I backpedaled through the gap between a couple of small trees to cut off the path of the hell antelope trying to impale my chest with one of its spiky black horns. The horns both looked and cut like obsidian, so I was definitely focused on keeping what distance I could as I tried to get in a good shot. I had no intention of getting this close to these little monsters in the first place, but the wild elves that Galan had introduced me to didn’t seem to really care about the margins of safety with which I had hoped to operate or, really, my safety in any way.

The wild elves had demonstrated their amazing instincts and the skills built over lifetimes of experience during our many, many encounters with enraged monsters and beasts over the past few days, but the two that I was working with tended to revel in the chaos much more than expected. They were leading me on a loop out of the Emerald Sea to learn woodcraft and test out some live combat while harvesting food for the team, which was what I had hired them to do. They were just doing it in a way that was much more action packed and life threatening than expected.

Case in point, these hell antelopes were both super fast and super murderous and there must have been hundreds in this section of the forest alone. Given how many I had killed and how they kept coming it felt like there was no end to them. I know that you are thinking, ungulates don’t tend to get all that murderous, so how did we get here? First off, hell antelope is their name, not an amusing description. The monsters stood about four feet tall at the shoulder and their jagged, black, stone hard horns were about three to four feet in length. Their eyes glowed a dull red and they made a piercing, whining screech as they darted through the forest in a frenzy. The woods were currently alive with these horrible screeches. It wasn’t like I was innocent in all of this, as I had cut a path of carnage through their territory for the better part of a day, but they would have wanted to kill me either way.

I dodged away behind a large spruce to cut off another attempt to impale me from the hell antelope that I had engaged. It swung wide around the tree, presumably with the intention of cutting off my avenues of escape and pinning me, literally, to the spruce at my back. I had dropped the long musket-like rifle that I had been hunting with earlier in the day when the antelopes first closed the distance and began darting at me from the trees. Instead, I was sporting a mid-range weapon, basically a magic shotgun, with a good spread that gave me a better chance of keeping up with the pace of the situation. It didn’t require as much preparation to shoot or really even really need to be carefully aimed at the current distance. As the hell antelope rounded the tree I caught it with a shot squarely to the head and it was an instant kill.

I turned to scan the forest to my right when it felt like something, obviously the horn of another hell antelope, tore into my calf. I fell forward onto my knees and then flat on the ground with my gun under me. I rolled away from the tree quickly enough to stop the hoof headed for my head from connecting, but it felt like my shoulder broke as the other hoof smashed me into the ground. Fortunately, my magic shotgun magically had zero recoil and generally felt weightless, allowing me to shoot using just the arm that didn’t feel like it had just exploded. At that range I painted myself and the large spruce I had hidden behind with blood and bits of flesh as the point blank shot demolished the antelope.

The wild elves just chuckled as I hauled myself to my feet and loaded two additional shells into my gun as more screeches erupted from the darkness that blanketed most of the ground, the sun largely filtered out by the thick canopy hundreds of feet above. As the pain faded away, I got to wondering what the hell antelope actually ate in these woods. The dense forest crowded out most of the underbrush and the trees were mostly conifers and way too high to reach. ... Yeah, best not to think about what these monsters ate and just focus on not making my way onto the menu.

I was actually getting pretty tired. I was wearing the best energy armor that I had access to at the time as well as a training device that allowed one to experience all of the sensations, including the pain, of injuries avoided by the energy armor. Apparently pain teaches, but bleeding to death in the woods doesn’t, so this was the combination recommended in one of the journals that I had dug up in the Treefort. I had dozens of defensive artifacts to choose from in the trove of gear that I found ahead of the start of the tutorial, but most were highly situational.

The two wild elves, Deldes and Delirien, that Galan had connected me with for my immersive hunting training found all of my mistakes and the punishment that I was taking funny, but the fact that I had chosen to experience the pain also seemed to earn me a small sliver of respect from them. When I had formulated this plan I had visions of the hunting that I was familiar with from my prior life. Getting into position in a stand or blind before dawn and waiting for the perfect moment to take my shot. Then spending the evening enjoying a meal and the fire before getting to bed early under the stars.

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There were no campfire cooking lessons by the fire on this trip. Deldes did make me eat a piece of the heart of my first kill, a large cave bear, to give me strength, but it wasn’t cooked and I barely kept it down. Most nights we didn’t even have a fire because it would give away our position and I was fine with that because we only got a few hours of rest each night anyway and I needed to spend them all sleeping. Later I would learn that Deldes and Delirien were actually pretty good company, but they were true free spirits and lovers of chaos who believed in a real learn by doing approach. They revered the forest and tried to live in harmony with animals, but monsters were another story. The maniac glint in Delirien’s eyes when I screwed up too badly and she entered the fight was chilling as was her laughter as she cut through anything that got in her way with the blade of her spear.

The area around the Emerald Sea was actually relatively dangerous and I was definitely not currently at the top of the food chain. The wild elves had a perfectly good camp about fifteen miles from the eastern edge of the safezone, but they led me deeper and deeper into the forest by the day. Somehow they were communicating with their compatriots who would appear each evening to collect what we killed. I had learned quite a bit in just a few days and I still had four days left to go in this loop. I also had multiple additional loops planned with them. If I could stand it and survive it, I expected to become an expert in the use of firearms, basic woodcraft and stealth in the six months that I planned to spend working with Deldes and Delirien.

Deldes and Delirien weren’t doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. I paid them five gold for each week that we were on the hunt and we split what we killed. They were wild elves and they had no interest in moving into the relative safety of the outpost, but they had plenty of interest in some of the shops in town and trading with caravans all over the Emerald Sea. Five gold was actually a tidy sum in the Emerald Sea at the time and the coin that I was paying them was very useful as the economy of the area slowly spun up following the reopening of the outpost. Apparently some of what I had traded to Galan was relatively valuable and I had almost seven hundred gold on account with the brownies, so paying Deldes and Delirien was currently no problem for me.

We occasionally foraged for plants and mushrooms in the woods and I definitely tangled with more than my fair share of plant monsters, but most of the food that we were able to harvest on this loop was meat. We were going to be eating hell antelope jerky for a long, long time. On the bright side, hell antelope meat is naturally a little peppery and spicy, so it makes great jerky. We were also occasionally able to monster parts that could be valuable as materials to the right craftsman, so there was the potential of some additional benefit when we could find buyers for those. It felt like I was helping the team with the produce from this hunting trip and that I was helping develop my skills in the process, which I felt like enough of a win for now.

***

I was dirty, like gross dirty, and exhausted by the time I completed my first loop through the area near the Emerald Sea with Deldes and Delirien. We had collected enough meat, whether still fresh, smoked or cured, to last me and my friends for at least a month. I’d have to stash some of the most heavily preserved meats in the Treefort when I had a chance, but right now I needed a shower and some real, restful sleep.

I slipped into the bookstore and the brownie girl behind the desk gasped audibly at my appearance. I was filthy and covered in blood, so I just flashed her my most winning smile and kept on trucking through the store and the backroom to the stairs up to my apartments. When I unlocked the door and stepped into my living room it was my turn to gasp.

It was obvious that the brownies had been in my rooms while I was away. When I had left there were no decorations, no rugs and what minimal furniture I had looked like it either belonged in a dorm room or a dumpster. Instead of fifteen odd stacks of books around my threadbare couch and the coffee table with uneven legs, two large bookshelves now dominated the wall behind the couch, which had itself been replaced with a wood frame sofa with leather cushions.

The end tables that had been added had proper lamps for reading and some potted plants that really livened up the room. A small woolen rug to catch any stray ashes and embers had been placed in front of the fireplace and my new couch and coffee table stood on what looked like the fantasy world equivalent of a persian rug. An additional sitting area had been added by my large window complete with two overstuffed leather arm chairs with a small table between them. I could definitely see curling up there with a mug of tea or a nice snack while reading the afternoon away.

The transformation of my bedroom and kitchen were no less significant. It was definitely a dump before that I’d be embarrassed to let anyone see, but now it looked like the kind of place that you could invite a date back to and actually score some brownie points. See what I did there? Brownie points. Anyhow, I only had enough energy for a shower before I slept for what I assumed would be a full day, but tomorrow I was going to need to catch up with Galan and his merry band for an update and an explanation. I was also going to need to see about a new lock, because the one I had clearly wasn’t brownie proof.