《One Of Many: The Story Of A Walking Bush》Chapter 17 – Peace and quite
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An hour passed and nine spears were already made by me, it was much harder to do than I expected, not only I had barely any room but with my crude hands it was somewhat troublesome as well. I placed them back into a pile as usual and said, “I need more.” Thinking it over I knew that nine spears weren’t enough for my plan.
I looked at the sharp piece of rock that I was holding in my hand and tossed it aside, I used the Gravis stones as a cutting tool because the stones that I could dig from the dried wall were or too small or too smooth for the job and no matter what I did I couldn’t sharpen them enough. So I went after the Gravis stone debris as I knew that they can be used for cutting.
Few days slowly passed, the number of spears in the tunnel increase at an intense rate, there were already more than forty spears and it looked like I didn’t want to that number to stop growing. I already started to have a problem storing the spears, I started to place them above me as a roof between two rocks that I stuck with a force between the walls.
Because of all those spears, my item crafting skill has leveled up, the quality of the spears and my crafting speed increase a little.
My resting room turned to a tunnel in that tunnel I made another two huge holes, one on the left and another on the right, the one on the left was extremely bigger than the other, this hole was my room. After sleeping all this time in this confined space for days and nights I only dreamed of an open area to rest, so it was totally normal for me to waste my time on a spacing my room a little more than I should have.
The other hole was for resources, currently there were only Gravis rocks sharpies, some bark and huge leaves, for now I didn’t really need anything else except that and it would be only troublesome if I tried to get more stuff. Thinking about it a little more I wanted to create a new bag for myself, but I needed to find some vines and for that, I needed to adventure further away into the forest, what currently I didn’t want to do.
With the bag I wanted to get more items into it as well, maybe in the future, I will find some use for them and it would be nice if I made the hole bigger as well, that way I would able to store my spears there and not fear to accidentally drop them on my head when I leave the tunnel.
Weirdly in those days only the crafting skill have leveled up, I didn’t get any new skills at all, but I still continued my stupid boxing practice because I was sure it’s going to produce a fruit soon enough.
My berries were slowly growing back on my body, it took much longer than before, but I couldn’t do anything about it because I needed to drain minerals and water from a normal soil for a whole night to regrow them at a faster rate.
In one of those days I found out that my health got back by one, it wasn’t a big surprise for me, but at last I knew that my body was healing. I was sure to keep most of my body in the sun when its day, but the sunlight barely entered the trench, because of that I was little worried and didn’t know if my condition was getting any better, but now I knew that I worried for no reason at all.
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Meeting monsters in the forest wasn’t a surprise as well, but it wasn’t common, maybe because I barely left the tunnel but for now it didn’t bother me. I met some wolves and some horned bunnies but they just ignored me, because I didn’t have any fruits on me. I wanted to snatch one of the bunnies for health, but I knew that it would be dangerous in my current state, so I left them for another day.
Another day came, it was around noon as I went out for more sticks, I was getting a nice amount and it slowly came to the wanted quantity, but for now I just continued to stack them up. The first time I got out of the tunnel I made a promise to myself that until I dealt with the panther I would never go out to the forest for long period of time and will do it only once a day, I didn’t knew if that was a good idea but I followed it as law.
Today wasn’t my lucky day, I picked few more sticks from the dried up tree. The tree looked almost empty after all the work I put into breaking its branches. As I picked the third stick, I heard a sound coming from close by, I looked at the source and saw a boar looking at me with its eerie eyes.
“Shit, I was spotted.” I said as I slowly started to back off to the direction of the tunnel, but sadly the boar started to chase after me. I dropped all my sticks to make sure that I was little faster, I didn’t know why didn’t the boar got startled or confused like the other weak monsters that saw me before, as the stupid bug or a bunny that I accidentally met two days ago, but for now I couldn’t care less I just focused on escaping.
Of course, my speed of wasn’t much higher than the boar, so slowly it was catching up to me. I did my best to go around trees and jump above few rocks to make the boar way more difficult, for my surprise it was very effective. The board chased straight after me and didn’t even changing its direction, because of that it got stuck with its head in a few trees and even fell once because of a rock.
The boar slowly was slowing down until I ran into the open area, “Oh I forgot.” You could almost see a droplets form on my leaves from worry. I looked back and saw a boar charging at me as a madman, with a low angry “WHEE WEEE!!!” sounds.
“How lovely I got on its bad side.” I said when I saw that it got angry, but what bothered me is that it got much faster than before. ”Faster legs, faster!” I screamed at my own body for being too slow, I tried my best to get to the tunnel.
Luckily I was already closing on the wall, but I couldn’t just climb back, I by a sitting duck if I did that, so I ran to the wall stopped and turned around, a few moments later the mad boar reached me. All what I did is just jump to the side, with a bang the boar hit its head into the wall.
I was little speechless but didn’t meddle for too long and started to climb into my home. This time there were few holes on the wall of the tunnel so it was much easier to climb into it. I made them thinking that something like this could happen, I had few other ideas to slow the monsters as well, but I didn’t have the time to execute them.
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I looked at the boar from the tunnel as it went in circles around the entrance while looking at me with a menacing look, all that time it made low angry noises “WHEE WHHEEE, WHEEEE!!!” Looking at him I said, “Oh poor little bastard his food ran away, inspect *dumb boar*.” As you could see I didn’t really care about him at all, but at least I wanted to know its stats.
-Wild Boar Lv5-
Health: 23/23
Mana: 5/5
Stamina: 11/13
*Wild Boar* – Low tier monster, loves to eat roots from trees and plants, the monster intellect is relatively low, it can be easily be angered and because of that some of the times it will bring itself to its demise.
“I wasn’t wrong it’s really is dumb.” I was kinda happy that it wasn’t really smart, it would be easily for me to kill it in the future, but for now I knew it would run away if I attacked it, so I didn’t bother with it and went to dig the storage room little deeper.
After using up my mana I went to sleep till night, I woke up at night time as usual the stalking feeling was present, but something was different this night because I could hear the strong cries of a pig outside the cave.
“Stupid pig, it didn’t leave?” I asked in confusion, I never expected the pig to stay here till the night. “But why is it alive? The panther should be already here…” I went out closer to the exit to take a better look, but I couldn’t see anything at all because today there were too many clouds that blocked the light of the moon and the stars, and my own light wasn’t enough, to reach it as well.
“I shouldn’t get closer it could be dangerous.” I went back to hit the wall like every night, I didn’t really know what I could achieve with it, but it was fine for the time being because tomorrow I wanted to start executing my plan, then I could get more opportunities to get new skills.
I hit the wall again and again every time a *pa* sounds came from the wall, it was going pretty smoothly like every night but after hearing the pig scream for almost an hour I was getting really annoyed.
“Shut up!” I screamed while looking at the exit, “Right he can’t hear me…” I thought to myself and continued to hit the wall, just as my hand was reaching the wall the pig gave out an even stronger annoying cry, it startled me a little so my hand changed its direction and with a sound of a *crack* I hit the wall.
“Ah! Stupid pig!” I was in pain because I broke one of my branches, checking my status I found that I didn’t lose any hp but my patients were reaching its end. “I will kill it.” I said as I grabbed a spear from behind and came closer to the exit, but when I just reached the exit I remembered that I am caged bird and I couldn’t be careless.
“Can it be that the panther is trying to lure me?” I asked myself with a face of disbelief, I knew that the panther was kinda smart but it wasn’t a smart enough as a human being and why would it think that I would go out because of a pig. But just in any case I used my detection skill and looked around with the best of my abilities, I couldn’t see the panther at all but I could detect the dying boar aura.
The mark didn’t get off a strong creepy feeling as well, but I still got little scared so I wanted to go back deeper into the cave, but I could hear the annoying squeaks and cries of the pig again and again, so I just turned my view back around.
I never increased the size of the trench to not let any predators enter it easily, so it was really awkward for me to stand there, but now I really didn’t want to let the pig go. At that moment I didn’t notice but a really weak red aura could be seen slowly pouring from my body, if I would have seen it most likely I would returned to my senses immediately, but sadly I didn’t.
The spear was stuck inside my body, I embraced it strongly with my branches currently I resembled a squished tank. I knew the relative location of the pig so what I wanted to do is to throw the spear at him. I tried to inspect him but looks like I need to see him and not his aura for the skill to work, but because of his screams and cries I understood that he was already injured all what I needed to do is to give the finishing blow.
So without further ado, I loaded the rocket I mean the spear and with precision tried to shoot it out at the pig. Sadly I missed, “Damn my spear…” When the spear fell near the pig his screams became even stronger, “Shut up, Shut up!” I was getting angrier and angrier by the moment.
I had plenty more spears and most likely nothing bad would happen to them if they stayed one night outside the trench, so I took another spear and did the same, but the result didn’t change. Slowly the red aura got more vivid around me as I continued to grab more spears and throwing them in the direction of the boar.
After the six spear a mighty voice sounded inside my head, with it I knew that I learned a new skill.
*Skill learned “Throwing”*
I was surprised that I learned a new skill so fast, without thinking much I inspected it.
*Throwing Lv1* – Let the user sent projectiles or objects with a higher accuracy.
“This will be useful for my current cause.” A madman glint flashed across my imaginary eyes, as I took another spear. Spear continued to fly one after another, but no matter how many I sent flying I just could hear them hit the ground, the annoying pig was screaming stronger and stronger but except that nothing changed.
Without me knowing every time I threw a spear I was getting closer and closer to the edge of the tunnel, but I was too distracted to notice. I threw more than twenty spears already, suddenly after I throwing another spear I could hear a soft piercing sound of flesh and an alarming cry of the pig, after the screech the pigs cry slowly stopped.
“Oh thank god! It stopped… At last, I could have a little quiet and peace.” After I gathered my thoughts I suddenly noticed that I was almost popping outside from the tunnel. A cold feeling went through my body as I remembered about the panther, without thinking at all I moved with haste back inside.
Just as I moved back into the tunnel as if from nowhere a huge black claw emerged from the darkness, and flew right into me. The claw graced me a little but for my greater luck, I still managed to escape deeper to a safer distance.
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