It was uncommon grade straight out of the system so Eren started thinking after having that skill.

Thinking about how to combine different skills and do stuff to absurd but efficient in this forest.

He’d gotten the Masony skill while carving a new stone cup and the system had apparently decided that his accumulated experience with fire pits and rope braiding and stone shaping and platform building qualified him for something broader than any single craft.

The rope skill only lets me makes ropes and basic fabric from leaves or other vegy stuff. But this precioussss allow me to make everything!

Cups, blades, platforms, containers, maybe walls and shelters eventually. And my 42 Intelligence is already affecting the quality.

He picked up a fist-sized rock from the pile he’d collected yesterday and turned it over in his hands. The idea was a stone knife small enough to throw with Calculated Arc but heavy enough to do damage on impact. Something disposable he could make in bulk.

He grabbed a harder stone and a short thick stick and started chipping away at the edges.

The Masonry skill guided his hands a little, suggesting angles and pressure points that his untrained brain wouldn’t have found on its own. But the rock was more brittle than he expected and after about ten minutes of careful work a chunk broke off wrong and left him with a lopsided triangle too thin on one side and too thick on the other.

"Making a stone blade is harder than I thought it would be but I’ll figure it out eventually.." he muttered as if talking to birds from the distance while turning the failed stone knife over.

He tried a different approach and shaped the remaining stone into a cup with a narrower mouth, something he could seal more effectively for carrying water on long runs. The cup came out better because cups were simpler and he’d already made three of them this week. But the skill didn’t level up which meant the system didn’t consider another slightly better cup as meaningful progress.

He set the cup aside and looked up at the outer branches where the fire birds were doing their usual afternoon routine of screaming at each other and occasionally launching small fireballs at bugs.

Something had been bothering him about those birds since yesterday and it took him until right now to figure out what it was.

They were watching him.

Not the casual glancing that animals did when something moved in their vision. The birds on the closest branches were facing his direction with their heads tilted at the angle that meant both eyes were focused on the same point. And they weren’t watching him in general. They were watching what his hands were doing.

He held up the stone cup and slowly rotated it. Six birds on three different branches tracked the motion in perfect sync.

He put the cup down and picked up the rock he’d been chipping and started tapping it with the harder stone. The birds watched the tapping with an intensity that made the hair on his arms stand up because it looked exactly like a group of students watching a teacher demonstrate something at the front of a classroom.

They’re not just looking at me. They’re studying what I’m making.

He set the rocks down very carefully and sat still, then remembered that dangerous rainbow colored tiny bird.

The apex predator that lived in its tree a few kilometers south and ruled this entire section of forest without ever moving from its branch. The same bird that had given him a dead electric cat whose meat started his entire evolution.

That bird had made a specific decision to help him like a human could. Not randomly but deliberately, giving him a creature whose meat would trigger changes that made him faster and more agile and better adapted to this forest. That wasn’t kindness or charity.

"You’re smart.." he whispered while looking at the nearest cluster of birds. "All of you. Not just the big one but every single bird in this forest. You’ve been watching me since day one and sharing information with each other this entire time. Every time I made a tool or lit a fire or killed something you were taking notes about me."

The birds didn’t react visibly but they didn’t look away either. Maybe he was tripping and thought too hşghly of their intelligence, or at least their linguistic abilities.

He was talking in Turkish..no bird in a fantasy forest would or should understand him right..

But he still thought about his first days here and how he’d screamed at the birds for waking him up and thrown a rock at one and cursed at them daily. But in the mentime how he’d never hunted a single bird in the last thirty days despite being surrounded by hundreds of easy targets.

He hadn’t done it consciously. Something had told him not to, maybe his own instincts or maybe the system or maybe the birds themselves through some subtle influence he’d never detected. But he’d spent a month in a forest full of easy bird meat and never once tried to catch one.

And now he was sitting in their tree being watched by their network while the strongest member of their species had handed him an evolution on a plate.

If I’d eaten one bird on day two I’d probably be dead long ago!

His Primal Senses picked that exact moment to do something unexpected.

A blue screen appeared that was different from the usual notifications. Larger and with a golden border he’d only seen twice before when his Climbing and Tracking skills had been ready to evolve.

[Congratulations! Your skill Primal Senses (Uncommon - Bloodline) is ready to evolve to Evolution League 2]

[Please select one of the following evolution paths to upgrade your skill]

His heart rate spiked. This was the one he’d been waiting for. Primal Senses had been sitting at Level 9 for full two days and the amount of sensory data he’d processed in the last forty-eight hours between tracking gorillas and navigating wyvern tunnels and mapping hundreds of new creatures must have been enough to push it over.

He read the first option slowly and deliberately. Then the second. When he got to the third he covered it with his imaginary blockage because he wanted to experience each one without the next one pulling his attention early.

Eren was grinning with this small skill selection menu and having too much fun.

Or maybe he was losing his shit..

[Option 1: Apex Predator Awareness (Rare) - Second Evolution League]

*Requirement Met: Feline Bloodline Integration + Extended Survival in Multi-Apex-Predator Environment -Uncommon skill will be upgraded to Rare Quality

-All five primary senses enhanced by 70-120% over current levels depending on sense type. Night vision upgraded to near-daylight clarity. Sixth sense threat detection radius and precision dramatically increased

-(New!) Mate Detection Passive: Within a 10km radius the user can passively detect the presence of compatible biological partners capable of producing viable offspring. (No mammal should face extinction without the chance to pass on its legacy!)

-All previous Primal Senses benefits retained and amplified]

[Option 2: Territorial Awareness Network - Quality: Uncommon - Second Evolution League]

-Creates a semi-permanent sensory web anchored to a fixed location of the user’s choice. Within the web’s radius all living creatures are passively detected and catalogued regardless of stealth or concealment abilities

-Web radius scales with Perception stat. Current estimated radius: 200 meters

-Sixth sense detection maintained at current strength outside the web zone

-No enhancement to primary five senses outside the web]

[Option 3: Reflexive Sensory Burst - Quality: Uncommon - Second Evolution League]

-Active Skill: On activation all five senses spike to 300% of current capacity for 3 seconds. Cooldown: 60 seconds

-During the burst window the user perceives all movement within visual range in extreme slow motion and can identify concealed threats that passive senses would miss

-No permanent sense improvement outside of burst time windows. Sixth sense maintained at current levels]

He read Option 1 three times. The sense improvements alone were insane. Seventy to a hundred and twenty percent on top of senses that were already superhuman. Night vision at near-daylight clarity. Threat detection that would make his current range look like a joke.

Option 2 was interesting but limited. A fixed-location web was basically a home security system and the moment he left that zone he’d be running on the same senses he had now. Useful for protecting his tree but useless for everything else.

Option 3 was a combat tool. Three seconds of extreme perception sounded amazing in a fight but sixty seconds of cooldown between bursts meant he’d spend most of his time at normal levels. And "no permanent improvement" was the dealbreaker. He needed his senses to be better all the time, not just in three-second windows.

But the last part of Option 1 and "The Mate Detection passive" was insane..!

His brain got stuck on that and wouldn’t let go.

Within 10km I can detect compatible partners. That means humans. Or at least humanoids. If there’s a woman anywhere within ten kilometers of wherever I’m standing this skill will tell me she exists.

He hadn’t seen a single human or elf or anything resembling a person other than goblins and orcs since waking up in this forest. But if someone was out there hiding in a part of the forest he hadn’t reached yet this skill would find them.

He looked at Options 2 and 3 but his mind was already made. He selected Option 1 which was the first time had a quality upgrade.

It was almost option 3 which would had the best options and grades. So he always assumed that would continue.

The evolution of the skill hit him like cold water poured directly into his skull or backside of it...

Every sense of his sharpened at once and the world went from detailed to overwhelming for about three seconds before his brain caught up. The birds on the branches went from shapes with feathers to individual organisms with visible heartbeats pulsing in their throats.

The bark under his fingers went from textured to completely mapped with every groove cataloged by touch alone. The air went from smelling like forest to smelling like seventeen separate things layered by distance. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

And underneath all of that something new turned on. A low warm hum in the back of his awareness scanning outward in every direction to the edge of its ten-kilometer range.

It found nothing. No compatible partners anywhere within range. The hum settled into a quiet background pulse that would update as he moved.

Empty. But if I run a grid pattern through the forest, different ten-kilometer zones every day...

He’d find someone eventually. Or confirm that he was truly alone.

He looked down at the birds on the branches below. Fifty or sixty of them visible from his platform alone, all facing his direction with their dark eyes reflecting the late afternoon sun.

"I never hunted any of you.." he said quietly. "Thirty days and not a single bird. That might be the smartest thing I’ve done since I got here."

The nearest bird made a small clicking sound that might have been agreement.

His new Apex Predator Awareness was painting the forest in a detail that made his old Primal Senses feel like trying to see underwater. He could feel the wolves two hundred meters east with individual heartbeat signatures now instead of a vague group presence.

The things he guessed was ants were doing their thing in the cave to the north side underground and a new faint thermal profile that his brain automatically found them.

He lay back on the branch platform and let the skill work. Tomorrow he’d start running grid patterns. North first since he already knew that terrain from the gorilla chase. Then east, west and lastly south side in systematic lines.

I hope somewhere in this forest there is another person. Just give me one so I can talk and learn where I am!

The fire birds screamed their evening chorus from the outer branches and Eren closed his eyes.

I really wish you’d stop waking me up with that stupid noise every morning though..