North, still curled up in the hollow of the tree and unaware of the second thing approaching, pondered why the two-legged person had come to this area as he waited.
'When this person arrived, she walked around the tree and left something on the edge. Then she moved away a little, climbed up a branch and has been waiting there for a while. What is she doing? What is she waiting for?' While North thought about what had just happened...
STOMP...
With a sudden sound from near, he realized that something was coming. As the sound got closer and closer, he discerned that it was a large animal with four legs.
He had no idea why this animal, which walked with strong steps and made sounds typical of its species, was approaching the tree.
He was unaware of this, but even if he were to encounter this deer-like animal, he would have no way of recognizing it.
This species was entirely unfamiliar to him and the people in his village, as they had never seen it before.
As the animal approached, North pondered what to do. He, who had come to this forest in search of medicinal herbs, never imagined that when he woke up on his first morning in the forest, there would be two different things waiting for him outside.
All he wanted to do was to find some herbs and get home to his sister as quickly as possible without putting himself in danger, but the situation became uncertain.
As he thought about all this, he put aside the feeling of uncertainty that was bothering him, calmed down, and tried to understand what was really going on outside.
'First the two-legged person had come into the clearing and walked round the dead tree trunk I was in and left something on the edge. Then she climbed up on a nearby tree branch.'
'Now that I think about it, the reason this four-legged animal came here must have been because of what this person put on the floor. I realize that this is a predator-prey situation.'
'This two-legged person wants to set a trap and hunt in this clearing.' Thinking that this was the most logical situation, North, although mistaken, found himself in this situation and had to decide what to do.
Thinking, 'If I go out now, I might scare the animal away, in which case I will definitely earn the hunter's enmity,' he eliminated this option.
'In the other case, all I have to do is wait for the hunter to finish the hunt and leave,' he thought, and decided that this was the most logical course of action.
Although the duration of the hunt was indefinite, he lacked confidence in his ability to confront someone on their first encounter.
There was no need for him to put himself in obvious danger just because his time was limited.
While he was thinking about these things, the four-legged animal approached the tree cautiously and looked around from a distance.
Then it slowly circled the tree for a while and approached the object next to the tree, as if it thought there was no problem.
At that moment, North's mind was suddenly struck, as if by enlightenment, by the traces of blood he had seen outside the forest.
Although he wondered, "Could this person on the tree be the one who encountered predators outside the forest?", he discarded this meaningless idea without dwelling on it.
The four-legged animal stood in front of the object on the ground and began to fiddle with it.
North could even hear the sound of chewing from time to time. To avoid frightening the animal, he tried to remain silent and continued to listen outside.
North was actually unaware of what was happening outside.
If he had known that the animal, which he thought was a grass-eating prey and was trying not to frighten, was actually a carnivore attempting to hunt the person on the tree branch, or if he had seen the animal eating the rodent carcass on the ground right in front of him, he would have questioned where he had come and even frozen with fear.
While there was no other sound around except for the noises made by the animal eating in front of the tree, he was caught off guard by the sound of the arrow released from the bow of the person on the tree branch, causing both North and the animal to shudder.
His heart raced suddenly, and he managed to stay still without making a sound at the last moment, while the four-legged animal was surprised and moved suddenly.
...
On the other side, as the single-horned deer had bent over the rodent carcass and began to eat, the pointy-eared human waited in ambush on a tree branch, silently anticipating the right moment to release her bow. The arrow was drawn taut, with its tip aimed at the animal's neck.
The deer, despite being cautious and uneasy since it first entered the clearing, gradually lost its attention and unease while slowly eating the rodent carcass on the ground.
Just at that moment, an arrow released from the bow aimed at the animal's neck suddenly added a chill to the atmosphere.
Despite being caught unprepared, the deer had managed to react to the bow at the right time, and the arrow hit the deer's right hind leg.
SCREAM!!!
Intent on killing the single-horned deer by shooting it in the neck to seriously wound or kill it, she frowned upon seeing that her arrow had hit one of the worst possible places—the animal's thigh.
All her preparations were in vain as her life was seriously endangered when she had shot the animal in its most muscular part, causing almost no damage and revealing her hiding place.
Meanwhile, the fact that the deer was looking around in pain and anger, moving angrily without caring about the rest of the carcass, looking not only at the ground but also at the tree branches, showed that the predator was quite intelligent and was no longer a prey but a hunter.
At that time, she tried to hide by using the tree trunk to shield herself from the deer, but she couldn't escape the animal's eyes.
After finding its target, the deer angrily directed its horn toward her. Upon seeing the red-black, long and straight horn start to glow slightly, she immediately hid her entire body behind the thick trunk of the tree.
SCREAM!!!
A low-pitched scream was heard and suddenly, a small fireball shot out of the deer's horn and hit the spot where she had been standing, leaving burnt and blackened marks on the branch and trunk of the tree where it hit.
She, missed by the fireball, felt the heat of the impact and couldn't help but tense up, and swallowed. Now she was truly prey, to be incinerated at any moment.
Although she had never been this close to the predator that had been stalking her day and night, she knew what it was.
Apart from their size and meat-eating habits, these deer had a far more important trait, the ability to shoot fireballs from their horns.
This ability meant that if you encountered this species, you could be hit by fireballs from a distance, and these fireballs were powerful enough to burn and blacken the trunk of a tree upon impact.
This, combined with the animal's powerful, large physique and sharp horn, which made it difficult to attack at close range, made this species one of the most powerful predators in the forest.
She quickly attached another arrow to her bow. Controlling her breath, she jumped from one side of the tree to the branch of another tree.
While in the air, she turned her body slightly toward the deer and released the arrow from her fully drawn bow.
WHOOSH!!!
As if propelled by the wind, the arrow spun and moved toward the animal's neck with great accuracy, but hitting this predator in the neck wasn't easy. The arrow missed its target completely.
As soon as she landed on the branch of the new tree, another fireball came toward her.
This one hit the tree even more dangerously than the previous one, but she was saved from being hit by the fireball at the last moment.
In this situation, the best option was to try to kill the deer by shooting it with an arrow while it was in the clearing and was an open target.
If that didn't work, there would no choice but to change the location of the hunter-prey fight from the small clearing, back into the forest for a ground fight at close range.
In both cases, it was very difficult for her to fight with a body that was increasingly tired and heavy due to lack of sleep and wounds from encounters with the herd outside the forest.
Her body was drenched in sweat from the heat of the fireball and the excitement as she checked her quiver with a worried expression.
When she realized that she had only three arrows left, she felt unhappy.
Since leaving the village where the pointy-eared species in the depths of the forest lived four days ago, things hadn't gone as she planned at all.
Yesterday, on the way back home, it was as if all the misfortunes had found her when she encountered a small pack of predators, and now, on the edges of the forest, there was an unexpected predator.
Thinking of all the arrows she had used and lost fighting the herd yesterday, her morale sank.
If she had faced this predator with her quiver full of arrows, the situation might have been very different.
If she couldn't kill the deer with the remaining three arrows in her current situation, there was no point in running.
Even if she tried to escape again from the deer she had enraged, the smell of blood and sweat emanating from her body would reveal her location like a beacon in the dark of the night.