V1 - C29 | Hunting Practice

VOLUME 1

- CHAPTER 29 -

HUNTING PRACTICE

­

After leaving the training of the NPCs with Vute, the next thing I did in the morning was ask to participate in a hunting expedition. They were quite surprised, probably because they didn’t take me as the “hunter” type, even though my class IS an assassin. Vute kept telling me to give up on the idea, saying things like it being too dangerous and that my “calling” was to help from within the village.

Well… he didn’t stop me.

After a few minutes of powering my way through, I finally managed to enter a hunting raid, led by the couple Neduka and Nehen, the same muscular wolfkins that sliced that giant betemita back in the commemoration feast, and the ones who invited me to a hunting expedition back when everyone was cheering me up after I apologized, if I’m recalling it right.

Once Vute realized I wouldn’t change my mind, he even lent me one of his mounts and gave me its basic instructions. Now, I’m riding on one of those horse-sized birds, those who saved me back when Nate leaped on me with guns blazing after I almost killed Guni.

The most interesting thing I learned was that you don’t actually use the reins to “drive” the mount, for what they taught me, it’s mostly done in your legs and body weight. If you press your right leg, it goes to the right, the same thing with the left; if you want to go faster, you tap it with both heels or press both; and to stop you pull your body back. You can use the reins to reinforce a command, but even then, you only do it a bit and after the leg’s pressure, never pulling it too hard.

My entire life I thought the steering was solely made by moving the reins, but I guess it makes sense since back in history books and medieval movies the heavily armored calvary used both hands to wield weapons, and yet they were able to move the same way as in any horse. The same thing applies here, but instead of horses, it’s an oversized bird.

It’s like I said, a horse-sized brown-feathered bird, maybe even bigger really, its head has a beak like a giant eagle, but not quite. Eh, it’s weird to explain, just seeing it to really understand what they are. When they were in the game they didn’t look so weird, but now that they are in flesh and look so alive, it’s super distressful.

The first question I did was what the hell was this thing even, but Vute answered me with a simple: “a male birthrill,” completely missing the point. I mean, what is this creature? A horse mixed with a bird mixed with an insect? Why it was so big? and why did it have two pairs of legs and then a pair of wings?

But when I asked about that, Vute said that he wasn’t understanding the insect part and I left it at that.

And even though all of them have wings, the one I’m riding on can’t fly, apparently male birthrills are unable to after they reach adult age, so that’s a shame. As for what I was told, the females of this species are the huntresses of the relationship and are also the rarest to get, because they are very territorialists and often kill each other in the wild.

Again, if I’m not mistaken, those traits are somewhat resembling with insects. But who cares, it’s a fantasy game anyways, it probably doesn’t even have any connection with reality when it comes to mobs.

Then, Vute thoroughly spanked me for every minor detail he saw me doing wrong, like telling me to seat straight instead of leaning forward, relax my shoulders and arms, have my toes pointed upwards in the leather straps where you put your feet, and even have my thumbs faced up and wrists slightly in while holding the reins. I mean, what is this? A royal composure training on how to hold your birthrill with elegance?

Anyhow, after I passed the many questions and tests to check if I had learned it all, I was finally able to leave the village with a group of seven wolfkins and went south.

It took us about one hour to leave the dirt road and go inside the forest, and even then, we had to travel for another hour until they started searching for prey. Nehen, the spearwoman wolfkin, told me that since the heroes disappeared, the creatures migrated away to the south and the west. It was so worrisome that they had to split their hunting groups to gain more ground and had to increase their expeditions from every other day to a daily routine, as they had to bring fewer carcasses to not tire the mounts from the long travel.

It’s like something was scaring them, only the ones who had an important habitat around the village stayed, but the majority of those were hunted down on the first days or are simply too small to eat.

That made me remember of that dragon-tiger I encountered right after I left the dungeon, its spawn should be way over at the top of the northern mountains, but somehow it was trying to kill me way down in the forest. Was it also fleeing? Well, it certainly didn’t look like to be scared, so… maybe it itself was the reason why others were fleeing? Eh, I can’t tell.

Maybe that big-ass red light over the mountain has something to do with this… but I don’t recognize it as a skill. It’s probably a world event that came after the big update so there’s no telling what it does. All I can do is wait to see. If I’m lucky, it’s something I don’t need to worry about.

And with that thought, I had my divine vision turned on for the entire trip, both to keep my guard up and to search for that missing daughter of the leader. If she was nearby, her nametag would probably pop up. But unfortunately, there was nothing to see.

After almost two hours and a half, we finally encountered our prey: a group of wild boars. Differently from real-life boar, though, these are almost human height, even when in their fours. Not forgetting how fat and well-built they were, with tusks the size of sharpened clubs.

I let the first attack with the professionals. Neduka, the swordsman group’s co-leader, gladly unsheathed his katana and went forth like a madman to show how it was done. Apparently, their strategy is to… just be courageous. Assault them with speed and fury before they can mobilize, separate the flock and hunt the ones that stayed behind or lost their way.

It was… something to be amazed by.

I was pretty sure that if the wild boars just turned and attacked altogether, none of them would die. But the loud howls of the wolfkin were enough for them to think it wasn’t worth the risk, or weren’t confident enough that their kin would follow the counter-attack.

I mean, the boars were all level eighty, some even over ninety, they were basically at the same level as the wolfkins and had the bigger numbers. But even so, they were running. This is even more impressive if you account that levels aren’t as easy to read as they seem.

I don’t know how much NPCs are affected by it, but players have a pretty much linear growth rate, and a very slow one at that, but mobs have an exponential growth rate instead. Some species and types gain more attributes per level than us, sometimes their skills even evolve after reaching some level, while we are stuck with the same ones since we unlocked them.

It’s not official, but I have a basic rule guide to follow when I see levels. So, instead of seeing how different the levels between my character and the mob are, I instead place their level in a table I created. The first 30 levels are where anyone can kill it, independently of gear or power, all you need to do is smash buttons; from 30 to 60, you need some acceptable equipment or be about at the same level as it; from 60 to 80, you have to know its attack patterns; from 80 to 100, you need the right items or strategy; at 100, it’s generally required at least one more person with you; and every 10 levels over that, an additional person in the group is needed.

It's not a golden rule, you could be a level one and have no equipment and still be able to kill a level two hundred boss. All you need to do is not get hit, and maybe a few weeks without sleep. But to make the odds of winning higher, the more you’re prepared the better.

So, if you put these metrics to use, you’ll see that the War Ogres living back in that old dungeon were about level one-hundred and twenty, if I remember it right, for those you would need to know their basic attack patterns, use the right equipment or strategy, and a group of at least four people of that level to defeat it. While the dragon-tiger was somewhere over one hundred in levels, which theoretically you would need two people with the right items to kill it, but in the end, Willrus was able to fight it alone and without preparing his equipment for it, all he had to do was overpower it with a bigger level, wear a maxed out somewhat effective items, and a unique-rarity weapon.

Well, he didn’t kill it, it ran away, but you get my point.

So for these wild boars to be at level eighty, and the wolfkin being at the same range with no apparent overpowering equipment, they must already have good experience in hunting them and are using the right strategy to counter their reactions. They are, as I said before, professionals at doing this.

In a single assault, they had successfully slain nine gigantic wild boars. After about three hours, they only needed five minutes to complete their raid.

But for some reason, they felt bad that I walked all the way over here and didn’t do any hunting.

I was fine with it, I only wanted to take some notes, but when we were about to leave they pushed me to hunt one more boar, on my own, saying things like “Even if this expedition ended up bigger than usual, we still have the sheepkin to take care of!”, “Yes, yes. It would be so sad if a sheepkin child dies from hunger all because we didn’t have enough, we should always take more!”, and “If only a very strong hero could help the children in need…” or whatever.

The hell with this! If I knew this would happen, I would’ve faked chasing after some boars on the backline or something. Damn you muscular couple of wolfkins! Damn you!!

But luckily, a red-cloaked wolfkin, riding an oversized blueish wolf of our party, spotted a lone wild boar that got separated in the raid and I was dragged against my will to it. Once we arrived, a wild boar peacefully drinking at a shallow river came into sight, it was a little bit smaller than the adult ones, but it wasn’t quite a cub, more like a young adult of some sort. That, whatever, only reinforced their idea that I could hunt it alone.

It was a level sixty-three, so according to my table, I wouldn’t need the right equipment to kill it, but even so. It was the first time I was riding on a mount for real, and… it still fits in the “needing to know its basic patterns” category. I mean, wild boars are very simple, they stand their ground, charge to attack, or run away. Sometimes they can harden their skin, create barriers to protect themselves or close their target’s running escapes, teleport, heal, set a ring of fire around them, or any other protective or mobility abilities. But it depends on where they live, some are even considered mutations and could get you by surprise with an unusual skill.

But well… before I could think of any strategies or go further on what should I be careful about. Someone… slapped my birthrill and it lunged forth in an instant.

Without much time to think anymore, I gripped the reins and held on tightly to the saddle. The boar quickly realized the screech and the heavy steps of my mount charging at it, it hesitated for a second but it ultimately decided to run away, passing over the small river and disappearing on the other side of a hill.

Unfortunately, I was instinctively pressing both my legs to have a better balance and to not fall off, but the birthrill understood my fear as a command to charge even faster. It uncontrollably jumped over a few bushes on top of the hill and the wild boar came back to view, but instead of simply continuing to run away, the boar turned and stood its ground facing my charge with its big-ass tusks.

At that time, I realized that I was already completely fucked. So, why not embrace it?

I unsheathed one of my daggers mid-air and leaned my body forward to the left side, the birthrill’s balance shifted and once we reached the ground I almost fell with the bump, but with the rapid turn, I was able to evade the boar’s charge.

The birthrill didn’t need my command to understand it needed to turn towards the squealing boar, who had just hit its head on a tree and broken it from its base. The thin tree tumbled over towards the riverside and the boar turned to face me as if nothing had happened.

In less than a minute, the prey changed sides with the hunter. I tapped the mount’s sides with my feet for it to evade the next boar’s charges. While I had a hard time evading the trees on the way, my mind was questioning when would be a good time to throw my dagger. The boar was definitely pissed off, there was even smoke coming out of its nostrils, or better, there was smoke coming out everywhere from its body. Great, that’s some smoke skill that I can’t remember its effects, or better, I wasn’t focusing enough to remember as more and more problems piled up.

With all the noise, another group of curious wild boards came to help. And before I knew it, I was in front of a gang march.

I stirred the birthrill to walk in front of the new line of angry boars and eventually I got back into the small river from before. All I can remember is that in the corner of my eyes I saw the group of wolfkins waving their hands and asking something like “How did it go?” or “Where is the boar?”, but the squeals and stomping steps of the dozens of boars behind me engulfed any sound there could be.

I looked behind and saw the first fuming boar right at our backs, charging with a speed higher than the birthrill’s. I bumped the mount with my heels two times and pressed them to make it go faster and steered it to the side, but I instantly changed my mind once I saw it wouldn’t work, so I sat back and pulled the reins to stop in an attempt to make the boar’s charge pass right in front of us. But the speed didn’t go down, instead, the birthrill jumped forth just in the right time and the boar passed below us, splashing on the water of the river and continuing its charge toward the group of wolfkins.

My hips absorbed the trots until my mount stopped and turned away from that charging boar, and soon after I was facing sideways at the other dozens of boars coming from behind. Without much planning, I used the ability to shoot the dagger that was in my hands toward the river and put on all the energy I could with it. Before the boars could charge through the river it suddenly all exploded in ice, freezing the small water current and extending it towards them like a wall of blades made from thin air.

I heard some high-pitched cries of pain from the other side and I immediately began running away from it, already preoccupied that they might go around it, or to prepare in case the first boar came back and flanked me.

But once I made sense of what was happening behind me, the smaller boar was already laying on the ground bleeding from a wide cut on its side and the wolfkins were all spread around it, readying themselves for the coming group.

However, I’m not sure if it was because they sensed the bloodthirsty wolfkins or because they were scared of the ice ramp I made, but after that, the dozens of boars simply ran away and we didn’t see them anymore, so we left it at that.

After having time to breathe a little, I apologized for not being able to hunt it as they wanted to and for almost calling a horde upon them. But, as always, they brushed it aside and congratulated me, telling me something about pulling and separating beasts also being a form of hunting, and that it’s not necessary to kill it with your own hands for you to be considered a hunter.

Anyhow, they finally quieted down about me not doing anything and the hunting expedition was finally called completed.

I was most happy to hear that from Nehen. All I wanted was to go back to the village already, maybe even force myself to sleep, but as my life is unfortunate, they said we still needed to clean the corpses just enough to not leave trails of blood to the village, and to tie them with ropes so the mounts could drag them. And that… would be another hour.

Not only that, but the travel was even longer as the mounts were more tired and had more weight to pull than before.

Then, at the end of it all, I promised myself to never go on another hunting expedition again. It definitely wasn’t worth the experience.

­

­

­

­