"Not again..." Jackson was getting pretty annoyed at how many times he'd blacked out today, luckily it looked like he'd only been our for a few minutes at most as the sun was still in the same position as it had been. 

His body felt much lighter than it had been beforehand, most likely because of the level-up but now wasn't the time to check what changes had occurred. He quickly scrambled to the Panthers corpse, remembering how it'd wanted to end their battle as fast as possible - he could only assume that there was something bigger coming, something even this beast was scared of.

Luckily the stone he'd used to bash its jaw was close by as he used it to tear a hole in the skull of the beast, the process was gory as he hesitantly stuck his hand inside the hole he'd made and began to feel around for something... it was needless to describe the rest of the process as he quickly found what he was looking for.

The sight of his hand covered in blood and an assortment of other things made him want to puke but he managed to restrain himself with some deep breaths. 

'Time to get out of here.' He didn't stay for a second longer than he needed to and quickly set off back into the forest at a sprint, he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the corpse as possible; any beast in the area would probably be attracted by the stench from its corpse, he just had to find a place to wash the blood off of him or he'd be just as much as a target.

Twenty minutes of constant running later and Jackson had already seen the improvement in his statistics although he'd not yet glanced at them, the increase in his endurance was visible from his lack of breathlessness from constantly sprinting for so long.

He'd finally stopped only because he'd found a small stream in the middle of the trees and was using it to wash himself off, where it wasn't possible to wash blood off because it'd dyed his clothes he tore the clothes and threw the bloodied rags in different directions, fortunately it was only mainly his upper body that had been soaked in blood with him only having to tear a few holes in his jeans in places. They were still wearable, for now.

You could say that he was being overly cautious, but he would rather be cautious than have another beast smell the blood on him - beasts were excellent hunters themselves when it came to blood. Blood was a clear indicator to most species that something was wounded, even if it wasn't it would most likely mean they'd just gone through a battle and were at their most vulnerable.

If some other beast sniffed him out and found him with his guard down he'd be as good as dead.

Jackson sighed as he finished cleaning himself up, he'd also taken the time to drink from the stream to hydrate himself so he wouldn't have to worry about that for a while. As he sat down resting for the moment he took out something from his pocket, it was the thing he'd extracted from the Panthers brain before he'd left its corpse.

A Beast Crystal.

Other than the opportunity to level-up there was something else that a Hunter could obtain from beasts, they were small necklace sized pieces of rock that were formed in the brain of the beast. The one he was holding radiated a purple hue as he played with it in his fingers.

There were two types of Beast Crystal known to humanity so far, one could serve to reinforce and improve one of your statistics essentially taking the strength of the beast you'd killed and making it your own. However, the second was the one that most people coveted the most, they could also provide 'Skills' to the Hunter that embodied traits of the beast they'd killed.

For example, a Dragon-Skin Elephant could drop a skill called [Lizard Scale] that could give the Hunter the ability to form hard scale-like skin that could protect their body. Unlike Talents, Skills aren't unique, many people can have the same Skill but their proficiency levels would differ depending on how they used them.

Using the [Lizard Scale] again, those who used the skill multiple times would be able to create more scales to defend themselves than someone who'd just acquired it. Right now Jackson could do nothing more than hope that the Beast Crystal he'd gained would contain a Skill, it would boost his chances of survival by more than just a small percentage.

'Crrrr... Crack

The Crystal shattered as he crushed it in his fist, he felt a surge of warm energy course through him before stopping a few moments later; he sighed in disappointment but he knew he'd been asking for too much, Skills were extremely rare in comparison to enhancement crystals.

Jackson finally turned his attention to his status menu to see what had changed since his level-up.

[Class: Hunter]

[Level: 1]

[Talent: !?#@%]

[Strength: F] (+ 1)

[Intelligence: E+]

[Endurance: E+]

[Agility: F] (+1)

[Vitality: F]

[Mana: E]

Only his Endurance and Intelligence had actually increased but that was no surprise, he hadn't exactly used brute strength to kill the Panther. His Endurance increasing was only natural after the pain he'd forced himself through whereas his intelligence most likely came from how he'd baited the Panther into coming for him.

Although his luck in gaining a skill wasn't good it seems in terms of enhancement he'd at least gotten lucky, he'd received +1 Enhancements to two statistics rather than one, +1 Enhancements boosted the ability he could display by one rank so in this case both his Agility and Strength had unofficially been promoted to F+.

He wasn't sure if it was easier or not to gain enhancements when your ratings were lower or not but he assumed it to be otherwise every beast would boost a Hunters strength by unfathomable amounts.

Just to clarify, the Hunters guild didn't see a distinction between an E-, E or E+ rating, the Hunter would still be an E Rank Hunter regardless of their progress into a rating.

Jackson nodded as he took this all in, he was still hoping that his talent would suddenly reveal itself to him but he couldn't rely on that possibility. 

'I need to leave before it gets dark." He thought to himself as he glanced up at the sun, it was getting closer and closer to sunset with every second longer he waited. 

If he was still in this forest come night then his chances of survival dropped so sharply that he might as well just lay down and wait for some beast to attack him in the darkness. Nowhere was safe out here, it was already lucky enough he hadn't encountered any other beasts but he could only hope that was because he was still in the Panthers territory otherwise... he was probably in the den of a much larger, much stronger predator.

TheWorldTree

Whoops accidentally screwed up the chapter ordering ;P 7 was before 6, fixed now!

Hope you enjoy! :)