Nathan ran, sweat rolling down his shirtless back. He had ditched the shirt while he was still in the library because it was way too small for him, especially after his bulking up after the strength boosts.
Nathan glanced at his Interface on a whim, focusing on the physical state and Path sections.
Interface
Personal:
Name: Nathan Holbrich
Age: Nineteen years, six months
Height: 5’10
Species: Sapiens
Genus: Homo
Physical State:
Strength: Mediocre
Endurance: Mediocre
Perception: Poor
Reflex: Average
Willpower: Great
Condition(s): N/A
Existential Tier:
Ascendant: You have awakened and have gained an Ability. You have gained one rank in all attributes. You have ascended and gained a Path. You have gained a second additional rank in each attribute. Your attributes have been adjusted to your existential tier.
Ability:
Prodigy: If you activate this Ability during an action, you experience yourself doing the action twice. This allows you to grasp the principles behind actions much faster. If you activate this Ability while doing an action that gathers knowledge, you experience two fold time dilation. This allows you to comprehend knowledge twice as quickly as you would have otherwise. This Ability can not be activated during combat.
Type: Master
Secondary Types: Knowledge, Mind, Time
Path of the Grandmaster: Through extreme soul control and willpower you keep your soul core from aspecting to any type other than master. If you do an action that you have a minimum level of Skill in, part of your soul core will temporarily aspect to it. These will be quantified as Skills. Some Skills can allow you to ignore your attribute limit. The power of these Skills will be quantified as levels.
Type: Master
Secondary type: N/A
Skills :
Active Skills (Maximum five):
Intermediate Holbrich Spike Style(Tier 2) Level 6:You have practiced the Holbrich Spike Style for years and are very proficient with it. All movements that use the Holbrich Spike Style operate as if your Reflex, Endurance, and Strength were ten percent higher than they actually are. Each rank in an attribute increases the related capabilities by fifty percent. Each level in this Skill causes the power increase to go up by two percent. The current power increase from this Skill is twenty percent.
Basic Land Animal Tracking(Tier 1) Level 4: You instinctively know some of the signs to look for while tracking animals on dry land, and can learn about an animal by looking at its tracks. This effect scales with the level of the Skill.
Basic Running(Tier 1) level 3: You have some knowledge in how to pace yourself and what form to use when you run. For each level in this Skill you gain a one percent speed increase while running. The current speed bonus from this Skill is four percent.
Basic Improvised Crafting(Tier 1) Level 2: You gain a vague sense for what a material that you harvested personally could be used for in crafting. This effect scales with the level of the Skill.
Skill reserve:
N/A
In the past five days he had managed to rank up his reflex, which was no mean feat. Nathan’s Path section was even more impressive, however.
Nathan had gained a new Skill and leveled various Skills a total of 10 times. Nathan had the feeling that it would become a lot harder to level his Skills as they became higher and higher level.
Nathan dismissed the Interface and continued running. Nathan was following the tracks of the manticore that he had found. At the thought of the manticore, Nathan unconsciously reached a hand down to his hip, making sure that his spikes were still at his side.
Nathan had made a primitive belt to hold them three days earlier. He had taken the stringiest shrub roots he could find and braided them together, including two loops on the left and right hips to hold his spikes. That, along with the creation of the spikes themselves, had netted him the basic improvised crafting Skill and level the subsequent level in basic improvised crafting.
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Nathan veered of to the side, following the manticore’s tracks as they swerved over a hill. These tracks are getting fresher. It'll be at most three hours until I catch it. Nathan chuckled at the content of his thoughts.
It sure is strange how our relationship, if you could call it that, has shifted. Even though the manticore doesn't remember me because the level was reset when I died, I still remember it. The memory of desperately sprinting away from the manticore, sure that it was going to pounce any second flashed through his mind, but it was like a dull weapon. Overused and ineffective.
Back then, I was the hunted. Now I am the hunter. And I will catch my quarry.
///
If Nathan strained his ears, he could have sworn that he could hear the manticore’s paw steps in the distance.
It’s probably figured out that it's being hunted by now. Nathan had been following its tracks for half a day and he still hadn’t found it yet. From this and the fact that the tracks had been about ten minutes old for the last half hour, Nathan gathered that the manticore was running away from him.
You deserve to feel hunted. You deserve run, terrified that a more powerful creature is going to leap out and kill you at a moment's not-
“Urgh!” A giant shape lept from behind a hill and slammed into Nathan’s side, knocking him to the ground and ending his train of thought in irony.
By pure luck Nathan’s torso was turned away from the attack right before it had landed, so he managed to cushion the impact with a roll. Nathan gritted his teeth as he felt claws rake across his back midway through the roll.
“GRAAAAAUR!” The shape let it an ear piercing roar as Nathan turned to face it. There, in all its quill maned and bloody clawed glory, was the manticore.
“Aw fuck!” Nathan exclaimed. Of course it wasn't just blindly running away, this thing still thinks that it's the hunter.
The manticore finished its roar, and lept towards Nathan. As it sailed through the air, closing the twenty feet between them extremely quickly, Nathan analyzed the possible movements that he could make. Nathan's heart beat thumped loudly in his ears as warm blood flowed freely down his back.
If I go left it’l just twist in mid air and catch me. Same if I go right, and I can't jump back fast enough. I can't roll forward because of my back injury. I guess there's only one option left. Right before the manticore would have landed on him, Nathan jumped straight up, his strength enhanced body carrying him more than fifteen feet up.
Nathan’s hands gripped his spikes, but didn't have enough time to untangle them from the loops, so he just tore them off of the belt. The manticore’s back was rushing towards him quickly, so Nathan curled his legs in front of him, right spike between his feet. Fuck, this is gonna hurt.
Nathan slammed into the manticore’s back shins first, having rotated slightly while falling. Pain lanced through his shins, his spike finding a hold in the manticore, and slid off its back, collapsing to the ground.
The marticore let out a mewling noise as its legs were crushed underneath it. The spike had sunk into the manticore's back a few inches to the left of its spine.
Nathan slid as off of the, now sitting, manticore’s back, he attempted to cushion his impact with a crouch, but a pulse of agonizing pain from the spots where his shins had hit the manticore’s spine caused him to collapse on his side.
I probably fractured my shins. Nathan realized as he pushed himself back up.
Seeing that the manticore was also getting up, Nathan staggered away as quickly as he could, still clutching his left spike. The manticore limped after him. They were both going at around the running pace of a normal person, but the manticore was slowly gaining.
Nathan looked around, for any natural feature that could aid his escape. A chuckle escaped Nathan’s lips as he saw the cliff that he had tried to use the first time he had attempted to defeat the manticore the first time. Here we are again. Ironic.
The first time, he had been running in terror, but unwounded. Now he had four diagonal claw slashes across his back and had fractured both shins. This time the expression on his face wasn't one of terror. It was of determination.
Nathan closed in on the cliff. Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five feet. Right before Nathan would’ve run to the stone side of the cliff threw himself forwards.
Nathan ignored the pain from his shins as he pushed off the cliff, flying into the air spinning slightly.
Nathan felt like he was being empowered by some greater being. Time slowed down. An inexplicable sense of calm flowed over him. He felt his control of his body skyrocket.
The manticore clearly saw Nathan push off of the cliff, but it had picked up too much speed to stop.
As Nathan reached the manticore he snapped his right foot out and managed to land a crushing blow to the base of the manticore's jaw, just before the point where the quills started.
Shit, I was aiming for the temple! Nathan grunted in annoyance when he saw where his foot had struck.
Oh well, it still worked! The manticore’s head snapped to the side and it stumbled, as Nathan landed, just barely not falling over from the pain in his, now broken, right foot.
Nathan lunged forward on his left leg, his left arm, still gripping a spike, rocketing towards the manticore’s head.
The manticore might have been able to dodge before Nathan had landed his kick, but Nathan had hit it hard enough to cave in an unawakened human’s skull. In its current state, all that the manticore managed to do was stagger a few inches to the left. It wasn't quite far enough.
Nathan’s spike sunk into its left eye socket down to the handle, which was eight inches from the spike’s tip. The manticore let out a roar of pain and began thrashing wildly. Nathan was knocked away,into the cliff, but the spike stayed in.
Nathan watched, trying not to remind the manticore that he was there, from his position on the ground as it spasmed wildly. About thirty seconds later it abruptly stopped moving. It was dead.
The manticore was dead.
Alert
Congratulations: You have gained a level in The Skill Intermediate Holbrich Spike Style(Tier 2).
Intermediate Holbrich Spike Style(Tier 2) Level 6:You have practiced the Holbrich Spike Style for years and are very proficient with it. All movements that use the Holbrich Spike Style operate as if your Reflex, Endurance, and Strength were ten percent higher than they actually are. Each rank in an attribute increases the related capabilities by fifty percent. Each level in this Skill causes the power increase to go up by two percent. The current power increase from this Skill is twenty percent.
>>
Intermediate Holbrich Spike Style(Tier 2) Level 7:You have practiced the Holbrich Spike Style for years and are very proficient with it. All movements that use the holbrich fighting style operate as if your Reflex, Endurance, and Strength were ten percent higher than they actually are. Each rank in an attribute increases the related capabilities by fifty percent. Each level in this Skill causes the power increase to go up by two percent. The current power increase from this Skill is twenty two percent.
Nathan attempted to stand, but with his right leg broken and his left shin fractured, he collapsed onto his knees. “Hah.” Nathan let out a laugh as he retrieved his spikes from the manticore’s eye and back.
“Hah. Hah! Hahahahaha!” Nathan began laughing maniacally, as he waved his spikes above his head and stared at the dead body of the manticore.
“You see these?” Nathan shoved his spikes towards the Manticores face. “These are your quills! And guess what? I killed you with them!”
Another burst of laughter escaped Nathan's lips. “I killed you with your own quills, motherfucker!” Nathan held the quills above his head like a trophy. “Hahaha!” Nathan continued laughing for quite a while.
Once he had calmed down, Nathan frowned. Why haven't I been sent to the next level yet?
Nathan glanced around frantically. If that wasn't the objective, then what was. The only thing around him that wasn't grass was the manticore.
What could I do to the manticore that I didn't already do? At first, I was the hunted and it was the hunter. Now I am the hunter and I have hunted it. Nathan groaned in realization.
Don't tell me I have to eat it! It would make sense. When the manticore had killed him it had hunted and eaten him. Now he had hunted, and would have to eat, it. Fuck. I’m gonna have to eat it raw so that I don't bleed out before I make it to the next level and, hopefully, get healed
Nathan knee-walked over to the manticore’s corpse. He used the tip of his spike to rip a tiny piece of muscle from the edge of the hole that his spike had created in the manticore's back. Nathan tossed the piece in his mouth and swallowed the bloody meat without chewing.
The moment the meat entered his stomach Nathan blacked out, his body collapsing limply onto the grass.