Chapter 54: Chapter 54

“Air is supposed to be ‘wet’ and ‘hot’ according to the elemental system,” I said. “Which means it’s a lot easier to create than water or earth but much harder to control.”

“Uh huh,” said Noel as she glared at me.

“So it’s only natural that we run into a few issues here and there. We’re inventing a whole new magic spell, after all. Accidents are bound to happen,” I said.

“I see,” said Noel again.

“Which means it isn’t my fault my air magic went out of control and blew our food into the dirt,” I said.

“Oh really?” said Noel.

“Yes, really,” I said, “you would have done the same thing if you were working on it on your own.”

“Are you done making excuses?” said Noel.

“Yes,” I said with an exaggerated sigh as I stared at my feet. “I’m sorry I blew the food into dirt.”

And so we spent some time cleaning out the horrible insect meat with water before putting it over the fire again. It came out crispier than ever and we had to force it down with a ton of water.

“God, I hope those traps catch something better,” I said.

“Which god are you asking?” said Noel as she looked to the sky.

Both the moon and the red star were out. The moon was waning after dominating the sky for the past few days, and the red star finally appeared. I couldn’t help but wonder what the Immortal of Madness had done to make the God of Evil’s red star disappear from the sky, but it seemed like things would be back to normal soon.

“Neither,” I said. “Maybe the Immortal of Desire, but who knows where those birds have gone.”

Noel finished her food and used some water to wash out her mouth. Nobody wanted ashy insect meat in their teeth. “They were supposed to teach us magic.”

“Would’ve been nice to have a mentor,” I said. “Wouldn’t have blown our food into the dirt if we had a mentor.”

Noel chuckled. “Did you set up the perimeter?”

I nodded. “I put motion detection magic in a circle around the map. It’ll only work for land based monsters, though. I haven’t figured out how to make this work properly for flying stuff.”

“Maybe pick random spots above our heads,” suggested Noel.

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. I cast motion detection magic right over our camp. It would only give me a few seconds to react to any dive bombing flying monsters, but hey, that was better than nothing!

“Man,” I said, lying flat on the ground. “I’m cold, hungry, and tired as hell.”

“So am I,” said Noel as she lay down too. We couldn’t find any leaves or even wood in this part of the wilderness, so we were sleeping on the ground. I was especially tired because of all the motion detection magic I’d cast and Noel was tired because she had to keep the fire magic running so we could cook our food. If you could even call what we ate, ‘food’.

“Hey, Cas,” whispered Noel after I closed my eyes.

I kept my eyes closed as I replied: “Yes?”

“Do you think—”

“No.”

“That’s not what I was going to ask.”

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I hesitated. “If it’s not about what we’re both thinking, what we’re both avoiding thinking about… then sure. Go ahead.”

“Do you think we’re strong enough?” asked Noel.

“Strong enough?” I repeated. “Strong enough to do what?”

“You know,” said Noel as I heard her shuffling around. “Strong enough to fight monsters.”

“We just ate a couple of monsters for dinner, didn’t we?” I said.

“Those don’t count,” she said. “I mean, everyone we’ve fought so far has always been tougher than we expected. The one star Farro Bird, The Terrible, and you even fought the Oracle. We spent all that time working on our magic, convinced we’d be able to take on those big, powerful enemies, and we barely made it. Every time.”

“We won, didn’t we? Every time,” I said.

“We were lucky,” she said. “We’re not going to be lucky all the time.”

“I mean, when your tribesmen went out to hunt, wasn’t there always some luck involved? Like, finding the right prey or not attracting a powerful predator. Complaining about being lucky is kind of pointless, isn’t it?” I said.

“No, it isn’t. Do you think our hunters went into the wild every day with no idea where the monsters were going to be?” she said.

I opened my eyes. “...yes?”

Noel shook her head. “What were they teaching you in your tribe? Even children know about the connection between hunters and the land. We don’t know exactly where the monsters are going to be, but we know some things. We know the watering holes, the domains of fierce predators, the kinds of things that anger some monsters and comfort others. We even move groups of monsters around by scaring them or offering bait. Sometimes we’ll gather droppings from powerful monsters to stop weaker ones from moving into an area. Or we might want to cull some monsters by driving them into an area with powerful predators. And there are other tricks and techniques. There isn’t as much luck involved in a successful hunt as you think.”

Huh. I guess I hadn’t exactly learned about hunting practices in prehistoric hunter gatherer societies. My college course did a great job explaining certain aspects of prehistoric culture and technology, but it didn’t talk too much about everyday life. I guess it was the difference between knowing that archaeologists had found a doll in an excavation site and actually playing with that doll in real life. To the archaeologists, that doll was an important window into social structures, attitudes towards childhood, and might even serve as a demographic or technological indicator. But to a little girl, her doll was just her doll. It was important to her because she liked to play with it, and her family made it for her because they wanted her to be happy. Learning about hunting in a college classroom might tell me things about the people I was studying, but it wouldn’t help me understand them as real, actual people, the way I could understand people from my own time and setting.

The Immortal of Madness’ words came to mind: Have you even tried to learn anything since you came to this world? You’re in a whole new world where you can do unimaginable things, and you choose to do the imaginable?

“You’re right,” I said, at last. “We’ve been lucky so far, but our luck might run out.”

Noel nodded. “Neither of us have been hunters for long. In fact, we did barely any hunting in the few days for which we’ve been ‘official hunters.’ But I’ve learned a lot from hunters like uncle Sharun.” Noel paused on his name. She looked to the side of our little makeshift camp. The Dragon’s Tooth lay on the ground, mostly splintered and with many of its microliths missing or completely broken. It had been with us since I grabbed it from the unconscious Sharun after defeating the Oracle. “I think we can make better use of our magic if we learn to be better hunters. And I think we will be stronger if we learn to be better hunters. And finally, I think we need to be stronger to fight the kinds of monsters we’ve been fighting so far. I don’t want luck to determine if we live or die every time we fight a monster with a star on its forehead,” Noel finished.

“Yeah,” I said. “That makes sense. Although you’re going to have to take the lead on this one. I have no idea how to hunt stuff.”

“Wow, no otherworldly hunting knowledge on hunting?” said Noel. “I was expecting you to pull something useful out of that brain of yours. I’m sure this must be a humbling experience for you.”

I grumbled a little. “Fine, I’ll polish my ego by teaching you something else in return.”

“You’re going to teach me something? Is it going to be about magic?” said Noel.

“No,” I said.

“Then I don’t want it,” she said.

“It won’t help you with magic directly,” I said, “but it might help make you better at magic. Some might even say, it’ll make you, stronger.” I emphasized the last word.

“Fine,” said Noel. “I’ll teach you hunting, and you’ll teach me…”

I rolled over so I was facing Noel. Her silver eyes were way too close so I scooted over. I brushed her hair out of the dirt in between us, earning myself a silent glare for throwing dust on her face.

“You’ll teach me hunting and I’ll…” I picked up the Dragon’s Tooth, which was the only stick I had on hand, and used the tail end to make some shapes on the ground. “…teach you how to write.”