Why Fenrir? Wolves need to stalk their prey, so he's good at the idea of using another's acts and the environment to hide his presence.
Also I really have a much stronger sense of smell than I gave myself credit for. Like wow.
That whole downwind thing? I get it. I can actually smell out others, and them being in the direction wind is coming from makes it VERY easy.
Useful part of that is it's very easy to tell where I need to position myself to be downwind. I'm currently sneaking up on a deer right now, blade in hand.
Speaking of, my blades got a weird thing going on. The color has been s.h.i.+fting in terms of mana, and now it's taken on a form of myself? Like... the blade and handle, when seen through a.n.a.lyze, have the same black-red miasma as my flesh. 'Flesh of the Demon, Soul of the Divine', or whatever those two said.
So I would call it a demonic blade... except... it has the thin needle-core of white-gold straight in the center of the blade, that starts at the blade's base and goes 2/3 of the way up the blade.
It almost is like the blade has its own mana, which would mean its a living thing, but I can tell it's not quite there. As to the reason why it's growing so fast despite not actually killing that many realistically speaking, it's probably because of the Higher-Tier evolution upgrade I bought. Guess it affects half-living weapons too?
Anyways, back to my deer. I stepped carefully, cause the amount of 'what's underfoot decides the noise you make, so step carefully,' I've gotten from Isen is ridiculous and impossible to ignore.
And... I really wanna cry. I got the 'Skippy's Tutorial for Sneaking'.
Sob... I'm not crying! Just... sob... tearing up a bit...
Anyways... as with all tutorials, following along gives me the basics as instinctual, but without actual experience I'll have no idea how and when to use what.
Case in point: dumb Hobgoblin who hasn't heard of the idea "sword technique" still got the drop on me and kicked me flying.
So here I am, anxiously stepping, pausing, sniffing, and crouching. Hunting by stealth to get close is a patient game, and I'm willing to play.
I take a step as the deer does, so any noise is covered by its own. I have a root before me, so I step into that as to avoid the leaves.
I'm aware that the season is actually early autumn now, and the climate is pretty moderate in the summer, and we apparently ought to get some beautiful snow this winter. Wonderful.
'I'm almost there... just a little more.'
And then? And then the d.a.m.n deer turns it's head around, seeing me halfway into the clearing it's in, frozen still.
'SON OF A b.i.t.c.h!' I do my best to stay frozen, knowing movement will just confirm a predator is there, and hoping this is a dumb deer.
And then it bounds away. Of course.
Knowing I can't get it now, I send a WindBlade after it, slicing off a rear leg, and followed up with running at it, as it hit the ground suddenly missing a limb, and fell over.
The deer cried out, and raised its head just in time for my blade to enter its skull.
I have no need to wipe down my blade seeing as it eats any remains left on it, so I put it away once it was done.
Then as Isen and Fenrir came up behind me, I placed a hand on the deers neck.
"Sleep well, wherever you are."
Killing, hunting. It's necessary, but I don't enjoy it. I hunt for food because we do need meat. We have two children, 3 if you count the baby, and they need protein.
As we head back, I look at the progress in my plans for the past 2 days. I'll be leaving on the next sunrise, along with Fenrir and Luna, going to the mountain. The reason I got delayed was because I began implementing a sort of Dungeon-Growth plan in the background for while I'm away.
It started with me expanding the territory to be a wide area around the hill, covering a lot of Ever Maple trees. Then I began actually setting what elemental evolutions I wanted most common, and where.
So my map is now 'Glade'(Boss Room), 'Apple Orchard', and 'Ever Maple Area'.
I was setting it up so certain trees would evolve certain ways, to become materials for the houses I'd have to get built eventually for everyone, cause the housing I can buy from the Dungeon is... out of my price range.
Better to build something and have the Dungeon upgrade it next time it upgrades itself again, which happens after a certain benchmark of growth is pa.s.sed?
Also Fenrir finally finished his change, and now his leg is... back? Well all that smoke is now a leg. So he's got 3 legs of flesh and fur, with red paws, and then he's got a leg that 2 thirds made of smoke, and has smoke lazily drifting off it constantly.
This does mean that he is a LOT faster now that's he's got 4 legs instead of 3.
I also want to experiment with something based on the idea of evolution in this world. Everything can evolve, but for an animal to evolve requires a fortuitous encounter, and a great amount of luck, while only evolutions of a truly groundbreaking scale would actually change the nature of the next generation. If a human evolves to have good night vision in this world, their child will still be born normal, but may have a higher chance of a sight-based Evolution later on.
However, the Dungeon can completely break that balance with the Higher Tier Evolution upgrade. Evolutions of higher tier, which leave more impact on later generations, and much quicker and easier evolutions for the residents? Yeah, it has a lotta potential I've been forgetting.
So I got a new upgrade which is a 'Low Level Attract'. General wildlife with weak or very low mana(common bunnies and mice, maybe an owl) will be naturally attracted to the Dungeon. Then, I just needed to tame a bunny, which I left up to Touka and Luna. They seem like they'd like cute little rabbits.
So we got a small area of the Glade with bunnies we feed with seeds now, and while a good source of DP, I'm hoping they'll eventually pledge allegiance to the Dungeon. I've instructed Touka to accept any who decide to join.
I know it's less likely for a bunny to join as they might not be too smart, so I set the evolution to affect low level wildlife(the kind the dungeon can attract) to evolve more commonly even if not a dungeon resident.
Ironically that's the highest level of being a non-dungeon resident CAN be to still be affected by this upgrade, so I'd have to improve it again to make people not affiliated with the Dungeon upgrade more often.
So as my-maybe-will-one-day-become-rabbit-army plan goes down, I've had Fenrir actively finding free ranging wolf packs hiding from the enslavement of the Mind Flayers when not teaching me, and offering them sanctuary and a home with us.
3 wolves have joined so far, and apparently Fenrir is now an Alpha. You go man!
None of the wolves have evolved yet, but now those three are looking for more lone wolves to recruit, and eventually maybe we'll find a full pack? I know the chances of them evolving are higher, so I got hopes.
Apparently there's a high chance they'll follow Fenrir's path of evolution to a Smoke Hound as he is their leader, and the whole 'turns into a cloud of burning hot smoke that surrounds you, chokes you, and then materializes teeth to rip out your throat' thing is pretty bada.s.s. Also allows him to fly as a smoke cloud. Good stuff.
Then I kidnapped some bees. I bee-napped them. Why? Well... if I said I hoped they would join and evolve into large bee-people capable of doing the construction work, would you believe me? Ahahaha... yeah not likely, but I can dream! Plus I got them in a new nest that we can easily harvest honey from, and the low level attraction makes them want to stay!
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So in the end, we got honey!