Once the hunters were out of sight, Piccolo took a knee and lifted his body upright. The two-legged people had done a lot of damage, and the rest of his herd had fled. With no other options, he went back to the shelter he had dug the first day of his life. The hole in his shoulder was oozing purple blood, and his face and forearm stung, almost like a thousand wasps had assembled in three lines and each injected him with their stingers, not all at once but over the course of a few seconds. When he got there, however, the situation became worse.
The shelter had eroded almost to the point of collapse, and couldn't be used. Instead, Piccolo rested outside, occasionally drinking water and eating grass. 'What a mess I'm in,' he thought. 'I don't have any idea where the others are, and I don't have shelter. At least I don't feel the gash in my forearm anymore. Actually, I can't feel anywhere on my left arm. Come to think about it, I can't feel my right arm either … or my legs.' Piccolo knew low temperatures, but he had never felt this cold before. Almost every night in his life, he had rested with his herd. Nights were far less cold with a goat laying right next to you. Now, however, there was no one to lean against. Piccolo was relying solely on his own body heat to stay warm. His limbs were growing colder by the second, and he steadily became more aware of how cold he was as the shock from his wound dissipated.
Piccolo tried to curl up in a ball and cover more of himself with his clothing, but to no avail. His clothes had many holes in them from wear and tear, and they did not protect him well at all. Piccolo clenched further. He tried to get his body to make heat faster, to focus his strength into warmth. This was unsuccessful, and he took a moment to plead to anything he could think of to grant him warmth. "Help please… anything... don't let me die…," he prayed, "friends… two-legged people… monster egg… anyone, don't let me die!"
Not feeling any warmer afterwards, Piccolo sat down, looked straight ahead, and determined to face death with some dignity. He tried not to think about the cold currently killing him. With nothing else to think about, he emptied his mind of all thought. Suddenly, his eyes lit up with the spark of realization. Piccolo concentrated his energy into his core and head, raising his temperature back to his comfort zone. Gradually, he extended his energy into his limbs. Although Piccolo winced after regaining feeling in his left forearm, shortly afterwards he smiled.
He would never be cold again.
In the three years following, Piccolo grew to well over two meters tall. He also moved down the stream, to an area with many berry bushes. It was a better place to live; Piccolo was sick of only grass to eat. He dug another shelter there, and spent his days in a mixture of contemplation and exploration. While he stumbled across several herds of yak, sheep, or goats during those three years, he never found his old herd. So, for the time being, Piccolo stayed put.
In his fourth year away from the herd, there was a terrible drought. The stream by Piccolo's shelter dried up, and the vegetation started to die all throughout the Yunzabit Heights.
Piccolo looked over the edge of a plateau. It seemed that he had searched the entire Yunzabit Heights for water, but there wasn't any, not even a puddle. He was thirsty. The last time he'd had a drink was before the stream dried up. The grass was brown, and there was no wildlife in sight. He'd thought that with this view, he would be able to see a puddle or even a creek, but it was useless. His throat was parched, his muscles felt weak, and nothing looked in focus. "Maybe on the other side of that hill over there?" he said to himself. Piccolo sat on the edge of the plateau and slid down, tripping at the bottom of the slope. After getting back up, he set off to the hill in the distance, hoping there was water there.
As he climbed up the hill, Piccolo felt his strength slipping away. His muscles creaked and groaned merely under the stress of walking. As he went up further, he noticed a small cliff in his path, about 3 meters high at the most. Piccolo jumped to grab the ledge, but he missed and his torso crashed into the cliff and was scraped on the rocks. Fortunately, his foot hit a foothold, and he heaved his body up over the ledge. He looked up, and he thought he could see the summit. The entire field of his vision was blurry, but there definitely wasn't anything but sky over the top of the hill. The only thing between him and the top was one boulder flow. Gritting his teeth, Piccolo ran towards the boulders. He plunged his foot onto the first boulder, yet his foot didn't hit anything. Instead, it fell through a crack between two boulders. His leg was too wide to fit in, so the boulders skinned his calves, sending pain and adrenaline to Piccolo's brain. He pulled out his leg, focused his vision, and ran up the boulder flow. This time, he didn't trip or fall through.
When Piccolo got to the top, he saw a large puddle at the bottom of the hill. He quickly ran down the hill and reached the puddle. The area apparently used to be a lake, but now there was just a dry, cracked bed of clay with a large puddle in the middle. Piccolo was feeling exhausted and dizzy after running down the hill, but soon he wouldn't be. Then he noticed something. Two white quadrupeds on the edge of the puddle were drinking up the water from the puddle. Piccolo seethed. How dare these things drink my water! Suddenly, he knew what had to be done.
Piccolo roared and lunged at the white animals. They bleated and fell to the ground. Piccolo bit into one of their necks and sunk his claws into the animal's side. They bleated again and lay silent. As the blood seeped out of the animals, Piccolo kneeled next to the puddle and started to drink. The water tasted horrible, and increasingly salty as the animal's blood flowed into it, but Piccolo couldn't get enough of it. He lapped the water until there was no more. After he had drunk it all, he licked the clay. His vision focused, his muscles felt strong again, and his mind cleared. Piccolo looked at the animal, now only one, and tears formed in his eyes. The animal was a goat. More specifically, it was one of the goats that raised him.
'I can't go on like this. I just killed my friend. I need to get away from this place,' he thought as he looked down at the landscape below the Heights.
And so, Piccolo left the Yunzabit Heights, in search of food, water, and continued sanity.