...
'Well, I'm still alive and I don't see any scars left over from the battle that ensued afterwards. I do wonder about Hasso though, did he make it as well?
'What about the other 3 men that Hasso was supposed to recruit, did they end up joining our side?'
The memory abruptly cut off, just as Gaston was getting more and more invested.
Even so, he had learned plenty about his past there, and a lot about the world too.
Even if he did find it hard to understand a few things.
'What the hell is Cultivation? Some sort of DND leveling system that I haven't heard about?
'And Innate Realm, Qi Refining Stage, these are different tiers in this fantasy system, or do they belong in separate systems?'
It was all a bit too confusing for him at the moment, he found it hard to understand with the limited context he was given.
Returning back to the real world, Gaston found himself in the same position he remembered, his head lowered, biting into the grey wolf's throat.
Now that the threat head been dealt with however, and he had regained some clarity, he naturally wouldn't continue ripping into raw meat with nothing but his teeth.
Although it had to be said, the wolf did not taste too bad, even though he had tasted it raw.
It's blood was also not... repulsive.
It actually tasted a bit like what he thought red wine would taste like.
He had never been much of a drinker, not even when he was back on Earth, so he could only assume.
'Well, maybe I shouldn't be too sure. This new world of mine has forced me into cannibalism in order to survive.
'Maybe it's also pushed me to alcohol, and I just can't remember it yet.'
Nothing seemed too far-fetched to Gaston at this point.
Even though he had always been of the firm belief that alcohol and drugs were for weak people that needed such crutches in order to make it through life.
Given what he had just learned about his past, he wouldn't be too surprised if he regained a memory in which he was all of a sudden drinking like an alcoholic.
If even something as wretched and repulsive as eating another human's flesh was not off the table for him, then drinking some alcohol definitely wasn't as well.
Aside from the wolf blood's exotic taste, it also had some unexpected effects on him.
It brought a refreshing feeling back into his body, making his body feel full of energy, satiating both his hunger and thirst.
'Hmm...'
Just then, another possibility popped up in his mind.
It was possible that something else was going on here.
Maybe what it satiated was not what he thought were his body's basic needs, hunger and thirst.
Rather, it was his cultivation, which was a new basic need for his body, possessed only by cultivators such as himself?
'There wasn't much explaining going around in that memory, but I did learn that because of the fact that we were sailing across the Blood Sea, a place with no energy, my body as a "Qi Cultivator" was dealing with some problems.
'In that case, maybe this is my body's natural response to absorbing energy after such a long period of depravation?'
The more he thought about it, there more likely he found it to be the case.
After all, looking back at it now, that grey wolf did look to be abnormal.
It was ridiculously bigger than any wolf he had seen, and it managed to retain a high level of combat effectiveness despite the devastating injuries that the pigeon left on its body.
And as he himself found out the hard way, it's skin was also abnormally tough.
All of these things however could be explained away, if it wasn't just some normal creature, but a creature with "cultivation."
'If this wolf really did possess cultivation, then not only would that answer all of my doubts about it, but it would also explain why it's blood was of such great help to my body.'
Speaking of which, the effects of the wolf blood on his body were still on-going.
As he was trying to focus on feeling the subtle changes that his body was going through, he discovered that he could almost "look inside" of his body!
It was a strange sensation, looking at all the little brown streams of... what he assumed was energy, zipping across his body, going in all sorts of directions.
The more he looked however, the more he discovered that not all their movements were random, like he had initially assumed.
There was a significantly higher portion of these little streams of energy going towards his injured right arm!
The effects weren't noticeable immediately, but he did feel a comfortable sensation gradually enveloping his right arm.
Maybe he wasn't of a high enough "cultivation level" for this brown energy of his to immediately restore his right arm back to full health, or maybe he just didn't have enough energy yet.
It was also possible that it was because he didn't know what he was doing, and his body was using the energy instinctively which lead to an inefficient use of energy, and a slower rate of recovery.
Whatever the case may be, he knew that he wouldn't be able to discern the truth with his current knowledge of the subject.
He could only hope that a well-timed memory would return to him in the near future to solve these doubts of his.
In the meantime, he was just glad that those things were beneficial to him, and not some parasites that had entered his body through the wolf's blood.
...
Time passed by quickly as Gaston was experiencing these changes.
Maybe a little too much time.
Usually Gaston was not one to lose himself like this, however maybe these were additional changes to his body that he just wasn't aware of yet.
'I can't spend any more time here, what with the smell of blood and everything, and especially because it's the blood of creatures with cultivation, it's probably even more attractive to the other predators than regular blood. They could be here at any second, I need t-'
His unusually frantic thoughts were interrupted as his body suddenly stumbled a little, nearly tripping over nothing but air.
Nobody likes to have their thoughts get interrupted, but in this case, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing.
'What the hell is happening?'
Snapping out of his thoughts, Gaston suddenly regained some clarity.
He found that he was suddenly a bit out of sorts, his body feeling even more unusual than before, and even his brain wasn't functioning like it usually did.
It didn't take long for Gaston to put two and two together however, as there was only one thing that could be responsible for his current state.
'The wolf blood.'