The first months in this world were, to be honest, a constant reminder of how useless a modern human was without their technology.
Luckily, I had the system.
"System, search: how do I get drinkable water?"
The answer appeared immediately: identify water sources, boil it if possible, or build a filter with layers of sand, charcoal, and stones. It also mentioned something about collecting morning dew and looking for plants with high water content.
Great. Now I just needed to put it into practice.
I tried. Oh, how I tried.
My first filter was a disaster. I used leaves instead of cloth to separate the layers, and the result was a brown liquid that looked more like mud than water. It made me sick for three days. Well, "sick" is a relative term: my immortal body simply expelled everything bad and regenerated, but the experience was horrible.
"Mental note: don't drink dirty water even if I can survive it," I murmured between dry heaves.
Within a week, I managed to build a functional filter. Within a month, I could identify drinkable water sources just by observing the surrounding vegetation. Necessity sharpens ingenuity, and immortality gave me unlimited time to practice.
---
Traps were another completely different challenge.
My first hunting attempt was pathetic. I built a pit trap based on the system's instructions. I spent two days digging a huge hole, covering it with branches and leaves. I felt proud. I felt intelligent. I felt...
"AH!" I screamed as I fell into my own trap.
I had forgotten to properly mark the spot.
I spent three hours trying to get out of the hole I had dug myself. When I finally succeeded, I swore I would never again underestimate the importance of visual markers.
Snare traps were equally frustrating. The first dozen caught nothing because I placed them in the wrong spots. The next dozen caught everything... except what I wanted. One morning I woke up with a monkey hanging from the snare, looking at me with an expression that could only be described as "seriously, bro?"
"Sorry, little monkey," I said as I freed him. "It's not you, it's me."
The monkey threw a twig at me before fleeing to the nearest tree.
---
But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the war I was waging against the insects.
Mosquitoes were public enemy number one. Those damn bugs the size of rice grains not only buzzed in my ears every night, but they seemed organized. I swear they developed combat tactics. They flanked my position, attacked from the rear, performed dive-bombing runs.
"System, search: natural insect repellent!"
The answer was a treasure trove: citronella, eucalyptus, lavender, mint, and a dozen more plants that I had to identify, collect, and process.
Easy, right?
Absolutely not.
Damn it, NO!
First, I had to learn to identify each plant. The system showed me images, but in practice, everything looked alike. Is this mint, or is it a poisonous plant that will give me a rash? Only one way to find out.
Spoiler: it was poisonous. My face swelled up like a balloon for two days. My immortal body fixed it, but my dignity was bruised.
When I finally managed to identify the correct plants, I had to learn to process them. Crush, boil, mix, apply. My first mixtures stank. My second mixtures stank worse. My third mixtures attracted more insects than they repelled.
"This is a conspiracy!" I shouted at the sky one night, as a cloud of mosquitoes danced around me. "The insects have a pact with the universe to drive me crazy!"
But over time, with a lot of time and hundreds of failed attempts, I managed to create a functional repellent. It wasn't perfect, but it reduced the nightly attacks from "apocalyptic" to merely "unbearable."
---
Months passed. My timer kept running.
Day: 15 | Month: 1 | 7000 B.C.
Day: 30 | Month: 2 | 7000 B.C.
Day: 45 | Month: 3 | 7000 B.C.
Little by little, my survival skills improved. I no longer went hungry — well, technically I didn't need to eat, but the emptiness in my stomach was annoying. I could hunt small animals with functional traps. I could find water without poisoning myself. I could sleep without being eaten alive by insects.
But my clothes... my clothes were a disaster.
The original tunic had disintegrated months ago. My first attempts at clothing using leaves and plant fibers lasted exactly three days before falling apart. I went naked longer than I'd like to admit.
"I need hides," I decided. "Real hides."
The system indicated the best animals to hunt in the region. Among them, the saber-toothed tiger. Yes, those very ones. Prehistoric felines the size of a small car.
"Great. I just need to hunt a 300-kilo killing machine. What could go wrong?"
A lot. A lot could go wrong.
My first encounter with a saber-toothed tiger was... brief. I saw it, it saw me, and before I could react, I was flying through the air with four deep cuts on my chest. My regeneration closed the wounds before I hit the ground, but the message was clear: I wasn't ready.
I spent the next two months perfecting my traps and my spear technique. I learned their patterns, their weaknesses, their moments of carelessness. I studied the saber-toothed tiger like it was a final exam.
On the day of the hunt, I was ready.
Or so I thought.
The fight lasted twenty minutes. It broke three of my ribs, tore my left arm, and threw me against a tree with such force that the trunk split. But my spear found its neck at just the right moment.
When the animal fell, I stood staring at its body, panting, feeling my bones rearranging themselves as they regenerated.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "But I need your skin more than you need to live."
---
Processing a saber-toothed tiger's hide was an odyssey.
The system guided me step by step: skinning, cleaning, soaking, scraping, stretching, drying, tanning. Each stage required precision and patience. The first hide I tried to process rotted because I left it soaking too long. The second hardened like stone because I dried it directly in the sun. The third... well, let's just say scavengers need to eat too.
Four months. It took me four full months to get a usable hide.
But the result was worth it.
With the main hide, I made myself a loincloth that reached down to my thighs. I learned to make laces from thin strips of leather to secure it. For my legs, I created high gaiters from the same hide, tied with more cords so they wouldn't slip. I protected my feet with thick hide, cut and adjusted like a kind of primitive shoes.
The jacket was the biggest challenge. I needed it to be flexible yet durable, protective yet allowing movement. After several failed attempts — including one where I sewed the sleeves on backwards and couldn't move my arms — I managed to create a tiger-hide jacket that fit me perfectly.
When I looked at my reflection in a puddle, I couldn't help but smile.
My silver hair fell loose over my shoulders, contrasting with the orange and black fur of the tiger. My gray eyes shone with a mixture of pride and amusement. I looked... wild. Primitive. As if I'd been born for this.
"Not bad, Sunny," I told myself. "Not bad."
---
Year: 2 | Day: 9 | Month: 4 | Year: 6998 B.C.
Two years. Two years had passed since my arrival in this world.
I looked at the timer on my wrist, confirming the passage of time. The numbers no longer surprised me as much as they did at the beginning. Two years alone, in the Primordial Earth, as I had decided to call this era.
Because there was no one else.
That was the hardest part to accept. In two years of walking, exploring, and surviving, I hadn't found a single human. No tribe, no village, no sign of civilization. I was the only Homo sapiens for hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers around.
"Sure," I murmured one night, looking at the stars. "Humanity doesn't exist yet. Or it exists but is in Africa, on the other side of the world. And I'm here, in the middle of the Amazon jungle, completely alone."
Insects buzzed around me, ignored by the repellent I now mastered perfectly. In the distance, the roar of some enormous predator broke the nightly silence. Two years and I still hadn't gotten used to those sounds.
"Nature is beautiful," I sighed. "But it's also a bitch. A huge bitch, full of teeth, claws, and poison, constantly trying to kill me. And the worst part is, it can't even succeed. I'm trapped in a toxic relationship with the prehistoric world."
I laughed alone at my own joke. When you're the only human being on the planet, you learn to entertain yourself with little.
---
One morning, after two years of venturing deeper and deeper into the forest, I noticed the trees beginning to space out. The vegetation became less dense. The sunlight, which normally filtered in scattered beams through the forest canopy, suddenly hit me with full intensity.
I blinked, momentarily blinded. When my eyes adjusted, I caught my breath.
An endless plain stretched before me. Golden grass swayed with the wind like the waves of a terrestrial ocean. The sky, completely clear, arched in a blue so pure it hurt to look at. On the horizon, distant mountains loomed like sleeping giants.
I smiled.
I took a deep breath. The air was clean, fresh, without the dense smell of humidity and decaying vegetation from the forest. It smelled like freedom.
I left the forest and walked onto the plain, feeling the grass beneath my tiger-hide-protected feet. The wind caressed my silver hair, moving it like a flag.
I looked at my wrist.
Year: 2 | Day: 10 | Month: 4 | Year: 6998 B.C.
Two years, four months, and twenty-eight days. That's how long it had taken me to cross that damn forest.
"It was worth it," I murmured, contemplating the landscape.
But now came the important question: where to go?
I stood there, at the boundary between jungle and plain, thinking. I needed a goal. Something to do over the next few thousand years before anything remotely related to High School DxD happened.
And then it came to me.
Magic.
In the world of DxD, magic existed. Devils, angels, fallen angels, dragons... Gods, everything was real. And if I wanted to survive — or at least not be bored to insanity — for the next seven thousand years, I needed to learn magic.
But who could teach me?
The humans of this era, if they existed, knew nothing. Devils... probably hadn't evolved yet or were in their own world. Angels... I didn't know if they existed yet.
But dragons.
Dragons were ancient creatures, wise, powerful. In all the stories, dragons existed from the beginning of time. They were proud, yes, but also intelligent. Some could even be reasonable.
If I could find a dragon, maybe, just maybe, I could convince it to teach me.
"Perfect," I nodded, convinced of my plan. "I just need to find a dragon."
Then it dawned on me.
Where the hell do you find a dragon in the year 7000 BC?
I looked around. The plain stretched empty. Mountains rose in the distance. The sky showed innocent clouds.
No sign of giant winged reptiles.
"Well," I sighed, starting to walk towards the mountains. "I'll just have to ask around."
Who I would ask, I had no idea. But something told me the coming years would be... interesting.
The wind blew behind me, pushing me forward. My silver hair danced in the breeze. My tiger-hide clothing rustled softly with each step.
"Two years," I told myself. "Two years and I'm just beginning."
I smiled, despite everything.
"Mr. Dragon, get ready. Sunny Evermore is on his way to meet you. I hope you're friendly... or at least that you won't cook me alive. Though, come to think of it, I could probably regenerate from that. But I'd rather not find out."
My laughter was lost in the immensity of the plain, as I moved away from the forest that had been my home for the past two years.