The sun stood high, casting long, sharp shadows across the rocky terrain. Valkar moved with a purpose he had never known before. Each step was calculated, each glance analytical. He was no longer just a hunter; he was a predator with a divine intellect.
He managed to find tracks of two-legged creatures that were probably goblins, given how small they were. They were leading towards a valley that had some large trees near a small river.
"Water and food, perfect for goblins," he mumbled to himself. Slowly following that path, his senses were on high alert.
Not from goblins, but from the owner of the other track, Valkar found.
Bear tracks. Big ones. The kind of bear that made trolls look like scrawny goblins. The prints were deep, the claws leaving long gouges in the hard-packed earth.
However, Valkar could tell that the bear was injured. One of its paw prints was lighter than the others, and there were drops of blood.
"Injured... good." A predatory grin spread across Valkar's face. "Injured prey is easy prey."
Valkar's first priority was to find the goblin nest and steal their females, but he wasn't one to pass up on an opportunity. Furthermore, the bear seemed to be heading in the same direction as the goblins.
"Probably seeking goblin meat to heal itself?" Valkar's new mind connected the dots. The bear was smart. Injured, it would go for the easiest food source. And goblins were the easiest food source in these mountains.
...
He continued his hunt, the sun beating down on his green skin. His new mind noted the change in the air, the scent of pine and damp earth growing stronger. He was getting close.
Just as he shoved a branch aside, he saw it.
The bear was massive. A mountain of brown fur and muscle, with claws as long as Valkar's forearm. One of its front legs was dragging, a deep, ugly wound that spread from its shoulder down to its underbelly and to its leg.
The wound was huge and ten times worse than what Valkar had thought.
It wasn't just injured. It was dying.
But the bear didn't know that. It was fueled by pain and hunger, a dangerous combination.
Valkar's eyes narrowed. He could just sneak past the bear and continue his hunt. But something inside him, something primal and orcish, rebelled at the idea. The bear was a challenge. A test of his new strength, a way to gauge himself against the world's predators.
But he didn't just see a dying beast. He saw an opportunity.
Valkar's new mind didn't just see a threat; it saw a tactical equation. If he killed this beast, he had food for days and a hide for warmth. If he let it live, it might blunder into the goblin camp first, causing chaos he could exploit—or it might die in a thicket, wasting perfectly good meat.
The bear, a massive Great-Fur Ursus, let out a wet, rattling huff. It was sniffing the air, its black nose twitching as it caught the scent of goblin filth wafting from the valley below. It was desperate.
"Big mistake, fuzzy one," Valkar whispered, his voice a low vibration in his barrel chest.
He didn't rush in like the old Valkar would have—roaring and swinging until someone's skull cracked. Instead, he circled downwind. He moved with a ghostly silence that shouldn't have been possible for a creature of his bulk. His new muscles were tuned strings, ready to snap.
He studied the wound again. Long slashing cuts—not claw marks. Too clean, too parallel. Sword or axe.
It was only then that Valkar recalled the bears that were in the beast horde during the fight. This one was likely among them and had managed to escape, but not before being wounded by an orc axe.
The irony was not lost on him. He was about to finish the job.
The bear took another painful step, its hindquarters trembling with effort. It was too focused on the scent of food to notice the predator behind it.
Valkar waited until the bear's good leg buckled slightly under its weight.
"Now!"
He exploded from the brush. He didn't roar—not yet. He covered the fifteen paces in three heartbeats. The bear spun, surprisingly fast for its size, its good eye wide and bloodshot. It reared up, a tower of fur and foul breath, reaching a height of nearly ten feet.
Valkar dived. Not away, but under.
As the massive claws whistled through the air where his head had been a second before, Valkar slid across the dirt, using his momentum to drive the bone axe upward. He aimed for the festering wound on the bear's belly.
A spray of hot, dark blood coated Valkar's face. The bear shrieked—a sound that shook the very leaves on the trees. It tried to come down on him with its massive weight, but Valkar was already gone, rolling to his feet behind the beast.
"RAAAAGH!" Now, he let out the cry. It wasn't just a sound; it felt like a physical force vibrating in his throat.
Valkar didn't waste this chance and leaped, using a fallen log as a springboard. He flew through the air, bringing the bone axe down in a two-handed overhead chop, aiming for the spine.
THUD!
The axe bit deep, sinking into the thick muscle of the bear's back, just shy of the vertebrae. The beast roared in agony, twisting its colossal body, trying to shake him off like a flea.
Valkar held on, his new arm bulging with strain. He wrenched the axe free, tearing a huge chunk of flesh with it. Then he reached for the head with his free arm, grabbing an ear and yanking hard, exposing the throat.
It wasn't a move of finesse. It was a move of pure, brutal desperation.
He plunged the bone axe into the exposed neck, then wrapped his arms around it and started to pull.
"RAAAAAAAGH!"
The bear's roars turned into a wet, gurgling choke. Blood fountained from the wound, soaking Valkar's arm and chest. The beast thrashed wildly, its immense strength a terrifying, dying convulsion. It slammed Valkar against a tree, the impact rattling his teeth and cracking bone.
[-35HP]
He ignored it.
The old Valkar would have blacked out from the rib-cracking impact, but this new body thrived on the friction. His grip didn't falter; if anything, his fingers dug deeper into the bear's matted fur, anchoring him to the dying titan.
"Just... DIE!" he snarled, planting a foot right inside the hideous wound on the beast's side.
CRACK!
With one final, brutal pull, Valkar felt something give way. A wet, gristly snap echoed in the forest as the bear's spine severed at the neck. The massive body shuddered, gave a final, shuddering sigh, and collapsed to the forest floor with a ground-shaking THUD that sent a cloud of leaves and dust into the air.
Silence descended, broken only by Valkar's ragged gasps for air and the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of hot blood falling onto the dry leaves.
He lay atop the colossal corpse for a long moment, bone axe still lodged in its throat, his body trembling with a potent cocktail of exhaustion and adrenaline. Blood, hot and coppery, coated him, a second skin of victory. He pushed himself up, muscles screaming, and wrenched his axe free with a wet, sucking sound.
Ding!
...
[You have killed: Great-Fur Ursus Level 6 (Weakened)]
[Experience Gained!]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Current Level: 3]
[Attribute points awarded: 4]
...
"Oh~... so this is how I level up," he mumbled, wiping a thick smear of bear blood from his eyes. He felt a rush of warmth spread through his limbs—the system's way of knitting together the bruised ribs and the scrapes from the tree impact. He felt even more solid than he had two minutes ago.
But the warmth wasn't just from the level-up.
Down below, the "Succubus's Curse" flared in response to the kill. The thrill of the hunt had stoked the fire in his loins, and the 48-hour clock in the corner of his vision seemed to pulse with an angry, red light.
[Reminder: 46 Hours 12 Minutes remaining.]
"I know, I know," he growled at the empty air. "Find a woman or balls go BOOM!"
He looked at the bear. He couldn't leave this much meat behind, but he didn't have time for a full butchery.
Fortunately, the system came to the rescue.
A new screen materialized before his eyes.
...
[Would you like to collect the loot?]
[Yes/No]
...
"Loot?" The word was a novelty, but he instantly understood its meaning. He mentally pressed 'Yes'.
The bear's colossal carcass shimmered, its form dissolving into motes of golden light that swirled around Valkar before sinking into him. The blood, the guts, the fur—all gone. In their place, the scent of the forest returned.
Ding!
...
[Obtained: Great-Fur Bear Pelt (damaged) x1, Great-Fur Bear Meat x15, Thick Bone x3, Bear Claw x2]
[All items have been sent to your inventory]
...
"Inventory?"
The moment Valkar spoke the word, another screen appeared. This one showed a grid-like space containing small icons representing the items he'd just received. He focused on the pelt, and a new window popped up with a simple image of a massive, shaggy bearskin.
"Interesting..."
He focused on it again, and with a thought, a command, he willed it to exist.
WHOOSH.
The pelt materialized on the ground beside him. It was heavier than it looked, a thick, coarse mat of dark brown fur, still smelling faintly of wild animals and the forest floor. A gash ran down one side, marking it as 'damaged', but it was still a treasure. A bedroll. A shelter. A trophy.
"Useful."
He focused again, and the pelt vanished, returning to the grid in his mind. He did the same with the meat, taking a small bite of the raw, gamey flesh to confirm its reality. He did the
same with the bone and claws. They were all real, stored away in a space inside him, a space that felt as natural as his own limbs.
He spent a good ten minutes testing this new ability, summoning and dismissing items with a thought, a flicker of will. It was a power beyond any shaman's trick, a convenience that appealed to the conqueror's practical mind.
Valkar even found that he could store things that weren't the 'loot' the system spoke of.
Like rocks, sticks, and his bone axe.
"Good. No need to drag a corpse or carry heavy things around."