Kyle carefully moved through the wilderness.
He knew a lot more about it after his days with the hunters, but he still felt nervous.
This time, he was alone.
‘Just remember what you were taught. Just traverse the forest like the others. It can’t be that hard!’ Kyle told himself in his mind.
For a couple of minutes, he didn’t sense any other beast.
But then, he felt some subtle rustling from a bush and stopped moving.
‘Listen to your instincts! They have been pretty accurate so far,’ Kyle thought as he tried to identify the threat of the thing in the bush.
The rustling became more pronounced and louder.
It was almost like this thing didn’t care who or what heard it.
In general, that was a sign that this thing was powerful.
‘And yet, I don’t feel any threat coming from it,’ Kyle thought.
He watched the bush for a while, and after some seconds, the thing showed itself.
‘Oh my god, it’s just a regular ass hedgehog,’ Kyle thought with a roll of his eyes. ‘Why do these things always have to be so loud?’
Kyle continued traversing the forest for a couple of minutes before he heard something heavy moving through the forest.
‘Feels dangerous but familiar,’ he thought.
He climbed a tree and looked at the thing.
‘Oh, it’s one of these guys!’
It was a big worm with a huge sphere for a head.
‘Wonder if that’s the same one,’ Kyle thought, remembering the time he had broken the long bone spear of one of them.
In a way, these things were dangerous, but they were also extremely slow.
Kyle thought about collecting a bone spear, but he quickly shook his head.
‘No! Last time, Samson was watching the surroundings. If the sounds of battle attract stronger beasts, you’re done for!’
He ignored the worm and continued.
A couple of minutes later, Kyle noticed something.
‘Lancel said I should avoid big gatherings of leaves, right?’ he thought as he saw the ground covered in leaves.
‘Wonder what that’s all about. I might not be able to fight whatever is here, but I’m good at running away.’
Kyle searched for a stone, climbed a distant tree, and then…
He threw the stone at the leaves.
The stone landed on the leaves, and nothing happened.
But then, half a second later, all the leaves lifted off the ground.
BANG!
Red teeth came out of the leaves, and they slammed together.
From his tree, Kyle could see that the leaves were the inside of a maw.
He could also see part of a long body coming out of a thin hole.
Kyle watched nervously as the leafy maw crushed the stone for a couple of seconds.
Then, the maw opened again, and the teeth retracted.
In the end, everything returned to normal.
‘Crazy!’ Kyle thought. ‘Is that a beast or a plant? I genuinely have no idea! It could be both!’
As he watched the pile of leaves, Kyle felt fear.
‘Brah, the time I arrived, I had no idea that something like this lived here! I would have stepped on that pile of leaves without a care in the world!’
‘Fantasy land is scary!’
‘Seriously, I was probably lucky to run into the Narvonian Worm. If I didn’t kill that thing, Samson probably wouldn’t have found me, and I would have stepped into something like that!’
‘Why the fuck did Magic Bitch dump me in the middle of the woods?!’
‘Me and all my homies hate Magic Bitch!’
After calming down for a bit, Kyle realized that there was actually something to his previous thoughts.
‘Wait, why did she actually do that? I mean, it would make no sense to directly kill your new employee, right?’
‘Is it just because I chose the Predator’s Being?’
Kyle shook his head.
‘Nah. Sure, I grow stronger by eating beasts, but that place was still like an hour away from Theodor’s Rest. I would’ve just gotten lost forever. Would’ve been much smarter to put me in the vicinity of town.’
‘So, why did she do it?’
Kyle rubbed his head before grabbing something from his toolbelt.
It was the drill he had found on the hill he was dumped on.
Samson gave the drill back after Kyle received his gear.
‘A stony hill.’
‘No beasts near the hill.’
‘A drill.’
‘Huh, it’s almost like she wanted to tell me to dig into the hill.’
Kyle blinked a couple of times.
‘Should I?’
‘I mean, the hill is relatively close to my route back. At most, it adds five minutes.’
Kyle shrugged.
‘Sure, why not?’
‘What’s the worst that could happen?’
Then, Kyle continued on his route.
He saw a couple of beasts and animals, but there were no real threats.
‘Oh shit!’ he thought as he quickly hid behind a tree.
Some rustling came from the bushes in front of him, and Kyle’s instincts immediately told him what the origin was.
Spitters!
He had heard and seen Spitters often enough to recognize the noise they made.
‘I’m relatively close to the hill. This might even be the same pack that besieged me.’
A short moment later, Kyle saw the Spitters coming out of the bush.
One of them was carrying the cadaver of a doe while the other one looked around warily.
Luckily, since they already had food, they weren’t searching for any prey and walked past Kyle’s tree without investigating.
‘That Spitter is probably bringing food for its pups. If I followed them, I could- No! Bad Kyle! Stop that!’
Kyle released a breath after the Spitters had left.
‘So many opportunities,’ he thought. ‘If I were stronger, I could have gotten another bone spear, and I could have also followed the wolves to their pups. That’s some good money. Hell, I might have even been able to take on that weird leaf thing.’
Kyle felt like money was rushing past him, but he couldn’t grasp any of it due to his stubby shitty little arms.
He continued on his way, and a couple of minutes later, he arrived.
‘That’s the hill, alright,’ he thought as he looked at the stony hill.
‘Well, let’s get digging, shall we?’