-Intelligence in animals is seemingly correlated to their exposure to mana, this much is proven. However we are still uncertain as to what level of intelligence we are dealing with here.
While it is true we are dealing with more and more intelligent animals, most seem to only be capable of the simplest of feats, such as those of an unevolved primate, others show far more complex thought processes.
Simple traps, pack hunting in animals that were not previously inclined, advanced hunting tactics, all of these things seem to point towards the beasts of our world slowly gaining on humanity as the only intelligent beings on the planet.
The real question is… what do we do when something reaches us?
Or surpasses us?-
Dr. Eugene Simmons; Head of Biological Research of Yumi Corp.
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Where are the pups?
With the annoyed panic that any parent could relate to, his eyes shot open as he scanned the area near his pack's resting place. He had only dozed off for a moment, but the pups had clearly taken the chance at freedom and scattered.
Not again!
One of the many difficulties of life came in the form of both a blessing and a curse; parenthood. Shortly after reaching adulthood he had overcome his Pack Leader in both strength and speed, and it had only taken him a few short months after maturity to rise as the new Pack Leader.
Hunting, fighting other packs, claiming and expanding his territory and pack size, all of it had quickly become a rather boring part of his life.
He was content, to an extent, with the life he led. However he hadn’t expected the hurdles that parenthood would bring. Constant hunting of his litter, making sure they didn’t wander away and cause trouble with the rest of the pack, or try and fight something they weren’t prepared for.
He spent more time caring for the pups than he spent hunting nowadays.
It would be easier to manage if his mate was around, but he hadn’t seen even a glimpse of her in many nights. Shortly after the pups had been born she had wandered off, and no amount of searching had proven fruitful. It had hurt, but he at least had the consolidation of his pups to ease the pain.
Rising to his full height he began searching for traces of the pups. While many species within the Wylds were naturally stealthy, Wulven were not. It took years of experience, practice, and failed hunts for one to become even acceptable at hiding their tracks, let alone hunting prey.
And the pups were no exception.
Passing a few of his Wulven packmates he hardly even glanced at them as he continued to search for clues of his pups.
Murra would never leave the pack on her own, so Sipha must have dragged her along with her. If Sipha wanted to escape… she would have traveled along the embankments.
So I head to the embankment first.
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Son of a bitch, not only did it eat the damn beast - I am still hungry!
His awakening had been a brutal one, especially to his mood. The fact that the beast had been entirely devoured hurt him on a physical level, in the sense that he was now on an empty stomach after almost an entire day of unwilling fasting. He’d had the tantalizing smell of cooked rabbit right there, it was practically ready to eat already, and his Symbiote had stolen it from him while he lay comatose on the damn ground.
There had to be a word for this, but he was going to settle for two; fucked over.
The second nail into his mood’s coffin had been the fact that when he’d passed out he’d lost practically all of the daylight time he had previously, and while sight wasn’t an issue for him it didn’t take a genius to realize that a lot of dangerous shit stalked the night. He was pretty much surrounded on all sides by nocturnal predators, and if they were all anywhere near as strong as the Rox Mother he wasn’t confident he’d be fully capable of killing them. Let alone a rabbit-fox hybrid, what if he came across a chimera or something? Some monstrous beast that ruled the land in the dead of night, popping the big rox bastards like they were pills?
He only knew the Ingis spell, and even then he knew it was only one of the earlier, weaker versions. Let alone the fact that it drained his mana nearly entirely, or the fact that it was a Foca based spell with chances of failure if his focus was broken, it required chanting to use properly.
He had read more books over the last few months than he’d care to admit, and he knew that a Foca spell being interrupted had exceedingly dangerous consequences for everyone involved. If he channeled the magic through his hands it could detonate early, and the magic could take a decent portion of his arm with it.
It was one of the reasons higher tier beings, or just beings with more intelligence didn’t focus Foca magic inside their vitals unless they were talented or exceedingly competent at it. No one wants to charge a beam of lightning inside their mouths to shoot at an enemy, only for the spell to fail and take their own heads off.
If you lost a hand, you could regrow it, and if you couldn’t regrow it at least you were still alive
At least I didn’t fuck up the spell, but the mana cost… I really need to find something with mana in it to eat or I am going to be like this for days while my mana regenerates passively.
He had gone hungry before, but never like this. Sure, going a day or two without food was harsh and tended to cause him to get a bit of a temper, but the hunger he felt now? It felt like a dagger stabbing into his stomach.
Mana could be regenerated in several ways according to the material Lilliha had provided him.
There were potions that could be crafted out of mana dense herbs and apparently ‘Blessed Water’ that was brimming with mana that one could drink and recover from. Blessed water was apparently rather common in worlds with mana in it, however it required someone to have Ascended at least once, like he had, in order for the rich mana to not immediately cause the person drinking it to go into shock. Something about the body being unable to handle the purified mana within the water. It wasn’t always fatal, but was considered a rather poor idea for any mortals to attempt.
There was the current method he was attempting to use, which was eating mana rich food. Everything with magic had mana infused into their bodies, even humans, and while the transfer rate was rather low it still allowed a hunter to regain some of their mana pool and stamina from consuming things saturated with mana. It also had the neat side effect of allowing beings much weaker than the beast to consume its flesh without going into mana-shock, or mana sickness. This was apparently used quite a bit for those with cash to allow themselves and their children to grow stronger much more quickly, as Ascensions were apparently rather difficult for those without a ‘Patron’ to assist the process, and many of the techniques to undergo one required decades - if not centuries - of training and preparation.
There were of course other methods, arrays to focus mana into one's body, meditation or ‘breathe’ techniques to allow one to gather mana much more quickly, but he didn’t know diddly-shit in the way of any of those.
So he was forced to hunt down animals in the dark like some out of place caveman.
Speaking of cavemen, the third and final nail into his mood’s coffin had been his clothing. His clothing had all been the cheap shit he usually wore, practically dollar store bargain bins for most of his shirts, and his pants weren’t much better than that. The blast he’d set off had left massive holes in his shirt, while most of his pants had been simply incinerated all the way past his knees. They were basically just shorts now.
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He was covered in the tattered remains of his clothes, almost entirely naked, and using his bare hands to fight. Cavemen at least had spears, all he had was his fists… and the Symbiote.
Which meant he was stuck in this massive forest, almost entirely naked, hungry, tired, angry, slightly depressed, and to top it all off, lost.
He’d tried hunting - scratch that - looking for animals himself, but they’d grown accustomed to the wilds, while he was an amateur here at best. Even if he sensed, either by sight from a tree or hearing something move, whatever he chased would get away from him rather easily. Burrows, simply hiding where he couldn’t find them, or scattering when he made a move, he was out of his league here.
He’d decided, in the end, that the easiest way to catch himself dinner would be to target the beasts attempting to make him dinner.
Which was why he was currently cannonballing into pitfall traps.
Standing atop a tree branch roughly ten feet off the ground he scanned the small piece of dirt that made up the rather obvious trap beneath him. The traps themselves were rather obvious to him, and he was more confused about them than anything when he really stopped to think about it. The animals around here were smart, and as such it only made sense that they would notice something like this a lot easier than even he would, so why were other animals hunting like this?
Unless they aren’t traps. Maybe the animals of this place just like their own privacy… Wouldn’t that be funny?
He’d jumped into two of the traps so far, and both had been empty. This was his third one and he’d grown rather used to the act of preparing, and enacting the fall. It was an entirely painless process for him, and even if there was something sharp beneath him he was confident that it wouldn’t be able to pierce his skin, let alone get past any bones. Even if a spear made from the wood of one of the trees was strong enough to pierce his skin, let alone bone, it wouldn’t have the necessary force to do so. Maybe if something was just ungodly sharp enough, or enhanced with magic in some way, but as it stood his little ‘hunting method’ was almost entirely risk free.
Ascension was overpowered.
He judged the distance once, then twice, to make sure he would hit the landing. He hadn’t missed, yet. But the prep for this was irritating enough, no need to waste more time than necessary.
He took a breath, before leaping down towards his target. He’d grown accustomed to the process, relax his body, close the eye facing the ground, angle himself towards his side or back depending on the size of the trap, then use his legs to protect his weaknesses, before preparing his Symbiote to launch an attack on any animal stupid enough to leave such an obvious trap lying around.
The first few times had been learning experiences, especially when it came to protecting his privates. He may have ascended but his weaknesses were the same as any other man, a rock to the balls hurt just as much as it did before.
With his body prepared for the landing and one eye closed he smashed into the moss and twig trap hole, crashing through a foot and a half fall before landing directly in front of the den of a rather shocked, and rather large snake.
Jackpot!
Similar to before the animals that seemed to use the pits as traps tended to be ambush predators, and snakes fit the description perfectly.
It had just enough time to react by beginning to coil itself before he wrapped his hand around its throat, causing its beady little eyes to widen and the rest of its body to begin flailing. He didn’t even bother to think about it, before he crushed its neck with enough force to nearly behead it.
Little known fact; snakes don’t stop moving when they are killed, not immediately anyways. Something to do with their muscles or something, but he didn’t watch that episode of ‘Nature's Bounty’ all the way through. Even if entirely beheaded a snake's mouth can still open and close, and their bodies have a tendency to spasm about.
But even with the gross twitching, it was dead.
He let out a laugh of triumph as he celebrated his successful hunt, his Symbiote seemingly laughing along with him as warm humming irradiated from it.
Dragging himself and his kill out of the hole he held it above his head, marveling at the size of his future dinner. The snake was easily twice his height in length, and roughly a foot in diameter all the way down to the tail. Its scales were red and black, and while he knew that dangerous reptiles usually had colorful patterns to signify danger, he was too excited over the prospect of food to worry about whether or not its venom was capable of actually hurting him. Besides, it hadn't had the chance to bite him, so who cared?
He’d caught dinner, and dinner was going to taste so fucking good.
He didn’t even bother moving towards any camp, magic made making a campfire rather easy by simply charging a small amount of Ignis into his fingertips. Even with his near empty mana supply he still had enough to light a cigarette, or to start a campfire. All he needed was some dead leaves and wood, which the forest obviously had plenty of.
He wrapped the snake around his shoulders as he began picking up leaves and pieces of deadwood on the ground, it only took him a minute before his hands were full, and he was marching towards the den.
On the way back he noticed a rather long, and still sturdy looking stick.
Gonna need something to cook it over, right?
Picking it up as he passed he kept moving back towards his pit.
While the hole was too small to be a reliable sleeping spot, being too small to comfortably fit his legs, it was large enough for a good fire.
Planting the leaves on the bottom before stacking the wood he’d gathered on top he tried to make sure the tinder and wood were packed together enough to spread properly. He didn’t know much about camping as he hadn’t ever left the city before, but he figured a barrel fire and a campfire were about the same thing. Leaves instead of paper, and wood was wood.
Once the set up was done he placed his finger in the center of the dead leaves, doing his best to focus the smallest amount of Ignis magic into it. He didn’t want to pass out from mana loss, as he didn’t want the Symbiote to eat his kill again, but he also needed enough to actually start the fire. He settled for the tried and true method of waiting until he smelt smoke.
The channeling took a few moments, with him trickling mana into the chant slowly and deliberately as he felt the smallest amount of heat begin to transfer from his core to his finger. The heat grew from a small warmth to what almost felt like steam as the mana began to form and leave his body. By the time the smoke had begun to appear he had already depleted half of the mana he had left.
Pulling his hand back as his eyes began to feel heavy he forced himself to stay awake.
The hunger and fatigue was enough to make him consider just eating the snake raw. He knew it wouldn’t make him sick but the idea of getting absolutely drenched in blood and further ruining his already ragged clothing wasn’t appealing to him yet. Plus, on the off chance he actually found people he’d rather they didn’t immediately attack him thinking he was some weird beast-man eating people in the forest.
Albeit, he had it on good authority that if he left anything to waste, bones or blood, the Symbiote would take care of it. So maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about it in the future.
His thoughts were shoved to the side as the fire began to rise, taking up the wood and beginning his campfire in full.
Laying the snake laid out on the ground he took the Symbiote and put one of the fingers along its belly. He didn’t really need any coaxing as a moment later the finger extended into a claw, piercing the soft scales with ease.
Slowly dragging the claw across the snake's belly he watched in amazement at how effective the claw was. Even if it was the soft scales of the snake’s belly, it was still the scale of a mutated beast. He reckoned the claws could come in handy later, especially if he needed help popping open a beer.
Once he had left a clean line along its belly he began peeling the skin off. Unlike most animals skinning a snake was easy as hell, literally just separating some of the meat from the skin and pulling the two apart was really all that was needed to get most of it cleanly away. The skin got snagged on the end of the tail, and feeling rather impatient he simply clipped the entire thing off and tossed the skin and tail to the side.
Once he was done with that, all he was left with was the bright pink flesh, and some gooey mess along the middle.
Are those… organs? Can’t eat those, I think… I also don’t want to end up eating snake shit, so let's just toss all of this.
Once again he simply pulled it all out. Not too hard or too fast in order not to tear anything apart, but once again it came out as easily as ripping paper.
I’m a natural goddamn ranger, holy shit!
Once he was done, all he had left was meat and bones. Meat that he could eat off of the bones.
This is just like ribs! Holy shit!
Grabbing the snake he wrapped it around the stick he had grabbed earlier, before he began roasting it over the fire like a marshmallow.
Gonna be eatin’ good tonight!
He had never eaten snake before, hell he didn’t think anyone had besides those who were rich enough to pay for it, but he was going to enjoy it as much as possible.
Rotating the snake over he could smell the savory smell of sizzling meat. Even with the meat being half cooked he was tempted to just rip it off the stick and start chowing down. It took more self control than he thought he had to stop himself from acting like a bear and ripping it apart with his teeth. His enhanced sense of smell wasn’t helping either, as smell and taste went hand in hand and he could practically taste the meat from the smoke rising off of it.
After a few agonizing minutes the snake seemed properly cooked, as properly as it could be without any spices, or even salt. But you make do with what you have.
Pulling the snake off of the he brought it to his mouth and bit down hard enough to shatter the bones inside of the meat, before tearing it in half, bone and all. If he wasn’t so distracted by his hunger, and how good the meat tasted he would be more concerned over how easily he’d crushed bone with just his jaw strength.
But he was starving, and the snake just tasted so good.
Mana-Infused meat always tasted better than the alternatives, this was a fact. But people didn’t realize that in most cases the meat simply tasted better even without additives. You didn’t need selective breeding, different feeds, chemicals, spices, or even for the meat to be cooked for the average batch of mana-infused meat to taste leagues better than the normal stuff.
And no other time had that been proven more perfectly than now.
No spices, no special grills, just a raggedy ass campfire and a snake he’d literally pulled out of the dirt and butchered in the grass, and it tasted better than anything else he’d ever eaten in his life.
The strong tasting meat, somehow almost tasting like sweet and salty chicken mixed with the taste of the wood-smoke nearly sent him into a food-coma on the spot. He wanted to savor every bite, wanted to go into the nearest city and take its mayor hostage with the demand of a thousand pounds of the stuff, just so he never had to stop eating.
Delicious!
Delicious!
With the meat cut in half he’d ended up with two massive bundles of snake meat in both of his hands, so he began eating from both. Forgetting the fact that both were dripping meat-juice onto his hands and that he was covering a good portion of his face in it as well he kept eating, ripping massive chunks off with his teeth as meat and bone were ground up and turned into paste together, before being sucked down his gullet.
It had barely taken him two minutes to devour the entire snake, by the end he was picking pieces off of his hands and face that had fallen off while he was eating it.
When he’d run out of pieces to eat he let out a satisfied groan before falling backwards and laying down on his back. Let alone the taste of the meat, the feeling of his body being pumped full of mana as his body digested the food was heavenly as well, like drinking water after days lost in the desert.
He laid there, for the first time since he’d come to the forest, happy as he felt the afterglow of the meal and afterglow of the mana rush.
I could get addicted to this.