I was really lucky that I started to back off that soon, I didn’t have even the slightest time to react to the attack. If I was even a second late that claw would have already torn me apart, so yet again I was saved by sheer luck. The big claw left a mark on the wall, these stones are really tough and solid. It only shows the devastating power of the panther claws.
I could hear scary roars and growls coming from behind me as I entered deeper and deeper into the trench. The killing intent that came from the panther was so heavy that it was hard to move. It looked like the panther was getting impatient and wanted to kill me more and more.
“What was I thinking!” I understood that I almost sent myself for a suicide. A small red piece of aura entered my vision, just as I saw that aura a thought came into my head, “Was this because of the rage skill?!” If it's because of the rage skill it could explain why I was so reckless and stupid just because of one annoying pig.
“I can’t believe it, it never said anything like that in the inspection explanation… inspect *Rage*” I inspected my skill again to find out the reason for this craziness.
***
*Rage* - The core skill of the rage family, the skill lets the user accumulate rage that flows out of the user's body and uses it to power/use the skills of the family tree. This skill is hard to find in many people because of its strong nature of madness, only those who enter this endless madness state can use this skill for their own good.
***
“There is nothing here, only a small comment on a state of madness... Does it mean that I have the worst temper ever?” Not being sure if it was because of the skill or because of myself, it placed me in a really awkward spot. I didn't really know what to do with this information, "What happens if I snap and just jump off a cliff?"
I knew I couldn't do anything but try my best to control myself in the future and never let this accident happen again. Suddenly a sharp pain came from the side where the claw hit me, I changed my view to its location as I came into my room.
I saw a few broken branches and a lot of leaves missing from that spot, and as soon as I saw the wound I checked my status.
***
-Ontopary Bush Lv5-
Experience: 23/45
Rarity: Common
Health: 2/7
Mana: 13/17
Stamina: 3/4
***
“And here goes my health that I recovered, at least I got the experience from killing the pig, but why so little? Was it because I only dealt the deathblow?“ I got a clearer understanding of how the experience was split if the monster was killed by more than one party.
”*Sigh* If only I could have stolen its health as well, it would have been awesome.” I said with a disappointed sigh as I chose to just go back to sleep without completing my training, I just wanted to forget that I even saw the panther today. So without further ado, I checked my status again and closed my magic perception skill.
***
Morning came with it another day, I woke up and did my morning routine as usual. After remembering what happened yesterday I facepalmed myself a few times, “Stupid, stupid, stupid… I shall never do something so stupid ever again.” If not mistaken that was one of the biggest lies I ever told to myself.
I peeked outside the trench to see what was going on there after yesterday's battle, I saw the ground full of spears, but only a few of them were stuck into the ground. The other spears were laying on the floor and most of them were damaged or broken.
“Looks like the panther is much smarter than I thought, it blocked the spears that were flying toward the boar and waited for me to let my guard down.” I would never have believed that the panther could do such a dirty trick, to try and lure me out of the tunnel.
“If only not for this stupid *Rage* skill nothing like this would happen.” I blamed the skill again because let's be rational no matter how angry someone is he wouldn't go to such an extreme and for such a stupid reason as a screaming pig.
Near the spears, there were dried-up blood stains, but the carcass of the boar was nowhere seen. “Guess the panther took it as a snack.” I looked at the broken spears and sighed heavily “*Sigh*, all this work for nothing.” Then I went back to the storage room and started to dig it once more.
I wanted to go outside and pick up the undamaged spears, but I still wanted to follow my own rules that I made to myself to go out only at noon and not sooner. But there should not be any problems, it's not like someone will come and pick up the spears.
After I finished digging in the storage room, I looked at it with a smile. “Done now it would be much easier to store spears and other stuff in here.” Currently, the storage room increased in size and has shelves inside its walls. They looked more like holes than shelves, but I didn’t make them for decoration.
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“Now I can store the spears here as well.” I made a few of the holes deep only for this reason alone. I used my roots for the job, with them it's really easy to dig deep holes but really hard to dig in general. After finishing my masterpiece I went back to rest.
***
I woke up after a few hours, it was already noon so I took out the strips of leaves from the storage room that I made a few days earlier and exited the tunnel. As always when exiting the trench I always checked for any monsters nearby and like always the rear was clear.
I picked up all the spears into two piles, one with the broken ones and the other with those that still were usable. I looked at the broken pile and said with little regret, “The cat broke ten spears, but that's alright I wanted to use a few of them as material anyway.”
I started to pick up the broken spears, place them on each other and tie them together with the strips of leaves. After close to fifteen minutes or so I finished my creation, it was a cart, a really crappy cart that would fall apart at any moment.
I wanted to build a temporary cart from the spears, then break it apart and get the spears back, but now it looked like I didn’t need to do the extra job. The cart was really simple looking, I had no way of making wheels, so its lower part was only standing on two long broken spears that were parallel to each other. It reminded me of a sled, no it was a sled.
The upper part was simple as well, five short sticks that were horizontal to the lower part all tied up with the stripes of leaves. “The idea of the cart is to minimize the friction with the floor, that way it would be much easier to pull it around.“ I said with a proud voice, it was basic science and at that moment I didn’t think much about it.
I went back into the trench and started tossing out the spears that were still located in the tunnel. I didn’t move them to the storage room only because I needed to get them out anyway.
After tossing out ten spears I went back out, there were still close to twenty spears in the tunnel, but I knew that only taking these twenty spears most likely would be a challenge by itself, so I didn't bother with the rest.
Knowing my limits I stored twenty spears that were outside, on the sled, and tied them up together with the strips. I took the other small strips that were left and tied them together to make a long rope out of them. After that, I tied up the rope to the front side of the sled and went on my way.
Moving the sled with my small body wasn’t an easy task, I fell a few times on my way. Back then I wanted to use my *Wood Element Control* skill on the wood sticks, but I found out that it does not work that way. Firstly the plant needs to be alive. Secondly, I can move the energy inside the plant to change its position at best and not make the plant fly.
So all that I could do at the moment was to use sheer force. After half an hour of heavy lifting, I entered the deeper part of the edge of the forest, normally it would take me a maximum of ten minutes to get here.
“I am here...” I said as I fell to the ground on my face, a few seconds passed and I stood up on my legs again as I said, “I need to make another trip.” I emptied the sled and walked back with it to the cave. I took the other spears and in the end, the trip was smoother than the first one.
I piled the spears near a deep hole that was located in front of a bunch of trees. The hole was in the shape of an arc, the trees blocked one of its sides and in the middle, there was a small “island”.
I dug this hole, and every time I went to take sticks from the dried tree, the hole was two meters deep and a meter wide. It was a lot easier to dig this huge hole out than the tunnel inside the cliff, it just showed how strong the dried stone was.
The harder part of this digging was to move the dirt out of the hole. I used a shovel made out of thick bark from a tree and a basket I made from branches and leaves.
Without further ado I started to create a trap for my second great plan, it was really simple. I would be the lure, as usual, and will be located in the middle of the small “island”.
The trap will have twigs and leaves covering the hole, that way when the monsters will try to approach me and they will fall onto the spears that will be there and all that I will need to do is to steal their life if they are still alive that is.
Two whole hours passed and I already placed all the spears inside the hole and filled it with twigs and leaves. I was standing in front of those trees that were bunched up together and there were berries spread everywhere.
At last, after a whole week, the berries grew back, with them I could lure weak monsters to myself again. I spread a nice amount of them in all directions and also I crushed some of them to make their smell go a little bit further away, after that I just waited for my prey to come.
I was a little concerned because it already started to get late, “I wait here only for an hour and if nothing comes I will go back to the tunnel, I don’t want to meet the panther again.” I waited almost for an hour and just as I wanted to leave, I could see a wild boar slowly approach me.
“Revenge!” My imaginary eyes sparkled with a red light, I still didn’t get rid of that annoying feeling that I got from the stupid boar last time.
I was really lucky, the chance for a monster to appear just in time was like a sign from above. The boar slowly came closer and closer to me, eating the few of the berries that were scattered on the ground. Then he stopped a few meters away from me, looked up, and smelled the air, “Did it notice?” I asked myself.
As I finished the question I picked a small stone from the ground and threw it into the boar, it hit him right on the head. The boar looked straight at me with an angry mug, made two deep snores, and started to sprint right at me while making the sounds of a pig.
*Whhheee!!! WHEEE!!!*
“Idiot.” I said as a creepy smile appeared on my imaginary face once more. The boar was almost a meter away from me and just after taking another step a *crack* sound came under his feet.
The sound of breaking branches and leaves crunching was heard, and with it, the floor that was under him crumbled and the boar fell down while continuing his annoying scream.
*WHEEEEE!!!*
“Success!” Just as the boar fell down, I changed my view to my roots that were located inside that hole. There I could see the boar impaled on the spears, it couldn’t move and made low cries of pain. It didn’t bother me at all, we live in a cruel world, it's eat or be eaten. I gave the boar another glance and inspected it.
***
-Wild Boar Lv3-
Health: 6/18
Mana: 3/4
Stamina: 4/9
***
“I guess it’s time for me to eat.” The sinister smirk on my imaginary face only grew bigger.