Return of the Woodcutter
Chapter 8 - Friend Or Foe? (part 3)

The island's warm tropical air temperature slightly dropped as its sun slowly sunk into the ocean, falling asleep to await a new dawn.

Its last light passed by Aito's face, who was standing outside his cave's fortification, a torch made of a single piece of wood in one hand and his weapon in the other.

He had been on his guard since the monkey escaped. Training and crafting had been put on hold because it could leave an opening for his enemy to exploit.

But he considered it a real waste of time. The monkey had not appeared at all. Aito had been looking for it the whole day, to no avail.

"Fuck… I can't sleep until that thing is found." He said his anger about to blow up.

He then remembered that he had forgotten to feed a certain wrecker of bamboo stands and headed for Jack's dwelling, still on the lookout for an eventual surprise attack.

However, he did not expect to replace what had troubled him until now, dead in a pool of its own coagulated blood, riddled with holes.

Aito brought his torch closer to examine the wounds.

"It looks like a stabbing wound, but the flesh is shredded. The weapon wasn't sharp enough to leave clean cuts." He said, piecing the clues together with a knowledge he had acquired after one month of bloodshed.

Apart from him, only one other living being had a weapon on this island. A weapon that could have made those kinds of wounds. But that was impossible. Jack never attacked other evol monkeys before.

Aito had seen it observe him while he was fighting other groups of evol monkeys and Jack had always stayed on the sideline like a referee on a football field.

Blue particles rising for the corpse took him out of his reverie. Since the grey space, he had been more aware of his surroundings while pondering, because of what it had cost him; a certain not so enjoyable holiday on a godforsaken island.

The corpse progressively disintegrated, morphing into small blue bubbles randomly spreading in the air. Aito had never observed this phenomenon before, or rather, never thought of observing a dead body until it disappeared.

Curious, he tried to poke one bubble with his ax, but it passed through as if it did not exist in the material world.

"What… is this?" He said, his inquisitive face lit by the particles' warm blue lights that basked the surrounding trees of its weird, yet unique hue.

Aito stared at the phenomenon, at a loss to what to think of it, and simply appreciated its sight.

Then the lights scattered to enter the earth, trees, bushes, and rocks, ending the show.

Aito stood still, his torch occasionally dimming with the passing cool winds of the night. For the first time since his arrival, he couldn't replace an explanation to… well, something.

It seemed so weird, so magical, so… out of this world. But again, he wasn't even on Earth, nor on that other world supposedly called Iris. He wasn't even sure if he had been truly resurrected.

Tired after going around all day to replace a single monkey, Aito sighed, left a piece of meat for Jack, and headed back home.

"At least I can sleep soundly now."

***

Perched on a tree branch, Jack's sleeping face frowned, sweat profusely erupting from his pores. His every muscle had ached all day long. The sore progressively increased to the point he couldn't move any longer.

Pain gnawed him to the bone, but despite that, he slept. As if forced into some kind of self-preservation system against the unbearable pain.

Taking advantage of their host's current comatose state, the body's every cell moved at incredible speed. Building new muscles, bones, and nervous systems. Discarding the old and useless cells to improve the body's overall performance.

Slowly but surely, Jack's body was ongoing evolution.

***

Blood covering the floor.

"LeT ## #### ##."

Bruises on his face.

"YoUr ###."

Bottle of alcohol in hand.

"YoUr #########."

Broken skull.

"I ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ####."

***

Aito jolted awake, gasping for breath, and drenched in sweat. Panicked, he drew his weapon.

"Who's there!?"

He searched in front of him. Darkness.

"Show yourself!"

Behind him. Darkness.

"I said, show yourself!"

Right and left. Darkness.

Feeling insecure, he stood up from his bamboo bed, opened the inventory, and the basic materials to build a fire.

"Hurry."

He quickly organized the dry sticks in a pyramidal way.

"Hurry."

Placed coconut fibers inside the pyramid.

"Hurry."

Grabbed his flints and lit the fibers.

'Quickly, quickly.' He thought, blowing on the ambers.

The heat spread to the fibers then sticks. Surrounding darkness progressively dispersed by the fire's orange light that suddenly turned glacial blue.

Aito tried to move, but his body refused to obey. His breath became visible to the naked eye as the air turned cold.

Paralyzed, he could only gather his courage when a freezing hand grabbed him by the shoulder.

"CoMe tO mE, AiTo WaLkEr."

***

Aito was shocked awake and, this time immediately rushed out of his cave. The outside was still dark as he passed the fortifications. He kept running until he reached the beach. Only then did he dare to slow down.

"What… what…" He said, panting. "What the… fuck was that!?"

Out of breath, he walked towards his rock protruding out of the sand, sat on it, and attempted to regain his calm while still on the lookout for a potential supernatural phenomenon.

His mind was in shamble. That, whatever it was, could be just a dream. A very bad dream.

The thing in there had played with images of his past. It could have been a manifestation of his regrets, but… that blue fire. The freezing hand. The chilly air. And that venomous, deformed, rock voice.

"It felt so real. So fucking damn real."

He couldn't be sure of what he had seen. But one thing was certain, he was scared but also pissed.

Every time he finished a preparation to counteract a new danger, another unpredictable event happens, leaving him no time for a break.

It felt like the trial was spitting on his hard work, or slap his face telling him that what he did was a just waste of time. That he should just let himself die and end the suffering.

Inside him, anger overwhelmed the fear and soon proved to be impossible to contain.

"Fucking island!" He shouted, in need to vent out his frustration. "Fucking goddess! Fucking monkeys! Fucking…"

He paused, realizing he didn't know how to address the thing that had appeared in his dream.

"Fuck you, whatever you are!" He said, his anger slightly subsiding.

Then he thought about the thing's last sentence. It wanted him to come to it, which meant that it had to be somewhere on that island. But he had visited every corner of it and never found anythi—

A realization washed over him like a bucket of cold water when he remembered two places he hadn't visited yet.

One of them being his cave's depth.

***

Aito watched the dawn to calm his agitated spirit. It was clear to him now that if he wanted to survive the three months, he couldn't take the risk to stay in the cave. Whatever that thing was, Aito dreaded it. If it was powerful enough to invade his dreams, he dared not imagine what it could do physically.

But abandoning his cave would leave him with no shelter. He could still build a new one, but it will take some time. Time he could spend training.

His predicament quickly cleared when he decided to make the shelter his priority. With nowhere to actually sleep and rest in with a minimum of fortification, he was certain to die sooner rather than later.

With a goal in mind, he stood up and headed back to the cave.

There, he found an evol monkey standing on all four in front of the entrance as if it was waiting for him.

It looked… different from normal ones. It was shorter, with leaner toned and dynamic muscles that seemed to hide explosive strength. Its brown fur hid strands of black hairs, indicating that it was slowly changing.

Aito felt a sense of familiarity with the monkey. When his gaze shifted to the stone dagger it had in hand, something clicked like the last piece of a puzzle had been found.

"Jack?" Aito said, drawing his ax in case of an eventual attack. "Is that you?"

Before he could get an answer, stepping sounds coming from three different directions alerted him. He equipped his shield, turned around to face the threat, while slowly retreating to the cave entrance.

Five evol monkeys started to encircle him. Aito quickly noticed three differences. Obviously, they increased in number and size, but the most alarming was the appearance of a monkey with bigger features.

It was taller, more muscular, held an iron ax, and most importantly, it appeared to be their leader.

'Really?' He thought when finally realizing it was the start of a new week. 'First a nightmare, then Jac—'

Aito quickly glanced back—remembering that there was a potential enemy behind him—to replace nothing. The monkey was gone.

A monkey shout brought his attention back to the front.

"Wooo!"

The leader stood on two legs, hit his muscular chest to show his status, before launching an assault.

Aito picked a spear from his inventory, aimed at the leader, intending to bring it down as soon as possible for obvious reasons, and flung it with all his strength.

The projectile violently pierced the air, causing whistles, and struck true.

BAM!

"Woah!"

The leader screamed in pain from the wound on his left shoulder, then grabbed the spear and pulled it to take out the stone tip.

But Aito wasn't stupid enough to wait for it to recover and sent yet another spear. This time, however, it deviated from the intended trajectory to strike a monkey in the chest.

BAM!

The force of the impact sent it flying two meters backward. Aito clicked his tongue, taking a mental note to focus on spear throwing the next time he trains marksmanship.

By the time he took out another spear, he felt a draft to his right. He glared sideways to see a spear lodged in the earth.

'Are you kidding me?'

Aito shifted his attention towards the leader and could swear the creature was smirking.

He then threw a new projectile and didn't wait to see the results to flee behind his defenses. Judging by the lack of a screaming sound, it probably missed.

More agile, the monkeys were quickly closing on him. Aito pulled out a stone ax from his inventory and launched it at the nearest one.

BAM!

The stone ax bit into its left shoulder shredded the bone and cut off its arm. The monkey fell from the pain, grabbing its gaping wound while shrieking.

Aito finally reached the bamboo wall's entrance, turned around, blockaded it with his shield just in time to deflect an ax strike. He quickly followed by a shield bash and a deadly diagonal slash.

He kicked the beheaded corpse aside to free his vision, then turned towards the remaining monkey and gave him a warm welcome

'Where is the big one?' He thought, dislodging his ax from the monkey's skull.

He quickly found his answer right where he had been standing before the attack.

The leader was lying in its own blood with a slit throat. On top of its corpse sat, bloodied stone dagger in hand, the small monkey from before.

Puzzled, Aito carefully walked towards his mysterious helper. The monkey eyed him warily but showed no sign of aggression.

He slowly placed his ax on the ground, opened his inventory, and he took out a piece of roasted meat.

The monkey's eyes shone like the brightest stars. It snatched the meat and happily chewed on the food.

Aito smiled, recognizing the familiar voracious appetite. "So… we are buddy now, Jack?"

Jack paused, looked at him, and stuck out his tongue.

Aito chuckled, brought out another piece of meat as a bonus reward, and tossed it to Jack.

"Thanks for the help."