[15]
Panting heavily, Dante zigzagged as quick as he possibly could through the forest, narrowly dodging imminent death with every desperate dodge. Reminiscent of a lion, the monster covered in yellow fur chasing after him with bloodlust snarled aggressively, it's three red eyes trained on his running form as it charged through nature like a berserker.
Eventually, he spotted a ray of light poking through in the distance, and when it actually caught his attention, his pace increased even though he had long-since ran out of gas. At a certain point, it became more of a fight between him and his willpower rather than how much his body could take, but once he finally made it out and escaped the forest, the boy was simply too exhausted and had no cover or anything to duck under the clawed swipe that sent him flying.
Dante's vision blurred as his body made impact with the snow, a bestial roar ringing in his ears as he cracked open his eyes, only to see a mass of death quickly descending towards his downed form.
However, that's when things took a sudden turn, as an arrow immediately halted the monster's intent to kill by going right through the red eye located on it's forehead. The furred creature scampered back, yelping and whimpering in immense pain at the sensation of losing a third of it's vision in such an unexpected manner.
After a bit of straining, Dante grunted as he picked himself up off the ground, all while clutching at the side of his torso that was currently spilling blood down his black jeans. "Ugh, fuck..." The boy muttered to himself, his eyes warily locked onto the monster in front of him. "This shit hurts like hell."
"You alright, stranger?" A feminine voice reached his ears, causing him to glance back at a dark-haired girl holding a bow and arrow. "Where did you even come from?"
Blinking, he shook his head. "Do you really think it's a good time for those kind of questions? I nearly just got mauled to death and you wanna interview me?"
Her blue eyes bore into him for a moment, before she turned back to the task at hand.
With that, in a smooth motion, she pulled back an arrow before letting it fly, as it went deep into a second eye. Then, the last one. Shortly after that, Dante watched as it simply gave up and death eventually overtook it.
However, when the archer girl finally approached him after dropping from her vantage point, he was reminded of the pain coursing through his wound once more, which elicited an audible grunt from his grit teeth. Quickly noticing the problem, she made an attempt to provide him support to stand, but he held up a hand to stop her instead.
"What, do you want to drop dead or something?" She asked with a bit of anger in her tone, her brows furrowed. "...Or is it because I'm a girl, and a real man like you doesn't need my help?"
'Not only is this girl cute, but she also serves as a decent source of amusement.' He thought to himself, internally chuckling as he tried not to think about how he was currently feeling at the moment.
His head lowered, the boy peered up at her with a strained grin in response. "I need you to take me to a place where I can get some medical attention, and since I don't have anything to protect myself, I'll just be an easy meal for whatever's lurking out around here on my own." He explained in as calm a voice as he could under the circumstances, causing her eyes to widen slightly. "If you can focus on staying alert and staving off any creature that might try to kill us while we move, I'll try my best to focus on keeping this injury from killing me in the process. How about that?"
She couldn't help but stare at him again. It caused his grin to broaden, or at least until another shock of pain shot through him. Quickly picking up on it, the girl snapped out of her daze and nodded in acceptance at the idea, as she clutched her bow and turned towards a specific direction.
He followed.
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"...Asirpa."
Glancing towards her as they finally stepped onto what looked like a manmade dirt path, which was covered in quite a bit of slush, Dante looked at the girl with a puzzled expression. "Huh?"
"My name is Asirpa." She repeated. "What's your name? You still haven't told me it."
The realization dawning on him, he blinked. "Oh. It's Dante Luca, nice to meet you."
Briefly raising an eyebrow, the newly-named archer eventually nodded.
"Likewise."
Not much was really said after that, unless you counted a few curious questions from him that were mostly centered around their current landscape and the monsters settled around the area, or where they were currently headed. In the end, the boy obtained some fairly interesting answers.
Like, for example, the monster that nearly killed him back there was actually called a Danger Beast, or, to be even more specific, a Jackaleo. It kind of reminded him of a creature from Greek mythology that was called a chimera, honestly.
Eventually, the duo spotted a village settlement not too far away, which was surrounded by a decently-sized wall of spiked logs in a medieval fashion. It was a pretty cool sight to behold. Once Asirpa informed a guard standing at the entrance gate of his wound, stating that he could be trusted, which sort of made him wonder as to why she sounded so confident in that, they were let in and quickly led to a doctor.
"I'll be back in a couple hours. You were a bit of an unexpected surprise while I was out on a hunt, so I still need to go and find some food for tonight."
With that, Asirpa left the room with her bow and quiver full of arrows hanging off her back. Dante wordlessly sat at the edge of the bed given to him by the village doctor, simply nodding his head in acknowledgement before she disappeared, feeling bad that he could've possibly prevented her from eating due to his arrival. The majority of his torso had been wrapped up with bandages, and not only that, but a new set of clean clothes had replaced the ruined ones.
Even though none of it was clearly as modern as he was naturally used to, it felt comfortable enough to wear on a daily basis, at least. However, with the system reset that occurred earlier when he originally arrived within this foreign universe, there came a newfound urge to hop back into the the dungeons for it's randomized loot and leveling benefits. He would just have to wait, though.
Doctor's orders and all that.
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Asirpa seemed fairly interesting, all things considered.
The girl had turned back up with a decently-sized haul all on her own from what he heard, her skills at hunting and using that bow of hers already quite apparent. She was honestly pretty cool.
However, after some badgering from the village doctor about how he shouldn't aggravate his wound by doing any strenuous activities, she surprisingly invited him into her home, which turned out to be nearly on the opposite side of the village. It wasn't that long of a walk, though.
Navigating through the village itself felt relatively boring since not many people seemed to be out and about, which was most likely due to the cold. It was apparently supposed to be getting even colder in about a month or two, from what Asirpa told him, and this area would be a pretty harsh place to live in. However, with how long everybody living in the village seemed to make it work, he figured they would be fine.
Eventually, they made it to her home. It was fairly small, but seemed to possess everything needed to survive. Even if it didn't, though, it's not like it would be much of a struggle for Asirpa to find a way to get by with how independent she already seemed to be. It was also in that moment that Dante realized how true those words might've actually been when he noticed that nobody else appeared to be in the house, an almost gloomy-like atmosphere faintly surrounding the area.
"Welcome to my home." Asirpa muttered, as she placed her bow and quiver full of arrows against the wall before turning towards him, gesturing to everything around them. "Just go ahead and make yourself comfortable, I'm going to fix us a meal."
Before she could even begin walking towards the kitchen, Dante asked her something that had been on his mind even since he entered the village. "Why are you being so kind to me?"
There was a brief lull, where the only thing either of them could hear was the frigid rush of wind occasionally slapping against the house from outside, before Asirpa finally gave a response of any kind.
"My family is dead, and I haven't had anybody to talk to in years." She blurted out, all while blankly staring at him. "In other words, I'm selfishly indulging in a desire of mine."
With that, the dark-haired girl walked away, and there wasn't really anything left to say either. It was quite self-explanatory at that point, so Dante kept quiet and just took a seat, his mind lingering on what she told him.
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Asirpa is from Golden Kamuy, which is something that I haven't actually watched. It did pique my interest, though, when I skimmed through her wiki page. Honestly, I was just trying to find a character that I could place into the current setting that wasn't a part of the AGK plot.
I'd say Dante arrived in the world about a year, maybe a year and a half, before the beginning of the actual plot. Also, if you wanna see what she looks like, there will be an image within the comment section of this chapter.