Chapter 14: Arc 2.03

Φ Arising from my bed, I feel an intense presence right next two me, so out of complete instinct, I go to attack it, but as he is about to make contact, I see the presence is Orb.

“Orb, what are you doing here,” I say, shocked

“You told me, we start my training today, so I wanted it to begin the moment you awoke.”

There is raw determination in those eyes. He must be excited to become one of us. So full of drive. I say, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Orb. Let’s us go and begin your Training.”

Φ Since yesterday I haven’t been able to get the taste out of my mind. How did I go my entire life without this? The fact that people eat this every day has filled me with nothing but jealousy, but now I will be able to learn how to hunt animals whenever I need to.

-Break-

As Sequoia and I walk to the hunting grounds, I look around the town and take note of a few things first; everyone gets up early in this village. Even sitting beside the chief’s bed, I heard people working away outside. I also heard Maple scream, “I won’t give in,” since she is still tied up, won’t she eventually have to eat or go to the toilet?

Throughout my walk with the chief, something bothered me, so I asked him, “Why is everyone not wearing fur clothes like you? They’re all in cotton clothes; won’t they freeze since snow is scattered all around the village.”

“Well, that’s because we have some level of resistance to the cold, so when we are in the village, we wear cotton clothes. Our bodies have adapted to Fimbulwinter over generations. I was taught at first, when our town was founded, people really couldn’t handle the cold, and someone would end up frostbitten every day, but through their perseverance, they were able to grow accustomed to it.

This also applies to plants and animals. At first, on this mountain, there were countless different plants and animals, but most of them died when it froze over, and the ones that adapted to the sudden change are what were able to survive.

Maple told me you had seen the golden trees. They store lots of hot water in their leaves, allowing them to survive extreme colds. Things like this also make us less worried about the cold, because of all the different types of plants we have found ways to deal with, even extreme frostbite.

The only issue we have is that all the plants take a lot of time to grow back, and all the animals need to eat them to survive, so our only choice to get food is to hunt consistently,” before I knew it, we were at the hunting grounds.

To my knowledge, at the beginning of every week, the village’s warriors gather together to procure the food that will be eaten for the next week.

While begin lost in thought, I heard the village chief scream, “Let the spirits of our ancestors be with us as we go out. May today’s hunt be bountiful.” after the chief said that, he walked over to me and says, “Orb, sorry about this,” then I feel a substantial impact on the back of our head.

-Break-

“He should be waking up about now,” is the first thing I hear when I open my eyes. Then after looking around, I realised the voice I heard was Sequoia.

“Hey, what was that for.”

“Sorry, Orb, I needed to get you out of the village without seeing the exit.”

“You could of at least told me. Also, how did you know when I would wake up.”

“I knock my daughter out when she gets rowdy, so I have gained a sense for when people wake up from that.”

You know, the more he talks about his daughter, the more he sounds like an abusive parent, but I won’t ever say that to him.

“Orb, the hunt is about to begin, so watch and see what you have to achieve.”

So, as I get up from the floor, I see the village warriors walk past me. I see Aea and Alis. I stare and wave at them with a creepy smile whispering their names, but they freak out and walk faster away from me.

One of the warriors walks into me and pushes me to the ground. When I look up to see who it is and it’s the stomach puncher himself Buloke. He gives me a murderous look, and walks away. Now I have two goals learn how to hunt and push Buloke off a cliff. Oh, I am just teeming with motivation.

As I get up, I see something hiding in one of the bushes, but as I try to get a better look, it moves away. I have only seen him twice, so I am not a hundred per cent sure, but I still tell the chief, “I think I see Willow hiding in that bush.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. He is always sneaking out to watch everyone hunt. We’re all aware of him hiding over there.”

But as Sequoia was telling me, I heard someone shout, “They are coming,” and out of the forest, a group of waptors running at full speed headed toward us, screaming.

“Sequoia isn’t this bad. We didn’t have time to set up a trap, at this rate we will get overrun.”

“Traps, you say. Well, I guess that is the safest way to go about hunting, but we prefer a more head-on method.”

“What are you talking about? That’s absurdly dangerous”, but as the words leave my mouth, I see a waptor head fly over and land between Sequoia and me.

I look over and see that the warriors have beheaded the waptors despite their speed. As more waptors run towards them, I see Aea and Alis instantly cut off their heads. I was making fun of these two. If they wanted, they could have killed me before I even noticed.

Then I see Buloke fight in a mere second. He cuts the heads off of four raptors. He is moving so fast that I can barely follow him; these are inhuman movements. How are they doing this? It’s so amazing. All I can do is sit there, shocked.

“Using traps would be much safer, but it isn’t our way. Instead, we like to hunt the animals headfirst. It’s our way of respecting them. It makes hunting exceptionally dangerous, but all we have to do is get strong enough to compensate.” After Sequoia spoke these words, I saw the last of the waptor fall to the ground, dead.

“You guys are amazing.”

“No need to flatter us, Orb. You will be doing this soon enough.”

So as everyone is about to start collecting the bodies, a scream echoes throughout the forest. Then suddenly, trees begin to fall, and out of the woods comes a spercera.

I start panicking as it runs toward us, but I hear Sequoia say, “This is quite fortunate you needed a spear, didn’t you Orb,” Sequoia then grabs Buloke’s spear out of his hand in an instant, and starts running towards the spercera as it charges at him.

When the spercera is about to hit him, he dodges to its side while slicing the horns that protect its face. The spercera then runs into a tree. Then almost instantly, Sequoia turns around and jumps onto a tree, then jumps again into the air and falls directly on top of the spercera, plunging his spear into its head, killing it instantly.

I have been very casual with the chief, because he seems like the most normal person here, but he is a monster. Is he even human because if he is, he shouldn’t be able to do this?

“Orb, remember everything you have seen today. Well, I expect you to be able to do all this eventually.”

Dumbfounded by what I just saw, it took me a second to understand his words, but after my mind returned, I said, “Sir, yes sir.”

“You sure are funny, but that’s Good to Hear,” Sequoia says as he approaches me.

I didn’t think what I said was all that funny, but then I realised we had just finished. “Oh no”, is what I say before his hand strikes me unconscious.

-Break-

“Five, four, three, two, one.”

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“Where am I,” I say as I jump from the floor.

“Right on time, Orb.”

Quickly looking around, I grasp the situation and say, “You know you can just tell me if you want to knock me out.”

“If I did that, you’d know  to brace yourself for the impact, and then I would have to hit harder, it’s the policy of the village to do things in one shot to minimise suffering.”

“Whatever then, so when do I start my training.”

“We will start in a little bit, but here you go.” Sequoia then hands me fur clothing just like everyone else’s.

“Orb yesterday, I asked someone to make this for you, I thought that if you stay here, you should look the part.”

So, I put the clothes on a wool top, trousers, a half-open skirt, woolly boots and a bandana it’s primarily silver with a dark blue and gold pattern spread across it all.

“Thank you, sequoia.”

“No problem, but now we are going to begin your training. Are you ready”

“Ready as I will ever be.”

-Break-

It has been one month since I started my training, and I have been primarily doing three things during that time.”

First is strength training, every day is five hundred squats, lunges, crunches, and pushes ups, and then we run around the entire village eighty times. My body aches intensely afterwards, to the point that the meat I eat at the end of the day, which should be my solace, ends up tasteless, this is too unfair.

The second is battle strategies, which I am taught in a class with some young children.

“After years of research, we have found that the animals follow specific patterns when fighting them. An example would be the waptor. After its initial bite, it will try to cut you with either its left or right wings. You can tell which it will use to attack by how it moves its head, and if you can dodge under his wings, when it turns around to face you, its head will be exposed, allowing you to cut it off.

So, remember to understand all the patterns of the animals and look out for signs of their subsequent movements, especially you, Orb.”

“I will, Pine.”

The woman pine is a former warrior who teaches us. She is one of the only people in the village who isn’t bothered by my existence, unlike everyone else who shows either extreme disdain like Buloke, fear like the Aea and Alis, or is intrigued like all the kids in the class, well all except the kid named willow, he sort of sits there with all his attention focused on the class.

I also realised from the patterns on her clothes that she was the one who made me dresses, and due to me liking them, I like her as well though she does yell at me due to falling asleep in class due to exhaustion. I also learned that she is considered old even though she is only forty-five.

Now the final type of training I have been doing is combat training. I only started recently, and it has not been a fun experience because the warrior training me is the ultimate stomach puncher, Buloke.

“You can just quit if it is too hard for you.”

This asshole was supposed to be training me, but he has just been using that as an excuse to hit me as hard as he wants.

“Don’t you think you’re being too hard on him?” Aea says.

Aea, you just got some favour in my book. I will stop playing harsh jokes on her and her brother for some time, I think as I start getting up.

“Aea, he hasn’t been training since he was a kid like the rest of us, so I need to be tough on him, or he will never grow stronger,” He says staring down at her.

“He is right. The animals I have seen are much more dangerous, so I need to get stronger quickly if I want to hunt them, and he should keep going with this level of intensity, because I plan to pay it all back on his stupid face.”

“Oh yeah, well, we will see about that”, Buloke says as he charges forward with his fist.

Good, he is angry. I should be able to do it now. So, as he came forward, I moved my face out of him, then he went for a swipe with his arm, which I ducked. I must observe him. He is about to go for a knee, so I move back.

He almost got me, but when he is agitated his moves aren’t as precise, so I dodge all his attacks. My body starts aching, but dodging feels so good I can’t stop. This continues until he says, “Enough of this,” he then lunges forward at incredible speed as I see his fist about to hit me. One thought goes through my head, I am about to die.

Suddenly I hear, “BULOKE STOP YOU, IDIOT,” then the boy named willow comes between us and blocks the punch with his arms, but the force of the impact sends him flying into me, and then the both of us into the snow.

“Willow, what is wrong with you? If I didn’t hold back, you would have almost died.”

“What’s wrong with you? Ever since this man has shown up, you’ve been acting like an idiot, so I came to make sure you weren’t doing something stupid.”

As they argued, I heard some say, “Hello, Chief.”

As the chief approached where the incident just when down, he said, “Everyone go home for the day, and Buloke come with me, we need to talk. Willow, you come as well, so we can treat those bruises on your arm.”

So as everyone follows the chief instruction, I say to willow, “Thank you for saving my life.”

“I didn’t do that for you, I did it to stop that idiot from making a mistake,” after he says that, he goes off with the chief with a big bruise on both of his arms.

 

Log of animals

Name: Spercera

Height: 320cm

Type: Predasaur

Description: It’s a giant silver quadrupedal omnivore with one large horn at the front with curved horns around its face that form a spiral armoured face cover. It is covered in fur and has skin as hard as iron.

Fact: They ram into the hardest object they can find to sharpen their horn.

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