12. Hunt
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I repeatedly focused on one thought: kill the Chosen as soon as I see them. That was important, for they also might have mind controlling skills.

I jumped from tree branch to tree branch. I had gone to a corner of my territory before meditating, and now I moved beside one of the invisible walls. I was prepared to comb through the entire hundred squared miles area if needed.

My 18 points in strength and agility made me fast. That much agility made it easy to balance myself too. Sometimes, I launched myself so strongly to another tree that I broke a branch and ended up falling.

It wasn't hard for me to fall the right way though. Then, I just keep going, grabbing branches and swinging upwards to get back on top of the trees.

Keeping to the trees was necessary. I needed to move fast to avoid the Chosen getting to a place I had already gone through. And moving fast meant avoiding obstacles. Bushes, big rocks, animals, or even humans, none of that could be found at the top of the trees.

Using all the essence I could gather would allow my spiritual tattoo to detect [Fate Energy] up to a hundred yards. But I needed two hours to accumulate that much. Even worse, after a mere half hour, enough essence would escape from within my mental hold that the range would drop.

The point of diminished returns was half that, fifty yards. For that, I only needed as much essence as I could gather in five minutes. And I could hold it for ten minutes before losing any range. Much better.

Thus, my routine became run for ten minutes, stop for five, rinse and repeat.

A couple hours later, I suddenly felt my middle finger get colder from the rushing air than the others.

I had found the rat. The Chosen was within fifty yards of me.

I stopped at once and looked around, moving my head slowly, looking all around me, until I saw her. A naked five-year-old girl holding a teddy bear, looking straight into my eyes.

There were so many things wrong with this scene, that I threw my knife stone at her without thinking twice.

It went right through her and dissipated the illusion that she was.

'[Illusionist],' I thought, identifying his class at once.

Then, I felt essence move. The Chosen had been pushing essence into the illusion to keep it going, but I didn't have enough sensitivity to detect that. When he abruptly stopped though, the "vacuum" it made was way too obvious.

I jumped at the other end of the vacuum, punching the three I saw there.

My fist hit something solid, but much softer than a tree bark. The tree stopped existing, changing into an [Awakened] female that looked like a top model. I was more interested in looking at her hands though. When I didn't detect a weapon, I jumped at her, my fists going at her head.

"No! Please-" She started, but you never gave an [Illusionist] time to recover after you attacked them. It was just dumb suicide.

I caved her mouth into her head, and she died.

Except I was still feeling too much air brushing against my middle finger. I had killed an illusion, even if I had felt myself touching it.

The Chosen was still alive.

An [Illusionist's] creations weren't real, but they felt real. I could see, smell, hear, touch and even taste the illusions if I were so inclined. However, they lacked substance. They didn't have any weight to them and could only kill me if an illusion hid a real, physical attack.

While I looked around, the fake corpse stood up like a zombie in a pathetic attempt to make me scared. I kicked it away and kept paying attention to my surroundings. When I saw nothing, I moved around slowly, trying to feel minute changes to my finger sensitivity.

It was very faint, but I eventually felt it. I made mental a beeline from where I first felt the Chosen to where I now felt the change, then made a mental cone onwards up to fifty yards. I walked in the middle of the cone, and the air sensitivity intensified with each step.

I walked crouched, gathering as many stones as I could. If I saw anything move, I threw a stone at it, no matter what it was, no matter how big it was. I killed rats, squirrels and a lion that way. Most of it the product of the [Illusionist's] attempts at confusing me.

[Illusionist] was one of the strongest classes one could get on the First Floor. I felt thrilled that I didn't let him grow and even lucky I found the other Chosen. I had been lax before, thinking the statistical chance of Chosen being put in a village were too low for me to bother with it.

I should've known better. Unfortunately, being mentally old didn't make me infallible.

As more and more animals started running away, I let myself smile. [Class Holders] were powerful, but not even a day had passed. The Chosen hadn't had the time to grow his essence pool yet. Soon, they would be out of juice.

Said and done. When I shot a stone at a dog, it dissolved before my stone reached it. It had been a little too quick though, so I would keep alert for new illusions.

When I reached the center of the cone, I stopped feeling any changes to my finger's sensitivity. My essence quality and spiritual control were too low for me to get a more precise location than that.

There, I stopped and waited a little. When nothing happened, I started throwing stones at stationary objects.

The trees were first. Followed by brushes.

That led nowhere, so next I randomly threw stones at empty air.

Now, there's stone throwing and stone throwing. I wasn't just checking if things were solid, I was throwing strong enough to kill or maim.

Finally, after a throw, I saw the leaves on the ground move. I had missed, but I had scared the [Illusionist] enough that he moved. And he was out of essence to make more illusions.

Or so he wanted me to think, at least. I didn't move, still observing everything around me the best I could. I just threw three stones in quick succession at the place the Chosen was supposed to be.

They hit nothing. It had been a faint.

The tug of war continued for a long while. If I had an essence core, I could've ended this farce in seconds. With my essence seed it was, it took me almost an hour to see the leaves on the ground rustle again when I threw a stone.

This time though, the [Illusionist] let go of his invisibility illusion with arms to the air. It was a tall [Awakener]. "I give up!" he said.

I didn't even glance at this new body and threw ten stones in quick succession at the man and around him. One stone hit something to the man's right and a scream of pain followed.

With the scream, the man's illusion disappeared, and so did the [Illusionist's] real invisibility.

It was a young woman who looked just like the first I had "killed." Her red hair, blue eyes and perfect body would make many a man crazy for her. She was lying on the ground, crying, holding her shattered leg and looking furiously my way.

"Sorry, kid," I said, and threw a last stone at her head.

 

Hidden Quest complete: Hunter or Hunted
Congratulations!
You've killed the Chosen who had a [Quest] to kill you!
Rewards:
» New [Hunter or Hunted] Quests won't be hidden anymore
» +16 TP

 

TP received
» +16 TP — Quest reward
Total TP: 40

 

The TP rewarded to me was a tenth of what the Chosen was promised, and I didn't get any other thing they might have been promised.

The woman would've already received 162 TP for killing me right now, the sum of my attributes, and it was already tempting. After I had hundreds of attribute points? No one would resist so many Tower Points.

I approached the Chosen's corpse and searched it. Sometimes, classes were just byproducts of [Wishes]. For instance, someone might [Wish] for protection and get both a shield and a [Shield Bearer] class.

I hadn't searched the [Bard] because he was holding nothing, but who knows if an [Illusionist] wasn't making an object invisible?

No luck in that regard though. She was clean, and I found nothing in the surroundings.

I sighed. At least she was dead.

From now on, I would keep activating my tattoo constantly, to make sure I didn't have another pair of Chosen in my territory. Having more than a pair was almost impossible, but it had happened once that I knew of.

It made me quite anxious now.

My little hunt done, I climbed a tree and looked at the position of the moon in the sky. It should be around 4 AM. Enough time to hunt for more meat.

There were too many windows cluttering my vision, and I quickly checked them. I had leveled up some skills and unlocked a couple.

[Essence Manipulation] and [Climbing] leveled twice each, reaching level 3.

[Sprinting] also leveled up twice, reaching level 5.

[Projectile Throwing] leveled up once, reaching level 2.

I unlocked the [Running] skill for long distances, as opposed to [Sprinting].

And lastly, I unlocked the [Jumping] skill.

 

TP received
+10 TP — Unlocked a skill (x2)
+5 TP — Leveled up a Novice Tier Skill (x5)
+12 TP — Leveled up a Novice Tier Skill Set (x6) (x2)
Total TP: 67

 

Altogether, [Essence Manipulation] combined seven skills. Together with itself, it should count as eight skills when rewarding me TP. However, [Essence Sensitivity] and [Essence Infusion] were already level 5 and wouldn't level up until the skill set reached the same level.

I barely read any of it though, I just wanted to get the system windows out of my face.

Instead, I was wondering if wolf meat was as tasty as I remembered it.

For I was looking at a pack of six right now.

 


 

A couple hours after sunrise, I entered my village bringing the last sack of meat for the time being, a marvelous black bear.

I guessed most of the meat would spoil before we could eat it. But I was more interested in the grand image of thousands of pounds of meat being brought by me than whether or not people would eat it.

Not to mention all that fur would go a long way to provide clothing for my people.

'Status,' I thought.

 

Status
Name: Black Reaper
Power: Novice 19
Titles: Awakened — Precursor

Attributes
[TP: 6]
Physical
    Strength: 19 — Agility: 19 — Constitution: 19
Spiritual
    Pool: 19 — Regeneration: 19 — Control: 19
Social
    Charisma: 19 — Persuasion: 19 — Presence: 19

Skills
Physical
    Novice Fist Fighting — 6 / 10
    Novice Sprinting — 6 / 10
    Novice Running — 5 / 10
    Novice Climbing — 4 / 10
    Novice Jumping — 3 / 10
    Novice Projectile Throwing — 2 / 10
    Novice Offensive Martial Arts (13) — 2 / 10
Spiritual
    Novice Essence Manipulation (7) — 4 / 10
Social
    Novice Leadership — 2 / 10

 

I had broken through the Novice 5 bottleneck with two skills, [Fist Fighting] and [Sprinting], and even leveled up [Offensive Martial Arts] once. [Essence Manipulation] was also growing nicely.

Together with my 19 points to all attributes, this was a nice harvest for the first day.

This was the first time I was actually getting inside the village since I left it. When delivering the carcasses, I had left it at the beginning of the corridor and left to get more.

As I entered, pulling a bear by its front paws over my shoulder, I attracted stares soon enough. There were already many pieces of meat in sticks, being watched by ten cooks and tens of other people. Beside it, the carcasses of a little over a hundred dead animals were waiting to be skinned, while a couple dozen others were already skinned and cleaned to the side.

When the first guy to become a cook looked at me, he let out a sigh and just went back to cleaning a boar.

Half my people were already eating, and the conversations were lively. I smiled slightly and approached to leave the bear's carcass together with the others. I activated my tattoo, and it detected nothing.

This was a splendid start of a day.

Until I saw something I wished I hadn't.

About fifty people on a corner, watched over by a couple warriors.

Fifty people over the hundred that should be in my village.

Fifty outsiders eating my food.

I unceremoniously dropped the bear and marched their way with purpose.

 

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Next chapter tomorrow (Sunday).

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