[Predator’s Visage] had a couple of different skills mixed into it, but one of the most important aspects to Velik was that it gave him a sort of intuitive sense of where to look for prey. With the skill at rank 7, it had a nice range on it, about five hundred yards. The forest was a riot of autumn colors right now, all yellows and oranges except for a few stubborn evergreens clustered together, which made it far more difficult to spot animals than it might otherwise be.

In another month, the trees would be filled with the grasping wooden claws of bare branches and the brilliant leaves would be nothing more than a forgotten carpet of detritus on the ground, but right now, Velik’s primary class skill combined with his high mental stat did the heavy lifting when it came to finding and killing new monsters.

Normally, he slept through the morning and got up sometime around noon. Perhaps it was something in [Duskbound] that he didn’t understand, or maybe it was his class. Something the system had given to him had drastically cut down on his need for sleep, and a good day for Velik was three to four hours.

That gave him plenty of extra hours to do things besides just kill monsters. Today, he busied himself with hunting game, which had become scarce as more and more monsters appeared in the area. There were plenty of them that had no problems eating a deer or turkey. Even aggressive game like boars often died when they challenged a monster that had wandered into their territory.

But Velik’s food reserves were running low and monster meat generally tasted awful, so he went hunting for less dangerous prey. Luck was with him, and it took less than an hour to find fresh signs of a herd of deer that frequented the stream near his home. There were a lot fewer tracks than there’d been last year, the herd already decimated from the monster infestation, but they’d spare one more of their number to keep Velik fed for a few more weeks.

His movements were more deliberate in the day, slower and cautious, acutely aware of the world around him and how it might perceive him. Still, he quickly spotted the herd through the trees some fifty yards off and circled around to get downwind. It wasn’t something he had to consciously think about these days, not with [Predator’s Visage] coloring his behaviors. Stalking prey was second nature to him now.

Velik didn’t own a bow, not because he couldn’t shoot one, but because his style of movement revolved around slipping through narrow openings that a bow would get caught on. He was hoping to get one that had the same [Shape Shifting] property as his spear, and possibly with the ability to make its own arrows like that one he’d seen the younger of the two hunters using yesterday. Either it wasn’t system-crafted, or it was so expensive that Velik hadn’t been able to find it in the store yet.

He was more than familiar with hunting in melee range, which was admittedly much harder to pull off, even with a rank 6 [Stealth] skill. Sneaking up on a single monster was easy compared to approaching an entire herd of skittish deer, but Velik had done it plenty of times before and he knew how to do it again today.

He was in position on a thick tree branch hanging over the trail, spear poised and ready. All he had to do now was wait, and probably not for long. A few minutes, maybe half an hour at most, was all it would take. He already had his eyes on a nice, big doe, one that didn’t have any fawns hanging around it.

Everything was going perfectly, until something crossed the sun overhead and cast its shadow over the herd. They panicked and scattered immediately, with the majority of them running off in the wrong direction and the stragglers darting between trees instead of down the trail. Not a single one of them passed under Velik’s perch, meaning he’d wasted the last two hours of his life tracking down his next week’s dinner and getting into position to take one.

Maybe a bow would be worth it, just for hunting trips. It’s not like I’d need to carry it for killing monsters. Those don’t run away.

Velik peered up through the branches to see what had scared off his dinner, only to freeze and pull on [Stealth] for all it was worth. The monster was big, one of the biggest he’d ever seen, and definitely one of the strongest. [Predator’s Visage] had long since swallowed the [Identify] skill he’d picked up years ago, and while it no longer functioned to give him hard numbers, it told him plenty.

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Little bit lower level than me. Significantly lower physical, despite its size, and probably geared more toward agility and speed than raw strength. High mental for a monster; I’m betting that’s mostly perception and processing speed. And a lot of mystical. Is that all to keep it flying, or does it have some offense, too?

He studied the massive scaled squirrel as it glided by on enormous skin flaps, sizing it up for exploitable weaknesses and trying to get a feel for what its magic did. The last thing he needed was to be right in its face, about to stab its eye out, only to have it breathe out shards of ice or stone on him.

One thing he was certain about, though: it had to die.

* * *

“It’s not subtle, is it?” Jensen said.

“Not much tracking involved in this one, no,” Torwin agreed. “I hope you’re thinking about what you’re going to do once you catch up.”

“I thought I might shoot it to death.”

“Think harder. It’s got four levels on you and it’s an elite. You want to be a [Ranger]. Here’s your chance to prove you’ve got what it takes.”

If you didn’t have half a million decarmas worth of system crafted gear, your skills and level would be rising a lot faster. You rely too much on the toys and not enough on your brain, Jensen.

“Tch,” his apprentice said. “Have a little faith in me. Morgus himself has my back.”

“I’m sure. That’s why he warned you about that root you tripped over yesterday, right?”

“Only because you kept prodding me to go faster! I don’t have a level 50 rare class, old man! My physical is less than half what yours is.”

That would have been a fair point, except that a classless child could have shown more grace than Jensen had. He’d stumbled entirely because he wasn’t paying attention to anything but those bracers that made magical arrows he’d gotten right before they’d left Cravel for the frontier.

“You’d better milk it all it’s worth, or we’ll be chasing that elite til’ nightfall,” he told Jensen. “Damned thing is pulling away.”

“What? No, we’re just in a rough patch of the woods. Soon as the trees thin out, we’ll catch up.”

They’re not going to, and you should know that. We’ve been through here twice this week. Unless that elite swings to the south, the woods are only going to get worse. You’re going to lose it in about twenty minutes, assuming it keeps flying at the same speed and we don’t run into something else before then.

“You’ve got ten minutes to bring it down before I go ahead and do it myself,” Torwin told him.

“What?!” Jensen yelped. His eyes narrowed and he growled, “Fine, if that’s how you want to play it…”

Magic surged through Torwin’s apprentice and his speed suddenly tripled. He tore through the underbrush, snapping branches and ripping stubborn plants out by their roots. And there it is, Torwin thought to himself. You could have circled around to the south and shadowed it in parallel. You could have scaled a tree and fired a few shots at it to get its attention. If you were better at harnessing the potential of your stats, you could have just slipped through the thicker underbrush faster. But no, all problems are solved with money.

You’ll never turn [Tracker] into [Ranger], and I’ll never hear the end of your failure. Maybe it’s time I start thinking about retirement if this is what the new generation is like.

Torwin sped up, easily pacing his gear-assisted apprentice’s speed. It was easy to follow him; he’d left a trail a blind man could walk by bodily tearing through the foliage. Trailing closely behind, he followed Jensen as the young man ran the elite monster down. They lost sight of the monster frequently, especially with the canopy getting thicker, but it was always easy to spot whenever they caught a glimpse of the sky.

Until, unexpectedly, it wasn’t. “It went to ground,” Torwin said. “Huh. Maybe it found something to eat. Either way, lucky for you, huh? Maybe you can ambush it now.”

They hurried forward the last thousand feet or so, with Torwin hanging back to let Jensen take the lead. A bitter leaf hare distracted the old [Ranger] for a second, just long enough to draw an arrow and release it, taking the beast through the throat and pinning it to a tree mid-jump, then Jensen’s strangled cry of mixed surprise and outrage pulled him back to the chase.

“Hmm?” Torwin asked, rushing to catch up. “What in the world…?”

“He’s stealing my kill!” Jensen sputtered, outraged.

“He’s magnificent,” Torwin uttered, not even realizing he’d spoken out loud until Jensen turned a bitter glare on him. Oops, that’ll bruise his pride.