My clawed feet bounded me through the forest. It was hard to get used to my legs' forward propulsion. But I knew that if I wanted to last long in this new world of mine, I couldn't just try to survive; I had to thrive.
Training myself by jumping, twisting, and running was draining my St at a relatively quick pace so slowing down every once in a while to catch my breath. I could run for up to 5 minutes without a break before I started to lose my breath and would get sluggish if I kept going for any longer than that. I may be able to train my body to be able to last for more extended periods. This may not even be possible at all, but my gut tells me I may be able to do it.
As I continued looking for monsters to fight for a few hours, a notification told me that I had raised my St by 2 points, making it 22/22 instead of 20/20. So my theory of training my body proved to be correct. This will have to be further studied at a later date in time.
Finally, I found something digging into the ground by a tree. It looked like eating something and trying to escape under a tree.
Hollow Kit Lv: 2 Tier 1. It was a small cat-like creature no more significant than myself, but it had a higher Lv than myself, so I needed to tread carefully. 5 tentacles like growths grew out of its back. They reach a few inches off its body, not a real threat, but I will keep a distance from them just in case.
I was picking up a small rock. I tossed it to the tree to its left and prepared to try to use my Light Bolt. As it turned its head towards the noise, a small shard of light appeared next to my head and hung there. I only lost two mana for the spell. I was being able to use my hands still while casting made me happy. Now how do I shoot this thing? I tried to focus on the Kit, which seemed to do the trick as the bolt flew at the Kit. Seeing it fly at it, I used a Void Bolt next. The first bolt hit. It's the right back knee. Taking that out as part of the knee was gone, making it fall to the ground. Right after that, the Void bolt struck it on the head, knocking it around as it crashed into a tree.
Seeing my chance to try another skill, I ran at the dazed Kit writhing on the ground, trying to return to its senses. Standing just to the side of its head, Void Slash sharpened the claws on my right hand and made them glow a dark Indigo color. I was not losing the chance that I was given. My feet tore through what little resistance its neck could offer. This only used five mana.
Hollow Kit Lv: 2 Tier 1 Slain exp has been awarded. This was. Honestly, this wasn't very pleasant. I thought it would be more of a challenge, but this was a little too easy. Sure, I sneaked and attacked it, but it had a pitiful defense and was stupid too. First, the lightning bolt I shot at it destroyed the knee without much trouble, even though it was inferior. It had more tolerance toward the void bolt. The slash uses STR and INT to strengthen it, so the damage was significant because it used my highest stats. Since I didn't take any damage, Inferior Healing can't be tested yet. The Kit seemed like it had low VIT and INT but probably excelled in AGI and maybe a little STR. So the best way to deal with these types of monsters is to lead them into traps, perhaps acting like I'm running from it, wait till it gets close enough to launch a light bolt to take out one of its legs, then shoot its head or use slash on it.
Weakness was a horrible thing to have in a place like this, where you could die at a moment's notice. Looking at Kit's body, a growl came from my stomach. I was hungry from all the running I did today and other things. I picked up the body leaving the head on the ground and used my claws to open up its skin to get to the meat inside. While trying to open the body, I accidentally touched one of the tentacles and burned it. I took 2 points of damage while using Inferior Healing.
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10 HP healed. Hm! So it heals 10 HP while using five mana. Meaning I get nine heals or nine slashes, not including the bolts. If I was shooting the bolts, I could get around 22 shots before running out of mana. Taking 10 minutes to replenish one mana, it would take over 7 hours to regenerate my full MP bar. So I need to reserve some in emergencies where I need to destroy or heal. And if I start running out, I will need to get back to the pond, so I can regenerate safely without being killed by random monsters that stumble onto me. Seeing how I got 32 mana, I will be able to hunt for a while longer before heading back in a few hours.
Skinning it, I rolled up the skin with it on the inside for later use. Which would help me train some of my skills back at the pond. Picking up the skinned monster, I took a bit of it, and it was pretty bland, barely having any taste. But that didn't matter what I needed was food, and this thing would feed me for now until I killed something else.
While eating, I heard something trying to sneak up on me from my right. I watched as a baby spider crawled toward me from the shadows. Not wanting to deal with poison, I ripped off a hind leg and threw it toward the tiny spider. I stared at it while still eating the corpse.
It stared back at me before using its chelicerae and pulling it up a tree. A name popped up for the spider. Cryptfangling Lv:4 Tier 1.
Watching the spider, I saw that it was brilliant in the way it looked at the surrounding area for threats and the way it understood that I didn't want to fight it. It was probably watching from the very beginning of the fight. And knew what I could do, but I didn't care. It still watched me while it ate. I finished eating as much as I could. Getting to my feet, I looked at the spider. “Hey, I'm leaving. You can have the rest of this.” I told the spider while pointing at the remaining half of the corpses. It stared even harder at me with distrust in its eyes. “You didn't attack me while I was eating, so I won't attack you because of that, and you can have the rest of it since I'm full. But I take the skin for it.” I said. I didn't even look back as I left with the pelt with my tail wrapped around it to keep it secure.
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Spider POV
What is the name of the Mother? Was that thing? It knew I was approaching it from behind but didn't attack or scare me off, and It even gave me a share of its kill. Plus, it talked. Only being a tier 1, it shouldn't be able to speak yet. Plus, the way it talked showed it had high intelligence. But why share? In this place, only the Mother grants us kindness. Why did it do that? And it was something I never saw before a new race of monsters. That thing is bizarre. Why did it take the skin of the Hollow Kit? There were too many questions that didn't have an answer, but I wonder if I will meet it again in the future or if it will die. Only the Mother knew the answers to her questions, but she wished she could figure them out in time.
I still need to take this food back home and hunt for more.
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Mother POV
She was grinning as she watched how her newest son did something never before done here, not even by brothers and sisters from the same nest or even the parents that laid them. More chaos would spread from just the little act of kindness of sharing food. I wonder what this will create in the future as the spider grows from that act of kindness. She was on the verge of death and starving, but he saved her by sharing some meat from the kill. This has never happened before, but it shouldn't be surprising since he did this considering what he used. I only saw bits and pieces, but I think you were like me, my son before you died.
Her eyes watched her two new children with great interest. I wonder just what you will become in the future. One carried the food back to its nest while the other ran through the forest, trying to hunt new prey. While the skin on its tail sometimes smacked into things as he ran. A sweet melody floated from her lips as she sang for all of her children. Even though most would not hear it, a few of her strongest would hear the song and listen to her voice while resting or fighting. They were happy to hear the music because the Mother was delighted, which was a good thing.