Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.
Kuoh, Japan
–Motohama Kenji–
He began hyperventilating, feeling the beginning of a panic attack assaulting his mind as he looked at his arm with wide eyes. Slowly, the blood stopped pouring out, then he felt and saw the same worm wriggling, but this time, they were far more concentrated around the stab wound. The itch was also much higher this time, to the point he squeezed his own arm to stop himself from scratching the itch.
Then, the itch seemed to reach a new peak as he watched with wide, amazed eyes, the wood shards being pushed out of his arm. Then, the wriggling reduced as the wound scabbed over and healed up, leaving behind his original pale skin. Once again, no scar.
He immediately sat down right next to the backpack, his hand closed around a chocolate bar, as he closed his eyes and waited for the adaptation to spread to his whole body.
Surprisingly, it was not as bad as he expected. The itch was tolerable, but the hunger pangs this time were far more intense than before. As soon as the wriggling stopped, his eyes snapped open as he desperately downed the rest of the chocolate bars.
Before he could realise what had happened, the backpack was empty, and he had just undergone two adaptations. That was a bummer.
If things went as they were now, he would be out of his savings by the end of the week, and he wouldn’t remotely be the level he needed to fight someone at the level of Freed Selzen, let alone the Fallen. Not to mention, Freed did not fight with just his body. He had tools. Light swords and more. Sure, they would not be as effective on him as they were on the Devils, but at the end of the day, a sword was a sword. It was an energy sword, and he had a hunch that the branch stab wound he’d adapted to right now would not help him much in the face of a Light sword.
Beyond that, there were Light Spears that the Fallen could conjure freely. Spears that were bigger than his torso. He would just get bisected if he were hit by one of them. And to think that was something that the lowest class of Fallen could do. He wouldn't even know where to begin to adapt to something as esoteric as the Power of Destruction.
Shaking his head, he just sat on the ground, his mind trying to come up with something about his food situation. A wry chuckle burst forth as he thought of the absurdity of his situation. Here he was, with a superpower that had the potential to make him reach the top of the universe, and he was sitting here, worried about what? Having enough food to fuel his superpower.
Man, what a human problem to have.
The solution was in front of him all this time, and in the back of his mind, he knew that it was going to be inevitable at one point, but he still had reservations about resorting to that. It was delegated to the last resort category, but the truth was that it was the only option he had right now. If he wanted to do this on his own, without attaching himself to some organisation that might or might not have his best interests in mind, then there was one and only one option.
Sighing, he stood up to find the most edible looking thing he could find in the forest. How hard could it be? After all, humans survived for thousands of years just foraging and hunting for food?
If he wanted to become powerful, he would have to sacrifice something. And something as his uneasiness about eating like forest people was so low on the list that it would be an insult to people who actually had to sacrifice important stuff to get the power they had today. For example, he was sure that there were many bigwigs who would absolutely love to do nothing more than to pass their days in peace, without the headache that inevitably came with becoming powerful.
“Time to turn back to the roots, I suppose." He muttered to himself, reminding himself to get some camping gear the next time he came back here.
___xx___
Before he knew it, it was night. The darkness all around him should have been scary, but after spending hours foraging the forest and eating anything that looked edible, including one mushroom that gave him weird dreams before his body adapted to it, nothing could scare him in the forest.
He was shirtless, having stowed away his shirt after his gums had bled on it when he was eating a particular spicy branch. At first, he was picky, searching for some berries or fruits to eat, but as time went on, and the damage accumulated on his body increased, the criteria was just reduced to edible looking. Then, even that criterion was thrown out of the window as he just broke branch after branch and ate it like a beaver, his teeth breaking wood as if it were just noodles. After the third tie, his gums no longer bled, his mouth didn’t feel dry, and he didn't feel like his throat was getting clogged up by the half chewed wood.
Munching on a tree branch, he looked down. He was currently perched on top of the highest stable branch of the highest tree in the forest, which wasn’t much, but more than enough to damage him. He’d punched rocks multiple times, right up until he heard the much anticipated and dreaded cracking sound, which was followed by a scream that must have sounded like a girl being hunted down.
He’d blacked out after that, and when he woke up, he’d found himself gnawing on the trunk of a tree, his gums bleeding once more, but more importantly, with an intact hand and teeth marks on the tree. He’d refrained from breaking any more bones after that because that pain was quite something; instead, he focused on progressively damaging his body, but it was late enough, and he had time for just one more adaptation before he had to leave.
Technically, he was supposed to leave right now, but he could blame Issei or Matsuda a couple of times before Mom got suspicious enough to call their parents. He could have left, as he had made enough progress, but he wanted to get past the fear in his mind. How was he going to grow strong enough to be capable of regenerating from getting half his body destroyed if he was getting afraid of just breaking a couple of bones in his body?
Slapping himself, he hyped himself up, “Come on, you can do this. Come on! Come oooooon!”
His voice echoed in the forest as he plummeted to what was hopefully only a couple of broken bones. He had strengthened his body multiple times. Smashing his foot with stones had been painful, but hopefully, it had reinforced his body enough to—
CRACK!
“AAAAAAAAAA!”
___xx___
So…Good news was that he didn’t black out this much, leaving him vulnerable to any passing by wild animals. Bad news that he wished he’d blacked out this time. At least, he would be spared seeing the pain and trauma of feeling and seeing his knee joints burst out of his skin, blood spurting out as the white of the bone was now visible to him.
His hands scrambled at both sides of his body in panic, as he wildly grabbed onto the branches he’d prepared beforehand and bit down on the piece of hard wood, not even feeling it at this point. Collapsing on his back, he continued going through the large pile he’d gathered for this exact purpose.
As he went through half the thing, he saw nothing happening to his legs. No itching. No wriggles on his skin. A fresh wave of panic shot up his veins as he ate more and more, becoming the real life example of panic eating. It was only after he was done going through the entire thing that he felt something. Alas, apparently, the food he’d eaten was not enough, sending yet another wave of panic through him.
Because that was the highest amount of food he’d eaten in one sitting, and he was still looking at his legs, which were completely demolished. Was this it? Was this all that Absolute amounted to?
He shook his head, the blood loss making him dizzy for a moment before the dizziness disappeared, confirming that his power worked all right. It was just that he needed more fuel for his body to heal itself from such a grave injury.
Maybe jumping from a 10 story building the first time to see what fall damage would do to his legs was not the wisest idea. Then again, it was not like today had been the day of good decisions.
Shaking his head, he stabbed his hands in the ground, his enhanced strength and durability making light work of hard ground, as he pulled himself to the tree, and for the first time, he consciously began gnawing on the trunk of the tree.
He preferred branches far more for multiple reasons. For one, the trunk was quite literally the hardest part of most trees, had zero leaves, and was so thick that he would never be able to close his mouth around it. All in all, too much effort for too little, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Even this small movement sent fresh waves of pain up his spine, something that made him groan with his face pressed against the hard bark of the trunk. It would have carved grooves across his face and stabbed him in the eyes, but thankfully, he’d already adapted to that.
He was immensely thankful that he’d done all that in a haze of hunger, with no memory of the pain.
Unfortunately, he had adapted to that, which meant he had to be conscious of this. He’d hoped that he would have outright adapted to all pain, but things did not seem that easy. It was likely he had already adapted to some level of pain, which made this situation all the more terrifying. If the pain was so much despite him having some level of pain resistance, then he could only imagine what people went through who fell from much higher heights.
Wincing at the thought, he continued gnawing on the bark, and the second he felt things improving somewhat, he hardened his mind and stabbed his fingers into the bark and pulled.
He had a home to get to and a mother to lie to.
He would never be able to reach home on time if he continued to eat the trunk. It was quite literally the least efficient way to get food into his body.
Ignoring the fresh wave of agony sent up his spine as his legs dangled uselessly below him, he crawled up, determined to get to the nearest branch, cursing his past self.
Why did I have to start eating branches from the lowest levels?!