Far in the inland at castle Morgwen in the main residence of Mellechiev
Advisor Lanon:"We have reports that our men will not return. It is to conclude they all perished."
Earl Mellechiev laconic responded:"Send 50 men for reinforcements."
Advisor Lanon:"It is to suspect the targeted clan has considerable military strength. A good part of our elite fighters might be necessary to instigate enough damage."
Earl Mellechiev waved his advisors concern of:"Just send the recruits. Put them in the colors of viscounty Brisgean and let them shout the ususal."
Advisor Lenon added thoughtfully:"I don't think an attack of recruis will amount to much. They will most likely be cought and questioned. Recruits normally do not have a high tolerance to torture."
Earl Mellechiev gave a lapidary respons:"Just have them under oath. They are only aloud to attack and shout. I will consider this matter resolved."
Lanon dutiful as ever answered:"Yes, my lord."
----------------------------------------
Ker struggled against his instincts. He never had this need to just bite into flesh. Comicall as the situation was, Ker rather focused to dind enough dry sticks to start a fire. Of course he knew how to make a fire, nut doing this on an unknown area, with kust one hand added considerable difficulty.
In the end, he was happy enough with a smoldering pile of small sticks. Also he manahed to let go of the vole and dropped on the smoldering pile. Not really a campfire, but enough to slowly cook a small animal. When the smell of drying pelt hit, he remembered what he forgot. To butcher the animal in a corect way. So he took the vole of the pile and started to cut and tear its pelt away. Just with stones, sharp sticks and hands he prepared the vole. It definitely looked butchered up afterwards.
With added breath and a good while the smoldering pile became a little fireplace. The vole became cooked and strarted to smell... ok. That was how Ker described it to himself. Finally he bit a piece from the vole. It tasted bland, like chicken, just different.
His stomach stopped growling and his instincts were satisfied, other than that nothing happend. So he moved on.
Let's look at my gains.
He gained 5 stat points. He didtributed them to strenght and Dexterity, since he needed more power and better aim. Also being faster would help him anyway. His strength and dexterity were both now at 16.
The additional 5 points and the 10% were already visible. He decided to test his new stats and ran a short distance in the wood. What he thought was short was a good part farther. He was definitely faster and stronger. And so he moved onto his second hunt. This time he wanted to git a mice. Not to eat it, just put of spite for the denied kill. Finding a mice took a lot of patience from him. He had not become a berserker because of his patience, rather the opposite. If he still had any class or could gain one back.
After scaring a few mice and finaly getting the kill on one, he relented to more productive actions. Rather hunting mice and vole, he needed to kill a beast. Just that undertaking was a problem with pitfalls on its own. He already did kill his first beast a few month ago. But he had help, at least some and it was an aggressive firelynx. Very aggressive he remembered. He got burns nearly eberyway and needed healing. His mother was not happy one bit. How she cared for him and shewed his fathers ears off. That made him sad for a moment. They surely were sad too and waiting for him. Ker took a strong breath in and focused on his next task: slaying a beast in the wilds.
He was brave, not moronic. So he needed he foolproof plan, the right tools and well trained execution. First the plan, what did he know of beast in the wilds. Actually not much, there were strong, unrelenting and extremely dangerous. But little critters existed here too, so there were surely some not so strong beasts. He just had to find the right one. The plan was to make a trap, use spears to harm it enough until it died. Making a trap was again very possible for him. Just make a hole, put pointy sticks in it and cover the top. Bit would that work, probably not. Beats here were too strong, too good at surviving. He needed to make sure that the trap worked. He also thought about making a second trap to catch the beast simultaneously.
Then he began gathering sticks, branches and stones to make some rudimentary tools. After a good while he had twenty ropust sharp sticks, a dozen weak sharpened sticks, three short speers and some sort of stoneshovel. Making a rope had not worked out. The leaves and undergrowth always tore when applaying some force. Therefore he opted to make the trap to fall in on itself and burying the beast.
Now on to finding valid targets.
He moved as silent as he could, always crunched down, always carefull not to step on something loud. Slowly he was leaving the fateful site of the building. His path wound through the wood, looking for unkown tracks in the ground.
A large food print lay before Ker. Large in a sense that it was from a squirrel, but at öeast three times that big. Definitely a beast, but none he heard about. Squirrels were just little critters, so he surely had nothing to gear from one squirrel with a bit more mass.
Following the tracks doubts necked in the back of his mind. Why were the tracks so visible, didn't the squirrel need to hide. And why thinned the numbers on animals he could see. He had no answers to those things, instead he sneaked through the undergrowth.
Ker noticed a large lonely tree and a scurrying being on it.
Found you.
Ker observed the squirrel carry things up the tree and down. Right now he had no chance of setting a working trap. So it was time to wait. Sure the squirrel was big, biggest squirrel he ever saw. But how dangerous could it be.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
In the evening the beast seemed to venture out, for whatever it had to do. So Ker moved carefull to the spot most frequented by the beast and started to dig. He sat the trap up as good as he could. It would even collapse. He moved the foliage over the hole, tried to cover up his tracks and lie down on a nearby spot. The trap was sat and ready.
Good thing was he didn't need to wait long. Bad thing was the squirrel was just built differently. It sat the trap, has fallen into it and screamed pierced by the sticks. The collapse of the trap could never hope to hold this little monster. It jumped bloodied out of the trap and landed beside it. Ker already on the move, did throw his first spear. It pierced the beasts hide and successfully angered it. That was in acceptable bounds for Ker. What wasn't expected were the fury this very big and very angry critter had. In just moments it was on to Ker, biting slashing, kicking. Ker got hurt in seconds, even as he hold his spear against the onslaught. He would see no light against this squirrel, of things continued. So he waged his chances and thrown himself to the side. That gave him a moment to wound the beast more. But it in return wound Ker back, an unvoluntary exchange. They basicly wittled each other down. He had to find a way to get the upper hand. He still had two spears, one was on the place were he laid before. He baited the squirrel one step forward, accepted on wound to the shoulder and thrust the spear with his full weight behind it, in the squirrels right foot. That pinned the beast and changed the flow of battle in his favor. The rest of the battle were most one-sided exchanges. Ker took the last spear, aimed at the squirrel and thrust only when a hit was certain. Still it needed a while amd at long last it died.
He received 3 level and 17 stat points. Also the system noticed him about his gains:
Treesquirrel lvl 7 (I) slayn
3 levels gained
Title: predator not prey recieved
But there where no evolution points given. However he would recieve them was a mistery.
Also he was bloody, wounded and in a bad state overall. So he didnwhat he could do and put 2/3 of his stats in constitution.
Constitution: 27 -> HP: 270
That would also higher his defenses and indirectly his stamina. If everything still worked the same.
Still he bled and started to look for plants to desinfect him and tread his wounds. But the plants nearby were foreign to him. Now his instincts started to rise again. They led him to the slayn beast. He could barely hold himself back, his body wanted this squirrel. Sure it was not a vile, but he still had standards. At least he wanted to gold himself to those. His body had a different idea, made his mouth salivate, pushed him closer to the dead beast when he finnaly slipped in his control. It didn't taste that bad, just vwty bloody. Then it struck what he had done. He had tried to eat a animal raw, not even an animal, a beast.
He gulped the hearty meat down.
+ 1 EP recieved
What
He got EP from eating raw beasts. That was something new. Now he knew where to get EP, but would he follow through, just like a beast.
Well, he thought to himself, when stat points are vital for adventurers then EP must be kind of the same for beasts. He gulped at the thought of what he was abou to do. He steeled himself internally and bit down.
After eating a good chunk of his slayn beast, his prey, he got 5 more EP and felt much better. His wounds receded, not completely healed, but far lesser in severity. He discovered a new way of treating himself. Also that was probably an additional option for other beasts alike.
It wasn't too bad, but now his mouth was bloody and he really wanted a shower. Not that there would be any in the woods. Beside his messy state, he felt chill. It was getting rapidly darker, it was autumn and he had no real space to take shelter. He tensed up at the thought going back to the facility. A cursed place in his opinion. Maybe he could find a different place to stay. He looked up the tree and winced. Going up there would be problematic. But with his new stats, worth a try.
Moments later he found out how difficult it was to climb a tree. But nothing beats human ingenuity. So he got the first ordervout of the way, he cleaned himself as good as he could. Leaves were actually pretty usefull after all. Then he cut the quirrel open and put it on a branch from another tree. That way it would bleed out and could be skinned the next day. Then he used to of his spears as tools to climb the large tree. By reaching the first branch he asked himself how high he was and regretted the look down immediately. By the third branch he was certain a fall would be really bad. So he climbed higher and reached the den of the squirrel, at the midsection of the tree.
His night proved to be crampy. He barely fit in the den. It was a rough build hole in the tree trunk filled with lots of different nuts, stuff and a few smaller bones. At least Ker knew now where to fund nuts if he ever felt like it. And he was relieved, because even monstrous beast squirrels behaved somewhat like normal ones.
He tried to sleep, but the sound from the bottom of the tree were ungodly. Screams, screetches, wet sounds of tearing flesh. When all went still and the more normal sounds of the wood returned he drifted into deep sleep.
----------------------------------------
A new day may bring about new life. So the saying goes. Ker felt the same. He felt like a new being, fresh from sleep to start and conquer the day.
So he climbed down and saw the reason for the nightly disturbance. The squirrel was completely torn to pieces. However, he had to see if he could use any of the squirrels hide.
It turned out thecwas technically enough hide for short pants, but it was too torn to use properly. Ker sighed. He could at least use part of the hide to make very short pants to cover his intimate regions. The rest of the hide would still do for later use. So he choose a especially sharp stone and cut into already torn parts. He cut and tore, lay the skin free from the rest. It still needed preparation and drying. So he tried to delete as much fleshy bits as possible. He scraped the hide almost clean. The blood still stayned the hide. He hung the hide in the tree, this time on a higher branch.
He still had to find his way back, make good on levels and find out how his weird new system worked. Did he always have EP and it was hidden. Is this normal for humans or...
He really didn't like the alternative. It would make him a beast, just above an animal. Something people hunted - woild he be hunted? A question opening completely new dangers. Afterall a fellow human is a wolf to men. It would do very good to get more levels, gain abilities and figuring out how to apply EP.
This time he would change things up. He would make a proper trap and wait for the prey to come to him.
Ker hunted voles with mediocre success, which still was miles apart from the day before. It even was fun in a way. He started to understand, why some people made sport out of this. He kept two voles for himself and three as bait. He hid the three voles under bit earth to not attract other hunters too early. The other two he prepared and cooked similarvto the day before. He definitely learned from his previous mistakes. Still the flesh was bland.
Well saturated he planned his trap. First part was a deep hole. This time nothing would jump out. As the trap before, sharp edges were the first welcome for the target. Just that the sticks were no proper stakes. This time foliage would not be enough to cover the pit. He gathered sticks, leaves and foliage as cover. The sticks were arranged so that the next stick crossed the stick before. The sticks were loosely put innthe side of the pit. That created a nice pattern. It also proofed to cover the pit and give way at a certain weight. With leaves, dirt and foliage it nearly looked like the rest of the ground. Then the three voles were cut to spread the smell of blood. With three voles in the middle, the pitfall was ready. Ker also prepared more spears and a lot of stones. He would go certain that this time he had plenty of ammunition.
Now he had to wait again. He definitely needed something to do in the between time.