The first few dozen minutes of tracking was easy enough. Having a very clear blood trail to follow the beast. After that, he finds lesser and lesser tracks with blood. Clearly the beast stopped bleeding quite quickly from that wound. Although, judging by the tracks, it is still very wounded, its movements, strained and unsteady.

He knew he couldn’t afford to put this off for too long or risk losing the trail, potentially letting it recover and it would be back to square one with this matter. After about only 30 minutes of tracking it, he finally sees a burrow on the side of a small hill, about 20 feet tall, of mud.

[That’s clearly, it’s den or lair. I need to make sure it’s still in there before I commit to this. May be a perimeter check would help me find out for sure.]

Sure enough, he finds tracks that seems to be going away from the beast’s lair. He made sure the tracks have the signature, strained stepping to be sure this was from after the battle. He couldn’t find any others going back towards the lair again.

[So, it is still not in very good shape, but I guess all that blood loss meant it needed food to replenish its strength. Looks like it set out for a snack right after making it back to its lair. Normally, that would be a stupid thing for a wolf to do if it was still in a pack but this lone one here seems to not have much of a choice. Now, should I set the ambush in its lair or outside?]

After considering briefly, he decides he doesn’t want to face such a beast in such close confines.

[Besides, it might just smell me or the fruit I just ate if I straight up wait for it inside its home. That’s the opposite of an ambush!]

He quickly gathers a couple more sticks that are good to be made into crude javelins. One of the 2 being much longer than the other, making it good for use as a proper spear against the huge beast. Once prepared, he takes a vantage point from one of the trees about 20 meters away from the entrance of the lair, directly opposite to it.

[I’m grateful for these babies (his blades) of mine. They were expensive but are surely very effective against everything from the green heads to trees alike. I can just cut away some indents to make makeshift anchoring places.]

After waiting for about 30 mins, the wolf returns from towards his right, roughly in the direction it left toward. It briefly pauses at the scent trail he probably left behind when circling around its lair. It stares in the direction he moved in from that point, away from his current position. He secretly rejoices having done the sweep counter-clockwise. Else the beast might have known his rough direction even if inadvertently. After hesitating briefly, it decides not to ‘pursue’ the man, heading to rest in its lair, holding a snack with its jaws.

At that, the man reacts by tensing up and sharpening his focus. He lifts a throwing spear ready to act at any moment. His gaze sharp, his muscles tense, ready to spring the ambush at any time. He wants to wait till the beast turns its back to his direction, trying to maximize his chances. But it’s taking his all to hold back his impulse to jump the gun due to the excess adrenaline coursing through his veins.

The beast finally starts turning to its lair as it approaches it. Once it is where he wants it to be, he decides to activate his right arm partially and throws the spear at full power.

‘Shoooo’

The beast hears the piercingly loud tearing sound of the spear through the air, its fur standing up and its whole body going stiff from the unexpected danger but the throw was too fast due to using the suit’s power and it fails to completely dodge to the side and the spear punches half a hole through the other shoulder that wasn’t injured in the morning. But unfortunately, the wound isn’t fatal since it only damaged its shoulder muscles, but he still isn’t done yet he has more weapons to throw.

[Okay that may not be what I was hoping for but that sure as hell felt nice throwing with so much strength!]

The beast howls and growls madly in his direction showing its anger and frustration at falling for an ambush from its prey. Now completely facing his direction and not daring to take its eyes off him. He takes the only remaining throwable spear and once again activates his right arm to throw the spear aiming for the beast, only to be surprised at the beast’s ability to predict and dodge even such high speed projectiles under so many injuries, once again being reminded of the strength of the creature he is up against.

With a hint of sombreness that wasn’t there before, he makes his way down the tree with the longer spear in his hand and moves closer to the beast to end this drawn out duel. Once within reach, both man and beast didn’t let their eyes off their opponent. After a moment of silence, both lunge at each other simultaneously. The long spear in his hand thrusting toward the beast as it dodges and twists out of the way to get closer to swipe with its paw.

He wasn’t exactly trained to fight with a spear and the unpowered, additional burden of a suit is only helpful as heavy armour, only further increasing the gap in mobility between him and his opponent. He basically couldn’t dodge out of the way of any of the paw strikes. Only able to position himself and his better armoured bits to block the blows. This was despite the beast already being hurt multiple times in the past 2 fights.

He knew regardless of how it might seem on paper, a dragged-out fight, with him only able to inflict minor injuries is only going to work against his lower endurance. So, he decides to no longer conserve the last of the power reserves and powers one of his thrusts catching the beast off guard once again and wounding one of its hind legs.

[Damn! Now I wish I had taken some spear combat lessons in the past. I was hoping for more than a wound on its leg with that!]

He once again uses the same strategy after a few seconds but this time, his lack of the weapon skill clearly shows itself as he completely misses the beast and even gets the spear buried and stuck in the ground. The beast doesn’t miss the opportunity and pounces on the shaft to break it free from his hand, disarming him.

[Fuck! I’m definitely taking that spear lesson once I’m out of here! Now time to go all out!]

He doesn’t hesitate to bring out the only weapon left on his body, the blade from his left arm. The beast intently eyes it, finding it familiar. It doesn’t immediately pounce on him, showing its wariness of the weapon it had a copy of, from the first fight. He taunts and fakes lunging at the beast to try and get it to jump the gun but seeing how persistent it is, he takes the initiative to jump at it for real. Unfortunately, activating only his legs made him lose balance slightly when jumping and he is only able to shoulder tackle the beast. He quickly finds himself overwhelmed against the strength of the massive creature and gets pinned down along with the armed arm.

The beast sees an opportunity and quickly goes for the throat. Instead of the panic expected of him, promptly followed by death, his eyes sharpen and he takes the now free right hand and punches the beast in its ribs with a powered punch, while the beast quickly finds the throat that was supposed to offer it quick victory, is hard as steel and impossible to bite through. The powerful punch makes the beast wince and jump off him. The man now with a slight smile on his face,

[Hah! Take that dumb ass. I knew my line of work would have ppl going after the weaknesses of the body to quickly take out a strong combatant. So, I made sure I got all the weaknesses covered when designing this baby. Although I never expected it to help against a beast.]

Almost assured of his victory after dealing great damage to his nemesis, he is full of confidence as he slowly edges the beast that is barely able to react to his movement speed, against the side of the mountain. Only to have his expression take a dramatic shift as the wolf decides to run away from the fight and into its lair, where it would be almost impossible for a normal human to fight properly. He immediately pushes the blade completely into his left arm slot and takes aim at the beast, now running to the entrance of its lair and fires!

Unfortunately, he misses at such a critical moment of the fight, finding it difficult to aim properly due to all the injuries he had taken under his suit.

[Shit!]

But that wouldn’t have been such a bad situation if the beast hadn’t now shifter it’s focus to the blade that fell after clattering against a rock besides its lair. It quickly grabs it before entering and disappearing into its lair. Stunned at the unexpected development, he just stands there staring at the beast’s lair without even dropping his arm.

[SHIT!]

[Well, now I have no choice but to fight it head on in its lair. I still have some juice left but it’s really really close to being dried up. I don’t want to use it up completely here without even knowing where in the world I am]

After grumbling a few curses at his predicament, he moves towards the lair. He can only walk by bending below his waist height and it’s not an ideal posture for a fight. He gathers some courage and braves his way into the darkness. He can only vaguely see the beast in the darkness, some 10 meters away from the entrance, in position and its muscles tensed up for the final confrontation with its back against a literal wall.

He carefully approaches the beast to about 5 meters from its head. Uncomfortable with the lack of visibility, he takes out his lighter, once again cursing that he is unable to access the lights in the suit without powering it on fully. Now, with only one free, unarmed limb, he approaches it to about 3 meters, more than enough distance to cover in an instant either if the beast hadn’t sustained heavy injuries to it’s limbs or if this fight were outside, where the man could actually stand.

This being the first opportunity where he could see the eyes of the big wolf from so up close, he finally notices something unexpected in its vicious looking eyes, fear. Along with hints of some intelligence and anger. After a deep breath, he prepares to lunge to the inevitable dirty fight of strength in such an enclosed space. He takes a couple strides and launches himself from his crouching position. Surprisingly, the beast doesn’t do the same but braces itself.

While there is slightly more space horizontally at the end of the burrow, it’s still very claustrophobic. Dirt flies around dug up by both, rolling and wrestling for control on the floor. The man doesn’t shy away from using up his final bits of power reserves. Which does seem to be having an upper hand in spite of only being able to output a fraction of the max power output when it’s fully charged. But soon he’d be out of it, only to be left stranded at the end of the lair of a beast along with it, with no weapons. Desperate to end the fight immediately, he drops the lighter and tries to grapple the beast, only find it difficult to join his hands around it. He quickly abandons the idea and taking a bit of a distance and throws a lunging punch down on the beast’s head, which connects with a crunching sound.

Panting and crawling away from the now limp body of the beast,

[Thank the beast gods and battery goddesses, that took it out finally! I’m so….so fucking tired! I shouldn’t rest here but I have no energy to even stand up. Even if that really is possible here. I mean now that this is taken care of, I doubt there is any predator that will brave this area. So, I guess its okay for a nap.]

*The next day morning*

After a full 20 hours of rest, in the dirty, dark burrow, he finally wakes up and stretches himself.

[‘Yawn’…that was a great rest! I feel much better if only super hungry. How long has it been? From how bright it still is, it’s more likely that this is the next day. Probably morning I suppose. Man, I finally feel so liberated without the threat of being chased by a beast and unable to move freely. I finally can move away from these thick woods and find out where the hell I even am.]

[But first, I need to find my 2 babies! And for that, I need to find the stupid lighter.]

After groping around him in the dirt, he finds the lighter finally after about 5 minutes of searching and one of the 2 blades before that. He lights it up and finds nothing but filthy dirt and some stupid trinkets like a skull of an animal, weirdly coloured stones and finally, his blade at the edge. He happily takes it and is ready to get out of there.

[Wait! Nothing but dirt and stones……]

[Nothing but dirt?!]

He hastily moves his lighter around to check all around him only to find the corpse of the wolf completely missing.

[Noooooooo!!!!!!!]

-To be continued