Relieved that he finally got up from the river, Frost made her way into the forest line.
Having to wait bothered her a bit, but it didn’t affect things much, she easily recognized the beast that left the smell on the ground and knew from experience they only got out from their holes at night.
A few hours passed with them tracking down the prey and slowly the snowstorm that had been constant throughout the night eventually died down.
The beast's territory was closer than where they spent the night and was found easily in the first hour of the search, the problem was the numerous holes their den seemed to have, a lesson Frost learned the hard way when younger.
After finding four of them, she chose the one with the strongest smell and deepest tracks, so she was sure that when night fell at least one of them would walk out the hole.
Getting a few meters away she growled to the black beast trying to convey this was the hole they would watch.
He stared back with an oblivious look she had seen many times during the last hour and the same lost aura that made her decide to try and hunt him down.
Thankfully her skill let them communicate, if not a bit bothersome, otherwise she couldn’t see him being more than dead weight.
With a growl she closed her eyes and sent her plan to him.
He would wait a few meters away from their den and when the foxes walked out he would go for the foxhole and block their escape route, and she would be in the forest ready to catch one when they ran away.
The creature looked worried as it answered with its weird sounds.
“**** ** they fight ****?” he asked.
Frost lets out a confused growl, understanding he was worried but not quite getting what the problem was.
Thinking for a moment the creature responded with a vision.
Just like in her plan, night had fallen and the foxes walked out of their hole, following the scene he jumped from his hiding spot, closing the hole while she quickly killed one of the beasts.
But unlike in her plan the other beasts didn’t keep running and instead turned to them and started to shoot skills, from fire, water, rocks, to even thunder, the beasts shot random elements nonstop, till both the black creature and her lay dead on the ground.
Frost stared at the creature incredulously, she herself had chosen to strengthen her ice powers instead of getting bigger and stronger every time the option appeared and even she couldn’t shoot a single icicle yet, though she could feel it would be possible eventually.
So how the fuck a group of beasts even smaller then her would be able to use so many powers in a row? Was the black creature stupider than she thought?
To her his worries were so absurd she didn’t even know how to answer.
Well not like she couldn’t do her plan alone, though the chances of getting nothing did increase quite a bit, since these beasts are quite fast.
Frustrated with the cowardice of the creature she sent a vision to it.
Where the black creature hid in a corner trembling with fear and whining while she went alone, tall and strong, and came back with the dead prey anyway.
With a snort the creature stared at her with an annoyed look, before barking back a disagreement in his own weird way.
“** **** yourself.”
After a few moments the creature sighed and sent the first plan back., it seemed that although he was a coward, Frost could convince him with a bit of communication.
Happy with the result Frost went to her hiding spot so they could wait for their prey to leave.
***
As we waited for the foxes to appear I stared at my stats.
----------------------------
Stats:
Body rank 0 - 1/3
-Strength: rank 0 - 44/100
-Health: rank 1 - 10/100
-Resistance: rank 0 - 72/100
Mind rank 0 - 0/3
-Power: rank 0 - 9/100
-Mana: rank 0 - 32/100
-Clarity: rank 0 - 16/100
----------------------------
Though strength and resistance were my highest rank 0 stats by the speed mana had grown I’m pretty sure the next to rank up would be it.
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To think that in just the ten or so minutes I ended my hunger and went almost a third of the way to the next mana rank made me really happy that she knew about the river.
Though she seemed quite reckless when it came to hunting, with me even almost killing her on our first meeting, I couldn’t deny her help was indispensable in this new magical world, hopefully she would be right this time.
With the growth in the stats I could feel my mana pool had grown larger, though it was a really really small amount, the fact I could feel a difference meant a lot.
Changing tabs I looked at my skills.
----------------------------
Skills:
[Inborn]
-DARK SACRIFICE (rank 0).
[Class skills 1/10]
-MANA NOURISHMENT (rank 0) lvl 1(02%).
[Acquired skills 0/10]
>Merge Skills.
----------------------------
Not only had my mana grown, but also the skill leveled up.
Just like the mana, the difference was small, but a bonus nonetheless.
What occupied my thoughts though wasn’t mana nourishment, but dark sacrifice.
It had been a few hours since I discovered my health ranked up and I got a class skill.
Since then the question of if it was worth it to sacrifice the health rank had been constant in my mind, at first it seemed like a really bad idea, considering my safest font of sustenance had its strength based on it and was really weak already because of my small mana pool.
But with the magical river providing so much mana, such a problem had been made irrelevant.
Plus maybe I’ll get another great skill that might be worth weakening me till I get the stats back.
‘I’ll need to wait for the night anyway’ since during the day it would be quite hard to hide from the light.
‘I should have tried to convince us to come back later.’ I thought regretfully, having wasted quite a few hours waiting around, when I could have spent trying to raise my stats, or build a shelter, or find some random cave to use my skill or anything else really.
‘It's just a couple more hours of boredom’ I consoled myself, making myself comfortable in my hiding spot as we waited for the sun to come down.
***
When dusk fell the foxes woke up, making sounds of shuffling and chattering spill out of the earth.
Carefully Jake got into position, straining his eyes the best he could to watch the opening of their den.
Night here in the forest was dark and even in dusk he could barely see the environment.
With lethargic steps a group of four foxes walked out of their den, stretching themselves a couple meters in front of their hole.
Taking a deep breath Jake ran towards the fox hole, hoping to god Frost was correct, cause he was pretty sure he could barely fight a single fox in the dark, much less however many had just jumped out of their lair.
The moment he ran towards their den one of the foxes barked frantically, warning the others of sudden danger.
Frost silently circled them slowly, silently approaching the last one to react to the shrill barking.
Suddenly mana shone in the foxes and mist shot from their mouths directly to Jake.
Jake prepared himself for impact, he wasn’t sure what they were doing, but when the mist reached him the barking that hurt his ears faded away together with every other sound in the forest.
With the mist the poor vision caused by the darkness only got worse, making him unable to see even his own hand, as fast as he could he curled into the fetal position putting his right hand into the back of his head.
Knowing the best he could do in this scenario was wait for Frost’s help and survive till then.
At the same time Frost who had gotten quite close jumped full speed into the fox pack instantly grabbing the slow one by the neck and freezing his throat before it could alert the others.
Sadly the other heard her jump scattering in all directions while barking nonstop.
She in turn didn’t even bother to chase, knowing full well they would be underground in instants.
Satisfied with her meal she looked towards her hunting partner only to find him unmoving, squatting in front of the foxhole.
Putting the dead fox down she approached Jake growling in a low tone trying to get his attention.
Even then he didn’t budge, for he still under the effect of the foxes' mist couldn’t hear or see anything.
Nuzzling him with her head Frost tried to wake him from his seemingly paralyzed state, but the creature only curled harder and tensed a bit.
A bit of worry creeped on Frost’s heart, so closing her eyes she sent the situation to the creature, a measure that hadn’t failed to get a reaction so far.
After getting the vision Jake relaxed, laying down into the ground still unable to see or hear the world around him, he had already accepted he would be mauled for a while when Frost touched him earlier.
Thinking he had passed out Frost started to paw at his chest while howling trying her best to wake him up, she didn’t want to lose their hard caught prey to some random night animal or having to fight the foxes without the element of surprise.
Feeling the paw in his chest and an urging feeling coming through their connection Jake sat up, sending to Frost a vision of him jumping in front of their foxhole before losing hearing and sight to the mist.
Understanding the message Frost pulled their prey close to him and went to patrol their surroundings, waiting for his condition to improve.
***
Though the creature had black fur, he was surprisingly unable to see in the dark, leaving me to pull him around till we got far enough from their territory.
A troublesome but necessary affair, since we didn’t have enough packmates to eat unbothered close to an enemy den.
And the surprises didn’t stop there, even when finally we ended our walk into a safeish area the creature refused to eat his part of the prey, sending images of him with his hand in the river.
From what I could understand, just like I could eat snow to survive he could eat that river’s water, unlike me he preferred to eat the water instead of meat and instead of his mouth he used his hand.
Truly a weird creature, but oh well, more for me anyway.
As I gulped down bite by bite the dead fox I heard the creature say something to me.
“I’m going to **** a *****, ** I **** *** protect me.”
I still wasn’t able to quite get what he was saying, but slowly throughout the day I noticed my ability to understand his weird sounds getting better and better.
Getting the feeling he wanted me to watch him I stopped my meal for a bit, as he hid himself under a thick bush.
“Dark *********” the creature mumbled.
For a few moments it seemed like nothing happened, when suddenly the bush he entered got darker and darker, till a pitch black sphere seemed to cover that area.
Silently she watched the creature’s doing, feeling the mana in the surroundings lightly flow towards the sphere.
A few seconds went by in this way before the sphere slowly disappeared and the bush went back to normal.
“Finally” the creature celebrated, pumping his hand into the air.
Looking at him carefully I didn’t feel much difference, in fact he felt slightly weaker than before this whole show, but nonetheless much happier than before.
Truly a weird creature she had chosen as a packmate.