Pillaging My Way Through Another World c5

Ren shredded the large tree branch and gave form to the bow before using alchemy to give that weapon that bendy ability.

With the weapon form done, he moulds several crystals to improve the structure and durability of the weapon. 

To make the weapon's string, he used alchemy on the leaves from the branch tree. To make it more durable, he weaved another mana crystal.

Once the weapon was finished, Ren did some basic tests. The most important one was to see how bendy the bow could be.

To his surprise, it worked quite well. It turns out she can even use it as a close-range weapon, using the bow to beat up her enemies.

The weapon is durable enough for such a thing.

With bow out of the way, the teen returned to making arrows.

As he was doing all of that, the girl in question looked at him with a perplexed look.

For all that ass behaviour, he is spending a lot of time to make a weapon for her.

After watching for a bit, Lilian noticed that they didn’t have a place to put items in.

Like a backpack or something.

With that in mind, the girl nerviously decided to get his attention.

“Ummm…”

“What is it?”

“Do you have more leather? I could make a backpack for us.” 

He looked around, realising that wrapping everything into fur rolls was not the best thing to do.

“Yeah, fair point, give me a second.”

Ren agreed with her. He quickly grabbed one of the three remaining leather pelts and began to turn it into leather for tailoring.

A couple of moments later, he got leather, and there was a familiar sound of level-up.

[Alchemy has Leveled Up!]

He dismissed the window and handed the leather to the waiting girl.

Once he was done with that, he returned to arrow-making.

~~~

“Done.”

He handed the bow and quiver over to her. 

“Practise your shooting. Once you get the hang of it, we will begin to look for targets.”

Lilian stiffly nodded as she took the arrows and the bow.

She wanted to complain about resting as her fingers hurt from all that work, but there was no time for that.

“Target a tree and shoot it.”

He pointed at any of the random trees.

The black-haired girl slowly nodded, took one of the arrows, and tried to shoot. She quickly realised that it was hard to pull!

“Umm…”

“What?”

“It's hard!” She complained to him.

“...”

He sighed, seeing that her hands were shaking from her repeated tries.

‘Of course… she has 1 stat in Strength.’

“In that case, we will have to cheat.” Ren immediately got an idea.

Leeching is a thing in MMORPG… so why not here?

“...Cheat?”

“Yes. To use your bow, you need to level up. To level up, you need to kill enemies.” 

Her eyes widened from the horror she was hearing.

“What? You do want to live. To live, you need to kill.” As he commented on her expression, he pulled out his short sword and gave it to her.

He then looked around and found a tree.

“I need you to get into that tree and wait as I summon opponents for you.”

“UMM!”

She started to panic when she heard that!

“Don’t worry, I will cripple them for you. All you will need to do is deliver the finishing blow.”

That didn’t make her worry any less!

“...Relax…sheesh, you want to live, then start behaving like you want to live.” He rolled his eyes at the girl’s constant worry.

“...okay…okay…”

She tried to take a deep breath.

But it doesn’t help much. Ren exhaled loudly, seeing her like that.

So he decided to… hug the girl.

She stiffed upon the contact. He stroked her back for a bit.

“Relax, I will make sure they can’t do anything to you while you can bully them to the death, okay?” 

Snort

“D-Do you know how bad that sounds?” The girl somewhat calmed down and was able to joke about such a comment.

“Precisely.” He smirked back at her as he pulled away and looked at her face.

“You are journeying with a villain. So you know that bullying is on the horizon.” 

“...You…” She shook her head. This guy was way too straightforward, and yes, it made sense… he didn’t hide the fact of what he would do…

“Me. Now, get into that tree. I will summon wolves. We need more fur.” He looked around and saw a good tree for her to camp in.

“Get into that one.” 

Lilian looked at where he looked.

“...I will try.”

She got out of his hands and walked to the tree. After looking around for a second, the girl tried her luck climbing the tree.

To her surprise, it was far easier than she had imagined!

“See, that’s your dexterity.” 

Ren commented as he saw her surprised expression.

“That status thingy?” The girl wondered what the numbers meant. Her dexterity was the highest parameter.

“Precisely, the higher the number, the stronger the parameter is.”

Ren did the same to show it, but only that he needed a few steps, and he was already next to her in a tree.

Lilian’s eyes couldn’t even follow him as he moved way too fast!

It was the same back then… far too traumatic to recall things properly…

“As you can see, if you are strong, no monster will try to do what those midgets did.”

She sharply nodded as her eyes hardened. She was getting ready to… kill mentally.

“Good, I like that look. It means you are accepting the truth of this place.”

After seeing her ready, he jumped down from the branch and walked a few steps away.

He then closed his eyes and got ready himself. With the club in hand, he used the skill.

There was a huge urge to howl like a dog or wolf, but instead… Ren whistled loudly. The sound spread through the forest.

Lilian looked around. She was nervous. What was this? And what could he call?

After the whistling was done, there was a couple of seconds of complete silence. The wind gently breezed through the clearing next to the water stream, and the sound of running water was next to them.

It was tranquil, but then…

Sounds of running and growls began to appear from a single direction.

Ren looked at the source, and the next second, he saw a pack of wolves rush into a clearing.

The teen quickly noticed that these wolves were bigger than the ones he slayed in the cave.

‘Does the skill work alongside my level?’

For a second, he wondered if that was the case, but he did not have the chance to ponder as the wolves began to rush towards him with the intention of turning him into their food.

“Yeah, how about no?”

The first wolf that lunged at him received a smack to its face, sending it flying into one of the trees. The smack was powerful enough to make the tree shake.

With one down, the other five didn’t waste time as they tried to circle Ren and attack him from blind spots.

But this is where the teen smirked and waited for the last second. It was so ‘bad’ that Lilian cried out loudly. She thought that he was toast, but what followed next was arcs of lightning that disabled three wolves that tried to attack him.

Leaving only two canines standing.

“Well, well, aren’t you a big one?” Ren finally noticed that the one leading the pack was a big black wolf with several scars on its face.

The Pillager teen already decided to kill this one and see what kind of skills it has!

Growl

The black wolf sensed Ren’s intentions and began to growl and bark angrily.

The one next to the black wolf was a dark grey one; it looked like the companion of the leader dog.

The pair of them began to circle the teen. But Ren wasn’t playing nicely, just like the wolves.

As the grey one was closing in from the back, he threw one of the knives into the front legs.

The lightning-empowered knife slammed into the knee, making the wolf bark in pain. This caused the black wolf to stop for a second and look at what had happened to its partner.

“Gotcha…” 

Next second, Ren moved at maximum speed and rammed one of the knives into the throat of the beast.

It was an instant kill as the canine collapsed before him.

As the leader dog was down, he turned around and walked towards the wounded grey wolf.

With the club in hand, he smacked on the beast’s head and knocked it out.

He did the same with other wolves, double-checking if they were down for the count.

“Well, they are ready for you, Lilian.” Ren looked at the specific tree where the girl was hiding.

“...”

Slowly, the girl left it. Her actions were shaky as she nearly stumbled on the branch and planted her face on the ground.

Thankfully, she controlled herself and walked over to him. She was holding the short bone sword in both hands and close to her chest.

“A-Are you okay?” she asked him with a worried tone. That three-way attack looked deadly to her, and she didn’t expect him to explode with lightning like that.

“Yeah, I am fine.” He replied casually to her before looking at the downed wolves.

“You should focus on your enemies instead; you have quite a lot of killing to do,” Ren commented with a small smirk before returning to the big black wolf.

He was excited to see what this puppy has! He has a certain hunch about this world.

He already saw weapon skills, magic skills, evil skills, and work-related skills.

And even inborn skills, like the ones with the goblins.

What about special inborn skills? Like tall? Handsome, or just special? Those should be around.

That is why he pointed his hand at the corpse and used his skill.

“Pillage.”

A dark purple aura surged from him and rushed towards the dead wolf. It consumed the beast, and a Windows screen appeared before him.

[You have pillaged Wolf (Lv 18); select a skill to take]

[Hale]

[Thrash]

[Slash]

[Pack Calling]

[Pack Leader]

‘Huh… Hale, is that a body skill?’

Ren dismissed ‘Thrash’ and ‘Slash’ because they looked like better versions of Pounce and Bite. What he was curious about was the ‘Hale’ one.

So, without wasting any more time and desire to figure out what it was, he checked it out.

[Hale:

Lv 7 

Type of Skill: Inborn

Description: Faster, stronger and more robust than most

Effect: Boost Strength, Constitution and Dexterity by 2 per Level Up {Passive}

            Boost HP by 20 per Level Up {Passive}

            Perfect Height and Weight {Passive}

            Increase attractiveness to opposite sex {Passive}

            Greater chance to pass down this Skill to descendants {Passive}

]

“So it is a genetic skill!” As Ren pressed yes, the dark purple aura rushed back to him. At that moment, he felt that a thousand needles poked him at once and began to gut him.

“AGHHH!!!!”

The pillager teen dropped on the ground and began to trash from pain. He felt like dying would be better right now than taking this pain.

After what looked like an eternity, the pain passed.

By that point, Lilian was by Ren’s side as she tried to think of something, not as if she had any idea what to do in this situation.

“A-Are you okay? What happened?” The girl asked him after seeing him trash like that on the ground.

“..Y-Yeah… I wasn’t expecting that.”

When Ren tried to stand up, he quickly realised that he was taller than he had remembered. He felt strange, and Lilian looked smaller than he could remember.

“...Y-You look taller.” The black-haired girl looked at him with a somewhat weird look on her face. She realised that he was taller, and there was something about him.

She is starting to feel that even if he is an ass about things, she can let it slide.

“New skill. You should return to your prey. We need you to level up.”

He reminded her about the knocked-out and wounded puppies in the area.

“Oh, right!” For some reason, she is more excited than she should be…