I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep so I checked our status once more.
***
*Self Awareness Status*
-Visavil Bush Lv4-
Experience: 16/90
Rarity: Uncommon
Health: 6/14
Mana: 23/47
Stamina: 8/12
Health regen: -0.35/week (-2) + (0.4)
Mana regen: 0.9/hour (-3)
Stamina regen: 0.6/hour (-1.4) + (0.33)
Status: Intelligent(Unique), Withering(Strong), Symbiosis
***
-Young Wild Wolf Lv10-
Experience: 85/100
Health: 15/40
Mana: 5/5
Stamina: 18/18
Health regen: 2/day(-2)
Mana regen: 0.6/hour (-0.6)
Stamina regen: 1.5/hour (-1.5)
Status: Weakened(Strong), Symbiosis
***
In the end, nothing changed by much, but on the other hand, the wolf stopped being sick and now his health regeneration is even better than before. Just in a few more days, he will be as good as new.
On the other hand I am barely healing and I didn’t even know when my withering effect would decrease.
“Hmm soon I am going to be the weaker link, interesting though will the wolf even wake up when he will be healed?” I asked as I closed my perspective and entered my mind, seeing there the wolf's soul still sleeping and not wanting to wake up.
“Nope, still sleeping, I still should be careful. I don't know if he will be angry when he wakes up. If he will wake up, that is, eh? He got one max mana point. Was this because of me?” I asked in surprise but didn’t really care for that too much as I continued to look around his status.
“He almost leveled up I am so jealous of the *Consume* skill which lets you level up if you just fill your belly with junk, but by the looks of it, the boar meat gave him a lot more experience than other foods. I remember it talking about something that makes monsters grow as they eat stronger food. Let me check it out again.” I inspected the *Consume* skill once more to check if something changed but no it stayed the same.
***
*Consume* - Monster skill of the general monster's family. Every food that the user consumes will grant him experience points, the stronger the food is the stronger the effect, as in meat from a strong monster, strong adventure or even rare plants shall grant more experience points. One of the major reasons why monsters' combat abilities grow much faster than any other races and why monsters are seen as one of the biggest threats by those opposing races.
***
“Hmm nope, it's still the same as well whatever.” I thought of some possibilities of what would happen if I got my hands on some legendary carcasses of a monster, or something like the Devil's Cat's body, wouldn’t the wolf level up immediately?
“Should I go and look for it?” A small chill passed my body, as this thought crossed my mind, as even now I was somewhat afraid of the devil cat even though he was already dead.
“Na its body most likely was already eaten by the monsters of the night.” I shook my head gently as I stood up and up to the furnace that still gave out a warm feeling.
“Let's see how the jerky is doing.” I opened the furnace after many hours of cooking the meat. A puff of hot air blew over my face, I took a step back a little bit afraid that I would get burned.
Even though the furnace was really basic and had many small holes and cracks it still managed to hold some of the temperature inside it.
“Looks and smells good.” I took a stick and stabbed it into one of the pieces of meat and brought it to the wolf's face, before giving it a bite.
“Hard and almost burned on the outside but still tasty though it's even soft inside…” I murmured as I understood that I failed.
“Even though the outside is almost completely dry and even burned a little bit, the inside is just cooked, were the ambers too strong? Was the meat too thick? Or did I miss something?” I asked myself as I didn’t know what I did wrong.
“*Sigh* It's alright the first time does not always go as planned, it's good that these are still edible.” I looked for a place where to store the meat and just chose to leave it in the furnace for now.
Now I thought of what to do, the wolf was slowly getting better and I had a lot of meat that would last for a while before rotting away. Now I had some time to just chill and work on the hideout and equipment.
“Good, I'm going to get some Mungo fruits and more of these magical paralyzing flowers, having a few spears with their poison wouldn’t be a disadvantage for me.” I smiled and started to walk to the hideout entrance.
But as I entered the tunnels I smelled something weird with the wolf's strong smell of sense.
“Something is here… Shit don’t tell me it got lured by the smell of the meat.” I walked slowly to the temporary cooler that I made while using *Stealth* and sending *Detection* skill in all directions. But as I got to the tunnel with the meat I saw nobody there, but most of the meat was gone.
“Mother fucker!” I shouted angrily as I looked around, some pieces of meat that were left had teeth marks on them.
“Canine…” I said as they looked like teeth marks in the shape of smaller dogs, I immediately lowered my body and used the *Tracking* skill at the floor.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
“Three monsters, walking on two feet and looking like dogs… Kobolds… Fuck did the bastards followed me home and called for its friends?” I asked in panic as I followed the footprints outside, carefully checking my surroundings to see if any more of them were around, but to my greater luck, there was nobody outside.
“Godmmait I knew I shouldn’t have left the meat there, but otherwise it would have rotten after a few more days…” I stood there thinking about what to do.
“Should I follow the footprints as they look quite fresh…” I looked at the footprints that went into the forest but hesitated to take another step after them
“Fighting a group of monsters is nothing like fighting one on one. There always can be unknown dangers, so I need to prepare well. Who knows what will happen if they surround me or even more of them will join in the fight…” I shook my head gently and returned back into the hideout, I moved the meat deeper into the hideout and placed it at the end of the cave.
“I guess I will start creating a new cold room, and I think I should create a door to the hideout entrance too.” I thought to myself but now that I know that there are Kobolds here that can hold weapons for them, opening a door would be easy.
“I need a lock… How the hell will I make that… And what will be the key…” I started to think but in the end, chose not to think about it too much and just started to dig into the cave.
Every time I touched the wall with the wolf paws the rocks easily crumbled, “Still weird how the wolf is better in using the *Dig* skill more than me.” I murmured as I continued to move the rocks that fell to the side.
I even stood up on my hide legs to get to higher points and even released some of my roots so that even a person would be able to walk in there. I wasn’t sure why I made the ceiling so high, but I lied to myself that it would be for vertical storage space.
After digging for a few hours I finished half of the room and even made a few square holes as a makeshift shelf in the walls for items and meat.
I brushed all the dust and sand with my branches but no matter how much I tried, some dust still left no matter what I did.
“Still dusty I need to add some leaves or something so that the food won’t be dirty.” I noted to myself to pick up more of the big leaves from trees as I needed them a lot more than I thought. I continued to pull out stones and rocks from the room until I found something interesting in one of them.
“This one has a weird hue to it…” I said as I inspected it.
***
*Copper Ore* - Mineral deposits that have a majority of copper metal in them. Can be smelted and purified, great for creating utilities and everyday items, but too soft of a metal to create weapons with.
***
“I found copper… I entered the copper age! Wait, was there even a copper age…?” I asked myself confused… “I remember that there was a bronze age and Iron age…Meh, who cares! Now I have metals I can create a knife and other stuff from it!” I shouted happily not knowing how hard it would be for me to even make the most basic fork.
I started to dig through the other rocks hoping to find more ores but I found just a few more chunks of copper ores and nothing more.
“Nine nice chunks of ore, interesting how much copper would I be able to get from this? Would I be able to make some pots and a normal butchering knife?” I imagined to myself all the things that I could have made.
I placed the meat on the shelves of the walls and left the cold half-finished room, it was already getting closer to evening as I worked for a few hours digging. But I still choose to go out and grab a few leaves, sticks, and other stuff.
I sent a *Detection* skill as I left the hideout as I was still cautious against the Kobolds, “I am sure that these bastards will come back here soon… Should I make some traps for them?” I thought that it was a good idea but right now I didn’t have the time for this, so I left to gather as many resources as I could.
While doing so I checked my traps and found something weird, “Hmm all the bait from the traps is gone, but only one of the traps was triggered but still it was empty…” I did find this kinda weird but I still didn’t place it too much on my mind, I just rearmed the trap and placed new bait on all of them.
“Did a bird get the bait and flew away? Hmm, maybe I should build some bird traps too?” I thought to myself as I saw a few interesting birds here and there but most of them weren’t dangerous so I didn’t place a lot of my mind on them, and I wasn’t really sure how to even create a trap for them, so I chose not to do so.
“Thank god that there aren’t many flying monsters like that Giga Bat otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to leave my hideout at all.” I said as I went to collect the other resources.
As I finished doing so it was already very close to night time so I hurried back, if someone would have seen me from the side they would see a weird giggling monstrosity riding a wolf as many long branches, huge leaves, Gravis stones fruits, and mushrooms were sticking from me as I was preparing to craft a lot of things.
“I need to recreate my awesome bag, why haven’t I done that before?” I asked but of course, I already knew the answer to that. I was too goddamn busy from running around trying not to die, to trying to save the wolf, and only now did I have some breathing time.
I started to enter the tunnel of my hideout when I suddenly stopped in my tracks in shock, “Those bastards returned!” I shouted angrily in my mind, I knew that this would happen but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.
I dropped all of my stuff in one of the tunnels and followed the new footprints and smell that slowly led me to my hideout, “No no no!” I shouted as I crawled through the narrow tunnel jumping into my hideout.
There I saw a Kobold sitting in front of my furnace that was completely smashed to pieces and happily eating the meat that I cooked.
“You fucking dare!” I shouted with the *Soul Link* and used the *Adrenaline Rush* skill with it for some reason I started to feel something hot filling my body, and at the same time the *Killing Intent* skill got released without me even noticing.
*”Killing Intent” leveled up to Lv3*
The poor Kobold jumped and dropped the piece of meat that was in his mouth as he saw me bolting to him. He tried to grab the spear that was near him on the floor but he was just one step too late, as the teeth of the wolf pierced his neck.
*Splash!* Blood splashed at the ground as I started to shake the Kobold left and right.
*Yeelppp!* *Yelp!* *Yelp…* And the Kobold whimpered in pain as our teeth dug deeper and deeper into his neck, those whimpers were becoming quieter and quieter.
It tried to struggle, it tried to cry for help but in the end, its struggles stopped as it shrugged for one last time and stopped moving.
*Crunch!* I felt something break in my mouth as a cool feeling appeared in my mind mixing with the hot trying its best to calm me down.
I opened our mouth and the Kobold fell to the floor completely unmoving. Only small jitters were coming from his body, once in a while.
“It's dead…” I spoke as I looked confused at the Kobold that was in front of me, I didn’t even imagine that I would do something like this before.
Tasting blood with the wolf's mouth as I bite to steal some health and to kill for no reason had a different feeling to it, it was primal and scary. The sudden wave of uncontrollable anger I felt before wasn’t something that should have happened.
“I didn’t even use *Life Steal* on the fellow…” I looked at him and then at the broken furnace, even though it did destroy my stuff and stole my food I felt somewhat wrong for killing it.
“I feel weird…” I murmured as I thought about what I should do with this Kobold's body.
“Leaving it here isn’t an option, and eating it isn’t something I want to do…” I said I wasn’t sure why meat was meat but for some reason, I just didn’t want to eat this thing. Was it because it was somewhat intelligent or was it because it was a canine? I didn’t know and didn’t care.
I tied the corpse with my roots and started to pull it out of the hideout through the tunnel. As I got outside I walked some distance from the entrance to the cave and dropped it there in the forest.
“The monster of the night will eat you anyway, so there is no point in burial…” I turned around and was still confused about what was going on. Sadly I didn’t notice the few gazes that came from the deeper parts of the forest, that way I would have been at least prepared for what was coming.
I came back to the tunnel and picked up all the stuff that I left there. Taking it with me to the hideout, filling my stockpiles with many crafting items for the future.
I tried to fix the furnace but in the end, I just gave up as it continued to collapse into itself. I took the meat with a few big leaves and placed them in the cold room that I built.
“Now at least the meat won’t get dirty from the stone dust.” I said as I went back to the hideout still holding a piece of meat that I was going to eat today.
I created a fire in the campfire and ate the failed jerky as I looked into the flames, for some reason I really felt bumped down. I wasn’t sure if it was because the Kobolds stole my stuff twice or because I killed one of them.
“*Sigh* With a sigh I went to sleep.” Trying not to think about it too much.
*Experience reached the desired quantity “Young Wild Wolf” leveled up to Lv11*