The familiar chime came in yet again, as he made his way deeper into the forest trying to put as much distance as he could between him and the corpse. He had failed to sleep through the night and that made him feel refreshed somehow.
[You have received 1 lunar point for completing a daily objective: Resist the urge to consume flesh..]
[Lunar Points can be allocated to stat slots]
Leo furrowed his views and thought to himself. "That's new."
Another chime sounded in his head and a new string of text materialised before him.
[Daily Objectives]
1. Resist the urge to consume flesh.
Reward: 1 Lunar Point.
2. Resist "Xavax".
Reward: 1 Lunar Point.
3. Awaken an exclusive skill.
Reward: 1 lucky roulette coupon.
Seeing the name "Xavax" once more caused the pit of his stomach to grow cold.
He came to a stop before the small clearing before him where her could see the lush green grass swaying in the gentle breeze and basking in the golden rays of the sun. The scene was beautiful and majestic, Leo tried not to dwell on it too much. After all the most beautiful things were the deadliest of all.
His nose picked up the familiar scent of blood, this was one of the times Leo would be glad that he had received heightened senses from his awakening. He crept closer to a tree and his behind it as quickly as he could.
His ears twitched and listened, he could hear every blade of grass brushing slightly against each other. He could hear crickets and the unmistakeable sound of laboured breathing of a beast.
It sounded like the beast had been badly injured very recently, he wondered if it had just come back from a fight.
Leo let his bag fall quietly to the ground as he peeked over the side of the tree a little more to get a good glimpse of the beast. His eyes widened in surprise when he recognised the red eyed hyena from days earlier.
But he could have been mistaken, "It's an awakened beast." He told himself as if it would make it any easier, despite it being heavily injured that did not mean a newly awakened human like him could kill it with ease.
There were two deciding outcomes that could turn the battle either way, the first was the obvious fact that he lacked any proper training and equipment to effectively kill an awakened beast such as the red eyed hyena. The second one was that he already had knowledge on the beast that was barely sufficient, he knew that such a lethal damage would only be enough to slow down the beast and not be a mortal wound.
And even worse he would have to get close and personal to a beast that excelled at close quarters.
"Curses." He hissed as he watched the awakened beast observe it's surrounding before bending down to tend to its wounds. "It's now or never."
He looked at his hands and summoned the fangs to appear, this time he took a different approach. Instead of actively commanding it through words and action he decided to do it emotionally.
He could remember the times when he had lost control he had either been agitated or angry, he decided to use the one emotion that always came to him as first nature-- frustration.
Thinking about how many times he had failed to actually progress and pouring that feeling into his hands did not yield any signs at first.
A few seconds his frustration turned to rage and instantly the nails on both his hands started to grow out by an inch to become long and sharp. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped.
"I have claws?" It took great willpower to keep himself from jumping for joy and screaming.
Leo continued to feel the anger within him welling and rage building up from it, he could feel his feral side starting to emerge. "No, not again." He tried to focus on control but that proved ineffective very quickly.
He turned his focus instead to a memory that kept him grounded as a human being and remembered his little sisters bright smile. This surprisingly worked and helped him to keep his emotions in check.
He observed his claws for another second before deciding to attack the injured awakened beast while it was distracted but then came another problem. His ears could pick up the sound of other awakened humans coming in their direction and so could the beast, it did not take much guessing to figure out that they were responsible for fatally wounding the beast.
"Shit, think stupid." Leo wracked his mind.
He was always the one to think through every little detail of his hunt down to the tiniest irrelevancies and most of the time he just ended up overthinking things. But this time was different, he had skills he could use to his advantage. He was faster and stronger than he had ever been.
He knew it was only a matter of time before the awakened beast would choose a direction to run in and he would lose his chances to kill a weakened beast. Leo could not possibly pass off the easy kill, he calculated the distance between him and the beast. It was several yards away, how could he possibly close that distance in such short time?
As if by some divine gesture of luck the beast turned in his direction and chose to run his way. Leo's lips curled up slightly as his eyes drifted from the approaching beast to the five sharp claws on his hand.
"Who can possibly pass up a free kill?" He sang in his head.