Before setting out, he grabbed a basket that he assumed was for gathering food and strapped it to his back. Then he grabbed the bo staff and set out. He headed to the right of the temple and into the forest.

It didn’t take long though before he found something he hadn’t really expected. It was a large sleeping wolf, though it quickly woke up by the time he realized what it was.

The wolf was just over half as tall as Alexander when standing up, and Alexander was six feet and two inches tall himself. It looked like it was starving, and its gray and black fur looked torn up, like it was scarred. The brief thought of having a pet wolf occurred to him, before it attacked.

It lunged at him, right for his neck, he only had time to raise his arms. It bit into his left arm, its long teeth digging into the muscle and bone of his forearm. Alexander dropped the bo staff and smashed his balled fist into the wolf’s face, swinging his right arm down on it over and over again, actively channeling ki into his blows as he smashed down on the beast.

The wolf kept growling and biting down on his arm, the strength of its jaw seeming to grow stronger. Alexander shoved his right index finger into its eye and managed to get knuckle deep before it let go and pulled away. But it wouldn’t die.

Alexander grabbed the bo staff, though his left arm didn’t offer much grip strength, and smashed it down on the wolf’s spine. He used all of his might, channeling as much chi through his body as he could. Amateur though he is, he managed to do massive damage, but not to the wolf.

The bo staff split and seemed to burst from the force of the impact, but the wolf seemed to ignore the impact almost entirely itself, only seeming to get madder still. It lunged again, but Alexander dodged. It would’ve only hit his shoulder if he hadn’t moved anyway, its aim ruined by the loss of one of its eyes.

Alexander shrugged off the straps of his basket and ran forward, slamming his right shin into the wolf’s stomach. It seemed to do more damage than the staff, he could feel a good impact, but it didn’t do enough. The wolf bit at his leg but he pulled back. He couldn’t let it bite him again.

Alexander ran behind it and jumped onto the wolf, wrapping his right arm around its neck, squeezing as hard as he could. He wrapped his left arm around its torso as best as he could, and wrapped his legs around its torso when they were rolling around, the wolf struggling to break out.

It couldn’t bite him, but it definitely tried to do so. As it struggled though, Alexander’s grip only tightened. Soon it’s thrashed slowed, and finally completely ceased. Alexander wasn’t going to risk it getting back up, in case it was just playing dead to get out of the hold. He tightened his grip more now that it wasn’t struggling anymore, and kept pulling and crushing its neck until he felt something snap.

Alexander finally got up and stared at the creature for a moment, then he finally looked at his arm. It was bad, he didn’t know how to heal it, he didn’t know how to disinfect it either, with chi or with medicine. He hadn’t thought to read every conceivable book and scroll to prepare for this. Meditation could help with recovery, but he didn’t know if it meant getting your arm torn up by a wolf.

Alexander put the basket back on his shoulders, and grabbed the wolf by the neck with his right, still not trusting it not to bite him again somehow. He dragged its body back to the temple, not sure how to prepare any sort of animal, let alone how to prepare a wolf. But he didn’t want to go through this and get nothing out of it. And he needed to build his strength.

More importantly, he didn’t think he should go through this forest anymore until he was really ready. He barely managed to kill one starving wolf. If he’d met a pack of wolves, there’s no way he would’ve been able to fight them off as he was now. And the staff had proven to be completely useless.

Alexander returned to the temple. He’d only been gone for a bit over an hour. He hadn’t seen any better place to put it, so he threw the wolf’s body in the kitchen. He didn’t know how long he had to try cooking it, but he needed to do something about his arm.

He considered wrapping it in something. But he’d remembered seeing an open training area on the roof when he’d taken the stairs up. He’d always heard sunlight was the best disinfectant, but he wasn’t sure if it was literal. Either way, he would try and heal his arm first, rather than just wrapping it up. He knew chi existed in this world, he wasn’t going to settle for the mundane option that wouldn’t ultimately solve the problem here.

He went up to the training area on the roof and removed his bloody shirt. He tried to do some stretches, then he went into the horse stance and began his most effective version of meditation.

He held his arms out in front of him, feeling the sunlight on them. He tried to raise his chi, and he tried to circulate it through his body. He hoped he could use this to heal his wounds.

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Horse stance and seated meditation might be well suited for raising his chi, but it wasn’t the best for circulating his chi throughout his body.

After some time he opted for gentle movement. He didn’t know any forms, and he never learned tai chi, so he opted for shadowboxing. A light form of it at least. He focused mostly on the movements and circulating the chi throughout his body, hoping it would help him heal faster.

He imagined himself fighting a wolf, a large one that went up to his shoulders. He didn’t know if they really got that big, but he wanted a reason to use his arms. Making a fist hurt too much and inhibited chi flow with his injured arm, so he opted to use open palms.

He struck at its face, moved around it, kicked at its legs and torso, struck its torso with his palms, and with his elbows when he turned as he moved around it. He dodge its lunges. He avoided its bites. As this went on over the hours, he became lost in it, and the feeling of chi coursing through his body. What kept him going most of all though, aside from the feeling, was noticing the improvement in his injured arm when he saw it in front of him.

The puncture marks from its teeth, the torn flesh, it all had slowly healed. Filling in the wounds deeper in at first, and eventually healing the skin. He’d done this until the sun was setting, for most of the day he’d worked on raising his chi and circulating it throughout his body. On healing injuries, on opening up new pathways.

By the end of his training, he felt energized, but exhausted at the same time. His chi seemed to be flowing better than it had even as he stood still, but his body couldn’t handle much more or this training right now.

He went inside to drink. He saw that the wolf still seemed to be in decent shape, and decided to try butchering it. He’d only ever seen videos, and those were about wild hogs, but he had the general idea.

He grabbed a rope and tied it around the hind legs of the wolf, then grabbed a sack and a bucket, and put the wolf’s body over his right shoulder. He went out to the edge of the forest near the temple and hanged the wolf upside down from a high tree branch.

He’d brought a knife too, tucked in the band tied around his waist. He used it to cut the wolf’s body open down the middle. He started scooping out the innards and cutting out whatever he didn’t need. He kept the liver, because he knew he could cook with that, and whatever bit of fat he could find. The rest of the organs he threw on the ground.

He skinned the wolf, it was easy, he just had to cut into it and pull its skin off like a glove. He’d always thought it was funny how you could just pull skin off of people like that, he even found it somewhat cartoonish in horror movies.

He drained some of the blood into the bucket. He didn’t think there’d be much fat to cook with, and there wasn’t any butter or oil left at the temple obviously, so he thought using some blood might work just about as well.

Alexander cut off all the meat he could, and stuffed it in the bag. He untied the rope from the wolf and the tree, and left the wolf’s body there for whatever animals might come to eat the rest of it. He walked back to the temple, and returned just before the sun had completely set.

Alexander got to work starting the fire, and pulled out a large wok to start cooking on, he dropped some blood and fat, and started cooking the meat and the liver somewhat haphazardly. He was in a rush. He didn’t know how long the meat would stay good, and he was hungry from the long workout.

He’d overcooked some of the meat, and perhaps undercooked other pieces, but overall he thought it was okay for a first try, especially since he had to cook with blood instead of butter or oil.

Some pieces were sort of tough and chewy, but they were still pretty good, others were a bit softer, and only sort of gamey. He’d kept cooking and eating the wolf until there was only half left. When he was searching for anything to use for cooking, he’d found something useful.

He’d found two large sections cut into the floor, in a room near the kitchen. He lifted the panels and opened them. Built into the floor were some large containers, and under the panel were instructions on using them.

One was for keeping things cold, and it required you to place your hand on a rune carved into the wall of the container, and fill it with chi. This would power the enchanted sort of refrigerator they made. Another was for freezing things.

Alexander was planning on eating more soon, so he put the rest of the meat, and the rest of the blood in the bucket into the refrigerator. He also poured the juices from the meat left in the wok into a pot and put it in the refrigerator too. Then he placed his hand on the rune and tried pouring chi into it.

At first nothing happened, but soon he felt his chi flowing into the rune formation. Just pouring a bit into it left him feeling exhausted spiritually, nearly enough to match how exhausted he was physically. The indicators inside the box only showed enough for a few days, so he’d have to pour in more tomorrow. For now he went to bed, and quickly fell asleep.

In the morning he read about healing with chi. There were advanced techniques that could take years to master, and a lot of chi, in order to quickly heal major wounds, and even sicknesses. But the kind of training he’d done to circulate chi throughout his body can help to heal minor wounds over hours or days. Even beginners can benefit from it.

Unfortunately, he learned many other things about the temple as he read through the day. They practiced a soft, pacifist style, meant to calm or subdue the opponent through means of paralysis or suggestion. They dealt with the wolves and other creatures around the temple this way. The staff was made of a special kind of wood meant for channeling chi for such techniques, not for combat.

Though apparently you were meant to channel chi into a weapon to strengthen it and increase the power of the impact, or the sharpness of a cut with a melee weapon, when using a hard style anyway. So even if it had been made for combat with a different type of wood, he probably still would’ve broken it.

None of the forms here would be of any use to him. He didn’t want to live among the wolves, or any of these other creatures. He wanted to get rid of them.

If they didn’t have any style that suited him, then he’d make his own, and he’d train until he was strong enough to beat whatever was in the forest without getting chewed on.

He felt a stronger pressure to get stronger though, not just because of the immediate danger of his surroundings, but because of the recent recorded history of the monks.