Gunther hurriedly opened his eyes and found himself looking at a strange creature. Its body consisted of spheres, a small one on top of a bigger one, which were supported by root like appendices underneath them. The top sphere was adorned by a small stick with a leaf on it, kind of like those that sometimes are left at the top of an apple. Instead of arms, it had sticks sticking out of the sides of its lower sphere. Its spheres were green, like the stem of a flower, the roots supporting it were a slightly dark brown while its ‘arms’ were a lighter brown. The creature had its back turned to Gunther at first, but seemed to notice him staring and turned around. It had two big vertical elliptical eyes with a small mouth and no nose on its face. It didn’t seem to have any ears either, which rose the question of how it had even noticed Gunther in the first place.
When the creature saw Gunther look at it, a shocked look appeared on its face and it hurriedly ran away. After a few seconds of contemplation, Gunther decided his healing spell thingy could wait and chased after it. Inspecting a possibly sapient creature or society could potentially be way better than being able to heal himself a bit sooner. If he would just be a bit careful, healing wouldn’t really be necessary after all. Unfortunately for Gunther, he had completely forgotten his wound because of the excitement.
While Gunther was thinking about what to do, the strange plant creature had ran out of sight, making it harder to follow it. After looking around a bit where he found it however, Gunther found a small trail of disturbed plants. Hoping the trail was made by the creature he had seen earlier and not some dangerous monster, Gunther followed it. Careful, so to make as little sound as possible, he traced the track. After he had followed it for a while, however, the track seemed to disappear. Gunther looked around some more, but really couldn’t find any track except for the one he had followed up until there.
Thinking about what to do, Gunther realised he had been ignoring both his analysation skill and his notifications. Deciding to look at his notifications, he saw what he had expected.
Subskill (Forrest Attunement) skill gained: Tracking lv 1!
Perhaps the most dangerous skill of a true hunter is to find you, wherever you go.
By following the tracks of a specific target, you have gained the skill Tracking.
Helps you identify, look for and follow tracks in forests
Higher levels increase these abilities even further
Aside from the skill he gained, Gunther noticed it had leveled up once and he had gained two points in Agility as well.
‘It’s too bad the skill only works while I am inside of a forest, but for now it should be exactly what I need.’ Gunther thought, whilst activating both his Tracking and his Analysation skills for an extra boost. When he looked around with both the skills active, Gunther noticed some claw marks in a nearby tree. Finally realising he hadn’t done so before, Gunther looked up and saw a small feline creature up in one of the trees. While the trees had few branches this low down, the creature managed to cling on to it by stabbing its claws inside the bark.
When it saw Gunther looking at it, the cat apparently decided its sneak attack had failed and launched itself at Gunther. Gunther hurriedly assumed his combat stance again and tried to stab at the cat which was now flying right at him. Luckily, what had happened with the bunnies didn’t happen again, perhaps because of his slightly increased Agility, and Gunther managed to hit the cat. His thrust was slightly off center though and only managed to create a cut in the cats right flank.
Seeing he had not managed to stop the cats attack, Gunther tried to slam the it away. He was too late however and the cat managed to scratch his right arm. Gunther jumped away in a reflex and pointed his spear at the cat again. The cat looked at his spear and tried to circle around Gunther. Gunther was surprised the cat showed this kind of intelligence after the rabbits had just kept jumping straight at him, seemingly without any thoughts at all.
As Gunther was slightly distracted, the cat took this opportunity to launch another attack. Instead of jumping at him, as everything in this forest had done before it, it sprinted forwards and through his legs. It then tried to slash a claw across Gunthers knee pit, but because Gunther had begun turning around as soon as it saw the cat moving, it only managed to create a gash at the side of his leg. Gunther tried to stab it with the downside of his staff, but the cat had ran away before he could hit it.
‘This is bad. If this keeps on, I will die from small scratches like this one, just because I can’t get a hit in.’ Gunther thought, while keeping his attention focussed on the cat this time. ‘I’ll have to come up with a plan. But what can I do if it is so fast that it’s gone before I can get a hit in.’
Before Gunther could think of a plan, the cat tried to repeat its little trick again. This time Gunther saw it coming, however, and jumped to the side, while slamming his staff towards a spot just behind the place he had been standing before. The cat didn’t see this coming and ran straight into his attack. The smash hit it straight in its back, but didn’t seem to break any bones, like it would have with the bunnies. The cat did seem hurt though and was not as fast as before, while it ran out of Gunthers reach.
Stolen novel; please report.
‘How did I manage to do that? I barely noticed its attack and was already moving before I realised it.’ Gunther thought, amazed at his own actions. He only then realised he was still using his Analysation and Tracking skills. ‘So even skills that are not combat related can help me fight if I use them like this.’ He pondered, realising his Tracking skill had helped him trace the movements of the cat, while Analysation helped him think of what to do.
The cat noticed this stupid human was distracted again, though, and decided to launch another attack. It wondered what kind of idiot would let himself get distracted again and again while fighting. It ran at Gunther and suddenly its claw began to glow a bit and it slashed at Gunthers leg again. This time, its attack had a much greater effect. Gunther felt an incredible pain at his leg and almost fell to the ground, he managed to stab his spear into the ground to use it to keep standing however.
‘What the hell was that?’ Gunther thought, astonished. He didn’t allow himself to get distracted again though, since he realised it could very well cost him his life. ‘I’ll probably be able to launch one more attack if I hit it with my spear and then I’ll fall. I will have to make that one attack count then.’ Gunther thought. He quickly ran through his options before deciding on a course of action.
The cat ran at Gunther again, a lot slower than before apparently having expended a lot of energy on its previous strike. Before the cat could get to Gunther, he hit it with all his might, adding his own weight to his attack as he fell to the ground, since he lost his support. The cat buckled under the attack, and fell to the ground. After he hit the cat, Gunther expended all of his mana at once to use Mana Explosion on his staff, because he knew he would be done for if he didn’t finish the fight with this one move. Since he hadn’t used any mana in the battle, Gunther had poured his entire pool of 150 mp into that one attack. He tried to direct as much of it as possible towards the side of the spear where the cat was.
The spear exploded with a loud bang and the cat whimpered in pain. Gunther himself was also dealt quite a heavy blow by the explosion and gasped in pain. He and the cat both lied next to each other, exhausted and in a lot of pain. Looking at the animal, Gunther noticed it was very skinny and looked like it hadn’t had a good meal in a while.
‘That’s probably because the rabbits here are such ferocious creatures.’ Gunther thought to himself. Then, not really knowing why himself, Gunther reached for his pockets and took out two of the food pills he had gotten from William and threw one of them to the cat lying next to him.
“Here you go little guy, since we will both probably die here, why not share a meal together and die with a full belly at least.” He said weakly to it. He then proceeded to eat the second pill he had taken out of his pocket. Its taste was still horrible, but Gunther didn’t really care because he was quite hungry after that fight and he would die soon anyway. The cat seemed to at least partially understand what Gunther had said, or it just mimicked his actions and ate its pill as well. Gunther was a still a little surprised at how weak he felt, until he looked at his notifications and saw that his bleeding debuff had reactivated during the fight and that it had worsened a lot because of all the wild movements he had made. Before he could read any of his other notifications, he passed out.
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Gunther woke up in a strange and unfamiliar room. He seemed to be lying on a bunch of tied together grass and was covered by a blanket made of leaves. The room itself was completely made of wood, but contrary to what he would have expected, the wood seemed to be alive. The walls consisted of tree branches that were braided together and there were large openings functioning as windows. There was one particularly large opening, which Gunther guessed was the door. The windows and door were both covered with leaves, only letting through a part of the sunlight from outside. He tried to sit up, but his legs immediately began to hurt and he let himself fall down again.
Gunther looked under the blanket at his legs and was surprised to see a different kind of leaves bound around his wounds like bandaids. He looked to his side and saw the cat he had been fighting lying next to him. He started and immediately tried to get away from it, but before he could get out of bed, his legs began to hurt again and he had cried out in pain. The commotion seemed to have gained the attention of someone outside and the leaves before the door were pushed away by something that looked like a stick made to look somewhat like a hand.
A creature that looked like the one Gunther had seen in the forest walked inside. Yes, it walked. The roots underneath it had bundled together to form leg like constructions, instead of the octopus like tentacles Gunther had seen on the creature in the forest. Now that it stood on these legs, it was about one and a half meters tall, nearly double the height of the one Gunther had seen in the forest. The creature smiled at Gunther and said.
“It took you long enough to wake up, you have been asleep for nearly two days. The little fellow besides you refused to leave your side for even a minute. After it woke up, it went looking for you immediately. We tried to stop it, since we were afraid it would attack you again, but it laid itself down next to you and began guarding you instead.”
After hearing that, Gunther stopped trying to get away from the cat and looked at it with a confused expression on his face instead.
“Why would it do that? Wait, where am I? Who are you? What even are you? I have literally no idea what is going on here.” Gunther began to panic slightly when he realised he had indeed no idea what was happening. His Analysation skill’s passive effect kicked in and calmed him down somewhat before he could get truly panicked.
“Calm down young uhm... human? You have nothing to fear from us, you are in a place called Ardoricum, the city of Nature. My name is Tenli and I am an Arborling. You fought with this young Wood Panther and nearly died because of your wounds. One of our people found you and thought you trustworthy. He told us you nearly died because of this little fellow, yet still decided to feed it, when you saw how hungry it was. He also told us how your mana is attuned to the forest, so we decided to take a risk and take you in.”