Dark was closing in and Ulric wasn't in any kind of condition to deal with the corpse of the beast. He was exhausted, now that the battle-high had lifted. His body was bruised, he'd broken both his spear and knife, he was naked again, and it was time to go lay down next to a fire. Now that the mana sickness had lifted, he'd maybe get to sleep.

He hadn't been struck once by the monster but just the crush of its head as it threw him down and the weight of it falling on him had been sufficient to shave of a fifth of his total health. If he'd been conscious when it had fallen on his legs they might have broken, but, out cold, they'd merely been bruised. The rest of him was similarly mistreated. Bruised but nothing broken. A not so small miracle.

Ulric smiled as he thought he might have to reconsider his atheism. He'd met a god and been reincarnated. He'd seen evidence of the touch of immortal Watchers on the biology of the world. To say nothing of the majesty of this rolling plateau of Trees bigger than sky scrapers.

Shuffling out of the developing rainbow thicket, Ulric sought out his water hole for one last drink before bed. Stopping to piss confirmed that, at some point, he'd definitely voided his bladder. He rinsed his legs and returned to the shelter. The fire was down to a barely lit bed of coals. Using a stick to prod the fire to life he stacked sticks on it and retired to his leaf bed. He was awake long enough to see a small tongue of flame lick up the sticks before he slipped into a deep dreamless sleep.

Bird calls woke Ulric from slumber, their closeness and assertive noise being both familiar and foreign. The pitches sounded similar to birds he'd heard on his hikes and outside his apartment. The patterns were wholly new. What was even more incredible was how close they were. Ulric had heard the birds periodically on his trek to this place from where he'd talked to the Impossible. But they'd always been distant, far too distant to much more than know that birds existed in this world. Now though they were clearly singing from around his shelter.

Rising, Ulric noted, to his dismay, that the fire had gone all the way out over-night. He might be able to rouse it, with some fine tinder and a lot of effort. He also noted that the bruising had worsened and he was sporting a weird collage of purple discolorations across his left side and both legs. Pain was immediate but not intense. A nice background noise to accompany the birds.

Ulric took a small, six centimeter glassresin knife with him and exited the teepee. It was predawn. He'd slept probably ten hours, at least. He was assuming, baselessly, the days were about as long as on Earth. Without a clock, absent established circadian rhythms, or any substantial evidence to go on Ulric was mostly just bullshitting. That there was light enough to see was without doubt. Already his eyes had adjusted to bring the gloom to higher clarity. He lifted his gaze to the treetops high above and saw the flitting sources of singing. They were fast. It was too dark to be sure but he had the impression of a bevy of colors, matching the flowers of the clearing in diversity. The air definitely held a chill and his skin responded by dimpling against it.

Thankful for his cold weather predilection Ulric went out to the body of the beast, only taking a brief detour to gain and lose water. It was impressive as hell, even dead. The claws. The jaws. The dense fur. The sheer size and obvious strength. Truly it had been a lord of the forest, unchallenged in its violent glory. It was also probably related to the lack of animal sign. If he had to guess, the local wild life was probably pretty good at staying away from this monster. It still had that pungent musk to its odor. Death had done little to dull that stink. How the hell had it snuck up on him smelling like that? He briefly wondered. By staying down wind. Duh. Stupid Ulric, do better. An alpha predator would know how to do its business.

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Now that he was back here, looking at the monster in the cool morning twilight he was stunned again at the improbability of his still being alive. A million to one odds. At least. That's how likely it would be to ever kill anything like this again. If it hadn't been for the fact that he'd had exactly zero say in the matter or any viable options to run he'd have never contested a beast like this. It was suicide with extra, mostly painful, steps.

Well. He was here. Nothing for it but to sack up and cut the bastard that had tried, and so, so, very nearly succeeded, to kill him into usable bits. There was not a little irony in this situation and it brought a smile to his face. Kneeling down by the back end of the creature, Ulric went through the procedures for cleaning game. Start at the anus, circle with sharp knife, run up the abdomen keeping the knife parallel to the belly skin so as to prevent the tip from opening the gut by accident. Pull the guts out into a pile, separating the organs somewhat so they could be reviewed for signs of illness or parasites. Getting to the heart and lungs necessitated essentially climbing into the fucking thing and dragging them out of its body cavity. For once, his nudity was a blessing, there was no way to do this and not get yourself covered in gore.

As much as the glassresin had proved to be a shitty weapon in battle, far too brittle, it proved an outstanding skinning knife. The incredible sharpness of the edge held up even against the hide of this creature which he doubted he could have cut with a steel knife. It took the better part of five hours, he estimated, gutting, skinning, and processing the animal. The bones he could do nothing with. They might as well be carved of titanite. Cutting through the tendons and ligaments had likewise proven a fool's game. It could be done, but the sheer effort was not worth the result. As a result he focused on removing the meat from the bones and not on harvesting quarters, the way you'd do with a deer or game on Earth. More like butchering a rhino.

At last, the morning light having brightened into full day, he stood over a colossal hide onto which had been lain some six hundred kilograms of meat. To the side, lie the remains. Bones hard as any metal he'd ever worked with in a previous life. But surprisingly light. When he'd gone to pick up a femur, sure it would be nearly twenty kilos, he'd been shocked at how little mass it had. Contrary to his initial guess the animal hadn't massed much more than a ton and quarter. The muscle mass had, by far, outstripped its skeleton. In humans, the skeleton was right around one sixth the mass of the body. About a fifth was fat. Another twenty five percent was muscle. The rest was blood, organs, and various fluids. This animal, if you could even call something like this an animal, was probably only a tenth bone mass.

But hell if that bone wasn't magical in nature. Nothing organic could hold up to the stresses that thing had put on its legs during that charge and pivot. He'd seen the drag marks from its claws and feet in the soil. It had arrested a motion easily surpassing ten meters a second with a mass of at least a ton in a space of about five to seven meters digging down nearly a half meter of soil. Bones should have broken under those conditions. Ligaments should have popped like twine. And yet, it had not only done it without damage, it had been ready to go again, immediately. The shiver that passed through him then had nothing to do with the air temperature.

Ulric now had the task of transporting this monstrosity back to his shelter. Or was it even worth it to do that? Ulric's fingers snapped as he mulled over simply carrying or rebuilding his shelter here. It wasn't that far a walk to reach water. He didn't feel the urgency to have a rock wall at his back he had before. Especially not now that he knew things like this monster existed. It would have gone through his shelter like it wasn't there. Some sticks and leaves wouldn't count as toothpicks. If nowhere was safe, anywhere was fine. Right?

There was the presence of birds to consider. That they had come so much closer indicated that the Forest Lord's passing had not gone unnoticed by the denizens of the wood. There would be other predators. There were always other predators. They would soon overcome their hesitation and enter the former lord's territory. Especially as prey began to traffic it with more regularity. Perhaps he'd been wrong about the forest being a green desert. Maybe the creature he'd killed had been so horrifying it had kept its territory effective cleared. Gods. What if there were more of them? What if a merely three meter long monstrosity was just waiting for the big one to slip up?

"Fucking hell, I did not need that." Ulric announced. All the more reason to get his act together and get the fuck out of this forest.