[BOOK II] I Finally Lose My Cherie (1)

Willow's POV

I held my bow steady, crouched behind a forgery of bushes that stood five feet tall each. DId I question it? No, I was in a world that had gods and demons, along with ordinary people who had the chance, albeit small, to ascend to the status of said gods and demons.

My finger, calm and stable over the arrow, I took aim at the Deera munching on a bunch of fallen golden apples. The Deera didn't look anything special from the rest of the other Deeras that I'd hunt over the week, a simple spotted, brown hide, along with two fantastic devilish horns spiraling out of their small head and a crystal on the middle of their forehead.

Now one might look at the crystal and think of it as a weakness or some sort of core power for the species and take the shot. . .before you'd ruthlessly get charged at by a 7ft tall fantasy-enhanced version of a moose.

No, the crystal was just evolution's trick for making potential predators aim there. My eyes washed over the two spiral horns. With a quick chi-enhancement of my eyes, I could easily see how the most of Deera's chaos energy had been concentrated there.

I took a deep breath. In. Out. And, hold. Suddenly, there was no grass, no trees, no glorious sunlight and it's warmth raining over the expanse. There was just me and the Deera and that was all I needed.

But, even in this state of mind, I couldn't help but imagine Ivanka's stoic eyes that were definitely watching me from somewhere in the woods. This was her test after all. To see if I had advanced far enough into "Understanding The One'' so as to hunt a high-grade creature, otherwise known as the Deera.

I only had one arrow left. Probably because Ivanka knew I would stupidly attempt to hit both of the Deera's horns but one arrow should be enough. My [Dress of Heaven], which had transformed into a green, flowery dress that perfectly camouflaged itself with the tall shrubbery around me, fluttered against the wind. My muscles, which had noticeably toned over the week, tensed.

"One hit," I aimed at the right horn of the Deera, since I saw that it's chaos concentration was especially concentrated there.

I let the wonderful energy of chaotic divinity, that was my chi, travel from my heart, to my arms, before finally settling on my fingertips.

And, then I breathed out. "One kill."

FWIP!

My arrow shot true, traveling past the distance between me and the Deera in under a second, hitting the large beast directly in the horn, cutting it cleanly in half.

The Deera let out a roar, its head whipped back from the recoil before shaking around wildly in pain.

I didn't care much for the Deera, well, I didn't. Willow still cared very much for the harming of a relatively innocent monster. I scoffed at that. Somehow, I understood why exactly Willow always kept dying in every one of his reincarnations.

Not me, though. I was the only one who had the gall to even attempt to learn martial arts, and for some reason, I had been gifted chaotic divinity but oh well. Beggars can't be choosers.

As the Deera thrashed around, my heart started to drum in my chest. I crouched even lower, my hand slowly taking out a heavenly silver dagger from my thigh pocket. As you can probably tell from the name of the dagger, it's something of divine background. Otherwise, with my meager martial arts and emblem rank, how would I be able to hunt such a high-grade monster?

I meandered through the tall shrubbery, for once thankful of my short stature as the Deera bucked around dumbly, still roaring in pain. I would have been grateful that it wasn't running around wildly like a dumb animal but then, I felt the energy around me shift different. Yup, I was wondering where my bad luck went.

See, other than the impenetrable fur, immensely large stature, scarily huge maw, and other very terrifying aspects of the Deera, there were two things that you had to watch out for.

It's charge. If you weren't wary, and you give it the time to collect itself and charge at you, you were basically dead because there was no way you could outrun a Deera.

It's laser beam charge. This time, quite literally. When a Deera felt extremely threatened, it would charge up chaos energy, store it in it's forehead crystal before going kaboom on a one mile radius. Of course, it would survive at the expense of it's crystal.

I call this the "Crystal Attack". Very original, I know. Leaving the jokes aside, I couldn't just simply lie in wait and patiently assassinate it from the back anymore. I had to do something now. Seeing as how my [Dress of Heaven] isn't activating [Heaven's Guard], it meant that even if I did receive this attack, I wouldn't die. As reassuring as that was, I knew it also meant I would be suffering in pain, gasping in pain, probably limbless in pain as well.

I needed to do something, and I needed to do it now. "Okay, new plan." I swallowed a breath of air and hoped to whoever was up there that this worked.

Summoning chaotic chi, I directed them into my legs before I took a runner's stance, pointing towards the Deera that had almost finished charging up it's mini-nuclear blast.

"Please let this work." Then, I shot off like a bullet. Eyes enhanced with chaotic chi, my eyes could catch up to my speed, seeing as how the surrounding shrubbery turned into green flashes of light that whisked past me.