Chapter 17

The Hunt – Part 2

After finishing their meal, Lyrika headed off into the forest and got to work with gearing up for the hunt. In contrast to this, Olivia could only just sit there and watch, not having any clue what the girl was doing.

Or even what she herself should be doing.

Which didn’t go unnoticed by Lyrika.

“Are you going to help me?”

“Sure. If I knew what I was doing.”

“Wha- how do you not. Oh yeah, never hunted before. Look just grab as many vines as you can, nice and long ones. ”

So off to work she went searching through the surrounding area for any vines hanging off the trees. Thankfully, there were quite a few around and some were nice enough to be on low-hanging branches, making their collection quite simple.

Once she had gathered enough, she headed back to Lyrika who had just started on the next step in the preparation of hunting for food. Using her knife, she started to peal some of the outer layers of the vines, making them thinner and more streamlined, which Olivia did so with hers.

.....

“Ok, so how do we make a bow with these.”

“A bow. What are you talking about? These are for snares.”

Well, this was not what she was expecting.

All of the images in Olivia’s mind of hunting showed people with bows and arrows taking down deer and rabbits as they trekked through the forest. There was also the image of people holding rifles with dogs alongside them, but that wasn’t going to happen in this world any time soon.

Saying this though, it was probably a good thing they were using snares rather than bows. Olivia had no confidence that if she was handed a bow she could hit anything with it.

There was also the fact that she did not fancy taking on another one of those spike-growing antler deer things like she did when she first arrived in this world.

Ploughing ahead with it then, once all of the vines were stripped and smooth, it then came to the creation of snares, which Lyrika took her through.

“Very simply, you make a small loop at the end and pass the end through it. Then you tighten it up to about this size.” She said as she brought down the width of the snare.

Simple in design and quick to do, the snares had been made. All that was left was to set them., which meant the tracking portion of the hunt had to begin.

Almost like a bloodhound, Lyrika bounded off into the surrounding forest and scoured the forest floor. She spoke about searching for tracks and damage, which would show areas that animals had been through.

It took some time, but they managed to find small paws tracks in the dirt, heading off in different directions. Leaves and twigs had been broken along the tracks and what Olivia could only assume were droppings of some kind were scattered nearby.

Through further searching, a short distance from this area, they eventually came across a couple of burrows on the side of a small mound of earth.

“This is where we shall set the traps. It shouldn’t be too long before we get a catch.”

In order to set up the snares, they needed something to tether them to. Thankfully, the large trees nearby provided this service free of charge and allowed for a large number to be tied around it. The loops of the snares were then positioned around the burrows, and along the trails that the, what Olivia assumed were rabbits, had taken. Whether they actually were rabbits in this new world she would find out soon.

With the traps in place, they headed back to the camp and got some much-needed rest from all the trap building and walking. They decided to wait a few more hours before going off to check the snares, as Lyrika stated that this was around the time ‘they’ would come out to feed, which gave them plenty of downtime.

The conversation continued to flow, where Olivia spoke more about her life, adjusted to work with the new world of course, and Lyrika spoke about some fond childhood moments.

Olivia also decided to spend some time exercising and stretching to try and improve her form. The increased strength from her new form was a massive boon, but that didn’t help when you needed to chase or outrun something. Saying this, she did still do some weightlifting with logs from a dead tree, but she mainly focused on cardio.

Lyrika also ended up joining in once Olivia explained what she was doing, which led them to have a workout session. Unfortunately, Lyrika could only exercise for so long before she had to stop, opting to lay down, which was in a position where she could watch Olivia as she did her workout, not that either of them commented on this fact. While Olivia was seen as a monster, that didn’t stop the fact that with her muscular and toned body, she looked good as she exercised.

…

A good few hours later they we coming up to the evening. The sun was a short way away from setting and now was a good time to see what they caught.

Making their way back to the traps, they saw that their hard work had paid off.

While not all of the traps had caught their prey, a good number had, where half a dozen had been triggered and caught something.

And what a something it was.

Olivia was expecting a rabbit of some kind, and while she wasn’t far off, these were definitely different from what you would see on Earth.

While a similar color to what you would find on Earth, that was one of the few similarities. Their tail was more of a spike rather than bushy and the ears were also strange as in place of the floppy ears you normally ascribe to rabbits, they were more akin to that of a wolf or fox ear. Then, while the animal was still fluffy like you would expect, they did not act the same. Cute and meek were not words that you would describe these bunnies, given the way that while they were snared, they lunged for both of them as they inspected their catch. The shear aggression they exuded as they pounced for Olivia and Lyrika was frightening, as was the shark-like teeth they bared and used to try and bite each of them.

“Well, these are horrible.”

“Yes, they are called Efflers. Nasty creatures. They eat all manner of things, be it vegetables, fruit or meat, it does not matter to them. They also attack anything, even things that can easily kill them which is one saving grace about them; they are very stupid. They attack things as directly as possible, making it easy to know and understand what they will do. They are also easy to kill, the only problem is their numbers, which constantly grow. So, while they are easy to kill, if too many attacks a person, they can easily overwhelm them.”

They were horrible. Even as Lyrika spoke, they constantly tried to run and attack them, as if they did not realise that the rope that Olivia could only assume was slowly choking them, kept them at bay.

“Here take a stick and just hit them. That should be enough to kill them.”

Taking the offered branch, she got started. The sooner these things were dead the better, as they were creeping here out.

It didn’t take long and they were all down for the count. One conk, anywhere on them, was enough to kill them. All that was left was carrying them back to the camp and having a nice meal.

*Snap*

“Huh.”

Hearing something snap, Olivia looked up to find out what it was. As she did, one part of her brain could only imagine this as the cliché scene where she gets attacked by one of these horrible creatures that had been sitting nearby. That or some much bigger predator that had decided it was its time to dine.

With all of the trees and obstacles around her, her spear wouldn’t do much good, getting caught on everything and so she held her knife as she looked around.

Looking around through the forest, in the distance, something tall and dark dashed between two of the trees.

“Wha-”

Lyrika looked over at her to check what the problem was.

“What is it?”

“Did you see that? Something was moving through the trees, over there. Did you see it?

Lyrika moved around a bit to get a good look at where Olivia was pointing but could only shake her head given she saw nothing before or now.

“No. It was probably just another beast travelling through the forest.”

“Maybe. Probably.” Was all Olivia could say. While it was very possible it was another animal just roaming about, the fact that the dark shape was very tall made her think otherwise. It was also odd that she saw it move between two trees, but saw neither hide nor hair of it elsewhere past at point.

While she could think about it all day, there wasn’t anything she could do and so got back to work. Looking down she got back to collecting up the snares, both triggered and untriggered to bring back.

*Grrreee*

And was assaulted by something small and fluffy screaming at her. Which then decided to pounce.

“Ahhhh.”

She fell back, mainly from the shock of it and very quickly found herself starting up at a hideous visage of an Effler that was now sitting on her stomach.

Her thought of ‘ It actually happened’, was quickly pushed to the side in favour of a scream as the little monster used its razor-sharp teeth to bite down into her abdomen.

Lyrika rushed over to help, but given how weak they were and how panicked Olivia was, a very quick smack with her fist was enough to dislodge it and send it flying into a tree.

“Ahh, that stings. For something so small they have such a painful bite.” She said followed by the gritting of her teeth at the pain.

Hardly saying a word Lyrika was by her side, checking the wound. While not deep by any means, it was still pretty bad.

With Olivia’s extensive knowledge from TV, she knew she needed something to clean the wound and a bandage. The trouble was, that she had neither.

“It does not look bad, it should not take long to heal.”

“That’s not the problem. Do you have anything to clean the wound with? Stop it from being infected.” Olivia asked, hoping that Lyrika had some knowledge on this.

“Err, I. I have nothing on me, but I do know what the healers in our village use. It is a blue flower, that is crushed and applied to the wound. It should stop it from being infected. I shall go look for it.”

Then quick as a cat, she was off.

While still in pain, Olivia righted herself into a sitting position and watched her go. She then turned toward the horrible little thing that attacked her and one thought popped up in her head.

‘You have ruined rabbits for me now.’