It sucked a little that I was missing out on what might have been a decent resistance, but I immediately began to feel better. It also wasn’t long before my health was fully refilled with the regeneration and my ‘Vitality’ got bumped up a couple of notches too which was a nice consolation prize. It was just in time as well because there was another flash that heralded the arrival of another monster.
It looked to be a scaly version of a lynx that was the size of a puma. I could smell the blood on it like I had with the scorpion monster, and it matched my previous prey as well. Considering that it was also wounded and wobbling, it more or less guaranteed that had been what the scorpion had been fighting before it had the misfortune of ending up in here and facing me. Having a good idea of what I would find, I used my analyze skill on it to confirm my suspicions and to get a gander at what I would be facing. It took the skill a few minutes of me staring hard at the cat from where I was sitting to finish, but this is what it gave me:
WASTELAND LION
LEVEL: 10
STATS:
Health: 100/200
Mana: 45/70
Stamina: 5/10
Strength: 15
Vitality: 20
Endurance: 1
Defense: 15
Wisdom: 5
Intelligence: 7
Agility: 10
Dexterity: 8
Charisma: 6
Luck: 5
SKILLS
Slash
Growl
Armored Hide
Bite
Rend
Recover
Venom Resistance II
OTHER
Envenomed III
Watching the health tick down and then up a few times while I stared at the cat’s info, I realized how lucky I had been with the scorpion. If it had managed to nail me more times with Venomous Sting and had gotten Envenomed debuff to level, we’d all have been dead. As it was though, I had gotten a meal or so out of it and it looked like the second course had just shown up.
As I was licking my lips in anticipation, it struck as how much things had changed for me already. It was just a couple of days ago that I preferred begging and dumpster diving for my food over hunting rats. Now? I was in another world, staring at something that could have almost passed for animal back home like it was a big, juicy steak.
I suppose it helped that I wasn’t about to waste this second chance at life and that I had started my strange turn of diet with rats. Even though I had been averse to killing them, I wasn’t against eating them when they were offered to me. When you’re homeless and penniless, you took food where you could find it but even at my hungriest, I had lines I would not cross. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to worry about being forced to do so here. I’d rather die than eat people or anything resembling them…. Or anything smart enough to qualify….
I stopped myself there before I went down that rabbit hole further and left future possible moral quandaries to the future. I still didn’t want to hurt other things if I could help it and I didn’t like seeing things suffer but I wasn’t about to let other things kill me either. In this case I was fairly certain the cat would kill me if it had the chance. Humans were pretty soft targets under normal circumstances, and I didn’t even have a knife to defend myself. I needed to take advantage of it weakened state while I could and to do that, I had to sneak up on it somehow.
However, I never got the chance to try. It saw me and turned to focus on me but at least it didn’t try to come my way. It snarled at me instead as I got up and I flinch out reflex. That seemed to appease it for now and it settled for sitting and staring at me with the occasional growl to ward me off with. My analyze skill had highlighted it as being yellow which probably meant that I could still take it, but I wasn’t about to rely on luck alone. It’s what got me into this in the first place.
However, since the big bad kitty cat wasn’t inclined to pounce on me right away, I took the time to check on my stats and dump a few in defense this time. Or agility. Or maybe even strength. Any of them would probably help right now.
NAME: Samuel (hidden: Jackson)
RACE: Human
AGE: 18
TITLES: DEMON’S BANE, TITAN HUNTER
SOUL TRAITS: Defiant(worn), Merciful(neutral), Kind(neutral), Noble(strained)
FATE: Demon Lord of Gluttony(hidden)
STATUS: System Champion
STATS:
Level: 7
Experience: 6/24
Health: 130/130+22(reserved due to low resources)
Mana: 120/120
Stamina: 9/10
CP (hidden): 23/60
Strength: 11
Vitality: 13+22(reserved due to low resources)
Endurance: 13
Defense: 9+2(reserved due to low resources)
Wisdom: 11
Intelligence: 12
Agility: 11
Dexterity: 8+3(reserved due to low resources)
Charisma: 11
Luck: 12
Free Attribute Points: 5
SKILLS:
Active: Stealth, Identify, Analyze
Passive: Stealth, Mana Essence Reserve (55), Monster Wrangling, Exploration, Mapping, Enhanced Senses
RESISTANCES:
Mana Poison resistance I
AFFLICTIONS: Starvation (suspended due to ongoing Digestion of Food Item)
BONUSES: None
OTHER: None
Seeing that my defense still had a couple of points in reserve because of my starved state, I took it off the list of possible candidates for my meager points. That left strength, agility, and possibly endurance that I could put my points into. I was already more agile than it now that I had a chance to compare our stats, and I did have enough points to potentially become slightly stronger than it. However, I doubted I would get them right away because of my starved status. As for endurance, it was on the list as a possible defense against a possible bleed status. It had helped-
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My thoughts were interrupted as my series of reasoning bumped up my wisdom by a point and bringing it even with my intelligence stat. I stared in surprise at the seemingly random gain until I realized that my planning and careful weighing of my options was what had probably done it. I remember the system mentioning the other day that there were other ways besides level ups to get stat points. Seeing it happen before my eyes really brought it home to me.
Setting my random windfall aside, I focused back on the task at hand. I tossed a few of them into agility until I got a reserve point in it before tossing the rest into my strength figuring that I should focus on my weaker stats in this case. Doing that also got me a reserved point in strength. Looking over the results, I couldn’t really think of anywhere else I could have put them, but I still kicked my past self for panic dumping into vitality. Because I had done that, I didn’t have those points to spend elsewhere. I also had a feeling that having such high stats for my level would draw unwanted attention later.
NAME: Samuel (hidden: Jackson)
RACE: Human
AGE: 18
TITLES: DEMON’S BANE, TITAN HUNTER
SOUL TRAITS: Defiant(worn), Merciful(neutral), Kind(neutral), Noble(strained)
FATE: Demon Lord of Gluttony(hidden)
STATUS: System Champion
STATS:
Level: 7
Experience: 6/24
Health: 130/130+220(reserved due to low resources)
Mana: 120/120
Stamina: 9/10
CP (hidden): 23/60
Strength: 12+1(reserved due to low resources)
Vitality: 13+22(reserved due to low resources)
Endurance: 13
Defense: 9+2(reserved due to low resources)
Wisdom: 12
Intelligence: 12
Agility: 13+1(reserved due to low resources)
Dexterity: 8+3(reserved due to low resources)
Charisma: 11
Luck: 12
Free Attribute Points: 0
SKILLS:
Active: Stealth, Identify, Analyze
Passive: Stealth, Mana Essence Reserve (55), Monster Wrangling, Exploration, Mapping, Enhanced Senses
RESISTANCES:
Mana Poison resistance I
AFFLICTIONS: Starvation (suspended due to ongoing Digestion of Food Item)
BONUSES: None
OTHER: None
With that settled, I closed my status page and made my way over to the new monster while keeping an eye out for anything that would be useful in the coming fight. I didn’t see much, just broken pieces of gnawed on bone. I did manage to find a two foot long ‘splinter’ of bone that I hoped was strong enough to help hold the oversized cat off of me until I could use my CONSUME skill on it. It was the only real way I had any hope of doing any damage to it and good as dead if I didn’t and Salazar along with me. As for the bone, it had teeth marks and blunted sides that made it easy to grip while the ragged ends were fairly sharp. It felt sturdy enough and I didn’t see anything better.
Once I had my makeshift weapon, I was more confident in my approach to the Wasteland Lion. I held the piece of bone front of me like club or short sword, putting it between me and the monster. At the same time, some instinct had me couch slightly as I approached, bending my back and knees to lower my center of gravity. I also widen my stance a little to stabilize my footing and started to walk on the balls of my feet.
The monster didn’t like what it was seeing and snarled at me to get me to go away. When I didn’t, it crouched low to the ground, and I saw its muscles bunch and tense under its scaly hide. With its ears laid back and short tail lashing behind its coiled body, it glared at me as I got steadily closer.
“Easy there, buddy. Just let me touch and it’ll be over quick, I promise. No need to make this any harder for you than you have to.” I told it in a quiet, calm voice.
Grrrr…..
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
It was a tense few minutes as I crept closer to the pissed off monster. It made no move to get away or attack but that didn’t mean anything. My eyes kept wanting to lock gazes with it, but I ignore the urge and kept them on the cat’s body. I think read or heard it somewhere that you should watch the muscles and body of your opponent and not the face or hands to see where they were going to strike. It was lucky that was what I was doing as it was the only warning I got when it finally leapt at me.
I was only five feet or so away from it by then and it didn’t really give me any time or room to maneuver, which is what it probably intended. I tried ducking and dodging left anyways and I felt its claws tear over my right arm in the split second it took me to lash out at it after moving. I felt my impromptu bone club hit something fairly solid that moved away from the impact meaning I had some form of success.
Next thing I knew there was a drawn out scraping and scrabbling noise as something tumbled across the stone floor. Thankfully it wasn’t me, but the near miss sent my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I thought it was going to burst out of it, and I was gasping great gulps of air like I had just run a mile. Feeling my warm blood dripping down my arm didn’t help any either.
I pushed through all of that though to look for the cat so I could see what damage I had managed to inflict on it since my life was literally on the line here. I spotted getting shakily to its feet with blood dripping from its nose and not really looking to well. It doubled down on that impression by promptly barfing something out on to the floor that was chunky, liquidy, and vile smelling. It also gave me an opening I could exploit so, while it was heaving its guts out, I leapt on top of it and activated my skill.
CONSUME
