Hunted

Jack sat in front of a crackling fire and studied his map. 'From the distance that the map covered up to the Green Wood village, if it's drawn in the same scale, it shouldn't take more than two weeks to get to the White River Outpost.' Jack thought as he rolled up the map and looked up at Koray. He used the moon in the evening and the sun in the day to help him navigate through the forest.

Like this, he spent over five days of travel. A couple of times those wolf and boar crossbreeds tried to hunt him down while he jogged to let his meridians rest, but they only gave him the opportunity to refill his supplies.

On the sixth day, the forest started thinning out and a lot more rock outcroppings appeared, while on the seventh day almost no trees remained in sight. The land still had earth and grass on it, and the outcroppings didn't just form in a series of rocky hills, but barely any plants larger than a bush grew wherever he looked.

It took Jack almost half an hour to find enough wood to start a fire that would last throughout the cold night. He had no problems with enduring the cold, he just preferred not to if he had the choice.

When he set up a skewer of meat to roast over the fire, he unfurled the map and studied it again with a frown.

'This thing doesn't show the environment to the west changing so much. On this side of the Sect, the forest should go on for as far as the map shows. Did whoever made it just not care about the state of the landscape and just drew elevation?' Jack wondered as he saw little depictions of mountain ranges more to the north-west of the White River.

He sighed and started eating his dinner. Just as he washed the tasty meat down with some water, he heard a soft scraping noise come from behind him.

In one fluid movement, Jack jumped up to his feet and spun around. There, on the edge of the firelight, stood a monster that towered over Jack by almost a meter.

It had long and coarse dark fur that dragged on the ground, two thick and straight alabaster horns that sprung from its forehead by a quarter of a meter, and two half-meter long ram's horns that sprung from the sides of its head. Its face looked like a white mask of death in the darkness, with only slits for its mouth, nostrils, and eyes.

The creature's eye-slits held glowing-red triangular eyes that watched every move that Jack made. He crouched down as slow as he could while not disturbing the creature, and threw the few things lying around the fire into his travel sack.

Just as he thought about taking out his cylinder, the creature's nostrils turned into round holes from slits and sniffed the air hard. Almost instantly, its lips rose and showed Jack long rows of razor-sharp teeth as a cloven hoof stepped out of the mass of fur.

Jack didn't even think about fighting it anymore as he grabbed his things and started running into the night.

The beast gave off a cry that sounded like a mixture of a bear's roar and the bleating of a goat as it jumped forwards in pursuit of Jack.

'Is that a damned goat?!' Jack thought as he ran for his life. He looked over his shoulder and saw the two and a half meter monstrosity gaining ground on him. With a frown, he started using Moon Step and sprinted away from the thing.

An hour later, he stopped running and checked behind him for pursuit. For safety, he even found a large rock outcropping and climbed to its top so he could sleep. It didn't feel very comfortable, but he could take it.

A couple of hours after he fell asleep, a scraping sound woke him up. He quickly grabbed the prepared cylinder from his side, inserted a metal ball into it, and looked down the almost sheer rock wall of the twenty-meter outcropping.

Ten meters below him, the glowing red eyes of the creature glared up at him.

Jack blinked, and then focused his eyes on the small landing on which the creature stood for a few seconds. 'A goat indeed.' he concluded and raised his cylinder to his shoulder.

With a soft *thump* the metal ball flew out of the cylinder and smacked into the white face of the creature. Its head sprang back and it almost lost its footing, but after a few seconds it shook its head and resumed glaring at Jack.

He frowned and loaded another metal ball into his cylinder. With another *thump* the creature's head sprang back, but this time it didn't even look like it would lose its balance.

When it focused back on him this time, Jack could feel a sense of hatred radiating from the creature. A few seconds later, it started looking around for a higher footing.

Jack placed another shot at the creature's fur-covered body, but it acted like it didn't even feel it.

'Reinforced skin? Maybe I could cut it open with Elder Yu's knives, but I don't want to risk getting too close to the thing.' Jack thought as he watched the creature find a place it could jump to a meter up the outcropping.

He packed all of his things up and pointed a hand at the now four meters distant beast.

In a moment, the spell structure for the Air Blast spell formed. Only this time, he didn't use the tiny structure he used for his shots, he formed the strongest possible Air Blast he could make with his current knowledge and cultivation.

He braced himself and waited. At the moment when the beast spotted a higher footing and jumped towards it, Jack allowed the Air Blast spell to complete and shot out a thigh-thick blast of air at the air-borne creature.

The current Air Blast could send a normal person flying for almost ten meters, and it had enough power to change the direction of the creature's leap. With a frightened cry of alarm, it missed its intended target and fell down the outcropping.

Jack didn't waste the opportunity and climbed down the other side of the outcropping in a few jumps.

When he reached the ground he used Moon Step and fled in the direction he thought the White River Outpost lay.

This time he ran for more than two hours and found a taller outcropping to sleep on.

Just before dawn, he heard the now familiar scraping sound that the beast made.

'Son of a b*tch! It's following my scent.' Jack thought as he looked down at the climbing creature once more. He again waited for it to come close to him so he could use Air Blast. When it did, he made it crash back down the outcropping and fled while it picked itself up.

For the next two days, Jack would run and the creature would follow. In his more cheery moments he thought that if nothing else, it helped him quicken his pace.

On the third night since their meeting, Jack noticed a different creature of the same species running towards the outcropping on which he rested, while the one that followed him so far still climbed it.

With a ferocious bleat-roar, the new beast challenged Jack's hunter. Almost as soon as the challenge was announced, the creature that followed Jack jumped down from the outcropping and charged at the intruder.

As they clashed horn against horn, Jack thought 'Are they territorial? No wonder I saw almost no animals or others of its kind along the way.' He didn't run away as soon as the creature was distracted, but stayed and watched the battle.

The two beasts rammed against one another for almost fifteen minutes. In their last clash, the one that chased after Jack finally showed some of the exhaustion it accumulated from the days of hunting after him and allowed the newcomer to deflect its horns in such a way that it exposed its neck.

The newcomer didn't hesitate to seize the opportunity as it rammed its sharp front horns straight into the exposed neck. With a quick few jumps back, it retreated from the final struggles of the beast that followed Jack and watched it bleed out on the barren earth.

When the wounded creature bled out and died, the newcomer gave out a bleat-roar of triumph and strutted around its corpse for a while. Once it ended its victory ritual, it turned to give Jack a glance, and then went away in the direction from which Jack and his hunter came from.

With brows raised in surprise, Jack watched the victorious creature leave. When he felt sure that it left for good, he climbed down the outcropping and went to his dead pursuer.

Even when he used his knife and started from the wound in the neck, it took him almost an hour to skin the entire huge beast. He had to almost use his entire strength to cut through the thick hide of the creature.

When he skinned the creature, Jack tried to cut or smash its horns from its skull, but no matter what he did he couldn't get them off even after chipping one of his knives.

With a sigh of regret, he could only leave them on the ground to rot. Before he could continue on his journey, he had to spend another hour of cutting the fur off of the hide, or else it would have made a lot of problems for him on the way. When he got to the skin under the fur, he found out that it looked as pale as the creature's face.

Jack bundled it all up in his now bulging sack and continued his journey.

After two more days of journeying through the barren landscape, on the morning of the third day, Jack heard the rushing of water and saw a shimmer in the distance.

With eyes widened from shock, Jack stood on the edge of a canyon and stared at the rushing white waters of the huge river in front of him. In his whole field of view, nothing but the raging white waves of the river existed.

Jack immersed himself in the rumbling glory of nature for some time, before he sighed and turned to walk north towards where he thought White River Outpost lay.

A day later, he stood on the edge of the White River canyon and observed, with awe, the tall walls of a large city that floated on the raging river.