Ma Erk woke up dazed and confused. The last thing he remembered was drifting off in the human’s arm soon after he was commanded to eat the berry. Yes, commanded. The human was now his new pack leader. Thinking of his old pack, he still felt indignant. He was always the last one to eat even when he was the one that led them to the prey. They would always make fun of him for his size, but how was he supposed to get bigger, if they never left him with any food.

Checking himself over, his wounds had closed. The only evidence left from last night’s fight was the dried blood, his once pristine fur was now matted.

To even call that a fight was giving himself too much credit, if anything it was more a beatdown. He was nowhere as strong as the two lackeys, not to mention their leader. The past beatings were never this bad. It felt like they were going to kill him. Thinking back to how he almost died, a spike of fear ran down his tail. It was a good thing that the pack leader found him.

Ma Erk felt oddly good, especially considering the injuries that he had. Flexing his muscles, there was a newfound strength that wasn’t there before. Was this what the others meant when they talked about cultivating and being more than what they were? Somehow, he instinctively knew that things were different now. There were these unfamiliar memories that were flowing around his head. They were too jumbled to make sense of now, but one thing he was sure of. He was now in the first stage of Body Tempering.

Looking around, he spotted the hu-, pack leader, sitting by the cliff watching the sunset.

…

Max heard some rustling behind him. He turned his attention away from the view and looked back at the little wolf.

“So you’re finally awake. Good.”

As Max said that, he threw over a quick Analyze and saw that the injured status was gone.

“How are you feeling?”

“Good. Very Good, Pack Leader! Ma Erk stronger too”

“Pack Leader? Why are you calling me Pack Leader?”

“Yes. You, Me pack. You strong, you Pack Leader. I strong, I Pack Leader.”

Hearing that, Max couldn’t help but let out a genuine laugh, the first good joke he heard in a while. Max tried to imagine a day when this puny wolf becomes stronger than him and he would need to call him Pack Leader or some other nonsense.

“Okay, I’m the Pack Leader. You can call me Boss instead, I don’t like the sound of Pack Leader.”

“Yes. Boss!”

“You said you felt stronger before. How strong are you now? Do you know?”

“Boss. Ma Erk. Now Body Tempering 1. Ma Erk so strong.”

That caught him off guard.

‘If the little wolf just got to the 1st Stage of Body Tempering, that likely meant before today, he had no cultivation. That was a lot weaker than I expected. Maybe it had a higher level?’

“Ma Erk, what level are you and how many experience points do you have?”

“Level? Experience? Ma Erk no understand”

Ma Erk tilted his little head in confusion. Max spent the next few minutes explaining levels, experience, HP, and stat points. He even had the little guy try pulling up his character sheet, but nothing. It seems like the system was nonexistent for Ma Erk. Max wasn’t really surprised, this was always a possibility for him. When he gained access to the system, it gave him the System Pioneer title. But it was still good to have some confirmation. He still needed to figure out if this was also the case for other humans.

It was getting dark, they could continue the discussion inside the cave with some light. He started the fire-making process. Like before, the sticks, branches, and leaves were already set up inside the cave.

“Boss, you doing?”

“Making fire.”

“What Fire”

As Max was lighting the embers for the fire he described what fires are and the basic uses of fire. When the embers were ready, Max got up and stepped into the cave.

“Boss, Where go?”

Max had forgotten that he hadn’t told Ma Erk about the Formation yet.

“In here, just walk into the cave.”

There was some hesitation on Ma Erk’s part when the little guy finally came in the fire was already roaring. The young wolf came charging in, if Max hadn’t scooped him up the puny wolf would have charged right into the fire larger than himself.

Ma Erk let out a yelp.

“You need to be careful, the fire is hot.”

Putting Ma Erk down, Max also noticed that the little wolf had gotten bigger and heavier. Then again, it could just be his sore arms.

“Sorry, boss!”

Ma Erk wasn’t sure what he should be more amazed by, the fire or the cave. He spent the next couple of minutes jumping between the two sides of the formation and just generally playing around with the new environment.

Max chuckled inwardly and just watched the wolf’s antics.

It was normal for a young cub to be curious about everything, but seeing that Ma Erk wasn’t planning on stopping anytime soon, Max threw him the last hawk skewer to get his attention.

“You should eat.”

Seeing the food, Ma Erk quickly stopped playing around and dashed to the skewer. Sniffing it, Ma Erk asked.

“Hawk meat?”

After seeing Max nod, Ma Erk dug in with a vengeance, he hadn’t had any meat in a long time. He was already starving even before the fight last night. The meat on the skewer was gone in a matter of seconds. After finishing the skewer, Ma Erk looked at him with those big puppy dog eyes.

Answering the unasked question, “That was the last one, we would have more if your old pack didn’t steal the hawk.”

After hearing that, Ma Erk’s ears drooped.

“We’ll go hunting tomorrow, you said you have a good nose.”

Hearing that Ma Erk’s ears perked up again.

“Yes. Ma Erk best nose. Ma Erk find prey. Boss kill prey.”

Max saw the little wolf had started to drool and its saliva began pooling around its paws. It looks like the little one was already imagining

Snapping him out of his daydream Max said “Now that you are all healed and have eaten, you are going to answer some of my questions.”

Over the next hour, Max interviewed the little guy with all the questions he could think of. The little wolf talked about himself first. Ma Erk didn’t know exactly how old he was, but according to the elders in his pack, there were four seasons in the year and the young wolf had only experienced winter once. That would put it under two years old assuming the seasons worked similarly here as they did on Earth. The little wolf prided himself on having the best sense of smell in the whole pack and said that no one else was able to smell the hawk except him. Max took that with a grain of salt and would be the judge of that.

Max also learned that the Ling Wolves as a whole weren’t the strongest in this area of the forest. Their advantage was that they had very good night vision. They, along with other nocturnal creatures would only come out when the apex predators were asleep. Although they were weak individually, there were also a lot of them. There were at least four or five packs of Ling Wolfs in the area that Ma Erk knew about. Each pack had no less than twenty to forty wolves although not all the wolves were fighters. Ma Erk belonged to one of the medium size packs with around thirty wolves.

“What are the apex predators around this part of the forest?”

“Big hawks! Eat many wolves.”

“Do you know how many of those big hawks are around here?”

“One here. Boss strong. Boss kill Big hawk. No more hawk.”

Hearing Ma Erk’s answer Max wonder if that was why he hadn’t gotten attacked since then. He was also climbing down the hill early in the morning, it was possible the hawk was trying to catch some prey that hadn’t gone into hiding yet and it just so happened to see him.

‘Damn that was some bad luck on my end.’

Max was glad there hadn’t been another hawk attack, but it would probably be only a matter of time before another hawk or another spirit beast lay claim to this area. Thinking of that, Max had an idea. The hawk wasn’t terribly strong, it was only at the 5th Stage of the Body Tempering, which was only two stages above him. He was already at the 3rd stage and with the Midnight Dew and his training, there shouldn’t be a problem reaching that stage in a week or so. He just might be able to become the apex predator of this area.

After thinking about it some more, something was not right here. If there were so many wolves here, why weren’t wolves the apex predators? Why would it be a hawk? If the little guy was right and there were four or five packs and each on average had thirty wolves that would be at least eighty to ninety wolves in just the area. How would they not be able to overwhelm one hawk that even Max was able to kill albeit he did score a lucky hit? And also, who or what would have been able to injure the hawk? When it had attacked him, it was already down a talon and also looked to be a fresh loss.

Max thought back to when he was attacked by the hawk. The first thing it had done was dug one of its talons into his chest and back. Even now with his full HP, Max could vividly remember that pain. He can vaguely remember the hawk had ineffectually used its other leg, the one without the talon. It had tried using it to hit him a few times on his other shoulder. Seeing the lack of damage, the hawk must had decided to use its beak to attack instead. And that was when Max scored the hit on its eye. When the hawk’s beak dove downwards, his Chi-Infused Rock was coming upwards.

For Max to drive the Chi-Infused Rock deeper he stood up to extend his reach. Did he stand up? That didn’t seem right, there was no way he would have been able to stand in that condition especially with the hawk basically on top of him. No, it must have been the hawk flapping its wings trying to lift him up from the ground. But Max was too heavy. Unlike other preys, where close to a third or more of their size was fur or feathers, Max was all body mass.

Coupled with the fact that it only had one talon, it couldn’t lift him.

‘And the missing talon was likely lost in a fight. So maybe it was also injured in that fight. So who's to say its cultivation and strength didn’t regress when it found me. If that’s true, the 5th Stage of Body Tempering might not be accurate either.`

Max could imagine how much trouble he would have been in if he went airborne. That must be why the hawk was the apex predator in these parts of the forest. It would carry its prey into the sky which made most of them defenseless. Unfortunately for Ma Erk, Max really wasn’t that strong and he had only defeated a weakened hawk with mostly pure luck and circumstance.

Max spent the next couple of hours learning more about the forest and the different powers in this area including the Ling Wolves.