Wild Gourmet: Chapter 17

He didn’t fear an individual threat of this kind much anymore, but three was more than the one he had killed on his way to Bell. He might have considered withdrawing, but he wasn’t caught off guard this time, wasn’t classless, and wasn’t armed with a hardly effective kitchen knife. There was some fear in him, yes, a remnant of the closest he had come to dying since the last battle in the war. It wasn’t enough to make him stop.

He studied them for a few seconds, picking out the largest of the three and marking it as his first target.

His first throw was clean. His dagger caught the big eberhund in the shoulder, and its squeal of pain sent the other two wheeling around to face the yet unknown human threat. Brand was already moving, circling to get a better angle and to keep them from bunching up on him. The second dagger took the middle hound in the flank as it charged.

These were faster than the deer and much more aggressive. They attacked simply and honestly, keeping low to the ground and driving forward with tusks aimed at his legs. Brand remembered that tactic well enough from the first one he’d fought. This time, he had the dexterity to deal with it. Sped up as he was, it looked like the charge was occurring in slow motion. Each of his daggers found a home in a monster before they reached him.

He vaulted over the lead eberhund’s charge entirely, planting a hand on its back and shoving off to spring even further over it as he evaded its tusks. It was the kind of move he wouldn’t have even considered attempting a week ago. Now it felt right, a simple choice to accomplish a simple, almost safe task. For the first time since he started this hunting leg of his life, he felt almost strong.

The eberhunds regrouped faster than the deer had, but not fast enough to get to him before he got to them. Brand closed the distance on the most injured boar and finished it with two hard thrusts through the back of its neck. It collapsed as he turned to face the remaining pair. One was limping from the two daggers still lodged in its flank. The other one was somewhat bigger and handling its own injuries better, but was angrier than ever but cautious now. It circled him instead of charging, which was smarter than he expected.

Smart won’t save you. Sorry, friend. I’m just more than you can handle, now.

He feinted toward the limping one, drawing the bigger threat forward to try and protect it. Brand sidestepped the new charge, let the tusks pass him just a few inches away, and buried his dagger behind the animal’s ear. It dropped.

The last one tried to run. Whatever drove their aggression apparently had its limits when the situation became hopeless enough. Brand was too fast to let that happen. He sprung on it and finished things with a few well-aimed strikes, then began the work of unifying them all into one pile.

Three eberhunds in less than two minutes, and I’m not even breathing hard.

He built another signal fire, dragged the bodies together, and moved on. The process was already starting to feel like a routine. Walking, scanning, fighting, and moving on was a simple kind of work, though he knew it could become complex at any moment. He shook off whatever building complacency was accumulating in him and paid close attention as he resumed his route.

The morning wore on. He killed a lone crane that had strayed from whatever flock it belonged to, then found and dispatched a clutch of something the system called tunnel moles.

They weren’t dangerous in any real sense, but they were monsters, and leaving them to breed would mean problems for any future farming efforts outside the walls. Besides that, he was estimating their danger based off his own capabilities. He really had no idea what they might do to someone like Remm, who had no combat capability at all that Brand knew about outside of his pure stats.

By mid-morning, he had made about half his circuit. Six signal fires burned behind him in a rough arc, each marking a pile of dead monsters. His daggers were holding up well, as was his other equipment. He’d have Shou and Luisa look at them when he got back, but they hadn’t thought they’d have to do maintenance on them very often and that seemed to be proving true.

He stopped to eat. The meat from the smokehouse was not truly ready yet, but he had stolen and cooked up a few lumps of it this morning to serve as pure energy for his trip around the town. He tore through a thick strip of it as he sat on a rock and surveyed the landscape. From this vantage point, he could see the rear of Bell in the distance. There was no entryway on this side, and from a distance the wall looked invincible. He knew it wasn’t, especially to stronger monsters. Sooner or later one of those would find them, and unless they had what it took to defend the wall it would serve no advantage at all.

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It’s getting better, though. If everyone keeps growing at this rate, we’ll be strong sooner than I think.

He finished his meal and stood. The second half of the patrol awaited, and he had a feeling the territory to the north would be busier. The creek that fed the town ran from that direction, and water meant life. Life, in this context, meant monsters drinking, feeding, and breeding along its banks, hunting what non-monster forms of life they could and eating what edible plants they could find. He figured they’d be bunched up around the resource like flies around a pile of dung.