The place where Jamie had pointed off to, the center of the valley, had a few agitated chickens clucking around one of their nest mates. Which seemed to be lying down on the mossy ground barely moving. Max couldn’t tell what they were doing exactly, but it seemed like they were trying to nurse it. Or maybe trying to retrieve the protruding weapon.
A weird thought.
Had they been wrong in their judgment? Were those creatures intelligent? Had they attacked some sort of local wildlife after provoking them? They’d even know that it was the chicken’s territory thanks to his analyze ability. Thoughts of similar sentiments raced through his mind until he managed to control himself with steady breathing.
No, if they were intelligent, they wouldn’t have kept charging us, especially since I was armed. Though that meant little for sentience. Their survival instinct seemed to be low, which spoke of either a lot of brain power or very little.
The latter was more likely, he told himself as he kept observing the chickens.
The monster he had impaled with the pitchfork beforehand was still moving. As he kept his eyes on the situation while regaining his breath his eyes grew in size, his mouth was left agape.
“Did they just…”
“Yeah, pulled the rotten pitchfork out,” Jamie finished his sentence. “Ey Max, I think we should probably make ourselves sparse for the moment.”
That he could wholeheartedly agree with.
They helped each other up, before making their way back up the slope.
“We are going to have to get it back,” Max said after some quiet.
“Yeah, we need all the weapons we can get our hands at. Especially if we have opponents like those.”
After a brief pause, she continued.
“We are also going to have to work on our combat. I don’t know if you’ve got a notification, but it tells me, that I have made significant progress on my way to develop Boxing into Mixed Martial Arts. Whatever that means.”
“Sounds more useful. Boxing’s probably only effective against opponents of your size, as it doesn’t include kicks and such.”
“Mhhmm,” she said, followed by a brief moment of silence. “The chicken didn’t scare me. Well, it…”
“You don’t need to explain yourself, I was scared shitless as well.”
“No, listen Max. You remember my ability thing. I figured something out. When the chicken screeched, I felt fearful. But not really. I had tangible control over it, and for just one moment I accepted that fear. And it bolstered me even further. Increasing my Agility by another point.”
“Ok, that’s good, I guess. Can you repeat that?”
“I think so.”
Following Jamie’s lead, Max tried to see if he had any such notification. But calling up his status showed no change.
> Status:
>
> Max 57341 of Earth
> The Crawl – 1
> Dungeons – 0/1
> Boss – 0/?
>
> Stats:
>
> Might – 3
> Endurance – 3
> Agility – 3
> Soul – 3
> Perception – 3
>
> Traits:
>
> Primal
> Equipment Mastery (Beginner)
>
> Skills:
>
> Pitchfork Wielding (Beginner)
> Running (Novice)
> Academics (Novice)
> Biology (Beginner)
> Climbing (Beginner)
> Pattern Recognition (Beginner)
>
> Abilities:
>
> Analyze (Beginner)
> Sprint (Beginner)
>
> Items:
>
> Standard Human Workman Attire (Common)
> Soiled Pitchfork (Common)
He didn’t feel bad about it though. Jamie had fought two opponents with her boxing skill, while he had lost his pitchfork in the first second of battle. Something that was less than ideal and had to be fixed.
As they reached the top of the hill they took a small respite, charging up their energy and discussing a few potential strategies. To their chagrin they had neither sticks nor stones they could use as additional tools, nor did they have anything else they could use to their advantage.
There was a forest roughly two hills over, but examining the rest of the hills around them Max was hesitant of approaching it.
He’d noticed that every fourth hill had some special feature. The closest of those groups was one hill to their right. With some fauna on top, a water stream trickling into the closest valley, and some movement on top. Potentially every fourth hill, or more precisely every third over and one to the side had something special about them, roughly half of them being some sort of forest. And being special yelled additional danger at Max.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
He shared his thoughts with Jamie, who only seemed to be somewhat convinced.
“It doesn’t make much sense that it’s an absolute rule. I do agree with you though. We can probably take them on anyway. If we can bait another group of four or fewer, I think it’ll work. I’m a bit worried about the one you poked though. It seems to still be alive.”
So, after another few minutes of relaxing, they made their way back down into the valley. They followed the same approach as before, though with greater success this time. Looking for an angle of approach that had a lower density of birds they managed to draw the attention of three chickens. With a combined effort, they quickly took out the first, and then each focused on one of the remaining birds.
Later Jamie mentioned the weird acting of her bird. It had kept trying to intercept her attacks with its claws.
Which led them to stand over the defeated avian in question.
It looked slightly different. Its claws were less orange. That was the most obvious difference. They also had a light sheen on them and felt harder compared to the other chickens.
“So, all this is very magical and odd… Should we try to harvest the claws? We are going to need to eat soon anyway.”
“How would we do that? And how are we going to make a fire? Because I won’t be eating raw chicken. I say we look for eatable plants,” Jamie responded.
Max found that Jamie made a good point. And they could use his ability and her ability to determine whether a plant was digestible. At least he hoped so.
After that, they decided to stash the chickens together. Through some heaving and dragging they brought them to the ridge towards the hill with a spring before returning to fight the next group of chicken. Upon closer inspection, they noticed another characteristic on one of the cadavers. The one that had previously used its beak to try and intercept Max’s foot seemed to be reinforced in a similar manner. Another, the one that Jamie had previously tackled had feather tips that ended in a sharp edge. Those they plucked and kept.
The others seemed to have been identical to each other, not showing any special features. Given that only some of the chickens qualified as level zero, others not having a level at all, they thought it was the relationship between the reinforced body parts.
This would make higher leveled opponents significantly stronger and more dangerous, plus other aspects that might be gained through level-ups. They would try to keep away from leveled monsters for the near future. Thankfully they had discovered that there was only a single creature with a level indication left in the group of fire. The chicken that had been impaled by Max’s pitchfork. It also made the first chicken they had fought an outlier, being level one.
Together they walked down the hill, eagerly awaiting the avians to take notice of them.
It didn’t take too long before four of the five remaining creatures charged them. Clucking wildly, they left their still injured nest mate behind to defend their territory against the invaders.
They rested for a short while after dispatching the four chickens that had charged them. Unfortunately, their rest was anything but relaxing. The last remaining chicken croaked and hissed at them, waving its wings at them with seemingly no regard for the injury it had sustained. Max could see the blood flowing freely from the agitated wounds but the avian did not show a hint of caring.
After a few strenuous minutes, Max dashed over to where the pitchfork had fallen and grabbed it while running past it. The movement didn’t feel quite right, but Max managed to pull it off without being bitten by the continuously hissing bird nor dropping in speed. Armed with his soiled pitchfork he turned around, approaching the last remaining undefeated monster of the pack.
It croaked and battered its wings, but the monstrous chicken had no real ability to move, and the one-and-a-half meters of length the pitchfork awarded were enough to safely stab the five prongs into the monster.
Without much fanfare, it stopped moving.
Then the system chimed.
> Hidden Floor-Quest activated.
>
> Trophy Hunter – Defeat an aberrant monster, a mini-boss, a local boss, and a regional boss.
>
> Progress – 1/1 aberrant Monster. 0/1 mini-boss. 0/1 local boss. 0/1 regional boss.
>
> Reward – Gain a singular attribute point or a spell based on performance.
Max opened his mouth to ask Jamie about her receiving a quest as well before the system offered another prompt.
> Hidden Floor-Quest activated.
>
> Eradication – Clear 5 monster nests permanently.
>
> Progress – 1/5 monster nests destroyed.
>
> Reward – Gain a singular attribute point.
There was no punishment for failing either of the quest, which was nice. The reward seemed decent too since they had no clue on how to gain attribute points in the first case. With the exception of Jamie’s Mood Modulation ability.
Unsure of how to proceed they looked through the poor attempt at a nest in the middle of the valley, seeing if there was anything potentially interesting or advantageous to them. After a few minutes, they determined that was not the case.
They carried the last chicken with them to the ridge where they had stored the others. For if the level one chickens had something special about them, this one might very well be even more special.
It took the pair some time to get over their squeezyness, but eventually, Jamie began feeling about the level-one chicken. They had hopes that there was something distinct about this specimen’s internals, as there were no outward signs of its higher level. It would have made sense too given that it had held on to live longer than the others could have.
They found no reinforced appendages or feathers. Instead, the entire body felt as though a normal chicken would feel.
“Hey, check this out. This feels different. It’s harder than the other chickens here,” Jamie said, pointing at a spot below the chicken's ribs. “It’s almost like an extra bone.”
Max followed her gaze and probed the indicated area. To confirm Jamie’s theory, they checked three more of the normal chickens.
“Yeah, it does feel different. It might just be an injury. A result of the pitchfork maybe?”
It didn’t feel right, and on a hunch, he used the ability Analyze. He didn’t expect much, and at first, he didn’t receive much feedback compared to when the chicken was alive.
> Chicken of Prey – Level 1 - Deceased
Though the information had changed. It no longer mentioned the floor. Max didn’t let that discourage him, and he kept trying. Eventually, when he inspected the spot with his eyes and fingers at the same time, he received a different prompt.
> Raise Analyze (Beginner) or Biology (Beginner) to (Novice), Academics (Novice) to (Apprentice), or gain a magic-related knowledge skill to analyze the object.
>
> One-time information – There are countless ways to obtain knowledge. Only the most obvious were named.
He related the information he’d gained to Jamie, who listened with a cocked head.
“So should we take it with us until we gain one of those skills?” she asked.
“I’d rather not carry a dead bird with me for potentially days,” Max responded. “But I have an idea. It’s not great though. We can head over to the hill with the stream and try to pry whatever is in there from its corpse. With the water, we’ll be able to clean ourselves too, so it won’t be as gross.”
“I guess that sounds good enough. But are you ready to fight again? If you are correct with the special encounters there is bound to be one on that hill.”