One Last System

We were both still dirty. As it turned out, reaching the river by going directly through the forest would take us far longer than I initially expected, turning our leisurely trip to the shore into a  proper hunting expedition.

Yet, for how uncomfortable it felt to move around in randomly organized clothing while bearing all the marks of our nightly activities all over our skin… Right now, those things served as a massive advantage.

The smell of the slightly rotting sheets that I found in the room masked the distinct smell of a human. The lack of comfort stemming from how messy we were made both of us move as carelessly as we could so that we wouldn't spread the dirt any further.

And it was those advantages that allowed Mia to approach the fourth-tier beast with relative ease.

'Just a little bit more,' I thought, encouraging the girl in my mind while watching how she got closer and closer to her target.

A small blade flashed in her hand, reflecting the spare sunlight that managed to break past the barrier of the tree crowns and fall right on the girl's hand.

The beast suddenly tensed up, rapidly raising its head and then freezing in place.

'Huge ears, sizeable nose, small eyes…' I quickly took notice of the sensory features of the beast.

All in all, the monster looked like a mix between a mid-sized dog and a deer, as if someone took a beheaded corpse of a deer and then stuffed a head of a cute dog on top of its neck.

The nostrils of the beast and its large ears moved around, proving it was scanning the area for any hints of danger.

'Was it the light?' I thought, puzzled about what alerted the beast. I then squinted my eyes. 'Should I help out?'

Right now, the beast was on high alert. In other words, one could either wait it out for it to lower its guard again or direct its attention elsewhere to convince the prey it was nothing but a false alarm.

Sadly, Mia didn't have the expertise necessary to understand those points.

As soon as she noticed the beast freeze, Mia gathered the strength in her limbs, slowly raising her body to move it to a position where she could leap forward.

And to my genuine surprise, the beast kept on failing to notice the girl, as if her movements were too damn slow for it to notice them!

Mia leaped forth.

She was grasping the ground with her left hand while keeping her knees curled up all the way to her stomach. She pulled her hand back while pressing both of her legs to the back at the same time, leaping at a speed only a cultivator could achieve.

'She can do it,' I thought, watching how the beast instantly turned its head in the direction of Mia's flying body.

The beast tensed up and lowered itself on its limbs.

Mia's body flew closer.

The beast shifted its weight to the side, trying to jump away from where Mia would land.

Mia reached out with her right, attempting to cut the beast with her small knife before it could start running.

The beast pushed with its hind legs, ready to jump away and start running… Only for Mia's dagger to lodge itself into the beast' hip, throwing it off balance and stopping it in place.

'She got it!' I tightened my fists in celebration, watching how Mia quickly pinned the beast down to the ground with her body. Only once she was sure she secured her prey did the girl pull the knife out of the animal's hip, only to bring it up to its throat and cut it open with one, quick slash.

"Dry its blood!" I called out with advice. "The meat will taste better if we dry the blood as soon as possible!"

I wasn't going to keep the animal alive while it bleed out. And from the looks of it, Mia wasn't going to follow this kind of barbaric tradition that I knew from my original world either.

"On it!" Mia reported back, standing upright as she pulled her knife back before burying it into the side of the beast's head.

The beast convulsed once before its entire body fully relaxed, no longer controlled by its nervous system.

"Now, raise it and pull its head back to let the blood drain," I ordered, leisurely approaching the girl.

Back in the days of me being a contractor, I would rush to extract the beast's core and maybe some of its meat for my consumption before discarding the rest and fleeing the scene before predators would get attracted to the scent of blood.

This time, however, I was far too damn powerful to care about any monster that could be lurking within the bushes.

Those that I couldn't passively notice were too damn weak to pose any threat to me or Mia. And those that I could passive detect… I would be aware of their presence anyway!

"That was pretty damn nervewracking," Mia admitted as she used some hemp and climbed up a nearby tree to hang the middle-sized beast down one of its branches while using another bunch of wild grass to bind the back of the beast's head to the fur on its back. "I nearly let it get away!"

"That's true," I nodded my head. "You nearly allowed it to get away. You were too hasty to take the jump," I pointed out the girl's mistake. "The best moment to attack is when they are lowering their guard. Not when they do so already, but when they are in the process of doing so."

"So, when they are moving their attention back to grazing, right?" Mia asked while glancing over at her prey to ensure its blood was flowing out properly.

"That's right," I nodded my head in response, smiling lightly when Mia raised her hand and used the top of her hand to wipe some speck off her chin, leaving a trail of blood on it instead.

'That's pretty damn metal,' I thought, once again confirming that it didn't matter what Mia wore or what she had on her face, it would always look like some sort of genius fashion.

"But there is still one thing that you need to do after each hunt," I then added, approaching the hanging corpse of the beast before pulling out my own knife.

For a second, I focused my mana sense of the no-longer animate being before driving my knife right around the height of the beast's heart.

"If you want it to be edible, you need to make sure to extract its core," I explained, burying my hand in the small cut I just made before plucking out a small, shiny object from the beast's innards.