Lunam Obscurat

The winter was starting to finally end. The great cold that once flooded the forest was soon going to finally end and I was not that ecstatic about this.

There was too much going on in my little head to plan about, that I almost forgot to actually "train" with the kid for the day. Yes, I almost forgot that I needed to be killed again for the day, as she was essentially still filled with enough spite to want to keep doing this over and over.

I don't blame her for having the will to do it every day for as long as it takes for hr to be stronger than me and find a different path to walk on after she's done. Issue is, I don't think I have the same amount of will to be able to match up with her.

She's stronger and stronger every single time we talk to each other, and I don't deny that she's going to be more than capable of flinging my ass out of the forest when she's finished.

But she seems to be odder and odder as well. As if she was getting just as confused as I am as time goes by. And so I talked a little with her. "Come little one, we must discuss things."

"What do you want, old man?"

She was getting more comfortable with being articulate about her words, letting her sentences be more and more complex as she trained.

"Tell me, how do you know you're getting stronger?"

Her ears slightly twitched as I burned that little tidbit of information to memory. 'Whenever she seems to react with shock, her ears would twitch, fascinating little thing for a race unlike mine. What else do the elves of this world have to offer?'

She seemed to take a deep breath as her eyes grew stone cod and asked me without answering my own question.

"Why do you ask, old man? And why do you think I am getting stronger?"

I smiled a little as I tended over the fire and made sure there wouldn't be any stray snowflakes melting over from the latent heat and slowly put out the fire.

"Every single time we have sparred, you study me as much as I study you. Your movements, getting fluid every strike you dodge and throw. Your attacks, heavy and light to make a perfect cacophony of pain. And the wrath you've decided to bottle up, properly injected into you, at the right times and at the right amounts, I can't tell you've improved by magnitudes."

I looked straight into the fire as I reached out to it and grabbed a searing ember, letting the pain from my hand course through me as I stood up and held out my palm, which also burned.

"Give me your word, little one. Give me your word, that when the day that you may need to end me comes, not out of the sake of trying to avenge your brother from circumstances not our own, but for the sake of the world as you know it, that you will rise up, and do your damnedest to try and slay me.

Promise me, and accept the ember as a sign of the pact with me. If you do this, I will let you begin your attempts to kill me. And if you slay me twice in a single day, bury me alongside your brother. So that I may ask forgiveness from the lad for abandoning you two as well."

My words were simple, and yet they promise many things to be done in the far future. This, this may not make too much sense now, but it feels only right to put myself a good enough reason to still hold on to what little I have left in my moral well.

She looked at the ember as she reached out and seared her own palm, her eyes tearing up from the pain as she shouted out to the clouds above and threw the ember as far as she could have. She then returned her gaze to me as I nodded and shook her hand with the same I burned with.

"Tomorrow, will be the day that spring will come. I have stayed with you and your brother for less than two seasons, but I say to you little one, you and your brother were like the children I never had the chance to have."

She looked at me and nodded, and hugged me, while I reciprocated the emotion. The feelings of failure came back as I closed my eyes and shedded a single tear.

The very next day, after we ate out fill of the supplies, I put the fire out as I looked at the skeleton tree, the skeleton within it's trunk looking more and more brittle as the days passed. I shoo my head at the handiwork and preparations for a "shack" which I never properly finished.

I didn't dent the fact that I was abandoning this place, but it still seems to hurt me to leave here, despite all of the things that I and the little one went through.

I clothed her in a cloak and some basic shirts, and gave her a haversack to work with as I packed as much of the supplies as I could, looking to the grid of trees that I made to try and figure out where I should pick as the direction to head to.

The little one looked at the tree with solemnity as I patted her back and led her onto a random direction, which I doubt I'll ever be able to properly ever find the way back here again, not for a very very long while.

We walked and walked as far as we could, and when she or I ever grew tired from the trek, we would stop. And in about a few hours, we were already long past from my markings of my grid, so we were in very uncharted territory.

I made my best attempts to sticking to the same direction, and we walked and walked and walked over and over. The same scenery started to change ever so slightly as we kept walking forward.

The trees started to warp a little, going more and more twisted as we kept trekking past them, and the snow seemed to be pretty much completely gone when we were far far away from all of the normal spots that I could relatively recognize.

This wasn't the same spot that I arrived in the very first time that I came into this reality, and I won't deny that I'm a little scared.

But the exhilaration within me was something growing, and it was growing fast.

The cold bite of frost was slowly wading away as we were already within a vibrant green, seemingly different from the autumn leaves that I first associated with the trees I grew familiar with.

I will admit, it was a true shame to have to waste such a good spot, but staying there would have proven to be a nuisance in the longer terms.

And besides, my boredom was beginning to become more like nihility, so I needed a change of venue to clear my head a little.

The trees were a lot more different, and there was a very beautiful little spot for me to see around. But what shocked me the most, and confused the little one was something that I didn't anticipate.

A game trail.

"Meat, little one."

"What do you mean?"

"This, this is a trail from animals. Meat, food. Something not made by me. Something that won't leave you scarred for existence."

"What do you mean by scarred?"

"You need not heed my ramblings. But, we will take caution when dealing with this."

She hummed as she stayed behind me as we followed the trail, seeing that it was slowly but surely dipping in the ground.

They've trodden this path many times over. There was sign of feces around as well, like pellets.

That could mean something like deer, or something smaller in a sense.

But I didn't want to get my hopes too up. I turned my hands into claws again as I climbed some of the other trees and found them to be much easier to scale around than the old skeleton tree.

Granted they were smaller in size, but hey, it's still easier in the end. "Stay quiet, we need to get ourselves something different in our bellies tonight."

She was about to pipe up until I explained my side even further.

"We may have supplies for now, but they're going to run out, and I'm as sure as you that we're both sick of eating my flesh for days upon days upon days.I may not need it anymore, but it's still something that proves to be useful in any given situation.

However, when the opportunity presents itself with the risks also being minimal enough, we can and may likely should always take the chance."

I finished my little answer as we kept as quiet as we could as we stalked upon the game trail for as long as we could. There wasn't any actual guarantee that this trail was still hot, and it could also be completely cold.

After all, it's still the first few hours of spring, and I assumed that we were going to have to keep a heavy and close enough eye on the thing to get ourselves something that's not human flesh.

And so, we waited. The night was slowly but surely encroaching as I kept my eyes more than wide as I realized that my pupils and irises were essentially an immediate telltale sign to my mood.

Terrible business, this wasn't good. It would slow down whenever I was calm, unbothered by anything, but whenever I felt stronger emotions, it seemed to grow more darker and sharper colors to say what was happening to me.

How did I come to learn of this? Mirror, some little bits of looking at myself while feeling different emotions, despite them being shallow enough since they were based upon boring memories.

Overall, this was rather detrimental to what I intend to do in many, and probably all possible scenarios. It was not a good thing to have a fucking bluff caller every time people stare into my eyes.

I didn't need that issue to be added to the extreme pile of bullshit that I go through upon a daily bloody basis, so I did my best to control myself, and it did lessen the effects. But in the end it was literally a fucking signal for others to try and feel me out.

If I wanted to murder someone, my eyes may darken, but I am more than sure that they could feel the murderous intent wafting around, in the air, just for anyone to fucking smell my ass out and kill me.

On the other hand, they could actually see my eyes getting lighter every time I was calming myself. So this is my dilemma. On one hand, calm means I get sniffed out by grunts more often. But the darker feelings don't get noticed by big big people.

On the other hand, if I wanted to repeat what I did in 2033, well, let's just say that the big folks are more than likely going to be able to smell my plans about ten kilometers away.

In any scenario, it's more of a pain to have to get something like this, and somehow try to formulate a good enough plan when all plans would eventually go tits up when people could immediately locate you.

And that's why I always did my best to be flexible whenever I do the things that I used to do. My plans weren't great in the first place, and whenever they go to shit, I don't get all too mad about them.

So we waited, up until the little one immediately woke up and startled me.

"It's coming old man."

That, did not bode all that well. I made sure to slow my breath a little, since this was a fantasy world filled with creatures who also have access to a planet-wide system, except for me.

On that note, I am more than certain that the little one has a UI as well, considering that she takes so much from our "sparring" sessions. That would make the most sense, she is getting harder, better, faster and absolutely stronger.

It's slowly getting to the point where she's going to be a handful to have to deal with. But that's why we're leaving. She could come along with me, or she could also go on her own journey.

Personally, I truly believe that she should go out on her own. Her strength is exemplary, sadly I don't have a very very good benchmark for the power ceiling in this world. If there are bastards out there that are running New Game+n, then I'd like to shoot myself to save them the trouble.

I've skimmed through some things back in the internet, and the concept of someone failing over and over, yet simultaneously getting closer every single attempt, is something that I do not intend to outright compete with.

Unless I could immediately tell which ones are the dangerous and smarties, I'll have to steady my hand for the time being.

But returning back to the now and present, there was something in the game trail, and I was more than just shocked.

I was entranced.

The thing that came in was akin to a deer, and yet it looked like it was borne of void itself, with white lights swirling around, being the only thing to help outline it aside from its eyes.

Speaking of it's eyes, they were just like diamonds, sparkling with a dozen glints everytime they moved just a smidgen. But I felt something worse, well, two things. Concern and fear.

Fear is because it was a doe, or a male that just didn't grow out their antlers just yet, but the thing was massive. It was just shy of about double my bloody height, and the bloody beast was walking so nonchalantly along the trail.

Concern, because I don't know how magical energy would affect a fucking animal in this reality. Can it even be fucking edible if we were to actually try and capture it?

But within this fear and concern, there was the stupid thought process of opportunity that I really shouldn't be having at the moment. It was a beautiful creature, but it was also damn strong-looking.

It was more than capable of being a beast of burden, should we even be able to get to it. I needed some more planning before we got to the thing. Sadly, the lass didn't think so as well. She looked at the deer as I widened my eyes.

"Don't!"

My words were but a whisper to her, as she had already jumped and aimed for the creature's head. The deer only had a split second to react until it was thrown to the ground with the sheer force of what the lass had finally done.

It was still trying to get up but she was keeping her hands on its neck, making sure that it didn't have the chance to move.

"MEAT!"

She shouted out as I dropped down to the ground, ignoring the pain that accompanied it as I took her far away from it.

The beast seemed to be aggressive up until it looked at me. It started to shake a little while it bowed it's head to me.

'.....what in the bloody fu-'