The berry of the Galebush is sweet and nutritious, attracting fauna and adventurers alike. However, unless thoroughly cooked, the seed will sprout within a few hours spontaneously, causing an almost certain and gruesome death. This is likely a mechanism to provide the new seedling with fertilizer for the next part of its life cycle.
If the being somehow survives the ‘sprouting,’ they will slowly turn into a volatile and strange chimera of plant and animal. One such creature was the infamous Sun Bear of the Duskdown Forest, which terrorized the local territories for many years before a group of Knight Penitents brought it down.
- Monsters of the Mortal Realms by K. D. Fidditch.
My twin weapons in hand, I crept down the hill towards the pond with a furtiveness I never knew I possessed. Walking along the edges of my feet, heel to toe, I mused that the newly acquired Stealth skill was already clearly bearing fruit. Crouching slightly forward with my weight evenly spread, I instinctively knew how to bend my knees just enough to absorb as much sound as possible.
Edging ever closer, I slinked along the shore of the pond on my belly. Taking cover behind some shallow rushes on the shore, I decided to observe the scene before me.
Across the opposite shore, the amphibious Bibsis basked under the late afternoon sky, occasionally making musical gurgling noises. The school of monsters consisted of larger creatures the size of a monstrously big breed of dog, along with smaller juvenile specimens.
I waited, forcing each drawn breath to be slow and even, while I formulated a plan. Some of the juveniles were currently playing in the shallows near the shore. I needed to surprise one of them, kill it, and then retreat back to the relative safety of the shrine.
Waiting patiently in position, I trusted my Stealth skill to hide me from the monsters. After an indeterminable length of time, I grew impatient and picked up a scattering of fine sand and threw it a short distance from my place of hiding at the surface of the water.
Two adult Bibsis broke away from the main school, swimming lazily to investigate where I had thrown the sand. They gurgle-chirped to each other before diving below the surface and swimming to look for the source of the disturbance.
After a minute or two, one of the creatures swam back to the main school, babbling to the others. The remaining monster, about the size of a large hound, beached itself on the shore, rolling onto its side and closing its googly eyes in contented relaxation. "Perfect," I thought to myself, "time to use one of my combat skills."
I rushed out of my position to attack the monster. Instead of shouting out Power Strike, I invoked it using my mental voice and targeted the lone basking Bibsis. With my left hand holding the half-spear, I thrust it through the creature's flapping gills.
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There was a moment of resistance, and my Stamina drained by ten points. Then a driving sensation, different from a spell reaction, traveled through my body and along my arm and guided my weapon to its fated target.
The stone spearhead passed cleanly through the gills and into the Bibsis' brain matter, bypassing the cartilage of its skull with a squelching noise. I followed up by striking the creature's stilling body along its length with the other half of the spear in my right hand, using it like a wooden club. To my savage satisfaction, the forceful blows scattered wet, muddy brown scales across the shore.
Quickly, I pulled the half-spear from the Bibsis' cranium and scanned my surroundings for any incoming monsters, but none approached. Taking a deep breath, I was gratified to receive a notification of the creature's death, which granted me another ten experience points. I assumed that my initial attack had been a critical hit, given the powerful impact.
A dark liquid rapidly congealed on the shore underneath the fish monster’s head, with blood thick like tar staining the sand. I quickly heaved and tried to drag the creature away from the edge of the pond, but soon realized the impossibility of such a task, as the monster was too heavy to move.
The hunger was upon me, and I needed to eat as soon as possible. With the spear's blade edge serving as a makeshift butchery tool, I began cutting near the tail end of the fish. Piercing first and then sawing across, I deftly avoided bone and cartilage to carve out large chunks of meat from the corpse. With a chunk in each hand and the spear halves tucked under my armpits, I hastily made my way up the hill to the relative safety of the altar.
Arriving, I dropped my weapons and ravenously tore into the chunks of flesh like a wild animal. At first, I barely registered the taste due to my intense hunger, and the raw flesh was tough to chew. As I ate the second piece of monster flesh, my stomach finally began to settle a little.
It was then that I noticed the slightly slimy texture, but the meat had a rich flavor. It reminded me of what it might be like to eat a raw frog, and the thought almost made me throw up in disgust. Nonetheless, I continued to devour the rest of my barbaric meal.
Finishing off the last piece, blood congealing down the front of my robe, I crept down again to the rest of the carcass with more practiced ease. Crouching over the remains of the creature I began to clumsily butcher a few more chunks, then ran back up the hill to place the fresh meat upon the altar. On my third run, I stopped to drink some of the cool water from the pond and washed as best as I could the slimy blood from my hands.
Hoping to farm experience and gain new skills, I repeatedly employed my ambush tactic throughout the night. I lost count of the times I had clumsily attracted too many of the creatures and was forced to rush back up to the altar, dodging and weaving in a crazy zigzag pattern. Despite my efforts, I was occasionally hit by an errant solid water ball, and I had to pause to heal myself to restore the damage of bruised flesh and broken bones.
Occasionally, after landing a solid hit, I would cast Identify to gauge the amount of damage I was dealing. It seemed that my half-spear was doing between four to six damage, while my impromptu club was rather weak, dealing only one to two damage. Perhaps I was taking penalties for dual-wielding or not being proficient with my equipped weapons? Still pondering the mechanics of my new world, I climbed back up to the hill and succumbed to sleep just as the rosy-fingered dawn broke through the sky.