The girl quite disliked the feeling when her body was rotting, but that wasn't the first time she was in that state.
What she knew about Screechers was that those monsters hated rotting corpses.
They were active hunters, not scavengers, so they would never touch rotting corpses.
The girl had the feeling they wouldn't do it even if they were starving.
So, the girl sunk back into herself, focusing on untangling and unweaving the mess of her power.
If she could untangle it like she would a ball of thread, using her hands, it wouldn't be an all‑that‑difficult task, but at the moment, she only had her mind available.
The most she could do was move the end through the mess to free it.
But that was like her very own gaze got stuck to the end of the thread.
So when she pushed the end of the thread into the tangle, it was quite troublesome to find a way out without messing things up more.
Oh, she hated doing that, but it wasn't like there was a way to create a pair of virtual hands within her own body to untangle the mess.
Or at least that was what she knew.
In a world as complicated as the one she was in, everything could be possible, and even she, as basically the creator of the world, could be unaware.
Because even though the girl created the world by writing the book, she didn't become its god.
She knew only what was written in the story and nothing more.
Well, and she also knew what she had found out in the seven years since she appeared in the world.
So, lying in the tall grass and flowers, she put her full focus into the training.
If she wanted to get the ability to kill her limits, she needed to untangle at least a good fifth of the power.
She had nearly a month for that, but that didn't mean she could relax.
Anything could happen in that time that would mess up her plans.
She needed to be prepared for something like that.
For example, what if a scavenger monster suddenly came to the field while the Screechers were still around?
She would have to instantaneously find a way to conceal herself not only from them, but also from the scavenger.
Honestly, she was hoping that wouldn't happen.
She had a way to do that, but it was much more troublesome than just using the Death Presence that made her body rot alive.
For a few days, nothing bothered the girl.
The female Screecher did come to the field, but it didn't even bother with her since she looked like a corpse.
It just proceeded to the male, its mate.
But after just a while, the girl was forced to open her eyes again as she sensed something far more dangerous than any monster.
Something flew just above her and struck one of the Screechers.
Looking over at the Screechers, the girl could clearly see what it was: an arrow made out of the Power of Darkness and Shadows.
Those with the Power of Darkness and Shadows were another group that was ostracized in the world, but not as much as those with the Power of Death and Extinction.
But they were also greatly respected, especially if they had such control over their power that they got from it the ability of Solid Shadows.
The person that had appeared could be classified as a Shadow Archer, or maybe a Dark Archer.
Both terms were widely known.
And those bastards were one of the most dangerous people that could appear on battlefields or monster hunts.
The girl could pretend to be a corpse, but a person could discern that she was showing slight movements, like the rise and fall of her chest.
Or she could show herself, but she had no way of knowing whether the person would be hostile towards her.
And considering what she looked like at the moment (with patches and holes of rotting flesh all over her), it wouldn't be hard to figure out that she had something to do with the Power of Death and Extinction.
Even if the person wouldn't guess that she had it, he would guess she had at least gotten into a fight with one to end up with the Death Presence.
The girl didn't know what to do, so she decided to wait for a while.
There was still another thing she could do.
Theoretically, she could stay in the same spot, but with her eyes open, so it would look like the Death Presence was affecting her so much she could barely move, but was still alive.
If the person found her like that in that state, he would naturally underestimate her, so if it showed that he was hostile, the girl would have at least some chance of retaliating.
Because it is always easier to retaliate against someone who had their guard down due to underestimating the enemy.
So, the girl decided to do something that could even draw attention to her.
As arrow after arrow flew above her, she purposely let out a weak groan of pain.
For a moment, the arrows stopped, but the person probably thought he imagined it and resumed.
It was possible for him to imagine things since the Screechers were letting out terrible high‑pitched noises since the moment he started shooting at them.
Seeing the arrows resume, the girl let out another groan, followed by a second one when the arrows stopped again.
From that, the person was sure someone was in the field.
That made him determined to end the hunt on the Screechers as soon as possible.
He was clearly an expert, because as the girl watched the two Screechers, who were still in her line of sight, she could see they were barely able to move, making them unable to retaliate against the hunter.
To have the ability to do that, the hunter had to be one of the strongest possessors of the Power of Darkness and Shadow in the whole empire.
But that still didn't mean he could finish the Screechers quickly.
Though they were easily restrained, they were hard to kill.
Their skin was thick and the arrows bounced off of it.
To get through the skin, the hunter needed to strike the same spot over and over again until it bruised and broke on its own.
Then, he needed to stick as many arrows into the spot to make the wound as big as possible.
And then he would have to do something most archers feared.
He would have to go close up on the monsters and tear the arrows out of the wound to get access to the vulnerable flesh beneath.
From there, he would have to rip the monster apart from the inside, a gruesome task most despised.
For that, most hunters hated the Screechers, even though the materials that could be gotten from them were extremely useful.
The hunter finished the two monsters as fast as he could before going completely silent, listening to the sound of the groans.
A moment later, he picked up the direction and started searching for the source of the sound.
The girl waited for a short while before she saw a shadow block her sight of the sun.
The hunter was shielded from her sight by the tall grass, but just a bit more, and the girl would see him.
Finally, the hunter spotted the girl through the tall grass and looked at her closely.
"How long have you been lying here to end up like this?" he was clearly surprised to see the state her body was in.
The girl opened her mouth like she wanted to speak, but to the eyes of the man, it looked like all she could force out of herself was a weak groan.
His eyes didn't soften in pity like other people would react.
He just stared down at the girl lying in the grass.
Even her clearly young age didn't make him sympathetic.
"Can you get up?" he asked calmly after he processed the initial surprise.
The question seemed out of place.
It would be rational to assume that a person with their whole body rotting like they had some kind of zombie disease wouldn't be able to move.
So why did the man ask?
Though he seemed young, he didn't look inexperienced.
With the calmness of his expression and coldness of his eyes, it was clear he had seen his fair share of terrible injuries.
So, the fact that he was asking meant that he was extremely wary.
Seeing that, the girl knew not to lie about that.
Because if she lied and made it seem that she couldn't move, the moment the man touched her to lift her up, he would find out she could in fact move.
So, the girl slowly moved her hand to push herself up to a sitting position.
Even though she was the one who put herself in the Death Presence state, it did hurt terribly, so moving was difficult, hellish even.
The man watched closely as the girl moved, trying to determine how much she could move with the state she was in.