Risks and Profit (Part - 1)

I never killed anything before, except a few mosquitoes… but that's beside the point!

In this life, I'd killed animals for food and meat for the Eatery, so I was well aware of how cutting living flesh feels. Although, the number only reached two digits.

As my thoughts paused there, I realized that my assailant wasn't a flesh beast, but instead, a wood-walker.

Wood-walkers are creatures who don't have a body made of flesh but instead are made up of wood, or more like their whole body is just a small-sized tree trunk. The more powerful they are, the harder and thicker their trunk is.

They have vines in the place of limbs, and they see out of the two holes in the middle of the trunk, just above the scary mouth that bore no similarity to any flesh beast's toothy jaws.

The wood-walker in front of me had a trunk about a foot in diameter (around 30 centimeters), it had a total of six vines. Of the six, it used three to walk and the other three to attack me.

But, on closer inspection, it looked kinda… parched?

Unless someone paid enough attention, they wouldn't notice that its wooden body looked dry, and that its wooden trunk was thinner than it should be.

But what confused me more was that these creatures are supposed to be deeper in the forest, and I was miles away from that area.

Since I was able to reach it and attack it with my knife, it proved that it was still an inexperienced newborn.

Because the main property of adult wood-walkers was that they could make a protective layer around themselves using their vines, and harass their prey from a distance until they secure their meal.

"Haap!"

I forcefully paused my thoughts there and jumped back multiple times to distance myself from it, since staying near these critters was just suicide if you couldn't overpower them single handedly, and if it wasn't obvious enough by now, I wasn't suicidal.

By this time, it had retrieved its two vines from the ground. The part of the vine I cut earlier had also healed, and worse, re-grown.

[Wood-walker (Young):

Rank: Larvae

Class: 1

Strength: 8

Speed: 10

Endurance: 15

Magic: 4

Remarks: Strength: Versatile vines. Weakness: Weak Body.

Opinion: Run away while you can. You are still a kid, kid. This thing is not something you can fight.]

"Aren't you late to the party?" I mocked it with slight irritation.

[I was waiting for a chance so that you didn't get distracted and die because of me.] Codex spoke in my ears with a voice as righteous as it could get.

Ignoring Codex, I digested the information. 'What do you mean this thing is a larvae?!.' I grumbled under my breath.

If we compared raw stats, then this thing was far superior to me. The only weakness I could exploit was its body being weak. Which was a moot point if I couldn't even reach the said body.

While I was contemplating whether to fight or flight, three vines came at me from different directions, one behind me, one from my right and the last one was targeting my legs, probably to prevent me from running.

"Like I'll let you!" I shouted and looked for a way to escape. In that one moment, my mind worked in overdrive and I ran multiple scenarios in my head.

In a second, I realized that only the way towards the wood-walker was open. So I jumped, with the knife held in both of my hands, held high above my head, with its tip pointing towards the woody beast.

Once I was close enough to the wood-walker, I brought down the knife as fast as I could, intending to use all the momentum I could muster.

While I was in the air, two of its vines met head-on, while the third one came at me with full speed.

—Creak!

With the momentum of my fall and the force behind my hands combined, the knife plunged handle deep into the wood.

—Whip!

"Ugh!" I groaned in pain as the third branch whipped at my back. Tearing my clothes, along with my skin, leaving a significant gash on my back.

I persisted through the pain and wrapped my free left arm around its body. Then I pulled the knife out and plunged it into the same place as before.

By this time, all the three vines were behind me, whipping at my back.

—Whip! —Whip! —Whip!

"Argh! Damnit! Eat shit!"

Every time a branch whipped at me, a few splinters dug into the flesh of my back and curses flew out of my mouth. But my hands didn't stop and kept repeating the same process, pulling out and thrusting it in again.

After numerous whips of the vines and thrusts of the knife, my back was riddled with gashes, and it was completely covered in blood.

Clothes? They wouldn't be even seen through all the crimson fluid.

Persisting through the pain, I moved the knife around in the hole, intending to make it bigger.

After a couple more thrusts, the hole was big enough to fit my fist, I buried my knife in another side of the trunk. After all, I am not stupid enough to throw it somewhere and hope I can still find it in my time of need.

Then I threw my fist into the hole I made when the wood-walker realized what I was trying to do. It panicked and started flailing its vines frantically.

But I persisted and pushed my hand in deeper, ignoring the pain that came from the vines and the sharp nooks in the hole.

Soon enough, I could feel something spherical inside the wood-walker's trunk. A smile came on my face momentarily before I scrunched it up due to the pain.

Inside the wood-walker's body, there was a small cavity that housed an even smaller, pearl-sized object. Instead of touching the walls of the hollow cavity, the pearl was hanging in the middle of it, held there by threads of magic.

There were tens of green, intangible threads, jetting out of it, into the walls of the cavity.

I tightly grasped the round object and pulled it out with all my strength, but since the wood-walker was still alive, pulling it out was a bit difficult since it was actively connected to the wood-walker.

—Squeal!

Fearing its death, the beast went berserk and wrapped all three of its vines around my body and tried to pry me away with all its strength.

From the corner of my eye, I saw one of the vines coming to wound around my neck and removed my arm from around the trunk and gripped the incoming vine before I could be choked.

Its grip on my waist was so tight that blood started leaking from the sides of my lips.

Just a bit…

Longer…

I kept reminding myself that it was now a battle of attrition and that I had to win.

With the help of the powerful pull created by the beast itself, my hand slowly started creeping out of the hole.

The hand that came out of the hole was all bloodied with splinters of wood sticking out of my skin.

As the wood-walker was also pulling me away from it, I used its own force to pull the Anchor Shard out of its body.

"Come out, damn it!"