Ning stepped back and looked at the rusty-looking sword that floated up and down the beach on the water.
"What is going on?" he wondered. He tried once again, and it once again appeared so very heavy.
"Why the hell is this rusty sword so—" Ning paused. He looked closer and noticed something that he hadn't noticed before.
"Wait, is that rust?" he thought. The sword had a rusty color for sure with a cracked surface, but now that he was looking at it, that didn't look like rust at all, more like… well, he couldn't tell.
The closest thing he could think of when seeing it was dried mud.
"Is this sword made up of mud?" Ning wondered. "Why is it so heavy?"
He wondered if it was like with Qi artifacts, where it had to be refined before being properly used.
"I'm too hungry to care right now," he thought. He brought the fruit next to the sword and tried to cut it open.
The fruit opened in a clean slice and the juices inside started spilling out. Ning quickly placed the cut in his mouth and started drinking it.
As he drank, he found the fruit's juices to be so very tasty. It was such a refreshing drink that he didn't think he had drunk anything like that in a very long time.
He drank till his belly was full and burped a little. He chuckled at his own burp as he hadn't done that in thousands and thousands of years per his memory.
Once he was full, he sat down and looked at where the sun was in the sky. As he watched, he noticed a moon in the sky as well.
'Oh, that looks quite big,' he thought. The moon was either bigger or closer to the planet than it normally would be on other planets.
He sat there for a while, wondering what he was to do next. Just then, he felt something in his body. Some sort of… discomfort from what he could tell.
"What's happening?" he thought as he held his stomach. Something was definitely with him. Just as he thought that he realized what was happening.
He needed to go take a dump.
"But I only ate," Ning thought worriedly.
He quickly ran off to one side to relieve himself, only to notice that nothing solid was coming out at all. The juices from the fruit he had just eaten were coming out as it was, completely unabsorbed by his body.
Once done, Ning covered it with some sand and walked away.
"Did I… not get anything from that?" he thought to himself. That wasn't right at all. He wasn't feeling hungry and neither was he feeling weak at all.
If anything, he was energized, despite everything going to waste.
'Maybe it didn't go to waste,' Ning thought. He must have acquired something from the fruit, not nothing. He waited to see if that was just a feeling, but it became quickly apparent that it wasn't. He really had received all the required sustenance from the liquid.
The sun slowly started going down, and Ning couldn't find a way off the island at all.
"Guess I will have to sleep here then," he thought. He found some dried leaves from the not-coconut trees and piled them up before going inside it. He hoped that was enough to keep the chill off of him for the night.
Ning fell asleep rather quickly as his new body was strained quite a lot on the very first day. He did not feel any discomfort throughout the night.
There was no cold, no heat, and definitely no itchiness despite sleeping on leaves. He hadn't realized, but the energy in the liquid he had drank the other day had started affecting his body.
Ning had removed all of his knowledge of the energy, so he didn't even know what energy it was, so he couldn't guess it at all.
The entire night, the energy moved through his body, improving it slowly. The improvements were not very noticeable at the moment, but very soon, they would be.
Ning woke up, unaware of the changes in his body. All he could feel was hungry again. He looked out and saw the moon on the horizon. He had been facing the opposite side to where the sun was going to rise.
"Hmm, the moon looks smaller," he thought and got back up. Since he was hungry again, he looked for more fruits. While he would have to waste it all, the feeling of sustenance was what he looked forward to.
He found one of the fruits on the ground and walked up to the beach where the sword was. He had to look around for a bit before he found the sword. It seemed to have moved a few meters to the side over the course of the night.
He waited for a wave to float it up high and used the opportunity to cut his fruit again. He wasted no time drinking the fruit and finished it easily.
"What about this skin?" Ning wondered. He had thrown away the one from yesterday, but he wondered if he could eat it.
He started chewing it from the torn part, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't rip it off at all. The skin of the fruit was so very soft, but it was also so elastic that he simply couldn't destroy it at all.
Ning feared what would happen if he were to cut up such things and eat it, so he got rid of the notion entirely.
"Am I going to have to dump once more today?" he wondered. It had been less than a minute yesterday before he had to do it, so he assumed the same for today as well.
He waited for the entire minute, but nothing happened at all. "Oh, am I safe?" Ning wondered. It felt like he didn't have to worry about anything.
Just as he thought that he felt his stomach growl a little and he knew he had spoken too early.
"Dammit!" Ning cried out and ran for it once again. He found a place away from where he would sleep and relieved himself once again.
However, this time he noticed that the contents he excreted were a lot less.
He walked away wondering if he had drunk less. 'That's not right,' he thought to himself. The fruit was the same size, so he had to have drunk the same amount as yesterday.
"Maybe I absorbed a bit more today," he thought. "My new body must be getting used to food then."
Ning looked to the sky with a happy face and noticed a large moon there.
"Hm?" he thought and looked in the direction he now knew was west. "Wait, that moon is still there. Oh, two moons."
He nodded to himself as he understood what was happening. This planet had two moons. He remembered Nulwurn having two moons. "I wonder what their names are," he thought.
It felt very weird not immediately have the answer to such easy questions. But then again, that was part of the adventure he had set for himself.
"So, can I get out of this island somehow?" Ning wondered.
Ning decided to climb up a tree and see if he could see any ships on the horizon. Maybe he could set up some fire as well if he could find one to let them know he was here.
He sat on top of the tree for nearly half a day as he just looked at the horizon for something to show up.
It was a good place to absorb the 5.24 Trillion energies he could absorb today, as Heat and Radiant Energy were abundant in there. His body also absorbed Sound energy and some Kinetic energy from the wind.
If he could just get 1 Septillion energy somehow, he could collect energy by simply eating stuff. Anything in his stomach would give him the energy to absorb.
Unfortunately, that was still quite far away.
Ning waited for a long while before going down. He wondered what he could do here and started training his body to improve his physique. If it got stronger, it could absorb a lot more energy after all.
He spent the rest of the day training and then went to sleep. At night, his body would improve on its own, which he didn't become aware of.
Once he woke up, he would find another fruit and go drink from it after cutting it with the sword that he couldn't pick up. Ning gave up on even trying for now.
Every time he drank from the fruit, he had to take a dump. However, the period after which he had to do so and the amount he had to get rid of were slowly getting better and better for him.
At some point, it would be no different from eating normal foods.
Of course, Ning was starting to get suspicious that the energy of this world was affecting him. He didn't know what this energy was, but simply drinking a bit of fruit was not enough to sustain one for an entire day after all.
"I must be consuming the energy in it," he thought.
Days passed one after another, and Ning waited for a ship or something to show up on the ocean. However, as each day passed by, he started to become more and more certain that that was not the case.
He couldn't wait for someone or something to come save him here.
He had to make his way out of here on his own.
