"Catch a wendigo?" Blank was utterly confused by this proposal. "How do we even begin to do that?"
"First, we need a trap. The cave will be that trap, we just need to make a few more adjustments." Harker said. "Then, a bait. Someone who will lure the wendigo in the cave while the attacker comes in. We only need one wendigo. So there needs to be a defense, someone who will block the other wendigos from going inside."
He added while drawing lines on the snow. "I will be the attacker. We will execute the plan three days from now."
"Why three days?" Joan asked.
"I need to experiment with something." He said. "Within those three days, I need help with hunting. I heard the howls of wolves before, the hoots of the owls, and of course, I have seen many deers wandering around."
"What will you do once you hunt those animals?" Blank asked.
Harker decided that since he will be needing his support in this plan, the least he could do was to be honest with him.
"I'm going to eat them. A lot of them. One wolf, one deer or one owl wouldn't cut it. I need to go on a diet of about 5 of each animal for three days. And… This may disturb you all, but I have to eat them raw."
He had noticed that each time that there was a notification about the animal's abilities being limited, it's always because they were cooked. He had never tried eating raw animals before, and especially unconventional animals like this. Out of curiosity, he asked Yan while he was bathing on an unfrozen lake a few days ago:
"Say, If I eat a cheetah…. What would its stats be like? Is it still all D despite it being fast?"
"Yes, Master. But a cheetah's ability is considered a rare type of nameless ability. Mainly because it has more stat points than that of other nameless abilities, like a chicken's. A cheetah has high speed and raw power." Yan explained.
The eyeball added. "Eating one cheetah would result in all D, yes. But if you probably eat more than one, the summation of the high speed and raw power stat points can combine to turn that D stat into a C."
"So if I eat a lot of cheetah's, I can still gain a decent amount of stats?" Harker asked.
Yan nodded. "Yes, within your Absorption Limit, of course. Eating a whole animal is harder to digest and absorb, and does not have the same quality as monster flesh. But it's still not bad if you have no choice left."
He then confirmed another hunch he had in his mind:
"Mina would often mix her features with Roland's, so it's not complete shapeshifting but more like a hybrid instead. And I have seen Skittles turn into a creature with different traits from different animals before." He said. "So that means…."
Yan did confirm it was right. So he wanted to test it right now, when he really needed that Wendigo ability to protect his group during their long travel in the mountains.
Blank was hesitant at first to help him, since he had doubts about how the Sasquatch would react to this. But Harker reassured him with this point:
"The woods is the animals' habitat, so I understand why he'd get angry. But animals kill and eat each other all the time. We humans are essentially animals too, just gifted with a little more sentience. So would it really trouble the spirit of the mountain for us to just apply nature's rule of ''Survival of the Fittest'?"
Eventually, he agreed, and taught Harker how to shoot arrows and take down wild beasts. Harker managed to get the hang of it pretty quick, as he still has a bit of enhanced senses as a demon lord after all.
Some of the meat they hunted goes to the other three, while Harker feast on the rest alone inside the cave. He didn't want to make them uncomfortable seeing him with blood splattered on his teeth, chewing on raw, uncooked flesh. But he did catch Joan trying to peek once in a while.
This was confirmed when on the second day of his diet, Joan sat beside him on the campfire while Blank still took care of Ahanu's recovery.
"I don't know how you could do it." She said, her eyes focused on the flame.
Harker just picked on a piece of meat stuck on his teeth. "I already told you that I'm not a normal human now. I'm a monster, so I just have to roll with it even if it's disgusting, or immoral, or whatever word you'd like to use."
"That's not what I meant. I'm also technically a monster now, remember?" Joan smiled wryly.
"You're still more human than I am. Just that you can't die easily, which is lucky. I have a bunch of monsters going after me even when I want to live a simple life, whether I like it or not." He sighed.
Harker gave a bitter chuckle. "Meanwhile, you don't even have to be dragged in this in the first place had you not accepted my call to help searching for Victoria. You'd never see wendigos in your life, or learn about demons and mermaids existing—"
"And I'd never meet the real you right now. The one you hide from everyone else."
He closed his mouth once Joan said that.
"Harker….. Do you really hate not being 'normal' that much? Because I'd like to give my two cents about that." She said.
Harker didn't say a word, and continued to watch the flames for a while. Then, he said, "Go ahead."
"I don't want this to sound like I'm preaching. But basically, I know you believe being the 'normal' guy gives you an easier life. But what is normal? It's defined by a society that doesn't even know itself, that keeps on imposing rules that don't make sense half of the time. That could only be applied to certain people, ignoring the rest that can't follow those rules."
She sighed, and spoke sincerely:
"I was a normal woman in the 18th century. Better than normal, my family and I never have to worry about food to eat or face any prejudices. They are well-regarded and respected by the community."
Joan gritted her teeth. "And yet the price of being 'normal' would be that you are always on a leash to keep being so. To maintain what standards they set on us, and to hide the parts of ourselves that we don't want the world to see."
"I will always live with those shackles on my neck until..." She faltered. "Well, until I met Edmund."
Harker already expected that for some reason.
The night seemed long, and there was nothing in the cave besides the warmth of the fire and their voices. Harker wasn't feeling sleepy anyway, and needed to digest all the wolves, deers and owls he ate.
"If it's fine with you…. I want to know what happened to Edmund, and how you and your family became like this. What is your past life like?
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