Chapter 5

The man still looked angry, but there was a layer of confusion mixed in there now. "What are you talking about?"

"Yeah, so I went there this morning trying to catch a few rabbits. I caught one but then a wolf pounced on me and killed me." Theo explained as he continued to rub the back of his head.

"What the fuck are you on about? If you died the how the fuck are here?" The confusion was slowly overtaking the previous anger that had shown on the man's face.

"I resurrected back at the temple, something about being one of the gods' chosen." When he said that, realization seemed to dawn on the man's face.

"So, you're one of them?" The man was now staring intently at him. His face had lost the traces of anger and confusion, the only thing on his face now was curiosity.

"I guess? How does everyone I've met know what a god's chosen is?" Theo asked the question that had been bugging him for quite a while.

"The priest at the temple has been preaching about your kind for the past year, I'd be surprised if there still existed people who didn't know about you guys." The man answered as he turned and walked back towards the racks.

Now that he wasn't being threatened by the man, Theo could take a closer look at him.

While the man wasn't bulky, neither was he skinny. He had an athlete's body, from what Theo could see. The man was wearing the same type of leather armor as he was, with a slightly bigger quiver on his back.

The man put the bow back onto his back and took out a knife from his belt before starting to skin the small game on a table nearby.

"The name's Wesley, so." While doing that he started to ask questions again. "What does one of you want to do with me?"

"I heard you know how to hunt, and I want to learn how to hunt for myself."

"Aren't you supposed to already know that?" Wesley asked quizzically over his shoulder as he skinned the hide off a squirrel.

Theo just shrugged.

"You want me to teach you? Why would I do that?" He had finished skinning the squirrel and had pulled a rabbit carcass to the table.

"I could help you hunt?"

Wesley stopped the skinning process and raised his gaze from the table to look over him thoroughly.

"I've used a bow before." Wesley looked skeptical. "I can demonstrate." Theo received a nod in return.

Theo pulled out the bow with his left hand and turned towards one of the trees on the edge of the forest, the distance was approximately twenty meters.

He pulled out an arrow out of the quiver with his right hand and nocked it. The string on the bow tensed as he drew back, keeping his index finger above the arrow and his middle and ring finger below.

He aimed while pulling the string back and released it when the hand that was pulling the string had reached the side of his face and was touching his chin.

The arrow shot out of the bow with such force that it surprised him. The arrow flew fast and was now rooted to the bark on the middle of the tree trunk.

A notification appeared in front of him.

[You have acquired a new skill: Archery]

[Archery – LVL 3

You have a good grasp on the basic principles of archery.

You have a rudimentary grasp on shooting while moving.

You have a good grasp on shooting while stationary.]

It's already level 3? Why? Theo was left confused as he read the notifications, but he shook his head to dispel the confusion.

He turned around to look at Wesley and noticed that his eyebrows were slightly raised, and he was looking towards the tree he had shot.

"What I want you to teach me is what you've learned of the forest so that I can hunt more efficiently."

Wesley slowly placed the skinning knife on the table and started to walk towards the tree that now had an arrow sticking out of it. Theo put the bow back onto his back and followed suit.

Soon they were both standing in front of the tree and inspecting the results of his shot. The arrow itself wasn't very big, but it was buried into the tree until there was no metal head left to be seen.

Wesley reached out and pulled the arrow out of the tree and they both started to curiously look over the hole that was left.

While the hole wasn't large, it was considerably deeper than any other arrow that he had fired before.

He turned his gaze from the hole to the arrow that had made it and noticed that while the iron head did not have the shine it previously had, it still looked as sharp as it had been before.

"What do you want to know?" Wesley handed the arrow to him, and he put it back into the quiver.

They started to walk back towards the shed where Wesley picked up the skinning knife and resumed skinning the rabbit.

"Tell me about the forest."

/-/

The sun was now hanging up in the sky and casting down rays of sunshine through the canopy of the forest, making it appear even more vibrant than in the morning. There were a few clouds drifting lazily in the sky, occasionally cutting off the rays of sunshine.

[You have acquired a new skill: Stealth]

[Stealth – LVL 1

You have the rudimentary skills to hide yourself visually.

You have the rudimentary skills to mask your scent.

You have the rudimentary skills to make yourself quiet.]

'This one's a level one skill again? Why was archery already level three when I got it?'

Theo was sitting on the thick branch of a tree, gathering up leaves and mashing them together and rubbing it on his clothes, when the notification popped up.

After reading through the notification, he looked below and placed his focus back onto what he was doing.

There was a rabbit carcass laying down by the base of another tree around ten meters from the tree he was using.

Wesley had told him where the territories of the wolves were and how many packs existed within the forest. He also told him of their recent surge in activity.

While the wolves were the apex predators within the forest, they had been keeping to the northern, eastern and southern parts of the forest, leaving the village, which was on the western side, alone.

Recently though, around a month ago, Wesley and the other villagers out in the forest had started to notice the presence of wolves on the western side. It was soon after that that the villagers who went out into the forest foraging started to disappear.

Wesley, being the de facto leader of the village after the raid, warned the villagers away from going into the forest and started to investigate what had happened.

What he found were torn clothing and bits of blood spatter, alongside a single wolf, dead by a tree that clued him into what had most probably happened.

The wolves had started to appear more and more frequently in the western side of the forest. Villagers who went to the forest were starting to disappear on a rapid rate, and everyone knew why.

Soon it was only Wesley and the most famished villagers who dared venture into the forest in search of food.

He had received a notification informing him that he had received a new quest.

[Wolf menace.

Wesley has informed you about the situation within the forest and has requested your assistance with it.]

Theo was sitting in a tree waiting for a wolf to come by. He had his bow ready in his left hand and his right was ready to draw an arrow on a moment's notice.

He had spent nearly twenty minutes setting up a trap and catching a few rabbits and had now sat in the tree for nearly thirty minutes before a pack of five wolves came into his view.

He held his hand and let the wolves come near the tree. He watched as they came closer and closer, the closest one was already sniffing the carcass.

The first one took a bite of the rabbit, before the four others also came and devoured the single rabbit in a matter of minutes.

Theo watched and let them leave in peace, without ever informing them of his presence up above them.

He might have been able to shoot down two of the wolves before the rest would have torn him into pieces.

Wesley had warned him not to become overconfident just because he was atop a branch, since the wolves could climb up the tree within a few seconds.

He waited for another five or so minutes before climbing down from the tree and setting up another bait from the stash that he had managed to gather within those twenty minutes.

After the bait was set, he went back into the tree and waited once again. After around ten minutes, he heard multiple howls in the distance. It sounded like a dozen wolves howling at once.

After around five minutes more of just waiting and bated breath, around seven wolves appeared within his sight.

The same process that had happened with the five earlier wolves repeated itself, but after they had devoured the rabbit carcass, they stayed and sniffed around.

Each of the wolves were looking around the forest while sniffing, as if they had smelled something new.

When they had started to look around and sniff, he had backed up against the trunk of the tree on the base of the branch and was trying to make himself look as small as possible.

It seemed like they had noticed something fishy was going on. He stayed like that, sweating and waiting for a good ten minutes before he dared to peek below.

The wolves seemed to have left as he saw none of them, yet he retreated once more towards the tree and hid for another five minutes just to be safe.

He mentally counted five minutes before he peeked over once more, breathed out a sigh of relief and started to climb down to replace the bait.

"So annoying, can't they just come alone like that fucker who killed me or at least in pairs. Why do they always have to be in big fucking packs." He grumbled under his breath as he put the rabbit on the same spot and climbed back into the tree.

The wait this time was longer than it had previously been, but the wait was worth it as a pair of wolves appeared in his vision and slowly stalked towards the bait.

He had been waiting for around an hour now and had yet to fire a single arrow, so he was getting impatient. Yet he was still patient enough to let the two wolves creep closer and closer to the bait, until they were sniffing around it.

He pulled out an arrow and nocked it on his bow, he waited until the first one had taken a bite and the second one was opening its maw open and rearing for a bite itself.

He pulled the string tight, till it reached his chin and shot it straight into the maw of the wolf that was ready to take its first bite.

The arrow flew right into its open mouth and pierced through its throat to the back of its head. It looked confused as the arrow was stuck in its maw and it tried to instinctively bite down.

It proved to be a bad move based on the cry it released as the shaft of the arrow was snapped, but not before it managed to drive the arrow deeper into its head.

Before the second wolf had time to react, he had already released a second arrow straight towards the now raised eyes of the wolf.

The arrow managed to penetrate through the left eye of the wolf, as before it even had the chance to look around at what was going on, its legs gave up and it slumped down, snout in the rabbit.

The first one he had hit was now looking around wildly, growling with a slightly broken sounding voice, something which he attributed to the arrow now stuck in its maw.

A third arrow flew by but did not manage to hit either one of the wolves. That miss seemed to be all the wolf needed to be able to pinpoint his location, as it directed its gaze straight to him.

"Fuck." He cursed his trembling hands. He hadn't tried to kill something with his bow before.

He released another arrow as the wolf started to run towards him with haste. It did not manage to connect, instead striking the ground before the charging beast.

The wolf had managed to close down the ten-meter distance between the trees in the time it had taken him to nock another arrow onto the string and it was already jumping towards the tree.

He tried to forcibly calm himself down and stop the trembling of his hands.

It's just a game, It's just a game. He repeated to himself mentally, and it did seem to help.

The trembling lessened and he was able to shoot out the arrow just as the wolf was trying to climb its way up the tree.

It did not hit the intended target, but still managed to strike the wolf straight in its back. It released a whimper as it lost grip on the tree and fell backwards.

It smashed to the ground and released an anguished howl.

He nocked another arrow and waited for the wolf to pick itself up.

He waited for what he felt was hours before loosening the string as he saw no signs of movement from it.

He looked at the one directly below him for a while more, before directing his gaze towards the one lying on top of the bait. That one was not moving, either.

He breathed out a sigh of relief as his legs gave way and he plopped down on the branch.

"Holy fuck, that was way too fucking intense." He breathed heavily in and out as the trembling of his hands slowly subsided and a smile slowly spread across his face. "I love it."