Newly Summoned Demoness - Chapter 16 - The Hunt (Patreon)

Hunting was not as simple as Elania had thought it would be. Going out and just wandering through the various caverns aimlessly allowed her to build up a mental map of the region, but prey eluded her. She guessed that the Ralfots and Elnats were all hidden away under the protection of the Mushroohums near their village, meaning it was too dangerous to go after them.

She had seen no wild specimens of the two species, so she had started to think about taking on something larger, like the [Darkwalker] that had attacked her.

In one cave, she found a weird-looking plant that had long but flexible rods. The [Fenrod] stalks seemed perfect for weaving something useful out of them, and she carefully constructed a frame from them using small strips of cloth from her dwindling supply to secure the construction. The wicker frame was sturdy and flexible by the time she was done, but since the most common weapon she’d faced was spears, she felt it needed reinforcing.

Using her wedge rock, she stripped some wide boards off of a fungal tree and then used a small amount of [Power] to fuse the soft wood to the frame rods.

[Primitive Shield]

At least it hadn’t given it the ‘crude’ moniker. She wondered if the result would have been better if she’d slotted [Survival Crafting] back, but the cooldown on swapping slotted skills made her hesitate to do so.

She was looking for a fight, after all.

Searching more caves didn’t yield any results, and she was growing bored. But not tired. Her [Power] was on a timer and slowly eroding. The fight with the darkwalker had been only slightly beneficial. She’d burned 12 power killing it and only gained 15. That was a bad ratio, and she needed to ambush whatever she fought and try to conserve as much [Power] as possible while doing so.

Projectile weapons would be ideal, but the throwing stones didn’t seem like they’d be effective. She needed more javelin spears.

If she had a lot of them, there would be no need to hesitate to throw them at whatever she came across. She needed that advantage. Her aim wasn’t very good. It never had been, really.

Giving up her fruitless hunt for a while, Elania aimed for some more of the [Fungal Growth] trees that were so common. Her wedge rock came out, and she began furiously scraping away at one of the larger ones. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty shafts later, she felt satisfied and bundled them up in her arms and carried them off to a cave corner and got to work.

Before she started though, she wanted to swap out a skill for [Survival Crafting].

[Mana Manipulation]was just too important to consider dropping, and she never knew when something was going to attack, so she didn’t want to give up her [Improvised Combat] either.

[Stealth has been unslotted. Survival Crafting has filled the slot.]

[You have one slot replacement remaining. Slot cooldown has 23 hours remaining.]

Oh. That was an interesting new tidbit. The cooldown for the slot change had reset with her new switch… meaning she had to wait another 23 hours to get her full three swaps back. If she swapped another skill before then, the 23 hours would reset a third time and she’d be stuck with what she had picked until the cooldown was up.

Still, that didn’t derail her current plant to craft the javelins and then re-slot [Stealth] for the next round of ‘Hunting’ that she hoped would be… a little more productive.

Going through the big stack of spears took a while. The quality seemed very subtle, unfortunately. All of them came out as [Makeshift Javelin] without the crude moniker, so that was good. She wondered what it would take to get an ‘excellent’ or some other prefix. If that was even possible?

Armed with the stack of makeshift javelins, Elania set out once more into the cavernous network. Her newly crafted shield hung awkwardly from her shoulder, but it was the best defensive thing she could come up with. Re-slotting her [Stealth] skill set her cooldown back to 23 hours, and she was officially out of swaps until it reached zero.

A few more caverns turned up nothing but [Jelly] and a few insect swarms. She was about to move on when the smell hit her. It was the smell of rot and decay. Something had died. Or just smelled terrible.

Scouring the area turned up a half-eaten Ralfot carcass. Bugs squirmed in its flesh, and she quickly dismissed the thought of approaching any closer to see if she could absorb it, anyway. She hurried to a safe distance away and then fought to keep from vomiting. Nothing came out, though, just dry heaves.

That was probably because she no longer ate or drank anything.

There simply weren’t any big herds like she’d found near the Mushroohum village. Probably because things like the darkwalker ate them, so they had to hide. Heck, she was hunting them; there were predators and it only made sense to keep hidden.

When she entered the next cavern, the gloss moss on the ceiling was shining extra brightly, enough to actually hurt her eyes a little. Covering her face with a forearm, she moved to a more shaded spot so she could survey the area.

A stream ran through the rock, patches of green moss growing along the back all the way to a large pond. She froze when she spotted the first creature. It looked like a [Ralfot], and she realized there was a whole herd of them. So much for her theory of no herds—they were probably just widely spread out.

Unlike their domesticated cousins, this group was absolutely silent. Which made sense. She crouched down and did her best to avoid being spotlighted by the bright patches of moss as she worked her way around to a ledge that overlooked the water.

All the Ralfots had their heads down, taking big gulps of water and sniffing some of the mushrooms and plants near the water’s edge.

Except one. A big one, with a massive coat of shaggy white moss-hair that reached the ground. It read as a normal [Ralfot], as well, but she suspected it was the bull. The large pair of horns that curled inward on themselves almost guaranteed it in her mind, anyway.

As she got a better look from above, the differences between these Ralfots and the domesticated ones became even more apparent. Their coats were shaggier and longer. It looked like some of them had been in rough fights and had major scars, and one was even missing an eye.

That jived with how rough a place she’d learned the underworld caverns could be.

She set down her stack of javelins silently, then counted. There were eleven of them. That was a pretty scary number. If they decided to run around and up to the ledge as a group, she’d be hard pressed to not be forced to flee rather embarrassingly.

But she’d made a lot of javelins. She had twenty-five ready, and she felt like she could probably take down one of the beasts with two or three good throws.

She set her shield down and prepared herself mentally. A bit of guilt washed over her. Everything she had killed had tried to murder her first—this was the first time she was going to be the aggressor. She didn’t really count stomping on the Elnat an aggression; that had been an accident.

She took three javelins in her left hand, then readied another in her throwing arm. Nervous energy coursed through her as she stood up, took aim, and threw at the nearest [Ralfot].

The throw was bad. She could see that before the weapon even made it halfway to the target, so she quickly took aim again and threw a second one. Then a third.

The first one clacked on the rocks loudly. All the Ralfots froze and lifted their heads, looking for danger. The second throw sank into her target’s flank, right in the big muscle of its back left leg. It let out a pained “Mooobaaa!”

[Throwing Rank E has been unlocked.]

The herd bolted like she had expected. Straight for her and the ledge. The aggression was surprising, but they didn’t angle to go around and up to get to her, instead several smashed into the stock outcropping. The ground shook slightly, but it wasn’t very effective.

Elania revised the intelligence of the [Ralfot] downward, considerably.

Their stupidity gave her a good chance, though. They were so close it was hard to miss, and she shoved a bit of [Power] into her arm to increase her strength. Javelin after javelin rained down on the herd.

[You have gained a rank in Throwing!]

That was nice. The skill was easy to level. She definitely needed whatever advantage it gave; her aim was admittedly bad.

When she had three more solid hits, which took over half her javelins, the Ralfots finally realized that she was a predator they couldn’t deal with, and the herd scrambled to escape out of the cavern.

They quickly charged out of her range, except for one she had wounded heavily. It made it a little way away from the pond before collapsing onto its side. She gathered her five remaining javelins and jumped down and hurried over to the carcass. She touched it and accepted the absorption request quickly.

[You have gained a level!]

[You have absorbed 11 Power!]

[You have gained a rank in Crisis Management!]

[You have gained Ralfot Affinity!]

[Consume more Ralfot Essence to enable Ralfot Transformation!]

She shook her head. There wasn’t time to think about why Ralfots rewarded Crisis Management. Or any reason to think about transforming into one.

There were two more wounded Ralfots. She’d watched them run away with the rest of the herd with javelins sticking out of them. Sprinting over to where she saw them disappear, there was another cavern. Blood drippings on the ground provided a line to follow, and she did just that.

Not blindly, though. She didn’t want to run into the angry herd and give them an easy target to attack. Keeping a careful eye out, she pushed forward cautiously.

In the next chamber she spotted a [Ralfot] on its side, puffing heavily. The wound had been enough to slowly take it down. The rest of its family was nowhere to be seen. Elania stepped up to the thing’s head, and it made a pitiful cry as its eyes rolled wildly at the sight of her.

A frown crossed her face. “I’m sorry they left you behind. I’ll end things fast.”

Not trusting her soft wood javelin, she knelt down, then pushed a flare of [Power] into her fist before slamming it into the animal’s skull. It was crushed between the blow and the stone, and it went limp.

[You have absorbed 12 Power!]

[You have gained a rank in Crisis Management!]

[You have gained Ralfot Affinity!]

[Consume more Ralfot Essence to enable Ralfot Transformation!]

There was one more left. She was pretty sure she got it good as well. The trail of blood continued further into the cavern, and she followed it. It led to another transition, but this area was full of glowing red plants. Her eyes adjusted to the light, but it made it very hard to spot the red blood trail that was leaving a thinner and thinner coat on the rocks.

That wasn’t good.

Giving up didn’t sit well with her, though, and she put a lot of effort into searching. Eventually, her perseverance was rewarded with a new, very useful sounding skill.

[Tracking Rank E has been unlocked.]

She was racking up new skills at a rapid pace, but she would have traded some of that for more [Power], the Bone Demon had given much, much more and it was going to take hunting a lot more creatures than she had thought to reach her maximum. Especially since it had leveled up so much when she had been overloading with the mana shard.

The blood trail crisscrossed through a half dozen more caverns, and she began to feel frustration. Just how far was the thing going to run? The blood trail had nearly gone dry, so the wound had probably nearly stopped bleeding. She hadn’t spotted the javelin, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t somehow dislodged the weapon and she had just missed it.

Just when she was about to give up the chase, she spotted her quarry lying on its side near an incline up to another cavern entrance. “Yes!” she mumbled out loud, excitement getting the better of her.

Unlike the second [Ralfot], this one wasn’t moving or awake.

Her javelin had been removed from its corpse and was lying on the ground, and as she moved closer, she immediately saw that someone had been slicing off the animal’s skin. A familiar musky scent filled the air, as did a loud “Glua-Glaa?”

Immediately, she went into a crouch and crossed to a shadowy area along the cave wall. She moved forward slowly until she spotted the source. A Mushroohum was looking around, maybe for the sound she made, a metal knife held in its hand.

[Hunter – Mushroohum – Level 22]

She stopped and watched it look around. Maybe her [Stealth] skill was working because it looked directly toward her several times, but its gaze passed her right by. After a few moments, it went back to the [Ralfot] corpse and went back to work.

He had stolen her kill. Anger at another theft filled her, but she quickly suppressed it. Still, she didn’t want to give up the [Power] the carcass would provide, even if it was reduced due to the damage and state.

Looking back over her shoulder, she confirmed an escape route was clear, then moved forward, doing the best she could to remain silent and stealthy. It worked until she was very, very close.

She stepped out of the shadows and shouted. “Hey!”

The hunter was so startled it fell backwards from its crouch. Its two yellow eyes focused on her immediately and it held up its knife, pointing it at her. “Glaa-Glaa!”

A stinky smell filled the air.

Maybe she’d just made the mushroom man shit himself?

Elania pointed at the Ralfot. “That’s mine!”

“Glaa?” The smell became less pungent, but still bad. More worryingly, it slid its knife into its belt and then grabbed its discarded spear.

Elania readied her own weapon. If he choose violence, she was ready to end things quickly, and she wouldn’t feel bad at all about it. Stealing from her was one thing, but then fighting her over her kill was another.

Her grip tightened on her weapon. “We are all just fighting to survive, but that belongs to me!”

“Glaa-Glaa!” came the reply.

Frustration filled her, but then she froze as she noticed movement behind the Mushroohum. Two yellow eyes crept forward.

She realized that her attempt at an inter-species communication breakthrough would have to wait.

The [Darkwalker] roared and pounced on the Mushroohum Hunter’s back.