Chapter 122

Luke prodded the dead boar… thing… with his foot. It had a lot of bone spurs across its skull and shoulders, and instead of hooves on its front two legs, it had appendages that looked an awful lot like monkey feet. It was also a lot bigger than a regular wild pig, at least any of the ones he’d seen. It was easily taller than he was, and if it weighed less than three tons, he’d be surprised.

It had taken a single attack infused with [Power Strike]to the side of its face when he lowered its tusks to gore him to snap its neck and send fragments of teeth, bone, and brain out in a wide arc to his right. There were no less than six different trees with specks of white peppered into their bark. “Huh, that was easy.”

[You have slain BoneCharger Boar (lvl 20). 415 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 372 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 1.]
[Highest level kill: 20.]

He felt kind of bad about it, after the fact. Sure, the boar had been more than willing to take a swing at him, but only because he’d walked over and put himself in its line of sight. And then he’d just hauled off and one-shotted it. The XP gain wasn’t even that much.

“System, this says that I have only killed one of this type of monster, but I swear I’ve encountered one before.”

“You have also killed one bonespike boar, a related species with similar anatomy.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess that must have been it. Well, I suppose I best get to butchering it while it’s still fresh.”

Thanks to rank 4 [Butchering], that didn’t take long at all, and Luke got some choice cuts off the body. Well, as choice as a wild boar got. He doubted the meat would taste anywhere near as good as bacon off a fat farm pig, but it was better than leaving it to rot.

On the plus side, while he was doing his best to package up the meat without making a huge, bloody mess, plenty of other animals came by to investigate. Thanks to [XP Mask], they were no longer avoiding his massive XP presence, and a few of them were aggressive enough to fight him for scavenging rights. Of course, that started to get old quick…

* * *

[You have slain Hephelian Falcon (lvl 22). 505 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 471 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 1.]
[Highest level kill: 22.]

If the bird hadn’t tried to divebomb his head, he might have felt worse about killing it. It kind of reminded him of Red, except a lot more murder-y. Plus it was kind of on the scrawny side for a monster bird. Luke shrugged, waited for the explosion of feathers from where he’d decked it to finish falling to the ground, and kicked the body out of the way so he could get back to work.

* * *

[You have slain Camo Cougar (lvl 26). 712 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 521 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 1.]
[Highest level kill: 26.]

“Okay, what the fuck is a camo cougar?” Luke said after a nearly invisible cat tried to pounce on him from behind. Even with his perception as high as it was, he hadn’t seen or heard it coming, but the smell gave it away. He’d had to fight that one essentially blind, relying on his skills to react in time, but the cat hadn’t been able to take a hit, and once he’d tagged it once, it was easy to finish it off. “System, is this just a weird translation error?”

“I am not sure what you mean, Luke.”

“Well, like, I see the notifications in English, right? That’s not a language on Aros, and ‘camo’ is an abbreviation in my language. It’s just weird, is all.”

“I understand. It could perhaps best be translated as ‘large cat with the ability to become nearly perfectly invisible,’ if you were to take the name literally.”

Luke rolled his eyes and considered the corpse. “I wish you could relay messages to Zea for me. I bet there’s some part of this thing she’d want. Maybe the whole hide?”

“Apologies, but that is outside of my functionality. I can advise that the eyeballs are prized amongst alchemists, though you lack the equipment to properly remove and preserve them. The hide does not have any special properties.”

“The equipment and the knowledge,” Luke said, looking down at his knife and back to the cougar’s corpse. He could probably pick up a skill for that, but didn’t see a reason to bother since he couldn’t magic up the tools needed. Besides, they had enough money now. He didn’t even know if the coins they were currently using would be good for anything on the other side of the ocean.

* * *

[You have slain BlackRot Viper (lvl 17). 298 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 235 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 1.]
[Highest level kill: 17.]

“Why is it called blackrot viper? This sounds like something someone would try to poison me with.”

“The venom sacs are indeed harvested for use by poisoners and assassins,” System said.

“What does it do?”

“It turns the skin around the bite black, and then chunks of necrotized flesh start to fall off.”

Luke gave the dead snake a wary glance and stepped away. “Ew.”

* * *

As some point, he eventually gave up trying to butcher the boar and settled for just waiting until the next carnivore came by, looking for a free meal. The stink of blood was starting to get overpowering, and Luke had to reposition himself a hundred feet or so upwind to cut it down to tolerable levels.

A lot of small animals showed up, most of them between levels 3 and 7, which he generally just ignored as long as they didn’t try to take a bite out of him. The only time he moved in for the kill was if something above level 15 made an appearance, and even then, there were only half a dozen over the next hour or two.

After a few hours, he gave up on a moose coming by. It made sense, he supposed, that an herbivore would avoid a scavenger’s buffet, but then again, it wouldn’t surprise him the least to see one come by with a mouth full of sharp teeth and a taste for flesh, not on Aros.

He’d filled his food bag with various monster parts that System said were usually useful for enchanting, mostly things like teeth and claws, though he’d taken the time to skin that giant snake and start processing the leather. It was quick work to set up a drying rack for it now, and gave him something to do while he waited for the next victim to show up.

Hopefully, no one would mess with it over the next few days. He wasn’t even sure what he’d do with the hide, but it was a nice black color and he had 2 ranks in [Leatherworking] that hadn’t seen any action in a while. If it followed the same progression as [Butchering], it wasn’t even all that expensive to bump it up to rank 3 or 4 either.

Maybe a nice belt, or some boots? Luke would figure something out. Zea would probably say to just sell it instead of making her anything, and in her defense, if it didn’t have fur attached to it right now, she did not want it.

“Hmmm. Maybe a money purse?” That would be a good gift for her. “Oh! A case for her enchanting tools! One of those roll out ones.” Perfect.

It felt kind of weird just leaving a drying rack out in the middle of the woods, completely randomly placed and unattended, with no camp nearby. Hopefully none of the animals would get at it. Well, if it was gone or destroyed when he came back to check on it, he wasn’t out anything but some time.

“Okay, this has been a thing, but let’s see if we can’t find a moose now,” Luke said.

* * *

Finding a moose was easier said than done, especially considering they hadn’t even meant to find the first one. It had just stumbled across them one night and Luke kind of had to kill it since the crazy fucker had immediately charged them. That had been a good two or three hundred miles away in a very different kind of forest, and he was starting to suspect there just weren’t any around here. Even if he did find one, it might not be the kind Zea wanted.

“System, what was the type of moose we killed?”

“A razorprong moose,” System supplied.

“Right, that. Can you tell me if there are any in this forest? I mean, is this the right type of habitat for them?”

“They are commonly found in much denser woodland areas farther away from advanced civilization. It is rare to see one this close to Sicanti.”

“Damn,” Luke said. “I was hoping I was wrong about that. And you can’t point me in the right direction either.”

“My apologies. I cannot.”

“Okay, well, I guess we’ll see what [Survivalist] has to say about it.”

The answer to that was, unfortunately, not a lot. No convenient moose tracks jumped out at him, and as soon as Luke thought that, he had a sudden craving for ice cream. After two hours of exploring, the deaths of a few larger carnivorous monsters, and precisely one encounter with a skunk, which Luke promptly ran away from, he gave up.

There was just too much background noise to rely on his hearing, and as spacious as the trees were, he was still limited to about a thousand feet in any given direction. He supposed he could have theoretically gotten lucky and caught a whiff of moose musk, but that hadn’t happened. If there were any moose, they were nowhere near the locations he’d explored.

He was hoping that some of the other stuff he’d collected would be close enough to do what Zea wanted. Those snake fangs were sharp as fuck, practically needles at the tips, for example. That had to count for something. Then again, he only had two fangs, and she’d used over a dozen shards of antler in her initial construction.

He trudged back into town, somewhat disappointed despite his full bags. When he got back to the inn, he found Zea passed out on the bed, snoring softly, various tools and scraps of materials he could only guess at scattered across her work table. Luke was tempted to start cleaning up, but he didn’t want to risk anything blowing up if he handled it the wrong way or touched it to something else it wasn’t supposed to come in contact with.

Instead, he inspected the tools, trying to get a mental snapshot of their dimensions. Already, he was envisioning pockets and straps to hold them and wondering if he should add some extra space just in case she got more later.

He was definitely going to have to bump [Leatherworking]up another rank, and he thought he might need to find a supply shop of his own. For something this small and delicate, using thin strips of leather as thread wasn’t going to work. He’d need actual thread, and considering the kinds of weird materials they had available on Aros, he might find something that was strong enough that it was guaranteed to never break.

That was a job for tomorrow. Now, he settled down next to Zea and smiled at her when she cracked open her eyes. “Did you find my moose?” she mumbled.

“Sorry, there wasn’t one anywhere. I did get you a few other things. You want to look them over?”

“Maybe later,” she said, crawling over to lay her head on his leg.

“Later is good.”