The miles passed by as he kept up his walk. He felt more exhausted now than he had in his entire life. His body being ready for something to happen pumping him full of adrenaline for such an extended period had worn him down. He finally started to doubt that instinct telling him something was going to happen, and slowly made an effort to relax his awareness. That feeling of unease was still so intense it was almost a physical weight on him, but he tried his best to ignore it. The total lack of sound other than his own, the absence of living creatures, it was all freaking him out. Of course, he tried to drown it out with any thoughts he could which turned into a spiral wondering what he would do if there were no other people in this world. Eventually he would run out of supplies especially if he couldn’t find any edible plants or wildlife. Somehow his train of thought led to him thinking about a nice juicy burger, and while he was distracted by the enticing allure of a cheeseburger it finally happened. A beast similar to what pictures he had seen of a hyena came barreling out of the woods at breakneck speed. As he prepared to dodge or attack, some internal instinct told him to dive out of the way. Not stopping to question it he threw himself to the side, just in time as it turns out, a second beast flew through the air right where he had been standing.

Some small part of his brain was cheering that there was indeed wildlife, and also that he finally had that dangerous adventure every little boy secretly wants. The rest of him though was concerned. He saw with his eyes that the beasts were moving, and yet there was no sound coming from them at all. Filing away that piece of information he decided to take the initiative. Stepping forward into a quick strike his staff slammed into the top of 1 of the beasts he decided just to call hyena's head. He was forced to step back as the other hyena was starting to lunge for him. He dropped back, spun the staff to his left bringing the tip down to plant against the ground catching the second hyena lunging from the right in the chest with the bottom of the staff. The jarring impact elicited the first noise he had heard from these hyenas; it was a deep throaty yowl that reminded him of a neighborhood stray, only much louder. The damage inflicted was enough to introduce some caution to the predators' movements. It was clear they were trying to flank him, and not wanting that to happen Wyatt took the initiative leaping forward, bringing every ounce of strength and speed he had to an overhand strike right on to the top of one of the hyena’s heads. There was a moment of resistance before his staff continued through the skull of the creature accompanied by the sickening sound of crunching bone.

Even knowing there was another dangerous hyena looking to eviscerate him he had to fight the sudden urge to vomit. The feeling of that resistance dropping as he heard the sound of bone crunching would likely stay with him for the rest of his life. Luckily the sudden violence seemed to briefly stun the other predator who didn’t manage to take advantage of Wyatt’s nausea. He wasn’t sure how smart these creatures were, but when he looked at the beast, he was pretty certain he saw the fear fading to be replaced by pure rage. Whether that is what he saw or not a moment later the second beast came at him relentlessly striking out and trying to inflict wounds on him. His staff served him well to keep the beast at bay, but when he overcommitted to a strike, he was forced to release his staff or be raked in the side by its claws. He quickly drew his knife, and the focus that he had been able to hold onto started to break down in fear as he no longer felt like he had the advantage. He had no time to worry as the creature lunged at him jumping an impressive height into the air as it did so and seeing it airborne hurtling towards him allowed him to focus once again. He threw himself straight back as he saw no other way that he would avoid serious injury. As he was falling, he fully extended his arm jabbing the knife into the underbelly of the beast. The knife was ripped from his hand, but not before tearing through a section of the hyena’s guts.

Wyatt hadn’t escaped unscathed, his movement throwing himself backward had landed his head against an exposed root, and his shoulder had a deep scratch from the wild flailing of the hyena's leg as it flew past. Wyatt moved towards his staff and was able to recover it without being attacked. The hyena seemed to be watching him with hatred filled eyes but hadn’t moved to attack him again yet. A moment later its legs gave out, and it collapsed to the ground letting out a yowl. Wyatt wasn’t taking any chances, and brought his staff down on its head, and just like before after the initial impact it crunched through the bone ending the beast’s misery.

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Whether it was the disgusting feeling of the staff crunching bone, the sound, or just massive amounts of adrenaline rushing through his system he fell to his knees and vomited. Having read more than his fair share of books about adventures to new worlds he never imagined killing something would be so, for lack of a better word, much. Staring at the smashed skull of the hyena he had to fight down another wave of nausea. Before he did anything else he pulled out a piece of cloth and wiped away the blood in the scratch. He then used a little water to flush it out before using a little alcohol to try and disinfect it. Then taking a bandage from his kit he used some tape to secure it to his shoulder. The wound cleaned and bandaged; he sat back to think about what happened next. After a quick glance at the hyenas, he knew that he should harvest the meat from these beasts. It probably wouldn’t be great considering they were clearly predators, but who knew when he would have a chance to resupply. He had as one of his jobs cleaned fish, but he had never skinned an animal. Knowing it was possible he might have to do so on this side of the gate he had watched tons of videos to prepare, and he knew more or less what to do he just didn’t have the muscle memory for it.

Staring at the hyena he pulled his knife out, and set about making incisions like he had seen online. His knife had clearly cut into either the bowels or stomach when he stabbed it, and he decided he wasn’t going to eat any meat from this one. The smell emanating from the hyena’s insides when he sliced it open fully decided the situation for him. He was curious based on all the fiction books he had read about spirit animals and so he started looking for anything that didn’t belong to see if it had some type of core. At one point he got out the saw toothed knife he brought to help with this process. If there were cores in animals here that would be something he would want to know, and obviously would also want to collect them as hopefully a form of currency. He was disappointed when he found organs very similar to what he had seen on the videos he had watched for how to dress, skin, and butcher an animal, but nothing extra that could have been a core. Having gone through the process the second one was much easier, and in what felt like about an hour or so he had the organs removed, and had the animal skinned. He had assumed it was going to be a lot faster based on the videos he had watched, but then again, he had never done this, and he was being extra cautious. He hadn’t cut away any meat to use yet. He looked it over, deciding what parts would be worth eating. After he cut away some of the meat, and wrapped what he was going to keep he looked over the skin and decided with the rather poor job he did skinning the hyena it was not truly worth keeping.

Wyatt walked about a mile away from the kill site before clearing an area, and building a small fire. He was hungry, and this meat wouldn’t last long without refrigeration. He also was oddly excited about eating something he had personally killed which wasn’t something he had the opportunity to do before. He got out his little camp pan. In reality it was a stainless steel pan with the handle removed to make it smaller. He had a handle he could hook on to get it out of the fire, but it easily came off. He had a small container of lard, and decided to use it like butter. To lubricate the pan. Wyatt had brought some salt, but he didn’t have much and he didn’t really want to waste it so he cooked the meat with just a little lard, and when he believed it was done pulled it from the fire. He wasn’t sure what it should taste like, but it reminded him of the one time he ate goat, but a bit tougher than he remembered that being. He ate everything he had cooked, and then decided to cook up the rest of the meat he had selected. It would be ok for a little while after he cooked it, and given he had no way of storing or cooling it he didn’t want to waste what he had harvested. After it was all cooked he realized it was still daytime, and although the sun was clearly on the decline it was still fairly high in the sky. He leaned against a tree as he decided to take a little rest where he wasn’t cooking, fighting, or dressing an animal. He only meant to rest for a moment, but quickly found himself slipping into sleep.