And (N)one Shall Remain

“Good shot!” praised Esperanza as she watched the old hunter Adan-Zil at work.

 

While the trio of natives were leading her back to their village, she eventually managed to insist that they not mind her presence and hunt like usual along the way. She was not in any hurry to begin with, and she would feel bad if she were to derail the three’s hunting plans and accidentally cause someone to go hungry in their village as a result.

 

The native trio hunted in a manner that was as primitive as their gear, though after she got a closer look at how they did things, she noticed a few things about them as well. For one, whatever their kind was, Adan-Zil and the youngsters were definitely stronger and faster than humans. The two youngsters moved notably faster and more agilely than the Temple Guards she faced back then, and while they did have half a tier’s worth of levels in advantage, it was more than evened out by their non-combative second tier as well.

 

Classes like what they had were the bottom of the barrel, the common sort of classes the majority of people had. According to oldies the gains they received from those classes would be far, far worse than what Esperanza gained from her first tier class. The disadvantage would accumulate and just increase as they went higher in levels and tiers, and people with mixed, poor classes like those would be nowhere near as effective as those who got better, more focused ones even a tier lower. Usually, that was.

 

It turned out that the different races did have differences with their base stats, so some non-humans like Adan-Zil’s kind would naturally have an advantage over humans in that regard.

 

Compared to the two youngsters, Adan-Zil was something else altogether. Esperanza sort of expected that, as his class setup was better and more focused than the youngsters, but had not expected the degree of difference between them. 

 

Where the two youths reminded her of hunters she had seen in shows in her previous life, skilled despite their lowish levels in the class, Adan-Zil reminded her more of the stealthier predators that lived deeper in the jungle. The older hunter sometimes seemed to just blend in with his surroundings, to the point that most would have had a hard time to notice his presence even at close range.

 

As the youngsters were less skilled in hiding their presence, they relied on their spear-throwers to hunt. They would keep a javelin nocked in the tool with the rest of their javelins held in their other hand together with their long spear, and skulked until they were close enough to ensure a good hit. The force of the thrown javelin was quite impressive, as Esperanza had seen one hurled by Eda-Zil pierce through the ribcage of a deer and went out the other side of the animal’s body.

 

In comparison to Adan-Zil however, their skills were still greatly lacking. 

 

The older hunter was so accurate with his spear-thrower that Esperanza was impressed by how he took down a large bird in mid-flight with an accurate throw that skewered the animal from one side to another, from a distance more than thrice what the youngsters were comfortable with. 

 

He was most comfortable hunting with his spear, though, and he made his hunts an example for the younger two to learn from as he snuck through the undergrowth or atop tall branches before he struck down his prey with his spear. The violence was often very brief, as the experienced hunter killed his targets near-instantly.

 

Esperanza also noted how he never used his club-like weapon but always kept it close at hand. In Adan-Zil’s own words, the weapon was rare and difficult to make, so he did not wish to risk damaging it unless he really needed to do so. It was a proper weapon for them, not a hunting tool, and was something he would only use in defending himself against the more vicious beasts of the forest.

 

The three native hunters made a sort of stretcher from branches and vines on which they placed their kills, and dragged it behind them as they walked towards their village. According to Adan-Zil’s words, their village was roughly half a day’s walking distance away, roughly a day for them since they were burdened with their prey. 

 

As such, Esperanza accompanied the native hunters as they settled down for the night in a small clearing. The pile of animal carcasses they carried with them were placed on the side of their camp, covered in leaves that leaked a sort of resin-like substance which somehow kept the smell from dispersing. Most of the animals they hunted had levels in the mid-teens, which according to Adan-Zil had more lifeforce and thus wouldn’t spoil as fast.

 

Nights in the forest were quiet moments. The three native hunters huddled around a small campfire that both warned some animals to stay away from their camp and gave them warmth. They drank from their waterskins and chewed on some rations they brought from the village. Adan-Zil had offered Esperanza a portion and she accepted it out of politeness.

 

It tasted sort of like a protein bar of some kind, though from what she could tell, it seemed to be made out of crushed dried meat and fruits suspended with rendered fat instead. It definitely wouldn’t have won any sort of culinary award, but was decent enough for a portable meal to be had during hunting trips, she guessed.

 

One of the three stayed up as a guard while they slept, the three alternating in shifts. Esperanza noted how Adan-Zil took the middle shift on purpose, so as to allow the youngsters to get some hours of straight, uninterrupted sleep in. None of the three seemed to have even thought of asking Esperanza to help out, which was something she sort of expected.

 

Regardless, she chose to help out with the night watch anyway. Ever since her incarnation to this new world and the changes to her body, Esperanza no longer truly slept like she used to. Instead, she only rested part of her mind, with the other half remaining in a half-awake state, switching between the halves partway through her rest. That meant that she remained acutely aware of her surroundings even during her “sleep”.

 

She didn’t know if Dali and Gordy needed any true sleep either, but the two dogs curled their bodies around her legs as she slept, something they habitually did, though she noticed how they were often aware of intruders before she even noticed it at all. When she considered their true natures, they probably needed as little sleep as she did, if not even less.

 

Their peaceful rest was interrupted towards the end of Adan-Zil’s watch when Esperanza heard a slight rustling in the trees, approaching in their direction. She snapped fully awake in a flash, while both Dali and Gordy unlimbered themselves from their comfortable huddle around her feet. Adan-Zil noticed her movements and turned to face her in alarm.

 

“What is it, Honored One?” he asked with obvious worry.

 

“Sh…  Guarda Silencio,” she said with a low voice. Fortunately while she had inadvertently switched to Spanish the meaning still got translated all the same to Adan-Zil, who nodded and shut his lips tightly. They spoke silently enough that neither Eda-Zil nor Kvar-Litu were roused from their slumber. “We have incoming… I think there’s… five? No. Six of them… from all around us.”

 

Adan-Zil almost leapt up from his sitting position when she said that, though he somehow managed to do it without making any discernible noise. He grabbed the paddle-like club in his right hand and his spear with his left as he looked around in full alert immediately. It must have been ingrained instincts and reflexes which allowed him to do it so swiftly and silently.

 

He was about to wake up the youths when Esperanza held up one of her hands to stop him. Instead, she gave a couple gestures to Dali and Gordy with her other hand, and the two dogs nodded back at her before they slipped away in the darkness, into the forest. She herself moved to stand next to Adan-Zil, and shushed him once more, one finger held over her “lips”.

 

To his credit, while Adan-Zil looked at her questioningly he left the question unvoiced, and simply maintained his readiness. After a short while of waiting in the oppressive silence, they finally heard some noises from within the forest, noises which sounded like animals fighting, punctuated by something that sounded like a monkey’s cry in the distance.

 

Just as Adan-Zil looked like he was about to say something, Esperanza moved. Her arms elongated from beneath her outfit and struck into the canopy of the forest like a pair of serpents. Instinctively she shifted one of her maws onto the palm of each hand, which bit into their prey the moment the hands latched onto their forms in the darkness.

 

Even before her surprised targets could cry out in shock and pain, she formed another tentacle-like limb topped with four sharp claws that arranged themselves almost like a second set of jaws inside the maws that formed on her hands. Those new tentacular tongue-like appendages shot out from the cavity with great force and punched through their victims all the way to the other side of their bodies. Blood and bone fragments spilled out from the exit wounds as the tenebrous limbs pushed their way through, cloaked in their entirety with gore and bits of their victims’ organs.

 

Her prey ceased struggling shortly afterwards as the life left their broken forms.

 

She got her first glimpse at the creatures as her elongated arms dragged the carcasses back towards the camp. They looked like baboons at a glance, but with elongated snouts that were filled with many razor-sharp teeth not unlike a shark. Their six limbs were each twice as long as their torso, spindly almost like a spider’s legs, ending in three-taloned claws, and they also had a tail which was just as long, with a nasty looking stinger at its tip.

 

Esperanza took a brief moment to identify them back before she killed them, and saw that they were called [Venom-Tailed Crawlers], with their levels all in the low 20s. That was definitely on the high end for this area of the forest. Apparently Adan-Zil thought the same as his greenish face had visibly paled when he saw the carcasses.

 

“You know these things?” Esperanza asked quietly. The distant fighting and her own quick execution of her prey had made so little noise that neither of the youths had been awakened from their sleep. From her interface she already noticed that Dali and Gordy had made short work of the remaining creatures, and inwardly nodded with satisfaction. The experience they gave out was minimal, but still better than the tier 1 creatures that mostly inhabited the region.

 

“They are some of the most dangerous predators in this region of the forest, honored one,” replied Adan-Zil with a look of wonderment on his face, probably related to how easily she just took down two of the beasts at the same time. Or maybe it was about the bit where she literally shot out her arms and took care of things that were easily ten meters away from them, she wasn’t certain. “Sometimes one of them would even crawl into the village and steal some of our livestock away… or even our children.”

 

“I see. Pests and vermin then,” said Esperanza with a nod as she gave a shrug of her shoulders. She looked at the mostly intact carcasses once more before she asked Adan-Zil. “Do you have any use for their bodies?”

 

“We could use the tails to poison our weapons. Their poison is paralytic and breaks down when cooked, so we often use it for hunting,” he explained. “The claws and teeth are also useful to us. We sometimes make our spearheads and other tools from such materials.”

 

Without a word, Esperanza shifted the fingers of her hands into blade-like claws as she detached the tails of the creatures from their bodies. Then she used those claws to directly pluck their heads off their necks as well, which she then tossed over to Adan-Zil for his use. 

 

Even as the native thanked her, Dali and Gordy returned cheerfully with blood around their mouths, so Esperanza tossed the remaining parts of the monsters to them, which the two dogs devoured with gusto.