With all the clues he’d received, there were no questions that Eleven’s path to improvement would be linked to what she would consume, and due to the failure to retain a hundred percent of the efficacy of an adapted attribute or skill, he was pretty sure ‘You shyte what you byte’ was a reference to incomplete assimilations.

Minor adaptation huh, thought Luke, mind still reeling from the revelations in the alert, If there is a minor and this carries penalties, is there a possibility of majors which will lack that disadvantage?

Although the penalties were low so far, he didn’t have a large enough sample space to determine whether they’d remain that way, or if they’d change as Eleven continued to adapt.

Speaking of the adaptation, its registration under racial traits pointed more to a fundamental change in Eleven’s make up as opposed to a regular skill gain, and this made him wonder if they’d be any visible changes to her outward appearance because of it. A thorough inspection of her form turned up nothing, even on and around her head, where the adaptation had referred to. There could have been a delay in manifestation, so Luke chose to wait it out a bit longer, but a few more mouthfuls of the grilled meat failed to produce any more alerts and notifications. Barring the possibility of a delayed change, this ruled out changes in appearance, and beyond that it revealed that the penalties and benefits were a once off.

Betting on Eleven’s instinctual knowledge of her abilities over the text notifications, he communicated his curiosity to her, and she assuaged it, her demonstration adding torque to his reel and pushing it towards a spin instead. She prepared for the exhibition by climbing up to two heads above Luke, and this was followed by the sudden appearance of a thick vapor around her head. It quickly solidified into contiguous stone plates around Eleven’s head which forced her to dip a head as the film hardened in place, and this alluded to a substantial increase in weight that was soon confirmed by a failed rush forward as gravity took charge, sending her falling right onto Luke’s forehead.

Seeing it coming, he’d managed to brace for the impact but the weight behind the blow still managed to knock him over and inflict a stun effect, and this he only managed to shake off after a full second. Dusting himself off, he cupped a deflated Eleven, and worried about her lack of response. He made to pull up her status, but a mental communication came through their bond, confirming she was alive, exhausted and could do with a break. Luke nodded, and Eleven initiated a meld, triggering a notifications that brought with them quite the pleasant surprise.

Eleven> has initiated [Meld]. [Exhaustion] status registered. [Meld] options disabled, default mode: Full Meld. [Meld] has triggered [Recovery (Accelerated)] on Eleven>. [Recovery (Accelerated)] - Target: All wellness stats and negative status effects.

Thanks to the acceleration, he only had to stand guard over their campsite for the 30 minutes it would take for Eleven to fully recover, and after that, Eleven took over the watch for the eve, allowing Luke to recuperate for the rest of the night.

◆◆◆

It was with rested body and mind that Luke met the dawn, unencumbered by the morning chores thanks to Eleven’s daily call, and his own early bird habits. He’d served some of the leftover hare meat for breakfast before tearing down their camping site and storing everything in his inventory.

Finishing his tasks early had left him with a few minutes that some idle thoughts appropriated, with yesterday’s peculiarities being the content of his contemplation. Unlike most hunters would, his approach had excluded traps and projectiles, but he had stalked his prey and snuck up on it before the decapitating blow, making this more of a hunt than not.

Surprisingly, he still hadn’t received the Hunter secondary class, despite the near-perfect kill, and this worried him due to the large deficit on experience points he was still saddled with. Thinking it a matter of an unmet threshold, he chose to spend the better part of this morning addressing this, as he felt a few more kills would likely net him that class, the experience points that would come with its addition, and an avenue for further points thanks to its eventual leveling.

With this in mind, a concerted hunting effort would be top on the day’s agenda, and as soon as day broke, he made his way deeper into the forest in the service of that. New to the area, a rushed hunt would be less likely to replicate yesterday’s results and more likely to spook any potential prey in the best-case scenario, or, have his role as the predator reassigned as a consequence.

Choosing the wiser route, he elected to send Eleven in ahead of him as the scout, which lent its viability to her “Observe and Note” skill for her benefit, as well as the “Repeat” skill for his own, completing the recon loop. Although he could’ve gotten the information over their bond through their usual form of communication, the Observe and Note skill had the advantage of detail since the Repeat skill communicated the audio and visual aspects of what was previously noted.

Most convenient things had to have their drawbacks and/or limitations, and the Repeat skill wasn’t an exception. The drawback was a single-second delay between the observation and the repeat feed, and although it was currently a non-issue, the limitation being a cap on the range wasn’t. The limitations made themselves known soon enough in the form of static over their bond and the details started coming in jumbled.

The specifics came to him in the form of an addendum to the skill description, and this was logged in the entry’s ‘extra’ section as a range, the lower cap being 250 meters for rugged terrain, and the highest being 500 meters for clear terrain. Luke considered moving in to stabilize the link, but Eleven forestalled his efforts with an idea of her own instead. A split-second later, the garbled detail cleared up, filling in the holes that earlier repetitions had left on his map.

Eleven> has invoked the {Remote} modifier on the skill [Repeat]. Effective Range: 750 - 1500 meters.

Adjusting to the new minimum, he maintained a distance of 800 meters give-or-take from Eleven, and he finally had a clear map of the surrounding areas after 4 hours of scoping. With map in head, he called for Eleven to return before considering his options.

The first would be his current heading, and directly ahead of him lay the hints of a path whose tell-tales told of a previously trodden road, wide enough to accommodate a single cart on either side, were he to assume it to be two-way. The grass, now thriving in the middle suggested the road did not see a lot of traffic, maybe even none in the recent past, which presented questions in terms of how safe it would be to continue down this path to the nearest town or outpost he could find. Seeing as he’d have to tackle it on the way out anyway, staying on this path would be best if he could find prey on it, and this being a new area, nothing could be guaranteed.

Another option would be west of his current heading, which was north on a compass, and there lay a wide lake that served as the local watering hole. There, he could see multitudes of animals drinking their fill and this would’ve been the prime spot for his hunting exercise were it not for all the deer moving in tandem. Their mass couldn’t be explained away by four or five bevies, and this suggested an even bigger congregation. Being the only source of water at that level in the area, it wouldn’t have been strange for such a gathering, but the subdued nature of all the stags, as well as the absence of deer predators and their tracks in the area suggested a challenge in gunning for one of them that Luke was not prepared to tackle.

His last viable option lay east of his current heading and to the cardinal south, where the path disappeared into a spiraling road towards a low-lying swamp. There, he would be sure to find a few nests of creatures he could hunt with relative ease, so he chose to go with this.

◆◆◆

Although he could’ve made it down sooner, an extra 45 minutes wasn’t much of a price to pay for a journey free of unseen traps and attacks. He’d expected an abundance of swamp creatures for the hunt, but so far, the swamp had been sorely lacking, and a 5-minute walk soon revealed the reason for this. Rat-skins.

A single nest is all he’d managed to spot from his current vantage, but due to their voracious nature, this was enough to explain the missing prey. Rat-skins, ratz for short, were so-called for their appearance, with each presenting as an eyeless mass of folds that was akin to once-fat but now skinny, shaved rat.

Instead of rats though, they were more related to leeches, albeit with the head occupying the fat end, and a tapering posterior to represent the rat’s tail. They were alternately referred to swamp-sharks due to their mobility in the mud, the keen sense of smell and the frenzy that a single drop of blood at a distance could invoke in them.

They had strong abdominal muscles for movement and crushing large prey, and due to these, they could close the distance fast in the swamp. Due to their crushing force, close-quarter encounters were quite dangerous but thanks to their oily secretions and exoskeleton, close-quarter range was the only avenue that Luke had to try bringing them down.

Weak to shock and fire effects, their secretions made for an insulator for the former, while serving as a devastating amplifier for the latter. Thanks to their speed, they could dodge many long-distance attacks, and while stepping in could make dodging a bit harder, it wouldn’t be advisable given their propensity to seek fire invokers in their last moments, making for mutually destructive detonations.

Although he was still two-and-a-half kilometers away from the nest, thanks to the meld, he could clearly see all six of the nestlings milling around it. Six nestlings made for a total of seven rat-skins, with the brood mother inside the nest at all times.

With his targets identified, Luke fashioned eight poles from the upper branches of the tree he was in, and after lowering them with lengths of rope attached to the middle areas, he retreated a few trees behind his original position and enacted the next part of his plan. He retrieved some of the leftover hare meat, but instead of catching it, he let it drop to the mud for fear of some of the lingering drops attracting the ratz to his perch.

He leveraged the meld to its fullest extent and tracked the shiver of swamp-sharks as they made for the bait. As they approached the area below his original perch, he yanked hard on the ropes attached to the sharpened poles below and they came up, piking four of the ratz. While the impaled ratz struggled, the two free ones attached the bait, and Luke made use of this, dropping down while brandishing his colichemarde for a single thrust through each ratz’s head, which was accompanied by a direct jolt to the brain to end each of them.

With the mobile two out of the way, he repeated the jabs on the impaled corpses, making short work of them before making to collect his spoils. The roar of an aggrieved mother issued from the nest, and the fear it invoked resulted in Luke beating a quick retreat. Although the brood mother would be chunky and lumbering, the threat she presented were she to catch him was enough to propel him into hurried action and he abandoned the first two corpses as he made a run for it. Pulling the impaled four in tow, he made his way out of the swamp before she could catch up to him, but her wails accompanied him all the way, and even lasting an extra hour beyond his departure.

◆◆◆

Luke processed all the rat-skins, skinning them and collecting the oily ducts, products and all. One whiff of the rat-skins had turned Eleven off their meat, and this saved Luke the trouble of trying to cook any of it for her. Nonetheless, he collected all the meat into an inventory slot in hopes he could find a use for it in future. Two hours of labor was enough to process all four of the rat-skins, and as soon as he finished, he got the notifications for his troubles.

Alchemist, level 2 attained. Threshold Satisfied: Hunter, level 1 attained. Hidden Class Quest, requirement met: sacrifice a new secondary class (Hunter). Previously Met Requirements: Apply two or modifiers to a single skill. Pending Requirements: Clear the XP deficit: -99

The notification signaled the cap to acquiring secondary classes but fortunately, there was a thick strand edging the dark cloud of that. He was a single step away from revealing his hidden class, and he now knew what needed to be done.