Chapter 4

With his errands finished Jack got to work after lunchtime and walked into the office, as he walked in through the main doors, he received more than a few second looks.

“Hi Jack, you've er… got a sword?” Robert, one of Jack’s work friends, greeted him as walked into the locker room.

“Nope.”

“Then what's that in your hand?”

“A machete, I wouldn’t know the first thing about wielding a sword, I’d look ridiculous.” Jack replied smiling. He held the sheathed blade up to Robert.

“Uh huh ok, why do you have a machete?” Robert asked, still seeming confused.

Jack considered telling Robert about his ambitions but in the end decided against it. “Oh well, it’s kinda gettin a wee bit dangerous out there now.” Jack held his forefinger and thumb close together. “Last night on my way home after a late shift I ran into a group of giant wasps, almost died actually, probably”. Robert’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

“Oh fuck are you ok!? Did you get like…stung or something?”

“Nah, there was already a group of hunters there, they killed the wasps while I patiently waited, it was all very civilised.” Jack replied casually. “I just thought with it getting dark earlier and with more monsters and mutated animals around I should be prepared”.

“So you bought a machete,” Robert said in a deadpan manner.

“Yeah, I don’t know why everyone’s being weird about it, it's legal now and everything”.

“That law only just got passed, and besides I don’t think everyones just going to go out wearing long swords and carrying axes around.”

“Maybe they should.” Jack shrugged, it was true despite the law passing that anyone could carry a non-firearm weapon to defend themselves with, not many people did, monster attacks were still a rarity unless you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe that would change in the future, maybe not.

“Haah, well ok then,” Robert sighed, “Just be careful tonight though yeah? Maybe actually take the bus or a taxi this time, you walked again didn’t you?”. Jack nodded the affirmative, Robert shook his head. “Don’t know why you take so many late shifts all the time,” Robert said as he walked out of the locker room.

“The money is slightly better and I like getting up later”, Jack had always been a bit of a night owl. He hung up his coat and then attempted to stow his weapon in his locker, his locker was already full of random miscellaneous odds and ends, this actually forced Jack to go through his stuff and throw out everything he didn’t need, which was most of it, before the weapon fit. When he was done the locker actually looked quite neat and tidy. This weapon was already proving useful.

Jack walked into the office and sat down at his desk and booted up the computer, he didn’t immediately begin his work however. He felt now that he was equipped with a weapon he should actually try his hand at hunting tonight after work, he first needed to decide where he was going to go, he couldn’t just aimlessly wander the streets with a machete, that wasn’t the image he was going for.

Luckily though ever since monsters had begun spawning everywhere the government had sponsored various initiatives to aid public safety, one of those was the rather popular monster hotspots map. This initiative produced maps on UK government websites of every heavily populated area such as cities and towns and highlighted spots where monsters were known to appear. Jack clicked on the website for the York city council and located the hotspots tab, when he opened it he searched around for his route home from work and any nearby hotspots. There was one, a park, it was fenced off and the gate was always locked at night, that's the one.

The day wore on and Jack could barely concentrate on his job, he had too much nervous energy bubbling up inside him! He did a little research online about harvesting monster parts and found something interesting he hadn’t realised before, you couldn’t just cut into a monster with a knife and pull out what you needed. It turns out since monsters seem to spawn from some kind of magical energy, the scientists were still scratching their heads on that one, they actually decompose or fade away rapidly after death within an hour or two. In order to actually harvest something and prevent it from decomposing the harvester needed to instil a tiny part of their essence into the item they wanted, for a wind elemental it would be the equivalent of a slight breeze or for a fire elemental a small pulse of warmth. Jack frowned as he read this, he didn’t know if he could do that, he couldn’t even control his own element, but then again, he knew he could pull lighting energy in, he just couldn’t hang on to what he pulled. So maybe instead of pulling he could try pushing instead.

It got darker outside and Jack's shift at work came to an end, he went to the locker room, put on his coat then retrieved his machete from his locker. As he walked outside he noticed it was a little colder than yesterday, he shivered though he didn’t know if that was from nervousness, excitement or the cold.

Jack walked along the same quiet road as yesterday until he got to the park, he stood in front of the locked gates. It wasn’t really much of a deterrent, any determined individual could climb over and today Jack was determined. He threw the machete over first then climbed over and dropped down on the other side, he took a look at the park, it was a fairly wide expanse with a children’s playground in one spot, a large grassy field taking up most of the area and towards the far end a thick copse of trees and bushes. It was towards the trees and bushes Jack headed, after a few minutes with Jack proceeding more and more cautiously he reached his destination. It was getting darker now and there were just a few weak lights along a nearby path providing illumination, he crouched behind a bush and tried to listen carefully, he heard a rustling and a grunting.

That wasn’t human grunting, it was more the sound an angry pig would make, or a vexed boar. Jack took a deep breath and steeled himself, maintaining his crouched position he scuttled around the bush and further into the copse of trees. A few seconds later he caught his first glimpse of his prey, at first it seemed like a lizard, a very large greyish lizard about the size of a labrador with a tail about three times the length of its body. However when it turned around he could fully see it’s face, or lack thereof, it’s open mouth seemed to take up the entirety of its head which was composed of multiple concentric circles of sharp teeth. In the centre a long thin tongue regularly darted out as if tasting the air. It didn’t appear to have a nose or eyes as far as Jack could tell, just teeth.

It was after a few seconds of looking at the creature that Jack realised it had become motionless and was in fact facing Jack directly. Jack slowly moved his dominant right hand to grasp the handle of his machete and that was when the creature moved. It was fast and was almost on Jack before he could evade the creature's pounce. He drew his weapon and tried to take a swipe at it but it dodged to the side then tried to bite Jack’s leg, he backed off quickly panicking slightly, he couldn’t afford to get a limb trapped in that mouth, he’d never get it back. After collecting himself he rushed at the creature swinging with his weapon, as it tried to dodge again Jack managed to grab a hold of its tail and he yanked it hard to the side. The creature seemed to stumble and Jack took advantage by hacking at it several times into its flank and head, it backed off limping and wounded. He slowly followed breathing heavily, he’d heard wounded animals and in this case monsters he supposed could be even more dangerous. All of a sudden the creature lunged and tried to bite Jack again with those nightmarish jaws, Jack was alert though and shoved his blade into its mouth making sure to give it a twist. The creature began choking and thrashing, it scuttled back quickly off Jack’s machete and vomited up blood before falling flat on its side, dead, finally.

Jack stood staring at it for a few seconds, making certain it had stopped moving. He approached and nudged it with his foot, it still didn’t move. Just to make certain he placed the tip of his machete against the creature's chest where he thought the heart might be or at least something important and pushed down. With that done the monster was definitely dead, now what?

He’d definitely done a service to the city, that thing was prowling around a park where children come and play. But he wasn’t actually a hunter, nor was he part of the neighbourhood watch, no one was going to pay him for this, or care probably. Well it didn’t matter to him, this was just him getting his feet wet anyway. Looking down at the monster he realised he had no clue what it actually was, there were published bestiaries that the public had access to detailing many different types of monsters and mutated animals but Jack couldn’t remember seeing this one anywhere. However the bestiaries were new like everything else and were always being added to so new species being discovered was still relatively common. But still, since he didn’t know what it was, he didn’t know what if anything was good to harvest. It didn’t matter he decided, for now he could just practice that elemental harvesting technique he learned about online, it would be useful to know he could actually do it for when he found something he actually wanted to harvest.

He crouched down over the monster and put his hand against its side, he focussed on his core and instead of trying to pull he pushed energy outward. At first he felt nothing but then there was a slight rippling sensation travelling down his arm through his fingers and into the beast, it was then that Jack could actually feel something in the monster. It felt similar to the energy he could detect in various electrical components when he concentrated, such as with his tray of gadgets. Intrigued, Jack decided to try pulling the energy back into his core, at first he got back the miniscule amount of lightning energy he put in, then more lighting elemental energy poured from the monster. At first Jack feared another repeat of the usual but this time there was no pain or sudden jolt of electrical discharge shocking him, instead Jack received a trickle of pure lightning energy flowing up his arm and into his core, it felt both warm and cool at the same time. The monster’s corpse stiffened then twitched slightly before falling still and Jack could feel no more lighting energy within the monster. He stopped pulling from it and stood up. He could feel his core, it had grown ever so slightly.

“Huh, did I just cultivate?”