“Okay, children.” The old storyteller said with a voice fit for a grandma. “Let us continue where we left off last time.”

“Yeah!” one of the children replied. “I want to hear more of about the Mother!”

“Indeed.” the old woman said with a nod, her old eyes seeing far despite being covered by a grayness that would never leave no matter how many times she shed her skin. “Now, we pick off where we left off last time, with Lyrhea Herself stalking her prey. Listen close, for you may learn things from this that you may take out into the wider world.”

…

A nest sat high in a tree, and within it sat a trio of newly-hatched bird-like monsters. Each one was barely a few minutes old, but already they were sporting a full outfit of down feathers and were looking around with a mix of curiosity and concern.

They, despite being newborns, could feel that something was off and that they were in danger, and so they began to cry out for their parents to return. What they were unaware of, though, was that the very reason for their concern was counting on that response and was watching from afar and from, in her eyes, a perfect hiding spot.

Lyrhea waited patiently as the roughly shoe-sized baby birds begged their parents to return, but after around an hour of solid cheeping, the noises stopped. Lyrhea braced herself, fully expecting that the lack of any noise meant that the parents had arrived, but was instead met with a surprise that was both welcome and unwelcome.

First off, the parents never showed, which was a disappointment. However, the chicks, like true monsters, had fully matured, which was a disappointment but also a welcome sight.

Lyrhea emerged from the foliage and rushed towards the newly matured bird-like creatures and shot her hand forwards in a clawing motion. Her nails dug into one of the animals and before the other two could react she had already sent her nails into the body of another using her other hand.

The third bird-creature squawked and beat its wings, but was swiftly silenced after Lyrhea spat into its open mouth. The bird-like creature initially choked on the spittle, but then ended up swallowing and immediately regretting that course of action as it began to spasm and then fall limp.

“’Venom’ my ass…” Lyrhea griped as she licked the blood from her fingers. Sure, this new ‘system’ or whatnot called it venom, but her ‘venom’ functioned more as a multi-vector all-purpose biohazard than either a mere poison, venom, or toxin. Depending on how she used it, it functioned perfectly well even when applied directly to the forehead like some kind of deadly version of that old medicinal remedy.

That cross between a condor and an iguana had found out the hard way that her spit could be laced with the stuff, too. Hell, she had only found out that she could do so after running into something very nasty and spitting in its eye in her attempt to insult it before it killed her.

She grabbed the three bird-lizard things and retreated back into the foliage and began to make her way deeper into the treeline, spitting on her own path every once in a while, while also spitting in random directions and hoping they would either slow down or stop and kill anyone or anything that chose to track her.

As she delved deeper into the plant matter, Lyrhea could not help but pat herself on the back. Though it had taken her literally 5 tries to pull off, each previous one resulting in either a hasty retreat or a few injuries she needed to heal from, she had finally managed to make some progress on her current Quest.

She had, of course, tried to go in guns blazing at first, back when she was only in Part 2 of the Old Tutorial, and she had quickly learned through the pain and humiliation she received in doing so that she was definitely not built for that. She knew she was frail, but to be nearly knocked out by a punch to the face and a tail to the gut was just absurd. Of course, these monsters in that area were far stronger than any creature she would have been capable of facing at her own power level, but the fact remained that she had been unceremoniously dumped there and not given a chance to start in a better place.

Her journey from that hellhole to her eventual stomping grounds and then to here was a long-ish one, but it was essentially over, at least for now. Now she just needed to grow more powerful in this area, until she was more than capable of dealing with the fully adult and fully aware bird-lizards.

While keeping herself alive and intact over the course of the past years, she had slowly (and sometimes quickly) learned how best to use her own biology, and, as she should have expected from being part snake, the best way for her to fight and kill was to be fast, hit hard, and avoid prolonged battles whenever possible. The way a snake fought was with speed and power, opting to end things in a single strike and avoid any kind of damage that was utterly unnecessary, and she was at long last able to pull that off.

However, she had to admit that this was only a fight against three newly-matured creatures with frail bones and pitiful physical abilities. If she had to face the creature that had forced her to experiment with her venom, then she was most assuredly going to be very far up Shit Creek without a paddle.

As she reached her hiding place, which was a hollow inside of one of the trees that was only accessible via a thin opening, Lyrhea took another look around and tried to make use of her new senses again. She had been able to use them a bit more as of late, though they still caused her no shortage of pain and anguish if used for more than a second.

The world around her flashed to reveal a cacophonous mix of thermal signatures, visible smells, and electromagnetic signs, all layered on top of her normal sight, and she hastily turned off this sensory overload before it hit her too hard. She was, of course, getting better at dealing with it, but it would likely take many weeks of use to allow her to reach any decent proficiency with it.

She slipped inside the tree and tossed the dead bird-lizards onto the floor and began to try and keep the fire she had lit previously aflame. She eventually did, losing a decent portion of her stored reserves of tinder and firewood in exchange.

Lyrhea then set to work plucking the feathers off of the lizard-birds/ bird-lizards before taking a knife and skinning the creatures and carving them up. She then impaled their meat on a few thin metal rods and began to roast the meat.

“Want a bite?” Lyrhea asked. “I’m pretty sure that I remember which one had my stuff in it.”

Lyrhea paused and waited for a response. It did not come.

“Oh, don’t be that way.” she grumbled, shooting a glance over to a corner of the hollow. “I wasn’t the one who did something so boneheaded. And let’s not forget, I could have killed you then and there, but I didn’t.” She waited for a reply, but once again was met with defiant silence.

“….” Lyrhea shook her head in annoyance. “You call me a monster, but here I am trying to get you some food and water, and all the while neither torturing you nor killing you. Which, might I add, is more than you can say about what you wanted to do to me.”

“Shut up.”

Lyrhea smiled and looked at the Ranger who had finally spoken.

“So, you can talk. Wonderful!” Lyrhea said mockingly before bringing the roasted lizard-bird meat over to the mouth of her captive. “Now, let’s get you something to eat. Open wide; here comes the train! Choo-Choo!”

…

“Wait, wait, wait.” interjected a child. “Did you seriously just time-skip forward over all the stuff leading up to that? What the hell?!”

The storyteller paused and tapped her head with one of her fingers. “Wait… I didn’t tell you everything leading up to that point?”

“You told the previous class, but not us!” yelled another child.

“Oh, right! Sorry, I tend to bleed these things together in my old age. Now, let’s pick up right where we left off before that…” she paused. “Which was?”

“Oh, for the love of the Goddess! She was running from the Four Hunters!”

“Ah, yes, sorry about that! Let’s start there, then.”