I was hungry, very hungry. I had already run out of the scraps of food which was still left on the other's bodies long ago and I had been too stupid to look for food before coming here. I was thirsty too though I felt the hunger more.
I decided I should search for water first, I could survive weeks without food but without water? I couldn't survive long at all but there was one problem with actually finding water... It was still night. There was no chance I could see anything whatsoever and while I could still vaguely make out objects like trees by feeling the surrounding mana, finding water was going to be hard with how close I have to be to make out any shapes. Working from my memory when looking over the cliff face there was a river that came from the east side of the cliff.
A moment later I realised I had no idea whether it was actually to the east or not. stepped onto this world facing north relative to earth but I wasn't on earth anymore. I didn't have a compass either so I couldn't tell by using that.
I could say what east and west are compared to the rising and setting sun but compass directions aren't based on the sun at all. It's based on a compass of course, which faces the magnetic poles of the planet which didn't technically have to align to the axis of the planets spin though commonly did. Earth's magnetic pole for example is about ten degrees from its axis of spin.
I berated myself for even caring about some superficial thing, It didn't really matter what the compass directions were. All that mattered was that I knew where I was going. So until I could find a compass, knowing what is north or south is pretty useless.
Reaching for the zipper of my hammock I opened it up and began the process of climbing down one of the trees my hammock was attached to. Tiny hail stones hit my skin but it wasn't any problem.
The problem was the possibility of getting wet but It had been raining when I went to sleep and hailing when I woke up so I doubted it would let up any time soon. Rain seemed to last far longer in this world.
Climbing up something in higher gravity was surprisingly not much different than on earth, it was more tiring sure but I had near infinite stamina thanks to immortality. Climbing down wasn't nearly as easy. My balance constantly felt incredibly wrong and it took far longer than I would have expected to climb down.
I briefly considered just jumping down and taking the damage, trusting my immortal body to heal the injury but that was kind of the problem. I had no idea how much It could endure or recover and I wasn't quite willing to find out, especially not here in the demon realm.
My feet had finally reached the ground and I was glad, climbing down like that felt very unsafe. I was confident in my skills but none the less the increased gravity made even the simple task feel risky.
With my soul I felt for the mana around me, in reality what I was doing was pushing all mana my soul could touch ever so slightly and by Newton's third law there was an equal and opposite reaction on my soul which could be physically felt.
I wasn't quite sure how Newton's third law still worked in situations like this but at the same time didn't as I myself didn't feel the force apply to my body, only my soul.
This new pseudo sense called soul sense, very creative I know but it's not like I came up with the thing, was immensely useful. It took a lot of practice though, having your soul itself have a force applied to it was a new experience to everyone on earth who did it. Translating this feeling into an actual sense took many years of meditation.
Demons as expected universally knew how to do it, making sneaking up on them nearly impossible. Laura actually was the one to figure out how to get past this sense. She was able to have the mana within her body react to even another's soul in the exact same way the air would have if she was not there but sadly I never managed to do it well. The technique itself wasn't perfect, she still took up the physical space and so air was able to hit her, which could be seen in the mana but it was able to fool almost every demon we found.
All but one, The demon lord.
Maybe I should focus on trying to learn that skill a bit more, it will definitely be useful to be able to hide from anything searching for me.
There's me thinking about the past again, I had been doing that a lot recently. I hoped I wasn't going senile. Living forever as a senile old man wasn't exactly how I pictured the rest of my life but then again, living forever wasn't exactly what I expected anyway.
I caught myself, realising I was stuck in my head again. Despite the fact I was just thinking about that.
Soul sense allowed me to sense my immediate surroundings, it allowed me to take each step towards where I expected a river to be but without the fear of walking off the cliff or into a tree. Sadly it didn't allow for much else, I was probably one of the best at using this sense and yet I still had a long way to go until I could call myself truly proficient.
---
I found it, It was a lot farther than I thought it would be. Turns out I massively underestimated the sheer scale of this world. That river I saw down the side of the cliff was about ten kilometres away. It had also stopped raining which was very nice, I could hang my clothes while I washed up and they would be dry fairly soon.
The cliff must be several kilometres tall by itself, far larger than anything on earth that's for sure.
Anyway once I found the river I decided to wash myself after filling my flask, it was never good to go unclean and especially not in another world with unknown dangers.
Speaking of unknown dangers, is this water even safe to drink? It might have some unknown virus which will make my life hell.' I thought to myself.
It's not like I really had a choice, cleaning my body and drinking water weren't exactly things I could avoid.
The water was somewhat warm to my feet, not like bath water but just lukewarm. It wasn't very common for water to be warm on earth unless it comes from a geothermal spring but this was a nice surprise.
I noticed how warm this place actually was as well, I had just come from Canada in summer which should have been around thirty degrees Celsius on a hot day but this place was definitely hotter than Canada currently.
For some reason I didn't seem to really mind the heat at all, I considered if it was because of my new body but that just made my mind go down a rabbit hole wondering why a spell that was supposed to only grant immortality seemed to grant many other weird things.
Is it a byproduct of immortality or is it part of the goal of that spell?
In the back of my mind I noticed the mana behind me moving a bit strangely, It was gaining speed suddenly but there didn't seem to be anything that would cause it to do so. There was nothing but air mana behind me so why would that happen.
It was hardly the weirdest thing to happen in this world but something kept irking me about it, it almost felt familiar in its movement.
A moment later I realised 'Laura's stealth technique'
There was something moving behind me.
I jumped to my feet and turned around, in that exact moment the thing that was previously behind me disregarded all pretences of stealth and simply pounced.
It was four legged with a long snout, kind of like the shape of a dog but I couldn't make out much else.
It moved quick, quicker than any creature had any right to move. Before I could even react the wolf-like creature was already ripping apart my arm.