He decided to test his theory of the "aura of the living," and walked briskly over to the rotten trunk of a fallen tree. The moss that covered it gave off this aura, but once it was stripped away, the trunk looked almost as dead as the rocks. "Almost" because the numerous insects that lived beneath the moss were also glowing with that strange inner light.
Deciding not to worry about what he had seen, it wasn't important, at least it looked like it wasn't important, Alexander walked back to the entrance of their dugout. Taking his bow and dagger he left the camp, this time deciding to walk towards the mountains. The busy events of the day demanded an outlet. The tedium of the day's work unfortunately did not provide one.
When he got about a kilometer away from the camp he began to look for birds on the branches of trees. The size did not matter, although he still had to hit them. Fortunately, this activity, impossible under other conditions, was quite possible to him new - living birds, as it turned out, shone with this inner light brighter than plants.
He was able to see the first bird almost immediately, but unfortunately it was too high and safely covered by branches and foliage. Bows and arrows were useless. If he hadn't had his new abilities, he wouldn't have been able to spot it. Not counting on such quick luck, he continued his walk, which after a while threatened to get very long. Birds did not sit openly on the branches.
Night, the time of various predators. And no one canceled the nests. With a curse to himself, Alexander stopped moving away from the camp and began to circle it in an arc.
Luck loves the brave and persistent. And Alexander's patience was also rewarded. Quite low on a branch, right in the course of his movement sat an owl. A real owl. He could even see that she was looking at him, but apparently she didn't consider the man to be any kind of threat to her. The arrow had cut short its existence, proving the bird wrong.
Approaching the fallen carcass, the man bent over it and without lifting it off the ground, simply pulled out the arrow and then inserted his finger into the wound. The bird's blood began to be absorbed right through the skin.
Already almost habitual and unsurprising. As was the sense of power that came along with the fistful of memories of the bird's mind. Picking up the already bloodless carcass, Alexander began to ponder.
Even the bird had some semblance of memories and skills, not to mention that its entire life was fully available frame by frame, like a movie. While amusing himself with watching the owl's life's journey, he almost missed the most important thing. The smell. For some time now, he had clearly sensed the odor.
Man is a creature that adapts to everything. Even in the morning, the possibility of having a better sense of smell than a dog amused him, then even helped him, and then... Hard work around a lot of people.
As you can imagine, everyone smelled strongly, and not to say pleasantly. And some women, on the contrary, smelled too pleasant and even arousing. In a word, odors and the ability to catch them began to irritate Alexander. And like almost any man, being unable to cope with something, he began to ignore it.
And the odor he detected was very, very interesting. The smell of bear. Imagining how much blood would be in the bear, Alexander involuntarily licked his lips.
It remained to decide how exactly to make the bear his prey. After all, by his own stupidity he had only brought a dagger and a bow. Bare knowledge alone was not enough. People's memory kept clear and unambiguous notions - one does not go into the forest with only one dagger, especially in THIS forest.
There are worse predators here than bears. But a city man remains a city man: a penknife in the forest? That's enough! But here is a dagger! Wow! But that won't be enough for the bear.
It was not difficult to get to the den. And then Alexander decided to act almost according to the method of hunting with a slingshot, that is to take the beast by force.
Only in his case it was assumed that the beast would not bleed out and die, but that the blood would be absorbed by the vampire. To do this, one must inflict a wound on the predator and keep his hand in it long enough, while preventing the beast from inflicting retaliatory injuries.
Occiput! Fits perfectly.
There are songs to the folly of the brave and the foolish. Without thinking further, Alexander began to strike the hilt of his dagger against the tree trunk. Following the noise, a snag flew into the den.
The bear was huge. The roaring predator, awakened and not satisfied, was determined to get even with the offender. When the bear stood on its hind legs and roared, the young vampire leaped under its paws and was at its back.
The dagger struck him in the scruff of the neck, another swift blow to the throat and the dagger flew away, the deed was done - the hide was opened. The blows were so fast that the beast did not even realize what was happening, and his neck was already in the iron grip of such a fragile at first glance creature.
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