The monster stepping out from the other side of the tree was taller with longer, lanker legs and sleeker fur. It also had a set of short antlers on its forehead.
'A deer?' It was the first time Cinder saw one. Deer and other antlered, four-legged animals looked pretty similar. He was sure it wasn't a moose, but that was about it.
It looked at Cinder with big, glossy eyes. But Cinder was looking at something else that caught his attention. Hanging on one of the branches on its antlers was a bracelet or necklace of some kind, dangling and sparkling in the sun.
Like a magpie, Cinder was drawn to the shiny item.
That had to be the legendary treasure that Kode had mentioned. It was the other way for Token miners to earn money. They could stumble upon treasures just lying around in the wild and sell them for whatever they were worth.
Sometimes, it was scrap the cleaners hadn't taken for some reason. Other times, it was the physical incarnation of wealth and fortune.
This one, just based on how it looked from a bit away, had to be worth a pretty penny. Cinder didn't even care about the deer it was hanging on. That was secondary, even if it looked like a mighty fine deer with beautiful fur and meat.
Cinder's only problem with the deer was that it might run. Unlike boars, most monsters were elusive and prone to flee at the sight of a human, after all.
Cinder's eyes narrowed as he thought about how he could take down the deer. Fortunately, at least, it didn't flee at the sight of him. It gave him some time to think. He glanced at the mace in his hand.
If he threw it hard enough and got a good hit on the deer's head, it could probably kill it or knock it out. But the deer was just shy of forty strides away. That was a long way to throw a heavy mace.
'Does it understand humans?'
The boars seemed to react to his taunts as if they understood when he was mocking them. Maybe he could provoke the deer into attacking him. If that worked, he would only have to worry about his primary rule of monster hunting and not the deer running away.
But before Cinder could decide anything, the deer, as if provoked by nothing more than Cinder's greedy eyes, lowered its head and scraped its hoof against the ground.
"Oh, shit…!"
The deer charged at him, and it was faster than the boars he was used to. Cinder ended up using his refined technique of throwing himself to the ground to get out of the way.
The deer made a U-turn, keeping its speed as it turned around before charging at him again, trying to stab him with its horns.
For some reason, Cinder felt like this behavior didn't align with how deers acted in reality. But he wasn't a deer expert. Who was he to comment on that?
Cinder stood up in a hurry and raised his mace up along with him, aiming for the deer's lower jaw. An uppercut with his mace should be enough to knock out the deer. It wasn't as heavy or sturdy as a boar. It was just faster.
However, the deer raised its head like a rooster and avoided Cinder's mace. The smooth metal club bounced off the deer's shoulder without doing much damage. The deer then tackled Cinder, knocking the air out of his lungs and him to the ground.
Losing his breath was uncomfortable, and his grip on the mace weakened, but it wasn't as painful as when the boar tackled him, and Cinder forced himself to get back up before the monster charged at him again.
Still struggling to breathe, he raised his mace and aimed for the deer's head, knowing it would do the same thing again. When the deer raised its head above his reach, Cinder instead rammed his mace into the deer's chest with everything he had.
He was pretty sure he felt something break. But since he wasn't convinced and because the deer tried to headbutt him, Cinder ducked down under the deer's head.
"Ah! Motherf—"
The deer bit him in the shoulder. Cinder almost dropped the mace but grabbed it with his left hand before his fingers lost the grip entirely. He stepped out of the deer's path and, with a weak, wrong-handed strike, hit the deer's hind leg as it tried to get away.
The deer's leg was nowhere near as sturdy as the boars' legs. And even if Cinder had done it with the wrong hand, he had hit it good, breaking the deer's leg. The deer stumbled and tried to hobble away on three legs.
Before it could get far, Cinder caught up to it and ignored the pain in his shoulder as he grabbed the mace with both hands and rammed the mace down on the deer's skull, cracking it open and killing it, putting it out of its misery.
Cinder always felt so barbaric when he killed monsters by bashing their heads in. But if they didn't want to get their heads bashed in, they should have bought him a better weapon and taught him how to use it.
Cinder groaned in pain and put his hand on his shoulder, which made him hiss in pain. It stung.
"Since when do deer bite?!" He complained and lightly kicked the deer's leg. He sat down on a nearby stone and used some water to clean his wound after taking off his shirt. The extra clothes he bought after stopping by in the village were already used up.
Cinder sighed.
It was a scam. This whole game was a scam. He could make money by playing it. But it also cost money to play it. Under the guise of investing money and Tokens to earn more Tokens, he was sucked into a bottomless pit.
Cinder sighed frustratedly before wrapping the somewhat clean rags that remained of his shirt the best he could around his shoulder. It was poorly done, but the wound wasn't that bad. The deer had nipped his skin and taken some of his flesh. He just needed to control the bleeding.
When he had done that, he turned his gaze to the deer's head. More specifically, he was looking at the bracelet still dangling on its antler. His eyes lit up. The clothes he used up due to the deer would never be worth as much as the bracelet.
Or so he hoped.