Wild Gourmet: A Hunt-and-Cook Progression Adventure

Wild Gourmet: Chapter 28

by inkadmin

The snake’s trail wound deeper into the hills. The trees grew thicker and the underbrush thinned out, starved of light by the canopy above. It made for easier walking but worse cover. Brand compensated by staying further back and relying on his tracking skill to confirm the snake’s direction.

It was the tracking skill that saved him. He had been following the trail around the base of a large outcrop of stone when his tracking skill drew his attention to a vital fact. The trail led behind it and disappeared, which was normal enough, but no tracks came out the other side.

The implications hit him a fraction of a second before the attack did. The snake was already striking as Brand cleared the boulders, and Brand saw teeth, the pink interior of its mouth, and almost nothing else as he began to dodge. If he hadn’t had his moment’s worth of warning, it would have all been over there, and nobody would have ever known what became of him. The warning, though minimal, was just enough to give him a chance.

He dropped to his knees and skidded forward on the packed earth as the strike passed over him. The snake lowered out of its spring, slamming the ground behind him. It immediately adjusted, swinging the bulk of its body across the trail to cut off Brand’s retreat. Brand didn’t try to turn out of the way. Instead, he drove his shitoku into the snake’s flank and used it as a handhold, vaulting over the thick body and landing on the far side in a stumble, almost totally off balance.

The snake was already coiling to keep him in place. If it wasn’t fast in its conventional travel, it was certainly quick enough at close quarters to make up for it. Brand pulled back from the next loop just before he ran into it, close enough to see individual scales and full of the knowledge that the snake could play this game all day if it needed to.

I have to slow it down.

He pulled a crippling dagger from the bandolier and threw it into the snake’s side. The blade sank in and the effect took hold almost immediately. The coiling slowed. Not by much, but enough that Brand could see gaps to escape where he didn’t see them before. He reached and plucked his dagger back out as he ran down the snake’s side, aiming for the lower points where the massive body tapered off towards the tail.

The snake was already rearing back for another strike, slowed from the debuff but still capable. Brand scrambled onto the nearest boulder and slid down to the far side as the snake’s head shot forward. He felt the jaw snap shut somewhere above his head as he pivoted and took off at a right angle, finally clear of even the best attempts to keep him penned in as he cleared the body and hit the ground running.

He sprinted away at full speed, with no thought for conserving energy. Trees blurred past him as he tore through the forest, vaulting roots and ducking branches. Behind him, he heard the drag of the snake’s body across the earth, but it was falling back. The crippling throw was doing its work, and whatever straight-line speed the snake had wasn’t enough to close the gap Brand was opening.

He ran for five minutes before he let himself slow, then ran for five more at a jog before he stopped entirely, sucking in air until his lungs stopped burning. The forest was quiet, and though the snake was fairly silent it wasn’t capable of moving completely without noise. He waited another ten minutes to be sure he had lost it, then slid down to the dirt at the base of a tree. His hands were shaking. He let them, using them as a diagnostic for his own recovery.

He waited an hour before moving on, burning ten minutes on recovery and the rest of the time on considering what had gone wrong.

The snake had almost gotten him. He hadn’t imagined it was smart enough to set an ambush off a clue as small as a single whiff of scent, but it had been. It had picked a good spot and shown patience based on only the barest of indications it was being followed, and it had almost worked.

It hunts the same way I do. It just does it better.

The one stab he’d landed had hardly mattered to a monster that size. Judging by how little the snake had even appeared to notice the attack, he knew that he’d need to hit it dozens of times to do meaningful damage. All that time would be spent within the range of the snake’s fangs, hoping and praying he wouldn’t get nicked.

Worse, the snake’s size was almost its own kind of speed. It wasn’t fast in a straight line, but in the fight it had managed to seem like it was everywhere. Every direction Brand turned had revealed more and more snake as loops of body blocked his path, cut off his angles, and closed around him to control his movement. He’d had as much target as he could have asked for and no safe way to stop and take advantage of it.

The crippling throw had worked. That was the good news. That one dagger was a third of his enhanced capacity, and it had worked enough that he had noticed the effect. Three would be better, so long as he could actually get them in the air. There was still a chance, however slim, of figuring out a winning tactic.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author’s work.

You aren’t going to beat it in a slugfight. You have to get surprise. Somehow.

Brand spent a while planning, then got started on his preparations for their next encounter. The first task was his smell. It was clear enough now that the snake hunted by ambush, and it set that ambush based on scent. If Brand couldn’t eliminate that advantage, the snake would smell him coming, and any fight would be a repeat of the last near-disaster.

He searched the forest for half an hour before he found what he needed. The climbing ivy was wrapped around the trunk of a tall hardwood, parasitic if only weakly so. The leaves were broad and orange, and Brand could smell them from feet away.

Queen’s Leaf

Related chapter tags