as agile as a monkey.

  A heavy thud sounded behind me and the tree shook. I glanced back without pausing. What mattered was opening the distance, not my morbid curiosity. Still, peering down, I saw the ultraraptor had also slammed against the tree. The beast was five or six feet below, uncomfortably close, and it had proven itself a much better jumper than I was.

  A mistake I committed to memory, especially since it could have meant an early redo, had I been a second slower. While I climbed, the beast stuck to the trunk, scratching and clawing, but failing to gain height, slowly sliding down.

  Finally, in its random thrashing, it lost its purchase, and fell, hitting the ground with a squish. I kept climbing as it righted itself, its green and black camo scales smeared in mud for an even better camouflage effect.

  I reached the first bough, but decided to climb higher until I reached some thinner branches, ones the massive saurians couldn’t navigate without snapping them. Just because one of them failed to climb didn’t mean none of them could, and the risk wasn’t worth it.

  “I really am a dumbass. Sure, I want to die, I’m even going to kill myself. But why in heaven's name didn’t I take a staff with me? Or a maul, or a hammer?”

  I blame Everrain, growing reliant on magic to solve my problems, while the staff was more of a decoration than a weapon. It was a mistake, a foolish one at that.

  Fine, from now on, no walking around savage jungles unarmed, even if I’m planning to kill myself anyway.