{The Hunted}

On the edge of the forest, roughly 100 people were gathered watching as a red-haired man in his 50s spoke. Said man was none other than Vaxner, the chief of Reioi, and grandfather of Neil. His roaring voice made it easy for everyone gathered to hear everything he said.

"As you know these young ones have been trained for four years in various weapons. We have given them the skills and mentality for them to someday enter the gates of Valhalla. As your chief, I have no greater honor than letting these young ones show us the fruits of their training in this great hunting competition. May Eir and Thor protect them these next 3 days that they remain in the first."

With this, the people began to cheer as the teens picked up their weapons of choice from the tables that were placed in the clearing. 

Neil looked at what was available and chose a bow, a quiver of arrows, and two long daggers. After choosing he walked into the forest and little by little the cheering and chattering of the people became quieter and quieter. 

As he walked he looked around for anything that was worth hunting. After seeing nothing he sighed and looked up at the treetops. 

The hunting competition was held as a form of graduation from the 4-year basic weapon training school. Its main purpose was to get students to hunt and sell whatever they hunted and buy their very first weapon. For his village a weapon was sacred if one did not earn the weapon then they would be denied entry to Valhalla.

'I wonder if it's like that in all villages or just Reioi? Anyway, the hard part will be what happens after this competition. For the next 4 years, I will have to enter Dragon Killing School which I'm not fully okay with. That said if I can't avoid it then forgive me dragons, it isn't personal. As long as it increases my survivability then it has to be done.' 

As he continued thinking to himself out of the corner of his eyes he spotted movement. It was a reddish squirrel that was digging a hole in the ground. 

He carefully aimed at it, and drew his bow. The squirrel caught his movement and quickly began climbing up the tree. 

Neil followed its movement and shot an arrow at where he thought the squirrel would be by the time the arrow made contact. The innocent squirrel had nearly gotten away, the arrow that it had gored through its lower back nailed it in place. 

It squealed loudly as it squirmed trying to break free. This made Neil feel very guilty but what was done was done. He quickly shot another arrow which hit its neck completely silencing the poor rodent. 

Now that it was dead Neil cursed himself for his bad aim, "Sorry little guy, I'll work harder to make sure no animal I hunt suffers like you did today."

"That said…..How the hell do I get it down now?" 

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In the middle of the night on the edge of the beach, Neil can be found feeding a fire as he cooks part of the squirrel. 

'To think out of all places the arrow would hit its rectum…. Since a good portion of the meat was soiled I'm not happy. I'll just have to use what I couldn't eat as bait tomorrow.'

While he wasn't too happy Neil had managed to catch 3 rabbits, a turtle dove, and a black grouse. 

He had already skinned the animals and washed the meat. At the moment he was eating as much as he could without giving himself a stomach ache. 

'Am I the only one who decided to move to the beach and sleep here?'

Neil didn't like thinking about sleeping in a forest, he had tried it once but in the end, he wasn't able to sleep. All the shadows in the forest made him imagine things that weren't there. 

'Well with the bird feathers, and skins that I collected so far...I might be able to collect 45 Rei at best and 30 Rei at worst...…. I should really stick to art.'

The next day Neil climbed a tree using his daggers, as he had done the day before to retrieve the arrows and the squirrel's corpse. Once he was sitting on a low branch he dropped the meat on the floor and waited for an animal to take the bait. 

A few minutes passed before he finally heard movement in a nearby bush. After a few more seconds a young terrible terror poked its head out. Its eyes were glued to the meat as it clumsily walked towards it without a care in the world. 

Neil, who had drawn his bow at the small dragon aimed at it but after a few seconds he sighed and put the bow down. 

'It's leather alone is about 40 Rei but I can't do it.' 

He began climbing down and once he had touched the floor the little creature growled and stood on top of the meat defensively. 

"Easy their buddy… here have some more."

He tossed it some of the raw bird he had left. With that, the little dragon completely dropped its aggressive stance. 

It slowly and suspiciously walked towards the meat that had been thrown to him. After getting ahold of it with his jaws he scurried back to where the first piece of meat was. During the whole process not once had it shown its back to Neil. 

Seeing how cute the little creature acted Neil couldn't help but laugh, "I get it little guy. Now eat quickly and hurry away from the island. Just because I don't want to hurt dragons doesn't mean that the rest will ignore that hide of yours."

The small dragon tilted its head as if confused by what he had just said. 

Neil smiled and as he turned around to walk away a blowing noise caught his attention. That was then followed by a sharp sting on the back of his arm. 

When he looked at the direction it had come from he found nothing. However, another blowing noise caught his attention. 

"fr…From ABov?"

As he looked up he saw four figures dressed in black. But that wasn't all, they wore a type of clothing that he had seen many times on TV.

"N….NNNin.."

Before he could finish his sentence everything became dark and cold.