For the first time in at least a week I was fully dressed and equipped, and for the first time since I had arrived on the island that meant actually clothed and carrying a significant number of weapons and supplies. On my left hip, the almost-longsword sat at an angle fit for drawing. On my back, crossing from left to right, was an iron spear with a wooden shaft, tied onto me using cordage. On my right hip was an axe, and in the small of my back was the merchant's dagger. Under my tunic I wore the same thin metal armor as I usually did, and the pockets of said tunic were stuffed with preserved meat for later consumption. This is almost what I'm used to, I thought as I wished I had a rifle of some kind.

Nobody watched me leave the cabin or checked to see if I was doing my job. Instead, they simply trusted me to go out and do it for some reason, which I found laughable. As I walked along the path towards the bridge, I couldn't help but think about the two humans I had seen the last time I was on it. I now recognized that they were women, which was obvious to me from the hairstyles, clothing, and slight chest protrusions they had. I couldn't really remember what they had said but, judging by the village's other reactions to things, they most likely suspected I was a ngahp or some other wildlife. Furthermore, I still wasn't sure what a ngahp was because I hadn't yet found the time to ask anyone. The local fauna wasn't exactly dangerous by my standards, so it was entirely possible that they were simply exaggerating their security practices.

At the creek I bent down and sipped water from my hand, watching as my hydration rose in my heads-up display. It's strange that the body gives me enough feedback that I don't really need it, I thought. As the water flowed into my mouth I could feel a certain coolness spread through me and my mouth itself grew less dry, indicating that my hydration was improving. Still, having an objective measure of the need to drink was good as it let me know when to stop without having to overfill myself. So long as I made sure I didn't exert myself enough to sweat I was able to fill up once per day and maintain decent physical function.

I found the meadow again, and then the exact spot where I had speared my captive. Though it wouldn't have been visible from more than a few paces away, when near the exact spot the discoloration in the soil from the blood was still obvious to my eye. The trail I had left while dragging the man was more faded than before, but knowing the general direction I had proceeded in helped me in finding it. It's fortunate that nobody else came across this before I left, I thought. I didn't know exactly how many hunters the village employed but considering their food stores it must have been at least ten, perhaps more. If Ahpoyt didn't venture out past the distance he was comfortable operating in, and there are an average of ten humans hunting around here at any time... I tried to estimate the likelihood that I would have been caught in my head. It was low, but still too high for my liking.

Finally, I found the tree where I had laid, and mutilated, the body of Ahpoyt. I knew it was the right tree because of the stains around it, tinging the trunk and ground a dull rust color, and not because the body was still there. Damn, I sighed to myself, of course something ran off with it. That was what I was intending. I cursed my own effectiveness for a moment before looking around for the other parts I had strewn around. About ten meters away from the tree was a collection of bones that came from a forearm and hand, though the larger ones were cracked apart and clearly had the marrow drained from them. If I could have found the skull at least, that would have been ideal, I thought.

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I spent a half-hour looking for signs of where the body might have been brought by whatever animal consumed it, unsuccessfully. There were simply too many animal trails around the area for me to pinpoint which of them, if any, was the one belonging to the corpse thief. Back at the tree, I sat down and took out a piece of preserved meat, eating it slowly while looking at the sky. It doesn't rain that much here, I thought, it's not like what I'm used to at all. As I was eating I heard some scratching sounds from behind me, then the sound of small feet scampering. Without looking my right hand snapped back and caught something furry which started to squeal and thrash.

Looking at the creature I wasn't sure exactly what it was or what niche it filled in the local ecology. Upon first observation it appeared to be a rat with a body that was around fifteen centimeters long, but it had a stub for a tail and its teeth were anything but rat-like. Instead of over-sized incisors for crewing through soft material, the rat-thing's mouth looked more like a smaller version of a shark's mouth with jagged ripping teeth in many layers and a tongue that itself held small spikes for ripping flesh. Obligate carnivore probably, I reasoned, maybe it smelled the meat. An idea popped into my head suddenly, and I glanced at the scrap of preserved meat in my left hand. This might just work, I thought.

I used up another ten minutes trying to get the creature to calm down. Small animals had a very powerful fear response so calming them was tricky, but I found that the best possible way to do so was to arrange an environment where they could attempt escape and be foiled repeatedly. This rapidly conditioned them to think of the presence of their captor as inescapable, which interrupted the escape reflex. I thought back to a mission where I had captured dozens of rats of a more familiar variety, gathered them inside a container, then used them to destroy the grain stores of a warbreed settlement. That mission certainly required creativity, I chuckled as my body responded to my amusement. On the other hand, the rat I was trying to train was more stubborn than I had thought it would be, and my desired outcome was anything but creative.

Eventually, the rat became so exhausted that it was reduced to panting from its core temperature overheating. I reached down and touched it, testing to see if it saw me as a threat, and it didn't react. Good, I thought, now eat some of this. I put down a tiny piece of the preserved meat in front of the animal, and after a moment's hesitation, it tore into the food with reckless abandon. Spittle and pieces of the meat flew from its jaws as it rushed to clumsily consume the fuel I had given it. After it finished, as expected, it did not attempt to leave. It was either smart enough to understand my immediate intentions or hungry enough that it still couldn't flee. I gave it more food, and it ate more, and I waited.

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As it filled itself the rat stopped eating so quickly, then it stopped eating altogether. Seeing this, I took out a much larger piece of meat and put it in front of the animal. It smelled it, sized it up, then grabbed it with its mouth. Good, I thought as I moved my legs aside and gave the animal some space. Seeing the opportunity, it dashed off to the west, and I dashed after it. The rat was quick, but my sheer size compared to it meant that I had no trouble keeping up, and its clicks and squeaks easily let my trained ears know where it was going.

I had made a gamble that the rat was some kind of scavenger based on my knowledge of the local wildlife. Almost nothing besides the unusually large insects was both big enough to be meaningful prey for such a creature and also small enough to be able to be killed by it, especially considering the healing ability of the local wildlife. It was possible that the rat was an insectivore, but if it was, I reasoned that it wouldn't have been attracted to the meat when insects were plentiful. As we headed west I saw five more rats coming out to join the first rat from the northwest, and each of them began eating part of the first rat's meat. It was alone when it snuck up on me, I thought, more than one rat from the same direction increases the likelihood that the den is over there.

Not content to wait until the rats left in case they decided not to return to their den, I headed northwest and kept an eye out for anything resembling a rodent nest. After some more time I was about to give up, having clearly gone far enough that I must have passed the nest, but a squeak to the south attracted my attention. I went towards it, then saw a small bundle of dead sticks and leaves from between the trees, looking about a meter in diameter at most. That's unfortunately small, I judged, I was hoping the nest would be more expansive and have some bones or other leavings in it. Still, I approached anyway in case there was some clue, only stopping when I heard snapping sounds below me. What the- my thoughts were interrupted as I was suddenly falling, then surrounded by screeching and being bitten.

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I scrambled out of the hole that had appeared in the ground below me and began ripping rats off of myself, tearing out chunks of my skin as I did so due to their powerful jaws and jagged teeth. At first their numbers appeared large, but then I realized that the rats I was tearing off and throwing to the ground were not fleeing, but climbing back up my body to bite me once more. Aggression like this is probably common since they can heal, I thought as I ripped a rat off of my left arm and crushed it in my fist, spewing its organs out of its orifices. By the time I finished picking them all off of me and killing them, I wasn't sure just how much of the blood on the ground was mine.

I took a breather twenty or so meters away from the hole, letting my purple bar recover from the depletion it had suffered. I couldn't wrap my head around the way my body's stamina worked. At times I could run for hours without issue, but small things like what I had just experienced could deplete it rapidly. It recovered quite rapidly from depletion though, so there was an upside. Seeing the sun low in the sky, I walked back over to the hole to take a look inside before it got too dark to investigate.

As I had begun to suspect when I fell through the ground, the ball of sticks and leaves was only the entrance to the nest. The majority of it was underground, made up of multiple chambers and tunnels which had collapsed under my weight when I walked over them. I had only fallen around a meter, but I was nearly two meters from the entrance which meant that the nest's volume was very large. But why would they make it so delicate? I wondered, That ground wouldn't support more than twenty kilos at most. If a deer happened to walk by the entire den would collapse. As I inhaled, I noticed that my body began to react much like when I had eaten non-digestible food. After suppressing my body's attempts to empty my stomach, I began paying more attention to my nose. I had gotten into the habit of ignoring smells in most cases, not only because the village commonly smelled unpleasant but also because the information was rarely useful due to how low resolution it was. High amounts of gasses produced by rotting organic material, I thought as I sniffed again, they don't need to build it durably because other animals instinctively avoid it. It might even be so strong as to suffocate them if they enter. I was sure that the smell had been present before I collapsed the den as well, I had simply been ignoring it and the reactions it provoked.

Inside the nest I could see more rats scampering about, but unlike the attackers they were avoiding me. A few had emerged from the main entrance and were smelling their crushed and pulped brethren, with one chewing on what I could only assume was the flesh of one of the corpses. Not picky, I thought as I looked back into the den and examined the interior. I could see bones in some parts, so I drew my spear and began using the blunt end to collapse more of the tunnels and reveal more of the interior. More rats fled, giving me the opportunity to step down inside the den and get a better look. The bones looked non-human for the most part, but some were from much larger animals judging by their size. The central shaft of the den was big enough to accommodate a human torso by my estimation, so I kept digging.

The pile of bones was large, a rough circle that looked to be nearly two meters in radius and of unknown depth. It was held together by layers of decomposing matter, both flesh and plant, some of which still clung to the bones themselves. The whole pile was positioned with the main shaft almost directly in the center, probably to allow the smell of rot to more easily escape and repel intruders. A few tunnels ran through the pile since it was stable enough to not fall apart, which were likely used by the rats for depositing more bones from their scavenged findings. I dug through the bones, occasionally stopping to remove and crush errant rats that attacked me, looking for anything human. If there isn't anything down here I've wasted an entire day, I grumbled to nobody in particular.

The last rays of sunlight began fading and all I could find were the skulls and bones of cervid-like creatures, small lizards, other rats, and miscellaneous bones which didn't fit anything I could recognize. Then, as though the bones had heard my frustration, I saw a flash of yellow-gold. Digging frantically, I found more hair, then finally what it was attached to. I climbed out of the rat den, covered in filth and smelling of death, and examined my prize. The head of a human, missing its eyes, nose, and tongue but still having most of its rotting skin attached, stared back at me with a slack jaw. In the darkness I could see that the rats had dug inside and emptied out the braincase, which explained why it felt very light in my hand. Well then, Ahpoyt, I thought as I put it down on the grass, let's see if I can't find a bit more of you to bring back.