Chapter 23 - Steps

"I still can't get used to this."

Just the thought of the raw flesh it had consumed threatens to force all the contents of its stomach out.

After all the trouble it went through to get its meal down, throwing it all up now was not an option. It forcibly tries to shut down any thoughts regarding the issue.

"It's been a week already. I should just accept this already. No matter how many times I pray to the moon, what I've lost is never going to return. I need to get my act together."

Though the words that came out of the fox's mouth seemed to hint at its will to get over the matters of the past and move on with its life, its face portrayed a different reality. Contrary to his words, its expression still showed an expression of lingering hope.

Hope that it wouldn't have to accept reality. Hope that whatever it was that it had lost would eventually be returned.

In the end, letting go of things is always a slow and hard process. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that you need to let go, there's always a part of yourself holding on to hope. A hope that never truly dies.

It would take a while before it could truly start accepting its current condition. Even if hope never truly dies out, it would at least be able to learn to be content with its current situation.

The fox stretches its limbs. They had become sore from the amount of time it had remained sitting in the same place.

It looked around.

"From my estimates, that rabbit will probably last me for the next 2 days.

Thinking about its next meal makes it shudder. But in the end, no matter how much its body rejects it, it has to be done. In the wild, food didn't come from the skies. You had to make the best of what you got.

Looking around, the fox noticed how bright everything around it was, the sunlight breathing new life into the whole place. A whole night had passed, once again, while it tried to eat its meal.

These thoughts were starting to overwhelm the little fox. In order to clear its head, it decided to go out on a little walk. Maybe some exercise would improve its mood and help its digestion.

The fox jumps out of its nest and moves towards the exit.

After a pretty long journey, the fox reaches the entrance of the cave.

As it gets out, its eyes get greeted by a wide-spanning forest. Trees of all shapes and sizes span as far as the eye can see.

This was its hunting ground. These fertile lands that gave birth to numerous plants attracted multiple herbivores in. And so, it was the perfect place for carnivores to gather as well.

However, funnily enough, there were barely any carnivores around the area. The fox didn't know the reason why this was happening, but it could vouch that, in the last week, it had only come in contact with 1 other carnivore predator.

Regardless of why it was happening, even if it was weird, it certainly benefited it. This reduced level of competition for prey certainly increased its chances of gathering food. Not having to fight for food or worry about accidentally entering the territory of a rival predator would certainly make its life easier.

As the fox goes about in its walk, a sound catches its attention. The sound of gravel being stepped on. In a more or less constant timing, the sound of something crunching the gravel below their feet could be heard.

From how loud the sound was, coupled with the frequency at which it came, the fox could deduce that whoever was producing the noise weighed something between 80 to 120 kg and was a bipedal creature.

'A human'

That was the first thing that materialized in its mind.

The sound itself further confirmed this. Gravel was the material being stomped on. In that forest, there was only one specific place where gravel could be found. That was the rudimentary road that humans had constructed to facilitate travels through the area.

It was extremely rare to see any animal using that particular road to move about, especially for long periods of time like was happening this time. They knew that the road was frequently used by humans.

Walking openly on the road would only lead to them getting seen and then hunted down by any human that might come in contact with them. So, unless they were trying to cross from one area of the forest to the other, the herbivores of the forest never took a step into the road.

That left the few carnivores present in the area. However, they were quickly discarded as a possibility as well considering the fact that none of the predators of the region walked on 2 legs.

That left only one option. A human.

The fox stops in its tracks.

It was the first time it had felt a human cross the area. It had only been a week since that, after all.

Should it go investigate?

Logically thinking, that would be a mistake. Nothing good would come out of getting involved with humans.

Sure, humans didn't usually go around hunting foxes. Maybe if they were around their properties in an attempt to protect their cattle. However, in the middle of a forest like this, several miles away from human civilization, there was usually no reason for them to go out of their way to chase a fox.

Foxes were known to be shrewd and, therefore, hard to hunt. In terms of food, foxes weren't the best choice either, their muscles too tough to make a proper meal. If humans wanted food there were several animals far easier to hunt and meat far more adequate for consumption.

Though, even though their meat wasn't valued by humans, it didn't mean they were completely worthless to them. Their pelts saw quite the high demand in human circles, being used in a multitude of clothes.

Even still, the pelts were not enough to entice regular humans to chase foxes, especially in an area like this. An inexperienced individual had an extremely high chance to lose their way and get lost in the forest. At that point, it didn't matter if their hunt was successful. Being lost in a massive forest like this was extremely dangerous.

No normal person would risk something like that.

And it's not as if they were guaranteed to hunt the fox in the first place. Most people had no training in fighting and usually carried no weapons with them. Foxes might be small animals, but they still have several sharp pieces that can very much sting any human trying to approach them.

Especially with the terrain advantage in the forest, with their movements hidden by the foliage, being able to catch humans off guard and hit them in their weak points wasn't anything far-fetched at all. The hunter could very well become the prey.

The situation would be different if the human chasing the fox was a hunter. They had actual training experience, as well as the ability to predict the movement patterns of animals. It was their job after all. Usually, if a hunter set their sights on you, your luck would be over. They wouldn't stop out of fear of getting lost either, since they had much more experience in navigating forests and would be more than capable of finding their way back.

With this said though, the fox didn't think whoever was walking through the road was a hunter. Hunters would never announce their own position like that, as it would scare their prey away. Firstly, they would make sure that their every step would make absolutely no noise. Secondly, they would navigate through the leaves and bushes of the forest, in order to completely kill their presence.

Walking out in the open like that was not the way a hunter operated.

So, the only possibility was a regular human, right?

That would be wrong. There was another possibility. And that was a cultivator.

If a hunter was considered a massive danger to wild beasts, cultivators were seen as a fickle God.

Most of them never really bothered to hunt anything. They were usually either rich enough to carry their food around with them, conserved in their magical devices, or didn't need to eat anything at all to survive.

If they actually had to hunt something, a little fox like that wouldn't even be considered an option. It was too low level to even consider.

However, them not hunting them for food did not mean cultivators did not attack random animals. Depending on their personalities, they may decide to kill some unlucky animal they may cross paths with.

Maybe they found the animal unpleasurable to their eye, maybe they thought the animal looked at them the wrong way, maybe they had their pride wounded by the beast standing in their way, maybe they wanted to relieve some stress, maybe they had a bad day and maybe they did it because they just could.

At the end of the day, there were many reasons that could lead to them reacting that way. And with the tremendous power they held, capable of killing any wild beast with 1 or 2 fingers, the description of fickle god suited them perfectly.

And so, with all this considered, exploring the sound didn't seem like the best of ideas.

There were several ways for the situation to end badly.

So the best choice was simply to turn away and ignore it. That was what its mind was telling it. That's the conclusion its reasoning led it to.

However, it couldn't do it. There was something inside of it spurring it into action, almost pushing it in the direction of the sound.

Its limbs started, slowly, turning into the direction of the human. No matter how much its mind screamed at them to stop, it could do nothing. Almost as if they had a mind of their own, they started their dash towards the sound.

Like a puppet, being pulled by the strings of fate, step by step, the fox marched towards its inevitable destiny.

In the end, no matter how much you try to escape from it, destiny arrives all the same.