Despite a message about exp popping up, Sylvia felt anything but good. The blood and brain matter that had splattered out everywhere, combined with this being the first time she had killed anything larger than a wasp or spider, left a horrible feeling in her body, as if she had just done something really bad. This feeling was only exacerbated when she looked closer at the animal; she may not know what a Bunniv was supposed to look like, but upon closer inspection, it seemed a lot thinner than any kind of bunniv she knew.

“Gods…” -she realized why it had changed its direction earlier, making her feel worse- “it was just starving for food. Why did I kill it? Was it really necessary?” While questioning the situation she had ended up in, she did her best to keep her cool and keep the content of her stomach in place. Then, answers or reasonings to her questions and actions began to sound in her mind, ‘Because it was running for you, and you didn’t know it was just after the food; you just did what you had to. Maybe it wasn’t necessary to kill it, but it could’ve just as easily been after you, in which case not killing it could’ve resulted in serious injury or maybe death. The action to kill it was the safest choice.’

She wasn’t sure if her mind was playing devil’s advocate to try and protect her sanity, or if part of her simply thought so. But one thing was one hundred percent sure, if she retained the same view of animals as back on Earth, then she could very easily end up like the bunniv, and that was not something she wanted to happen. So, despite not liking it, she tried to make herself think of it simply as it being unlucky to encounter her, and to view it as a potential threat that could’ve cost her her life, either directly or indirectly through an injury later on.

“Hhh… Haa…” She took a deep breath, trying to mentally prep herself for what might happen on the way home, as she now reeked of blood and would be carrying a bleeding carcass home. “I need to get to the creek, quickly.” She decided on letting the carnips stay, as they would just get in the way when carrying both a carcass and an axe. Just as she as she began lifting the body up, which was fairly heavy, a sudden pull on the tail end reminded her of the rock there, so she quickly used earth magic to excavate the tail, before proceeding to lift it a second time.

As she walked back home with heavy but quick steps, she made sure that the head was far enough away from her to mostly drip on the ground, as she didn’t want to risk too much blood staying in her clothes and maybe being unable to be removed. When she reached outside of the forest and was once again following the creek with full vision to both sides, she found a spot some hundred meters from the forest and placed the bunniv down.

She leaned down over the edge of the slow flowing water and was about to lower the carcass down when she thought of something. If the water is entering through the entire opening and most blood probably being quite a bit down the system at this point, the water would probably fill up the system from both ends and prevent the blood from leaving the body.

As she stood back up, she realized that if she had actually lowered the body, it would’ve also been filled with water, which would just make it a lot heavier. A quick look behind her indicated that it hadn’t been dropping blood for quite some time, so she decided to just keep the head extra raised as she walked home.

----

When she returned to the cave, she quickly deposited the carcass and carnip on the opposite of her bed and the plants pile, before walking back out to get rid of a log that had been blocking her from turning into Frank. Taking a deep squat, she heaved a deep breath and turned into Frank. Almost as if his prep had meant nothing, the sudden weight of around 100 kg made him exhale all his air in a sudden groan and almost toppled him, but he barely managed to just release the log and catch himself before that happened.

“Phew. I’m so happy I didn’t have to actually carry it all the way home. Now, time to make sure the bunniv is actually drained all the way, and hopefully it isn’t too late.” As he had already given up on trying to not drag blood back to his cave, his mind instead went to part of what little he knew about dead animals. Which was that they had to be drained to taste good, and now that he didn’t worry about being discovered by something, his mind finally had time to remember that.

Frank proceeded to pull the animal out of the cave again, this time making a quick hole in the dirt with earth magic, which he felt take a lot less mana than manipulating stones did. Before placing the bunniv with the head down the hole and body resting against the cliffside. “The hole in the head is probably enough, but to be sure I might as well try to get as much out as possible.” He took the knife and used a single strong cut to open its throat.

“I’ll check on it after eating a bit, my stomach feels like it’s calmed down enough for me to eat a bit, and hopefully that will help on a little on the blood stench.” A good half an hour later, after he had practiced a bit more magic and lit a fire, he came back out and checked the bunniv, at which’s head a small pool of blood had formed. “I hope that was enough.” He pulled it back down on the ground and grabbed the axe, before chopping at the neck, cleaving it off in two swings.

While it may have been better to try and use the meat in the head, Frank simply assumed that there would be too many bone shards for it to be worth it, and it was by far the most blood covered part, so he threw it into the hole and used earth magic to cover it back up and try to force it further down the ground. That last act used up a lot of his remaining mana, but he stopped it before it went below 3.

The rest of his day went with cleaning up the canopy to the best of his ability, leaving him with some branches to use for campfire fuel or something and a log a little over three meters long. He had considered cutting it up a bit but had decided against it until he had an actual plan for it. With the sun setting, he quickly ate and got something to drink, before using his mana and heading to bed, having completely forgotten about Sylvia’s pants being stained with blood.

----

The next morning went almost the same as the previous one, with the exception that by the time Sylvia had reached the forest, half her mana had been spent on practice. She could now do quite a lot with a rock for a pretty low mana cost, so she had tried to channel her mana through the entire hand, which had allowed her to do more, but at the cost of a lot more mana.

The forest was pretty quiet like peaceful like usual, so she simply resumed her project of getting trees from yesterday. The first tree she found was a little thicker and shorter than the one from yesterday, so it took ever longer than the day before. And after putting her back into it, she had one tree stored in what she had begun to think of as her inventory.

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Despite it taking longer, she was thankful that it had only taken a couple hours and not however long it would’ve with just a stone. To give her arms a chance to recover some strength, she took a break to look for some food, though this time just enough for lunch. Half an hour later, she was eating a couple fruits she had gotten from a tree. When she got to the next tree, she was about to start with the same method as for the other two trees, when something struck her.

“I think that the circling technique was mostly used in the videos where they cut down even thinner trees. I should probably just do the typical strikes from a single side. Wait, do I even need trees this thick?” She pondered it for a bit before facepalming. “On closer thought, I should only need trees around 7-8 cm in diameter, no need for this thickness. They would also be a hell of a lot lighter.”

With her new realization in mind, she began to walk back towards her cave, as the trees were thinner at the forest outskirts, and she might as well fell it as close to home as possible. As she was also beginning to grow thirsty, she set the course for the area close to the creek.

Rising from her knees at the edge of the river, a weird clicking or crunching sound barely managed to save her life. When she turned her head to see the sound’s origin, she saw her life flash before her eyes, as her vision was quickly getting filled with the view of some creature’s mouth. In a desperate effort to survive, Sylvia instinctively swung her left arm towards its head, but the head was further back than her panicked mind had realized.

An ear-piercing scream sounded through the forest, tracing its origin to Sylvia and the creature’s rock-hard grip on her arm. With the head now visible around her arm, she recognized it as a wolf. One of the wolf’s claws landed on -and ripped open- her left shin. The adrenaline had at this point reached her brain and immediately discarded the flight option, that only left for her to fight it. With the most desperate effort of her life, she reached her right hand behind her and felt around for her axe.

For what felt like an eternity, her hand was unable to find it, steadily increasing her panic, but she didn’t want to look away from the wolf and allow it to surprise her. After reaching a certain level of panic, and she had begun to mentally prepare herself for death, she noticed something weird; the wolf wasn’t really pushing further against her. And that was when she saw it, the wolf’s left leg was horribly bent and lacked most of the paw, she realized that that leg was probably what had warned her about the attack in the first place.

Suddenly, one of her fingers found the handle and began to wrap around it, followed shortly by the remaining four. Now with slight hope in her heart, she swung her arm with all the force she could muster, aiming directly for the wolf’s neck. As the weapon approached it, it almost looked as if fear flashed through its eyes, and it released its bite on her arm to instead try and avoid the axe, but by then it was too late.

The axe struck right into the side of its neck, not killing it, but doing enough to make it howl out in pain. At the sight of the wolf howling out, her fear and hope turned into anger and overconfidence, causing her to throw herself towards heavily bleeding the wolf. The thing she hadn’t considered, was that even gripping the axe with the left arm or setting off with the left leg wasn’t really possible, which resulted in her falling over, but by stretching her arm fully out, the axe was able to cut that little bit more.

Sadly, that didn’t seem to be enough to instantly kill the wolf. And just as she saw it approach it and resigned herself to death, with her left arm and leg in too much pain for her to really do anything. The wolf wobbled less than a step away from her, before falling over mid step. Not many second later, a notification popped up, but she had more important things to care about, so she didn’t even take time to think about it.

It took a couple seconds for her mind to catch up, but as soon as she realized the wolf wouldn’t kill her, she realized that she would still die if she just stayed there. Through her current life’s most painstaking effort, she managed to sit up, and with her left arm, she was able to get her shirt off. The pain from both had already subsided a somewhat, but she suspected the cause to be loss of blood, so it only made her hurry even more.

Aware that a wolf’s bite could very possibly bring a disease with it, she clenched her teeth and inserted her arm into the creek, as she was already next to it. After fighting through the searing pain for multiple seconds, she puled her arm out. Next, she locked the shirt’s one shoulder between her knees, bit on the corresponding sleeve, stretched it out, and used the axe to poorly cut the sleeve off. The torn sleeve was quickly wrapped around the wound on the arm, in an effort to stop excessive blood loss.

With one wound now taken care of, she moved on to the next. After quickly rolling up the pantleg on her leg, she repositioned and inserted her shin into the water, not caring about drenching her shoe or sock. As soon as the leg was back up, she tore off the other sleeve and made a bandage of that, before rolling the pantleg back down again. Now that she had at least done her best to take care of the wounds, she finally looked at the notification.

Killed Blood Wolf lv. 12. Gained exp

Leveled up

Leveled up

Leveled up

Gained: 6 strength, 6 vitality, 4 endurance, 8 mana, 4 wisdom, and 2 perception.

As she read it, she found the name strange, “Blood wolf? It didn’t feel like it really had anything to do with blo…od. Of course,” -she facepalmed with her good hand- “it must’ve found me through the blood stains from yesterday, especially those still on my clothes. At least that sounds possible. Regardless, I need to get home, this place isn’t safe. I can check out my level up stuff later.”

After painfully walking for at least half an hour, Sylvia finally saw something of interest; before her laid a stick around the same length and width as her axe. With a slight smile, she sat down besides it and used her good leg to hold up her axe, with the handle facing up. With her good hand, she placed the stick on top of the handle, and by wrapping her hand around the connection, she used magic to the two pieces of wood to bind together.

Now that she finally had a walking stick, she was able to speed up her pace a fair bit, as she didn’t have to put as much weight on the injured leg. Even before making it, she had actually stumbled upon multiple sticks that seemed suitable to use as walking sticks, but with only one hand ‘free’ and no trust in the other’s ability to keep hold on something, she prioritized keeping the axe, as it would be a waste to throw all that work away.

As she walked, her thoughts dwelled on the encounter with the wolves, and what it meant for her besides the physical injury. Due to two wakeup calls arriving one after another, first the bunniv and now the wolf, she fully confirmed with herself that she had to get rid of any preconceived notions about animals being nice, and just treat everything as a danger to herself, at least within the forest. And unlike after she had ended the rabbit, this time it didn’t even feel like there was a part of her playing devil’s advocate, these thoughts were well and truly her own.

A trip that would’ve normally taken her half an hour max, now took her over three in total, as in addition to a slowed walking speed, she had to take multiple breaks to let her leg rest. Once she finally reached home, she forwent changing into Frank, as she right now didn’t want to deal with the tree. Instead, she spent longer than normal to light a fire, knocking the flint out of her left hand multiple times, after which she ate some food and immediately went to bed.

Anything about leveling up could wait until tomorrow, for now she just wanted to recover whatever energy she could, and hopefully the state of her wounds would be better the following day; after all, her blessing did say that her regenerative capabilities had been improved.