Lyrhea used her new weapons to continue to whittle away at a tree branch that she had found lying around. There were others like it, too, all of those ones, though, had already been fully treated to the same treatment that she had given to those twigs a while back.

This was the last one, and if she was being perfectly honest, she didn’t believe her current plan would work nearly as well as it had when dealing with the hornbuns. The Forest Guardian was much, much bigger, and seemed, at least to her, to be more built like a tank rather than a fast, nimble foe.

As she finished her knife-work, she placed the branch near the fire and grabbed one that had already been properly heat-treated. Once that one was in her hands, she stuck its tip into her mouth and began to work it around, making sure to drench it in as much of her saliva and multi-purpose oral poison/ toxin/ venom as possible.

She pulled the sharpened branch out of her mouth and stuck her tongue out in disgust after a while, smacking her lips ad trying to get the flavor that polluted her palate to vanish more quickly.

“Dumbass time limit…” she grumbled to no one in particular. “If only I had more time.”

She had the branch in her hands, and she had some time left before she would inevitably fight the Guardian, and so she got up and set the sharpened, contaminated stake into the ground at an angle. Each stake was placed at a similar angle elsewhere around the area, though none were bunched up close to each other.

She had a hunch that her oral poison/ venom would not stack as easily as some others would, and so she had devised a plan that was, at least to herself, rather devious. She was overflowing with stored fuel due to snarfing a few tens of hornbuns a day lately, and this would be key to her plan of attack.

The plan was simple, or perhaps not so simple… It depended on the perspective.

Essentially, Lyrhea intended to turn the upcoming fight into something out of a video game boss fight, using the contaminated sharpened stakes as environmental tools to deal damage when and where she could not. She felt that it would be highly unlikely that her nails or knives would be able to do much of anything to something literally called a ‘Forest Guardian’, and because it seemed to be built like a tank, she figured that if she did manage to harm it using her knives that it would receive minuscule damage at best.

She waited a little while longer for the wooden stake to harden before giving it the same treatment as the previous one and then slamming it into the ground somewhere else. With that, she had prepared all she felt that she could, and from there downed yet more hornbuns in order to build more reserves.

…

The Forest Guardian pushed through the foliage and emerged into a clearing that ended in a small cave. Standing opposed to it, separated by about thirty meters, was the monster.

If it felt that it was worth the struggle, it would have tried to speak or give some parting words, but a fool like itself did not deserve such things. Besides, it likely did not even know why the Forest Guardian was here, and so it would die in ignorance.

It strode forwards, slowly but surely, yet also moving as fast as it could. Yes, I am aware that sounds weird, but you’ll understand soon enough.

It marched on at what to itself was a breakneck pace for this form, and it ‘quickly’ closed the distance and raised its paw to smash the monster dead. The monster, though, did something that the Forest Guardian did not expect as it brought down its paw.

It smiled, and in the brief moment before the paw landed, the monster moved aside and dodged with mere millimeters of space to spare. As its paw completed its follow-through, it felt a slight tinge of irritation on the pads of that paw.

The monster moved away faster than the Guardian could react properly to when it tried to grab at it with its other paw, only taking hold of air just a centimeter away from the monster. Once again, a slight tinge of pressure was felt, this time in its other paw, but it brushed that all aside and kept up the attack.

…

When the Forest Guardian stepped out into the area that she had prepared, Lyrhea couldn’t help but feel more concerned than ever. The thing had grown considerably since the last time she had seen it, bulking up and now towering over her on its hind legs.

She figured that, being the big bad boss monster of the area, it would start with some kind of charge or something, but instead it just seemed to marginally pick up some speed at what she could somewhat instinctually tell was the Guardian’s attempt at sprinting. And once it finally reached her, oh, that was where she began to think she may have actually had a chance at beating the damn thing.

She watched it raise its right paw up and bring it down, but to her shock, the swing was atrociously slow! Hell, she had seen sloths move faster than the speed at which the paw was moving, and she decided then and there to be a bit cheeky and just barely move aside as if she was a certain fighting anime character and could somewhat tell that the countenance of the Guardian shifted slightly once she was clear of the swing.

Then, to add insult to injury, she swept one of her knives up and drew it across the paw pad of the Guardian. It didn’t do much of anything, and she could tell as much, but the fact remained that she had, essentially, drawn first blood. Technically she hadn’t actually drawn any blood at all, but she had been the one to hit the opponent first, so it could be called ‘first blood’, right?

As she backed away, the left paw of the Guardian came over the right arm and reached out after her, but she was just a hair’s breadth away from its full reach and quickly drew her other knife vertically across the outstretched limb’s paw pad. Another swing, another miss for the Guardian, and another mark on her side of the tally board.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as she had thought it would be?