{Race - Human }
{ Strength - Four/Ten - A }
{ Agility - One/Thirty - S }
{ Endurance - Five/Ten - A }
{ Dexterity - One/Ten - A }
{ Skills - ( Peak Predator - A ) ( Hardening - B ) }
This was the result of a twenty-minute hunt.
"What do you base these scores around?" I asked. Now that I was invested in getting stronger, my interest in the grading and everything was beginning to rise. Those values were arbitrary numbers to me before, but as they kept stacking up, I started seeing visible improvements in my state.
I needed to optimise myself to become a being capable of killing a god, within the span of a month. Or well, twenty-eight days now.
"Your relative strength throughout your race."
"So I would say that I'm pretty goo-"
"My judging results came to be a lot like poverty. The strong are the only ones keeping the average this high. If you were to take them as a frame of reference, you would need to double your points, just to reach them. And that's the bare minimum to kill a God. Add to that the fact that we're counting your race as base humans, the kind that hasn't evolved to accommodate magic. Basically all brawlers."
"And you were trying to go at the pace of a couple of wolves a day?"
"I mean it wasn't like I was expecting you to reach the bare minimum to kill a God. I just didn't want you to die on the spot pathetically." Her bland face just drove the point home. No one including myself was actually expecting me to make it out of this.
"That's encouraging."
"So what was up with the trap."
"I set it up while you were asleep. I ran across the record in the grimoire, then I found this tunnel. I hardened my spikes so that I broke the entire ceiling. Then I held up that thing with a hardened enamel net. Then I left a little gap that I could put a spike in to make it lose its structural integrity."
"You came up with something like that?"
"Fishing was one of my hobbies. Anyways, we can't waste any more time here. I didn't wrap this up quickly to chat. I suppose we're out of wolves?"
"The forest will make more of them. Schwarzwald maintains a homeostatic environment. If the wolves disappeared their prey would increase in number, yes?"
"So do you say we wait for them?"
"No. You're too good for them at this point. We need another prey for you."
She flipped the grimoire's pages.
"The next one has an interesting ability."
As she flipped the book at me, a drawn figure stood out.
"Winglings?"
"That's the common tongue for them, yes. But it's more appropriate to call them Flyions. That's what we named them at the time of conception."
"Winglings it is." I flipped through a page and saw the location and headed in that direction immediately.
"It's actually that way." Liu turned me around.
"Oh."
###
A wingspan of around 12 meters, covered in feathers, and glossy eyes. They were almost built like birds, yet didn't have a beak. Black irises, rounded snout and mouth that extended to the very sides.
If the wolves were majestic these were exquisite. You couldn't find a single thing wrong with their appearance. They exuded peace and serenity. Embodying the feel of this forest itself.
But appearances don't guarantee survival.
At the end of the day, all they were, were herbivores. The kind that ran away at the very sight of a predator. The kind that didn't even bother fighting back. They took the 'flight' from 'flight or fight' too seriously.
Their meal consisted of rare flowers that helped them maintain very low body weight, and their wings were imbued with mana to make up for the lack of protein. Which resulted in beings that could fly as fast as if not faster than dragons.
I barely had S tier speed in comparison to humans. There was no way I could catch this overstacked bird if it caught wind of me.
I was trying my best to not show myself in front of them or even to create the slightest disturbance in the environment at this very moment. In front of my eyes, without the slightest bit of movement, the winglings were sitting on the top of a rock gazing out at the sun.
The light reflecting off every individual feather.
"Do you reckon you can kill it without getting noticed?"
"I have to."
I snuck around the corner and saw the wingling continue to look at the sky.
"Peak predator."
My senses extended out and 3 lines of motions emerged from the snout of the wingling. All heading out from that one location.
I dug my foot into the ground. It was about time I exploited my S tier agility.
"Fuuuu" I breathed out and simultaneously rushed in at my maximum speed. Growing this strong in such a short interval meant that I had next to no control over my speed. It was astronomical. I could probably make it out of Rottheim in under a minute with this speed. But my mind wasn't very capable of functioning to keep up with the technique. I stumbled but managed to follow through.
This was fast. Way faster than anything I had seen myself or anyone get. There was no way I wouldn't make it. S tier speed was that incredible.
I finally looked up at my prey and!
...
Nothing.
My eyes slowly followed the sky and there it was, flying away, gradually looking back at me. To taunt me. In the most pretty way possible.
Damn it.
Nature really had a way of humbling you. S tier speed my ass. Killing those mutts meant nothing.
My skills weren't enough.
'But I can't give up!
If I was able to control my speed, there would have been no way they would've escaped.' So I took to finding the next wingling to hunt.
No shot.
And the next.
Nothing to show for it.
And the next.
They all flew away.
And the next.
I could barely touch the wingling's leg this time as it flew off.
By the end of the day, I came to the realisation that it was impossible for me to kill one of those. I wasn't quick enough, yet.