The moment I witnessed its movements, I knew — this hunt had been a failure from the start.
This red fox was something else entirely. Too intelligent, too calculated for its age. It had read me before I had even raised my weapon. When I fired the black powder mix, the steel balls scattered uselessly, and the fox moved like smoke through water — a dodge so clean and effortless that it left me standing there, humbled by a creature most men wouldn't think twice about.
What can I do? I thought bitterly. My reaction speed is nothing compared to this.
I made my decision. Cut my losses. Move toward the second group in a different direction and leave this fox to its forest.
But as I turned to go, something stopped me.
The fox rose from its position.
It didn't flee. It didn't circle. It walked — deliberately, almost ceremonially — straight toward my trap and stopped there. Still. Completely still.
I watched it, confused, my hand hovering near my weapon.
Then it raised its paw. A gesture. Clean and unmistakable — sit down.
Then another gesture. An offering. A sacrifice.
My mind went blank. A fox was communicating with me. Not through instinct or aggression, but with intent. With meaning.
I stood frozen for a long moment. Then, slowly, I nodded.
Words came out of my mouth before I had even fully decided to speak them.
"I promise you," I said quietly. "After I become a God — I will absolutely resurrect you in the divine realm. I will give you eternal life."
I had no way of knowing whether it understood. But something in its amber eyes shifted — a depth that had no business being there in the gaze of a wild animal.
Then the fox began.
The sacrifice.
The magnetic field that erupted from its body was unlike anything I had ever felt. It didn't crash over me like a wave — it wrapped around me, layer by layer, like a cocoon being spun from the fabric of the world itself. The air inside that field became perfectly still. Perfectly silent. An isolated space, sealed from everything beyond it.
I couldn't move. I didn't want to.
One hour later.
The 900-year-old spirit ring settled into me like a key finding its lock.
Spirit Rank: Level 17.
I sat in the aftermath of the absorption, cataloguing what had entered me.
The first ability revealed itself immediately — Photographic Memory. An active skill. When I engaged it, I could photograph any knowledge that entered through my eyes or ears with perfect fidelity. Not just memorize — capture. Every word on a page, every technique observed in battle, every formula heard once in passing — locked away in crystalline detail, retrievable at will.
The second was the external spirit bone.
Because it came from the fox, I had expected something ordinary. Animals of the forest rarely yielded divine-grade spirit bones.
I was wrong.
The spirit bone carried a divine passive — a constant, quiet nourishment of my brain cells with spirit power, steadily expanding my mental storage like water slowly carving a larger channel through stone. Over time, my capacity to hold and process knowledge would grow beyond any natural limit.
And its active ability — when I consciously engaged it — would anchor me. A calm, rational mindset, unshakeable in the face of chaos, pressure, or provocation. In a world that would throw madness at me at every turn, that kind of mental fortitude was worth more than raw power.
I exhaled slowly, feeling the abilities settle into their places like new rooms added to a house.
These skills will follow me into any world.
A slow smile crossed my face.
Then I caught myself. The spirit bone — I needed to keep that hidden. Before the fusion was fully complete, before I truly understood what I was carrying, no one could know about the external spirit bone. Not its origin. Not its grade. Not its abilities.
The fox had given me a gift that could change everything.
The least I could do was protect it.