I never forced her to eat them all!

Liam and his large feline friend continued on their way on the side of the stream which started to widen after some time, and then it emerged into a river. He looked around for any signs of life to find the herbivores. It didn't look like they were nearby and Liam felt confident enough to come out of the forest. But then, he had to look back, because something was holding him back.

The Black Menace had a hold of him, keeping him from entering the clearing ahead. She had bitten him. Not him, but rather she was biting his clothes.

It was still daytime so he couldn't understand why she was holding him back. Most creatures should still be sleeping, but then he looked at the feline and had to sigh to himself. If she was already awake with Nio then every other best might be as well. How stupid could he be?

The next moment he saw a new creature he hadn't seen before and this one went for the river. Probably to drink some water. Nothing special happened, but the black fluff still didn't let go of him. He petted her head to let her know, that he wasn't going anywhere, and she let go of his clothes. Relaxing a tiny bit. She started to hiss when the creature approached the water.

'Is there something dangerous in the water?' he thought and continued his observation. After all, the fluffy kitty won't let him near the river.

The creature looked a lot like the deer on his home planet, but they were way bigger and had no fur. Which looked rather weird to him, but this was after all another world. It had horns and they were formed like blades, one side of each one looked incredibly sharp. Its legs and body looked sturdier than earth deer and it's built in a way that allowed it to fight predators if necessary. That creature definitely looked like a herbivore.

Liam wished that he could get his hands on some of those creatures.

Suddenly he saw something odd. A tentacle was moving slowly out of the water and sneaking toward the creature that looked somewhat like a deer.

Liam looked at it and got a strange feeling from it. As he had seen, no, felt it somewhere before. The tentacle was giving off an aura that was familiar to him. He thought about it and looked at the tentacle that had captured the deer-like being and pulled it into the water. On that evening he had only observed the creatures coming to the water.

The tentacle didn't appear again, not even once as all the creatures nearby came to drink. Liam noticed a few of them stopping by a certain location. But as there were many creatures and even a few of those Tyrant Kings around, he didn't dare to visit that place to check if it had what he needed or not.

On his way back he took down another beast. The kill was fast and clean, Liam didn't like that it was so easy. Has was thinking that he needed to find prey that was harder to kill or maybe make his own job harder, by trying to capture rather than kill. Would that make the hunt more interesting? Either way, he didn't know that as of yet and skinned the beast. He didn't take the carcass and just left it there.

The black kitty had other ideas.

When she observed that Liam had no interest in the carcass other than the skin, she proceeded to devour it. She had been following Liam for a few days now and had forgotten the eating part of her day. After all, she wasn't as advanced as the prickly one.

Liam paused as he saw the Black Menace eating the creature's carcass he had just skinned.

'Hmm, would it be helpful to her if I hunted a few more?' He didn't think twice after that and just climbed a tree. He spotted another one of the same species and proceeded to hunt it.

Now, he had made it his mission to make the hunting time as short as possible. Half an hour later, he had already finished skinning the beast.

'A few more and I should be settled,' he thought as he wrapped the skin up and tied it with a vine.

The hunting in the forest continued and just a few hours later Liam was back under the huge tree where Nio resided. The Black Menace was waddling behind him.

They heard loud laughter when they got closer to the tree.

Nio was laughing his head off.

"What so funny?"

Nio tried but failed to answer but Liam was a patient man. He went to the stream first and chucked all the skins into it. Held them down with a rock, so they wouldn't float away.

He returned to the tree to see the Black Menace had curled up and sleeping soundly. He patted the creature's head and sat next to it. After all, the night was rather chilly and the kitty sleeping soundly was quite warm. He looked up as it looked like Nio was calming down.

"That was the funniest thing I have seen! To think you'd feet that thing to bursting," he continued to laugh as he remembered how it had come back, waddling.

"She ate everything I caught, I never forced her to eat them all!" Liam frowned at the accusation and tried to justify it, but it didn't look much better.

Something of a different nature occurred to him.

"Hey, if the plants release toxins or gas into the air, how come you haven't developed any resistance to it?"

The serious question made Nio calm a little, or enough to be able to answer him.

"We did! We just choose to sleep," he pondered over the words, "It's like an agreement was formed between all species on the planet."

"Your words sound as if you were present when the change occurred," Liam found this rather odd and needed some clarification.

"I was! It happened about ten years ago," he felt the need to clarify this.

"What? Wait! Was it sudden or gradual?" Liam was confused and needed answers, he couldn't just let this kind of information hang in the air.

"Gradually. It spread slowly, but eventually, it reached everywhere."

"Huh! That's interesting, I wonder what caused it. Hehehe! It would be fun to figure out," light started to shine in his eyes as he started to chuckle.

Nio thought that he looked creepy this way. The next moment he saw Liam stuff his mouth with the leaves that he had gathered on his way back.

'Definitely a strange bastard!' he thought to himself as he watched the leaves take an effect on him. He was a bit startled that he was forming an immunity toward it, as it took a few minutes before he was out.