A Hunt and an Idea

It had been a week of training and Kye was now running low on food. He would have to hunt for food out in the forest to survive. Kye had a small notebook and mechanical pencil stored in a small pouch by his waist for note-taking on various herbs and tracking tips. With his axe on his back and spear under his arm, Kye stalked his way through the thick underbrush of the forest that surrounded the clearing with the cabin. Kye went through the underbrush looking at the ground for tracks or herbs he recognised as valuable. Kye's first discovery was a patch of valuable yet common silverweed. Silverweed was named as such for the large glistening silver seeds that sat in the middle of their flowers which otherwise looked exactly like a common garden weed. Kye carefully cut the stalks of the flowers with the hunting knife he had strapped to his leg and put them gently into a larger pouch on the sling he used for his axe. He made some detailed notes of Silverweed's appearance and the conditions which allowed such a large patch to grow unhindered by the invasive and destructive vegetation around it.

After taking his notes, Kye trekked onwards for an hour before he found some tracks. They were of a hooved creature of considerable weight judging from the depth of the indentation it left in the dry soil compared to Kye's footprint. Kye had no knowledge of prints so even though he could discern they were hooves and that it was large, he had no idea what the creature could be. The tracks were easy enough to follow so Kye crept along the trail the creature left and after forty-five minutes of following the trail, Kye spotted a pig-bodied animal with its back to Kye, grazing on a patch of grass. Kye snuck around the creature so he could see the side profile. It had sharp-looking hackles on its spine and two large tusks protruding from either side of its mouth. Kye recognised the creature as the quillback burrower boar.

These creatures were often bred by feral tribes orcs and goblins as dangerous mounts that their raiders would ride in on and break lines of men, splitting up the squads and reducing the overall effectiveness of the unit. These animals were very dangerous when fully grown but Kye estimated that this one was only a year and a bit old as it lacked the intimidating size of a fully grown quillback. Even in adolescence, they could be dangerous but not to Kye who had been training as a knight for nearly a full year now. Kye tucked his spear into his arm and readied himself to charge at the quillboar, piercing its side and hopefully stabbing the heart. Kye focused on his target and charged out of the bushes with the only sounds being the cracking of branches underfoot and the swishing of the leaves he kicked up. The quillback heard him and turned its head but it was too late and Kye's spear ran through the quillback's side. In a state of shock and pain, the quillboar raised its hackles and shook its body, raining down razor-sharp quills in the near vicinity. Forced to dodge out of engagement range lest he end up a pin cushion, Kye let the spear go and slid backwards, coming to a stop half a meter away from the quillboar.

*SQUEEEEEEEE*

The quillboar now recognised the threat and reared its head at Kye letting out a guttural squeal. Kye unsheathed the axe from his back and prepared to engage the quillboar once more. The spear was still jutting out from its side with blood leaking profusely from the wound. If Kye had to, he could resort to tiring the beast out and letting it bleed to death. Though Kye knew if he did so, the chances the meat would be ruined would be high so to eat something better than the dried meat he had leftover, Kye had to kill the beast in combat with a swift strike. The quillboar recognised that Kye was not backing down and thus charged at him with what strength it could muster after being wounded severely. Kye side-stepped the quillback's charge, letting it past him and run head-first into a tree trunk. After seeing it was dazed, Kye didn't hesitate to come up behind the quillback slammed his axe down with all his might into its skull. There was a deafening crack as the quillback's legs gave out from under it and it toppled to the ground. Kye had smashed through its skull and destroyed most of its brain with the shards of bone. Kye gave a small smile of triumph at his successful hunt. Kye pulled the spear out from the body and attached it to its clip on his sling along with his axe.

Kye could manage to carry the nearly one hundred kilogram quillback across both his shoulders by grabbing the legs and hoisting it up so the weight was resting comfortably on his back. As he wasn't on the lookout for things or worried about the noise he was making, Kye could afford to be faster on his route back to the cabin so the trip would only take about an hour. Kye's journey back was an uneventful one but as he estimated, after an hour he was back at the cabin. He took the quillboar to a work table on the outside of the cabin and began skinning, gutting and bleeding the carcass, a process that took Kye who was doing it for the first time in a long time several hours. Kye made sure to preserve the tusks as they could be sold for a decent sum in the markets back home. After Kye had successfully butchered the quillboar, he stored it in the cooling box situated in the kitchen of the cabin. With this, although it required a pricey mana crystal to keep running, he could live off this one boar for at least two months.

After stowing all the fresh meat inside the cooling box, Kye grabbed a hoe from the tool cabinet and went outside. While he was here, he would attempt to grow various herbs he collected and would experiment with them. He took some of the seeds from the silverweed flowers and planted them in the soil he just tilled and buried them. Though silverweed wasn't particularly hard to cultivate, Kye wanted to test to see if the soil was the main component in the purity of the silverweed seeds or if there were other factors. A high purity seed meant it could be distilled and refined into a better quality healing salve that could do more than just hasten wound scabbing. Kye was an academically-minded person so the lack of neural stimulation he was getting from just training was wearing on him even only after a week. With an experiment like this, it would at least keep him busy even if nothing came of it.

Kye finished planting and watering his new crops and went to clean off his tools and weapons. Cleaning the knives he used to butcher the quillboar was as simple as washing the blood off and then running the whetstone over the blade a few times but Kye took extra care with his spear, axe and hunting knife. After cleaning them with water, wiping with a dry cloth and lightly oiling the blade, it was time for Kye to clean off the oil and begin sharpening them. Kye took extra care with the whetstone on his weapons as he knew that in a pinch, he would be relying on them to save himself. This process took nearly two hours and by now, the sun was beginning to disappear over the tops of the trees. Seeing that last light was upon him, Kye began training the same steps his father had taught him and he had been practising the past week. Even though he felt he had the movements correct, he couldn't help but think that something was wrong with them. It was like the end of the movement didn't facilitate follow up moves as they should so Kye did as his father asked and consulted with the manual. After flicking through the moves several times Kye threw his hands up.

"This is pointless. There is nothing about this feeling I have in this cursed book, why am I wasting my time!?"

Kye resumed his movements as before but gave up before long and sighed. Kye had come to a crossroad here. He could continue to train in a technique that felt wrong and unnatural to him or he could adjust to himself and train that. The words of his mother Rose rang through his head at that moment. 'Technique is all a knight is, you are just a vessel for the power of your ancestors to move through you and against your enemy. Honour your technique and it shall serve you faithfully'. She would often say this to him when he suggested changes to his axe fighting style but she would say that it was not what the technique manual said he should do, though to Kye it felt more natural. Kye had abided by his mother Rose's words up until now but it was here at the very foundation of this technique, he felt it didn't suit him. What was the correct path for Kye, to change a centuries-old technique or continue training until it felt natural.

Ultimately, Kye knew that he would not be fighting like an orthodox knight regardless. With his technology and weapons, he would reinvent warfare as the world knew it so why should he abide by the words in a crusty tome? This was Kye's fighting style, a style that would mix ranged combat with melee combat. Kye sat down on the ground and fiddled with the spear as he mulled over ideas that were rapidly flying through his brain. The ways to mix Weavetech rifle capability with the versatility of a knight's techniques was a fine balance. Even in his past life, Kye had only trained with a rifle for mandatory military service but even that wasn't for long before he was recruited by The Tower of Magos so he felt most comfortable with a long-barrelled weapon more than any melee weapon. As the thoughts of what weapon he wanted to use flashed through his head, Kye examined the spear his father had given him. It was not the traditional pike that one would expect but had more of a curved blade on the end of the long shaft. It was more for wide slashing arcs than piercing through an enemy.

What intrigued Kye the most was how distended the base of the blade part of the spear was from the shaft's end. It was done to keep the balance of the weapon stable for one-handed use which was required for this technique. Suddenly, Kye sprang to his feet and stared wide-eyed at the space between the shaft and blade. In a rush of inspiration, Kye ran back into the cabin and set his spear down in a hurry before sitting down at the table and pulling out his notebook. He began carefully sketching out his idea for his new weapon. The spear would be shaped similarly to the one he currently had but instead of having the shaft end with the distended blade, Kye would invent a small automatic gun complex with the spear blade being positioned more like a large bayonet. There would be triggers on the shaft up where Kye would normally hold his spear and a venting lever on the side of the shaft for ease of access.

Kye worked tirelessly into the night as his new weapon began to take shape on paper. He would use his father's technique for the spear as the melee component of this weapon but after this one was completed, he would have to train doubly hard with accuracy and efficiency with the ranged component. The idea of weapons like this coming into existence excited Kye, as it meant that he could help incorporate them into the Runewalker territory knights without forcing them to learn a new weapon, but rather just expand on their available options.

So the night went on but the light in the cabin did not as Kye worked until the next morning on his new idea. Kye decided to forego sleep for that night and set about his daily routine again of physical training in the morning, a foraging expedition into the forest surrounds and then training with the spear in the night. It would be simple for the foreseeable future until Kye had to explain his idea to his father in another three weeks but for right now, Kye would indulge in the simple lifestyle he now led.