During my first couple weeks, the Toltemic people mostly spent my time fully healing my wounds. The internal damage the spear had caused was not something that would heal in a day or two. I had also worsened my injuries with all the activity I had done after my battle.

During that period I mostly spent my time helping the tribal woman and youth do chores around the main camp. When we got to their Ancestral camping grounds I had thought we were still in the wilderness.

But as the days went by and the camp was fully set up I saw what was good about the spot they had chosen.

It was an open clearing that was well hidden in the brush, it had access to vital resources. There was a large creek not far from the camp as well as plenty of fruit and nut trees around. The area seemed to be lively with small and medium game for hunting when meat was on the menu. There were also many hidden resources that only the Toltemic people knew how to access.

My daily activities consisted of helping to set up the living structures, helping with the cooking, and helping them make necessary survival tools.

They had an ingenious shelter set up that was a combination of prepared parts and use of the environment. They would only build each additional shelter other than the ones for each family member when a certain activity was required like tool making or resource storage.

I also watched and learned their methods of food preparation and preservation. The food they made was delicious and nutritious but the way they preserved animal parts is what really impressed me.

Choksuma who was Roksumas's brother told me that they came across carcasses of dead animals or beasts that had been hunted or killed in self-defense. He told me that the harvesting work some of these individuals did on these beasts, almost made him cry.

To the Toltemic, almost every part of every animal's body was useful in some way so they had developed ingenious preservation methods to harvest and store these resources.

Most commoners just harvested the juiciest parts of the meat, as I had discovered before, traveling light was almost a requirement in the wilderness. They only took what was most valuable to them.

He told me Experts resource hunting and professional hunters did a little bit of a better job harvesting the bodies but they still wasted almost everything as well.

Usually, experts would hunt beasts for a specific purpose, like looking for a specific ingredient they might need for some elixir or potion.

Hunters meanwhile only harvested the meat and what they knew was valuable and of high demand in the market.

It was hard to remember all the uses for the body parts I learned to preserve but I still felt like this was rare and valuable knowledge.

After cooking and camp building tool making was the activity I participated in the most. They made everything from baskets to pottery, to woodworking, to even metalware. These people had knowledge of a variety of crafting arts.

In my first attempts at trying them, I realized how bad I was with working with my hands. At least compared to these people, I was at the level of a toddler. But they were patient with me and taught me as best they could, eventually, I became decent enough to make the most basic of tools.

Mostly basket weaving.

Although the things that I was learning were fascinating, I was itching to go hunting with the Warrior tribesman. I had never learned to properly hunt, most of what I accomplished was self-taught.

But seeing the variety of animals the tribespeople hunted I really came to know how useful the art of hunting was. Most of the hunting done were the smaller creatures around the campgrounds.

Mudhogs, Horned Fowls, and Riverdeer were big favorites in the camp. But they also hunted a variety of other creatures.

Through them, I learned to identify common magical beasts like the Lightning Hare, the wild version of the Wily Scorch Rooster, the Wily Scorch Fowl, and Mana Frogs cool looking blue critters.

Magical creatures couldn't be eaten directly; their meat was full of magical energy that was lethal to anyone who didn't practice Magical Arts or cultivate a body that could process Mana.

But the Toltemic had figured out ways to make them and process them into potent medicines and even tools. All of their weapons were bathed in the blood of these magical creatures for weeks on end because apparently, they had figured out that doing so made them more powerful and sturdy.

I had heard from Tomis, one of the Warriors, that some of the Priests and Elders within the tribe even knew how to use magic.

But after a couple of weeks, I had yet to see any evidence of that.

Other creatures I learned about were the Powerhouses of the forest, the large Megafauna, the King Beasts, and the mighty Feral Beasts.

I had learned about the types of beasts that lived in the forest throughout my young life from different sources but I hadn’t really ever seen one.

They resided deep within the dangerous wilderness. We could hear their battles and even occasionally heard of someone getting attacked by the main road or out the bean fields by one of them, but most commoners would never see one of these creatures in their life.

A couple of days ago a group of Warrior tribesmen formed a hunting party and set out. Choksuma told me they did that when they got ready to hunt large animals.

They had already been gone for four days and they had not returned; apparently, these expeditions took some time.

The Megafauna were the largest herbivorous beasts that inhabited the forest. Large animals bigger than humans like large deer types, ox types, and horse types were common, but Megafauna that were of gargantuan size were ironically hard to find in the forest.

To hunt these creatures was to hunt the prey of King Beasts and the terrifying Feral Beasts.

King beasts were the natural apex predators of certain territories in the wild. They would grow to huge sizes as well, to hunt these Megafaunas.

Feral Beasts were everyone's nightmare. They were the most common and most aggressive type of dangerous creature in Volunterra.

Feral Beasts have a deep history in the country.

Many years back a massive influx of beast attacks appeared throughout the countryside. Nobody knew what was going on, they only thought it was a sudden population boom of Magical Beasts or even just predator-type beasts like King Beasts.

Spirit Beasts were too rare to even be considered and Fiend Beasts and problematic Monster creatures had long ago been exterminated from the Country.

They came to the conclusion that they were experiencing some type of Monster invasion. Cases like those were not unheard of around the World.

But eventually, the Volunterra Government found out about a nefarious plot that hostile forces in their neighbor rival country Scienimo, were conducting.

They were conducting experiments on all types of animals, with the sole purpose to make them as dangerous and deadly as possible.

All types of Biologists and Genetic Scientists were employed by Scienimo to create monstrosities and they were covertly let loose in Volunterras territory. The goal was to cause as much damage and death as possible.

They were successful, lots of villages around Volunterra disappeared overnight. The number of beasts that were released into Volunterra were rumored to be in the thousands and they had been able to employ this tactic for almost a year uninterrupted.

When the Volunterra Government got involved it was already too late.

The Feral Beasts were cunning and acted differently than regular beasts or Magical Beasts. They were good at hiding and could stalk their prey for days for the right opportunity.

Some of the Feral Beasts look no different than regular animals; it was only when they attacked that their true nature and abilities were revealed.

Some of these Feral Beasts even had ridiculous reproduction rates. It was a nightmare for Volunterra to deal with.

Unlike Monsters, they couldn't track them down so easily and unlike Fiend Beasts, they weren't as stupidly aggressive. In the end, all the government could do was a nationwide cull every few years.

Eventually, people got used to living along with these beasts and they even turned out to be quite valuable to Rankers.

Scienimo realized they might be helping Volunterra get stronger and stopped sending their beasts as well as funding their operations.

Choksuma told me his father had expressed to them that their people also experienced hard times because of those events. In fact, it was to the point that their whole tribe was at risk of being exterminated.

But in time they too learned to live with the beasts and found ways to deal with them.

In fact, the soaking of their spears in Magical Beast blood was a recent tradition they had developed in order to have a stronger and better way to damage the beasts in combat.

They had noticed that almost all the beasts in the forest fear Feral Beasts except high-level Magical Beasts. As it turned out these beasts didn't know how to deal with magical damage so Feral Beasts started to avoid high-level Magical Beasts.

I found it surprising that I'm learning more about the history of my Country out here in this wilderness than I ever did in school. It only further solidified to me that commoners always get the watered-down version of the news.

All I knew was that Feral Beasts were beasts created by crazy Scientists. Turns out they're even more dangerous than I thought.

I really was fortunate to have survived in the wilderness by myself as long as I did. But if these common people can hunt high-level beasts out in these woods then why can't I.

And so I had set my next goal, hunting a fierce beast.