Bernard found it interesting how much Aegis access seemed to change Henry. It more or less confirmed that there was some mental manipulation going on. He felt like it should bother him, that knowing something was messing with his head should be disturbing on a number of levels. It didn't though. Perhaps that was yet another thing that was being messed with, but all he had seen from it so far was beneficial.

Panicking or freezing in fear when you were attacked by a random monster that shouldn't even exist wasn't great for your life expectancy. Not to mention the fact that he doubted he would have made it far without the adjustments to his mentality pushing him to survive. It was strange to reflect on everything that had happened so far and realize that he should have died. Not just from the monsters, he had virtually zero knowledge of how to survive in a jungle.

Survival shows, half-remembered or not, did not prepare you for actually surviving in a virtually unknown environment with nothing but the shirt on your back. Sure, they had helped some, but the Bernard from just before Aegis would have never climbed that tree for example. He wasn't ever afraid of heights per se, but the risk of falling would have kept him firmly on the ground. Assuming he would have even been capable of climbing it. Each level he gained was slowly increasing his strength and endurance at the very least.

He only realized these things about himself after watching Henry go through a similar transformation. It was a subtle thing of course, the kid was still a bit standoffish and overly serious for a twelve year old. That was something he had been told quite emphatically when he asked how old he was. Offering his guesses of eight to ten hadn't gone over well. Still, the kid had gone from frozen-in-terror to coping with his trauma astonishingly well.

"Oh, kid, I forgot to ask, was it just you and your mom? Where's your dad?" Bernard asked as they walked in a roughly northwestern direction. His dash through the forest that led to their meeting had taken him past a bend in the river and he saw no harm in staying on this side of it awhile longer if he could still head north.

"My mom always said he left and that it was a good riddance. What about you, old man? Where is your family?" Henry answered with a shrug. His tone told Bernard that it was a bit of a sore subject but not totally off limits.

He wasn't going to press the kid on a sore subject though. He was just trying to learn a bit more about his new traveling companion. "Don't have any. My parents passed away a long time ago and I never got married or had any kids."

"Why not? Is it because you're ugly?"

Okay, now Bernard was considering feeding the kid to a murder log. "I just didn't want to. I'm not ugly, nor do I have any trouble meeting women. Why am I talking about this with a kid?"

"Because you're lame."

"You know, I'm not against leaving you behind."

"Good luck, I'm way faster than you are."

"This is exactly why I never wanted kids." Bernard paused. "Stop. Two o'clock."

"How do you know what time it is?"

"No, It's a direction! There's something ahead of us at two o'clock!"

"How is that a direction? It's just a number."

"Oh, son of a- nobody ever taught you how to read an analog clock? Shit, watch out!" It turns out that arguing loudly was the opposite of stealthy and the threat he had detected, a pair of big cats, came to check them out. He didn't know if these were more of those razor cat things, but they were big. He charged forward a bit, wanting to keep both of them focused on him. It had only been a day and the kid was already annoying, but he wasn't about to actually let the kid die.

The bigger of the two cats leapt at him, swiping at his head with a massive paw. Not willing to take another blow to the head just yet, he raised his arm to block it while bringing his mostly repaired thistle around to wallop it across the face. He felt more than heard something crack when the paw landed across his arm, and he rang his own bell when the weight of the blow drove his gauntleted hand into his face.

Thank god for helmets. He thought as he tried to shake off the brief bout of dizziness. He wanted to engage the other cat as well, but this one was having none of it. It took advantage of his brief disorientation to clamp its powerful jaws onto his shoulder. He heard wood splinter and a terrible pressure started to crush his collarbone. He didn't have room to swing his thistle, so instead he just started punching. Over and over he punched at the cat's ribs, thorns sprouting from his knuckles and shoulder.

The cat seemed indifferent to the damage it was taking, even the thorns in its mouth not inspiring it to let go of him. The poison on his weapon eventually took its toll though. The cat began to weaken quickly and he was finally able to get free of it. He looked for Henry with a bit of trepidation, fully expecting to find him being eaten by the other cat.

Instead what he saw beggared belief. The other cat was limping and had a couple blotches of blackened flesh that were suspiciously the same size as Henry's fist. Before he had a chance to help, Henry darted closer to the cat, deftly ducked under a swipe and hammered a barrage of punches into its chest. Another black splotch appeared in the center of its chest, and Henry tucked back and flipped away from the cat before it could catch him.

Bernard finally reached them as Henry was disengaging and threw his weight into the injured cat's side, knocking it to the ground. Naturally, he tripped over it and ended up sprawled on top of it. Henry jumped right back into the fight in a flurry of punches and kicks that somehow only landed on the cat.

Congratulations! you have slain a level six Ironfang Cougar!

Congratulations! you have assisted in the slaying of a level three Springpaw Cougar!

Congratulations! You have earned enough energy to advance to level five! Would you like to advance now?

Your ward has earned enough energy to advance to level two.

"You go first." Bernard said with a grunt. Wincing as he tried to roll his shoulder.

"You really aren't very good at fighting." Henry said with a grin. "Here." He reached out and touched Bernard's shoulder. A pale light glowed under his hand and Bernard was surprised to see both his mangled pauldron and shoulder rapidly begin to recover.

"It works on my armor too?" He asked as the light faded, testing to see if it was fully healed. It wasn't.

"Only because it's a living thing too. I'm out of ki though, I won't be able to heal or hurt anything until I get some rest. Well, I can still hit things, I just won't be able to add any extra damage to my hits." He clarified without being asked. He waited a moment to see if Bernard was going to ask anything else before accepting his level up.

When the cloud faded a few minutes later Bernard asked. "Get anything good?"

"I got a feat, increases my ki pool a bit." Henry answered with a shrug.

"What were your other choices?"

"Wait, you had choices?"

"Uh, no. Nope. Forget I asked that."

"That is so unfair!"

"Says the twelve-year-old that just kicked the crud out of a two hundred pound killing machine." Bernard said with a snort. "My class has been giving me choices, but they're all plant based. You can heal and do backflips, while I can talk to trees and get chewed on. You can tell me how unfair it is after you get chewed on by a few things."

"So… what do we do now?" Henry asked after a few seconds of silence.

"Well, I'm going to level up real quick. You should try and collect some stuff to burn so we can eat."

"Eat what?"

Bernard just pointed at the dead cats. "Waste not, want not." Then he triggered his level up.

Congratulations! You have reached level five in your class, Arboreal Warden, you may select one of the following feats! Well-rooted, Arboreal Stride, or Iron Bark.

Stride being a new one, he pulled up the more detailed information on it.

Arboreal Stride: You gain an instinctive knowledge of how to move in dense forest, increasing both speed and grace while on foot.

Yes. Bernard wasted no more time and took the feat. He was beyond tired of stubbing his toes on roots and tripping over things. If he could get feats that let him get around easier he definitely wanted them. When he came out of the leveling cloud he found Henry waiting with a pile of dead branches. "You don't have a pocket knife or anything like that by any chance?" Bernard asked hopefully.

"No?" Henry was a touch confused by the seemingly random question.

"Okay, then we need to find a sharp rock." Bernard said as he began rooting around the ground for one.

"What for?"

"Well you can't just throw the whole body on a fire. You have to clean it first and get it ready."

"And you know how to do that?" Henry asked dubiously.

"I'm not the best at it, but I can do it." Bernard hedged. "Come on, help me look." They found a rock Bernard judged 'sharp enough' after a few minutes, and he got to work. Henry watched in horrified fascination as Bernard proceeded to brutalize the smaller cat in his efforts to carve edible portions of flesh from it. He picked the smaller one because he had poisoned the other, and either cat was more than they could eat.

It was tedious and dirty work, but he eventually managed to carve out two thick slabs of haunch, staying away from the blackened areas. This close he could tell that it was necrotic tissue, and he definitely didn't want to eat it.

When he returned to Henry's side splattered in blood and carrying his prizes wrapped in a large leaf he wasn't surprised at the disgusted look on the kid's face. "Hey, don't knock it till you try it. Eating something that just got done trying to eat you really enhances the flavor."