“Couldn’t we just find a rabbit and be done with it?” It had been an hour since we had started our exploration of the plateau. As me and my sister had been city-dwellers most of our life, with very few outings out in nature, it wasn’t easy. We did get some of the usual dad fishing trip when we were younger, but the strenuous relation between him and my sister had made those family gatherings stop pretty quickly. I had taken archery as a hobby when I was a teenager, but I had doubts about my actual skills, as the System didn’t even recognize I had any at all.
To caricaturize slightly, me and my sister had never gone hunting anything else but a slushie in a department store, and we were now supposed to kill a prey large enough to pique the interest of a who-knows-how-big giant crow.
“I don’t think a rabbit will cut it, not that I saw one anyway.” Only birds, and those were too small and too far up the trees to be considered a practical solution.
“We do have an idea of what it’s interested in.” My sister responded with an edge in her voice.
“…Uh uh?” I pushed away some inverted leaves with the tip of my sword. I should have thought of asking Bonnie to make a machete. The centre area of the plateau was much denser than the outsides, and I was afraid of cutting myself with my new razor-sharp straight sword.
“It is interested in things human-sized.” Gaëlle finished sarcastically.
“Great. And how do you expect we’ll find anything like that?”
“Maybe by starting to shut up.”
“You’re the one who started complaining!”
“I didn’t ask for the whole conversation to follow!”
She was being unfair, but she wasn’t completely wrong. Our nerves were clearly getting tested. Navigating through the woods where so much horror had already happened, even during the day, wasn’t giving us a lot of comfort.
So, we continued shuffling through the woods in silence.
It took two more hours for us to finally find something interesting.
“Ew.”
“Shh.” I reprimanded L. Those looked like rabbit droppings, except twice the size.
Maybe a very big rabbit would suffice. We found no tracks, but I did get the rabbit’s smell. Which was a new experience. Now that I was actively concentrating, I could see where the smell was weaker and where it was stronger.
“Over there.” I pointed to where the smell was stronger.
“How do you know?” Gaëlle whispered.
“Smell.”
“Oh my god you’re a hunting dog!” She squealed.
“I will miss my arrows in your butt, L.”
She did her best not to giggle loudly.
We sneaked around much more carefully than before, and I knew we were getting close.
It still took twenty minutes before we finally saw our prey for the first time.
It was eating some sort of blue undergrowth but didn’t really look like a rabbit at all. It was large, reaching our bellies in height, and completely round. Its skin was leathery and covered in brown fur, and if I hadn’t heard it eat, I would have completely missed it as it was very well camouflaged.
It looked like a weird balloon with eyes and mouth. No, that was its asshole, he was eating from the other side. Did he have two pair of eyes?
In any case, it didn’t look too threatening, and it hadn’t heard us arrive.
I didn’t even know where its ears were.
I showed my sister where it was, and we began our plan. She was going to circle around it, and if I missed my shot or it didn’t die immediately, she was going to cut off its escape.
If it started growing tentacles or summoning five hundred more of itself, we were going to run like hell and meet back at the lair.
A perfect plan.
I muffled a sigh. I was getting more and more sarcastic with passing time, the defence mechanism rearing back its ugly head.
I watched my sister move away, barely in sight. Every crack of branches made me shiver, my eyes falling back on the weird ball mammal. I didn’t want to draw my bow yet. I didn’t want to tire myself out and my sister actually told me to wait at the last second in case the rabbit had a bullshit [Sense Hostility] skill. It wasn’t a rabbit, but I was pretty certain that it didn’t mean that it couldn’t have the same skill. I hadn’t concerted with my sister about ball mammals. Maybe there was a whole sub-genre of fantasy about them?
My thoughts were cut off when I finally saw my sister give me the go sign.
I rose back on my feet, slowly. Took the bow fully in my two arms, nocked an arrow and aimed.
It was large and not very far. Even a complete amateur wouldn’t miss.
Then again, why didn’t I have the skill?
No, I calmed myself down, no thinking.
I inhaled. I exhaled. The arrow snapped off the professional nylon string at crashing speeds, the perfect carbon shaft and industrial fletching flew and wobbled naturally as it went perfectly where I had aimed.
“PFIUUUU!” The ball animal/monster made a very inflated balloon kind of noise, and visibly deflated. It sagged where it had stood.
Me and my sister looked at it for a short moment, then Gaëlle decided to come closer.
“Could be a trap!” I warned her.
“Nah. It’s…Oh.” She was giving it a look full of pity.
“What is it?”
“It can’t move now; it’s just hurting and well…”
I decided to join her and saw what she was talking about.
The animal didn’t look threatening at all, it just had a pained expression on its flat face, the excess of skin had flopped tragically all around him. He was completely unable to move.
“We need to…” Gaëlle hiccupped with sadness.
“I’ll do it. I was the one who shot it.” I took out my sword and tried to aim at the thing’s…There was nothing I could aim for except its eyes.
I grimaced.
I pulled my sword over my head, then slashed down.
My weapon pierced the skin but didn’t go deep enough.
“Pfiii…” The little thing was still trying to get away, only managing a pained cry.
“Oh my god…” Gaëlle turned to look away.
“Sorry…I’m sorry.”
It took me three more strikes to put the creature out of its misery. Its skin was especially thick, and I doubted normal Middle Ages arrows would have pierced it as ours did.
It was a bloody affair, but we finally had our bait.
Despite it deflating, it was still way bigger than a mere rabbit, but it wasn’t that heavy, especially considering our improved strength. We tried to avoid getting blood all over us, which made our trip back a bit more difficult, but we did reach the ledge of the lair before sunset. Or crystal set. The sky showed colours of something like multiple sunsets, parts red and pink, others still looking bright as day. I didn’t believe I would ever get used to the view. We didn’t enjoy it for long, as dark clouds came from the north and covered our view to the sky sea entirely.
We hadn’t experienced rain in this world, and it did bring up a problem.
“Is rain poisoned like the Blue water?” I questioned my sister as we were setting up our trap.
“Maybe? But wouldn’t we just need to avoid drinking it?”
“Keeping our mouth closed at all times? Not exactly fun or easy.”
“I guess. Should we wait for tomorrow?” She asked.
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“No, we should be fine under a Redtree.”
“What about our bomb and spotlight?”
“Bonnie told us they were water resistant.” I countered.
“I still think we should wait; the spotlight will barely be effective under that storm.”
“…Let’s try, please? Every day that passes those poor… If it doesn’t seem to be working, we’ll retry tomorrow.”
We set up our hiding spot, covered ourselves as best as possible to avoid the rain, and waited in front of our trap.
Night fell quickly with the dark clouds over our heads, and we could only see around the spotlight when it started raining.
We had stuck the flesh to the ground and a tree with a rope, so that if the [Dark Crow] swooped down, it would get stuck eating the balloon creature long enough for me to pull the trigger.
I was the one in charge of making things explode, as I had the better perception and reflexes.
At first, the droplets falling from the skies were little and far in between, but soon, it was a real downpour. We didn’t manage to get completely dry under our makeshift cover, but it wasn’t bad enough to warrant leaving. Not that we were going to with so much potentially deadly liquid crashing down all around us.
About something like an hour, the deluge finally ended.
Or so we thought.
A few minutes after stopping, water started rising. Little droplets of inverted rain went flying up, back into the dark clouds. Most got stuck inside the inverted leaves and the mushroom like dome of the trees, but once all the water that had fallen down started rising back again, the vegetation overflowed and the water pursued its mad ascent. We had to remove our vests, as the little water that had fallen around us was conglomerating at the top of the internal part of our waterproof hoods.
I didn’t really dare say anything, as to not get water in my mouth, and my sister was doing the same.
But seeing this inverted rain was something straight out of a movie. Like someone had pushed the rewind button and we saw the whole world around us go backwards in time.
After ten minutes, the water stopped rising.
And rain fell normally once again, the downpour just like before.
“Nielle…” My sister didn’t need to say more.
I sighed and nodded to her.
We wouldn’t get anything done this night.
The next day was just preparing everything again and taking the balloon creature out of the fridge. At least it wasn’t bleeding everywhere anymore.
We also improved our spotting cover to be better camouflaged and completely protected from the rain.
Our second try was under clouds again, but they were clearer and announced no rain. The ocean above was also emitting some kind of light, making the night not as pitch black as before, more like our first night in the System world. The beam of light from our spotlight pierced the mist and puffs of grey, but for hours, nothing happened. And when the crystals in the sea showed themselves back behind us, we knew this night had once again been a failure.
We slept most of the next day and tried a third time.
We had decided it would be our last attempt and would need to rethink our strategy if we didn’t have results this time as well.
At least, the skies were clear, and the ocean was still partially lighting the ground up like a weird kind of moon. My sister could help me be on the lookout, and the both of us often switched between spotting and taking a break.
It was the middle of the night when something finally occurred.
The first thing was the gust of wind, then the very, very soft sound of wings. I wasn’t sure my sister would have been able to react if it had been her turn on watch duty.
I shook her gently and felt her squirm under me to look at our trap.
The [Dark Crow] was there, a dozen meters (20-30feet) away from the balloon bait, standing upright on the ledge.
It was very hard to distinguish any features from it due to it being entirely black, except it definitely looked like something of the Corvidae family (I had done some research), except way too big and scary. Its eyes were a deep red and showed undeniable intelligence. Still, it turned its head left and right while still maintaining eye contact with our bait. Or the light, it was hard to say what was intriguing it the most. It was half the size of a Redtree, and those weren’t small, its beak the size of two men. I spotted something on its left ankle but didn’t really understand what it could be. A large ring?
“CAW” It sang.
It didn’t sound like a crow’s caw at all, much deeper and slower in pitch.
It hopped once, closer to our trap.
I didn’t exactly know how big the explosion of our bomb would be, but that was definitely not close enough.
It hopped once more forwards, then backwards, as if hesitating what to do.
It was clearly under our light’s charm.
Then, suddenly, it turned one-eighty degrees, facing straight over the cliff.
“CAW?” The sound had been different this time.
It angled its head to the side, like it was listening to something, then, after one last look behind at our spotlight, it flew away towards the west.
After a few minutes to make sure it wasn’t coming back, Gaëlle couldn’t contain herself. “What the hell!? Why didn’t it work! It was so obviously very interested! Why not hop, hop and boom? Why!?” She was still whispering, but her angry tone transformed her hushed voice closer to her normal one.
“I…” The bird’s behaviour made no sense. It didn’t act like a monster, not like the [Tooth-Bear] at least. The [Dark Crow] was obviously intelligent, but not smart enough to spot the trap.
“When it turned around to look to the west…It seemed to hear something. Do you think it spotted another prey, bigger maybe?”
“I don’t know, someone in the village? Some light it spotted? Maybe its favourite snack is humans?” My sister tried to calm down while answering me. “But shit! We were so close!”
“It doesn’t make sense why it wouldn’t just grab the free food…Was it suspicious you think?” I tested another theory.
“I don’t know! It sure didn’t seem like it but then again I’m no bird expert.”
I sighed. “Tell me about it.”
“And how much perception does this thing have? Did you hear anything from the west?”
“No…”
“So this [Dark Crow] can hear better than you do! Maybe it could hear our heartbeats…”
I shook my head. “I don’t think we would be alive then.”
“Ah, mhh, not wrong…”
“Maybe try again?” I questioned.
“For it to leave towards the village at the last minute? Sure. Maybe we should grab the remains of Grognar and try with that.”
We had buried the wolf man deeper into the forest the day before, and I had no desire to dig out his rotting body.
“No way. Wait a minute…say that again?” It hit me. What the raven had around its ankle.
“Grab Grognar’s remains?”
“No, before that.”
“For it to leave towards the village?”
“Leave towards the village…Leave towards the village…” There was no way. Then again, there was a tall mage tower with whole floors that it could use as nests.
“What if…what if…” That couldn’t be it, how much of a monster…
But I was stopped in my thoughts by a new sound, coming not far away from us on our left.
KR KR KR
I put my hand on my sister’s mouth immediately.
“Do. Not. Move.” I begged her.
Her eyes immediately filled with panic and questions.
KR KR KR
It was closer now, and this time my sister didn’t miss it.
She didn’t have any more questions in her eyes, only panic.
The largest bear I had ever seen emerged only two or three meters away from us (6-9 feet). Even hidden in our alcove of leaves, it would not miss us if it turned to face us. There were three tentacles with eyes coming out of its body, looking around as the bear’s head lolled like a dead marionette.
This thing had to be close to the raven’s height, but with incomparable mass.
The tentacle eyes didn’t focus on us, fortunately. They were looking straight at the spotlight.
And the dead balloon rabbit thing.
Why did it not occur to us that trying to bait the raven could have attracted something else?
In terms of bad news, this [Tooth-Bear] was extremely high on my scale.
I looked back to my sister to make sure she was okay, but instead of fear, what I saw in her eyes now was…greed.
I removed my hand from her face in surprise.
“Free Experience.” She smiled wildly.
“Wha…?” But another KR KR KR made my words die in my throat.
I looked back at the [Tooth-Bear] in terror. It had come much closer to our trap but had turned around to look towards us.
I stopped breathing, feeling its gaze pass over me.
While two of the eyes were looking in our direction, it had continued walking towards our bait.
I refrained from screaming in horror as the thing opened.
The second time wasn’t any better than the first.
It slithered to the spotlight, immediately breaking it under its weight.
I felt my sister grip my hand holding the trigger.
“On three. You ready?” Her grin was mad. I nodded in approval.
“One…”
“Two…”
“THREE!”
Now I expected many things to happen. The first, fuelled by cynicism, was that nothing happened; we had fucked up with our bomb building, and we had now made our presence known as a perfect pair of idiots by screaming three in unison.
The second was it worked too well, and we would find ourselves in the blast of the explosion.
The third, and most hopeful part of me, wanted to see a big fireball engulf the [Tooth-Bear] completely and kill it on the spot.
What I didn’t expect was a large bang, a brief flash of light, and falling on my back and seeing nothing.
My ears were ringing, and if my eardrums weren’t blown that was only due to a very important investment in constitution.
Balanced stats for the win.
“Oh my god!” I heard my sister as if she was underwater. “Oh fuck! Why me!?”
I tried to look up, now worried.
“Nielle! It’s all over me!”
It was all over her? But… I was looking at her and she seemed all right, what was…Oh.
Piles of guts and half a tentacle eye had splashed all over her in a very disgusting and nauseating manner.
While I had been completely spared by the shower of gore.
I looked to where our trap had been.
There was only a small hole and smoke remaining there. The [Tooth-Bear]… well it was mostly all around us.
“That was effective.” I admired our work.
“Don’t fucking stand there! Help me get that shit off me!” She screamed hysterically.
“Yes, yes. Calm down, we are still in a forest invaded by the creepiest bear monsters in existence.”
I did want to touch the grimy remains of the dead bear, really, but then very unfortunately a System prompt popped up in front of my face.
You have killed [Tooth-Bear] [Level 312]
For killing a living being three times over your level, you gain extra experience
Experience is shared with others
15 510 Experience awarded
1 000 000 Experience awarded
You levelled up
You levelled up
You levelled up
You levelled up
You levelled up
Your [Berserker] Class has levelled up.
“Well, that’s nice.”
“No it’s not…Ah fine it is. Let’s go back to the lair, I don’t feel safe around here. Let’s get all of our levels, our stats, get your new class skills, and make a new trap… It’s so fucking disgusting, and the smell! I’m also going back to take a shower.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m not going to stay too close to you.” It was hard to breathe around here. “But we don’t need to make a new trap.”
“What, why? It almost worked and if we manage to kill all the big ugly monsters around here, we’ll power our way through everything!”
“…Because I don’t think the [Dark Crow] is a monster. I think it’s tamed.”
“Tamed!? That doesn’t…Oh my god. The village. The tower! The top of the pervert’s tower is its nest!? But why?” She had come to the same conclusion I had.
“I don’t know. Political opponents? People he doesn’t like? I’m not sure but it seemed like some sort of shackle had been set on the crow’s ankle, like it had lived under captivity for a while.”
My sister fell deep in thought.
When she talked again, we were near the cliff’s edge.
“Shit we need to rethink everything… How can we help the village if the monster is living inside the village? A village where we’re not welcome anymore?”
“I have no idea. But now we really have to help them.”
“Not if it kills us, we don’t.” My sister countered.
“…We’ll find a way. We’ve got a fucking space station in our control, what is a perverted mage and its big bird pet against that?”
“Ha!” Elle climbed down and I followed her.
I sighed as I realized that the tunnel was pitch black, and that our only light source had just been blown with the [Tooth-Bear].
Our way back to the door was going to be slow, annoying, and maybe even painful.
My sister turned to look at me.
“Let’s level up here. Then ask Bonnie to send us a drone to guide us back.”
I nodded as I pointed my finger towards her. “That! Is a great idea.”