“Ugh...”

As a new morning rose in the sky Eline woke up to the sound of a creature moving near her. She stood immediately when she saw the face of another creature so close to her after opening her eyes. She went on guard not even bothering to try to hide her surprise and alarm.

“What are you doing!”

Eline shouted at the little cub in her face. The Cub’s only response was to lean in closer and lower. The Cub’s eyes just seemed full of pure curiosity, seeing only the pure curiosity Eline’s body subconsciously relaxed and collapsed back down reminding her of how weak she was at the moment. She started panting to catch her breath as she moved too quickly in her panic and reopened her wounds causing extreme pain to flow through her but she never once dared to look away from the small cub in front of her.

“Can you understand me….. Say something”

Eline wanted to try to figure out this cub in front of her yet The Cub just continued to stare at her. After waiting a few more moments and seeing The Cub start to get irritated she just gave up at communicating.

“Sigh, well I guess you can’t talk…. But I swear I heard a voice coming from you when you were in the water…. Maybe I was just imagining things, either way why the hell did I even save you? I don’t even know you let alone have any relation to you worth risking my life.”

Eline was vexed about her actions just prior to now where she heard The Cub seem to say something and then just instinctively dived into the water despite her own wounds to save The Cub. Eline suddenly noticed that The Cub was no longer looking at her but staring at the hole in the rock around them seemingly in thought. Seeing The Cub like this Eline couldn’t help but let her exhaustion take her and she fell asleep again.

When Eline next woke up she noticed that the sun in the sky had already moved past noon yet when she looked to The Cub it hadn’t even moved an inch since she slept. This greatly surprised her as she had been sleeping for around 8 hours yet The Cub didn’t move at all. Eline almost felt like The Cub had been replaced with a statue while she was asleep yet as she started to move The Cub seemed to notice and turned to look back at her. But Eline didn’t even want to bother with this cub any more as she spotted the river behind The Cub and suddenly remembered how it had been 2 days since she had a drink.

“Swaying liquid bad, Painful, Ends cycle”

The Cub suddenly opened its mouth and spoke elegantly and fluently, yet the words that came out were broken and lacking structure. This alarmed Eline a moment before she became extremely confused.

“What? You can actually talk? Then why did you never respond to me when I was trying to talk to you!?”

Yet as Eline was talking The Cub clearly ignored her and just turned away going back to contemplating whatever it was he was before.

“Really! Now you just go back to ignoring me! Ugggghhh, fine what do I care, but what is swaying liquid?? What cycle??”

Eline became angry before quickly calming herself back down and trying to understand what it was The Cub said. Yet The Cub just continued to ignore her and actually seemed to get annoyed with her in response and started to walk out of the rock to get away from her. Eline once again got angry at this complete disregard for the person who just saved his life when she saw The Cub stop and suddenly look really happy before laying down in the sun on the grass falling asleep.

“Seriously, he didn’t even look around for danger before he fell asleep and why was he so happy all of the sudden. There doesn’t seem to be anything different there than anywhere else. Ahhh whatever I’m just gonna get a drink.”

Eline got up and walked to the river to take a real drink of water instead of drowning herself in it to save an ungrateful child. The Cub was truly an ungrateful and seemingly clueless child. After filling up on water Eline started to feel her hunger again and looked around only to spot two rats only 30 feet to her right.

It seemed that there rat hole was nearby meaning Eline needed to be very cautious lest she scare the rats back into their home. Yet this also means that maybe tomorrow there will be more rats to eat making hunting easy for a few days. Eline quickly got her body close to the ground and slowly stalked up on the two rats. The rats were currently drinking water yet they were obviously still on guard. Eline quickly approached within 10 feet of the rats before she started to circulate qi into her paws in preparation of using one of her innate techniques, Shadow Slash.

While the technique couldn’t show its true power any other time than night or in a dark cave it was enough to kill two rats even midday. The rats ears seemed to perk up the moment her qi reached peak of circulation meaning they had been alarmed to her qi. This surprised Eline but she didn’t hesitate one bit to strike the moment she was noticed. Eline jumped out from the nearby grass slashing her right claw in a path on both the rats. As the claw passed it created a black streak of light that shot out 2 feet before hitting the two rats, cleaving both of them in two before they could react and leaving a slight indent in the dirt. 

“Food! Ah I really am happy they only noticed so late, considering they were able to sense my qi at all they were obviously atleast borderline magical beasts which is surprising but all the better for me now. In my weak state if I didn’t get the drop on them I doubt I could even put up a fight against these two.”

Eline then approached the body of one of the rats eating a full halve all at once.

“Wow, I really was lucky. These rats were really first rank beasts at least in the mid stages. If these rats had any kind of real vigilance it would have been likely that I would be the one dead not them.”

Eline shuddered at such a thought. She was only at the first rank 2nd stage yet a beast at the mid stages were at least 4th stage or higher. Even just one of these rats was more than enough nutrients to make up for all the food she had missed in recent days and maybe even let her advance to the next stage. She couldn’t help but be completely delighted yet also fearful. If even the rats around here were this strong what kind of area did she wander into.

Nevertheless she quickly devoured the other half of the rat and went over to the next one ready to devour it. But the moment before she ate it her instincts told her to stop. As she stopped her head suddenly filled with scenes of The Cub and she realised that if The Cub didn’t move all day then only went to sleep it likely hadn’t eaten yet. Eline couldn’t help but be worried by this and instinctively wanted to bring the other rat to him to eat yet as she was about to she stopped again.

“Why the hell am I so worried about stupid cub! He didn’t even say thanks for saving his life. Why would I give such a good meal to him…….” 

Even as she said this she still  found herself picking up the rat but not eating it. Eline sighed as she just resigned to her instincts and brought the rat in front of The Cub leaving it there for The Cub to eat when it woke up. With one last look of longing at the rat Eline, downtrodden, walked back to the strange rock and layed down to sleep. Only she couldn’t fall asleep she found herself staring at The Cub and his surroundings worried that something might attack him.

No matter how much this pissed her off that she was worried or that she had to be awake she couldn’t fall asleep as her body refused to leave The Cub in such an open area during the night without even the slightest protection. So as night came and The Cub continued to sleep Eline continued to be awake and watch over The Cub. After an agonizingly long night the sun finally rose and The Cub woke up. Seeing The Cub wake up her body finally relaxed and she collapsed in exhaustion.

Author's Note:

This was me taking a story I had written maybe a year ago and posting what I have of the story. I'm not sure if people really like this concept or not and if I should continue with this story. So I decided to make a small poll at the end of this chapter to get the opinions of the readers on how they like the story.