Manda ran aimlessly through the night, sweat sticking to the wound on his thigh, every step a searing agony.
Behind him came the baying of hounds—Shadina's hunting dogs. A cold dread from the depths of memory jolted the exhausted Manda fully awake in an instant.
His mind flashed to the scene of the original owner being mauled by several vicious dogs at once. He heard the boy's helpless sobs, and Shadina's gleeful laughter.
Manda, the bastard son of Baron Rugon Cloudsail, a lowly wretch unworthy of a family name.
The rules of this world were nothing like he'd imagined.
In the ancient eastern kingdom, a noble's bastard, though not granted the same status as a legitimate son, would at the very least live a life of luxury and plenty.
But he'd lived like a beast, enduring twelve years of torment at the hands of his elder brother and sister.
He could not let them catch him. If they did, he would not even be allowed to live as a beast. He darted past a row of peasants' huts, then a wheat field, and past the dilapidated wine god's temple that was soon to be torn down, before plunging headlong into the forest.
A heavy downpour had just passed, leaving the ground a quagmire. After stumbling through the muck for what felt like an eternity, Manda tripped over a gnarled tree root and fell hard to the ground.
It was a brutal fall—his face smashed straight into a stone. Dizzy and disoriented, he nearly blacked out.
Fortunately, his front tooth accidentally bit down on his tongue, and the searing pain, mixed with the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth, roused him once more. The hounds' baying grew closer, and pinpricks of torchlight flickered to life in the forest. They were catching up.
Not a moment to lose. Manda struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the edge of the forest. Beyond the trees lay a canyon, shrouded in a thick mist that hid everything within from sight. Manda wanted to step forward, yet fear held him back.
A voice from the original owner's memories echoed in his mind, a constant warning: "Do not go there.
Never enter the Valley of Malignant Mists." The voice was his mother's. She had died two years prior, and this must have been a resurgence of some long-buried memory.
The Valley of Malignant Mists—forbidden ground of the Cloudsail family, and the Baron's place of execution.
As the local lord, Baron Rugon Cloudsail had devised numerous private punishments.
By the kingdom's laws, a lord had the right to chastise his subjects, but not to arbitrarily strip them of their lives. Yet the Baron had secretly put countless villagers to death, for his family had long kept a macabre method of execution: casting men into the Valley of Malignant Mists. No one, not even the Baron himself, knew what lurked within the valley—only that no one who entered ever emerged alive.
They herded the "condemned" into the valley, posted a guard for a short while, then left, never fearing the prisoners would escape. A few days later, the prisoners' bones would be laid out at the valley's mouth, picked clean of all flesh and sinew as if devoured by some beast. Manda lingered at the canyon's edge when the Baron, flanked by his servants, caught up to him at last.
A sea of torchlight blazed so bright it blinded Manda, and he was instantly transported back to the terror of the branding iron. "You beast!" Lady Attia, the Baroness, stood behind her husband, pointing a finger at Manda and screaming. "It was I who showed you mercy! It was I who let you live to this day! What have you done to my children!" "You shameless madwoman! Why don't you ask your precious children what they did to me?" Manda shot back. Attia roared. "I'll flay you alive!" "Then come and get me!" If he could take a hostage, Manda might buy himself a little time.
The Baron remained calm. He took two steps forward, stared at Manda for a moment, and spoke softly: "Come back, my son. It is all over. I will not punish you.
I know this is not your fault." Such tender words—Manda could have almost cried from the false sentiment. In the memories, his father, though cold and distant, had never raised a hand against the poor boy.
To follow his father home, to pretend none of this had ever happened—for a twelve-year-old boy, it would have been the perfect ending. But the boy standing before the Baron was no ignorant child. Inside that twelve-year-old body beat the heart of a madman from the Jurassic.
There had been no violence from the Baron, but neither had there ever been a shred of protection.
He had turned a blind eye to every torment Manda endured, until the poor boy had been tortured to death.
And now he looked at the horde of torches before him. The Baron had roused more than forty servants just to hunt down a child. He was no different from those devils—he merely kept his hands clean of blood.
One could not harbor illusions about devils. The only thing that could stand against a devil was a madman. But there were too many devils now, and the madman had no choice but to retreat for the moment.
Manda glanced back at the canyon and inched silently backward. Rugon's voice boomed out: "Don't do something foolish. You have nowhere left to run.
Step into that canyon, and you step into hell!" "You're quite clever! Backward is hell!" Manda suddenly laughed.
The Baron stared at him in astonishment. Since when had this cowardly fool dared to speak to him like this? He had never even had the courage to meet his eyes. "Come back at once, while I still have a shred of patience left.
You still have a chance to live!" the Baron ground out through his teeth. "Do not believe me? Take one step back and see!"
"I will not step back. Not one step!" Manda gritted his teeth too, his gaze never leaving the Baron's face. The Baron froze, his hand falling to the hilt of his sword.
He had fought in wars—this was the look of a cornered animal, and Manda could lunge at any moment.
The servants around him raised their cudgels, hoes, and all manner of crude weapons.
Manda looked on with open contempt and laughed. "Step back? Never.
I've decided to walk in, head held high!"
Manda spun around in an instant and sprinted into the canyon.
The Baron stared, dumbfounded.
The men around him exchanged confused glances, but none had the courage to chase after him. "He's mad. He must be mad," the Baron said, shaking his head helplessly. "Just like his mother! A shameless little bastard! When we find his corpse, I'll smash every bone in his body!" the Baroness shrieked, yet she did not dare take a single step forward.
Stepping into the valley was like stepping into another world. The Baroness's screams cut off abruptly, replaced by howling wind and an eerie, unidentifiable birdcall.
Manda tramped through sand, mud, and loose rock for a long while, and sure enough, no one followed.
He sank to the ground, leaning his back against a bluestone boulder, and gasped for breath.
He picked up a stone from the ground and scrawled four lines in Chinese upon the earth: Advantages: Still alive.
Disadvantages: No idea how long that will last. Long-term goal: Survive. Immediate goal: Escape this valley. Writing down the important things was a habit of his—even in the Jurassic. It was how he kept his mind focused on what he needed to do.
Thick mist swirled all around, reducing visibility to less than three meters.
Even within the canyon, Manda knew nothing of it. Did it hold man-eating beasts? Blood-drinking ghosts? Or perhaps the cursed branch of the Cloudsail family, who did the clan's dirty work in secret? Or maybe there was nothing at all—merely a place so easy to get lost in that people wandered until they starved to death.
The thought of hunger reminded him that he had been locked in a warehouse all day, tortured, and had not eaten a single bite.
But thirst was far worse than hunger. His throat was parched as if on fire, his mouth coated in a bitter, salty film, his saliva thick and cloying, as if it were thicker than blood. Manda held up a finger, pointed it at a stone, and muttered under his breath: "Turn into a bowl of water. Turn into a bowl of water…"
He chanted it eighty-one times. The stone remained a stone. His omnipotent cheat ability—only moments before, it had cut through his bonds.
Why was it failing him now? Had he used it wrong? "Turn into gold." "Turn into a roast chicken." "Turn into a bowl of rice." "Turn into anything, just not a stone…"
He tried dozens of times on the stone, even taking two bites out of it, mouth full of mud, and accidentally cracking a tooth.
Beyond that, he had nothing to show for it. "Cracked or not, it was already loose from the beating anyway." He tossed the stone aside, snapped off a blade of grass, and tried again dozens of times.
Manda was certain his cheat ability had no power of transformation. Had not the ghost messenger promised him all cheat abilities?
Why could he not even use the most basic function?
Was there some terrible misunderstanding here? He thought back to the bonds he had cut, and decided to run an experiment.
He pinched the blade of grass between his index and middle fingers, mimicking the motion of a pair of scissors, focused his mind, and squeezed hard. The grass snapped cleanly in two.
A misunderstanding.
A colossal misunderstanding. Manda tried again and again—he could cut the grass into chunks, strips, even slivers, until the ground was littered with shredded blades. It proved his cheat ability beyond a shadow of a doubt. Fingers that could harden into sharp metal.
That was the ghost messenger's idea of a "cheat ability." And what of all cheat abilities? Manda grabbed another blade of grass and tested each finger crevice in turn.
Every single one had the same cutting power—both his left and right hands were razor-sharp. What was this?
Wolverine? Edward Scissorhands? He tested all ten fingers, one by one. Would he ever be able to wash his face again? Scratch an itch? How would he do important things like pick his ears or his nose?
Would he never be able to hold himself again? Was there any joy left in life? He should not have been so greedy. He should not have bantered with the ghost messenger.
He should have spoken clearly.
There were countless cheat abilities in novels—any one of them would have been better than this!
He was wallowing in regret when the sound of running water suddenly reached his ears.
Water! Without a doubt, it was water!
Manda scrambled to his feet, forgetting all about his cheat ability in his excitement, and ran toward the sound.
Manda had sharp ears. He did not run far before finding the source: a small stream trickling down from the mountains, pooling into a pond in a hollow of the valley.
Without a second thought, Manda dove into the pond. As he drank, sweet, clear water coursed through him, from his toes to the tips of his hair. He was alive again.
Truly alive this time. All he needed now was some food…
Manda froze. He heard a sound behind him—the scrape of four limbs through the grass. Small, but agile.
A leopard, perhaps, or some other big cat. Striking while prey drank was a cheap trick carnivores had loved since the Jurassic.
Manda did not panic. He kept drinking. Luring small carnivorous dinosaurs in while they drank—he had used that trick countless times himself.
His attacker chose its moment, leaped, and pounced at Manda.
Manda darted to the left, watching as it plunged into the water, then delivered a sharp kick, sending it crashing hard into the pond. It was no leopard. It was smaller than he had imagined—more like a hairless monkey.
Manda did not stop to think.
He waded in and kicked it repeatedly. The creature tried to fight back, but could not find its footing on the slippery pond bed.
After a barrage of heavy blows, it fell onto its back in the sand and stone, motionless, its will to resist broken. Manda pressed a foot down on its chest and, by the light of the moon, got a clear look at it. It was almost completely hairless, save for a few sparse strands on its head.
A small head, a thin neck, a pair of eyes the size of chicken eggs, ashen gray skin, a gaunt body, and long, spindly limbs.
He thought he had seen that face somewhere before. "Sméagol? Gollum?" It hit him. In a classic movie from his life before last, there was a character who looked just like this—though this one wore a reasonably clean short tunic. "I am not Sméagol! My name is Quinta!"
The creature could talk! Manda laughed and greeted it. "Hello there, Quinta." "Let me go, you damned bug!"
Quinta had a foul temper. He strained to lift his head, trying to bite Manda's leg, but the angle was wrong, and his rows of serrated teeth could not reach. "
Let me go at once, you foolish cur! I swear by Typhon's name, I will devour your flesh and feast on your soul!"
Who was Typhon? The name sounded familiar. It did not matter. Manda knelt down and looked at Quinta with a smile. "Do you have any food?"
Quinta froze, blinking his egg-sized eyes in surprise.
"W-What food?" "Any food. Rations. I need to eat."
"I-I do. Of course I do! It is just not on me. I have plenty at home," Quinta blinked again. "Let me go, and I will give you food. I swear it! I swear by Typhon's name!"
He was probably not lying—at least not the first part. His tunic was skin-tight, with no place to hide food.
"You put me in a difficult position," Manda sighed. "There is nothing difficult about it!"
Quinta grinned, baring his teeth.
"Free me, and I will give you food. I will even lead you out of the canyon."
"That is not the point," Manda shook his head, then picked up a large stone from beside his foot. "The point is, you do not have much meat on your bones."