"It was probably pretty foolish of us to think we could walk through an entire forest without encountering a single creature," Brian said. Brian and his sister were at the very edge of the forest, if they were to look past the terrifying beast now in front of them, they could see through the trees the even side of Reedwodehouse Road, however, there seemed to be a tiger in the way. It looked almost like an ordinary tiger, just three times the size plus glowing green eyes. The system message had called it a fear tiger, but that didn't mean anything to Brian or Elizabeth, well Elizabeth did file the info away in case it would ever be a crossword question answer. They had also been warned that they would not be able to flee, and even if they hadn't been willing to take the system message's word o that, which they might have been, the faint blue forcefield like dome around the area where both they and the fear tiger stood certainly seemed to back up the claim. "I really don't feel like fighting this tiger, maybe if we climbed a tree it would get bored, well unless it can climb trees, any thoughts?" Brian asked.
Elizabeth also didn't want to fight the tiger. It looked terrifying, and not at all like a crossword puzzle. "Hmm, maybe we could tame it, somehow? The message said that was an option, right? It at very least implied that it could be an option." Elizabeth looked at Brian, then at the tiger, and then back at Brian as she was speaking. "The good news seems to be that despite us standing here all indecisively, it doesn't seem to have any interest in attacking us. Just look at it, sure it looks scary but it is just waiting there glaring at us and occasionally making scary intimidating noises in our direction. Maybe a fear tiger is more fear than tiger, but I'm sure not about to gamble on it not being a real physical danger to our continued existence as living humans not mauled painfully to our deaths by an oversized tiger."
"So your plan is to just continue to stand here talking like idiots and hope everything turns out okay?" Brain asked. Not because he had a better plan, but simply because, well it seemed like a terrible idea, even if so far there hadn't been any consequences. Brian really didn't want to be eaten by a tiger today, or any other day really, but one day at a time.
"I mean, it isn't exactly a plan, but sure. Standing here and talking about the situation surprisingly doesn't see to be making the situation any worse, so I say, what doesn't kill us, doesn't kill us. That sounded way better in my head. Look, all we know is so far we have done nothing in response to the terrifying fear tiger and it has done nothing to us. I'd like it to keep on doing nothing to us. If we inched, ran, walked, skipped, charged forward, back sideways, up a tree, how is that going to help the situation? For all we know, doing anything but standing here assessing the situation and failing to come up with a plan of action, is the only safe plan of action, and we have lucked out into salvation. There is no point in risking any actions because there is no way to know what actions might get us killed. Anyway, for something so huge, it is actually rather cute."
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"I'd still go with terrifying over cute personally."
"Well, you've always had terrible taste."
"If we survive this adventure, I'm vetoing you getting a pet."
"When we survive this adventure, when not if Brain, and if I can somehow get an animal as majestic and cute and terrifying as this fear tiger as a pet, well I am so overruling your veto."
The fear tiger continued to glare at them menacingly throwing in the occasional growl, roar, and intentionally scary yawn for good measure. However, the prey in front of it didn't seem to mind. Sure they looked a little scared, but not proper scared. They were not weeping in despair, attempting a futile getaway out of desperation, or bravely gathering up their courage for what they knew was going to be a truly hopeless charge. The poor fear tiger was very confused.
Fear tigers hunt through intimidation and might. Once a fear tiger has invoked enough fear in their chosen prey, the fear tiger would access the prey's reaction and then calculate how to carry out the attack in the most terrifying fashion imaginable to a fear tiger. However, even if one is not crippled by fear to the point of incompetence, and the method of the attack fails to increase the levels of panic, the fear tiger's prey is still unlikely to survive the attack for one simple reason, fear tigers are actually quite mighty and also only pick out prey that seems weak. So usually, even when a fear tiger is confused by the reaction of the prey it sooner or later still chooses to attack, and this fear tiger probably would have, except, it was afraid. For while Brian and Elizabeth had been dealing with the tiger situation buy not dealing with the tiger situation, the fear tiger had been analyzing Brian and Elizabeth in an attempt to learn how to best terrify them.
There are only three things that the system lets a fear tiger see when analyzing prey, names, levels, and titles. While this might not seem like much to go on, well it isn't like the system really cares whether or not a fear tiger can get enough information to properly terrorize or not. Anyway, The names didn't really mean much of anything to the fear tigers, and the levels were proof that the prey were as week as it has first assumed, but the titles, one of the prey has a lot of titles, but only one of them really worried the fear tiger. Sure the prey looked weak, but could it really be weak if it had destroyed whole worlds, the fear tiger wasn't sure, and that's what was causing it to be afraid.
"Oh looks like the fear tiger wandered away, weird that I didn't see it leave. It must have gotten bored. Well, we can get out of these woods now at least as the barrier thing seems to have gone away. That was rather anticlimactic. Disappointing too, I really wanted to tame it." Elizabeth said causing Brain to think to himself that it really was the best outcome possible. Not only did we not die, but I also avoided having to deal with my sister adopting a really terrifying pet. Just like that, they exited the forest and reentered the neighborhood.
The fear tiger watched them leave and then took a nap. Both fear and confusion are rather tiring and also, fear tigers like naps.