9 Taking Time to Heal

As the darkness fades the first thing that comes into vision of Z is a glorious sight. Dirt....Dirt? Z immediately realizes he passed out outside in the open. Quickly trying to get up in fear he just starts lifting himself when intense pain hits him from his entire body causing him to collapse back on the ground. Though when he collapses he turns his head to see a pile of blue petals. Right behind this pile is the flower they came from with one petal remaining and a blue jewel where the petal originates from. This is that blue flower that he was growing and just looking at it helps drives off what panic remains.

As he watches the flower calming down the last petal falls off landing perfectly on top of the pile. The flower's stem and leaves then quickly start to wither away into dust leaving behind the jewel. At this sight Z once again tries to move this time slowly and carefully. He successfully sits up soar with some tinges of pain but they are bearable and he begins to collect the petals and that gem. Something inside of him just tells him to do so and if he didn't he would greatly regret it.

Afterwards he manages to stand up his head is getting a little fuzzy and the pain increases but he can still move enough to get in his house. His clothes while shredded still had his keys in them and that pocket now has the petals and gem from the flower. He manages to get inside and immediately chugs down the last bit of milk he has.

"You fucking idiot why did you try and break the damn shell." Z shouted at himself as he collapsed on the couch. "It had to be that gem from the flower. I was way to reckless but the question is how. It honestly was like I was awake for 36 hours and was going with the help of 3 bangs being chugged at once. The only thing that I can think of is I ran out of mana but I still don't know if mana is a thing. Ugh my head still hurts and now I have another one and I am not sure if I should eat it." Pulling out the blue gem it every shade of blue he has ever seen and some he has never seen before like what a sapphire should be.

"Fuck it" Z deciding to risk it since this time it wasn't from something that nearly killed him and these gems have proven more times to help him than not. So he decides to eat it and sleep since he still needs a long time to heal up some of his missing ribs and not to mention his spine. Once he swallows the gem it filling his entire mouth a cool feeling spreads from his entire body. It felt so good and was quite calming, plus it actually helped get rid of the fuzzy feeling in Z's head. This brought clarity and helped cement the fact that the other seed did something to make him dumber. Anyways time to sleep and start preparing it is going to be a long time before Z goes hunting again.

* * * * * *

As a few months passed Z has been busy healing and practicing stuff that did not relate to killing. Such as turning all the rabbit pelts he had gathered into some pants and a bag. He had to explore the neighborhood again to gather the materials to due this. Weirdly the normal sewing kit he found in a nearby house worked perfectly even though they should have been too small for leather. He also found some fabrics in the same house though some had been damaged or were decomposing the ones that were usable were pristine and strangely better than what they should be. Z couldn't rip these nor cut them with the steak knife he had found.

Z also went back to the library and tried to find other books that could be useful and managed to find some about blacksmithing, though most are about history or cultural a few gave him an idea of how to start. Of course he wouldn't build a forge since the chances are the death bird would investigate it and that would be the end of everything. Though he did manage to turn the rabbit horns into a spear and even made some arrows. Strangely after eating the blue flower's gem he regained a lot of memories from when he was human some of which were helpful, like when he was bored as a teenager and looked up safecracking on the internet. This helped him open a gun safe and found a recurve bow in good condition.

Z did not even attempt to hunt the rabbits in this time and confirmed that he does not need to eat. So that is a plus, right? Though today that was going to change he has a bow and arrows and needs to get back to doing stuff out of his house. Namely getting strong enough to kill and eat a crab. The best way that he figured to do this was eating monster cores. Of course he is gonna try and hunt something not a rabbit and he actually has a place he wants to check out. It is a greenhouse he found in his neighborhood a while back but didn't check out because he saw no point.

Slowly and carefully he made his way towards the greenhouse bow in hand and the knife sheathed at his side in his handmade sheath. Once he got there he didn't immediately open but glanced inside to look for movement. After seeing nothing he goes inside to see a flower garden full of plants never seen before. The garden itself was designed to be self sufficient using rain water to help replenish any lost water and even a decomp pile that restored nutrients. That pile had very weird mushrooms on them that Z was not gonna touch. While the flower that he saw were very pretty there was nothing that was really noteworthy though. At least at first glance.

After Z had carefully looked at everything in the greenhouse his eyes went to the fountain in the middle that served as the reservoir to keep everything watered. In the pool were fish, koi fish to be precise. He only saw three though and they were swimming weirdly. One was red, one was blue, and one was green but the shades varied. The sight of these fish though made him feel hungry incredibly so. Enough to actually make Z worried since he hasn't actually felt true hunger like this since he had involuntarily trimmed his fat.

So Z decided to play it safe and try and use an arrow to spear a fish since he left his spear not expecting to need it. Well when he tried though it was impossible. The arrow didn't even go into the water but because he didn't force it he did not lose the arrow. Deciding it wasn't worth the risk right now Z decided to come back later if he could think of something that work other than shoving his hand in the water. So with that Z resumes trekking the neighborhood in search for some prey.