25 Escape from LA

Leaving the dining room Harrison felt conflicted. He didn't like to lie to Sheina but considering he knew her a little more than a day it was the right thing to do. Checking his energy he found he still had plenty left so he went to the library. By now he could at least mostly discern the book topics from the covers since the lessons from Sheina gave him a lot of new words he could translate.

He found the book on geography from last time and he re-analyzed it again. A new learn button appeared and he immediately used it.

Geography skill LVL. 2 acquired.

Geography skill LVL. 3 acquired.

Geography skill LVL. 4 acquired.

Geography skill LVL. 5 acquired.

Bonus Wisdom +1

In between were constant messages of energy depletion. He noticed the level of skill he got was the same as the energy needed. Geography level five cost him 5 energy. So the geography new levels cost him 14 energy all together.

It was not something useful at the moment but he was perfectionist so since he started to read that book he wanted to get everything out of it. He opened to read it manually and noticed most things were translated by the system but some words were still unknown.

He remembered where he put the bestiary and he got it again to see if he could get more out of it. Upon reanalysis and learning he got Zoology up to level 8. So he was down 15 energy again going from level six to level eight.

Opening it up he searched for the marakash.

Luckily for him the book was illustrated and he could recognize the beast.

In the Illustration was a wolf like beast with big bunny ears that except the big canines didn't look too intimidating. The description was another story.

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"Marakash"

A vile beast that is extremely cautious when hunting. Its long ears enable it to hear the other predators and its prey coming from a far distance. It hunts in packs of three or more of its kind. They coordinate together to encircle their prey. They hunt significantly bigger prey than they are using this strategy. Once the prey has been designated they are very hard to dissuade. Easily recognized by its dark color and big ears.

Main strengths: Speed, stamina, excellent hearing, strong bite force, sharp claws

Main weakness: Small size resulting in low strength, slow movement in water

Usable parts: delicious meat, fur, claws, teeth

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He also found the ratbit and foxbit in the bestiary.

Ratbits were called Foofni and foxbits were called Feruns .

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"Foofni"

A small creature that feeds on everything from plants to small animals even minerals using their strong teeth. Spooked easily. They move in herds. Will bite when cornered.

Main strengths: Speed, excellent hearing, strong teeth

Main weakness: Small size

Usable parts: tender meat, fur, teeth

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"Ferun"

A small marakash like creature that lives by itself. When provoked attacks a lot bigger prey than it can handle. Easily distinguished from marakash by color and size. Their color varies from yellow to orange with black paws.

Main strengths: Speed, excellent hearing, strong teeth

Main weakness: Small size

Usable parts: usable meat, high quality fur, teeth

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As Harrison remembered the experiences he had with these animals he could only nod at the descriptions. The weakest of them had bitten him when he tried to capture it. The other two he only managed to kill due to them being slow when they fell or chased into the pond with him.

'I need to take care of marakash when I go into the wild again. Maybe climbing trees is an option.' Harrison thought as he browsed the bestiary some more.

There were all sorts of beasts he still has not encountered in it. They all looked somewhat familiar to him as they had respective counterparts on Earth. There were animals similar to deer, boars, bears and even tigers. Different kinds of birds were also described.

There were around 50 animals all together in the book and on the last page he saw a notice.

Derun beasts and higher will be described in books two and three.

He had no concept of what a derun beast was so he decided he will ask Sheina tomorrow.

Harrison checked his energy supply and noticed he only had three energy units left so he decided to call it quits for today.

Walking back to his room he eyed the bathroom but decided he will not inconvenience the servants by asking for a bath and just went to his room. It would probably take an hour for them to get the water and heat it up anyway.

Getting into his bed he thought about all the things he learned today. As he contemplated on the new knowledge he soon dozed off.

The sound of the ventilating machine was soothing by now to his ears but the darkness that surrounded him left much to be desired. The +26 energy was the only positive thing that made him come back to this plane.

Harrison still had some medicine that would take him out cold if he used it but he decided to wait as he didn't want to accidentally overdose himself. The boredom was killing him with nothing but the ventilating machine making some white noise and the muffled sounds of footsteps coming from the corridor.

After a while he remembered he still had some books in his inventory and he decided to manually read them since it didn't cost him energy to do so. It only cost him energy when he took them out of the inventory space or put them in, also when he used the analysis and learning buttons.

He chose the meditation book since it was the most obscure one out of all of them. By now his vocabulary was big enough to understand more than fifty percent of the text and he noted the words that were foreign to him. He would ask Sheina about them tomorrow.

As Harrison was learning how to meditate on the other side of the United States in Las Vegas Ambroise Ananta was fuming.

He was about to book a flight and retrieve his VR helmet from the evidence locker as he received a message from the higher plane.

In the message was an order for return from the Earth's plane since the higher-ups have decided the manpower they had was wasted here with the temporal instabilities that are plaguing this plane.

All the staff members located here are to immediately return while the plane was stable and await further orders for reassignment. The departure deadline was in four hours.

Ambroise was fuming since there was nothing he could do to oppose the order. The orders he got were always absolute and any failure to comply would be usually met with only one punishment - death by soul ignition.

Soul ignition was a method that could kill a cultivator from anywhere across all the planes so it didn't matter if he hid somewhere. It was used on all new cultivators who were sponsored by an alliance as a means of ensuring absolute loyalty.

Along with the order he got a surprising news that this plane was experiencing temporal anomaly which made the time flow approximately forty times slower in the last four days on average.

With this news he sighed in relief.

'Even if I have to stay 40 years somewhere else only a year will pass here and they probably will not lose the helmet by then.' Ambroise thought and packed up everything he had of value. He hurriedly made arrangements for his company and left for the local portal. His closest portal was in Los Angeles which was a four hour drive by car so he would make it in time if he stepped on it. AS a CEO of a multimillion company naturally he chose a helicopter to fly him there.

As he got to the warehouse in the industrial zone he took one last look and then went through the portal that was still awaiting other agents. Earth was quite a popular place for finding new recruits especially in Asia since the disciplines of eastern monks were very similar to the methods of cultivation on the higher planes and even though they didn't get the same benefits because of Earth's lack of spiritual energy the willpower needed to undergo the strenuous cultivation methods shone a light on the eligible candidates.

The North and South Americas had all together less than twenty agents deployed which was five times less than the Eurasian region with over one hundred. Nobody cared about Africa and Australia even though the probability of finding possible cultivators was not lesser the density of population and ease of finding them was a lot lower.

At the time all the cultivators have left the Earth's plane Harrison was still tumbling about the meditation book trying to surmise what some of the untranslated words could mean. The hospital room was quiet most of the time except one time a nurse came to check his catheter and measure his temperature.

After what he figured was long enough he transferred a drop of diazepam into his body from the inventory space and drifted off.