61 – Smarter Than the Average Bear

Jonny scarfed down his breakfast, and before he had even finished swallowing, he was already up and stretching his arms out. He ran through a routine of ordinary body stretching, then a light mana workout, doing a series of different movements Igrette had taught him. Each one came with a corresponding internal mana technique, and together, they were supposed to use every single part of his body.

It also looked cool. Or it had when Igrette did it. Even with one arm, she was smooth and graceful, and with her body empowered by her mana, every movement was extraordinarily fast. It was like superpowered tai chi. Jonny was still clumsy, and getting accustomed to fine control of his internal mana, but he was getting better by the day.

At some point during his routine, the hawks emerged from the mana well. Charles saw Jonny warming up and knew exactly what it meant, and started flapping his wings excitedly while his parents watched with something similar to amusement. Once Charles had grown up enough to take care of himself, and Jonny and Igrette proved that they were no threat to him, the older cloud hawks had warmed up to them, and they had now become downright pleasant neighbors. They did their own thing most of the time, but they often brought back meat that they clearly thought was tasty for Igrette and Jonny to enjoy. This meat tended to be liver meat, which Jonny personally did not enjoy much, but he appreciated the thought.

He did not see them much, since they spent most of their days out and about doing… whatever it was they did during their free time, so he gave them a nod of acknowledgement. The hawks both nodded back, as they had started doing a few years back.

When he finished his warmups, he looked to Igrette, and before he could ask, she gave him a small nod, and immediately, he was off, with Charles flying overhead.

His target was a bear that lived on the east side of the mountain, opposite the direction they had fled from the inquisitor. The bear was late in the third layer, and was quite strong, but more importantly, it was an asshole. The first time Jonny ran into it was three years before when it showed up right after he killed a lone glass deer and ran him off before eating most of the meat and leaving the rest of the carcass out to freeze.

Thinking he was unlucky, Jonny made a note of where the bear had returned to so he could make sure he avoided the area, and didn’t think more of it. Then, a couple months later, he found an injured yak and managed to bring it down with his knife, only for the bear to show up right at the end again and run him off.

This happened three more times over the next year and by then, Jonny knew it was doing it on purpose. It was waiting for Jonny to take on the risk of fighting and killing the prey, then swooping in for the meat. It knew that Jonny wasn’t big or strong enough to challenge it, but it didn’t want to risk injury against the bigger, stronger prey animals, so it just stole Jonny’s kills instead.

Jonny had tried to fight it once before, but it didn’t go well. He was not quite as skilled with mana as he was now, and the bear just had too much raw power. It had clearly been at the third layer for quite a while, and even then bears just inherently were strong. A third layer bear was often just as strong as a fourth layer beast of a different species in terms of raw power. It had no magical abilities, but that also meant it had no weaknesses that Jonny could exploit.

Of course, once Igrette had recovered enough to move around, she could have taken this bear out in an instant at any time she wanted, but Jonny insisted that he wanted to be the one to do it. He had failed once, and he didn’t want to leave that failure hanging over it. While the bear was living life on easy mode, stealing the fruits of other people’s labor, Jonny was training, and getting stronger every day. And now he would finally get back at it.

Igrette had cautioned him about seeking revenge, saying it was bad for the soul, but Jonny assured her that wasn’t what he was doing. The bear was an asshole, but he wasn’t fighting it to punish it, and he didn’t necessarily want to kill it. He just wanted to beat it. To wipe the loss from his record. If it ran away, that was fine. That would mean Jonny won and he would be satisfied.

It only took a few minutes to reach the treeline, and then a few more to reach the bear’s den. Surprisingly, it did not live at a mana well. Igrette said this was normal for some powerful, solitary beasts. They were strong enough to take and hold a mana well if they wanted to, but it was difficult and risky, and if they weren’t close to adding a new layer, why bother? It was easier to just dig a den beneath a tree and sleep there, and invade a mana well when it needed mana.

This particular bear’s den was scarily inconspicuous. It was right at the base of one of the larger trees in the area, and with the snow on the ground, it was hard to tell exactly how big the hole was. And even if you saw the hole, the hole was only slightly wider than the bear was, so you’d never expect a bear the size of a car to be living in it. Not if you couldn’t sense its mana, at least.

Jonny could, so when he arrived, he knew it was sleeping inside. He stood thirty feet or so away and started making a racket, shouting for it and throwing snowballs into the pit. He heard it growl as it woke up, and started shouting even louder and throwing more snowballs. The bear was slow to rise, but when it did rise, it was angry. It emerged, snarling, just in time to take a snowball to the face.

It shook the snow out of its eyes, then locked onto Jonny letting out a roar of challenge.

“Yeah, it’s me, asshole!” Jonny shouted back. “Come at me, bitch!”

“Language!” shouted Igrette, perched on a tree branch above him.

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Jonny cringed, having not realized that Igrette followed him. She usually didn’t, but he should have expected that she would come to see his first fight since reaching second layer.

Charles screeched at Jonny too, though he wasn’t sure if it was also a scolding, or if it was encouragement.

Thanks, Chuck.