Trembling from fear, he looked at the large boar in front of him. He wanted to run away as fast as he could but most of the bones in his body were broken from the previous impact. Although he could feel his bones already starting to heal under his body’s regenerative powers, it would not be enough for him to evade the following strike.
The boar, on the other hand, seemed a bit surprised that its charge wasn’t able to instantly kill this small and weak animal. At the thought of this, the boar felt its pride wounded and insulted so he hit the ground with its front right leg and prepared to charge once more to finish off the boy.
The boy, contrarily, was now barely able to move neither his arms nor legs and had no chance of running away. ‘Move, move, I have to move’ he internally screamed to no avail.
With a loud snort the boar pushed itself forward with its strong and mighty legs kicking up a mighty cloud of dust and earth from behind it as it charged forward. With every step the ground underneath its hooves cracked and produced vibrations that shook the neighbouring trees.
In the boy’s eyes, the boar had already transformed into a reaper that represented his impending death. ‘I died once already but am I going to have to undergo that experience again’ although it was true that he had died once already that did not make the thought of death any less scary to him but instead magnified his terror as he did not know if he would receive a third chance at life. “Encountering this boar is just too unlucky for me” he muttered as he stopped struggling or trying to move and merely accepted his death, “I at least hope that I can get another chance” he ultimately said.
Crack crack!
And then, like a miracle from the heavens he heard a sound coming from the tree behind him. Exhausting the little strength he had left he turned around to see numerous cracks appear on the trunk of the tree before a 3 meter long snake exploded out from the trunk. The snake’s body was remarkably similar to the bark from which it emerged from and the unique difference between it and the snakes that he knew of in his memories were the two large brown deer antlers that it showed on the top of its head.
From the angle that the snake monster emerged the first thing that it discerned was not the boy on the ground but instead the boar who was charging at its tree home. The snake had originally come out due to the sound of something hitting its home and the vibrations from outside which were shaking its tree. Now that it saw the boar charging at the tree it deduced that it was the cause of all those happenings and the snake’s amber eyes narrowed. Furious at the ignorant attacker it launched itself at it with the intent to kill.
Simultaneously, the boar was already distracted when the snake suddenly emerged from the tree behind its target and was even more confused as to why it was striking at it. However, that confusion did not last long since for the boar the only fact that it needed to know was that this snake was assaulting it therefore it was its enemy.
A battle very quickly broke out between the two monsters. The snake was trying to coil around and strangle the boar while the boar’s sharp tusks and fierce charges were preventing said event from happening. The more they fought, the more they focused on each other and their surroundings seemed to fade from their vision. Due to this distraction, the boy was able to rest and heal up for a while. Thankfully the two beasts appeared to be at a comparable level of strength and neither were able to gain an advantage on the other.
An hour had passed, and the boy’s body had healed to a certain point, he was at least able to move a bit now. From this one could infer that the damage he received was not minuscule. The battle between the two beasts had shifted them away from their original location which was what allowed the boy’s body to recover. “Ow, damn it” the boy tried moving his body as he clearly understood that only death would come for him if he waited here. After a period of time, he managed to take a few steps “Crack!!” before he heard a large snap and an enormous pressure descended on him. He didn’t want to turn around; he didn’t want to because he knew that as soon as he did so he would die.
However, that choice was not his as a green serpentine head with deer antlers and amber slitted eyes gradually entered the corner of his vision. Slowly for what seemed like hours the snake slowly cooled around the boy who had not moved from his spot, still petrified by fear. The snake’s body was unharmed apart from some scratches and two puncture holes. His eyes retained a look of satisfaction, clearly happy from his victory and that he had attained a snack as well. The boy once again lamented his own fate. He had narrowly escaped from death only to fall right back in his grasp. He felt like the victim of a twisted game. The snake was slowly crushing and suffocating the boy, taking pleasure in his despair and clearly not putting his strength in his eyes.
Concurrently, in the cave of the boy, a crack appeared on the bizarre egg and with it came many sacred and mysterious rhymes which simply gushed out of the egg before quickly reforming itself into a ball and shooting into the forest.
Back to the scene with the boy. As he lost more and more of his consciousness his vision darkened until a seemingly fictional golden light appeared in the center of his vision before disappearing and in its place the boy felt something hit his diaphragm, hard. However, unlike the pain that one would expect he actually felt exceedingly pleasant and comfortable. A stream of warm energy flowed throughout his body nourishing and healing each cell, strengthening his bones, condensing his muscles and tightening his tendons. He could feel his body become denser and sturdier. At that point an even more abundant stream travelled to his heart and made his already gold tinted heart even more golden.
From the snake’s point of view, he was about to eat the boy when a golden orb suddenly appeared, interrupting his meal and shooting right into his dinner. Then the boy who was about to be eaten suddenly started giving out an extremely sacred golden aura which caused the snake’s body to unconsciously tremble and separate from the boy. This was not the fear of someone else’s overwhelming strength but rather the instinctive terror of a lower level life form to a high ranking one.
No longer trapped he fell to the ground and staggered for a few steps before regaining his balance at which point a faint figure of a golden heart manifested above him. As the light from the heart fell upon the boy, he felt immense power coursing through his body. Looking at the confused serpent next to him he was now full of confidence and thought to himself “Maybe I can take him on now" however, when he was about to simply go attack it a flash of inspiration came to him and instead he loaded back his arm, closed his eyes and bent his knees. Currently, he was concentrating the flowing golden power in his body towards his arm and more specifically his fist which grew brighter and brighter.
The snake, already realizing something was amiss, was fleeing away, yet this was to no avail because the boy opened his eyes which now had a golden tint and punched out with his glowing fist. As he did so all the energy contained within shot out in the form of a golden shockwave that crushed the trees in its path and upturned the rocks and dirt. Compared to this force the snake’s body was easily smashed into a pile of meat with the sole things completely intact being its antlers.
At long last, with his enemy gone the boy took a breath to calm down. Although his body had been restored and was not tired, he was still mentally fatigued. “Looks like I have to do something about this” now having regained some clarity he realized the golden aura from before had not disappeared as he was still radiating in his surroundings causing him to act like a mini sun. Closing his eyes once more he tried to control the golden power in his blood and body.
In due course, he managed to restrict his blood, bones and heart which were what was emitting the aura. “Phew, ok that’s done” he sighed with relief after all even though he had gained a considerable increase in power he nonetheless didn’t want to have to meet another entity like that one. Done with all of this he was preparing to go home when on second thought he chose to bring back the snake’s corpse as he could still probably eat it and maybe even exploit it for materials. “I undoubtedly could use some clothes” wearing nothing but some leaves over his crotch tied with plant stems; even if he had adapted and become used to this he still couldn’t help but want some actual clothes. Therefore, even though he knew that with his level of skill he would never be able to make something like that he at least hoped to be able to craft some attire of better quality than simple leaves.
The long snake was, despite its appearance, quite light for the boy which made the journey back faster than expected. Once back the boy was shocked as well as excited at the sight of a crack on the egg. He had taken care of it for so long yet it had never shown any signs of hatching. He had even begun wondering whether or not it might be a rock. However, this moment showed it was indeed an egg and even more important was that it would probably hatch soon.
This gave the boy unimaginable joy. Being alone with no one to talk to for a month had, even if he tried denying it, taken a toll on his mind. But if he included a companion that he could be with, this toll could be lightened. This was exactly like when people who had pets would experience their stress fading away while they were in their company.
To celebrate he decided to help himself to the snake that he had just beaten. A little while later, “Mm, snake tastes a lot like chicken” he muttered while munching on a piece of snake meat on a stick. In addition to the superior taste the meat was very nourishing and he felt his energy rise with every bite.
The next day he went to work by starting to completely dismantle the snake. Regrettably, many of its scales and internal organs were broken from the punch, and those that were relatively intact were mixed with piles of flesh. At long last, he managed to extract seventeen scales, one eye and two 5cm long fangs in addition to several pounds of snake meat.
He continued his day by, with some hesitation, returning to the forest and trying to retrieve the boar which proved not that complex as all he had to do was follow the destruction from their battle which led him to a small area with multiple fallen trees and a big dead boar in the middle. Thankfully, unlike the snake the boar was in far better condition and so he was able to obtain more materials from it. On top of that, he also acquired some more materials from three wolves who were attracted by the smell of the corpse.
On the way back he also collected plenty of plant stems and sticks. Once home, he got to work. He commenced by taking four sticks and using the stems to bind them together which he repeated four times before eventually tying the boar’s leather in between the stock clusters making sure to leave a hole for his arms which produced a makeshift tunic. He then subsequently repeated this but with wolf leather for his legs and feet before utilizing the remaining leather including the snake leather to make gauntlets. He then took one of each of the fangs and attached each one to a gauntlet and gathered the leftover teeth and affixed them to the gauntlets as well.
