Chapter 20

The Hunting Roadblock

Hans was trying to sleep, but he was a little disappointed by the situation. All day long with Rudolf in the forest, he tried to control TheVeganCarnage, but it didn't even listen once. It was a powerful weapon, but a weapon that can't be under control was nothing but a liability, and Hans didn't like that term.

So instead of something which he can't control, he started diverting his mind towards what he could. The thoughts of strengthening VeganBind were acting like a stimulant that kept him awake. He finally got tired, with a lot of ideas wrecking in his mind and got some shuteye, but Rudolf’s loud voice dragged him down from dreamlands quickly. He actually slept for at least six hours, but the feeling of just closing his eyes and instantly waking up was irritating him.

He was cranky, so Rudolf offered him advice, "Why don't you try your restraining spell on hunting, ON YOUR OWN?"

Hans always tried to talk Rudolf into this, but this time the old man proposed this on his own, so his crankiness just vanished and he finished his breakfast in the open fields, which had almost become the lunch, and urged the old man to hasten up.

It was different from yesterday's control exercise, where he was under the supervision of the old knight. Today, Rudolf won't be interfering with him or guiding him, and he has to be responsible for his every action.

Hans was not on Rudolf’s shoulder like he usually sat on their outing. Rudolf wanted the brat to feel that hunting is not only about attacking and pinning down the prey but stamina and physique, which he was lacking. He expected Hans to lose some vigour while trekking but since the start of his weird mana practice, the raw mana was strengthening him physically. They came across a herbivore beast and Rudolf marked it as their target today. He shrouded himself in the aura and his presence disappeared. His act clearly meant that he wanted Hans to do everything. If someone else saw a boy of eight years hunting in a beast zone, not to mention Ghost Isles, he would have reported Rudolf to the Knight Association for child abuse.

It was an absurd idea that an eight-year-old boy was here hunting a class second dark Krillin, although it was a herbivore that looked like a big scary goat with a dark brown hide, when provoked it could tear apart limbs of an adult with just one hit from his front leaning, almost a metre crowned horns. It could impale anything with the strength of two metres tall and a muscular body.

Hans was feeling the itch to use TheVeganCarnage but held back because if that spell failed and the Krillin got lucky, the thing he was imagining doing to the beast could also happen to him.

He focused and spawned a VeganBind seed under the Kirillin, instantly bounding its four legs and stretching them in opposite directions, making the beast drop against its soft belly. A wicked smile came to Hans’ face as he constructed a seed at a safe distance. With his high elevation and gravity adding the extra force, the seed quickly fell towards the beast. He jumped higher right after creating the crying seed for extra safety and shouted for aesthetics “TheVeganCarnage”.

With a loud screech, more of a roar, the crying seed made its presence known and later came the dangerously sharp-speared vines. The Kirillin beast panicked. He didn't have the slightest idea what was happening because everything unfolded so fast. Just when it tried to free itself from the restraints, the drowsiness caused by the poison hit it.

The strong lustrous vines with dark purple colour were in a different league than the previous form of vines. Its fine trichomes (plant hairs) have lost all their flexibility because of mutation with OrganicIron plants. It was better to say that the advanced VeganBind was like a torture whip with tiny poisonous spikes The new features genuinely surprised Rudolf. He almost said attaboy to Hans, but he held back. The boy was already arrogant enough and his praise would have raised his nose higher.

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The Kirillin tried to break the vines but its struggles progressed the poisoning, making the beast more numb. The tentacle of crying seed came like the grim reaper at the defenceless Krillin. Rudolf even felt sorry for the poor beast, but there was no guilt in Hans’s eyes and, just like that, the boy killed his very own prey.

The most painful thing on the first hunt was not the strength of the target but the guilt of taking its life, but Hans was only feeling proud of his accomplishment. It was not that he was heartless, but he was told multiple times by Rudolf, “feeling bad for the enemy will lead you to doom” and he understood one more thing, the law of this place was to kill or be killed.

Rudolf also observed another thing: the number of tentacles in the crying seeds increased by one, and it became more violent, too. With a newly expanded range, it hunted nine beasts before withering out. If used cautiously, it could become Hans’ trump card. The only downside was that he couldn't use this among his allies unless he wanted to kill them all.

Both of them came to the hunting ground and saw the impaled Kirillin. The crying seed precisely aimed at the head and left the body intact, the targeting ability of TheVeganCarnage and its terrifying speed already set this spell in a league of its own. Rudolf had to use ManaSense so he could see the spell in action but he couldn't catch everything because he was late in activating his skill.

Hans was maniacally laughing like a sadist, but Rudolf’s smack on his head stopped him as the old knight reminded him. "To complete the hunt, you must secure the game. So stop idling around and collect all of them."

Rudolf was trying to see how this little brat would collect the corpses, but his jaw almost dropped to the ground when he saw his vines coiling around every prey and dragging them towards Hans.

Hans smirked and after he read Rudolf’s expression, he said while pretending pitiful, "Gramps, you won’t bully me by carrying the heavy beasts home, do you?"

This irritated Rudolf, as the boy effortlessly hunted the nine beasts. Five of them were reptiles which he didn't like to eat, so he did not touch them and started field dressing(skinning and collecting eatable parts of the game) the remaining ones. As they were returning home, Rudolf said to Hans, "From today, I ban you from using VeganCarnage for hunting."

Hans didn't refute him this time because he knew what Rudolf’s fundamental principle for becoming strong was and he also believed in those words “the easier it gets, the weaker you become”. If he depends on this spell, then he will have no chance of improving further.

The boy was going regular hunting for days, improving his control over the raw mana and, with the improvement of spawning and activating speed, he became efficient in VeganBind. Rudolf also allowed him to field dress his game and pointed to his wrongdoings and, with the same schedule few months have passed. Hans was improving and at the behest of Sierra, he focussed on mastering the single spell that he learned.

His method of hunting was simple: restrain and then choke the beast to death while knocking it out. This method was not bloody like others, but they have to detoxify the meat before cooking it.

It was one of his regular hunting days, but the boy had met his match today. Rudolf had picked a destination which was not suitable for Hans’ vines to act as he wished. It was a hot region on another island with an inactive volcano. Giant salamanders were one of the heat-loving creatures that lived in this place. The burning body of the beast was failing the VeganBind to restrain it. The moment it coiled around the salamander’s body, it burned the vines and attacked Hans.

Hans might be not able to restrain the beast, but his vines were helping him to dodge the beast’s attack by acting as Hans’ elongated limbs and pulling him to avoid the attacks in opposite directions. Thanks to that, Hans was improving his manoeuvrability, but not being able to restrain the giant salamander was turning a frustrating thing for him.

The orange-scaled salamander already had the protection of its reptilian armour, but on sensing danger, it released the embers, which looked like it had burning skin. Today's failure made Hans return home empty-handed. He was wrecking his brain for improving the existing vines, but he didn't find any suitable mutation for its VeganBind.

He gave up and opened the book for the answers.

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