7.

image [https://i.imgur.com/P03LO6v.png]

The beasts growled and whined as they lunged and clawed into each other.

Yellowtail Kingfish have a particular way of hunting, Djina.

A memory of one of my mother’s sparse lessons surfaced in my head as I slowly worked my way towards a tree on the absolute edge of the arena the fox and wolf were fighting in.

The first key to the technique is the herding.

I reached a distance I thought was sufficient to surprise. Then, I waited for a lull in the creatures’s battle. The moment came nearly instantaneously, and I jumped from behind the tree, appearing behind the scythe-pawed fox and in front of the lupine.

Both creatures jerked in place. The fox spun quickly, angling itself so it had a sight on both me and wolf. The lupine only bared its bloody fangs, on which I could see pieces of meat. It was doing its number on the enemy.

Now, this next part I had to play carefully. If they decided to team up on me, I was done for. So, I couldn’t appear too weak. If I appeared too strong, though, the same issue would occur, and they may just decide to dispose of me together.

Balance was key.

I drew one of two daggers I had stashed at my hip. Mother hadn’t actually taught me how to fight yet. She said doing so was a waste; I was still growing, so if I started training too early, I would settle into habits that would hold me back.

But that wasn’t important. What was important was the threat.

Slowly, I took a step forwards, and both beasts staggered backwards. The lupine growled at me as it neared the treeline behind it, saliva dripping down its teeth—its fangs could pierce straight through my forearm and come out on the other side. The fox was more silent. Its eyes weren’t fixated on me. It scanned the surrounding, gazing into the shadows of the trees, as if doing so would reveal life-saving information to it.

Right it was because the second key of Kingfish hunting was—

May darted out of the treeline behind the wolf, aiming for a quick strike. The predator jumped and tried to dodge, but it was too close, so it could not gain the necessary distance. A lick of flame, so brief that it was like the flash of a flickering light bulb, passed over the tip of May’s sword. Her blade pierced into the thick of the meat right above the wolf’s leg.

It whined, the cry whistling and reverberating among the treetops. I frowned. That could possibly draw attention.

In front of me, the fox did the closest thing to wincing I imagined a fox could do. Understandable, really. It must be sharing mentally in the pain of its distant relative and also physically. They had the same type of wound, after all.

The moment it was distracted was of course when I struck.

I had no way to quickly close the gap between me and it. Even if I could, I did not want to get close to that beast if I could help it.

So, I flipped the dagger in my hands, holding it like you would a throwing knife. In a moment of inspiration, I tried to draw on the maura within me and send it up to my arm, focusing on the string like Elder Muyue had told me.

It didn’t work. The maura had gone up my other limb on accident. There was a difference between practise and a real battle.

However, when the fox’s muscles tensed, my arm had already finished its motion. And how lucky that was.

The fox’s scythe clashed with the throwing knife, but the angle was off, and the blade ricocheted, striking it in the chest. Had it been a split second faster, it would’ve blocked it.

‘Finish it!’ May yelled. ‘Don’t let it escape!’

I glanced towards her, at the other side of the arena. The wolf was now working with a mean limp, which allowed her to chip away at it from a distance with her sword.

That same strategy won’t work for me, I thought as I drew my second and last dagger from my hip. Either I used this one as a throwing knife as well, or I risked getting in close.

The choice was not mine to make. The fox was already badly hurt, so it must’ve realised its sorry escape chance. It lunged for me. My heart drummed in my chest as I jumped to the side, barely dodging the tip of the scythe.

The beast landed in a way that minimised the pressure on its injured leg. But from the way the skin on its snout pulled taut, it still hurt.

It can only use the scythe on its injured leg. I realised. Otherwise, it lacked the necessary stability after jumping.

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I stepped to the outside of its sole weapon. The beast noticed what I was doing and tried to circle and keep me in line with its bad leg, but it couldn’t keep up with me.

Quickly giving up that battle, it lunged again. It was more reckless and sloppy this time, which was why I could catch its blade on my own. The force behind the swing was enough to nearly launch me off my feet but I held. I deflected the blow and threw my weight behind it, angling the fox so it couldn’t land like it wanted to.

It crashed to the floor and yelped as its bad leg snapped with an audible crack.

I was on it in an instant. My dagger plunged into the soft hide around the neck, goring through flesh and rending the beast apart. It cried and tried to wriggle to its feet. I leaned forward so all my weight was pushing down on its other weapon leg and kept stabbing. Again and again. Until the trashing stopped.

When I finished, my robes were completely stained, and the blood dripped from my face.

I heard a ping in my head as I heaved and caught my breath.

New ability unlocked!

Basic Dagger Wielding - rank E: you possess a barbarian’s skill at wielding daggers. With time you will hopefully become better!

…Was the system sassing me?

‘Good job.’

May strode towards me. The first thing I noticed was that she was cradling her left shoulder. Second was that her chest moved up and down as if she was dragging it through the mud.

‘Did you get hurt?’ I said worriedly.

Then, I frowned. The wolf had lost most of its mobility in a single exchange. She must’ve blundered to get hurt that badly.

The arm had not gone limp though, which I took as a sign of it being intact. I pushed myself off the floor so I could go over and have a better look, but my legs shook when I stood up, and I nearly lost my balance.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s but a flesh wound.’

She eyed me, and an appraising look passed over her face.

‘Rankless, huh,’ she said. ‘Looks like you’re not entirely hopeless.’

‘Who knows,’ I said, huffing.

Though I tried to play it cool, I couldn’t deny the adrenaline spiking through me. I’d won my first battle at the academy! And decisively at that. My hand covered my mouth as I smiled despite myself. I wonder if Mother would be proud of me.

A moment passed.

May scoffed.

‘Stop hiding your smile. You’re not fooling anyone.’

I flipped her off.

‘Leave me—’

I jerked as her blade whined, cutting off my response. She pointed the sword at the corpses and grinned.

‘Whatever, Rankless. More importantly, let’s loot our spoils.’

‘You think it’ll have a beast core?’ I said, my brow raising and eyeing the tip of her blade.

Monsters could have cores inside them. They were similar to the ones in our own body, which we drew our maura from. They were a rare find, though.

‘Worth a try,’ May said.

The core of a beast—and a human for that matter—was located in their centre. Which meant we had to get down and dirty to find it. My multi-tool knife wouldn’t cut it. But my daggers would.

I turned towards the mangled fox.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered and lowered my head.

Whenever I helped butcher animals on the farm, Aunt Clavis made sure I did so with a clean stroke to make it quick and lessen the pain. The fox’s neck and chest were no longer recognisable. It was just one, big hole.

It had been anything but painless.

I sliced the fox open at the belly, pausing to allow the remainder of its blood to spill on the forest floor.

Trying to breathe through my mouth did not work to keep the putrid smell wafting upward out. But I was used to it. I did not poke around inside the beast with my hands. Instead, I used the tip of the dagger to feel for anything hard.

‘This ones a bust,’ I said.

‘Too bad,’ May said. ‘It was the strongest one.’

The girl was grunting in effort as she went to town on the corpse of the wolf. Right. She had hurt her shoulder.

The strength in my legs had returned. So, I yanked the dagger I had thrown at the fox out of its flesh and made my way over. I handed her my dagger, which was more handy than her sword, and pressed down on the corpse to keep it from moving as May did her thing.

I saw her knife arm rebound before I heard faint ringing reverberate inside the belly.

‘Bingo!’ she said.

May eagerly shoved her arm into the wolf’s guts. She wriggled around a bit, then pulled out a red-tinted orb that fit into her palm.

Inspect, I thought.

[Name: Fire Attuned Maura Core - rank: E]

I whistled. May grinned.

She glanced up at me.

‘How do you want to divide the loot? We can sell the cores at the academy for points.’

And we could use the points to buy better gear or even private lessons from the elders. However, with a low rank object such as this, selling it wouldn’t lead to much value.

‘Your maura nature is fire, right?’ I said. ‘You can have it.’

She could use the flame maura inside to practise her manipulation skills. Not only that, once she had collected enough flame maura, she could try to learn a fire-based ability. That would greatly increase her combat potential.

‘You sure?’ she said.

I nodded. It was not hard to imagine the saliva leaking down the side of her mouth from the face she was making.

‘If you offer me the same courtesy,’ I said.

‘Deal,’ she said without thinking. ‘What are you? Water?’

My response was pulling on a little of my maura and creating a drop of water.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘That means we’ve got some diversity. We’ll need that when facing tougher creatures.’

I smiled. In other words, she wanted to keep hunting together.

‘See? Weak fish, together—’

‘Let’s check the other corpse,’ she said.

I pouted but obliged. We discovered another fire attuned maura core. Our luck was insane. Well. May’s luck, I supposed. I would not get jealous, though. A school was formidable because of their pack-mentality. Discord would only serve to break our cohesion and our strength as a whole.

‘Maybe that’s why the fox risked a battle against them,’ I said, thinking of something.

Going off its speed with one injured leg, the wolves should not have been able to corner it let alone wound it if the fox didn’t want the fight. But the Math added up if it thought the wolves possessed cores; monsters who absorbed enough of them could evolve to the next stage in their evolution, which would make them more powerful.

‘It should’ve picked its targets better if so,’ May said.

She placed the two cores in her pouch, then her chin turned up at the sky.

‘We cannot have been gone for more than two hours, so it should be somewhere around eight in the evening.’

I looked as well. It was summer, so the great star lasted longer, but the sun was all but gone from the sky. Darkness would soon consume the forest, and we had no light. If we were caught on the outside of the academy gates after midnight, we’d truly be swimming blind. That was as good as certain death.

I opened my mouth to speak.

‘Let’s go home—’

‘I swear the sounds came from this direction.’

Both of us stilled.

We were followed.