Alex didn't need to turn to see where the approaching murder chicken was, he could sense it approaching with his water senses, crouched down and trying to be stealthy. Unfortunately for the chicken the rain revealed its details to him with ease. He readied himself for his next action, getting ready to evade the incoming attack - he needed to get the murder chicken between him and alpha.
The alpha and the murder chicken coordinated their assault, lunging at him from the front and the back simultaneously. The chicken had jumped, aiming at the height of Alex's shoulders, seeing that he dropped hitting his butt, and rolled over his shoulder beneath the airborne chicken. He watched as it collided with the alpha in a tangle of feather and claws
Alex used the chaos to rush forward and skewer the weaker chicken, putting it out of its misery. As important as it was to wound the alpha, he couldn't have himself getting encircled. As he drew back, he noted the chicken stuck to his spear, and he swung his spear in the direction of the other incoming murder chicken, who he'd seen approaching. The force of the swing threw the corpse of the first chicken off his spear causing it to collide with its brethren, sending them sprawling.
Again, the alpha rushed him, not giving him any chances to collect himself. The alpha let off another wave of coercion, but this time he knew what to expect, and it only lasted for a quarter second. After coming out of his trance was greeted by an oddly familiar scene, as the alpha flew towards him airborne, claws extended first, as it tried to pounce on Alex, paper shredder end first.
Unfortunately, his spear was rather out of position to deal with the oncoming predator, and he instead shuffled to one side, while hurling a large fastball of water at the creature. It was then that Alex noticed something that he'd previously ignored in his previous endeavors. When he'd thrown the ball of water at the creature, he'd felt his body accelerate in the opposite direction, and quite hard at that.
This time, he'd thrown a whole bowling ball's worth of water to stop the charge of the creature, and it seemed moving such a large quantity of water quickly had resulted in a substantial opposite reaction on his body.
A lightbulb flashed in his mind, understanding a little more of how his powers were working. Unfortunately, before he could take advantage of his newfound knowledge, he noted another presence behind him - the secondary alpha. The primary alpha - with coercion abilities, was approaching him from the front, and the secondary alpha was closing the distance behind him. Alex tried to see if there were any nearby trees he could escape up, but unfortunately, he wasn't given much time to think, as the second alpha lunged at him from behind.
Dropping into his lowest squat, he swept the other end of the spear behind him, into the wounded leg of the creature, before hooking it upwards and tripping the second alpha, knocking it on its side. He then leaped up before it could snap at his ankles, and slammed one of his larger balls of water into the ground, pushing against it and blasting him further into the air, where he reached a height of 4m, before he began descending.
Before the wounded creature could recover to standing, he grabbed as much water as he could find in his radius, and willed it to change its direction, shooting it flying upward. Unlike when he jumped off the ground, he didn't really have anything to push against, so he just had to throw it really hard and fast.
For a brief moment, gravity seemed to halt on the rain within his sphere of influence, the rain stopping its downward trajectory, before it promptly accelerated upwards, shooting into the sky, simultaneously hurling Alex towards the ground like a meteor.
Clutching his spear with both hands for dear life, he thrust down, impaling the second alphas chest, penetrating deep through the bones and into its organs. With a loud crack the spear shaft bent, and then shattered, unable to take the strain of his fall.
Alex didn't fare much better, his grip on the spear had absolutely shredded his hands, leaving them bloody, and when he landed he didn't do a great job absorbing the force, and his foot slipped, causing him to slam his knee into the ground. He'd also blown three quarters of his remaining mana in that attack, putting him down to 15 points.
The good news was that the second alpha was skewered and very much dead, additionally the primary alpha hadn't had any real time to react, as Alex's sudden acceleration towards the earth had seemed to come out of nowhere, as far as it was concerned. Almost all creatures followed an identical pattern whilst airborne, given that gravity was basically unchanging, so rapid changes to velocity were always a shock.
That was about where his good news ran out, as the primary alpha let out an agonizing wail, not even bothering to use its coercion, before it rushed at Alex trying to take his head off.
'I wonder if that was its mate?'
'Or just its partner in crime. Not that it matters.'
Alex now had a serious issue, without his spear, he was in for an extremely tough fight, even with his water control, as all he was armed with was his dagger. This left him very much in range of that set of claws, and teeth, looking to dice him up finely.
Sure, he could head to the trees to create a slightly better scenario, but the problem remained that he was almost completely out of mana. The creature in front of him would also not be pleasant enough to grant him such an opportunity to escape.
Instead, he had to make one. Throwing himself backward, Alex then used the remaining water he had to shove against the chest of the alpha, throwing both him and his attacker further away from each other, leaving the alpha snapping at empty air once again.
Landing Alex drew his dagger, and charged at the creature, who returned his charge, claws extended. Just as he neared the creature, Alex dropped to one knee and ducked down, where he slashed out with the dagger, cutting through the quad of the creature.
Unfortunately, this was not a great position to be in, as the creature twisted its torso, and reached down with its claws, scoring upwards across his back with its claws. Just as this was happening, he slammed a mass of rainwater he'd quickly gathered into the creature, causing it to stumble forward, tripping over him with its now wounded leg.
He gritted his teeth in pain, while the leather armor he'd gotten from the deer had been helpful and had probably protected him from getting cut bone deep, he was still left with three three cuts across his back, stretching from his left hip to his right shoulder. Hand on his dagger, he put some distance between himself and the creature, who slowly limped after him. He rushed over to where the corpses were, and quickly pulled 4 or 5 arrows from the corpses and the ground, before grabbing his bow and slowly jogging out of the clearing.
As he started leaving the clearing around the cave, he noted one of the murder chickens struggling to climb out from underneath its brethren, who he'd thrown on top of it. Leaning down, Alex opened the creature's throat with his dagger - today was not the day for mercy.
After he felt he'd put some distance between himself and the creature, he significantly slowed his pace, and started focusing on restoring mana and stopping the bleeding in his shoulder. Unfortunately, it seemed all he could do at the moment was stem the bleeding a little, manually keeping the blood from pouring out of him.
Alex noted that he was managing to restore more mana than he was spending, even while manually controlling his blood. He occasionally left a drop of blood here and there, creating a trail behind himself.
He finally reached his destination - the pit trap, where he allowed a handful of blood to drip out atop the pit, before he also discarded his armor and clothes, creating a pile atop the pit. He'd added more sticks and made the covering on the trap thicker so it could support a little more weight earlier in the day.
He then sat down on the other side of the pit and began to kneel, dagger in hand, as he focused on restoring his mana. Alex had thought about fleeing back to the clearing, but that would mean sacrificing his loot, and he wasn't ready to go that far. Even if he went to the clearing and came back with his spear, he would spend too much time away, and there was a possibility of another beast scoring his kills.
Additionally, there was always a possibility that even if he used the river the creature would be able to track his scent, as he'd traversed this area multiple times. Having the alpha find him in the middle of the night was very low on his list of things to do for fun.
Instead, dealing with this creature while it was badly wounded seemed to be the optimal plan, his wounds were closing at the moment, and he would be good to fight soon.
After his wounds closed, he climbed up a tree, where he readied his bow, and began restoring mana. Eventually, the wounded creature limped out of the forest, appearing to have followed the blood trail. Alex had positioned himself on the other side of the tree, leaving the only room for detecting him through the beast's sense of smell, but given his clothing and blood, he'd made the pit trap impossible to ignore.
As with its predecessor, both the murder chickens and the evolved alphas seemed to love pouncing on things, and the alpha lunged on the pile of clothes, promptly falling through the trap and impaling itself. Due to how large the pit was, as well as his vantage point in the tree, Alex could see down, and he fired off his 5 arrows, targeting the good leg of the creature with three, and hitting its torso with another two.
Unlike the earlier murder chicken however, the alpha was much more resilient, and the spikes had only wounded it, hence the hail of arrows from Alex. The creature surprisingly managed to jump out of the pit, now leaving its own trail of blood behind it. It looked like one of its feet had been badly gouged, and it had three arrows in one thigh, and a solid slice through the quad of the other. The pit trap had also stabbed through its belly in a number of places, further exaggerating the blood trail.
Having run out of arrows again, Alex began the slow climb down the tree. He was in no rush. After dropping from the last branch, he turned to face the creature, who glared at him with malice in its eyes.
Alex winked at the creature lovingly, as he slowly approached the creature, gathering his orbs of water.
Eventually, he drew near enough, and Alex watched the creature crouch and then pounce into the air. As it did so, he slammed the water balls into its leg, causing it to spin slightly, putting its badly wounded leg under it. He threw his body backwards, and watched as the creature landed on its wounded leg with an extremely loud snap, filling the air with a sound as loud as a shotgun blast.
The half severed muscles in the creature's leg couldn't handle the impact, and the remaining muscle fibers in its quad had torn, creating a loud snap. Its leg immediately collapsed out from under it, and it fell down onto the knee of its wounded leg, the rest of its body quickly following suit. Alex stood over the wounded monster and was hit with several waves of desperate coercion, none of which had any effect on him, as he knew exactly what to expect.
Unfortunately, it kept spinning on its back like a cat, keeping its forelegs and somewhat healthy leg between him and the creature's underbelly.
'Oh just give up.'
Annoyed, he slammed a ball of water hard into the base of the creature's jaw like an uppercut, at which point he lunged in and embedded his dagger deep in the creature's chest. Before it could slice and dice him, he kicked the flailing body of the creature back into the pit, before standing back up to watch the creature in the pit. The creature twitched and thrashed around for a little while, before succumbing to its numerous injuries.
Alex let out a long exhale and collapsed to the ground.
'Nasty until the very end.'