There was less than a month until my birthday and all the preparations were completed except for one. There was still one material missing for my plan to succeed. When I collected leaves and acorns from the iron oak, I chanced on a particular branch that I instantly felt had an incredible bow just waiting to be uncovered.
It took a little work to bring that branch back, but I haven’t done anything with it. I would guess making a first-rank or hopefully, a second-rank bow would give me quite a lot of experience and I didn’t want to level up and potentially messed up my accelerated growth.
I’ve made a lot of regular bows getting me to the very edge of levelling up my archery class. So hopefully when I complete the two planned bows from this piece of wood. I will be able to get enough so I can reach the level 20 milestone.
Making the longbow out of this wood fit to my size would be time-consuming but I have everything here that I need for it. Making the composite bow in the Hun style would be impossible as I don’t have a strong enough horn to use.
To gain this material I will need to go on a hunting trip but luckily, I haven’t had to kill anything strong in a while so I should be able to accomplish this without messing anything up. For this hunt, I’ve made myself a first-rank spear to use with my other weapons. I’ve also made my standard armour, but the brigandine and gambeson now had my heraldry dyed onto it.
With everything ready I crossed my bridge and started to head north to the more dangerous and older area of the forest. I planned to be sneaky and only engage with a creature that would have the required material for the composite bow.
Goose was my eyes in the sky as we continued to head further into the forest. After about three days I had to start camouflaging myself constantly and sneaking around as we occasionally ran into first-rank creatures that I didn’t want to spend time fighting.
On the fourth day, I even ran into a strong sabre-toothed cat, but I was able to hide fast enough that it wasn’t able to find me. This place was dangerous and the further in I went the more powerful beast we found. It seems that the beasts around here killed off any monster when they appear before they were able to get strong enough to dominate the area. Because of this, the ecosystem was quite good and it was quite refreshing to be in this energy dense of an area.
On the seventh day, I finally found my target. It was a bit bigger than a normal woolly rhinoceros, but it was close to second rank and the beast just looked powerful. It could easily pierce first-rank trees with its horn and if it wanted to push them down it could. Seems like it liked to eat newly growing leaves.
Observing it for a few hours I found it not to have any elemental abilities. It also didn't seem to have gained much in intelligence, so it was just a regular beast. All of its strength seemed to have gone into the body itself, which was exactly what I was looking for. While a monster might have a stronger horn there simply isn’t any around.
This wasn't going to be a regular fight that I was used to, this was going to be a hunt and for that, I needed to prepare a bit. I scouted a good location where stone was quite close to the surface. I need that extra support as dirt wasn’t going to be able to keep the spear in place. Having found my perfect location, I went and engaged the beast. I started the fight with a bow shot that it didn’t even notice. I actually had to use energy with my shots to get its attention.
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Even with a fully powered-up shot, at least as much as the bow and arrow allowed me to. It still only left a scratch. That was fucking scary but something I expected. The beast didn’t like it and soon I was running for my life while a living tank was chasing me. It was a lot faster than I expected and the trees didn't hold him back. With my movement ability, I was able to keep ahead of him while still keeping him focused on me.
I finally reached my destination and picked up the spear. I then started to flood energy into it and the ground beneath me as I needed to strengthen it as well. When our eyes met, I saw amusement in them.
He could see what I was doing and the amount of energy inside the spear, but he just lowered his head a bit so the first thing I would come into contact with would be his horn. If I would try to aim above it, thanks to its scull shape the spear would glance off and I would end in a bloody mist.
It was a good thing that this wasn’t my plan and that I wasn’t hunting alone. Goose had been up high constantly gathering and compressing wind for our plan. He swooped down at incredible speed, but the beast didn’t even notice.
Goose had become incredibly good at controlling the air element and when he flew past the beast the noose that he had made wrapped around the woolly rhinoceros head. With the speed he was going, it pulled its head just high enough before it hit the spear. Now instead of being deflected the spear penetrated deep into its chest. There was a brief moment where it looked like the spear shaft would break but it held. I was just quick enough to get out of the way.
The beast had fallen. It was trying to get up but with four feet of spear penetrating its chest it was finding it hard. I didn’t waste a single moment and quickly pulled out my two-handed sword charging it up as much as possible and then striking the neck of the beast. It took three strikes to get past the skin and another one to open the juggular.
With that, the beast quickly bleed out and died, but our troubles weren’t over. As soon as the blood stopped, I stuffed the corpse into my adventure bag and Goose, who was now almost three times the size he previously was, used the last of his strength to carry me as far away from this place as possible.
Behind us, the sounds of battle had already begun as many predators were attracted by the smell of blood. They will be fighting each other without knowing that there wasn't anything to gain.
Without air manipulation, Goose could never have been able to carry me. That also meant when he was running low on energy we had to stop. I was the one who carried him even further away from the fighting. After a day I was reasonably certain that we were safe. I was still being extremely careful just in case, while we were returning.
While I did stop for a moment at my home I was only there to eat and let everyone know that I was safely back from the hunt. Afterwards, I immediately left so I could go to town. While I could butcher the beast myself, I didn’t have any specific abilities that would make harvesting materials better.
I would still help but a lot of the job would be done by the professionals. When I made it to them, I saw their eyes begin to sparkle. We had talked about this before, and they were ready holding their breath to see what I had brought. This would probably give them a lot of experience and they would get some of the materials as well.
When I pulled out the six-meter-long and three-meter-tall woolly rhinoceros they couldn't help but cheer. Everyone quickly calmed down and the professional atmosphere took over. The workplace even had cranes so they could deal with large bodies.
Helping them was quite interesting and I learned a lot, but I was only required for the start of it. Afterwards, they were able to handle it themselves and it would take them a while to properly extract everything.
I still stayed a bit longer than I needed to as it was interesting to watch the different abilities being used to preserve the body so they would have the time to make the harvested materials as good as possible.
Eventually, I left them to it and headed back home where I opened my notification. I found out that my archery class levelled up to 19 something that I expected but luckily none of the others did which means that I should be safe even if I need to go out and fight some more.