Chương 35: On the hunt again

I half expect Gigi to stay in the city, to have no interest in living out in the woods. But she seems to be extremely excited about learning to survive in the wilderness, and about camping in general.

"It was nice to sleep in a bed again, but I want to get out there and go camping." So we head out of Elmspire the next morning, after a hearty breakfast of eggs and bread. Once we get out from the circle of planted trees around the giant tree, the forest becomes more primal, and the smells of the world start painting a picture in my brain. It's like I can see where animals have gone before, where people and creatures have passed. The more recently they were there, the more intensely I can sense them.

Rabbits and foxes and voles and deer and elves and other creatures that seem like a mixture of human and some other animal, all of them crossing over each other as we move. It takes some time to figure the different scents out and to pull them apart so that I can understand what's going on. I think it will continue to take some time to really be able to pay attention to everything my nose is telling me.

We move through the woods for a few hours, not really talking, just putting some distance between us and the giant tree of Elmspire. We do see some of animals that I smell, but we don't stop to kill any of them. It takes a few hours before we spot the first monsters on our lists. Brown Bear. Basic Uncommon beast, level 5. HP: 75/75. Killing it is nothing, barely worth talking about. But once it's dead, we start to work to dress the bear. I use my new tools to skin it, then pull out the claws and fangs.

I strip off some meat, and realize that we need to make camp in order to start a fire and actually do something with the rest of the bear's body. I've never had bear meat before. First time for everything. We start to set up camp in a small clearing nearby, digging out a fire pit and gathering some wood to build one. I could use magic to light the fire, but instead I take out the flint and steel and use that on some kindling. It takes a few seconds for the spark to catch, but soon I have a fire starting to build.

I put strips of meat on some of the skewers from Glacrow and start to lay them out over the fire. While I do that, Gigi and El go and collect more wood. I make sure that the meat is over the smoke of the fire and check my notifications. Cooking 1, survival 2, and tracking 13. I'm pretty sure the increase in tracking comes from the enhanced sense of smell and my general ability to tell what animals have gone where recently.

I'm impressed that I gained two levels of survival just for setting up camp, but I suppose it makes sense with my class. I'm a Tracker; I should be good at survival. I probably have a buff to learning that skill, making it easier for me to qualify as ranger. Bear meat is like a mixture of beef and pork, though slightly gamey. It's not bad, if I'm honest. And smoking the meat over the fire turns the meat into a sort of jerky.

"Do we want to call it a day, or should we keep hunting?" I ask. The sun isn't going to set for another few hours yet, but we have a camp set up. So maybe we could just call it a day and relax, or range around and find some more bears.

"Let's keep this as our base camp, but go out and hunt a bit more," El says.

"I'm guessing we can take out the bears around here as easily as we took out that first one. We could even split up and see if we can get the bear pelts before dark." I have no trouble getting four more bear pelts. For one thing, it seems like each bear's hide is actually worth two bear pelts. For another, a single arrow from me is enough to kill one of these bears.

I end up back in camp before the other two, possibly because of my increased speed, and I make more bear jerky while I wait, smoking the meat and drying it out while I clean the pelts as well as I can and put them into my storage bag. Gigi makes it back before dark, El just shortly afterwards.

"I think we're much higher level than we're supposed to be," El says as she comes into camp, dragging a few bear pelts behind her. My animal harvesting increased to 8, so I assume hers must be getting up there too. I wonder if she thought to grab the claws while she was at it. I don't know what I'm going to do with sixty bear claws, but I'm sure I'll find something. Maybe another bracer. Maybe a weapon of some kind with bear claws down the side of it. I don't know yet.

"What do you mean?" Gigi asks. She sits with a whetstone sharpening her sword. I wonder if it will increase the damage that she deals.

"Bears at level five? And that's one of our quests?" El shakes her head.

"That's nothing. And did you see the quests for other monsters? Those are things that are worth getting when we're starting at level one, not at level twenty four."

"But it's good that those things exist," I say.

"We want to be sure that we can start at level one, should the worst happen. But I agree; we're probably higher level than was expected. I hit level ten the first time through the tutorial, and that was mostly luck. I'd be surprised if anyone else who came through hit as high a level as we did." This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

"Do you think we're still higher level, though?" Gigi asks.

"I mean, they've had three days here, same as we had the three days in the tutorial. And they didn't die. So they were able to keep going from, let's say, level ten without having to regain any levels."

"I still get the sense that we're higher level than most," El says. I'm inclined to agree.

"Glacrow thought I was a hunter. That was one of the first classes I qualified for, in the first run through the tutorial. I think that the tutorial had a lot more fighting than we can reasonably expect here, unless we really go looking for it."

"So you think we're high level, compared to the other outworlders?" Gigi asks.

"I guess the only way we'll know for sure is when we go back to town an meet some new people."

"I'm kind of holding off on that one until we know if we're going to get killed by the quests we have," El says.

"Two hundred and fifty experience is almost enough to go from level one to three, and I'd like a super easy quest like 'go make a friend' to get that." I hadn't realized she was thinking about things so morbidly, or so cleverly. She's right; completing the quest now does us no good. Two hundred and fifty experience is nothing when you need thirty thousand to get to the next level. But when you're starting over, it's a lot. It would be a good start. Then again, so would the quests that we're doing out here.

"Let's complete as many quests as we can and try not to die," I say.

"Then we'll go back and see how much higher level we are than everyone else. Maybe we'll see that we have a long way to go, maybe we'll be more powerful. Hard to say."

"Let's operate under the assumption that we did better than most," El says.

"Makes me feel better about missing the end of the first tutorial period."

"Okay then," I say with a chuckle.

"What do we want to do now, though? The sun is going down; it'll be full dark soon. Do we want to keep going or should we bed down until morning?"

"I'm not tired," Gigi says.

"And I can see in the dark. Can't you guys? So then let's keep going. If nothing else, let's get some shadow wolves. We've killed a lot of those."

"I want to find the things that are level twenty or higher," El says.

"I'm guessing those are farther afield. So yeah, let's keep going." We pack up the camp, putting out the fire and splitting up the bear jerky so that we each have a fair amount. We're not going to eat everything we kill, but it's a good practice to be in to at least try to use the meat. I find that I'm hungry enough to stuff myself full of as much meat as I can, somehow feeling like it's better to gorge now and then not eat for a day or so. Maybe that's a wolf thing. Maybe it's just a survival thing. I don't know.

Once the sun is down, finding shadow wolves is pretty easy. We run into a trail that leads us to a pack of a dozen of them within about an hour of trying. I check one to make sure that they haven't gotten any worse than before. Shadow Wolf. Basic rare monster, level 8. HP 400/400. Good to see they haven't gotten any stronger. I use Sniper Shot to take out the first wolf. It deals 469 damage, taking the wolf out in a single blow.

I then use Rapid Shot and take out a second one before the other ten even know we're there. Then all three of us shoot at the group as they come towards us, wiping out half of them before they get to melee range. I use Bleeding Strike, dealing 92 damage with the initial hit, giving me a good start for fighting the shadow wolf. It bites me, but only deals 3 damage to my Shell.

I'm not really worried about fighting two of these wolves at the same time; I can pretty much ignore one of them and work on the other without much fear of taking any real damage. They're no match for my 95 defense. As the fight goes on, I notice something strange about my stamina. It is regenerating, but it's regenerating faster than I expected. I'm pretty sure it's regenerating at two stamina per second instead of one. Is that from my wolf blood? Do I just have an endless font of stamina now?

Two per second is a significant amount. I mean, obviously it's twice as good as one per second. But it's also enough that I can actually keep using my abilities without fear of running out. One minute is enough for a hundred and twenty stamina. Most fights don't last much longer than a minute, and I have nothing that uses that much stamina. Not yet. But now I know that I can afford more things that cost me stamina, which gives me goals of things to get.

There has to be another way to get abilities other than finding scrolls. I can probably buy them in stores as well. Which means I'll need money. Maybe that's what I'll do with the bear claws; I'll sell them. Or I'll make them into something and then sell that. That might be an even better source of money. And knowing that I can buy spells and abilities will give me something actually worthwhile to spend my money on. A night in an inn was nice enough. It was pleasant to sleep on a bed.

But at the same time, it felt weirdly constricting. Like I'd rather be staying out in the wilderness, under a tarp or in a tree or something like that than in a bed. Beds are comfortable, but restricting. There was an itch in the center of my back all night long, and a very large part of me did not like the experience. I wonder if that's the wolf blood. I end up taking 22 damage, total, from fighting the shadow wolves.

And after stripping them of their pelts, giving us 12 pelts to bring back for that quest, I see that my bow has increased to 26 and my animal harvesting to 9. I'm guessing animal harvesting is going to keep going up while doing these quests, which is good. I like having more skills. How close am I to the skill quest now? I have 191. So I just need nine more levels. Getting enough levels of survival will almost be enough to complete that quest.

And while it would be great to complete that quest after dying and resetting to level 1, it wouldn't be bad to get it while trying to hit level twenty five, either. 7500 is a lot of experience. We gained 1600 experience each for the shadow wolves. At this point, it's starting to feel like trying to level up with such paltry enemies is going to be a grind. I'm with El; I'd rather fight something more powerful.