After getting up I immediately checked my wounds. It barely hurt!
I immediately rushed to take some actual food from the warehouse, took some food (dried mushrooms) and started eating. Ah, even though mushrooms weren't my favourite food, but now the taste felt many times better.
Ish said that she was busy with maintaining her equipment, patching her clothes and etc, which was why I decided to go hunting alone. Hopefully I could find something fancy. I also took a wooden spear before leaving (I must admire people like Gord, who bother themselves with making basic tools anybody in the village can use. And there were always spears lying around. People using atlatls and spear throwers were almost literally burning through these things. Side note, I need to finally make a higher quality spear, an atlatl wouldn't be a bad addition to my arsenal, too.)
Once in the forest I decided to go to the northeast.
About two hours later I finally found something notable: the burrow of some animal, judging by the size I would say that it was a Mretik. Fortunately the burrow was empty. I wondered if I could wait it out. But and the end I chose not to. First such animals were dangerous, second I didn't want to wait much. Better keep myself busy.
I moved on.
Eventually I stumbled upon a quite gruesome scene: a Hayat devouring an animal I couldn't recognize because it was almost fully eaten and what was left was half rotten. The Hayat didn't seem to mind that since it was currently breaking the dead animal's bones to reach the marrow.
The Hayat itself somewhat resembled a lizards, although much bigger. Its body was a bit less than three meters in length, slender. Its main feature was its head, about half a meter in length alone, that supported powerful jaws with big canine teeth.
I moved to its left before attacking.
And then I charged at it with my spear ready. I penetrated the skin around the shoulder, although not too deep. I tried to push the spear at least a bit deeper. The Hayat started to shake, throwing me on the ground about two meters away.
The next thing I could remember was me facing the animal's jaws. It was ready to bite and crush my neck. In spite of the pain I was feeling I got my dagger out. And thrusted it straight into the creature's eye. That didn't kill it immediately, though. I got up and stabbed its head from above, thusly reaching the brain and killing the Hayat.
After the deed was done, I started skinning my prey. Unfortunately the skin was not collectable, but at least the meat appeared to be fine. There was plenty of fat there, so everything appeared to be great. I ate some of it. The taste wasn't bad at all. I was quite picky when it comes to what I would carry back home. Meat from the tail, from the chest and etc. I also took the teeth and claws. Hopefully somebody would find them useful. The canine teeth could be made in pretty good daggers, for example.
After all that was ready I got back to the village at about an hour before sunset.
I left most the meat at the warehouse, giving some of it to Lashi in exchange for the claw of a Mretik, I had an idea what to use the thirty centimeters long claw for.
"Hey, where did that come from?" I asked Lashi after seeing a pile of sharp obsidian rocks.
"Fleria brought it." said Lashi.
"Hm." I grunted.
So she had returned...
"There lot of obsidian in the mountains." Lashi added.
"Thanks. Maybe I should go there sometime. Well, I will take some."
"Whatever."
Before going to my hut, I checked the new farm. Clams were already being grown there. I picked two of them and ate them directly. It wasn't that bad.
Once in my hut I finally started work on my project. I needed a weapon with a longer range, which was also sharper than a wooden spear. This is what I'd use the Mretik claw for: a war scythe! I tied it to the end of a straight branch that I had cut to make more comfortable for handling. The claw was placed on the same angle as the stick, which made it look more like a spear than a farming scythe, which had a blade placed at a right angle (the farming tool also had two handles, while the weapon had none). The final result wasn't bad at all.
I got out and swinged it around a few times. It was both sharper than a wooden spear and it had a sharp blade on the side.
"I see that you've got some interesting stuff, Stralki."
That was said by a woman I couldn't recognize. She was a bit taller than even Freyr. Her hair was black, long and a bit curly. She was wearing black clothes made out of leather and an iron breastplate atop of it.
"Fleria, I assume." I said.
"Right. Excuse me for missing out everything related to you."
"No problem. I understand that you have been busy keeping us safe."
"If you view it this way, I'm glad. Freyr was willing to tell me everything he knew about you, when I returned, but I cut him off. It's better from you, isn't it?"
"Well, I assume you're right. Where to start then?"
"If heard you've done quite a lot with Ish, for example..."
"Well, we did capture a dryad, but not much more...."
She nodded: "If you ever believe this is not much, I can offer you two words "do not". Also if you need a sparring partner, while trying this out..." she looked at my scythe "I'd like to see your skills."
I thought for a bit: "That'd be...fun."
"Very well. Better go outside of the village." Fleria said.
We got to the edge of the village. Fleria got her weapon out (an eighty centimeters long warhammer with an additional spike.) After seeing my confused expression when I saw it, she explained: "Hammers are pretty efficient for crushing undead."
"Aha, so what're the rules?" I asked.
"We go ten ten steps from each other and then the sparring starts. The first to bleed loses."
"Understood, Fleria." I said
"You know, "mother" works too."
"Okay... Mother."
And a minute later our little competition started.
I prapered my scythe. After all, I had the reach advantage. It'd be stupid to attack.
Fleria was moving towards me. I thrusted the scythe forward. She dodged it by jumping to my left. In response to that I swinged my weapon leaftwards. Fleria jumped down and avoided my attack.
"Ha!" I said and thrusted down my scythe.
Instead of me winning, I got my weapon stuck into the ground. Fleria was quite agile, apparently.
She closed the distance between us and then swinged her hammer at me. I avoided it by jumping left. I attacked Fleria once again with the wide side of my scythe, but I missed and hit the back of her armour instead of the neck.
"Auch!" I said.
Fleria had lightly stabbed my back.
"I guess you win." I admitted defeat.
"Don't feel down." she said "If a person trained by me was as good as you, I'd be proud. Want a rematch?"
"But of course!" I answered.
We ended up fighting seven times. I won twice. By the time we were over, a small group of onlookers had gathered.