Jon immediately felt his heart pump faster than ever before.

It made sense, if he thought about it.

In this moment, he was not Jon. He was not a human. He was prey, a piece of meat standing before something that devoured it.

A predator.

When living creatures were faced with situations of intense stress and pressure, there were only two responses.

The most obvious one was to run away. If he managed to escape this situation, he would continue to survive.

The other… well, it was arguably what mankind was best at.

The creature slowly opened its mouth, a thick, viscous saliva dripping from the corners of its mouth. The external parts of its mandibles appeared fleshy and mostly covered in hair, giving it a strange, but still somewhat familiar appearance.

The moment it opened its mouth, Jon felt his stomach drop, seeing the creature as the foul abominable spawn of a mind flayer and an alien facehugger.

A vile, monstrous beast wearing the skin of an alien goat.

The creature took another step closer towards Jon, a short, thin appendage escaping from the centre of the creature's mouth, flicking several times before retreating back inside its fleshy mouth. The action seemed somewhat similar to that of a snake, but Jon somewhat ignored this detail, focusing primarily on the rows of razor sharp teeth.

Jon suppressed the blooming fear in his heart but still kept one hand in front of him and one hand on the duffel bag hanging around his chest. He did not continue to glance at either side of himself. This creature was not an herbivore, but a predator. It did not possess all the natural tools that the majority of carnivores were born with, so it gave Jon a chance.

Even if Jon knew that he did not have any weapons on him, his bag was perhaps the most advantageous tool that he carried on him.

It was what protected himself too, the moment this creature leapt towards him, mandibles dripping with a horrid smelling saliva.

Jon pushed his duffel bag upwards, hiding his face behind it. He was lucky his back was directly up against the tree behind him, otherwise the weight of the creature might have toppled him backwards onto the ground. Even without feeling the strength behind the creature's jaw directly, Jon could see that it had immediately punctured straight through his duffel bag, teeth piercing through the layers of fabric beneath.

Jon only caught a glimpse of the rows of teeth within its mouth up close, but noticed their serrated edges hook deeply into his duffel bag. Based on the strength behind its mandibles, and the form of its teeth, Jon assumed that this creature would literally tear off prey's limbs, dozens of razor sharp teeth carving through flesh.

He tried to push back against the weight of the six-legged beast but found himself unable to leverage his weight while standing on the ground.

'Fuck! Why the hell is this thing so damn heavy! It's literally half my size, how the hell can it weigh so damn much!' Jon thought to himself.

The creature had stood up on its hind legs, using its front four limbs to kick at Jon's torso, suppressing a wince as one of the legs collided with his lower abdomen. This goat-creature was leaning the entirety of its weight on Jon. Even with the tree behind him, there was not much room to manoeuvre without the possibility of Jon letting the creature fall on top of him.

'I'm literally stuck between a rock and a hard place right now! If I don't want to die, I'm going to have to get this thing off me!'

Gritting his teeth, Jon felt one of his feet come into contact with the tree behind him and with a spark of inspiration, decided to move his hands away from his duffel bag, instead moving them further outward, wrapping them around the centre of the creature's torso.

His hands felt a thick but short layer of fur, Jon immediately started gripping down it as hard as his muscles could allow him. The abomination released some sort of deep bellowed groan, almost in surprise, allowing Jon to place another one of his feet on the tree behind him.

His entire figure was being pinned to the trunk of the enormous cherry blossom behind him, the mouth of the creature still clamped down tightly on Jon's duffel bag. Jon's newfound flexibility and centre of balance gave him an almost preternatural sense of stability and control over his physical form.

Within the span that it took to blink, Jon kicked off the tree behind him, pushing every muscle that he could possibly muster forward, knocking the creature backwards and onto the ground behind it.

Jon knew that this thing would chomp down on his face or one of his limbs the first chance it got. There was nothing malicious or inherently evil about it. This creature just thought of him as food and wanted to eat him to satiate itself.

He did not want to die.

So, Jon did what he had to do.

A sense of clarity washed over Jon as his mounted the stomach of this creature, despite its best efforts to kick against his chest and arms. The pain wracked Jon's upper body but did not cause him to so much as whimper as he raised his hands, thumbs pointed downwards as he aimed towards the creature's head.

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The feeling of being kicked by a hoof did not hurt nearly as much as obtaining a Mana Core.

Jon had previously tried to stave off the pain by punching the ground in order to distract himself, but in this situation, Jon merely endured the repeated blunt force. That same sense of lucidity expanding throughout the rest of his body.

Jon's hips, kept the mandibles around the duffel bag trapped in place, giving him a clear line of sight towards the rest of the goat-creature's head. A single flash of hesitation flashed through Jon's eyes, but mustered the strength to steady himself, ignoring the taste of bile on his tongue.

Jon felt his thumbs come into contact with the soft skin of the creature's eyelid. The deep bellowed groans that it was once releasing suddenly became significantly louder, and much more distressed as Jon continued to apply pressure to the creatures' eyes.

It only took a moment for his fingers to crush its eyes, his thumbs digging through soft tissue as he started to apply pressure to the rest of its skull, ignoring the churning sensation deep within his stomach.

The sounds the creature was making was eerily similar to that of a scream. It was not high pitched, so it did not quite match the definition of a scream in Jon's mind. But somehow he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was screaming.

The amount of force required to crush a watermelon was roughly 360 pounds. A human was perfectly capable of producing such a force with their hands, given the correct training of certain muscle groups. The amount of force required to crush a human skull varied due to size, bone density and age, but a safe estimate was roughly 1,200 pounds of force.

Jon did not know how much force his arms and chest could produce crushing down on an object, but his thumbs had already pierced through flesh, splashing blood and other undesirables all over him. With a cold, focused expression on his face, it almost made it seem as though Jon was the monstrous beast in this equation.

His dominant hand removed itself from the creature's head, clenching itself into a fist.

Swinging it, Jon suppressed a grunt, feeling a slight pain in his knuckles.

In a swift, almost mechanical manner, Jon raised his fist again, bringing it down over the creature's eye. Blood sprayed over his face, the faintest traces of warmth splashing across his face.

Jon continued to raise his fist, punching with an unrelenting vigour and an impassionate visage on his face. His fist eventually caved the creatures head in, causing him to pause, realizing that the goat-creature was dead.

His knuckles bruised and bloody, throbbing as his chest continued to rise and fall, reminding Jon that he was still alive.

The young man sat on the stomach of the beast, gazing down at the beaten in skull of the creature beneath him, feeling a distorted sense of accomplishment settle within the bottom of his stomach. Jon just looked down at his hands, seeing the huge amounts of blood on them, his vision painted in splotches of violence and carnage.

Removing himself from the creature, Jon stood up, his legs somewhat wobbly despite his near-perfect sense of balance and preternatural flexibility. He still felt a strange sense of detachment within him, as if he was not quite in the moment.

His knowledge and rationality had taken over, pushing him towards survival. There was never any possibility of fleeing for Jon. It was never a consideration for him. There was enough knowledge within him to not just fight against a predator, but to win.

Jon continued to breathe deep and steady breaths, slowly bringing himself back into the present. He would have been standing there just breathing for over a minute, before reality came rushing back like a tidal wave.

"I think I'm going to-," Jon said, before unceremoniously bending forward, hurling the remnants of his breakfast and lunch all over the ground.

Break

Jon wiped the corners of his chin, disgusted by the aftertaste of vomit on his tongue. His face scrunched up into an expression somewhere in between revulsion and fear. Jon had cleared away what he thought was all the blood off his face and hands, but an uncomfortable sense of warmth still lingered on both.

His heart rate had managed to come down from whatever adrenaline-filled high he was on before, and the queasy sensation from his stomach had started to subside. Jon leaned against the tree behind him, letting out a small sigh before shaking his head.

"What the hell was that?" Jon said self-deprecatingly. A twisted chuckle escaping his lips.

Jon had always considered himself a more intellectually mature individual, at least in comparison to others his own age. Emotional outbursts did not result in a compensation or any sort of reward other than perhaps pity or annoyance from other people. Anger or violence was something Jon was never quick to.

If he was being completely honest, Jon had only ever been in a handful of fights in his life. Nothing beyond throwing a punch or two after seeing his teammates or friends slapped or badmouthed during competitive sports. He had taken a few punches before and knew from experience which ones hurt the most.

He felt anger and hate during that moment, but nothing so similar as to what he experienced just moments ago. Jon had never thought himself capable of such violence.

But in that moment. Where for the first time in his life, Jon felt his life threatened, some part of him responded with an equal amount of aggression. Jon felt his mind fill with an almost inhuman sense of clarity and purpose, dulling the rest of his mind as he continued to rain blow after blow on that goat-creatures' skull.

Jon placed a single hand over his chest, clenching it as if trying to touch something within it.

'The Mana Core… it's changed more than just my physical capabilities. It's altered my sense of self. Suppressed emotional responses. Filled me with an overwhelming sense of clarity and focus of purpose'.

'Is this what Knowledge is?' Jon suppressed a sniffle, somehow smiling through his distorted thoughts. His mind was his own, even with the introduction of some foreign quality injected into it. Jon was not sure if picking a Mana Core other than Knowledge would twist his personality even further, but was sure, at least in this moment, he was himself.

There was a chance that a Mana Core somehow brought out certain traits of Jon's personality or psyche that he did not quite realize existed. Jon was certain that he was in control of himself, even as he was forcing his thumbs through the eyes of that goat-creature. There was no malice or hatred behind his actions, only an unfeeling sense of purpose within him.

Letting out a small breath, Jon lifted his gaze, noticing a minute grey shimmer in the corner of his vision. His eyebrow raised slightly, as he turned his attention back towards the corpse of the goat-creature, looking down towards the source of the gleam.

Jon noticed a tiny, crystalline object mixed in with the brain matter and skull fragments on the ground. It was only due to the object reflecting the light of the sun that allowed Jon to notice it amidst the blood and gore.

Despite being mostly covered by brain matter, not a single droplet of blood clung to it, sliding right off it the moment Jon picked it up.

His eyes widening as another translucent panel appeared before him.

Fragment Of "Mouth" discovered.

Would you like to integrate this into your Knowledge Mana Core?

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