After the absurd incident and the dangerous fight with a black bear, he had acquired some serious injuries and hurt one of his legs enough that he won’t even be able to jog. Deciding it would be good enough to sleep in the bear’s territory itself for the night, he sets up camp a bit away from the scene of the battle but still inside its territory. His supper being some more fruit and a little bit of the smoked meat he was carrying. A fire was started to keep them warm and dry his clothes.

[Ouch! The wounds still hurt! The nanites, still in my system, should be good enough to fix these wounds. I seem to have not hurt any of my bones which is good! Saves the nanites in case there is more trouble along the way.]

Looking at the now slightly sulking wolf, he couldn’t help but look back at the absurdity of how scared it looked as it ran away in a full-on panic attack.

[It weirdly was okay right up till the bear let out the roar and charged us. And it’s not like it didn’t notice it before either. The wolf should have known it was the territory of a bear. The only logical conclusion is that it thought the bear would be no threat and yet…]

[Either I broke something when I punched him or the nanites did some funny business when fixing up his head. Fuck! That makes me feel a bit guilty. Even if it was the one that first tried to hunt me down.]

‘Sigh’

[Well, I guess this is for the best. I wouldn’t have to be too worried about it going out of control when amongst humans. Once I get it checked, I should be able to get some help for it.]

He chooses to sleep up on a relatively stubby tree closer to the bank. He made sure that there was no weird snake or a wild cat occupying it before, feeling a bit paranoid. Especially now that he has second thoughts about the Wolf being such a good deterrent. Moreover, he takes away the right arm of the exo-skeleton/suit that was on the wolf’s back up to now.

[I better keep wearing what little armour I have on hand. While the spear worked out better against that bear, I rather I had my trusty baby. It cuts super well to make up for its lack of reach. Also, I had no formal training in using a spear but this, I’m even good at it!]

With that, feeling a bit more secure about his safety, he falls asleep early. So that he can recover better.

*Next day morning*

He wakes up rather late due to the fatigue and injuries. After a climbing down the tree and a quick check of his body, his mood improves a bit.

[Nice! All the external wounds seem to have scabbed. It seems the nanites I have left should be plenty.]

At those thoughts, he turns to look at the now fully sulking wolf. It seems to not even have gone for any hunting after yesterday. Sighing, he moves closer to it to.

"It’s okay buddy. I probably had a hand in it too. Don’t beat yourself up too much. I guess I haven’t even touched you after the dramatic scene, except for taking my stuff. Come here!"

The wolf seemed to recover a bit after some scratching and petting, evident from its wagging tail. Still, not as good of a mood as it had before.

"Alright! Now that you are done sulking, go get some food. Don’t over do it. I still have some fruits left for today and almost all of the smoked meat after that."

After a seemingly acknowledging bark, it ran off as he lights up the fire in preparation to roast the meat. He takes a seat on a nearby rock to wait till the wolf returns.

After about 30 minutes, the wolf comes back with some sort of boar, he prepares the meat closer to the bank of the Creek. Halfway through, the wolf starts growling and barking in his direction. Feeling puzzled, he picks up the now partially skinned boar and walks closer to it.

"Calm down buddy! Are you that hungry? It’s almost done just give me 5 more minu- "

As he was trying to calm the wolf, he hears a low hiss behind him and instantly recognizes the sound as an Anaconda. Without thought, he jumps to the side and runs away from the bank to the wolf. Which is at the campfire, a good 20 meters away from the bank. He seems to have dropped the half-skinned boar along the way. Thankfully, the anaconda mistakenly went for the skin and entrails, closer to it. He tries to walk without any sudden movements to try and sneak the food back to safety. Only halfway through, the Anaconda figures out the real meal and with much of its body on the bank, it lunges to get a hold of the boar.

Seeing as how his stealth has failed, he quickly lets go of the boar to back away to the camp site. It definitely wasn’t worth it to fight all those coils to just get back a meal. That was assuming, he could put up a good fight at all. Which he didn’t think.

As he was coming to terms with the loss of the meal and the camp site, he turns to see a very pissed off wolf. Which growls and barks as it runs past him at full force. Horrified and confused at the sudden outburst of courage, he quickly grabs a hold of his spears, trying to come up with a way to drive off the snake.

“Buddy, get back!”

As he approaches the snake, it is now coiled around not just the stolen meal but also one of the legs of the wolf. Looking at the wolf, he notices its struggling expressions of both anger and fear, but it seems the feelings over its tasty meal won over the fear. And it can’t even run away now that its leg is caught, leading to all the emotions being poured into its fierce fight against the snake.

With the massive muscled coils in the way, it was impossible to get a good shot at its head. So, noticing that the tail end is going for the wolf too, he drops the small spears and brings out his blade in his right arm. Picking a good position away from both its head and tail, that are now focused in dealing with his wolf, he gathers momentum and makes a jumping motion to exert maximum force. And tries to cut the snake through, but it wasn’t able to and gets stuck halfway. Making him pull it back and jump away in a panic. But that got the snake writhing in pain. It finally stopped caring about the food but now its coils are flailing around in pain, an intimidating site. Unfortunately, the wolf is still not free.

The worried human keeps an eye out of the spot that was cut halfway and when it exposes to his side, he doesn’t hesitate to move in and this time, he doesn’t stop at one attempt. He keeps trying to cut through. After 2 good slashes, he himself is now in tangles but fortunately, he completely cuts through after 4 slashes. He was about to feel relieved at killing the snake but realises that the snake doesn’t seem to be stopping or dying. Cursing at his ignorance of fighting giant snakes, he desperately tries to stay on his feet with the mass of twitching and reflexively coiling snake trying to constrict him.

“Stop biting it and get away from it! It’s already dead!”

While he is sure the wolf would be fine, he himself can easily get crushed accidentally by such a giant snake. Not to mention he is a bit weaker from the wounds of the previous day being only partially healed. Fortunately, he is dealing with the second half, the one without a brain attached to it. He barely manages to stay upright and manages to cut and squeeze his way out of the coils. It’s been a couple minutes and yet the snake’s body is still twitching and moving with the wolf completely drowned in its coils. After another 2 minutes passes, the snake is mostly dead. He moves to free his pet from its misery. The first thing it does once free is search for his boar. Which is completely crushed at this point and the head part of it is a bit visibly slimy, probably from the snake trying to eat it.

“Ugh….”

After considering it a bit, he decides it’s ‘yucky’ to be eating the slimy bit even if the fire would make it ‘safe’ to eat. Salvaging what he could, he decides to cut off and eat a bit of the snake instead. Taking a good cut from the thickest part, he sets it on the fire in sizable chunks, after he removed all the bone and non-muscled parts.

Although skeptical of its taste, he tries a small bite and finds its very distasteful. The wolf somehow is very enthusiastic about the snake meat. Maybe because it’s happy to be eating its enemy or it just tastes good to it. After considering it a bit, he decides to not carry any of the snake meat. He feeds the wolf as much as it’s able to eat without forcing it and packs up to move away from this unlucky place, where he had to face 2 giants in less than a day.

“Come on buddy, let us get away from here!”

‘Woof!’

Even though he was feeling much worse than in the morning, they make decent headway. By the time it is 4 in the evening, he is very tired and even though it was early, he decides to make camp for the day. Especially considering that the terrain seems to be changing from the thick wooded area to one more sparsely populated with trees and off in the distance on the other side of the creek, he even sees a grassland with the occasional big boulder, stretching west into mountains.

“That Anaconda fight was super draining. Your stupidity is going to get us killed before we get to safety at this rate. That boar was definitely not worth that fight. I guess I was also to blame for not thinking about Anacondas in South America. Well, what’s done is done. Let us be careful from now on.”

The wolf makes a confused face at his talk with it.

‘Sigh’

[Why am I talking so much to a wolf? I guess I really miss social interaction already.]

He takes off the extra weight on himself and his shirt, to relax beside his wolf for a while in peace and quiet. At least whatever amount of quietness a forest offers.

About 1 hr later, the wolf’s ear twitches and gets up to stare at a relatively tall patch of grass. The man expecting it to be some prey animal inadvertently stumbling on them, slowly makes it to the longer wooden spear he had, placed to rest against the nearby tree. As he just grabs the spear, he hears a low growl, not of his beast. Immediately snapping his neck to the creature now coming out of the tall grass, he spots a Puma, cautiously looking between the man and the wolf.

“Shit!”

In desperation, he looks to the wolf to see if there is any chance it will stay and fight this time. Only to meet his pet’s eyes with some panic and some determination. Seeing the struggle at least made him feel like his chances are better than the time with the bear. Hoping for the best but keeping an eye on the wolf, he takes a position against the puma. In case the wolf runs away, and he would be forced to put up a desperate fight. To his relief, the wolf at least tries to make an intimidating growl and a loud bark but even he as a human can sense the nervousness. Let alone a fellow animal. Preparing for the worse, he slowly moves closer to the throwing spears. By the time he has them within his reach, the Puma, also nervous due to being outnumbered and losing its surprise, tries to make an intimidating roar. Which normally wouldn’t mean anything, but he had a bad feeling and turns to look at his wolf that is struggling to keep his ground, looking like he is ready to run away at any moment. If he had any doubts, that let him know that he would be fighting alone again.

Taking a deep breath and preparing a javelin, he takes some distance from the wolf so that he can attract all of the cat’s aggro towards himself and hopefully, getting its attention from the wolf. If he gets lucky, the wolf might be able to launch at least one solid attack before running away, giving him some advantage in the later fight. To his dismay, the now confident Puma issues a roar towards the wolf instead of paying attention to him. That was enough to push it over for the wolf and it runs away leaving the Puma momentarily conflicted if it should follow its reflexes and chase the wolf or claim its dinner, left alone now. Just like with the bear, he tries to take advantage of that moment and throws a well-aimed spear at its torso, but luck wouldn’t be on his side every time. The spear fails to penetrate much deeper than the skin due to the superior agility of the big cat. If it had any doubts before about its target, that settled it. After a moment of focusing on him, it lunges to deliver a paw to his face, only to be interrupted by another of the same spear with a poke in its face.

[Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! I am not about to die at the hands of this animal after coming this far! The last 24 hours have been the shittiest time for me! Okay focus!]

He knows he has very little chance to taking a full health adult Puma with wooden spears. He isn’t sure it would be enough to pierce it unless the cat is immobilized first. In many ways, this was a worse matchup to his current self than that fight with the bear. His only option is to get to the blade as he keeps the beast at bay. So, he does just that. He Keeps the beast’s claws in check by threatening with the spear but not fully committing. After a few close calls and no significant damage inflicted to the cat, he reaches the blade, but the problem is he can’t just wield it with his hands. He’d have to swing the whole arm part of the suit to use the sword. As he is deliberating on his next course of actions, his instincts scream that the cat is about to commit into a big attack, probably recognizing that the spear is largely no threat to it. Driven by instinct, he turns at his waist to grab the hand placed on a pile of firewood, he cut earlier and swings it widely, as he turns around, praying that he would be quick enough. In a dramatic exchange of blows, one of the paws of the Puma move across his stomach, nearly completely cutting it open, whilst its other paw gets completely cut off by the blade. The now three limbed big cat, limps, rolls, crawls away towards the creek and swims across it as it lets out miserable cries.

The man only manages to hold his standing position through sheer will, before collapsing on his back when the cat finally gets out of sight. He quickly reaches for the now taken off clothes nearby and they are already soaked through by the time he holds them tight. He knows his only path to survival is to trust that the wolf will come back quick before some other predator comes after his blood. In preparation, he throws the now conveniently close by wood logs at the fire, piling as many of them as he could, before saving a small amount of energy to get to his medicinal vial, in the pocket of the Under suit. He was fortunate enough to keep with him at all times after the bear incident. As he crawls and creeps on his back, trying not to disturb his stomach area, he almost reaches the pocket with the vial, but before he is able to take the vial out, he feels completely out of energy. With a bleak smile, leaving it to fate, he looks across the Creek, not expecting to see anything in particular. He is momentarily taken aback by the sight of a big Deer with massive antlers, with a sort of Majesty he wasn’t expecting from a beast. The truly striking part of it being that the Deer is completely white, with patches of Light Blue to teal, shining in the setting sunlight. Concluding that he must have lost a lot of blood to be having such weird hallucinations, he rests his head on its side, facing south, the downstream direction of the creek, noticing a distant but distinct smoke column with a small amount of red in between the trees. Realizing what it is, he prays that that is also not a part of the hallucination he just had. He loses his grasp on his consciousness and closes his eyes.

-To be continued