62 Just A Dumb Bear

The cold air bit down and dug its teeth into my aura. I adjusted and flexed my aura, but the cold never stopped. Its body hung from my aura a lioness holding onto prey making itself a hinderance against my cultivation itself. Lumps of winter hung on to my aura chewing into me threatening to bring me down. The aura of cold might have originated from the arch demon Winter herself. To me it wasn't an ally.

With ever step forward my guide shivered. Her steps quieted and our pace threatened to stop all together. She looked back at me her eyes a shocking tundra blue. Mahina wanted to protest, I could see it in her eyes.

My aura ground against itself scattering sparks of a warm aura. The lumps were slow to melt but my adjustment would help.

She whirled around and stared at me. Small sparks lit up in my aura splashing my surroundings with a very weak fireball. It was enough to keep the worst of the cold at bay.

"I thought you were going to hunt it. Even a blind squirrel could sense that from kilometer away." Mahina said.

"It's a calculated risk. Just because you're scared of a bear doesn't mean I am. Besides, the sooner I encounter him, the faster this hunt will end." I said and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry if all else fails, I can fly out of here." I said.

She stared at me like I was insane. "I'm going to die." Mahina whispered the words and started to shake. Just beside a tree was a massive pile of shit. It was still steaming.

"Does that mean we're getting close?" I asked her. There was a good chance it wasn't from a bear or the bear we were looking for. But there was a bright red coat mixed in with the mess.

"That was Katy's coat. We bartered with a traveling human merchant for it." Mahina said.

A shattered child's skull stared at me accusingly in the muck. Most of the other bones must have digested. The synthetic dyes in the coat weren't easily digested. I wanted to help her or give her some closer. I didn't know Mahina and after today I'd probably never see her again. Still, who was I to interfere with nature.

I let a sigh escape my lips. "Stop blaming yourself. Its not like you could have saved any of them or warned your pack." Mahina's breath hitched. "You didn't have a chance to save her did you." The werewolf's head lowered more at my words. Should I even keep going. I wasn't a quitter. "Its not like warning them could have changed anything the fight wasn't close and if you had taken one of the children, it might have found you both through scent."

She fell to her knees weeping. I rubbed at my face. Comforting people was harder than I thought. I wasn't there and didn't really have the facts. She was definitely a coward.

"Come on don't be so down on yourself. You can avenge them by helping me find the bear." She continued to weep while the night only grew colder.

"This way," she whispered. We'd come to a ravine. Water rushed down through a gorge out into a valley down below. My legs wobbled at the sight of it. Suddenly, I was drowning and losing parts of myself. All at once I was trapped and forced to decide. What parts of myself was I willing to kill? The bad memories and boring days seem easy to decide from but it's the bad times that define an individual. To reach the surface, more important memories had to be given.

Something touched me and I shot up into the air. Aura burst around me, and I glowed like a fallen star. I hovered several feet in the air with Aura Rush powered to maximum. The world seemed to freeze as I prepared to destroy everything. I wouldn't go back beneath the waves no matter what.

Twelve fireballs glowed around me heavy with explosive aura. I turned my eyes down below and prepared to begin bombarding the world. Spell chains formed and cur appeared at my left hand. This area wouldn't survive my bombardment.

Something clicked before I cast the spells. My programming finally kicked in and I was able to calm myself down. This was just a stream not the ocean of death. Even if I fell in it couldn't stop me from flying out. If only I could fly out of the river of death.

This job of mine was only a reprieve. One day I'd have to go back there and then there would be no coming back. Slowly, I cancelled my spells and floated down to the other side of the gorge. I kept my back to the river.

I heard a rush of air behind me and Mahina landed. "I thought I was going to die." She said.

My teeth ground together, and I glared at the trees ahead. "How much further?" I demanded.

"There is a burrow in the hallow of a large tree. That's where Arctos is said to live." Mahina said.

"Said to live, did you and your pack gossip with the deer about where this thing lived. Are the squirrels chatty with news?" I asked.

"The beavers actually, they are terrible gossips." I stared back at her with a raised eyebrow. She snorted. "Some trappers come out this way we exchange supplies and trade information about the area, happy."

"If he's been here for so long then why attack now?" I asked.

"Until the storm we never encountered him." That's when I realized it was my fault.

Because I couldn't win a fight, I'd had to ensure the arrival of a counter force. Then again, if one wasn't nearby already it wouldn't have shown up. Dol might have attracted it and I may have driven it to rampage.

The trees near the burrow were hunched over and crooked. Roots stabbed upward in spikes and briar patches inched closer when they weren't observed. "Look forward and continued walking." I told Mahina when she looked back at me.

A vine shot out only for a javelin to pierce its center mass. The briar patches rapidly rotted away while we followed the piles of bone filled shit piles. Each time something struck, I shot a javelin killing the offending creature in an instant or rotting it away slowly in return. It was the power of an AI. I could calculate their range of attack and react before they committed to an attack. What xp monstrous briar patched could give me was too low to bother farming them. Instead, I only attacked when one committed to attacking us.

"At the stream, what was that. I've never seen someone so afraid." I felt a shift in aura and snatched Mahina out of the way. A powerful bite breezed by my face as a several tons of bear charged through the snow.

It growled raised a paw and slashed at my face. With Mahina in my arms, I couldn't move at my full speed. "Catch a branch." I whispered to her before throwing her high into the trees above.

The bear's paw came hurtling at my face. I moved just out of the way, stepped forward, used one of the bear's outstretched limps as a hand hold, and leapt and hovered just above the beast. The bears smashed its mighty paws into the snow sending snow flurries everywhere. It growled and looked around.

"Where are you meat?" It roared. That threw out my hypothesis that it was just a dumb beast. Well, it was still dumb. While it roared and sniffed around, I looked at what I was working with.

I still had some of Star's silk rope stored in my ring. The tree above the burrow would do for dragging the corpse up to clean it. There was a limit on diameter, so I couldn't just stuff the corpse into my ring and clean it at the camp sight. Flying such a large beast would be a challenge as well. I hadn't practiced that before.

The bear's head was as wide as a car's hood. It raised its head and sniffed the air. At the end of the day no matter how monstrous it was, it was still just a bear. I had promised Gwen I'd throttle the bear and that's what I'd do.

I flew up higher than the massive trees and then I dropped. Flying downward accelerated me more than gravity alone. Aiming carefully, I plummeted.

When my foot struck the bear's spine, and I felt a snap. I reached my hands out and stopped my momentum. Then I wrapped my arms around the bear's neck and stared to squeeze. Mahina dropped down from the tree and stared at the bear. The she looked at me and back to the bear. I shrugged my shoulders.

"At the end of the day, he was just a dumb bear."