Chapter 31:
In that very moment, his body surged forward as if the air itself had propelled him.
His veins thrummed with newfound power, his steps so light they barely disturbed the forest floor, his figure a blur against the backdrop of green and brown.
The rabbit barely had time to flinch. Its legs hadn’t even finished extending to dash when Damien was already upon it.
With a swift, practiced motion that felt less like a first attempt and more like the repetition of countless forgotten lifetimes, Damien swung one of his silver daggers.
The blade gleamed under the fractured sunlight as it sliced cleanly across the back of the rabbit’s neck.
Shhhk!
The motion was smooth, effortless. Blood splattered in a thin arc, droplets catching the light before sinking into the dirt.
The rabbit let out a strangled, almost pitiful squeak—then collapsed.
Its body convulsed once, then stilled, the gleam in its eyes fading to dullness as the few crimson drops oozed down its fur.
Damien straightened slowly, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. He glanced down at the beast, smirk tugging at his lips, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.
Too easy.
Lifting his dagger, he swiped the edge against the grass, cleaning the faint smear of blood that clung to the silver surface.
He twirled the blade once in his grip, admiring the way it caught the light, then sheathed it at his side with a faint click.
Technically, this was his first hunt. His first kill in this world.
And yet... it didn’t feel like a first.
Not at all.
Damien exhaled softly, his smirk deepening as a strange thought pressed into his mind.
Ever since meeting Eros, the truth behind all those strange déjà vu moments finally clicked. The endless cycles, the repeated flashes of familiarity, the eerie sensation of having done things before...
They weren’t illusions. They weren’t mere tricks of the mind.
They were memories.
Fragments from lives upon lives he had already lived.
An uncountable number of existences, stretched across endless possibilities, all bleeding into this one. Together, they formed that suffocating feeling he had endured his entire "last" life—that endless loop.
He had already done almost everything there was to do. He had seen countless jobs, fought countless battles, gone on countless journeys.
He had lived different lives, done different things again and again until nothing seemed new, until everything felt like yet another page in a book he had already read a thousand times.
And hunting... was one of those things.
So yes, even if this was "technically" his first time standing in a forest with daggers, hunting a rabbit, his body had moved with the confidence of someone who had slain beasts hundreds of times over.
His movements were instinctive, precise, almost too smooth to belong to a first-timer.
The weight of the daggers in his hands felt natural, like extensions of his very arms.
His grip tightened, knuckles whitening for an instant. A strange light flickered in his eyes, an edge of something both primal and eternal.
His lips curled slightly, his breath steady, and for a fleeting moment his entire presence radiated something dangerous, something almost inhuman.
The thrill wasn’t from the kill. It wasn’t from the blood.
It was from the confirmation that he was no longer bound to the monotonous loops of his past lives.
This was new.
And he intended to make it his.
Damien stood there, staring at the dead rabbit with his daggers still clenched tightly in his hands, the faint metallic scent of blood lingering in the air.
For a brief moment, silence stretched across the forest, broken only by the soft rustling of leaves above him.
’I guess... those unbearable ’repetitions’ also have their own benefit,’ he thought to himself, his lips curving faintly into a thin smile.
It was ironic. The very thing that had tormented him in his past life—the endless, suffocating sense of living the same scenes over and over, of being trapped in loops that had no meaning—was now the reason his body moved with such precision.
And yet, the most surprising part to him wasn’t even that.
The best part was that this time, he didn’t feel the weight of that suffocating ’déjà vu.’
His body had drawn upon memories from his countless past lives, yes, but unlike before, there was no dullness, nor sense of repetition.
Slaying the rabbit still felt fresh, exhilarating even, as though it were his very first time experiencing such a thing.
He glanced down at the fallen beast, its brown-and-white fur stained with the crimson of its own blood.
Earth had never birthed creatures like this. Earth had never given him the thrill of staring into the eyes of something wild, dangerous, and utterly alien before striking it down.
That difference alone carved a gap between his old loops and this new reality.
"This world really is... different," he murmured under his breath, his voice low and calm.
He stepped closer to the rabbit’s corpse, crouching slightly. The forest floor was damp, dotted with fallen leaves and twisted roots, but his focus was entirely on the prize before him. Without wasting another second, he activated his skill.
[Inventory].
At his command, the familiar hum of energy echoed faintly around him, and in the next instant, a translucent, glowing window manifested before his eyes.
It was simple in design yet radiant, like a polished piece of glass suspended in the air.
The interface showed ten square blue boxes, each neatly stacked upon one another in a clean column.
His eyes narrowed with intrigue as he examined the slots.
The faint azure glow pulsed gently within each one, waiting to be filled.
For a moment, he simply stood there, staring at the interface as though he were testing its limits with his gaze alone.
He then stretched out his hand toward the rabbit’s corpse.
The daggers remained in his left hand, their blades dripping faintly, while his right hand hovered over the lifeless body.
He didn’t make any physical contact with the corpse, and instead simply thought about it.
’Store.’
The command was silent, existing only within his thoughts, but the system responded instantly.