Chapter 42: Hunt Small, Live Longer
Chapter 42: Hunt Small, Live Longer
My first solo hunt took an hour and forty minutes.
The kill took about four seconds.
That ratio turned out to be the whole job.
The creature was a Grey Digger—knee-high, blind, and built like a badger designed by somebody working from a poor description. Level 3. It was digging through the floor of a collapsed outbuilding, alone.
I confirmed the last part by lying behind a fallen door for fifty minutes and watching for anything larger that might consider the Digger its property.
Nothing came.
I fixed two withdrawal routes in my head: through the doorway toward the stream or over the low wall into the yard. Then I did what Liora would have done.
I did not fight fairly.
I approached from behind over ground I had already checked for loose slate, caught the creature with its head inside the hole, and drove the military knife beneath the base of its skull with both hands and all my weight.
It kicked for a while.
That part did not get easier.
[Class-Assisted Kill Confirmed.]
[Experience transferred.]
I sat against the wall and shook for two minutes. I had stopped being embarrassed about that. When my hands steadied, I butchered it the way Liora had shown me—long muscles, discard anything that smelled wrong, inspect the liver even if I did not plan to eat it.
I carried only what would not ruin my ability to run and left the rest.
The house was still empty when I returned.
That should not have surprised me. It did.
I checked every warning line before going inside, cleaned the knife, wrapped the meat, and spent the evening drying the thinner strips over a low fire. Twice I looked toward the kitchen doorway because I expected Liora to correct something. Twice there was only the doorway.
Before sleeping, I checked the timer.
[Blind Call Recovery Remaining: approximately 58:41:00]
More than two days.
The following morning, I woke before the light, listened from bed, checked the track from upstairs, and inspected the warning lines from the doorway before stepping outside. Water first. Then food. Then two hours of drills, divided into sets short enough that my arms did not become useless.
The routine helped. So did having tasks that could be completed.
Feline Grace earned its keep in pieces small enough that I noticed them only afterward.
Crossing a floor of broken tiles toward a sleeping Ash Rat, my heel touched something loose. My weight came off it before I made a conscious decision. The tile settled with a click instead of a crack, and the rat kept sleeping.
Later, I shot a Digger across thirty metres of open ground. The recoil struck my shoulder, but my stance did not collapse around it. The first round hit too far back. The second landed close enough to the first to matter.
That had never happened before.
When I backed too quickly out of a doorway, my foot came down on a curved length of pipe. Feline Grace turned the ankle roll into an ugly step instead of a fall.
My knife point stayed steadier.
Not steady. Steadier.
Nothing about it looked remarkable. An observer would have seen an underfed man in filthy clothes moving carefully through rubble. They would not have thought There goes a man using an imprinted passive skill.
That was what it was, though, and it kept me alive at least twice.
By the end of that second hunt, the closer ground had become a problem. Not empty—nothing in the apocalypse was kind enough to become empty—but recently disturbed. My shots had carried. Blood marked two separate sites. Returning too often would teach every predator nearby where food and noise could be found.
The next morning, with a little more than a day remaining on Blind Call, I went farther northwest.
There was a Level 4 Digger in a drainage ditch, apparently alone. I settled behind a hedge and watched it for almost an hour. I had just begun planning the approach when the wind changed.
Snuffling travelled up the ditch.
More than one set.
I stayed still until I could count them. Three. One was larger, and the other two gave it space whenever it moved.
Right. And there is my dinner standing in the middle of them.
I eased back through the hedge and went home with nothing.
The decision had been simple. The walk back was not.
I was Level 9. I had a rifle, ammunition, two knives, terrain, surprise, and a passive skill. Three Level 4 creatures in a ditch should have been manageable if the numbers were all that mattered.
Then I heard Liora’s voice doing the thing where she never needed to raise it.
And where was the exit after the first shot?
There had been one narrow path out. If the first creature reached it, I would have been trapped between the ditch wall and the pack.
I ate dried meat that night. It was awful. I was alive. After a while, I understood that those facts were not in competition.
Behold the mighty Level 9 Dimensional Summoner. Master of an EX-ranked class. Hid in a hedge from three animals the size of large dogs and went home hungry.
I chewed another piece.
Still here, though.
Those days alone had given me a rhythm.
Wake before light. Check the warning lines—can on the track, twigs at the pinch point, slate beneath the kitchen window—from upstairs first, then the doorway. Boil stream water. Eat. Drill. Hunt or decide not to. Cook, dry, wrap, cellar. Watch both approaches from upstairs until the light failed.
I had meat hanging below the house. I could make fire when I needed it. Two clean pots stayed filled before thirst became urgent. Nothing had climbed the track, and the eastern horizon had remained free of Eastbridge vehicles.
My experience bar sat close enough to full that the empty portion irritated me.
A Level 6 creature lived near the second bend. I had seen it twice: bigger than a Digger, slower, always alone. Killing it might have carried me through Level 10 in one attempt.
One careful fight, temptation suggested. Then you find out what your class really is.
I thought about it.
Then I thought about how one careful fight against something stronger than me was a sentence containing an obvious lie.
Level 10 would still exist after Blind Call recovered. I did not need to reach it alone.
That night, I slept behind a barricaded door with food below me and water beside me. The recovery timer had entered its final stretch.
For the first time since the Merge, I caught myself believing I had the situation under control.