After circumventing the town the group kept treading forward, relying on the little dried and salted for they had left, along with whatever plants they found. Koro got poisoned once when earing something he shouldn't have despite Al's warnings, but thankfully Yuly's mana worked against poison. It wasn't very efficient and required a lot of time and mana, but she managed to cure him fast enough for the poison to cause very little damage.

As they kept moving forward, they once again stopped encountering black beasts, but something else was on Al's mind now. The days were getting colder and shorter, meaning...winter was about to arrive.

Al didn't know how the Rank 1s behaved in winter, since I'm the area near the orphanage they stopped appearing long ago, since once all the beasts reached at least Rank 2, their spawn would also be of the same rank. He made a plan to hunt as many normal Rank 1s as possible and preserve their meat.

When Al asked Misty why the stronger beasts didn't hunt the weaker ones in areas with less mana, she told him that the more powerful a beast becomes, the more limited they are in their movements, since if the ambient mana decreases even just a bit from what it was when they evolved, they would start leaking mana from their bodies to the outside.

This was because beasts, unlike humans, relied on mana for many of their vital functions, such as quickening growth when in infancy and providing nutrients. When Al asked Misty why she could be in low mana areas without a problem when she was Rank 3, she just told him that she was a completely different thing altogether. Al knew not to overstep his bounds with her by now, so he left it at that.

That night Al heard Yuly cry once again, as had been happening around one night for every three. Well, that's just counting the times he heard her. Sometimes he just ignored her and blocked his ears, but today he decided to sit alongside her. He probably wouldn't be able to sleep anyway since he couldn't get the worry of how to survive through winter out of his head.

She heard him coming and scooted over on the horizontal log she was using as a bench, leaving a spot for Al. He sat there and she wordlessly put her head on his lap. He caressed her hair until she stopped crying, and kept on doing it until she fell asleep, her face peaceful like that of an angel, and her eyes puffy and red. 'Haaaah, I swear, this girl's more trouble than she's worth' he thought as he carried her inside the tent. 'You were gonna catch a cold at that rate,' Al thought as he sat back down, watching the stars of the clear, cold night.

He spent the next few hours (or hour and some minutes) making rough wooden figurines of him, Koro and Yuly with a half-blunt carving knife. He had picked up this hobby in order to kill time, since he couldn't exactly train his skills in the middle of the night as most of them were quite... loud.

When the sun finally started peaking from between the eastern mountains that were getting farther and farther away and its warmth started reaching his body, Al took their only pot from his backpack and filled it with stream water, then put it on top of the fire he rekindled with his mana. Luckily they had never gotten sick from drinking this water, maybe because it's flow was pretty fast, and its banks were mostly made of rock.

The local wildlife didn't seem to need much water either, if at all, and they didn't seem to pee, so unless the water turned brown (which it never had) Al wasn't scared of using this water for cooking. Plus, if anything did happen, Yuly would probably be able to cure it.

He put some cut mushooms and pickled meat into the water pot, but unfortunately couldn't add any salt, since they had already ran out. He added some more forest veggies that he knew combined well and were nutritious, and let it stew as he went to wake up the crew. 'Ah, this is depressing as hell. If only Jiao was here to cheer us up...'

Al slapped himself to get out of that train of thought that he had fallen into so many times already. And shook the hell out of Koro to get him to wake up.

After the meal, the group continued their voyage, stopping only occasionally to relieve themselves. At the beginning Yuly refused to do it with anyone watching, not even Misty. By now though, no one really cared, pulling down their pants right there and then at the side of the path.

Al learned long ago that a special powder was always sprinkled on forest paths, and it had a slightly poisonous effect to living beings, especially plants. The group could barely notice it and with Yuly's daily heals it wasn't a problem, but it ensured that the flora didn't cover the path in the months that could pass between one usage of said path and the next.

It also repelled weak beasts, so Al and company were walking as far enough from the path as possible while still being able to see it, so they'd be able to secure more prey for winter. They were running out of spices by now too, but it should be enough for any game they hunted the next few days.

After four days their backpacks were full already, so they started piling the meat on Misty's back.

Three days later, Al's age in his Status changed to 4 years old. His birthday had always marked the start of winter, but this merely confirmed his suspicions.

The days had already started getting much colder, but the nights were the worst part. They had been forced to cut out a piece of the fur for the tent in a way that wouldn't make it lose its function, but it made it smaller. That piece was to be used by the person on guard duty so they wouldn't freeze to death. The cold had not reached that point yet, but Al felt that it would soon.

'Where's a good Hareth Collapser when you need them,' Al used to see Rank 3's as an annoyance or even a threat, but right now they would do anything to find one.

Every new animal they had encountered, such as some weird metallic fishes that lived in the stream now that it had gotten wider, and some fire-red birds that crossed the skies every now and then, had just been small Rank 1s, since even if the mana concentration was steadily increasing as they moved west, it wasn't enough for beasts to reach Rank 2.

The cold of winter slowed down their marching speeds, and the long nights limited the hours of daylight they had, meaning less time on the move. The fact that they were making less and less progress dampened the group's already low morale, and Koro started getting annoyed more easily, sometimes slashing through trees just because he felt like it.

Al could only shake his head as he kept scouring the ground for prey. Until now they had managed to hunt barely enough to avoid having to eat their spiced meat, but encountering beasts was getting progressively harder and harder. He guessed rabbits must have hid underground, squirrels,should be inside tree trunks hibernating, and it had been a long time since they last saw any boars.

The birds are probably on treetops and the metal fishes seemed to have buried themselves under the river gravel, so after a while it was basically impossible to see any beast in the open. So Al decided to make use of Koro's rage instead, and asked him to go around cutting all the trees he wanted. Misty's job,was to fry the brains of any squirrels that scurried out of said trees.

Meanwhile, Al was on the lookout for any birds that flew out of the fallen trees, and took them down with throwable spines, managing to hit the on his first attempt about half the times. He had almost 100 spines and could always pick them back up, so he wasn't worried about running out.

Suddenly, a blue screen appeared in front of Al

You have created the [Piercing Throw] skill. Allows for greater accuracy when throwing by hand small, piercing objects.

Al was pleasantly surprised, but he just waved the notification off and went back on the lookout. This method of hunting slowed their movement speed by a lot and made Koro use up a lot of stamina, meaning he had to eat more, but it provided them with enough squirrels and birds to eat, allowing them to delay consuming their spiced meat.

That night, while on guard duty, Al opened his Status screen, as was customary by now.

Alberto Peñas

Age: 4 years

Level 17

Class: Prodigy of the Lightning Rapier

Strength

D+

Dexterity

C

Toughness

D+

Will

D-

Intelligence

D-

Charisma

E-

Perception

E

Assignable

0

Skills:

[Mana Molding] (Mid)

[D Grade Core] (High)

[Physical Augmentation] (High)

[Sense Enrichment] (High)

[Palm of the Storm] (Low)

[Impulse] (Low)

[Flash] (High)

[Zapper] (Mid)

[Piercing Throw] (Low)

The only changes since Al left the orphanage were his age, the level he gained, the skill he just got and that he used up the assignable stat points. He put one into Perception over a month ago, and it had helped him a lot while hunting.

Then he put one into Dexterity, since it optimised his movements, even walking, making him use up less energy.

He put one into Toughness when the nights grew cold, but he was forced to cut out that piece of the tent anyways since Yuly also had to do guard duty.

Finally he put his last assignable point into Dexterity once again, and combined with the Squirrelic, Al imagined he would almost be able to reach the max speed he had back on Earth. He couldn't try it though, since it would be a waste of food. 'Fuck me backwards, this shit is depressing'

Al decided to try out his new skill since it wouldn't make much noise anyway, and it felt a lot like the slight redirection that the [Flash] skill acquired when its proficiency reached High, it made his arm movements differ slightly from what he wanted them to do, but always in a manner that made the spine he threw hit closer to share he wanted.

The effect seemed bigger than [Flash]'s, but then Al realised it was just because he was much worse in throwing than in piercing, so there was more margin of error to correct. 'Well, piercing is my specialty, after all...that sentence has basically turned into my motto, hasn't it?'

Al mused as he kept on training the skill, and lost track of time so much that when he realised it, the sun was already peeking out. 'I guess Yuly won't be doing any guard duty today'