What should I do now?
The black blood inside my imaginary body existed before even I transmigrated to this body. So, I couldn't really do much about it.
Which means, the only best way I could do for now was absorb the black astral energies. But. That's the exact reason why Gāber killed me some previous lifes ago. It was tied to their past for some reason.
Why couldn't he forgive evil shayaṫīn? And why the heck, all three of them, seems like stunned while discovered about my imaginary black-blood condition?
Fuck!
If that was the case, would I never met that djinn family ever again?
Hamad had to admit that this was the most frustrating thing for him now. His post-transmigration life had never been this difficult.
And there he was, got ready to do sukūn ritual after defeating anubises. After a countless mutterings, after a lot of theories and calculation, he made a decision.
He would only absorb the black astral energies, went to the different direction to avoid Gāber and his family, and explore around to met some possibilities.
He did sukūn.
Wounding parts of his imaginary body, and absorbing all of the black astral energies hovering around.
One thing he just realized that exact time. It turns out that black astral energy only comes from the corpses of the anubises that are lying around. Wehlāl doesn't provide any type of black astral energy.
And, the amount he absorbed now is very little. It couldn't circulate properly inside his imaginary body.
Well, that was concerning. Doesn't that mean that I needed to kill a lot more anubises, or creatures similar to it, to maintain the amount of black astral energies inside my imaginary body?
Crap! Had a thought about that tired me already.
So, he just sat around there to recover his energy. After all, he did three consecutive lives without a single rest.
His throat was burning, his stomach was growled crazily. From the beginning, all he had was five sips of water, that left inside the water carriers he found.
He should get some food as soon as possible to maintain his sanity. And, the only thing he could do to achieve that was to hunt some desert animals.
It was true that the most of desert animals were nocturnal. But, he doesn't have any choices here. His body was really tired. He couldn't even move his body properly.
And the water condition too.
In normal conditions, human's body could resist three consecutive days without water. But, Hamad was in the desert now. The scorching sun would burn his throat in no time.
Also, he should be fight some creatures to maintain black astral energies inside his body. That was a stupid death if he couldn't find any well.
He could smile a little. This one is something he learned while living in the countryside with his family.
Usually, every village, especially that located in the middle of the desert like this, had some well nearby, or even some water resources like a river.
Take example from ancient Egyptian.
Without the great river of Nile, the ancestors of Egyptian couldn't inhabited Egypt at all. Without his ancestors lived in those land of myths, the reason why Ḥamād read a lot of novels in his life maybe couldn't be born.
The Legendary writer, the GOAT that made a lot of Egyptian generations love to read, the legend himself, Ahmed Khaled tawfeek.
It was the same for sumerians people. Without Tigris and Euphrates, they couldn't build their civilization properly. And without their civilization, It was likely that the oldest epic ever discovered by humans will never be discovered. The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Shit! I thought of something irrelevant.
He then turned his thoughts and gaze to the corpses of the anubises that were strewn around him, hoping that there was something interesting he could find.
In those stories about transmigration, monsters, and etcetera, there would be some reward that would drop after some individual got defeated.
Was it same for this world?
He then crawled to the nearest corpse and observe it carefully. There was nothing like rewards whatsoever.
But, what if the rewards was inside their bodies? Like some mana stone in the other stories.
He took the khopesh that was lying around, and dissected the body of that anubis. He cut the chest, neck, hands, even the feet, and found nothing.
He then looked at the corpse more closely, activating his imaginary eyes to observe the astral energy around it.
Ḥamād found something.
There's a very tiny amount of black astral energy that emitted from this corpse's forehead. He cut the skin and found nothing. Then he cracked the skull open, and found a little reddish cristal before the brain.
The tiny amount of black astral energies emitted from this cristal, that covered by a stinky black blood that almost made Ḥamād throw his stomach up.
It was disgusting for sure.
But, a gain is a gain.
Even though he didn't know the function of this little cristal, he collected it form all of the corpses he killed.
All of it.
Like those MCes in lit RPG he red.
He doesn't really knew. He did that just to kill time, waiting the sun to rise. And also, it pleased him in the way he couldn't explain. Like the joy when he discovered a great series of story. He even began to hummed his favorite songs.
The sun finally rise. He collected a sum of seventeen crystals in total. The same exact amount of anubises he slain. He put it inside a coin pocket he found earlier.
The corpses turned to dust when exposed to sunlight. This was probably a natural trait they had. And this was probably also what kept Ḥamād from being attacked during the day.
This was what Ḥuwayda talked about. Every kind had their own conditions. And for anubises, maybe they couldn't step to the sunlight.
Ḥamād took an old piece of cloth that once served as a canopy, and packed everything he could bring with it; the khopeshes, his made-up weapon, and even some spare wood pieces that could be use to make fire.
Then he began his journey to find water source.
He walked, walked, and walked.
The sweat covered his entire body, his throat burned even more. And, the last sip of water in his water carriers was long gone.
Ḥamād wandered in every directions from that abandoned village. He began to hallucinate. Several desert mirage, Gāber that scolding him for being weak, even his commander back in his original world.
He knew that everything wasn't real. But his body felt like couldn't hold it anymore. He began to crawled like a lizards.
Wait.
Lizards.
Why the heck I forgot about that? I could just follow the trails of lizards or any other desert animals. They usually went to some place with water to got a drink.
Yeah, that's doable.
Then he looking around for any trails of animals. And there he found it. The sun cast long shadows over the rhythmic pattern of camel hoofprints.
Camel!
He checked it, and it was the fresh trails of the herd of camels. This is a jackpot for sure. Not only the water source, he could found food, a mount, or even a caravan! Which means there was a probability he met humans!
That probability made Ḥamād excited. With the last drop of his strength, he ran following those camel's tracks.
He ran for around half an hour, and found what he looked for. An oasis, surrounded by any kind of trees you can imagine. Just like he thought, a herd of wild camels drinking this water.
There was even wheat grew very well. It seems like the villagers of those abandoned village -before they disappeared- used this oasis to the fullest.
Thanks to you, guys. Hope you got a cozy room in the afterlife.
Without any hesitation, he threw all of his belongings to the side, stripped his body naked, and jump to the water.
He drank the water to his heart's content, cleaned his body, and even swam from one side of the oasis to the other while humming happily.
When Ḥamād was satisfied with what he had done, he came out of the water and put his clothes back on.
Well, that was the best water I had in my entire life!
And suddenly, his stomach growled. He was really hungry after all that he did.
He stare at the wild camels that slept under the palm trees. It was a best delication that could be offered by the scorching heat of the desert.
If I catched one of them, the others would attack me in instant. And that could be the instant death. Their kick was very strong, after all. And even if manage to defeat them, I couldn't mount one of them.
Gosh, When was the last time I rode a camel?
Finally, Ḥamād chose to shake one of the date palm trees, which had a large number of ripe dates on it.
After filled his stomach, he began to make an emergency shelter to sleep the night. Yeah, he didn't get any sleep since his last resurrection. His body couldn't take it any longer.
But, one thing he didn't aware of, glowing eyes in the bush, a low growl of something terrifying lurked in the darkness, aiming it's eyes to Ḥamād's black astral energies.
***