I glanced around, doing my best to make up for my shocking negligence before. I should have known that the noisy nature of my crafting would attract attention, and I should have known to remain alert despite my own noise blocking out any chance of hearing approaching threats.

Well, if you live, you learn, and today I’d lived.

I tried to turn my head to view the damage, but the moment my neck muscles began to tense I felt the skin on my back pull at my open wounds and froze, hissing in pain. Well, someone wasn’t going to be able to climb trees anytime soon.

I took a deep breath and focused on my back. Not in any tangible way, but I could feel my magically enhanced senses homing in on my wounds. The pain grew along with it, going from a dull ache to an overwhelming agony, but so every other sensation. I could feel the cloth prickling of my hairs shifting in the breeze, the distinct pattern of warmth formed by the leaf-dappled light, the slow trickle of blood from my wounds, the strange tingle of mana beneath my skin.

Huh. I’d only ever felt mana once before, when the shaman had tested me for potential magical ability. I’d been laughed out of the room if I remembered correctly. Shows you what you get for expressing any kind of hope. I’d been honest about my enthusiasm for learning magic, but for the elite of the tribe mocking and abusing those beneath them was the easiest form of entertainment.

I released my breath and came back to myself, regaining full awareness. I flicked my ears, scanning the woods around me to reestablish the perimeter. No more murder-chickens coming for my blood, safe t-

Wait. I flicked my ears back and forth again, immediately jumping to the side and spinning to bring up my club.

I glared into the thorny undergrowth, making it clear to the darker-than-natural shadow that I was fully aware of what shit it was trying to pull, and having none of it. A furry snout poked out first, followed by a raccoon like body as it emerged from its hiding place.

I had to give it to it, it was impressively stealthy, able to move with little more than a whisper, but it didn’t matter how well you could mask your footsteps when I could hear your heart beating in your chest. It may be impressive, but the power of my Stats put me on a whole ‘nother level.

The scavenger made moves at my dead bird, but a few snarls was enough to send it packing without a fight. Nice to have an unambiguous victory for once.

I took my kill up a tree for security, but I couldn’t help but feel that the gesture was more ceremonial than truly functional. The way the branches and trees twined around each other in this place turned the whole environment three dimensional and rendered the very idea of a fully terrestrial lifestyle irrelevant.

I’d reached my current height just by picking out a slightly more diagonal than normal branch and walking up it. It was the only way I was going to get anywhere with my back the way it was, and if I could do it, then anything that called this place home certainly could.

So I wedged myself into a hollow where nothing could get behind me and worked on wolfing my food down as fast as I could so no one and nothing could take it from me. Not without ripping out my stomach anyway, but that was easier to defend than anything outside my body.

I started with the neck, biting down and slurping up what I could of the blood. I needed to cram as many nutrients into my tiny green body as possible, and who knew when I’d find water? The massive plants suggested there must be a lot of it, but those plants could be fucking liars. I didn’t trust them.

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From the neck I moved to the largest muscles, in the thigh and breast. Besides water my most urgent need was rebuilding damaged muscles, and it didn’t take a genius to know that the best food for that was the muscles of someone much less fortunate than yourself.

When I was done I looked at the sad sack of bones and organs in my hands. Still a lot of meat there, but my stomach was already bloated, so it would serve a different purpose.

I threw the corpse over into a neighboring tree and watched it splay out over the thorns. Good, plenty of surface area to spread the scent. From there I gritted my teeth and gained some height. The constant shifting of my back muscles prevented my wounds from clotting up properly, but if a goblin couldn’t work through pain then beatings wouldn’t be such a common work management technique.

I stopped after only twenty feet or so, any higher and I’d lose sight of the bait. I settled in for the wait. I didn’t have to wait long, but the first arrival was, predictably, the same little scavenger that I’d scared off before.

The little bastard grabbed a morsel and retreated to enjoy its prize, blissfully unaware of me glaring down at it. It wasn’t what I was looking for, and wedged my club into a branch to free up my hands. I tore off another branch and began the slow process of stripping the thorns and sharpening it into a usable state.

Should have grabbed some feathers from the body. It was a pain to get javelins to fly straight without proper fletching. Eh, I probably wouldn’t have time for that anyway. I kept my eye on the eating animal as I carved. I could empathize with the life of a scavenger, always snatching up scraps from more dangerous creatures, but didn’t mean I could afford to let it eat its fill.

The scavenger finished it’s morsel and I readied my strike. The crudely sharpened wood wasn’t exactly impressive, but neither was the scavenger’s defense, so as soon as it moved for the next bite I’d stick it with the spear and have more bait instead of less.

Funnily enough the scavenger didn’t seem to be going for that, and just hid itself in the bramble above the carcass. It took me a moment to get it, but once I did I couldn’t help but chuckle. I wasn’t the only one who knew the value of an ambush.

Sure enough, it wasn’t more than a few minutes before a bird fluttered down to pick at the carcass and the scavenger sprung its trap. The bird, a small shrike, vanished beneath its paws, fragile bird bones snapping like twigs. The scavenger, fresh prey happily clutched in its jaws, scampered off.

Fair enough mate. Fresh, hot blood was far more appetizing than a torn up carcass, even one that was still warm. I, however, was looking for larger prey than a shrike.

Or not prey, as the case may be. The creature I was ultimately looking to find wasn’t the kind that would find itself on the wrong side of an altercation often. Only time would tell if I’d see it today, but I’d gotten valuable info already.

The whole point of my little trap was to scope out the local ecosystem. If you wanted to avoid the really nasty critters than you needed to know what they were. I was willing to put money on the nastiest thing around being some kind of cat, given the environment, but who knew? Life was full of surprises.

Some wouldn’t even kill you.

The scavengers came first, naturally. It was what they did, after all. Still, I began to shoo them off after the first few. The lowlifes were all well and good, but of limited threat. The apex predator was my true target, and while they’d be happy to take a free meal, that didn’t mean they’d deign to show up for a picked clean carcass.

Of course, if a few more corpses were added to the mix…..well, that would become all but irresistible, even to an apex predator accustomed to hunting live prey. So I sat in my tree and hurled down my little makeshift javelins. Not the most efficient method of hunting, but I was pleased to note that my newly increased Stats played a part. Dexterity and Agility made my throws more precise and Speed added the power to penetrate skin and muscle even with unhardened wood points.

Frustratingly, it was unclear how much I’d improved. I had the priest’s word that killing made one stronger, but I had no way to know by how much. I was still being hunted by the humans, something that they were basing off of my strength. They might not be anywhere I could see, but I was under no illusion that they weren’t keeping track of their ‘investment’. If there was nothing to see then that just meant they were keeping track with some I couldn’t.

Fucking magic was a pain in the ass. But was it a pain in the ass that I could use?

I’d been able to sense mana earlier, while not even trying. Maybe I could figure out how to break whatever connection they were using to track me?

Well, I admitted, maybe later. I was trying to attract an apex predator, so tuning out all those nice physical senses that told you when something was about to eat your face off in favor of the more esoteric ones wasn’t the best plan.

When the local top dog finally showed up, it was almost anticlimactic. Just another big cat, as I predicted. Large, powerfully muscled, and covered in spots. Some type of leopard, it looked like. Good climber, good hunter, and all around prime candidate for the dominant position in this sort of densely wooded environment.

I prepared to get moving again as the leopard bent down to eat, awkwardly keeping its head level enough to remain alert for any potential ambush.

Huh. What would ambush a big ca-

Snapping branches and shattering wood echoed throughout the forest. The cat shot a glance over its shoulder before snatching up one more mouthful and sprinting off.