Upon waking, Alex returned to a different segment of the forest, where he managed to hunt another deer. Having finished his hunt before midday, he followed it up with another one, bringing his third deer back to the clearing in two days. He now had enough deer meat for a whole week, even on his aggressive physical training schedule.
He finished another round of physical training before he set off in search of the murder chicken cave once again. Once he got within a 3km radius, he moved his way up to the treetops, doing his best to avoid being noticed. He traveled until he got within 1 km of the cave, where he impatiently began to circle the treetops, waiting for one of the beasts to leave.
After waiting for 10 minutes, he was granted his wish, and he pursued the creature as it made its way out of the cave, stalking it quietly from the treetops.
Alex followed the creature for 15 minutes, before he was satisfied that he was far enough from the cave and the other murder chickens. It was time to begin testing the creatures.
Maintaining a distance of around 15m from the chicken, he began lightly tapping his knife against the bark of the tree, creating little knocking noises. Seeing no reaction, he grabbed one of the small branches from the tree he was in, and gave it a crack - still no response. Alex alternated different sounds he thought would attract the attention of the chicken, slowly ramping up in volume.
Eventually the creature noticed his presence, but Alex had already formed a solid conclusion - their hearing sucked. Sure they communicated by doing their weird screeches, and they'd noticed the rock hitting the cave, but those were all blatantly obvious tells.
The creature stared up at him atop the tree. Alex remained where he was not bothering to hide himself, he specifically wanted to test if they'd climb after him, and how capable they were in the treetops. Unsurprisingly, the creature began climbing up the tree, gripping the trunk with its claws, and using its back legs to propel itself upwards, all the while making slow awkward progress.
Eventually, the creature reached the branch where Alex was waiting, where it extended its claws onto his branch tentatively. There it awkwardly approached Alex, seeming to struggle to balance on the branch, before gathering its courage and leaping at him. He watched the creature, a bored expression on his face, as he speared the creature through the chest.
'Why would you climb the tree if you're that bad at fighting up here?'
'All I have to do is bait you losers into climbing the trees to fight me.'
'Their instincts seem very poorly tuned. They're far too desperate to hunt prey far outside their weight class and power level.'
'The hunting of the demon bear for example. I'd originally assigned their behaviour to stupidity, but desperation might make quite a bit more sense. Even after watching their ally get obliterated by the bear, they kept trying to fight it.'
Taking a second, Alex grabbed the corpse of the murder chicken and sensed its mana concentration - he estimated it was around 90, around triple that in the atmosphere, somewhat higher than the fish in the river, and about what the deer was.
He processed the corpse of the chicken before descending the tree. It was perfectly good eating, and he'd use the feathers to make some arrows.
'I think that's most of the information I need.'
Alex then returned to the clearing, carrying his spoils of war. He then plucked the feathers off the chicken, they were fairly large and would be great for fletching arrows.
The groundwork for his planning was laid, and now he just had to complete his preparations.
The next day was uneventful, though Alex could feel the pressure change coming - he was quite confident it was going to rain tomorrow, which lined up well with his timelines.
The intestines of the deer had all finished drying, along with their skins, and Alex combined the three sets of intestines to make a long, thick bowstring. He spent quite a bit of time choosing the right piece of wood this time, and almost half a day working on it, but he finally completed his longbow.
The bowstring was around 1.5m long, and he'd built the bow from a sturdy, thick wood. He'd intentionally chosen the materials to better match his new strength, but even with them, he could still hold the bow at full draw for at least 30 seconds.
He'd made new arrows which were quite a bit longer to make good use of his longbow design, and he'd been able to find quite a few decent feathers off the corpse of the chicken, pulling together around 30 arrows. He then made a bootleg quiver out of some of the deer leather, which he tied together with some sinew.
Similarly, he'd crafted himself a bunch of leather armor from the four deer corpses. It was patchwork and half-hazard, but it was better than nothing, and it didn't particularly reduce his movement. He'd basically had to carve himself a wooden needle in order to punch holes through the armor through which he could thread the sinew.
The armor gave decent protection to his vital organs, using a chestplate and back covering, after which he just created broad pieces of leather which ended up strapped to his limbs.
After practicing with his bow and adding some tweaks here and there to make sure the arrows flew straight, Alex was ready, now all he had to do was wait for the rain. Before going to sleep that night, Alex reviewed everything he knew about the creatures.
'They mix hunting in packs with hunting alone. The initial one I encountered was on its own, while the one I trapped was obviously in a group.'
'I'm guessing they scout on their own, and then bring in the rest of the group if they find the trail of the correct target.'
'It seems like they hunt from early in the day until relatively late at night. They clearly seem to have at least a basic ability to signal one another verbally.''
'From what I can tell, their hearing is bad, and their eyesight isn't great either. The one at the trap pounced on the squirrel even though it was dead, I can only assume they're stupid or quite visually impaired from that.'
'Their sense of smell on the other hand seems excellent.'
'Their tactics regarding how they hunt in packs is pretty simple, they try to encircle their prey before they begin attacking. That's actually what saved me back near the trap, had they just sneak attacked me, I'd have been screwed.'
'They're also weak, but given how desperate they behave, I wouldn't be surprised if they're all young. The alpha seems to be the only one that's made it to adulthood.'
'The only thing I'm concerned about is their alpha, and their strange sense of desperation.'
Alex sighed and stared at the ceiling of the house he was in.
'Whatever, the plan has plenty of contingencies.'
Alex happily smiled up at the ceiling. Tomorrow they will bleed.
Alex woke up, sensing the coming rain. He now had two ways to tell, the first was that his perception gave him increased sensitivity to pressure changes, the other was that the ache in his wounded leg seemed to act up weirdly with the pressure. On days like this it was so bad he almost had to limp.
The increase in his resilience had made it more bearable when it was just him standing around, but any time he did things like run, he was constantly reminded of it.
He was also going all out to prove his own competence to himself, he'd been defeated a few to many times since coming here, and he wanted a major win against a decent opponent.
Grabbing his pickaxe, Alex set off for the pitfall trap, he wanted to widen it substantially for what he had in mind. After widening it to around 2m in diameter, he added more stakes to the bottom and covered it again.
Alex returned to camp, where he armed himself with his bow, arrows, dagger and spear. He then started slowly making his way along the treetops, all his equipment was quite awkward, reducing his travel speed, but it was worth it. After an hour he reached the cave entrance, where he began the waiting game, the incoming rain was going to be perfect.
A little past midday, the clouds had completely covered the sky, giving the forest a dark overcast. The overcast clouds shrouded any direct sunlight, ruining any shadows, and a silence seemed to settle in.
'Any time now.'
Alex's wish was answered, as the clouds soon opened, letting down a heavy rain. He watched as the first of the creatures appeared, seemingly in a hurry to return to the cave. Waiting for it to get in range, he held his bow, and felt himself get washed in almost feverish excitement.
He judged the direction the creature was going, and drew his bow back, holding his breath to help stabilize his chest. Aiming at the creature's chest, he released his arrow, and watched as it appeared, piercing right through its throat, pinning it to the ground.
'Sucker.'
Alex repeated the process several times, it was almost painfully easy, sometimes the murder chickens would stop by their fallen brethren, pausing, only to immediately get skewered by an arrow.
Between the rain diluting his scent, and the fact that their hearing was further suppressed by the rain, even the few times Alex missed had little consequence, as they couldn't locate him with their poor eyesight. They would just frantically look around, and squawk a little before getting hit by a second arrow. He had yet to miss twice in a row.
The sight was becoming increasingly gruesome, as it had basically turned into a pile of corpses, and the rain was spreading the blood to the surrounding areas, turning the forest floor around the cave a sickly red.
Alex paused, waiting for more creatures to show up, he'd only killed 10 of them, but it seemed the rest were either already in the cave, or had somehow gotten scared off.
He extended his water sense, pushing it to a 25m radius out of caution - the rain painted a significantly more detailed picture than what he could see without it. Finding nothing, he continued waiting, the rain would continue for another 2 hours and he was in no hurry.
Finally, after waiting for another half an hour, the alpha appeared from the cave, flanked by two of the smaller chickens, stopping to examine the pile of corpses, it let out an enraged howl, breaking apart the rhythmic sounds of rain.