Alric hummed as he shifted his weight on his side, his arm acting as a pillow for his head.
His expression was oddly peaceful, as though he did not care about anything.
He inhaled sharply as he turned again, slowly stretching his lean body.
Sunlight gently caressed his pale skin as his eyes fluttered open weakly but closed again.
He felt refreshed, as though he had just gone through a rebirth(1).
Alric Gently opened his eyes again, viewing the eerie yet beautiful scene.
The enterer of the hollow tree was quite spacious with a hole on the top, allowing sunlight to enter.
Alric's eyes fall on the inner walls of the tree, and soon after that, his expression shifted from peacefulness to terrified and then to confusion.
On the deadwood, he saw a massive centipede, stuck to the inner walls of the tree. Its size vast, spanning several meters in length.
Alric gulped, his eyes widening but did not flee, as he saw it in more detail, it did not move, and neither did it look... alive.
He pushed himself off the ground, slowly getting closer to get a better look at it.
The closer he got, the more bad odder irritated his nostrils, it smelled like a rotten corpse, in fact, it was one.
"it's dead" Alric muttered under his breath.
Its flesh had rotted away long ago, what remained of it was merely an exoskeleton, clinging to the spot it had died in.
Even so, alric could not help but be afraid, after all, it looked like a corpse of some ancient horror. He had learned one thing... and that was to never trust ancient things... never.
Its exoskeleton was camouflaged in the dry wood of the dead tree, making it seem as though it was just an extension of it.
Alric had no words at all... wasn't his life getting too bizarre? Once an heir to his own kingdom had now become a pirate, although this was the result of his own free will to pursue freedom.. it was not meant to be this bad... now was it?
It was clear to him by now, that life was not easy, not easy at all, but still... was his not just too much?
He knew being a pirate was not easy, he had chosen this path of his own accord. He tried to blame it all on his fate but deep down he knew, he knew that he was the one responsible for his own fate, he was the one who was carving his own fate, there is nothing called fate, it is merely the result of all the actions and decisions you have took, that is what fate is.
Alric sighed.
His stomach growled. He had run out of all the meat he had packed, last night, and after the nap he had taken for who knows how long, he was hungry once again. The hunger was not unbearable but it sure would be if he kept ignoring it.
His mind slowly drifted away to all the delicious food he could have eaten if he were to be in the royal palace or even the ship, but he could only think, for now, he thanked himself for reading all those survival skills books.
He did not regret his actions at all, leaving his life of luxury... he did not regret it, for him, it was better to live as a king with no kingdom than to live as a king whose kingdom did not even belong to him.
For that reason, he despised his family.
Looking at the remains of the colossal centipede, Alric felt nothing... what was he supposed to feel? Scared? Yeah, he was over that.
He was only cautious, and that's it.
"if only I was strong I could have killed any fucker here and eaten it raw." Well... maybe he did feel something, and that was fluster, he felt too weak.
"I want to be strong, and for that, I need to kill, and to kill... I need to be strong. fuck it all!"
"Take!" he shouted as two daggers appeared in his hands, in his right a long dark emerald-black dagger and in his left an obsidian dagger.
He rushed out of the hollow tree.
He had enough of this bullshit, he was going to get stronger, slaying anyone or anything in his way, slitting the thoughts of even gods and Buddhas if he had to.
[And that was how the sin of wrath took over him]
(1) By "gone through a rebirth" it means that he felt refreshed after the nap, there is no hidden meaning within it.