While delighting in the sweet taste of victory, I failed to notice that, from a distance, two pairs of bestial eyes, dead yet hungry, were set on me. I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed them if they'd just been hiding, but they purposefully exposed themselves.

Two black figures emerged from the tree's shadows, their steps producing a cacophony of hoof steps.

Two pairs of hungry, dark eyes. long and fluffy tail that stood still pointing at the sky, like an antenna.

Each had two pairs of razor-sharp white tusks.

No doubt, from the look of it, my stalkers were two warthogs, which appearance-wise looked completely, from head to hooves, identical.

These guys were warthogs, but there was something very "un-warthog-like" about them.

Weren’t warthogs just pig cousins? If so, then why do these guys look so intimidating?

Well, not that I knew how big a warthog should be, but these three are clearly larger than one’s average warthog. It was only a rough estimation, but I believed each of them to be, at the very least, about two meters long and almost as tall as I was at the withers.

Their reveals from their stalking locations were quickly followed by loud animalistic grunts.

I slowly drifted toward my backpack, doing my best to keep eye contact and avoid sudden movements.

Though there wasn't much action, the tense and heavy tension in the air was sickly palpable.

I was expecting a certain something to happen, but it didn’t, "I see, so it’s like this then…"

I threw a "discreet" glance at my backpack. It was just within reach, but from what happened next, it turned out the glance I threw at my backpack wasn’t discreet enough.

With the two warthogs simultaneously charging at me, I lept, rolling, toward my backpack, not for it, but for the nearby boulder, roughly the size of my head.

I reached for the boulder and hefted it with all my might onto the warthog leading the charge. The boulder slammed into the charge-leading, causing it to screech painfully.

I was expecting my boulder throw to have no effect, so I was surprised to see the damage I had inflicted on the first wartog and the hesitation I had instilled in the second, but coward as I was, I still chose to flee in my cowardice.

I believe I can possibly—I say possibly—take care of one of them, but with two simultaneously, I was already less confident.

I know with the other injured, I should’ve taken my chance, but remembering that I had little to no warthog fighting experience, I felt it was not worth the risk.

With only the two of them, they seemed very confident in their ability to take care of me. While enhanced, I agree that I have quite impressive attack power, but let's face it, what about my defense?Could my enhanced body withstand an impalement from these tusks?

"At least for now, I have lost- Aaaa~"

The trotting sound behind me and the thought of being impaled by a pig’s cousin sent shivers down my spine.

Amidst my panic, I came to notice that the trotting sound behind came to only one.

I threw a glance behind me to see and saw that indeed I was followed by only one of the warthogs.

‘Was my throw enough to stop it?" I wondered.

For a moment, still running across the forest, followed by the warthog, I came to realize with relief that I was faster than the warthog was, so still on the run, I thought briefly about the option I had left here. It was only after having outrun the bestial pigs for several minutes that I realized that the trotting noise behind me had faded away.

For the time being, it appears that I have lost them. but I was certain that it hadn’t given up on me just yet.

I took the choice of hiding in a tree since I did not want to venture any deeper into the woods and did not have the option of retracing my steps back.

I found the branched tree, and with the agility of a monkey, climbed up to a large branch. As soon as I did, the warthog appeared below. It came running past the tree deeper into the woods, but then, as if having come to a realization, started sniffing around the area I was in.

He hadn't noticed my presence in the tree branch yet, but he knew I didn't go any further than here. From the spot I was posted, I got an overview of how massive the warthog was.

I got an idea.

It is only a matter of seconds before the warthog realizes where I am, so I had to take advantage of the fact that my whereabouts were unknown to him.

Having no better than this one, I retrieved Olga and Martha from my backpack and unsheathed them both. I prepared myself to take it by surprise.

With both of my hands firmly gripping my blades, I jumped, jabbing viciously Martha and Olga into the warthog's body.

Wailing out a screeching and agonizing groin. The warthog fought back with all its might, but with my blade firmly lodged in its neck, the wail faded quickly, giving way to a strange, desperate noise.

One dagger pierced the neck, the other the ribs, and even made its way to the other side. I dragged my blades across the warthogs, trying and hoping to kill them as quickly as possible. Attempt which failed, for I had to wrestle in pig's blood for several minutes before it drew his last breath.

As I let go of my embrace on the warthog, I realized how bloody and gory the scene was.

I took a deep breath, then, "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah! Eat this, you son of a pig! That’s how surviving is done. " I screamed like a madman, celebrating my victory, before only, after a while, calming down.

I retrieved my blades from the creature's corpse, thinking, "Sigh, this was way too gruesome for a first visit."

I cast a last glance at the warthog carcass before making my way back to where I had run from the warthog.

I knew that there was still the possibility that that one warthog remained well and alive, so I hurried myself back to where I had stumbled upon them. The sooner I arrive, the better. So, yes, I didn't waste time. So when I returned to the spot and saw what I saw, I froze in place for a few seconds.

I saw not one but two warthogs there, and to make matters worse, neither of them was alive; instead, both had been butchered.

The warthogs were dead, good, but there remained the question of who did the killing, for it wasn’t me, and from the way they were butchered, it clearly wasn’t the doing of some sort of fanged or clawed monstrosity. Instead, from the cuts, I was more tempted to say it was done by something like …

"Who goes there?" I shouted, upon hearing in the distance, behind a tree, a noise.

My words were followed by a long silence before a familiar sarcastic intonation was heard.

"Who else but me, Young Lord? Or perhaps were you expecting someone else? "

Revealing himself from behind the tree, " … Syrius…"

"In bones and in flesh."

"What are you doing here?" I asked upon noticing the blade he was holding in his hand, confirming to me that he was behind the warthog slaughering.

"Well, certainly not tourism," he said, throwing a quick glance at the butchered porcine corpse.

"-But you said you wouldn’t accompany me."

That’s true. As secretive as I have been from my birth to this day, this excursion to the Iharana forest was not something I kept only to myself.

"I did say that, but I never said I wouldn’t follow you."

He glanced at the blades in my hands.

"But I must admit, I wasn’t expecting you to make it past the barrier so effortlessly." I approached and knelt, retrieving a handkerchief from his pocket. "-and even less, stumble upon these creatures." He said, starting to wipe the blood off of me.

"Aren’t you mad?" I ventured.

"Well, you told me about what you were planning to do. Though I did take it seriously, I failed to take it seriously enough." He just smiled warmly, "Besides, I am surprised how well the Young Lord handled these creatures. They may have been compared to some but they remains monsters nonetheless. "

"Monsters?!"

"Yes… Don’t tell me you didn’t know they were?"

I shook my head.

"Really."

I nodded.

Now that I think of it, these warthogs couldn’t just be animals that grew a little too big.

So these warthogs were monsters.

If that's the case, then did I just kill my first monster?

Even if it was confirmed by Syrius, I still found it hard to believe.

After all, monsters were said to despise the barrier and tended to dwell as far away from it as possible. I have this confirmation from Syrius himself.

"Well, Young Lord, as underhanded as it might have been, felicitation for your first monster kill."

"Wait, you saw that?"

"Yes, and it was quite a gruesome sight?"

"Why didn’t you do anything?"

"Well, when you ran away, I took care of your two friends over there, I wasn’t expecting that a third one would show up and chase after you,... But by the time I arrived, you were already bathing in its warm blood. "

"You saw thaaaat?!" I seethed, hiding my face in shame.

"Yes, I did. I wonder what "Maa" would think of this. "

My heart skipped at these words.

"Don’t make this face. She won’t know a thing about this, at least not from me. "

"Is that... so?" Thanks, I suppose."

"You’re welcome," he said, throwing away the handkerchief. "This won’t be enough," Syrius complained about the blood I was stained with.

Seeing how much trouble it gave him, I proposed, "Syrius, I know a place," before leading him to the said spot.

On my way back, I was fortunate to come across a tree hollow filled with water.

Upon stumbling upon it, I thought the discovery to truly be a gift from the gods, as though I had brought spare clothes, I failed to consider bringing along water to clean myself. Then, by chance, I came across the purest natural water this forest has to offer.

It must be stated that it was not simply "water" in a tree hollow; rather, it was a soup made of water, dead leaves, moss, and mosquito larvae.

Though I was initially reluctant to clean myself with it, Syrius and I understood very well that it was no time to be picky.

When I was finished with it,

As silence descended, I asked Syrius, "Do we get home now?"

He looked at me briefly for a moment, then asked back, "Do you want to get home now?"

Do I want to get home now, huh?

That question really made me question a lot of things.

Today,... this whole excursion was the result of months-worth of preparation, yet nothing prepared me to stumble upon these things. As painful as it is to admit, what happened today would have cost me a lot more than I was willing to give.

Today, it has been a blessing that Syrius has followed me here instead of not, as he had claimed.

I mumbled, "I don’t know."

Syrius looked around, before declaring, "Well, Young Lord, since we’re here already and the day isn’t yet too late, why not show me that which you came here for, I am quite curious about what else you can do with Aina."

A smile took over my face.