When she had first started trying to hunt, she had bungled it, time and again. Even with her knowledge of her own fragility, she had overestimated her own place in the hierarchy of the food chain.

She had been given a massive wake-up call.

She may have seemingly been stronger and faster than a normal human would have been, to say nothing of durability, but in the current world she was in she was a kitten trying to survive among tigers.

And many of those tigers wanted to eat her.

She would need to eschew the old trope of bum-rushing or stumbling around. If even a small animal that was less than half of her size like that lemur-dog could essentially knock her out of a fight with a two-hit combo, then that proved that she needed to either undergo a training montage (which she lacked the time and resources for) or that she needed to embrace the law of the jungle and use every trick she could learn to secure a win of any kind, so long as it wasn’t Pyrrhic.

Lyrhea found it exceedingly difficult to think of any winning strategy given what she had faced recently. If the monsters she had been forced to deal with were the norm, then she was in very, very deep doo-doo, especially after being driven deeper into the forest.

But was she actually deeper into the forest in the wrong way or perhaps in the right way? She would find that answer out later than she would have liked, and she would find it out only after this point, as she chose a random direction that was not the way she had initially come from and wandered off that way, hoping and praying that she could find something, anything that was an easier threat than what she had dealt with prior.

Morgana scowled as her partner returned. After summoning him and sending him off to try and locate the target of the Quest, he had ended up returning not merely empty-handed, but in a very poor shape. The poor thing would need a few days to recover, and that was the least of her worries.

If her ace-in-the-hole could get roughed up so bad, then how dangerous was this creature? Sure, her usage of a .45 magnum had been instinctual, driven by her own experiences and something she should have overcome by now, but that had blown her cover and been a rookie mistake that she had not expected to make.

That the weapons of modern, or rather, Old Earth no longer had much of an effect was a fact, and that this creature had taken a blow that would have killed a normal human was insane, but given the state of the world, was it any surprise? Despite that, she and her former fair-weather companions had made blunder after blunder, and now she was beginning to feel that something else was at play.

Her senses and reasoning had been noticeably dulled, only to be now sharp enough for her to realize that they had been. It was as if someone or something was protecting that monster until it could fight back.

A New God. That had to be it. Well, calling them ‘Gods’ was just a way of describing them, and they were far from the way people would have wanted gods to be. But, they did give help to their followers, so maybe that target had a target on its back because it was an agent of a God? It would explain why it was seemingly one of a kind, as well as why it was so lucky…

“Well, Fido, where did you lose it?” she asked her canine companion. The horned wolf made wolf noises and gestured in one direction with its snout. Morgana silently cursed at this reveal, fully understanding her beast companion despite them not sharing a verbal language.

“So it is out of our jurisdiction, and a failure…” She got up from where she was squatting and spat angrily at the ground. If only the team had stuck together for longer, and if only they had not made so many dumb mistakes that should never have even had the chance to cross their minds.

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Now she would need to report in, and hopefully be able to go and help that other place. But she honestly doubted if the people in her own town would let her. That other town was literally across a forest filled with vicious monsters, and the last few times they interacted it both started and ended in violence.

Odds were that the monster that she had failed to hunt down would stir up trouble for them and they would, in turn, blame her town. Not that she didn’t expect that to happen eventually, as it was human nature to blame others for everyone even when they aren’t responsible, but in this case, they would be at least partially correct.

“Beasts are so much more honest.” Morgana said as she stroked her companion. “Now let's get home. I’ll have to work overtime to wipe this red mark off my record.”

…

“Hey, wait up!”

“If you can’t catch up, go back home!”

“Nuh-uh! I’ve just gotten my Class! You think I’m gonna run back home after that? Just save some hornbuns for me!”

From a lofty perch, a monster watched as people ran beneath her with nary a care. She had expected that the reason the forest had gone quiet was due to the animals being threatened by a danger that she could not hope to beat, and yet these… well… children were literally running around looking for what she assumed were one of those jackalope-looking critters that bolted when it saw her.

The forest was quiet. That meant danger. What kind of idiots were these people?! She had half a mind to drop down and lecture them before one of the ‘hornbuns’ as the kids called them jumped out and made a beeline for one of them. It jumped up and headbutted one of them, knocking the kid down, but the kid got right back up and ran after the critter with his fellows.

“Huh…” Lyrhea looked on as another pair of hornbuns emerged from the undergrowth. It was a mother-father pair with a few tiny babies along for the trip. She looked at them and decided that she would need to test something. She could afford to damage her hand, and if all else failed she could always run.

Having been forced to learn stealthy movement by way of fear, paranoia, and anxiety, Lyrhea dropped down and snatched up the baby jackalope-things and held them close enough to her body to cause them to squeak in pain. The parents turned around and both rushed her, jumping for a double-headbutt that connected with Lyrhea’s hand and forearm.

And for the first time in a long time, Lyrhea realized something.

It wasn’t that she was weak compared to everyone and everything here, only winning that one battle against a giant rat due to luck and bullshit venom hax. It was that she was weak, yes, but that she was in areas where everyone and everything was absurdly strong, and she had managed to find the one thing she had a chance at beating.

Now, though? While her arm and hand hurt like the dickens, they were not broken. This area was more her level. She could win.

Another double headbutt sent her on her ass and sent the baby hornbuns scampering off with their parents into the foliage.

“Well… I guess I need to learn the ropes here rather than in someplace like there.”