Mathew

It was time to fight. No matter how weird it was following the training regiment of someone almost a decade younger, Ben was still the best option for a monster fight club. Right now, he'd advanced all he could by fighting against a net. Further, his crafting damage had recovered.

So live trial it was. They had talked about what to fight and how to fight. No matter what they decided to hunt, the risk of fighting the Alpha pack would be a problem. Using that fact as a key determinant of what territory to hunt in, they narrowed down the field.

Swarm creatures wouldn't pose too much of a threat with his defensive capability, and his digestion magic would take them down eventually.

Unfortunately, swarm creatures weren't a good option for Ben. His netting allowed him to specialize in single target takedown. While he could capture part of a swarm, it just wasn't enough to ensure his own protection. Further, his stealth magic would drain based on all the lifeforms trying to detect him. So far, his method to compensate for swarm threats was to hide under his own net.

Narrowing down the field to a less risky option was where they wound up. Which was right back where they started in the territory of the Field Cats. Mathew hated the idea of being ambushed by the Alpha but he also hated the idea of waiting for death to find him helpless in a corner.

Just because he was hunting in Field Cat territory didn't mean he had to hunt them down on purpose. In fact, confrontation with the Alpha pack was better avoided. Not putting them on high alert and risking drawing the Alpha itself was a much better idea.

Mathew led the way. He still couldn't navigate the area as well as Amber, but he'd be okay as long as he had Ben. If they got separated, Mathew could walk forward until he found the perimeter path and follow that until he could see the hub.

Going back out into the wild after finding out how deadly it could be put his teeth on edge. Looking back, he'd been pretty cavalier about the whole thing. At least Amber had a gun and navigation skills when they'd gone hunting. Mathew had no excuse, just foolishness.

It's who he was though, even now doing his best to sneak through the curled up ferns and gnarled branched of underbrush part of him hoped to try his mettle against a Field Cat.

This time he didn't forget his promise and kept trying to scan everything he came across. Netting himself two skill level ups and a better understanding of the ecosystem.

Other than that, Mathew used the mental attack skill to scan the area around himself at all times. Adapting to more inputs and sensations was a key to survival he'd been inadvertently training since his transition started.

Bringing it all together, he was able to monitor when his progress around the forest was noticed. When he felt a predatory hunting mind, he could stop and tap into its vision and sense of self. Realizing that most predators were pint-sized insect hunters was a relief.

Still, at the edges of his sense, he'd feel the tentacle land creature. It had some type of mental camouflage and he only noticed them as they returned to the heights of the trees. Like before, both people were able to travel unmolested through the forest.

After filling his digestion magic, Mathew expended fifty points to take the edge off his hunger. Distractions could be even more deadly than not having a full tank at all times.

For hours they walked through the territory. Ben gathered up reagents as either of them found an interesting one. After finding out how important it was to take care when harvesting Ben tried to harvest better. Without Harper being willing to come out and use her skill directly, it was a general set of rules rather than specific directions.

Mathew was worrying about Harper when he felt a disturbance in his mental sense. A bubble of energy swept over his mental awareness and echoing waves responded.

"Something going on that way," Mathew pointed. "Should we check it out?"

Ben nodded.

Giving Ben his trust, Mathew followed the commotion.

As before, Drull and Field Cats were in conflict. This time a group of Drull held down a Field Cat, and everything was thrashing violently. As Mathew broke past the line of bushes to get a good view he could feel the other cats ping their locations.

They didn't jump right in to defend their packmate. Instead, they crossed the path and cut off the avenue of retreat of the Drull.

Dutiful to his promises, he scanned.

[Field Cat

Physical growth is limited by available food. Strength of their blade arms is determined by age. Their variable size makes them valuable commercially for knives of all sizes.

This variant is mentally attuned. Attacks with their blade may inflict mental debuffs]

[Drull

A wrestling type monster, they disable their prey before draining their health. Their tough wrinkly hide lets them shrug off most teeth and claws of comparable monsters. ]

The cluster of Drull had their mouths opened wide and latched to the downed cat. A mental ripple passed over from the far woods. Three Field Cats from Mathew's side burst into the clear strip of forest from the signal. While they didn't outnumber the Drull, they prevented them from feeding.

Without being able to feed, they didn't have a reason to stick around. Breaking off from the cat, each Drull ripped its teeth free, tearing cat flesh. Circular wounds from hundreds of small teeth formed in six dinnerplate-sized circles across the Field Cat's body.

Mathew felt an instinct that they were competition. This was his Carrion Beast side and he'd gotten much better at identifying when those feelings began to influence him.

As the Drull retreated, a pincer attack followed them, herded them. Deep thumping sounds of fear and confusion echoed through the forest as the hammer of Field Cats drove them into the anvil.

Mathew's eyes keyed in on the injured beast climbing to its feet. Blood stained its white and grey coat red. It didn't have any health left. Right now, the rest of the pack was taking on another enemy.

He glanced at Ben, looking for direction to attack or hold off. Ben's eyes were as big as saucers. This was a lot to put on the young man's shoulders.

The dread of living in fear almost drove him to take immediate action. He wanted to take back his freedom to go where he pleased. Right now, that bleeding monster on its last leg was his opportunity to push back at that boundary.

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Watching its limping trajectory, Mathew cut through the forest to get in front of it.

Scraping the pathing in the trees with his vision, Mathew tried to find a nook to hide in when Ben caught up.

"What are you doing?" Ben urgent whispered.

"I'm going to ambush it." Mathew kept looking for a good place.

"That exactly opposite from our plan of not killing anything in the Alpha pack." Ben pulled on his arm.

"They'll think it was the Drull. This is a chance we can take." Mathew saw a nice thicket of roots that made a good ambush location.

"No, it isn't. Let's go." Ben pulled again. This time he didn't hold back that he had twice Mathew's strength.

Anger flared and Mathew put it away. "Okay." He managed to get out. These were more selfish actions he should know better.

"Too late," Ben looked up and threw his net.

It sailed up to a branch twenty feet in the air and wrapped around it like a pillow-sized hand. Of its own accord, the tether drew Ben up out of the conflict. As he reached the branch, the net unwound from the tree and wrapped him like armor.

Shifting his awareness to the nearby rise, Mathew felt the injured Field Cat descending down the slope towards him. Dropping everything else, Mathew focused his energy into mental attack. His intent was to mute the communication. It was a new way for him to use the skill but the skill description was about compelling the will of others. In theory, compelling the will outside the mind of the monster should still be part of the same skill.

As Mathews mental attack settled a muting bubble over the cat, its limping visage evaporated. Focusing on him exclusively, it let out a mental ping. Smothering the force was taxing the limits of his braced skill.

Slotting the Wraith into his Alpha phage slot, Mathew infused his mental attack skill with digestion magic. The effect was immediate chewing away at the press of mental energy from the monster. Immersion day after day, in this alien world had given him enough understanding to work solutions on the fly.

Of course, his digestion magic wouldn't last forever.

Pulling back what willpower Mathew's silencing shell could afford, he prepared conditional ambush. A pounce attack with leading blade arms as soon as it got irritated enough, Mathew predicted.

Watching for the signs, Mathew saw them. Twitching tail jump straight back and quiver for better balance, dark eyes expanding as vicious aggression took over its mind. A pause, then the pounce.

Conditional ambush triggered and Mathew flowed forward, deflecting one blade arm as the other skittered across his back. Ripper lifted into the monster's throat with a vertical slash. Flesh parted and Mathew was bathed in the blood of his enemy.

Even mortally wounded the monster put up a fight. Clamping its fangs on his shoulder, it bore Mahew to the ground and raked its rear claws everywhere it could reach.

No flare of pain kicked up, but the heat from bone regeneration kicked in for the first time in a while as his body repaired the damage being inflicted. Losing its steam after half a minute, it flopped down onto Mathew and released its last breath through the gap in its throat.

Expending his magic, Mathew lightened the load from the monster's insides. In his mind he felt the flavor of everything, the grossness that was inside its intestine, raw flesh and blood. The sensation blended with adrenaline and made Mathew feel like he was the apex predator.

Lifting the steaming carcass off himself, Mathew stood and gathered his bearings. Ben was lowering himself from the tree by the tether of his net. No indications of anything bearing down on them.

"Thanks for the fucking backup," Mathew spat. "What the hell was that?"

"Me! What the hell was that? Moving to attack the Alpha pack. The one thing we'd laid out that we wouldn't do." Ben was fuming. "That is exactly why I back off. You want to commit suicide by monster? Know that I'm not going down with you."

"It isn't that I want to die, it's that I want to live!" Mathew growled. "You going to help get this back to the Hub or not?"

"Idiot, fucking idiot." Ben hoisted what was left of the cat over his shoulders. "This way."

Stabbing Ripper into the ground, Mathew erased all the evidence he could find. With a few puffs of hunger smoke, Mathew cleaned himself up as well, leaving no smell to track him by.

Hustling after Ben's retreating path was a slog. Even with a hundred pounds of dead weight on his back, the higher stats carried him over the land like a gazel. Mathew tapped into his reserves with conversion twice to keep Ben in vision.

The pace was punishing but Mathew guessed that was the point. It worked didn't it? What is he getting pissy over? Coward just abandoned me! He's right about it being the one thing we talked about ahead of time.

Mathew argued himself for half an hour through the forest before feeling humbled and regretting. Not entirely but enough to temper his unwarranted aggression. Again he'd latched onto the selfish option rather than doing what was best for everyone.

The way he viewed life, being selfish was a valid option in part because without it being selfless had no meaning. That built on top of his directive to embrace the suck. Making the meaningful choice with open arms. Lately, he'd been refusing it for himself. Rejecting the suck that life sometimes could be was a weakness he wanted to tear out.

In short order, they were at the edge of their home territory.

Flushed red, Ben cooled off at the foot of the hill.

"Sorry," Mathew took a breath to gather himself.

"I'm not really interested in talking right now." Ben shut him down.

That threatened to piss him off but Mathew couldn't follow an apology with anger. They started back up the hill.

Ben broke the silence. "Your control is slopy. If it hadn't been drained of its health, it could have pinned you to the ground and chewed you apart. Your fundamental problem is that you are way more resilient than you are strong. A turtle just waiting for a persistent enough predator." Ben showed his teeth. "Like me, my binding is your hard counter."

"Heh, noted." Mathew listened.

"Can you engineer some more options?" Ben suggested.

Mathew nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Ben dropped the cat corpse at the door to the Hub and vanished right in front of him.

Damn.

Picking up the remains with a grunt, Mathew returned home.

He set the body over by Amber's workbench corner. Not seeing anyone, Mathew called out. "Hello?"

"The boys are back!" Amber burst out of the girl's room excitedly. "Where's Ben?"

"He needed to cool off." Mathew missed having expressions on his face. "We had a moment. I chose a stupid risk then I blamed him for the consequences of my actions."

"How'd he take that?" Amber asked.

"Gave me a good combat analysis and carried a hundred-pound carcass through the jungle for, I don't know, miles probably."

"That bad, huh?" Amber wasn't really asking. "Welp, he'll be back, and we can cheer him up with good news."

"What's up?" Mathew asked.

"We have a lead on getting Grant back up and kicking," Amber was excited all over again. "Harper's skill grinding paid off."

Amber showed him everything they'd accomplished so far. It was expansive. Mathew knew she'd been spending a lot of time in the back room but this was more than he'd imagined. Dozens of bottles and boxes stocked the shelving he'd seen empty only a short few days ago. Each one scanned with a different product.

Then they explained their medical testing breakthrough.

"Let me get this straight he isn't in a coma. He is under the influence of some illusion." Mathew stroked at the jaw of his helmet like he had a beard.

"That's about it." Amber nodded.

"Okay, I've had a day. I'm going to take a break and when I'm ready, I'll see what I can do with my mental skills." Mathew felt the pressure of Grant slide over to his plate. A chance for redemption after pissing Ben off.

Get Grant going and just skip the apology altogether.

"Oh Amber, I left a hide for you by your workbench." Mathew shot over his shoulder as he went to the newly opened corridor he was eating into the face of the mountain.

Here he let his mind wander on what he could do with Carrion flesh.

Two ideas came to mind readily. First was for being knocked down and left a sitting turtle.

Carrion flesh would let him craft muscles with tendons from his body's skeleton to open air. The other side of the muscle would have a webbing spinneret. This would allow him to anchor even more skeleton parts to what he already carried.

Experimenting, Mathew tried to craft three muscles near the bottom of his calf. His skill handled the details and bumped his elbow into a better final product. Like his bone, the muscle had to be fed whatever was needed to keep living.

The weakness in his calf armor would be worth it. Stretching his skill he tried to grow a bone off of the new grey muscles. Anchored within the Carrion muscle the spur of bone grew into a brace that ran up to his knee. One in front and the two behind him. When he put the support braces down, they formed a 'Y' on the ground.

Extending a muscle to each support, he made sure he could pull the support down with force. After testing, Mathew replicated it on the other leg.

Satisfied he had shored up a weakness, Mathew moved to something less practical. Growing small muscles from his exoskeleton didn't weaken the structure too much. Onto these small muscles, he hung the burden of false bone eyebrows.

Distractions completed Mathew was free to worry about Ben being in the wild alone. He took his time with this burden on his heart and mind and resolving it was a big part of being ready for his next task.

After feeling well enough that it wouldn't be a distraction, Mathew took a cat nap. Waking up, Mathew made his way to Grant and made his final preparations to render aid to the mind trapped in an illusion or nightmare for days.