Otherworld Adventure

Battle Spoils

When Cecil carefully observed what had happened, it turned out that when the bear had jumped into the air, the vines that were braided by Cecil didn't snap. Instead, because of the monster bear's actions, it was the thick tree branch overhead that snapped.

Bearing the weight of the bear and boulder, the branch gave way and snapped. Of course, it wasn't the entirety of the branch that snapped off. It was only a portion of it but that portion alone was enough to squash the reckless bear that was underneath it.

When it fell, it landed on the bear's head, literally squashing its skull and snapping its neck. The fatal injury immediately killed the monster and this result caused Cecil to release a sigh of relief.

This battle had shown him how naïve and foolish his original plan was. There were many uncertainties in battles and thinking on his feet would be much more

The preceding events that he envisioned went way off, the rocks, the jump, and the quake that followed after.

When he was caught off guard and fell on his back, he thought he was a goner when the bear started roaring and charging at him. Only to then be saved by the branch that fell from the skies. He was just lucky to be alive right now.

"Haaahhh… that was scary. I have to learn from this. I was so naïve earlier which almost cost me my life."

"Woof…"

"Haha, don't worry Silver, you did your part perfectly, not to mention you had distracted it for a split second!"

"Woof!"

Silver did his job well while he almost died. If Cecil died then Silver would have met his end shortly after.

'I don't think I could stomach that even after I'm dead.'

"Let's take a look at your wounds Silver."

"Raau…"

Cecil got up and took another look at Silver's wound on his hind leg.

"What a relief. The blood has already clotted."

After taking almost 2 hours to kill the bear, Silver's wound had already stopped bleeding, it didn't seem like Silver lost too much blood since he still seemed energetic. But he had to find a way to close the wound and let it heal faster.

"Phew, there's nothing I can do right now. So let's take a look at the spoils?"

Silver started barking in reply.

Cecil walked up to the remains of the bear that was squashed to death by the branch.

After a quick inspection, except for the head, the rest of the bear was still intact.

As luck would have it, the blade-like horn on top of the monster bear's skull to be snapped off with the entire blade fully intact and was just lying there ready to be used as a substitute skinning knife.

Cecil picked up the blade and felt that it was pretty light. He examined it and found the base of the horn actually being pretty smooth and only a couple of inches away from the sharp part of the horn. The smooth part fitted perfectly in his small hand and he waved his new weapon around in a familiar fashion.

"Haha! Awesome, lady luck is smiling on me!"

Cecil looked down on the bear's remains after playing around with his new weapon for a bit. He rolled the broken branch off the head of the bear with some difficulty. The branch although not that large weighed quite a bit.

It was no wonder why the strong bear had its head crushed just from the branch falling on it.

"Dang, this thing probably weighs more than that rock!"

After the branch was pushed off, Cecil rubbed his hands and said, "Time to skin this thing."

Having survived on the island for a couple of years, Cecil had picked up the know-how of wilderness survival which included skinning the animals he killed for its meat and other usable parts.

It took some time for him to get used to his new knife, but after he became more adept at wielding it, the process became much quicker and smoother. However, even then it still took him nearly 2 hours to skin the large 4-meter bear.

He did cut some corners and purposefully ruined some parts due to how hard the skinning process as a whole was, but his harvest was huge. The fur was large and he cut it up into two pieces and placed them on top of Silver.

"Hold them for me, I'm gonna gather some of the meat so we can eat it later, okay?"

Barking in reply, Silver seemed happy when Cecil mentioned meat. The wolf started wagging his tail joyfully when it saw the juicy meat being carved up bit by bit.

Cecil carved out some of the meat but it wasn't too much. The bear's skin and flesh were hard to cut even with his horn-knife. He only carved out 2 blocks of meat from the monster's belly and he didn't forget about the 2 paws of the bear. From what he remembered, the bear paw was supposed to be a delicacy of some sort.

The hard part came from stripping the rest of the flesh off of the bear's bones. The process was so long and tiring that it took up most of his time to do. He became so thirsty that the only way to hydrate himself was to drink the bear's blood which he reluctantly did.

However, after drinking the bear's blood, he felt a certain heat rise within his body and felt full of power. At least, that was the unknown sensation he was feeling. He certainly did feel stronger because right after drinking the blood which tasted horrible, Cecil was able to carve up the rest of the monster's body with relative ease.

When he found about the strength-enhancing properties of the blood, he braced himself and drank up as much as he could before he continued dismantling the bear's corpse. The blood from the bear was the only reason why Cecil was able to dismantle the entire corpse in almost 2 hours. If he didn't have that strange boost of power from the bear, he wouldn't have been able to completely harvest the corpse of materials and meat.

Cecil drained the meat of blood and drank as much as he could until he felt too full. He even gave Silver some of the blood. He couldn't collect the blood because there was nothing to contain them in so although he felt that it was a waste, Cecil let the blood drop to the ground.

While waiting for that, Cecil started prying out the claws of the bear with the horn blade. It would have been difficult before but he found that it became easier. He gathered all 8 of the claws and set them down beside Silver who was keeping watch of the surroundings. He took another look at the bear and remembered the sharp elbow blades of the bear.

"They're a meter or so in length, I could probably use them as swords if the bases are smooth like the horn," Cecil thought aloud.

He went over and started carving out the meat around the elbows until he hit the bones and found that the blade was connected to the ulna bone of the bear's arm.

'Good, I could use them as swords this way.'

Clang!

"Eh?"

After carving out the meat that was around the forearm of the bear, Cecil tried striking the bone to snap it but found himself recoiling from the strike. Despite the odd increase in strength, his hands were numb from the recoil.

"Oh no…"

The bones on the wrist of the bear were only small and somewhat brittle, but the bone in its arm was thick and strong. It seemed that there was no way for him to snap or cut it off.

"Oh well, I guess I'll just use the entire thing?"

After saying that, he proceeded to carve out the meat that was stuck to the ulna bone all the way up to the wrist and pulled free the entire thing along with the blade.

He inspected the bloody 'weapon' in his hand and said, "Hmmm… better than nothing I guess."

The forearm of the bear from the elbow to the wrist was almost a meter long, adding that with the blade, it was almost 2 meters in length.

It was taller than him if he held it upright. He could use it as a walking stick too since only half of it was sharp. He repeated the same process with the bear's other elbow blade.

"Good, now I have weapons to protect myself, next time I won't be so helpless when I fight against another monster animal."

He walked over to Silver and started to closely examine the rest of the blade-like bones that he extracted from the bear. The claws of the bear were sharp and the finger bone part was smooth and was about 2 inches long so he could use them as throwing knives.

For now, Cecil didn't have anything he could use to store them in so he could only make an impromptu utility belt using the vines he had braided earlier. After loosening them a bit and cutting the vines so the length was just enough to wrap around his body twice, he pushed the claws into the spaces between the vines, holding them in place.

He started walking, jumping, rolling, and running around, testing if the claws would injure him if he did any other action other than standing.

"Maybe I should make a bag from the fur…"

Cecil grabbed some vines and twigs then he bundled up the meat, tendons, bones, and other spoils around the fur and tied them together. Like this, he created an impromptu bag that he could sling onto his back. Cecil left the other half of the fur on top of Silver and used a bone blade as a walking stick.

"Alright, I got everything I need, time to head towards the river."

It was dangerous to linger around here since the blood of the monster bear could potentially attract other monsters towards here. Cecil and Silver quickly make their way towards the direction of the river he spotted from earlier.

Since he was only running in circles around the area from before, they hadn't shifted too far from the place all that much.

It was a river, so as long as they head towards the general direction of where Cecil saw it from, they would eventually reach the river despite not going back and traveling the same path from before.

They ran away from the area where the bear had died. After running and jumping for around 10 minutes. They stopped and started looking around the area. Seeing that Silver was keeping up with his speed even while injured, Cecil picked up his pace towards the river. The faster they got there, the quicker he could treat Silver's wounds.

After around an hour of travel, the duo no longer met with any other monster animal. They also finally heard the sound of flowing water which meant that they had finally arrived in the vicinity of the river he saw earlier.

Cecil slowed down and rested for a bit. Normally animals would camp around and build nests near rivers to act as a water source. It was all a part of their instincts so he had to be cautious when approaching. He might stumble upon a nest of monster animals if the animals of this world followed the logic of earth's animals. Nevertheless, caution was needed even if they didn't. It was better safe than sorry.

As he quietly, but quickly crept towards the river, Cecil kept his steps light and tried to move from tree to tree, and crawled under the green foliage. After around 10 minutes, he finally arrived at an area that had a wide view of the riverside.

Cecil observed the area from under the dense foliage of greenery. His eyes sharply surveyed his surroundings.

"I shouldn't commit another blunder now that I've finally arrived."

Once he made sure that the area was clear from all other animals. He carefully walked towards the river, he told Silver to stay back so he could probe the area first, just in case something was actually there. After walking to the side of the river, he looked around once again. Finding that no monster animal was charging towards him, he let out a sigh of relief.

"Come over, Silver!"

Silver quickly limped towards the riverside. After arriving next to Cecil, he quickly shook off the bundle of fur that was still on his back.

"Sit here."

Cecil untied the bundle on his back, took out the monster bear's skull, or what's left of it then started to wash the monster skull until it was somewhat clean. At least the bloodstains were all gone and the skull was now white. The skull was half crushed so he could only collect the other somewhat intact part.

Cecil started scooping up water from the river using the skull and poured it onto Silver's wounded leg which made the wolf whimper in pain.

"Don't whine."

Cecil quickly cleaned out the wound as best he could. He then took out the bear's finger bones and chose the pinky which was the thinnest one and started sharpening it. After it was sharp enough, he began thinning it out even more by grinding it against his horn-knife.

Once he got the perfect shape, he cleaned the finger bone using the river water. While he was at it, he also started cleaning all the tendons and other bones of the bear. He picked out a tendon that was longer than the rest and tied it to the end of the finger bone.

He intended to stitch Silver's wound using this. Although he was somewhat worried about an infection since there was no fire to boil the river water or sterilize the bone-needle he couldn't complain. He could of course start one, but that might attract unwanted attention instead.

Besides, the water in the river was really clear. So clear in fact that Cecil was able to observe the riverbed from the riverside. The deepest part seemed to be around 5 meters in-depth, not too deep and not too shallow. There were also some unique-looking fish swimming around too. The water seemed clean enough, so he cast all the worries aside.

Cecil placed Silver's injured leg on his lap and started to stitch together the wound as best he could. Silver whimpered only at the start, but he soon got used to the pricking and toughed it out. After Cecil finished sealing the wound he looked at his handiwork. The stitching was very tight and a bit messy, but at least the wound was finally closed.

"Great, it's sealed. Hopefully, it'll get better in a couple of days."

He grabbed the rest of the materials gained from the bear and started washing them in the river.

******

Once Cecil finished washing all the loot, he searched around and found a good place with a great vantage point that allowed him to survey the surroundings of the river and wasn't too far nor too close to the forest. This way he would have enough time to prepare himself if any monster came from the river or the forest.

After surveying his surroundings and making sure that it was safe from any dangers, Cecil immediately created a clothesline with the vines on him and hung the fur he had just washed to dry.

After hanging the things that needed to be dried, Cecil turned to look at his weapons.

'After cleaning up all my weapons, the color changed from a dirty red to a pinkish-white color.'

The make-shift weapons were no longer as dirty and disgusting. Staring at the absurdly long blades, he decided to use one as a walking stick while the other one as a sword, however, it was hard to wield because of how awkwardly distributed the bone and blade part was so he decided to try and shorten it until it was more sword-shaped.

"Maybe I can wear away the bone using the sharp rocks by the river?"

Thinking so, Cecil went around looking for sharp rocks that could be used to whittle the bone part of the bone blade. There was no way he was going to use the bone knife to whittle at the large thing. That would only dull the knife which would be a minus.

He quickly found some sharp-looking rocks and looked up to the sky. It was around midday from how the sun was positioned so he decided to hurry. He hoped to finish whittling the blade before sunset.

'I should also try and start a fire. It should be safe here since I haven't detected any monsters nearby.'

He started walking toward the forest again while looking for dry sticks and dry tree barks to start a fire. With fire, he could cook the meat of the 'blade bear' that he slew earlier.

After around 30 minutes, Cecil came back to his campsite with a bunch of dry wood, sticks, and also a handful of dry leaves. He dug out a small pit nearby and surrounded the pit with some rocks.

He picked up a stick, whittled the edge until it was flat, and then piled some dry leaves on top of a piece of bark before trying to make a fire. If done correctly, he could start a fire using friction from rubbing together the stick on top of the dried bark.

The entire process took a long while and after horribly failing a few times, he was able to get the dried leaves on the bark to catch on fire. He quickly moved the leaves which had caught on fire into the pit he had dug earlier and started to throw in a few leaves.

Once the fire got a bit bigger, he began stacking twigs and branches over the pit, and finally, a sizeable flame began burning. After making his campfire, Cecil sat down tiredly and said, "Phew, finally done."

Looking up into the sky once again, Cecil judged that it was early in the afternoon now. He walked towards the forest again and started searching for more leaves and sticks. After finding a sufficient amount, he went back to his campsite and finally started working on the bone blade.

"Urk… This is harder than I thought."

After 30 minutes of cutting the bone with the rocks, it only wore away a minuscule amount of the bone.

"I've got nothing to do so let's just continue…"

Before starting, he had already started roasting the bear meat over the fire. The meat was suspended above the fire pit using thick sticks that he picked up. The meat was cooking slowly. Even after being suspended above the fire for 30 minutes, it still didn't seem to be fully cooked yet so he decided to continue grinding. It was only after another 30 minutes had passed was the bear meat finally cooked to an edible degree.

Once he saw that, he stopped grinding the bone blade and took down the large bear meat that was finally cooked.

"Time to dig in."

"Woof!"

He placed the meat on top of a rock and then sliced it up into two portions. One portion was for him while the other was for Silver. The size of the bear meat was huge but because of his training, Cecil would normally eat a lot so this was nothing. Plus he was also pretty famished from the earlier fight with the bear.

After giving Silver his portion of meat, Cecil then cut his up into bite-size pieces and continued grinding at the bone blade while eating. He had to say, the meat was good—no, it was delicious. The meat was greasy and the fat that oozed out after the cooking process made it so that it didn't have a bland taste despite it not being seasoned with anything.

Cecil didn't dare use any of the plants or herbs from the area since he didn't know if they had any adverse effects if consumed or used as a seasoning. He could find some rock salt, but since he deduced that this wasn't Earth, Cecil wasn't sure if the rock salts from Earth were the same as the ones from this world.

'If only I had a way of obtaining information. I'm an avid reader of fantasy novels and whatnot since they're somewhat like the bullshit that my father and grandfather fed me when I was still a child, but in those novels, the settings were somewhat like this. Teleportation to another world and such, but the main character always had some game-like element added to him after the transfer! If I had something like that, the least I could do is identify things with it.'

The reality was different from fantasy. Since he couldn't identify any of the plants or objects around, he couldn't make medicine or seasoning. He could experiment, but there was no test subject.

There was no way in hell he would use Silver or himself as guinea pigs. Cecil could capture some animals and experiment on them, but if all the animals in this world were monster-like just like the earlier blade bear then it would be stupid of him to purposefully find danger.

'Before any of that, what should I do now?'

This was the real question that Cecil needed to answer. Referencing from the novels he's read, the main character would be summoned to some majestic place and have the inhabitants tell him his objective, or their objective, in being summoned to that world. With that, the summoned person would at least have a goal to work towards too.

Unfortunately for him, he was just dumped in the middle of a forest and had to face a ferocious beast just minutes after waking up.

'It was a good thing that I was a trained harsher than my siblings. If I wasn't, I'd be the one lying on the ground decapitated and mutilated. Speaking of which, what happened to my family?'

Since he was engulfed in that white light and was summoned here, hypothetically, his family should have been summoned here with him. However, after remembering back to the place he had originally woken up from, he didn't find a trace or any presence of his family members around.

Maybe what happened to him happened to the people in the city and everyone else who was engulfed by the strange white light.

'Were they also summoned here to this world? Man, it's all turning into a big headache, but if my family was summoned here, I have to find them but without information, how am I even supposed to start?'

"Ahhhhhh, come on!"

As Cecil was lamenting on his misfortune and bleak future, he suddenly lashed out and accidentally threw the sharp bone knife he had been using in place of a fork. It flew into the distance and stabbed itself into a tree.

"Hiiiihhh???"

"Huh?"

A sudden high pitched scream echoed out somewhere in front of him. Cecil quickly looked ahead and caught something hiding behind the tree that had his knife embedded in it. The tree wasn't too far away from his campsite.

'Damnit, how could I let my guard down, I didn't even know something was able to sneak up so close to me!'

"Silver! Get ready for battle!"

Cecil grabbed the bone blade that he was whittling away earlier, took up a stance, and ordered Silver to get ready. He then began moving closer to the tree where the scream came from.

"Come out! I already know you're there!" Cecil called out.

Not knowing what was behind the tree, Cecil proceeded with caution. Judging from what made the sound, it didn't sound like a monster animal. In his heart, Cecil hoped that the sound came from a human who was also transported here like him.

"Hurry up and come out!"

Cecil took a glance towards Silver and signaled him to go around the tree and flush the perpetrator out. Silver slowly made his way around the tree, making sure he didn't make a sound. His injured leg was hindering him a bit, but he still managed to get close to the left side of the tree.

"RAAAARRR!"

Silver pounced and Cecil quickly moved up raising his bone sword in preparation to stab at the enemy, but then he heard a surprised shout that made him hesitate.

"KYAAAHHH!"

Silver tumbled out from behind the tree with something underneath him. It was a bit small, so Cecil couldn't see it from where he was standing. He alertly raised his sword, preparing to attack, while he moved closer to get a better aim at the target. However, once Cecil finally caught a glimpse of what was underneath Silver, he was dumbfounded by what he saw.

"Grrrrrr"

"Hiiiihhh!"

"Heel boy! Stop!"

He immediately stopped Silver from trying to attack any further because the thing that Silver had pinned down was a person, at least, he thought it was.

'I-it's a person, right?'

The person pinned down by Silver was a young girl maybe around Cecil's age. She had long platinum-colored hair and a cute face that was scrunched up in a horrified expression. The large difference she had with Cecil that caused him to question whether the girl was a person or not were the animal-like ears that were on top of her head. After taking a better look, the girl also had 3 fluffy tails coming from her back. She clearly wasn't a human but looked more like a half beast and a half-human.

"Wh-what are you?!"

"Uwaaaahh, ***t ***l **!!"

And that was how Cecil met one of the people that would play a big role in his life.