Chapter 35: Chapter 35 — The Festival of the Hunt Part VI
I crouched low on the ridge of the great mountain range, my boots sinking slightly into the moss-covered rock as I peered down at my prey.
The wind howled around me, cold and sharp, carrying the scent of pine, wet stone, and something far more primal—blood. Fresh blood. The metallic tang mixed with the crisp mountain air and led my eyes straight to the creature below.
According to the sheet Miss Pineda had handed out during registration, the first monster I needed to hunt was called a Hiyak.
The description had been... unique. A bizarre fusion of a grizzly bear and a sasquatch, it read. Predator rank. Extremely aggressive. Do not engage in close combat unless absolutely necessary.
At the time, I’d thought the description was exaggerating. The illustrators for these guild pamphlets always added dramatic flourishes to make the monsters look scarier than they actually were. It was a marketing tactic, nothing more.
I was wrong.
I crept down from the rocky outcrop where I’d been stationed, moving as quietly as my enhanced stats would allow. Each step was deliberate, careful, the soles of my boots finding purchase on the uneven terrain without dislodging so much as a pebble. As I drew closer, the creature came into full view, and I had to clamp my jaw shut to keep from cursing out loud.
"Son of a bitch," I breathed, the words barely a whisper.
The Hiyak was far more goddamn impressive up close than any sketch on a pamphlet could ever convey. It was hunched over the carcass of a full-grown stag, its massive frame blocking out the sunlight that filtered through the canopy above. Its fur was a deep, dirty brown—matted and caked with dried gore—and from a distance, you could easily mistake it for an ordinary bear. But up close, there was nothing ordinary about it.
Its arms were too long, ending in black claws that gleamed like obsidian sickles. Those claws were currently buried deep in the stag’s ribcage, tearing through flesh and bone with horrifying ease.
The creature’s head was bear-like but elongated, with a face that held an unsettling, almost human quality—a pushed-in nose, a heavy brow ridge, and eyes that gleamed with a low, primal intelligence. Its incisors, thick and yellowed, crunched through the stag’s organs with wet, visceral sounds that made my stomach clench.
I watched it rip out a length of intestine and swallow it whole, and I had to fight down the sudden urge to gag.
Alright. Predator rank. Very aggressive. Don’t get close. Noted.
I pressed my back against the rough bark of a pine tree and took a steadying breath. The Hiyak was completely absorbed in its meal, its massive head buried in the steaming cavity of the stag’s chest. It hadn’t noticed me. That gave me one clean shot—one opportunity to bring it down before it even knew I was here. If I missed, or if the shot wasn’t lethal, I’d have a furious, wounded Predator-rank monster charging straight at me. And I really, really didn’t want to find out what those claws felt like up close.
I needed a bow.
"System," I called internally, keeping my mental voice steady. "Give me a bow."
It was the first time I’d ever tried to communicate with the gacha system purely through thought. Samira had mentioned that it was possible—that the system was linked directly to my soul and could interpret my intentions without spoken words—but I’d never actually tested it. For a brief, agonizing moment, nothing happened, and I felt a spike of panic.
Then, a familiar chime echoed through my skull.
Ding!
[Summoning Weapon!]
The gacha roulette materialized in my mind’s eye, a spinning wheel of golden light and shifting shadows. Weapons flashed before me in rapid succession—swords, axes, spears, staves, even a few things I didn’t have names for. The wheel spun faster and faster until it became a blur of colors, and then, with a final burst of violet radiance, it stopped.
[Congratulations! You have obtained the Tenazcrya Heroine’s Bow — Rank: Legendary, 5 Stars!]
A weight settled into my hands, solid and real. I looked down and found myself holding a bow of such breathtaking beauty that it almost made me forget I was supposed to be hunting a monster.
The weapon was a stark, luminous white, as if it had been carved from solidified moonlight. Its surface was smooth and cool to the touch, yet it pulsed with a faint inner warmth that seemed to resonate with my own ether. Along the limbs, intricate inscriptions had been etched into the material—lines and symbols that twisted and curled in patterns I couldn’t recognize. It wasn’t any language I’d seen in this world or on Earth. It was something older, stranger, a script that seemed to hum with power just beyond my understanding.
A soft weight settled across my back. I reached over my shoulder and found a quiver had materialized alongside the bow, stuffed full of arrows with silver fletching that glittered faintly in the dappled forest light.
"Alright," I murmured, gripping the bow. "Let’s do this."
There was just one small problem.
I had no idea how to shoot an arrow.
I mean, I’d seen it done. In movies. In video games. In the animes where the archer character always pulled off impossible trick shots. But seeing something and doing it were two completely different things. I raised the bow, pulled back the string, and immediately realized I had no clue how to position my fingers, my arms, or my stance. The bow felt foreign in my hands, an instrument I didn’t know how to play.
Then, something extraordinary happened.
A pulse of light erupted from the grip of the bow—a soft, silvery glow that spread through my palms and slithered up my arms like liquid electricity. It moved with purpose, streaming through my veins and rushing up my neck until it reached my brain. And then
---
Images.
Visions.
Memories that were not my own.
I saw a woman with hair the color of burnished copper, standing in a sunlit clearing. She was young, just a child, and her hands were wrapped around a small training bow.
A stern-faced man—her father, I somehow knew—stood behind her, adjusting her grip, correcting her posture.
The scene shifted. The girl was older now, a teenager, sweat pouring down her face as she released arrow after arrow into a battered target. Shift. She was a woman, fully grown, her body honed and scarred, standing atop a castle wall and firing into a tide of darkness below. Shift. She was dying, an arrow still clutched in her fingers, her eyes fixed on a monstrous, indescribable beast that loomed over her like a mountain of flesh and teeth. She fired one last shot, and then everything went black.
All of it—every training session, every battle, every calloused finger and aching shoulder—poured into my skull like water into a cup. I felt her muscle memory imprinting itself onto my nervous system. The way she breathed before a shot. The way she adjusted for wind. The way her fingers released the string without hesitation, without doubt.
When I opened my eyes again, I was already in position.
My body had moved on its own—or rather, on the instincts that now felt like my own. My feet were planted shoulder-width apart. My back was straight. My left arm held the bow steady while my right hand had already drawn an arrow from the quiver. A silver arrow, its tip glinting with a faint, cold light. I hadn’t even realized I’d reached for it.
I took a deep breath.
The world around me seemed to slow. The wind dropped. The birds stopped singing. Even the Hiyak, still tearing apart the stag, seemed to pause for an impossible heartbeat.
I pulled the bowstring back. The tension was perfect, the draw weight calibrated exactly to my strength. The arrow’s fletching brushed against my cheek. I sighted down the shaft, aligning the tip with the creature’s chest—right where its heart should be, assuming its anatomy was even remotely similar to a bear’s.
I released.
The arrow left the bow with a sound like a whispered prayer, a soft hiss that barely disturbed the air. A streak of white light followed in its wake, clean and pure and utterly silent. It crossed the distance between us in less than a heartbeat, and then—
It punched straight through the Hiyak’s chest.
There was no spray of blood. No explosion of gore. The arrow simply passed through, leaving behind a perfectly round, clean-edged hole where the creature’s heart had been. The wound didn’t bleed. It didn’t even sizzle. It was as if that part of the monster’s body had simply been erased from existence.
The Hiyak let out a single, confused grunt. Its massive claws loosened around the stag’s carcass. Then, with a ground-shaking thud, it collapsed onto its side. Dead before it hit the ground.
"Holy shit!" I shouted, the words tearing out of me before I could stop them.
I stared at the bow in my hands, then at the corpse, then back at the bow. My heart was pounding against my ribs like a war drum. A grin—wide, wild, and utterly unstoppable—spread across my face.
"Damn, that was fucking incredible!"
Comments