Our trip through the forest would continue in a similar fashion for the next several hours. Azarus would stomp through the forest, making as much noise as he possibly could. The racket that he made would draw various monsters to us in droves. Then, he would grab them, pin them, and get me to kill them. Sometimes I would manage to kill them in one strike like I had with the Warg. Sometimes it took a few pokes with my pointy stick. While the monsters would always target me first, somehow instinctively recognizing me as the weaker link, they never got to touch me though. Honestly, after a while, the process actually started to bore me. It had finally sunk in that I wasn’t in any danger.

During our trip, I took to using Observe as much as I could. Azarus had mentioned that using the skill as much as I could would increase the effectiveness as it leveled. I used the skill on the trees, the grass, the bushes, and of course the monsters as much as I could.

Something interesting he mentioned though, was there was only so far things like Observe could go. According to Azarus, General Skills, and General Talents were fairly limited by the System. They could only level up to seven, and then they capped out. Apparently, you could do something with them afterward, but Azarus just waved me off when I asked about whatever that was and told me to concentrate on the hunting.

One thing about the monsters especially piqued my interest, though. We ended up being attacked by more than just Wargs. We encountered a variety of different monster types during our trek. However, they all seemed to be variations of general forest creatures. Everything that we encountered seemed to be some kind of fucked up version of a regular animal that you could find in any regular forest. From Deer with two sets of bladed horns, to knee-high rats, to even a disturbingly buff squirrel the size of a German Shepard. I was curious, so I asked Azarus about it.

“Oh, these?” He answered me. “Well, we might have mentioned it, but monsters are affected by where they form. Since this is a forest, you get forest creatures. Ugly buggers, but generally recognizable.”

“Huh,” I said. “Do they care about the regular animals?” During our trip, I hadn’t really seen anything but monsters.

Azarus shook his head. “Nah, they don’t. They’ll leave the wildlife alone. For some reason, monsters only care about people that are Awakened. Hell, if you were still Unawakened, they’d just ignore you like they do a deer or something. Well, if you didn’t try and attack ‘em, I mean.”

I scratched the back of my head with the hand not holding onto my spear. “So, I guess we’re just making too much noise to see anything else but monsters, huh.”

Azarus grunted in agreement. Our conversation died after that.

……………………………………...

We continued for maybe another half an hour before Azarus suddenly stopped. I nearly walked into his back; I was following so closely behind him. Stumbling to a stop I opened my mouth to ask him what he was doing before closing it. Azarus was staring intently into the trees before us. I tensed in anticipation. He’d done this many times before over the last few hours. It usually meant that he’d sensed a monster.

I was startled though when he did something different than usual, though. Instead of readying himself, he turned back around to give me a speculative look.

I stared back at him blankly. “What? What’s up?”

Azarus tapped his chin in thought, still staring at me. “Well.” He said, drawing out the word with a grin. “I’m thinking maybe it’s time to get you some real combat practice.”

I gripped my spear till my knuckles turned white. “What do you mean?” I said uneasily.

I knew what he meant, I was just scared of it.

“I’m thinking that I’ll let you take care of this next one by yourself.” He confirmed for me. “It’s getting about time to start heading back, and I think it’d be useful for ya.”

I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm my nerves. It didn’t help much. “Are you sure I can do it?”

Azarus scoffed. “Course ya can. If you’ve got ten in everything like ye said, then these beasties won’t be able to put up much of a fight for ya. We haven’t gone deep enough to find anything that’s a real threat.”

I was silent for a moment. Azarus had mentioned it a few times, but from what I understood, fighting monsters was the best way to level up in this world. With this System. He wasn’t always going to be around to hold my hand. I was eventually going to have to learn to fight monsters by myself if I wanted to survive. At least it was better to do it for the first time with someone to supervise me.

Wait.

He was going to supervise, right?

“Oh, aye,” Azarus said airily. “I’ll be around.” He told me when I asked. Having said that, I watched dumbfounded as Azarus casually started to saunter off into the woods to our right. Once he reached one of the trees, he stepped behind it and didn’t emerge around the other side. Forgetting my nervousness for a moment, I walked over to the tree bemusedly that he had stepped behind, to see if he was just hiding behind it. Looking behind, I could see that he wasn’t. He’d vanished.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Stepping back from the tree, I looked back in the direction that he’d been staring in before he left. I didn’t see anything right now, but I believed that something was coming this way from how he had acted. Moving back into the center of the small clearing we had stopped in, I set my spear in the way Azarus had taught me. I set in to wait for whatever was coming.

After maybe three minutes of trying not to hyperventilate, and mostly succeeding, I heard a rustling in the bushes in the direction I was staring. With a snort, the monster emerged from the bushes perhaps fifty feet in front of me. I relaxed somewhat when I saw it.

It was one of the weird deer that we had encountered earlier. From the way that Azarus had manhandled it earlier, I wasn’t terribly frightened. If it had been one of those freaky squirrels though, then I would have been more nervous. It wasn’t even that big, as well. Sure, it was slightly larger than the one that I’d killed earlier, but not by much. This one came up to roughly mid-chest on me, while the one from earlier only came up to about my waist from the floor to the tip of its antlers. With a reddish coat, the only thing that distinguished it from a normal deer was its small, underdeveloped antlers. They were metallic, with the tips shaped more like knives than a normal deer’s horns. I used Observe on it curiously.

Name Young Blade-Rack Hart Level 6 Age 2 weeks Species Monster Abilities ??

Ha ha, Azarus. I could see why you wanted me to solo this one.

Feeling more confident and firming my resolve, I reset my stance and waited for the monster. I may have decided to fight it, but I wasn’t confident enough to make the first move.

Only a few seconds had passed since the deer had exited the bush, and it was already eyeing me with malice. Huffing, snorting, and pawing at the dirt, the deer gave me a baleful, red-eyed glare before throwing back its head and opening its mouth. A strange, hissing scream echoed around us as the deer bayed.

I froze. For some reason, it felt like I couldn’t move my body. I couldn’t even blink or move my eyes. With a sense of mounting panic, I was only able to watch motionlessly as the deer lowered its head and entered into a charging stance. Springing forward with its back legs, the deer rushed in my direction, antlers first.

Mentally, I kept trying to struggle my way out of whatever the deer had done to me. I didn’t know what to do, and all I could do was watch in dread as the deer approached me with speed. When the deer had cleared perhaps thirty feet, whatever it had done to me wore off. Stumbling, I tried to get the spear up in a block position between me and the deer hastily. But in my panic, I didn’t use the blocking stance that Azarus had shown me. With a tremendous bang, the deer connected with my clumsy block and blew me straight off my feet.

Flying back several feet, I landed on my back, still somehow holding onto the spear despite the impact. I lay stunned for a moment before snapping out of it and trying to find the deer.

It was charging directly at my downed form, antlers lowered.

Throwing the spear up across my body, I somehow managed to interpose the spear between myself and the deer’s horns. It collided with the spear again with another bang. Grunting, I managed to keep my arms from buckling.

But the deer wasn’t done.

It stayed locked onto my spear, trying to reach me with its bladed horns in order to gore me. It kept pushing and shoving its horns so wildly against the spear that I could feel the razor-sharp tips cutting into the flesh of my arms. With a snort of effort, the deer managed to push its horns far enough forward that I could feel a gash open up on my left cheek.

Wild with panic, I found a well of strength within and brought my legs up underneath me. With a hoarse scream, I kicked out with both feet and sent the deer flying. Blood pumping loudly in my ears, I scrambled to my feet. Looking around wildly for a moment, I tried to find the deer. It had only flown a few feet off of me and was laying dazed on the ground.

Instinctively realizing that I didn’t have long before it was going to try and gore me again, I set the spear in a sloppy stance and charged it with another scream. It had tried to kill me when I had been on the ground, and I was going to return the favor. I managed to reach the deer in time before it recovered and thrust down at it with all of my strength.

I hit it. My spear slid all the way through the flesh of the deer and pinned it to the forest floor. With a shrill cry, the deer went wild and tried to dislodge my weapon from its body. Flailing its head around, the deer tried to reach me with its horns. I kicked the deer as hard as I could with my right foot in its bottom jaw, stunning it. With it stunned, I withdrew the spear from its body and thrust it down with my full body weight, lodging it even deeper into the forest floor.

I held on desperately to the spear, kicking its head again. When it started trying to flail after recovering, I would thrust downwards after a kick so the monster couldn’t escape.

“Just. Fucking. Die already!” I bellowed between kicks to the deer’s head.

After a few rounds of this routine, the struggles of the deer started to weaken. Gradually, the deer lost strength. It stopped moving.

I stared down at the monster suspiciously. Was it dead? I decided to give it one more kick to be sure. But when I reared my foot back and did so, it passed straight through the head of the deer. It had exploded into that same, greasy black smoke that all monsters did on death. With my kick not connecting to anything, I overextended and slipped. I fell straight onto my back, right where the greatest concentration of the weapons-grade stench of the smoke curled on the ground.

I vomited directly into the air from a combination of the sink and the adrenaline of the fight. It fell right back down onto my chest. I lay there for a moment, soaking in my own vomit and blood, staring blankly up at the canopy of trees above me.

“Well.” I heard foggily, somewhere off my right. “That could’ve gone better.”

I blacked out.