Pov Eclipse

I was not able to find the black fur, something that was fine as the black fur left impressions on the ground.

But this was going on for too long, the sun was no longer above the canopy of trees, rather it was leaving and taking all the warmth with it causing the cold to come and envelop me whether I wanted it or not.

But finally, after so many trees, I saw it. The trees just stopped short of a large amount of water, but I didn’t go near it, I stayed deep within the trees as I saw the black fur lounging about near the edge of the water.

I thought it would stay longer, yet it started to leave just as the sky started to darken. I didn’t wait as long as before, excited to remove the now hardened blood off of me.

I approached the water carefully and looked at my reflection. A pinkish head greeted me, one of its antennas was partially removed and its eyes had white dots sitting in pitch darkness.

Hello me.

I grimaced seeing how awful I looked. Before going in I greedily drank the water, my thirst was unnoticeable due to the hunger, yet after the hunger subsided, the thirst took its place crying out for anything to quench it. The water was sweeter than the meat and the chill it brought somehow felt nice.

After drinking my fill, I entered the water, almost exiting as the cold pierced my body, yet I stayed.

I tried to distract myself as I watched the blueness around me turn redder and redder, yet that was not enough to stop the cold.

I simply sat there, confused on what to do, I decided to plunge my head into the water, wondering if I was cleaning my fur correctly. My eyes felt weird underwater, but I ignored it.

I could barely see anything in the water, maybe due to the blood clouding the area, or water was simply hard to look through, I didn’t know.

It was kind of peaceful under here if you ignored the very weird and uncomfortable sensation that appeared out of nowhere.

This is... Not good?

I quickly resurfaced from the water, my body automatically breathing in the air quickly.

I can't breathe down there?

Confused, I just stared down at myself, the blood was still there, but my fur was cleaner than before. Wanting to speed things up due to the cold, I plunged my head back into the water and quickly resurfaced, doing it a few more times removed most of the pink, but there was still some pink.

Hey, I look better already.

Happy about the result, I exited the water and shivered on the spot. The water made my fur a bit heavy, so I wasn’t too happy about that. I quickly shook myself off removing most of the water, but still being wet.

Now for the long journey back...

I looked into the pitch darkness that covered the trees, it made me hesitate, but I still went.

There was now a slight problem. The extremely limited light made it hard to see, due to this I now didn’t know where I was. The path the black fur made was no longer in front of me.

Annoyed and tired, I looked for a place to go into torpor, that’s when I saw something that made me stop.

What I saw exactly I did not know, what I did know was that it just moved.

Am I seeing things?

Looking around again didn’t help, so I just continued walking forwards to find a suitable location. Moments later I stopped again as I saw something just outside my vision. I quickly looked over and saw nothing but endless trees in the darkness.

I stared off into the trees, but I still didn’t see anything, so I continued walking just a bit faster than before.

Being more wary than before let me hear a hollow thud every now and then, and the sounds got louder and louder with each thud. I quickly looked behind me to see where the sound was coming from and used [Appraisal] on the darkness.

Name - [???] Age - [10 years] Species - [Hunter] Sub-Species – [Stalker] Level - [???/???]

The welcoming blue rectangle greeted me, it was extremely bright, yet for some reason it didn’t light up the surroundings. Strange but oh well, what did I know?

What I did know was that this, ‘Stalker’ was not happy anymore.

A piercing shriek came from the Stalker, I didn’t need any other warning to get out of here.

I didn’t look back as I ran through the trees, but I did hear the ragged breathing of the Stalker, it was louder now and occasionally let out a shriek the made me shudder. I was sure it was faster than me, but every time it almost caught up with me, I would turn around a tree and gain more distance.

But it always caught up, I knew that this would not last forever.

But how do I lose this thing?!

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I barely saw ahead of me, and I felt that I was approaching my limit as I felt something pounding in my thorax. My breathing was turning worse and worse as I started to feel a spike every time, I breathed in.

Suddenly I heard the thudding stop completely as I entered a field lit up by the moonlight. I didn’t stop running until I was sure that the Stalker wasn’t following me. I looked back and saw two dim red eyes in the pitch-black forest. It shrieked once again before snarling and going back into the forest.

I slowly backed up into the tall grass until I couldn’t see any more.

The blue rectangle came back suddenly causing me to jump backwards.

Can I have a break?

You have pushed your body to great lengths! Endurance +1

I looked at the blue rectangle in exasperation, before willing it away.

Why am I getting angry at the blue rectangle.

I was tired and cold, today was full of surprises and things wanting to kill me. I saw no humans, and no signs of their large colonies.

Am I going to live?

I shook those thoughts away.

No use worrying about that, I’ll at least be close to Mother.

I went into torpor not too long later.

I got out of torpor as I felt the sun warm me up. A plan already in my head.

First things first, find a safe place to stay in. Preferably near the water.

Exiting the tall grass, I looked around. On one side the now brighter forest stood still, the Stalker long gone, on my side was an endless field of green and yellow, only a few trees spaced around. Creatures that I’ve never seen before grazed in the field far out. The creatures were many in number, having brown fur, yet they did not look like the dead brown fur. Some of them had four branch like extensions coming from the top of their heads.

I could not see any other features as I was too far away, and I did not plan to go closer to them. I barely ran away from a single creature. I didn’t use [Appraisal] either, Silven warned me that creatures don’t like getting appraised, probably why the Stalker was so mad.

Go into the forest, or into the field filled with creatures?

My choice was easy, why would I go into an open field with creatures? I know I almost died twice in the forest, but I barely saw any creatures and there were lots of places to hide. The darkness was a big negative, but I’d rather deal with that than with whatever those creatures are.

If only if I found out what my other skills were before getting, put here.

That skill with moon in its name was still in my mind.

Second part of my plan... figure out how to open my [Status].

When I first met Silven, it mentioned that there were other ways to open my [Status]. What those were I did not know.

All right let's do this.

I trotted back into the forest; this time I was going to be in there with a goal.

If I couldn’t find a safe place, I decided to come back to the endless field. This time I was making my own marks and not relying on some other creature. And I was using my writing skills for this.

Thankfully, the tips of my legs were sharp enough to make grooves into the hard bark of the trees. So, I made a marking I thought of. It was a line with a triangle at the end of it, the triangle was the direction, and the line was just so it was easier to see.

These markings were small enough that a creature passing by would miss them completely, but they were large enough that I could spot them easily.

That means I won't be able to spot them if I start running through the forest, but I’d rather not have a way for other creatures to know where I go.

Would they even understand such crude markings? Humans barely understand me.

Yet I continued to mark my path as hidden as possible. To make it easier for myself, every now and then I would make a big mark and then hide it behind some foliage.

While I did this, I looked around, high and low. I found many small things, and I finally found the use for [Appraisal]! It told me what was food and what was not. I had almost passed by a bush covered in what I thought were flowers until I used [Appraisal] on them and found out that they were something called a Bane Berry, Alea gave me a berry before, and it tasted surprisingly good. This berry did have something called poison in them, and they tasted sour, but I now know that I don’t have to eat other creatures... That doesn’t mean I’ll say no to meat.

[Bane Berry] A berry that has a slight amount of poison.

Every now and then I would see some sort of creature, they were mostly small creatures, either with fur or some other material which looked fairly similar to fur, every time they saw me, they would run away faster than I could’ve.

There was one time when I saw two amber colored orbs floating in the air far above. I was curious when I first saw them, but once I looked closer, I saw the outline of a four-legged creature with the same physique as the dead brown fur from yesterday. It perfectly blended into the background as it watched me.

It creeped me out quite a bit, so I went far around it, I only calmed down once I could no longer see the amber eyes.

Once the sun was right above the forest, I found a creak flowing down a hill. Which would be a perfect place for a shelter... if there weren’t huge four-eyed black creatures playing in the water. These creatures looked like the white fur that almost killed me, yet they were far bigger, their eyes were different colored and weren't a single color.

I watched them for a bit, it was a good idea to know what creatures lived here after all.

They were down the hill in the wider part of the creak, in total there was seven, three played in the water while four sat on the rocky shore of the creak seemingly enjoying the sun which was allowed to reach the creak as there was not a canopy blocking the way.

Two of the four were far larger than the rest and their fur seemed to swallow the surrounding light. The rest had similar dark fur, yet two of them looked dark gray now that I took a moment to look at them.

The black fur in the river bit the dark gray fur, causing it to yelp, which in turn prompted the two to start biting each other. One of the pitch-black furs stood up and trotted calmly into the river.

I need to get better names for these creatures.

I looked on as the pitch-black fur bit the neck of the black fur, something that excited me as this might be another chance to get meat.

Wait no, why am I thinking about that?

Ignoring my thoughts, I continued looking, I didn’t know why the pitch-black fur was about to kill the black fur, but this might be normal around here.

I watched onwards as the black fur was lifted away from the dark gray fur and was placed out of the water. I heard a few yaps from the black fur, but it stopped shortly afterwards. And the pitch-black fur strolled right back to the other one.

Oh? That was not what I was expecting.

I don’t know why my first thought was that the black fur was going to die, companionship exists after all. The black fur looked not happy as it sat down.

I felt my chances of getting noticed were getting higher the longer I stayed, so just before I left, I gulped down some water and started going back.

After traveling for a bit, I reached an open area, with a single tree in the middle.

This tree wasn’t different from the others, this place just served as a good landmark. Going up to it, I made a mark pointing to where the creak was and after thinking a bit, I added a line going up down, so I knew a creek was that way. Looking up at the sky, the sun was starting to go down.

Do I explore further or start leaving?

I thought about it a bit but left in the end. I didn’t know if my marks worked, and if I get lost, I’d rather get lost while it's still bright out.

I’ll come back here tomorrow; it shouldn’t take as long since I don’t have to mark my way here.

I was feeling slightly hungry, but I should be fine for a while as I have berries and the moon light, but something tells me I need more than that.