Reckless

The young man continued to wander, causing more and more gnarled trees characteristic of this region to appear in his vision. The earth was still as red as before, but the environment began to show signs of life.

'Looks like the problems weren't my memories, but where I was.' Trevor thought as he stepped on dry branches on the ground: the noise causing some exotic colored birds to fly away.

Sparse green grasses also appeared from time to time. Trevor guessed he'd already walked far enough to stop worrying about possible pursuers in the shadows. Just as he was about to come up with his next plans, something ridiculous happened.

A familiar creature appeared, it was the guara that Trevor injured before!

The animal moved calmly forward, not noticing that it was being watched. The human in question didn't expect this to happen either, especially since a few hours ago this guara had disappeared like ice in the sunny morning.

In the end, it was like the tale of the tortoise that overtook the hare.

Suddenly, the same guara that was in his vision stopped moving. This same immobile creature then began to look around, as if suspicious of something.

'This shitty already noticed me?' Trevor tensed: which made the rest of his left arm sting with pain. Even the brief muscular tension already made him want to curse all the ancestors of those damned guaras who took his arm.

Worst of all was that even without this pain, Trevor would have no chance of defeating this guara head-on if they fought head-to-head. Losing one of his arms did more than just prevent him from properly holding weapons, it also altered his balance.

'What bad luck, what bad luck.' Trevor thought as he heard the Central Plateau monster howling. He gritted his teeth and took in the surroundings. There were no easy targets he could use to gain an advantage against this beast.

'I can't climb trees or hang from a cliff. I can't use that grass to hide myself either, that damn thing's nose is too good to fall for that stupid trick.' Trevor was feeling for the first time in his life the pain of being crippled.

'Oh, right, I can try to stay behind some tree while using my spear.'

But even the best plans were still flawed.

Trevor's plan went wrong from the start.

'Huh?' He opened his mouth wide, speechless to express his surprise. In his view, after the guara howled, little puppies that looked like cute little foxes emerged from a hole.

Their fur was like the setting sun, where the surface of the ground was pitch-black while the sky still glowed yellow-orange. Their size was comparable to a basketball, with the adult guara beside them looking like a giant among the ants.

The four puppies opened their tiny mouths, exposing their little tongues to the adult guara that had been bleeding from the neck until now. Like frogs trying to capture the flies and other parasites that flew around its open wound. Seeing the reaction of these puppies, the adult guara showed its row of frightening teeth.

One of the unsuspecting puppies got close to those teeth before disappearing.

Where it had been moments before, there was only blood left.

Just like that, Trevor saw one of the puppies be devoured alive!

'Well, I would have done the same if I was the one in that situation.' He didn't even blink at this brutal scene. In nature, the strong devour the weak. 'It seems that this guara is more wounded than I imagined. Will it eat more puppies?'

Blood painted on the tongues of the other cubs, making them wag their tails even more fervently. Unlike his stupid siblings, however, one of the other cubs was frozen in fear. This cub trembled in fear and ran into the den quickly.

It was the only one who survived the massacre.

His brothers turned to food and would soon be turned into feces.

'Actually, that's good.' Trevor thought as he noticed that the cub hidden inside the den stayed there, not even daring to show its snout. This baby guara looked more like a mole than anything else right now.

'If this thing is eating, it means it will have to digest soon. And that's when I'll get my chance to attack.' Trevor's sinister gaze never left the figure of this monster. He didn't doubt this creature's sensory ability.

The guara puppy, however, made a serious mistake when it entered the den. It didn't take long for the adult guara to also enter there and finish the job. All puppies were eaten, providing easy nutrients for the adult guara.

In order to heal its wound and digest what he had just eaten, just as Trevor had thought, the adult guara stayed inside the burrow. The crippled human had to approach that place carefully. Being careless here was like courting death.

Trevor crept in a crouch through the tall grass, breathing as little as possible. 'This idiot guara is handing the knife and cheese to me so easily. It's really useless to have muscles but not have the brains to control them.' Trevor thought this popular saying fitted this situation very well.

To disguise his scent, he walked towards the pool of blood that was formed with the blood of the guara puppies. Trevor reached out with the only hand he had, carrying a dry cloth in it. This dry cloth was soon doused with red liquid, flooding it with the odor of puppies that died minutes ago.

Trevor used this cloth like a scarf, wrapping it around his neck.

'My scent should be safe enough for now.' He held the poisoned kitchen knife in his right hand, but decided to do something different this time.

Trevor took that poisoned knife and looked at it, placed it beside the simple spearhead: creating the concept of a very lethal weapon.

Trevor's skill was shown when he used the lighter to heat the wooden frame, then used a piece of fabric he tore from his shirt in order to tie the poisoned kitchen knife into that heated spot.

Trevor took the spear in his hand and pulled the cloth with his teeth, pushing each one to a different side for the simple purpose of stretching the fabric as much as possible. After the fabric was stretched, he placed the knife on that heated part of the spear and wrapped the fabric that had just been stretched around it.

'But…do I really want to do this?' Trevor was about to finish the weapon when he hesitated. His brow furrowed, but then relaxed after considering the big picture.

'I'm thinking too much. In my state, preserving my food is secondary. Eliminating the guara and acquiring its shelter to rest is the priority. If the cost to get that is to poison the corpse, then so be it.' The analysis came to an end as he held up his new weapon.

For the next few seconds, he rocked the weapon sideways, trying to get used to its new center of gravity. The extra weight the kitchen knife placed on the spear made Trevor feel that the quality of the weapon's momentum had increased.

'Stopping the movements after I've already started them will be considerably more difficult from now on. Which means that I just need to be ruthless enough.' Trevor grinned like a shark.

Being closer to the burrow, Trevor could now take a closer look at the arrangement of vegetation. The house of that adult guara was well elaborated, considering the owner's intelligence. There were grasses and leaves covering the entrance, preventing strangers from seeing what hole was behind them.

'It's time.' Trevor gripped the newly crafted weapon and lunged forward, pushing at the mulch with the tip of his spear. His feet moved calmly, avoiding breaking the dry branches on the ground. The terrain inside the hideout was uneven but spacious.

Trevor entered the place and glimpsed the wounded guara, the latter was sleeping like stone.

He approached unhurriedly, and delivered the blow when he got close enough.

The guara awoke from its brief nap only to roar in agony and fall into eternal sleep.

'That poison is ridiculous.' Liman's abilities were still something Trevor had a hard time understanding. 'Glad I'm no closer to that demon.'

Trevor didn't rest, there was still work to be done. The young man touched the guara's carcass, feeling the soft fur of that creature for the first time in his life. After gaining more insight into the animal's size, he pulled this corpse to another segment of the burrow.

Once he finished that, Trevor stepped back a bit and used the spear point to collapse part of the roof of that place. Dust rose into the air and made the young man try to cover his face with his left arm by reflex, as the right was holding the spear that started the whole event.

'This really sucks.' It wasn't known if Trevor was referring to the dust, his condition, or both. Even so, he kept his expression as cool as the peaks of the Western Mountain Ranges as he left this part of the den.

'I still need to get rid of that blood out there.' He then headed for the entrance to the den. This time the work was simpler and no dust was raised. Trevor just used his boots and spear to spread the earth, using it to cover the pools of blood.

He sighed as he looked at the horizon, seeing the light streaks grow more and more frequent. Later, his second day in this world would begin. Trevor had distant thoughts, but his heart still remained the same since the nightmare.

'I need to rest soon.'

Trevor wasted no more time and went into the den, setting up a makeshift alarm at his entrance. If any mutant animal stepped there, it would break several branches before ending up touching the lines of stretched vines that were arranged in a weird clothesline.

On this unorthodox clothesline, several small stones were hung, capable of reverberating with the environment and producing sounds once they reached the ground.

'I could use the metal tools in the medkit, but the cost-efficiency doesn't pay off. Losing even one of these tools could cost me my life in the long run.' After he lost his left arm, Trevor gave special value to the medkit.

Also, among the other things Trevor did, was to improvise the structure of a campfire. He just didn't start the fire, otherwise he'd be killed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

'Well, I guess that's it for today.'

Before lying down on the floor, he gathered the grass and leaves nearby to make his bed. In the end, the product generated by his skillful hand was deplorable, to say the least. Even the medical litter in the P-02 installation was more comfortable.

Trevor lay down on that thing anyway, feeling pain in various parts of his body.

'Now, I just need to wait for sleep to come.'

The slight cuts on his body hadn't healed, and what was left of his arm hurt like hell. Even so, he just ignored these sensations and concentrated on relaxing.

Unfortunately, sleep didn't come.

The pain kept his brain from relaxing, keeping him in a constant state of alert.

Suddenly, something made Trevor open his eyes in shock!

'Holy crap!'

Larvae and worms stuck to his wounds. Several small invertebrate animals of different species treated that part of his body like nothing more than an open-air feast!

'It wasn't just pain I was feeling, it was those damn things too!'

As soon as he got up from the bed of straw he'd made, he felt even more stuff crawling up his body. Their little paws scraped across his skin, threatening to penetrate his wounds.

If there were any poisonous insects in there, Trevor would be as good as dead!

'Damn it! I was too reckless!'