Dan woke to danger. He bolted upright, crashed through the pine branch roof of the shelter he made. The danger was a monster, and his danger sense broke through the shroud of his exhaustion and lifted him to an instant state of wakeful alertness. The thing was about seven hundred yards away, looked like an armored, three horned bear the size of an SUV, had large solid red eyes (how did those even work?) and it was closing fast. He quickly used System Identify.

Bull Armor-Back Wrax, lvl 7. Monster Type: Wrax

That wasn't particularly helpful. It was headed straight for him, faster than he was, and built like a tank. How was he supposed to fight that? Did it even have weaknesses? In response to that mental question, Sense Weakness informed him that yes, it did. Nose. Eyes. Interior of mouth.

That was it?

It wasn't much to work with. He could climb the tree where he'd left his rope hanging, but that seemed like a good way to die of thirst in a tree. Or die quicker if it could just knock the tree over, which seemed disturbingly plausible. What did he have to work with? Sling. Minor Aether Bolt. Firestone Amulet. Several seconds. He activated Unerring Aim, stepped clear of his shelter, and pushed his senses to their limits. Tactical Precognition showed an array of futures, all within the next few seconds. But every moment that passed irrevocably cut some of them off as the beast drew nearer and the situation subtly changed.

After a short eternity, Dan acted. He fired three Minor Aether Bolts in immediate succession, one at each of the monster's red eyes and one at its nose. Each struck within a heartbeat. The beast stumbled, covered its injured eyes with a massive paw, and bellowed in pain and anger. That bellow was what Dan counted on. It necessarily opened the monster's mouth and exposed the unprotected throat within. Dan instantly launched a Greater Fireball from his Firestone Amulet and spent the rest of his aether pool on two more Minor Aether Bolts. They hit their soft mucosal target before the massive bull wrax could react, even by shutting its mouth. The monster let out a strange, strangled cough before resuming its charge.

Dan did not wait to observe the results of his attack. He ran for his rope and climbed with an urgency close to panic. If the monster was like a bear, then it could stand on its hind legs. That would give it a reach of maybe eighteen to twenty feet. He'd shot every bullet he had at once, and hoped it was enough to slow it down, or in a best case scenario suffocate the thing. But if his attack hadn't hurt it badly, his only chance was to have his feet at least twenty feet above the forest floor by the time it got to the tree. Waiting it out up on the stout branch seemed a much better plan with the monster injured and hopefully blind than if it were healthy. The rope was on the side of the tree opposite the wrax, and Dan also hoped that it would lose a bit of time and momentum circling around. It didn't bother. The massive beast came at an all out sprint as it lowered its head and rammed the tree. The tree rattled and shook. Dan's bones and teeth rattled and shook, and only his grip on the rope kept him from falling. For a moment he had a very real fear the thick trunk would uproot, tip, and crush him. It didn't.

Dan scrambled the rest of the way up to the bough above as the monster circled the tree and gathered itself for another charge. It had to be tracking him by hearing. Unless it wasn't. It could be scent, even with a heavily damaged nose, or thermal sense, or electrical sense, or aether detection, or life sense, or any number of senses he hadn't thought of or imagined. All the rules he thought he knew about how living creatures perceived their environments had to be thrown out now - he couldn't afford assumptions. The thing seemed to know where he was and could tell when he moved. How it was doing so didn't matter too much. It charged again and crashed heavily against the tree trunk. Dan was ready. He was on top of the big branch where he'd tied his rope and had his arms locked firmly around it.

Wait - why was he able to climb ten to fifteen feet up a tree, onto a branch, and get a secure hold in the time it took for the wrax to take another charge? He was better at climbing now, but still not all that fast. Dan focused on his Life sense. The monster below was ponderously walking away, presumably to gather itself for yet another try at battering the tree down. It was weakening. Much was different in this world, but Dan had bet heavily that monsters still needed to breathe air, and that at least this one did so only through its nose and mouth. At first it had seemed like the wrax had eaten a greater fireball with little more than a bad aftertaste, but no, it was just tough enough to shrug off the effects temporarily. The monster charged, hit the tree again. It was still a powerful collision, but not nearly as bone rattling as the first had been.

This time the monster lay down heavily and pulled its massive paws under its body, as if to rest. But it could not breathe. The Greater Fireball and Minor Aether Bolts had destroyed its mouth, nose, and airways, and the giant monster was slowly suffocating. Dan clung to his branch high above and waited, observing with all of his senses as the beast's life slipped away. It truly was enormous, a heavily built six feet high at the shoulder and fifteen feet long. Chitinous black armor segments like a beetle's wings protected most of its back, sides, and the fronts of its legs. Between the armor segments there was thick, coarse, very dark gray fur which filled out to a mane around the monster's muscular neck.

After it lay down, the wrax took fully twenty-two minutes to die. Either it was still able to get a little air, or its constitution was incredible. Possibly both. After his aether pool had completely refilled, Dan hit it with Minor Aether Bolts every two minutes, just to make sure it didn't have an uninterrupted chance to heal, even if that didn't seem realistically possible. But eventually it died.

Monster Defeated, Bull Armor-Back Wrax (lvl 7). Aether Gained.

Dan didn't gain a level and felt quite cheated. Perhaps there was some sort of accelerated leveling speed at play during the initial trial or something? Or maybe you gained the same amount of aether from killing a level seven inchworm as from a level seven armored, horned bear that appeared to have the reasonable belief that it could batter down large trees?

Whatever.

He climbed down from the tree and examined the massive corpse in the light of the moons. There were three of them, though one was much bigger than the others. One small moon, to his amusement, was in fact blue. The wrax stank. It had a musk like a ferret or weasel, and also smelled of burned flesh from where it had unwittingly swallowed a fireball. Its horns were short and conical. Dan guessed they were made out of whatever rhino horns were, and wondered if they had commercial value in this world. Should he try to harvest them? Probably. First things first though. Examine the rest of the body.

The paws were huge, and it was all Dan could do to pry one out from under the bulk of the body with his tire iron as a lever. That paw, the front left, was positioned such that only a portion of the body's weight rested on it, and he doubted he could dislodge any of the other three. It had fixed, large, fairly sharp claws that were unsurprisingly much like a bear's. They looked more than adequate for Dan smashing purposes. The more he looked at this monster, the more convinced he became that only two plans had had any chance of survival against it. The first was what he'd used to kill it. The second was to sprint like mad and hope that it would tire before its greater short distance speed overtook him.

He might have to start sleeping in trees. Dan grimaced. It would be cold, and he would be utterly exposed to any aerial or climbing monsters or predators unless he was low enough that he could safely jump down. When he'd gone to sleep, Dan had felt pretty safe, confident in his plans, resources, and abilities. Now? Not so much. Not so much at all.

That wrax could have killed any terrestrial predator on Earth with relative ease (discounting those that could escape or hide). If biology here worked anything like what it did back home, it probably needed around sixty to eighty pounds of meat a day. Maybe monsters could cheat on metabolic requirements somehow. Aether seemed to shrug off natural law as it pleased after all, and monsters were apparently all bound up with Aether and the System in a confusing tangle. Dan wondered who would have won in a fight, the dead wrax or the goblin troop. It was difficult to evaluate because he'd killed the shaman so quickly, but would probably have depended on how well the goblins were able to prepare. If they had traps, fortified positions, they might have had a pretty good chance?

His musings were interrupted when a large, black bird appeared on a branch up and to his right. Dan was instantly on his guard, for three reasons. First, it was the first being or thing that had shown up on his Sense Power sense other than himself and Sam, and if his sense was accurate it way stronger than he was. Even the wrax had not met whatever criteria that sense used to define "Power". Second, when he even thought about attacking the bird his Danger Sense screamed at him. Third, none of his senses had detected it until this moment. Either it had instantly teleported (scary) or it could hide from all of his insanely over the top super senses (scarier).

Dan used System Identify.

Twilight Raven, lvl 14. Noble Beast.

Noble Beast? Not a monster then, something else?

The Twilight Raven cawed. Dan's ears heard normal bird sound, but in his aether sense it was resonant, laden with meaning that was somehow immediately clear in his mind. Universal Translator presumably.

"Good evening, friend Vanguard. Congratulations on your victory. I am First Ray of Dawn Through Wet Leaves, Lord of this wood. Welcome to this world. Who are you?"