Chapter 9 -The bear

Day 9

Mike's POV

Mike was getting frustrated. Last week his sister told him about her engagement to Gunthar the blacksmith. He liked Gunthar, the former apprentice of his father was always like a big brother to him since his parents died. He wanted to have a special gift for his sister, but he got the news right after he came back from Geldern where he bought his new bow. Now he was more or less broke, that's why he'd been out of the village hunting for the last three days. But he was not successful. In his usual hunting ground he found only small game, some rabbits, a young deer and a fox. If he wanted to get the money for a nice gift, he needed to find a rarer animal. Grumbling he decided to relocate his hunt north of the village. This would be a lot more dangerous, somewhere further north there was a goblin tribe and if you had real bad luck you could meet one of their hunting groups. Additionally the steep and rocky terrain was forcing him to make large detours and that meant he would be sleeping in the wilds for the next days, otherwise he would be too close to the village to find some real game.

On his second day after entering his new hunting ground Mike discovered some tracks. It looked like they came from a medium sized black bear. If he could kill the animal without damaging the fur too much, he could probably get good coin for it. He knew it could be quite dangerous to go after a bear alone, but despite being only 17 years of age, he was confident in his abilities. After his parents died, the village mayor took him in and taught him everything he knew about hunting. Everybody knew that the mayor was still the best hunter in the surrounding villages. As a former adventurer the mayor could still hunt a hole group of goblins or a mountain lion all by himself, even with the crippled leg he got from the incident that killed Mike's parents.

He grabbed his new bow, attached the bowstring and took an arrow from his quiver. In the other hand he had his hunting spear. Depending on the situation he would probably first drop the spear and shot an arrow, if the bear survived that and then decided not to run, but to attack, he could still drop his bow and take the spear to defend himself in close combat. If he came across a goblin group, he would use the terrain and pick them off one after another from a larger distance. Goblins could only use short bows thanks to their size and everybody knew they were lousy marksmen. As long as he saw them first, he should be safe. With this in mind he carefully went after the bear trail.

It took him only 15 minutes to find the bear, scratching its fur on a tree. Carefully he went a little bit further away. For a good shot, he needed to come closer, for that it would be essential to close in to the bear from upwind. Keeping the ground in his mind, he crept up to the bear, than he put the arrow in his bow and waited for a good opportunity. The bear was too big and its fur to strong to aim for the heart, so he decided to go for the throat.

He observed the bear for a few minutes, then the chance was there. The bear finished with scratching itself and lifted his head. Mike carefully aimed and let go of the arrow, but in the last moment the bear turned his head a little bit and the arrow only hit the side of the neck. A heavy injury for sure, but not immediately deadly. The bear was only 25 meters away, to close to get another good shot and a normal hit would just enrage the bear. Hence he put down the bow, grabbed his spear and got ready to be attacked by an angry bear. But the bear didn't attack, it just howled loudly in pain and ran away.

"Shit!"

He grabbed his bow again and started carefully following the blood trail. It would be imprudent to just run after the bear. While he would be hunting the bear, something could be deciding to hunt him and catch him off guard.

Neo's POV:

Neo was just experimenting with his wolf template. He killed off the mutated forest wolf to get its template. Now he was trying to improve it. After some tweaking he came up with a way better design that was at the F4 rank, but it was also bigger and needed 80kg of animal material.

"Luna is there a good way to get more animal material? If I only get new material from animals that enter the dungeon it will not keep up with our grow. In addition if adventurers start taking corpses out of the dungeon for their meat we will run dry fast."

"The best way is cultivate your animals. You need to create a whole ecology if you want to be successful dungeon. If you have predators hunting prey and the prey eating plants, your creatures will grow and after their death you gain more animal material. For example you could let the rabbits hunt the wolves, then you need some plant eating animal for the wolfs to eat."

"Okay, I think you got something wrong there. Rabbits don't eat wolves."

"Just wait and see!" Luna said with a creepy smile while patting Mr. Floppy's back.

Neo decided to let go of the topic for now, thought about the concept for a moment and saw another problem.

"Wouldn't that just relocate the problem to the plant material? Sure plants grow by extracting carbon from the air, but in a deep dungeon with only one entrance it would be very difficult to get in a lot carbon dioxide from the outside without a complex ventilation system. The breading and the excrement of the animals would only make for a zero sum game. Without additional carbon from outside we would run in a bottle neck."

"That's only for larger dungeons. For a small dungeon like us that's not an immediate concern. Later you can make additional entrances or just burn stuff you find in the ground."

"Good to know, so I should go for younger animals, that have a chance to grow and I need to start to create some edible plants. Lighting for the would be necessary too, otherwise the plants won't grow."

"You will not feed the wolfs with rabbits!"

Shit, it seemed like Luna had guessed his way of thought. So he needed another type of animal, maybe deer.

"Ok, I get it. I promise I won't feed the wolfs with rabbits."

In this moment Neo sensed a wounded bear running in his dungeon. It had an arrow in his neck and that didn't look like it was made by goblins.

" Shit we got company!"

"Where? What?"

"A wounded bear just entered the dungeon. It has an arrow wound, chances are that its hunter will follow it here."

"Cool, finally something interesting to kill."

"Hold on for a second, lets observe the situation for now."

Sometimes to bloodthirstiness of the little fairy frightened him a little bit. Just to be prepared for an attack he started to create wolves from his new blueprint on the second dungeon level, at the moment Mr Floppy and the contaminated rabbit were the only creatures alive in his dungeon. The new wolves should be more resistant to the high mana levels anyway, they were still mana mutated after all.

Mike's POV:

Mike traced the trail of the wounded bear to a burrow. He saw no other traces of animals. At least it did not lock like there were more dangers coming from the hole in the ground. Carefully, with the bow ready and his spear attached to his backpack, he closed in on the entrance. When he was five meters away he discovered the bear, laying on the ground still breathing. Deciding he was close enough he aimed for one of the eyes and let go of his arrow. With a smile on his face he saw that it was a perfect hit and the bear died immediately. He entered the burrow to get his spoils, only to discover that the bear just disappeared from one moment to the next.

Neo's POV:

Neo saw a young man, entering his dungeon. He immediately used the analyze magic he developed when he was still human. It showed that the boy was only 17 years old. Seeing the rank of F11 surprised him, the boy was almost in peak physical condition and hat a neutral mana affinity. Most people, like himself started cultivating mana too early, without developing their body enough and would pay a prize for that later. The boy had a lot potential. His clothing was simple but practical and the bow was of medium quality. He wore no rings or other trinkets so he was probably poor. Working as a hunter spoke for an honest lifestyle. A man with a rank F11 was more dangerous than 99% of the population, he would be able to make a lot more money as a lowlife than being a hunter. With this thought process and the ten mutated wolfs now waiting in the next room, Neo decided to go for a gamble, absorbed the bear and created ten silver coins in its place. After this he contacted the hunter.

Mike's POV:

"Greetings hunter. Thank you for the bear. The silver on the ground is your reward."

Mike was startled he grabbed a new arrow and started to look around rashly."

"You cannot see me! I'm speaking to your mind. If you calm down, maybe we can come to an arrangement that is profitable for both of us."

"Where are you and who are you?"

"Haha, I am everywhere, I am this cave, I am a dungeon - You can call me Neo."

Mike almost panicked, when he was younger, his parents sometimes told him stories about dungeons. They had been adventurers when they were younger and their stories depicted dungeons as hellholes full of countless monsters, deathtraps and dangers that could even kill off the most powerful raiding parties if they were not very careful. Now he, a 17 year old boy, that could not even use mana, unsuspectingly entered one of these legendary deathtraps. He pulled himself together. He would not wet himself and dishonor his parents legacy. If he had to die, he would die like a man, after all his sister would be cared for, Gunthar was a good man and would treat her well.