Chapter 12: Routine
So, he used it to the best of his ability, maximizing each second of his days.
He had a basic routine that he would follow every day:
Firstly, he would wake up early in the morning. This was so that he had more of the day to hunt.
He would eat whatever food he cooked from the days prior for breakfast first before doing anything else.
Not much though, since he didn\'t want to be bogged down.
He would begin hunting early on, and this time he actually had different methods and traps that he had developed over the days.
Traps for smaller creatures were those like nets that automatically contracted as soon as something stepped on them. These weren\'t manual traps, so they were perfect to leave overnight.
During the day, however, Tyr would travel farther and farther in various directions to hunt. This caused him to sometimes see new, beautiful landscapes as well.
Of course, he wasn\'t traveling to sightsee. Most of what he saw was the plain old forest anyway. He was a mere human on foot, so it wasn\'t like he was going to travel too far.
After getting far enough away, he would use himself as bait again and wait in the bushes.
He wore a ghillie suit of leaves--making himself blend perfectly into the shrubbery.
Baiting multiple creatures like his first day of hunting was rarer than he had imagined. Usually, one or two would show up to his shouts.
As soon as they did, he would use his Blink Step to catch them off guard before Hypnotising them and going ham.
Blink Step wasn\'t an easy ability to use, however, unlike his other spells.
It had a fairly long cooldown of 5 seconds, which didn\'t seem like much but in the heat of battle, 5 seconds could feel like a lifetime and be the deciding factor.
On top of this, Blink Step used up 5 Stamina on each use, so he would be fairly exhausted right afterward.
Another thing was that the spell itself was pretty hard to use correctly. The first few times Tyr tried it, he accidentally blitzed forward to an area that was way too far from the creature to do anything.
This just gave away his position, nearly killing him.
He got better and better at using it through the seven days though, and now he felt he had a good grasp on how it worked. Still, there was a bit more go to before he fully mastered it.
The best way to use it seemed to be to visualize where in his eyesight he wanted to move to before using it. His imagination needed to be perfect since he didn\'t have much room for error and his body moved on its own after activating the spell.
Hunting was what most of his day consisted of. It wasn\'t easy by any means. It was grueling work, and most of the time it actually just consisted of waiting around or traveling to find a place that was far enough away where animals were still around.
After hunting, Tyr worked out using equipment he created himself for about an hour and a half before going to sleep.
He did push-ups, sometimes putting stones on top of his back to make it harder, pull-ups, and squats first as his compound exercises. After that, he trained his accessory muscles, such as the abs with sit-ups; biceps with bicep curls using dumbells he made himself with rocks tied to sticks; and triceps using the same dumbells.
After a solid week of all of this, Tyr was understandably stronger.
In general, he hunted about 6 beasts a day. It didn\'t sound like much, and that\'s because it wasn\'t.
Despite his constant traveling, Tyr still hadn\'t seen an entire group of animals or anything like that.
Just random solo beasts here and there. This gave Tyr the impression that the forest he was in was humongous. After all, it was either that the beasts were scarce, or the land they were in was big enough to make them appear so.
Still, this was enough to level him up a solid amount.
Right now, he was eating breakfast beside his campfire. It was some dried meat jerky from the prior days.
He donned animal hide on his torso that went around his left shoulder down to his right abdomen and also a short hide skirt around his waist.
Despite only training for a week, he had put on a fairly noticeable amount of muscle.
Before, he was relatively skinny without nearly any muscle definition, but now he looked lean with slight development poking through.
It wasn\'t crazily noticeable, but for a week, it was pretty incredible.
Tyr was also impressed at this small transformation. As he noticed his muscles while eating he thought:
\'Maybe putting points into my stats helps me grow muscle easier or something... speaking of which. I haven\'t checked my stats since yesterday night. I still have a few points to put in. GG, open my Status.\'
┏━━━Status━━━┓
Name: Tyr Evolion Thalonis
Bloodline: Almighty Thalonis + Unknown
Age: 15 Years
Level: 19
Vitality: 14/14
Strength: 17
Stamina: 12/12
Speed: 14
Aura: --
[Stats remaining: 3
Rank: --
┗━━━━━━━━━┛
\'My progress has slowed down a ton. At the start, I could hunt a single normal beast for a level or two. After level 15, I\'ve needed 5 to even 7 beasts to level up only once.\'
[Stamina: 12/12-->14/14]
[Strength: 17-->18]
\'With Blink Step taking so much stamina, it\'s become much more important. Still, at this rate, I need to kill around 5 more beasts to reach level twenty.\'
And there was a big reason why he wanted to get to 20...
[Level needed for next spell: 20]
Just the thought of it excited him.
\'Blink helped me a ton... I wonder if the next spell will be just as good.\'
After thinking about it for more than five seconds, he was ready to get up and head out for his hunt today.
Just like usual, he picked up his 3 light but durable stone-headed spears and headed out.
He lightly jogged in a direction away from the mountain for a while. He had never gone past the mountain near his base, since it was too dam big to even think of climbing.
But, since he had what seemed to be an endless jungle on the other side, there wasn\'t any point in attempting to climb the mountain anyway.
After an hour or so of trekking in a direction he hadn\'t been in before--marking his path along the way--he got to an empty patch of grass.
It was a large plot of land, stretching close to 50 by 50 meters where there wasn\'t a single tree or bush.
Seeing empty patches of land was common, but this was definitely the biggest one Tyr had come across so far.
Before walking out into the middle, Tyr suddenly heard noises and felt movements coming from all around him.
After living in the forest for a little bit, he had gotten used to the signs of his surroundings.
The birds flying off of the trees--as though startled by something--was the first sign that something was wrong.
There was also light trembling of the earth beneath his feet, a vibration he could feel through his whole body light.
His eyes scanned the perimeter for a second. A random Carniboar abruptly tore through the bushes on the opposite side of the grass patch out of nowhere.
Tyr\'s eyes opened widely as he saw the big beast.
\'What the fuck!? It\'s huge!\' Tyr confusedly exclaimed. The thing was no joke, weighing probably 100 pounds more than the one Tyr had first ever seen.
It headed right in his direction too, making him paranoid that it had seen him.
Nothing in the forest had seen past his camo yet, especially not a big dumb boar.
\'But then again... it is heading straight for me. Should I move? But that might give away my position and make me a target in case it hasn\'t spotted me after all...\' He was a bit conflicted.
The boar came very close to him, merely 20 feet away. It was storming forward with all its strength as if this was the last time it could ever run or something.
\'No... I won\'t move. I\'ll use Blink Step if need be.\' He firmed this thought in his mind and stood still as the Carniboar inched closer and closer to him.
Finally, it stormed right in front of him and locked eyes with him. This sent chills down Tyr\'s spine since no creature had ever made eye contact with him while he was in his ghillie suit.
This meant that the Carniboar had 100% seen him, and yet, it ran right past, completely ignoring him...
Tyr felt his heart still pounding slightly faster.
\'That was close... but why would it ignore me--\' He thought halted as he noticed 3 more beasts run out of the same bushes that the Carniboar came from.
\'Huh!?\'
An immense roar echoed through the forest--loud enough to make his very heart shudder.
*ROOOOARRR*
Then, as if it had been launched from the heavens, a giant wolf, as large as a grizzly bear, plummeted from the sky and crashed onto the ground behind the fleeing beasts--the earth trembling slightly beneath the impact.
Its aura was devastatingly strong, like nothing Tyr had ever felt before. Its fur was pitch black, and a glowing red symbol hovered above its back.
Tyr felt his body freeze up, his hairs standing on end as the beast let out another deafening, guttural roar.
\'W-what the hell... what in the fuck is that thing?\'