Jacob collapsed on the ground, finally letting out the breath he was holding in. Feeling the pain still flaring across his back as he did. He was expecting the last two floaters to hit him in the back while he was slowly killing the last floater, he was even ready to swing out with Flowing Water at a moments notice.
He took a look at Brian, he was walking towards Jacob with a neutral look on his face. Jacob still breathing hard did not respond to the smile, instead he focused on getting his breath under control.
“Young Jacob, it would seems you have a little bit of bloodlust inside. Wasn’t that display abit too much? You could have just sliced through the enemy and be done with it.” After Brian finished saying his piece, he sat down beside Jacob taking a breather too while he patiently waited for Jacob to recover.
It did not take Jacob long after awhile, the pain in his back slowly receded. With his breathing no longer laboured, Jacob finally found relief and promptly replied Brian as soon as he was able.
“I admit, that was bloodthirsty. But I do not regret what I did, they were after my life. I just wanted to deal out the pain I was feeling and that red floater was part of the ambush. It got the short end of the stick, but in the end it wanted me dead. So I merely prolonged its suffering a little.” Brian did not immediately reply. Instead he took his time to think and reply in the end he said.
“That's fair, its currently us against them. Just remember not to lose yourself in the pain and in turn lose the fight. When we have the time, I should really teach you some hand to hand fighting techniques. I saw you running for the sword, but with the speed you possessed. If you really wanted to, you would be able to handle those floaters even without your sword. You even had those claws in that makeshift pouch of yours but forgot to use them”
“I would happily take up your offer, but the next part of the tutorial uh...would make it rather difficult. I’ll explain what happens after the week is through when we meet up with Aurelius and Riley.” Jacob flushed a little as he remembered the cut off claws hanging inside the pouch right over his chest, while Brian nodded and his face turned thoughtful upon Jacob finishing his words. Jacob took the time to recover enough to start moving. Brian followed along when Jacob stood up Flowing Water in hand.
“Lets finish up hunting for some animals before we go back and meet up with the others, knowing how strong Aurelius is. Even if he was teaching Riley, we should expect a sizable amount of animals later. Even after being ambushed we have to show up with at least something.”
“No objections here, I’m not expecting any further ambush from the floaters and if there were more. I think both of us would be able to run away handily, so lets split up after we moved further from this area. The carnivores would be here soon for the bear meat.”
“Sounds good, we’ll change the symbol we make too.”
The duo sped off from the battlefield, leaving all the corpses untouched this time around. Two of the floaters appeared from above the trees floating down to the corpses of their comrades. They looked towards the direction of the departing duo as their eyes seethed with rage even the red floater with Jacob’s blood still on its claws.
“This is what you get when you play with your food, now four of our kindreds have joined the ancestors. If we could still hear them in this Evok-forsaken land, they would be complaining about their unjust death.” The red floater that was distracting the bear, spat out the words towards it remaining comrade.
“I will remember this lesson Roshur. Our time is limited, we can get our revenge next time.” After those fighting words, the two burned the remains of their comrade. After the bodies were fully turned to ash, another screen appeared out of thin air and the duo discussed their new plan.
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Jacob arrived with Brian at their meeting spot with Riley and Aurelius. He was dragging along a make-shift platform with Brian, their spoils piled up on the platform. As they reached the meeting spot, they smelt the rich smell of a roasting pig. The tantalizing smell nearly made the duo of Jacob and Brian drop the black sash they were pulling.
They continued pulling on the platform only to be intercepted by a wild Riley.
“Hiya guys! What took you all so long, also either Aurelius has some superb cooking skills or these meat are out of this world or both! I wish the food back at home was this tasty without any seasonings, the meat here taste like they are pre-made with a bunch of flavours.”
“Hi Riley.” Brian said with some enthusiasm glad to finally see a ray of sunshine after the amount of gore he experienced.
“Uh...Hi Riley just let us set the sash down first. How many animals did you all collect?” Jacob asked Riley
“We only brought back a bear, deer and a six tusked boar. Oh don’t worry about it, Aurelius guessed at what you need and collected about 4 litres worth of oil. He killed quite a lot of bears, we even saw a beautiful lake. I wanted to swim in it but he reminded me that dangerous monsters could be lurking inside. So I immediately stopped moving towards it and backed off several steps.”
Jacob’s thoughts churned as he processed the important parts of what Riley said, he completely forgot to tell the others what he was going for. He did not know how Aurelius did what he did. But he was very happy about it.
“That's great, lets have some food first. Then I can ask for some help from him to collect the fats and oil from the ones Brian and I had collected too.”
“Alright, waaait did something happen to you guys? Both of you are covered in yellow. Like the blood of those floaters.” Riley asked and looked inquisitively at both Jacob and Brian. She reached her hand out to touch some of the blood still undried on Jacob’s face.
“Ooooh its still wet, definitely feels like the blood of those floaters.”
“Yea, we were ambushed by them again. Let us sit down and we’ll tell the both of you what happened.”
Riley’s shoulder slumped and moved back to the campfire with a spit located above it. Jacob and Brian followed along eager to eat some food. Jacob eager to taste the meat of the boar and compare it to that of the deer and bear. While, Brian was just happy to finally have food after 4 days of starvation even with his enhanced endurance. The thoughts of food was ever present on his mind.
His face soured a little as that brought up some recent memories.
“Jacob! Brian! Welcome back. Help yourself to some food, I cut off some slices of the boar with the floater claws. Its placed on those hastily made wooden plates.” Aurelius warmly welcomed them back and pointed towards a stump with 2 plateful of food radiating with a sweet fragrance.
Jacob and Brian returned the greeting and immediately dug into the food. After the first bite, Jacob let out a small squeal. Not only was the boar meat delightful, the plate had deer and bear meat too. It was a mixed plate and it tasted absolutely sinful. Jacob initially thought that it was just a hastily cut boar meat, but the mix of deer and bear was a much welcome surprise. To his side, Brian was letting out some obscene moans after each bite of the meats on his plate.
“Glad the both of you are enjoying the food, I found some mushrooms that were personally tested by me. So some of the bites you guys felt that were softer, were from the mushrooms. Riley is right that the meat itself already felt flavour packed. When I first bit into the deer, I felt that I was back home again.” Aurelius commented as he watched Jacob and Brian enjoy the food he made.
Brian and Jacob did not reply as they were still wolfing down every bits and morsel from the plate. Aurelius and Riley watched with interest as the duo annihilated the food present on the plate.
“Seconds?” Aurelius asked as he was cutting off meat from the boar.
“Yes!” All three responded to Aurelius' question.
“That would be fourth for you already, Riley.” A small smile appeared on Aurelius was he prepared more plates for the three. Riley face turned sheepish from the light admonishment but that did not stop here from waiting for her plate with a wide smile. After the trio of Jacob, Brian and Riley was stuffed to the brim, Jacob spoke in between burps.
“So there were some upgraded floaters, they wore red instead of black. Had two horns instead of one sticking out from their head. One of them also had a special skill. I dodged its rather slow strike, but the strike still connected, and I was left with a rather nasty cut from its claw.” Jacob continued and gave a brief explanation of what happened. Amidst the oohs and aahs of Riley, Aurelius replied after Jacob finished his explanation.
“The greatest threat is still around, but we cannot do anything for now. Given that they can float, they might even be right above us now waiting for their moment to strike. We can only be more cautious about a potential ambush from them, but hunting them would bear no meaning given their abilities.”
“I agree with young Aurelius. We have zero need to try and hunt them and even if we could, it would just be a waste of time as none of us have tracking skills yet.”
“Actually, I have an important thing to tell you guys. Please listen properly, after the week is over. We will be sent back to Earth, well, Earth after it has been mixed with the planets of other races. So, there would be floaters and who knows what else in a new Super Earth, we would also be teleported to different areas once again. We might even be dropped into hostile territory with no other humans in sight.”
With Jacobs’ abrupt announcement, it left Riley and Brian quiet, stumped about the future.. Aurelius seemed unfazed by this news merely chucking the corpse of the boar away joining the bear and deer skeleton not far away from the campfire. A ruckus of bones cut through the cackling of wood and fire while the group was left in thought.