Two figures, one with red hair and the other gold were stalking a blue deer. The blue deer seemingly oblivious to its impending demise was gnawing on the grass beneath its small figure calmly. If this was an animal sanctuary, Riley would be shaking uncontrolably at having the opportunity to see such a unnatural colour back on Earth.
However, after many reminders from Aurelius as she shrieked away the last three animals. She was sadly clamping one of her hands over her mouth to prevent any more animals from being scared away. As she stood behind some of the local flora that grew rampant along the untrodden paths, Aurelius confidently moved forward under Riley’s observation.
Each made by Aurelius was soundless deftly avoiding any branches and bones lying around him. With the deer still unaware, Aurelius successfully made it to the back of the deer having made no sounds during the entire proceess.
He held one of the floater claw in his right hand as he prepared to end the deer in one strike, he moved to the right of the deer to give Riley the full view of what he was doing. With claw in hand, he grabbed onto the neck of the deer with his left hand. As it felt the pressure the deer kept kicking the ground in an attempt to bolt off, but the immense pressure from Aurelius’s grip did not allow the deer any leeway to run.
Fear could be seen in its eyes as Aurelius calmly but surely brought the claw down onto its brain dead center cracks from the skull be heard before the claw smoothly slid into the brain. A muffled gasp could be heard from Riley as the deer gave out a dying whimper and promptly slumped to the floor after Aurelius withdrew both his hands, sloughing off the brain matter and blood from the claw as he did.
“Come over Riley, I will show you how to skin the deer. Obviously we would not be able to use the head anymore, but given how many I sense Jacob would need. The head would not matter anyways, after I showed you how to skin the deer. We will be gathering our kills back here and skin them two at a time.” Riley got up from where she hid shakily, mind still reeling slightly from the horrid sight. She was supposed to be making friends with animals with her Job but with things as they are, she might not even get to interact with one.
“Aurelius uhm, I know that we are supposed to gather a lot of animals for Jacob’s plan. Can I keep one alive during our time here? I really wanna progress with one of my skills.” Riley asked nervously due to the practiced strokes that Aurelius was displaying while skinning the deer. He replied not looking away from his task.
“If it is for a skill, that should be fine. But we would have to do it after we collected enough animals and their oil. I happen to know how to made a container out of their skin to store the oil, that would be what I will show you later after you have successfully befriended one of the local fauna here.”
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Riley happily nodded, but as her sight turned to the deer being skinned and looking skinless and still pulsating. Turned queasy at the sight, she gagged and luckily only vomitted air due to the lack of contents in her stomach.
Aurelius turned to look at her due to the sound not stopping the action of his hands, seeing that she was somewhat fine turned back to his task. Riley recovered from the empty vomits, she took a few deep breaths. ‘It’s not that bad, the sights of those floaters and their entrails outside of their body was much worse. I got to make it back to mummy and daddy’
She comforted herself and turned to look at the skinning process again, this time with as wide a view as she could get instead of hiding behind Aurelius. She kept her eyes focused and her nausea at bay while she observed the entire process.
Meanwhile, Jacob and Brian was definitely having the worst time of their life. Every animal they had spotted somehow knew they were there and bolted off, despite chasing after them with all their System given speed. Their prey all vanished into thin air after a short chase, they did not even see their shadows.
The duo were catching their breath under the heavy shade of a nearby tree, sitting with their backs to the rough bark.
“Young Jacob, is you or me? I’m pretty sure we did not even make any sounds while we were moving through the undergrowth. I don’t smell anything bad on me.” Jacob replied wearily, tired out and with no food in sight.
“Well Brian we both washed off at the river, so its neither of us unless the forest is sentient and decided to mark us with intruder scent. Something is up, there was no reason for the last deer to bolt. We were only getting into position and we moved far away before doing that too.”
“If it’s not us and not a smell, what could it be.”
“No point asking lets try one more time.” Jacob said out loud
Thus they repeated the song and dance one more time, however this time was different. They have finally found a silver-clawed bear, Jacob salivated at the thought of that delicious and wondrous bear meat.
Even if the bear was scared off, with a much slower speed than the deer was capable of. They would be able to keep it in their sights, as if on cue. The bear did a small roar and hurtled off in the direction away from both Jacob and Brian.
Jacob not willing to let the bear off, gathered his essence in his left arm and drew Flowing Water back. As he reached a throwing stance, he quickly brought Flowing Water forward with all the essence driven strength he could muster and let the sword go. The serene blue sword soared through the air sailing in a beautiful straight line, it met its target with an immense force that belied its serene form.
The bear was immediately stabbed through the rear and was buried hilt deep, not moving an inch further due to the lack of essence injected into it. Jacob had been experimenting with the sword while all his hunts ended in failure, the more essence injected into Flowing Water the sharper it gets.
Along with the benefits of being able to explode once it reached a certain threshold, Jacob was still trying to grasp that. However, adjusting its sharpness was easy enough. Smiling at his accomplishment, he quickly moved forward to retrieve his sword amidst the roars of anguish from the bear.
As it turned to meet the direction it received the sword from, Jacob ran to circle it. Mid stride Jacob felt the familiar tingle along the back of his neck, he quickly curled himself up to avoid whatever could be coming at him.
If he could see behind him, Jacob would see the now familiar claws of the floaters cutting through the area where he was. Jacob felt the attack moved past him and quickly righted himself and ran to his left. Now weaponless, with what was most definitely an ambush. He would have to dodge and weave between the trees.
“BRIAN AMBUSH DODGE!” Jacob shouted whatever words he could get out as he ran between two trees, he took a quick look behind and spotted 2 floaters. However their apparel was different, it was red and they had two horns on their head instead of one.
Jacob gulped, he was planning to fight upgraded kobolds. He definitely was not planning on fighting upgraded and intelligent floaters.