“No time like the present,” Kent harrumphed, drawing his stolen dagger from his waist. He mused on the odd contrast of monster appearances during day and night for a single accelerated heartbeat, before shifting his focus on his knife.

The lack of proper system access hindered him from gleaming the full effects of the knife, but even an untrained and ungifted eye was able to discern some characteristics, the sharpness of the edge was an unnatural property, making it either enchanted or the work of someone with a metal-focused trait or something else that allowed for high-class smithing. Full of hope for it to be the former he tried to trickle in a single point of mana, the dagger didn’t budge, his mana stayed at five.

What a disappointment. He shifted his focus.

Within seconds he had spotted the pig’s silhouette, the movement a contrast to the barely discernable background. Guided by previous experiences he tried a different approach, not allowing the creature to be the dominant combatant, but rather to jump into action himself.

He charged towards the drop-pig.

The drop-pig noticed his approach immediately, but instead of charging him like he had hoped it vanished behind a tree. Fractions of a moment later he heard the signature hard impact on the floor of the monster from his left.

Without risking a glance to his side, he tried to use the remaining light of day to get further ahead. Away from where the creature could charge him from the side. Changing directions was not an option with the underbrush.

It might have not been ideal, but he had no other options now that his charge was foiled.

Or do I? He re-sheathed his dagger and scrambled towards the closest strong-looking tree. Its diameter easily measured his arm span, that was only a minor inconvenience. Climbing trees wasn’t something new for any of the village kids, they competed to climb the highest in Dodona’s crown at length. Struggling a couple times due to the low light he reached the first sturdy branches quickly, only nicking himself on the rough bark twice – the downside of only having barely any toughness.

He took a moment to calm down from the minor exertion of getting up the tree. As his breathing calmed his mind began to race. He realized that he had messed up. He would be safe from any drop-pig assault up here. They – the low-level ones – could only do their drop several dozen paces away from people. The issue was though that even though monsters only became active at night they stayed active during the day when agitated.

The second and potentially more threatening problem was turrls. He hadn’t heard one of the buggers yet, but from what the people of the village had said they had been increasingly active between Blueleaf and Reinsteel.

The villages were lucky and unlucky in that regard. The turrls so utterly dominating the local monster ecology was good, because they were rather weak unless you got poisoned. It also meant a vastly reduced chance of gaining any meaningful monster resources, requiring the village to focus on agriculture.

Kent liked that fact; he had enjoyed every single day working in the fields a lot more than he did any of the last few days, having to struggle to survive was horrible.

So, he sat in the branches looking for a more secure place to sit, should he fall asleep. Climbing a bit higher offered almost a sort of seat between two slightly offset branches. He sat down to wait for better conditions.

When he did fall asleep a twitch or jerk would quickly wake him up again. Whether he had slept more than just a few seconds each time was in the stars. What he was certain of was his new kill count. The night had invited six turrls to attack him, leading to a once again growing stock of sleeping medication.

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None of the turrls were above level ten, thus being relatively easy to dispose of. He had tried to drip down the contents of two of the turrls into the drop-pigs snout but had been unsuccessful thus far. He hoped he had simply been unsuccessful, because the other option, the pig being immune or very resistant would be even worse.

There had been sounds of intense fighting further back from the direction of the village group, but they would sustain. The most dangerous monsters would be too far away from the zone’s suppressive effects to notice even a group of hundreds of people.

His stolen pack safely hanging on another branch Kent readied himself for his plan. He send a brief prayer to whoever would listen and tossed one of the stolen health potions into a dense bush a few paces away. It didn’t shatter from the sounds of it. His survival chances increased he dripped just a few drops of the somniferous turrls saliva on his blade, stored the canteen, and climbed down as far as he dared. The dawning light of the sun spurted him to be on his way.

The monster grew agitated, apparent by its increased activity and grunting, didn’t like that one bit.

Well, it might, he admonished himself. As someone not educated in monster behavior, he shouldn’t make assumptions. Maybe it was just happy for its meal to come closer, for him to make all the work of getting down allowing the monster to just wait for delivery. Then again, monsters were said to completely lack the capability of thought, and not even feel pain, just be driven by their purpose of eradicating humanity as efficiently as possible.

Kent doubted at least some of that as he climbed down branch by branch. Though the latter, he was sure, was correct.

Now just his own and half again above the monster he braced himself. If properly executed he might get away completely unharmed. It all relied on his ability to react quickly and get away fast, which wasn’t all that easy in part due to the constantly dense shrubbery and the low light conditions.

The second he let go of the tree he pushed himself off with his feet just a bit so that his feet were slightly behind where the drop pigs’ squeaking originated.

At first, it seemed as though the floor would never arrive. Until it suddenly was there. All he managed to do before feeling the impact on the ground reverberate throughout his being was lunge the dagger as deep as possible into the monster's back straight in front of him.

He had managed to dampen most of the fall.

The few accelerated breaths it took him to gather his wits were apparently enough to let the drop-pig succumb to the effects of the somniferous turrls saliva, as it was mostly unmoving. Only the face and forelegs were twitching slightly.

Oh shit, did I hit the spine? he asked himself in a bout of realization.

An issue that invoked the same uneasy feeling he had felt before when confronted with having to murder incapacitated humans. It felt so very wrong, uncomfortable so. Some might call him queasy, heck he would go as far as to call himself that. It didn’t change that it felt wrong, disturbing, and disgusting to kill something this way.

He had to, though. There was no telling what would happen should the pig return to being lucid.

As much as it pained him, as uncomfortable as the – not by adrenaline-fueled – stabbing into the neck of a still-living creature felt he did it.

*Ding – Notification pending*

A brief check told him what he had expected. A level nine drop pig. It was too small to have reached the first milestone. But level nine was a large threat for someone of his meager level already. He did let some pride course through him then. He was far away from consistently or safely fighting monsters exceeding level five, but with a bit of luck, human intuition, and his items he would manage – maybe even a threat in the low to middling teens, if the matchup was lucky. Though it was best to not tempt fate.

The next step after having cleared the imminent vicinity was repeating his previous plan of poisoning the carcasses. He had a bit of time before morning proper arrived and it couldn’t be bad to kill a few more monsters while doing nothing. If anything, the seldom reminder of having killed monsters might be uplifting.

The harvesting of an entire bush of tollkirsch went by smoothly, with a few practiced motions he spiked the monster and was almost ready to head out.

He climbed back up to the tree and got his recently acquired pack, retrieved his previously thrown potion, which luckily hadn’t been necessary after all and went on his way. Further along next to the road, hoping to arrive at the next zone of civilization as soon as possible.