—Orion—

  My world had been reduced to my two feet, the stable areas of the roofs that could support them, and the monster behind me. I did not have the mental bandwidth to consider anything else, given that I had to give everything I could to maintain the balance the delicate dance between running and the ravenous wendigo demanded. A single distraction—a single mistake—would be catastrophic, and would lead to the monster removing me as an obstacle towards killing Sally—and Aylin... and probably Icaro as well.

  Whenever I caught hints of the wendigo’s attention moving towards the commotion in the middle of town, I made sure to pierce the monster with another arrow. To stoke its anger towards me and keep its hunger focused on someone who was better suited to fighting it off.

  A momentary glance behind me allowed me to see the wendigo walker's trail of destruction. It had grown far too big to traverse the straw roofs like it had when it was half its current weight, and had destroyed every home it had chased me across. It had been so aggressive when chasing me that in the time it took for its back legs to reach where its front ones had been a moment before, the thatching had already collapsed in on itself.

  If I could do so without risking my footing and the lives of everyone here, a look around me would've shown me an accurate trail of the route I’d taken, made of destroyed buildings. If I had seen it from bird's-eye view, then I might've felt a concerning spike of Déjà vu—but I didn’t have the chance to glance at my surroundings at the time.

  I was running along the roofs near the town-square where Sally was fighting the other wendigo when the one behind me slowed down. I decided to attack the wolf-headed wendigo chasing me to make sure its attention stayed on me no matter what. I managed to thread in an opportunity to attack while still running, but my brain and body had to be pushed to the limits to make it work. As I leapt across a gap between buildings that was a few metres wide, I added rotation to the jump. It had taken dozens of hours toiling under my Father's training to be able to accomplish this, but I managed to time the spin so that I was facing the wendigo halfway through my leap.

  With an arrow readied and the bowstring drawn back as far as I could manage without my feet on steady ground, I shot the projectile at the monster, hitting it in its eye-socket.

  [Strike dealt to [Wendigo Walker]!]

  [Damage: 8]

  [Critical hit! Damage increased by 10 points by hitting vital organ]

  [Damage reduced by [Pierce Resistance], 66%]

  [Damage: 18 -> 6]

  [[Wendigo Walker] [HP: 116/120 -> 110/120]]

  [[Trickshot!]: Shoot ten unique, nearly impossible to hit targets with a projectile.] [3/10]]

  I watched with a faint sense of discomfort as the metal arrowhead failed to pierce the wolf-like skull’s eye socket, but still managed to cause an explosion of the off-white jelly within. I did not have the time to appreciate the eye I’d eviscerated, or the skill I’d just displayed when I landed on the soft thatch with a grunt. I had to dive forwards into a running start to escape the wendigo's crash into the roof a second later.

  My breathing began to grow more ragged as I leapt to another nearby building, my stamina waning under the strain of continuous running, jumping, and climbing over the rooftops. I took another look at the source of my woes as it clambered out of its latest crater.

  The wendigo walker was unflinching as it reached up and yanked out the arrow that was embedded in the bony ridge at the back of its eye-socket. I couldn't help but freeze momentarily when I saw how unbothered it was from losing one of its eyes.

  Tik… Tok...

  I felt and heard the watch in my pocket begin to tick again, as whatever strange mechanism that it held within it had reactivated in the wendigo's presence. I didn't understand why the Moon god's reward acted so strangely, but I decided to leave it for later as I had before—I should've used [Appraisal] on it by this point, but I had gotten distracted.

  I jerked back into motion as the wendigo let out an unearthly bellow—somewhat similar to a moose’s call—and then charged towards me again. I dodged at a right angle to its stampede, running to the other side of the roof as the wolf-headed wendigo's weight began to destabilise the house. My footing rapidly tilted towards the monster as it caused foundations under the area where I had just been to collapse.

  I dropped into a crouch and grabbed the edge of the roof I was standing on, securing myself as the whole rooftop of the house tipped forty-five degrees. I had a few seconds to think and breathe as the wolf wendigo stared at me from the bottom of the destroyed home, and I realised that I did not have the energy to continue running from it like I had been. I was tempted to try to use [Self-Healing] to recover my stamina as well, but I hadn't tested it yet, and I wasn't willing to waste mana on an unconfirmed idea.

  I stepped across to another, unbroken rooftop, and decided to try a different idea.

  "If you try to climb back up, I'll remove your other eye." I deliberately threatened it. The momentary pause in the monster’s movements and the glint of understanding in its remaining eye confirmed that it had enough human intelligence left to understand my threat. The plan I’d come up with was a simple one, if I could entice it to attack me from an angle where I wouldn’t be able to easily shoot it, then it wouldn’t try to charge me from another rooftop. Trying to dodge its swipes from the edge of the building might be riskier than running from it, but I didn’t have the stamina to keep doing that.

  Pressuring it into attacking me in a way that didn't force me to constantly run had two main benefits. The plan was always to distract and delay it until Icaro finished killing the other wendigo and brought himself and Sally over to help with this wendigo. If I could occupy it without exhausting myself or my arrows any further, then why shouldn't I?

  When it dashed into the house underneath me, I knew my gambit had succeeded. Now I just needed to survive whatever it did next, without letting it return to the town-square.

  As I listened to the groans and creaking of the building below me as it flexed under the wendigo's weight, I used the break I'd been given to theorise a potential way to kill the monster. In events where normal weaponry was ineffective, the city of the Sun had instructed us to use a specific [Type] of magic or skill to weaken or attack the threat. They had said that opposites to what you're fighting usually work.

  Tik… Tok... Tik...

  If you're fighting an ice elemental, melt it with fire. If you're struggling to kill a living plant, burn it to a crisp. Fighting a corpse, cremate… it…

  I then realised that all of their examples involved using their signature holy fire. Given what I’d seen of the [Wendigo Walker]’s abilities so far, it certainly had some sort of influence over the weather, and the cold. Which meant… that a priest’s fire would be effective against this monster.

  Though, given that a wendigo’s main trait was eating humans for food… would that make it’s main [Type] a similar aspect to death? The act of resisting death through sacrifice? But… it could be the opposite. Instead of resisting death, it might be manipulating and absorbing the vitality of others, a parasite rather than an undead abomination.

  Well, even without access to a teammate with fire spells, a wendigo should have more than one weakness—

  Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok...

  The acceleration of the wrist-watch in my pocket was what reminded me that I was supposed to be paying attention to the monster’s movements. As I focused on my ears in an attempt to hear what was happening in the room below me, I suddenly felt like I was in danger. It only took a portion of a second to realise that the sounds of the wendigo's footsteps had gone quiet.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  [[Hunter's Senses] automatic activation!]

  I hastily jumped up and out of the way as a clawed hand punctured through the straw below me. I barely managed to get my leg out of the way before it snapped shut around the empty air. The size of its clenched fist gave me a renewed understanding of just how much bigger the Wolf wendigo was compared to me. Its palm was as wide as my shin was tall, and after a single glance, I just simply knew that if it had managed to grab me, it would be over.

  Tik… Tok...

  I steadied my breathing as the watch returned to its languid pace, idly ticking as the wendigo's presence receded along with its hand. I kept a more careful eye on the roof below me as I carefully listened to the watch. I was unwilling to look at such a precious gift-horse in the mouth and ignore the emergent life-saving warning system the supposedly broken watch apparently had.

  I stayed in the spot I’d landed and kept my body extremely still—I did not want to give the wendigo my position easily. While I waited for it to attempt to attack again, I couldn't help but continue to think about what this monster's weak [Types] could possibly be.

  It is not an undead beast, as it's the corruption of a despairing, starving, living human-being into a monster with a twisted nature. It embodies the desperate need to survive at whatever cost, so anything with vitality or lots of energy would probably only feed its—

  Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok...

  I back-stepped away from my current position as another one of the wendigo's hands pierced through the straw—thankfully a metre away from where I was standing. I was tempted to try shooting an arrow through its exposed palm, but I was unwilling to waste any more of my dwindling supply of arrows on such an unappetising target. So instead, I wound my boot back as far as my balance would allow, and kicked its appendage with all of my strength.

  [Strike dealt to [Wendigo Walker]!]

  [Damage: 15]

  [[Wendigo Walker] [HP: 110/120 -> 95/120]]

  For once I took pleasure in hurting another living being as what sounded like multiple bones in its hand broke underneath my reinforced boot.

  "That's not fair!" It screeched as its hand was yanked back into the safety of the darkness below, and like clockwork, the intensity of the watch's ticking also retreated.

  I put aside my idle thoughts and focused on surviving the immediate threat the wendigo posed instead of trying to theorise a way to kill it. As an occasional snowflake fell onto the roof around me, I decided to quickly retrieve the magical watch that'd already saved my life multiple times. It would be far easier to hear if the sounds it made weren’t muffled by the cloth pocket it had been stuffed inside.

  I reached into the pouch the watch was in and pulled it out, not daring to look at it while I strapped it to my wrist with one hand. My heart was pounding as I clumsily threaded the leather band into its metal buckle, and only felt slightly less stressed when I finished.

  A cold gale began to blow as I waited for the wendigo to make its next move, the air puffing gusts of arctic wind that pierced right through my outer layers. It was the kind of weather that only blew in climates that rarely saw the sun during their long winters. It reminded me of a trip Father had taken me on to visit his home, and that brief period was the only time I had ever seen his extended family and the snowy alpine tundras of Norway he had once called home.

  Tik… Tok... Tik...

  As the beating of the watch started to accelerate again, I readied myself. I crouched and tensed my legs, prepared to sprint at the smallest sign of danger. I ignored the cold chill of snowflakes being blown onto my exposed skin as I restrained the urge to bounce my knee.

  Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok...

  But instead of a sudden ambush, the speed of the watch's ticking was slowly accelerating, and being unable to see the wendigo only heightened my anxiety. What was it doing? Why hadn't it just tried to attack again?

  I looked around wildly at the straw thatch below me, my heart racing faster and faster as I tried to glean some clue as to what was happening beneath my feet. And I almost missed it the first time I saw it. A small glimmer from inside one of the holes in the roof, the darkness hiding everything within, except for the brief refraction of a ray of light.

  Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok... Tik… Tok...

  My head violently swung back towards the gap in the reeds, and I froze when I spied what looked like an off-white, partially-dehydrated, grape staring back at me. It took a moment for me to break eye contact with the shrivelled, greyed eye and run away from it as fast as I could.

  I'd taken two panicked, off-balanced steps backwards when the wendigo launched itself through the roof. The bulk of the wendigo bowled through the thatching with the destructive force of an enraged bear. I barely managed to take an uncontrolled dive towards the next house before the entire roof of the building I was just on exploded into a cloud of hay.

  “A straw house can’t stop me!” It childishly cried out as it landed on a stone pillar where the straw roofing had once been.

  I landed on the next rooftop on my stomach, and I had to scramble to stand up again and start fleeing before the wendigo leapt at me again. I managed to get a foot underneath me and started running towards the building that should be on the opposite side of the house I was on. I had just begun moving when the wendigo had launched itself off of the remaining foundations of the just-demolished building. The noise of the stone slabs collapsing under the wendigo’s jump was loud enough that I instinctively glanced backwards to see what it’d done.

  But by the time I looked away from the monster chasing me, I’d already reached the edge of the roof and saw that there wasn’t a building in front of me. I didn't have time or room to resist the momentum carrying myself forwards, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaping into the empty air. As my feet moved to land on a non-existent platform, I gazed down at the rubble beneath me. I realised that I must’ve accidentally doubled back onto the path I’d taken over the rooftops. I should’ve kept track of wherever I'd run previously, given that wendigo hunt of me had destroyed any buildings I’d run across.

  In the split second I had before I fell into the ruins, I braced myself for a painful collision with the stone slabs. Luckily my feet happened to land inside what had been the original flooring of the house, sparing me from landing on the remaining and half-crumbled walls of the home marking my target. But even with falling in one of the best places I could, it doesn’t mean that I landed injury-free.

  [New injury!]

  [Health: 64/64 -> 58/64]

  I let out a strangled scream as my ankle landed on a shard of shattered stone, violently twisting as it rolled and made contact with the uneven floor. With one leg collapsing, my body began to unwillingly tumble forwards, and years of deeply ingrained reflexes kicked in, helping me break my fall by curling up my extremities into a ball. The following roll onto the stone tiles absorbed the energy far less violently than a limb locked at the knee or elbow could’ve.

  [[Self Healing] Automatic activation]

  [Health: 58/64 -> 64/64]

  [MP: 25/25 -> 22/25]

  I got up and began hobbling towards the remaining doorway of the home as I felt my torn ankle weave itself back together. As I ducked through the stone archway, the wolf wendigo dropped into remnants of the room I was just in. The massive monster snarled as it landed, the shattered bones of its injured hand shifting positions under the strain of the wendigo's weight.

  [[Using [Appraisal] – Lvl 1] on: [Wendigo Walker]]

  [[Where's Wolfie?] upgrades the level of [Appraisal – Lvl 1] when facing an aberration!]

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 2] on: [Wendigo Walker]]

  [Wendigo Walker – Level 38 Aberration]

  [Health: 95/120]

  [MP: 38/60]

  [Conditions: Starvation (Stage 3)]

  Tik… Tok... Tik...

  But as I continued to flee, I noticed the monster turn its attention to something that wasn't me. I had not noticed the two animals at first, but they were hard to miss once the wendigo's gaze had landed on the pale pair.

  The creatures were unhealthy, starving, and diseased, but I uncharacteristically struggled to glean any other details about the two animals' species or origin. They were hairless, four-legged, their skin and other features were the albino shades of white and red irises—they also lacked tails. The head was only vaguely canine, and lacked any other characteristics that could define their genus.

  I foolishly watched instead of fleeing as the wendigo dashed towards the pair and grabbed one of them. The other pitiful creature did weakly attempt to get its partner back, but was slapped aside by the monster's broken hand. The wendigo took a large bite out of the beast's neck, its struggling ending almost immediately as its blood was completely cut off from its head.

  It only took a few bites from the wendigo's wolf-like maw to completely devour the human-sized animal.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 2] on: [Wendigo Walker]]

  [Wendigo Walker – Level 39 Aberration]

  [Health: 115/120]

  [MP: 46/60]

  [Conditions: Starvation (Stage 1)]

  My body was frozen on the boundary of the home as the wolf wendigo returned its attention to me, the broken bones in its hand loudly clacking as they realigned and healed themselves. It licked the last of the animal's blood and gore off of its mouth and hand with a tongue coated in saliva, the liquid tainted with black blood and green-brown bile.

  It cackled loudly as it reached down to its waist and chest, the clawed hand ripping off the tattered remnants of its brown cloak. It threw the rags onto the floor, and I watched at the already spoiled cloth absorbed splatters of gore from the monster’s feast. The dirty sheep's fur that lined the inside of the cloth absorbed the blood it had been tossed onto, the new bloodstains a red so dark that it was almost completely black.

  "Stop running Sheep-y, I'm still sta-a-arving." It croaked out as its form began to change even further. The antlers on its head grew another few centimetres as its skull and skin shifted even further towards inhumanity. Its headhad—as far as I could tell—had finished morphing into a that of a wolf’s, as identical to a natural-born’s skull shape would be.

  Though, even as the wendigo’s body grew even larger, its skin was untouched by the transformation, and its already restrictive flesh grew tighter around its oversized skeleton. The outer layer of grey hide was pulled so tightly to the bones beneath it that it’d become taut enough to see every ridge and bump of the the bones underneath its mummified flesh.

  I began to run again, and it stepped over its sheep-skin cloak as it gave chase, the discarded disguise forgotten as the wolf-like predator sprinted after me.

  Never...