The fight hadn’t been that hard with Bravery, so he felt the effects of the stat points on his refreshed body much clearer.
He didn’t put much thought into assigning his free points, as Endurance was a much needed stat if he was going to continue to fight.
He approached the rolt and awkwardly put his hand on its body. He still felt bad about leaving it to bleed out for a bit, but he wasn’t risking it having some sort of final attack it would use when he got close to put it out of its misery.
Loot Rolt? Y/N
Confirming again, the rolt disappeared and a pelt landed on the ground in front of him. It was a far cry from the soft fur of the rolt as it lived, lacking in both size and texture, but Devon already knew that the system very much degraded the loot received when using this option.
He strongly suspected that even he could get more out of the dead animal than what the system provided, but he didn’t want to linger, and the smell of the dead animal would certainly attract more creatures trying to feed. Plus, the pelt was extremely clean, and most surprisingly, fuzzy on both sides.
His spear felt comfortable in his hand, and he wrapped the pelt around his neck as he walked away from his camp. The sun was already starting to rise, so he decided to get started on his next goal: a house.
* ••
Commander Syleth paced, his Boots of Steel harshly tapping against the marble floor. The Chosen had been in the world for 2 days now according to the High Priest, but their hastily organized search parties had found no trace of them.
They should have appeared in the temple, but something had gone wrong with the transport. It would have been easy if the Chosen had wanted to find people, as the scrying of the High Priest would have succeeded, but apparently whoever this Chosen was, they didn’t want to be found.
However, maybe it was for the best. His spies had informed him that their neighboring city Ibrahel had already sent out parties as well, looking for Aletan’s newest advantage in the never-ending feud.
He could only hope that if the Chosen was in Ibrahel’s territory, they weren’t being too conspicuous.
* ••
Devon yelled at the top of his lungs as he ran towards the rolt. It had actually become even easier to fight them, and he found himself enjoying the fights. He had wondered if that made him a bad person, but if he didn’t kill the fox-like creatures he would die, so he figured that if he enjoyed killing them that probably would be good for his mental health.
Plus, their levels kept rising. They rose scarily fast, actually, but his combat ability rose faster. Devon guessed that they might get less than 5 stat points per level, so despite the level difference he was able to come out on top in a 1v1 pretty easily. They were persistent, though. He almost respected the unwavering confidence that made them throw themselves headlong into a fight that was, at this point, almost impossible for them to win.
It was a different story with multiple, however. While the rolts seemed to actively avoid each other, he had stumbled upon two in battle on his third encounter with the beasts. He had barely managed to kill both, as their teamwork was actually frightening.
He had also gleaned that the rate at which he leveled was determined by the difficulty of the fight. The highest leveled rolt he had killed was at 19, but the fight was easy compared to the rolts he had fought in tandem. This was reflected in the experience, as Devon didn’t even gain a single level from the first fight, while in the second he gained two.
Stolen novel; please report.
This led to him seeking out more challenging fights, as he was doing now. He didn’t exactly want to attract another rolt before he killed the first one, but with his limited knowledge of the system he figured that if he fought two consecutively it would count as a bigger challenge.
The forest was infested with rolts, so much that Devon would have wondered where they got food from if he hadn’t seen a herd of moose go right past him, their bodies packed so tightly that it was like a wall obscuring his vision. The system didn’t call them moose, but they were moose.
He supposed that the rolt’s screech would slow one down, then it would pick it off as it fell away from the herd, but again the ecosystem just seemed alien to him. He didn’t think that the system micromanaged every little thing, so this was probably a real ecosystem created through evolution and survival of the fittest, but there were so many more factors at play that he couldn’t even imagine what had led up to this point.
It also gave him more questions about the system. Did the animals try to work towards titles? Did you need less food at higher levels? One of those seemed like a likely option, as the one moose herd he had seen couldn’t possibly sustain the entire area within which they roamed, and he definitely would have noticed if there had been another within his vicinity.
Speaking of food, Devon finished killing the rolt. The third out of the five he had killed including this one had given him a steak that wasn’t terrible when he finished cooking it. And that was saying something, as he had cooked it completely through, burning it trying to get rid of any bacteria that might be left. He had cringed looking at the dry meat, but he wasn’t going to take any chances with the food.
Luckily, this one also gave him a steak that landed on his outstretched hand as he looted the rolt. It also gave him a curious new message.
You have become more familiar with the Rolt species.
Devon wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe he would become better at finding weak points or something? Bravery sort of did that, so it wasn’t a stretch that it would give him better ways to attack.
It had been three days since his first encounter with the stabber, and while he didn’t quite fall into a routine, he became more confident that it was just a fluke encounter. He made sure not to lower his guard, though, looking for strange rocks every time he went to the river.
Speaking of, he trekked back to the river, something he had done twice to fill up his new makeshift waterskin and to cook the meat. The only items he had gotten from looting were a pelt, a simple square of leather, and two steaks. One of the rolts had simply not given him anything, and he had cursed profusely for a minute until another rolt happened to wander into his vicinity.
His roasting stick was just a sharpened stick that he poked through the steak and lowered into the fire. Luckily, neither the stick or the steak broke either time, and he successfully completed another overcooked steak. This gave him another Crafting level as well, which wasn’t that surprising. Cooking was definitely crafting of a sort, and the system had been broad with its skill and title definitions thus far.
After he finished the steak, Devon washed his hands in the river and headed back to the forest. He didn’t have any long term goals, but he was already level 8, so he figured he would just keep doing what he was doing. Having a plan seemed like a bad idea, as he had just scratched the surface of this new world, and adapting on the fly seemed like the best way to go.
Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to be smart about his build and stat distribution. He had continued to invest points into endurance, and it had paid off. He was able to take a hit from a rolt now if he needed to, and he wouldn’t even be badly bruised. However, the claws could probably still easily cut him open. He was even able to run for longer distances now, but he still didn’t feel like he was superhuman yet. His endurance was fast approaching that level, but an olympic level runner could outrun him still.
Next he wanted to start using aura in fights. He could maintain it with only a little concentration, but he couldn’t get it to extend to the tip of his spear.
Devon was wondering if he was doing something wrong or if it would just require more levels in Mana Manipulation when he caught sight of a rolt, and stopped in his tracks. Or, it wasn’t the rolt that surprised him, but the status screen that popped up when he inspected it.
Infant Rolt Level 12
A thought slowly crept into Devon’s mind as he stood atop the log he had stopped on. If what he had been fighting all this time was an infant, where were the parents? Finally, the rolt caught sight of him, and it charged.