Chapter 31: Camping

“System, you don’t happen to have a tent crammed into a corner of my mind or something?”

[Sorry, no. But I can tell you that a tent won’t be enough to stop any of the monsters you encounter, so it wouldn’t have helped you even if I did.]

“Damn. Any ideas on what I can do, then?”

[Hide?]

“Where?” Alec looked around. It was rapidly getting darker, and he was in the middle of a forest he had never visited before.

[Now!] The System urged hurriedly.

“That doesn’t answer—” Alec turned around at the sudden sound of a snapped branch.

Slowly, something walked out from behind a nearby tree.

’A sheep?’

Alec’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the animal.

Maybe he had walked in the right direction and gotten close to a farm or something.

The sheep’s eyes shone in the light of the setting sun.

Sheep weren’t famous for their intelligence to begin with, but Alec could tell, even if it was his first time seeing it for himself. He had read and heard enough about monsters to recognize one.

After all, no matter their appearance, all monsters had one thing in common.

It was the absolute lack of intellect. Their brains were empty.

Most of them lived through bloodthirst and instincts driving their actions. Those two things, combined with their raw physical superiority compared to ordinary animals, made it easy for them to thrive in the wild.

The easiest way to figure out if something was an animal or a monster was to look in their eyes.

If they were desparingly blank, glazed over, and more like the eyes of a dead one, it was a monster. If the eyes were alive, it wasn’t a monster.

However, as this sheep fully left the shadow of the tree it had snuck up behind, it became even clearer that it was a monster. Its horns had mutated and multiplied, covering its head and neck like cancerous growths.

Still, it had no trouble at all raising its head high as it looked at Alec with no emotion in its eyes.

And yet, Alec could feel the bloodthirst from the monster.

’Is this due to the existence of Aether? Do the metaphysical aspects of reality make bloodthirst and fear tangible?’

’Ah, maybe not the right time to think about stuff like that.’

The sheep had no reason to wait. It had no mind to come up with a reason. It sprinted straight at Alec as soon as it was past the tree.

Alec’s feet were frozen in place like roots had crawled out of the ground and were holding him down. He could only stare blankly at the monstrous sheep as it closed the distance.

Fifteen meters shrank to ten meters in the blink of an eye. Five meters.

Four meters.

’Surprisingly fast.’

Three meters.

’Fuck, am I dead?’ Alec felt surprisingly calm.

Two meters.

’No.’

Time slowed to a crawl. Alec’s thoughts…ceased for a moment. As his thoughts took flight for a moment, so did the paralyzing fear, and he flung himself to the side. The next thing he knew was the stings from landing on roots and sticks.

The pain cut through the remainder of his fear and panic. He didn’t see clearly.

His vision shrank as adrenaline flooded his body. The pain faded away despite droplets of blood squeezing out of the scrapes on his arms.

His heart pounded like a drum. It roared loud enough to make a lump in Alec’s chest.

His feet moved before his thoughts did, and he dashed to the side right in time for the sheep’s second charge.

Before he knew it, he was already halfway up a tree. He latched onto a branch and pulled himself up. One of the advantages of barely weighing anything was that he didn’t need to be strong to do that.

He kicked and flailed until he was fully up. A moment after he pulled up his legs, the entire tree shook. Leaves and branches clattered to the ground. Alec would have joined them if the tree had shaken in a different direction instead of along the branch.

He looked down. There were splinters of bark on the sheep’s head as it backed up to ram again.

The tree would break long before the sheep’s head did. Alec had to do something.

[Appraisal successful: Monster sheep. A weak monster.

[Strengths: Sturdy wool. Sturdy, overgrown horns. Robust body.

[Weaknesses: Stiff neck. Worn joints.]

’Okay, that’s neat.’ Those were things he didn’t know [Appraisal] could reveal. But it made sense. So, he didn’t read into it.

However, that didn’t change the fact that he was above the sheep. The only parts of it he could see were the sheep’s strengths. Regardless of what he tried to attack it with, it wouldn’t do anything other than tire him out.

Magic…

Any spell that would work in his current situation would drain all of his mana and cripple him before it killed the sheep.

He needed to target the sheep’s legs somehow.

With all the time in the world at his disposal, he could probably figure something out. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the tree would hold up five minutes, much less for the rest of eternity.

’System, any ideas?’

[Don’t die.]

’That was the plan.’

Alec’s brow furrowed as he thought about how he could take advantage of the monster’s weaknesses to kill it.

’Fireball won’t do.’ It might singe the sheep’s wool, but wool didn’t burn that easily. He was also in the middle of a forest. Starting a fire of the scale necessary to kill the monster wasn’t a good idea.

’Waterball isn’t powerful enough.

’Airshot is also too weak.

’Pebbleshot…Maybe if I can hit the eyes.’ Easier said than done.

Alec glanced around. Maybe someone had hidden a rocket launcher in the tree that he could use.

He didn’t find one. Not even a single assault rifle. Rude.

But he did find the next best thing. A perfectly sized branch.

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