The Gamer Chapter 1312 – Fusion Festival 19 – Hunting, Salivation, Ear Scratches (Patreon)

“I used to do this in the early hundredths.” Metra grinned while she and John stalked through the forest. Every tree around them was a girthy, incredibly healthy member of its species. Their roots created a network that was difficult to traverse and their leaves a roof through which the light of the day was filtered.

This was the Velonora, the elf forest in the Hudson Barrier’s east. Originally the area granted to them had been limited to a cemetery and a park next to it. Over time, they had been granted additional blocks. This was due to pressure from the Supernatural People’s Party and a steady influx of migrants of the elven, dryadic, or otherwise tree-dwelling persuasion.

Over a not so long time, the trees that had been planted had been grown by means of magic into a dense forest that was peculiar in its biodiversity and its fauna. A myriad of interesting creatures had been introduced, sometimes without John’s knowledge. Considering what a pain it was to oversee a balanced ecosystem, he was still annoyed about that. At least those creatures stayed away from concrete like a vampire did from the sun.

A fleshy vampire, not Claire.

The Gamer and Metra had gotten permission to hunt a few of these creatures for sport. That he had even asked had made the First of Wrath roll her eyes. In her mind, this was all his kingdom and a king did not need permission to hunt on his land. The counterargument was simple: John had no idea if he was accidentally shooting a holy animal. Better to be safe than sorry.

“Your early hundredths or the calendar’s early hundredths?” John had to ask.

“Calendar,” Metra clarified. They spoke in quiet tones. Having agreed not to use mental communication for this hunt, nor any excessive supernatural abilities, they had to keep their voices down. Both were armed with a Bealementium spear. The metal was not enchanted. Its natural strength may have been above what most people regarded as fair for hunting, but at the point they managed to stab their prey it was already over anyway.

They climbed a dense network of willow roots. Wind rustled the treetops. A sound that made both John and Metra pause. They were far beyond the Guild Hall. At a barrier this size, winds were sometimes created, the ecosystem was large enough for that to occur. Something that could shake treetops, however, was unusual.

Then both felt a tremble. Now the origin of this wind shifted entirely. There was something afoot. Something large and powerful. In both categories, it exceeded what they had prepared for in this hunt. Metra gripped the air, suddenly holding Rex Magnar. The weapon screamed at the surrounding forest with drums and shredding guitar sounds. Had the birds not already all left, they would have scattered up in the air now.

A quake so intense John felt it in his bones made him summon his own battle regalia. Then there was a roar, a cataclysmic scream of anger, and he simultaneously relaxed and got way more worried. He knew that voice. ‘What the hell is happening with Nathalia right now?’ he reached out into the mental network.

There was chaos over there as well. He and Metra were drawn into a rapid exchange of information, as they tried to locate Nathalia. Obviously, she had retained her human form, Sylph would have spotted her immediately. While the dragoness was out of the picture, her brother could be seen near Governor’s Island.

John did not need any further explanation why Nathalia was pissed off.

Ten minutes later, the situation was cleared up. Sylph had dashed over, asked what this was about, and Tilgun had, as he was so prone to do, used the wrong tone in conversation with his sister. The result had been just a minor earthquake. The harem was forcefully removing John from the conversation about potential damages.

‘W-we all made the decision that you have to relax!’ Gnome declared and shut the figurative doors.

‘God bless her cuddly heart,’ the Gamer thought and, after that odd scare, returned to their hunt. “Well, things just got a lot harder,” he said, loudly. Every last piece of game in the entire forest was now on high alert. Best they could do was sit down for a bit and let everything settle down. “So, who did you serve in the early hundredths that took you hunting so often?”

“Oh, just some lords here and there, no one too important,” Metra responded with a shrug.

“You sure you didn’t end up in the service of William the Conqueror or someone like that?”

“Who’s that?”

“…Might not have been an Abyssal figure,” the Gamer hummed, rather than go into the lengthy history of England, the United Kingdom, and the various ethnicities of its monarchy. “Always fascinating who was and who wasn’t an Abyssal.”

“I always wrote off Abyssals who decided to invest any time into the mundane. The modern age makes me question myself in that regard.”

“You shouldn’t have written off gunpowder in particular.”

“It was so fucking boring at the start though,” Metra groaned. For the next couple of minutes, they exchanged their favourite modern inventions. Unsurprisingly, John was partial to the PC. Metra professed an interest in satellite systems, of all things.

When they deemed that the forest had calmed enough, they continued their hunt. Rex Magnar was just left where they had talked. The halberd was thief-proof anyway. “Do you sometimes wonder how people react when they find your weapon lying around?” John asked.

“Huh… no, I haven’t,” Metra confessed. “Not my fucking problem either.”

“If you lose it, I’ll be mighty mad.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” The First of Wrath grinned dangerously. “I’ll be madder.”

John noticed a movement in his periphery. Up in the canopies, he saw a tiny girl wearing a dress made of leaf petals. A fairy, he recognized. A pixie, to be more exact. These particularly friendly Seelie fae were known to live around wood elf settlements. That they were present here was good news in terms of the health of their society. It also meant they should steer away from that direction. Nothing to be hunted there. Nothing he was supposed to eat, anyway.

Then again, Lee was a delicious snack.

‘Love really does go through the stomach, otherwise we wouldn’t use all the same words for the two phenomena,’ the Gamer thought.

Metra raised a fist and John stopped. Immediately his focus heightened. Metra pointed to a gap between some trees. Moments later, John spotted the movement. The creature was large and its light brown fur blended with the trees easily. Humans had quite outstanding eyes, in the animal kingdom, and theirs were even sharper. Once he spotted it, John did not let it go. He would have cast his tracking enchantment from his Visions of Calamity. That was an illegal help for this hunt, however.

Metra made a couple of additional movements. Two fingers to the left, a circular motion, a thumb to the chest, and pointer straight forward, then she pointed back at him and showed a silent scream. John nodded and began to sneak off to the side.

The Gamer did not excel at rogue activities. As a matter of fact, by the standards of his level bracket, he sucked at it. To hunt something that was only slightly above the mundane, it sufficed.

He was looking at a massive boar. Over two-and-a-half metres, snout to hindquarters, with tusks made of polished wood and thorn-like spikes protruding from its spine. Its teeth were cracking open tree roots and unveiling some kind of mushroom that was growing underneath it. The boar was eating those mushrooms. A perfect opportunity to get around it unnoticed.

Once in position, John took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs.

The boar’s head flew up and immediately noticed him. Between fight and flight, the boar decided on the latter. It turned around, twisting its massive body to do so. It was already mid leap down the hill of roots when it spotted Metra.

The First of Wrath brought her spear up in a flawless motion. From John’s perspective, she vanished under the much larger body of the wild pig, then the spear broke through the inside of the skull. A final shiver went through the massive creature. Its impaled brain ceased its function. Then it went limp.

“Fucking smooth!” Metra roared triumphantly. While John climbed over the half-devoured mushrooms, she heaved the creature to a relatively flat part of the forest floor. On a layer of moss and stone, the boar rested. The spear had been thrust through the soft bottom of its jaw. “Alright, time to eat! Get out the knife.”

“I’ll trust you with this,” John remarked and pulled out a Baelementium multi-purpose knife. It was sharp enough to do the duty of cutting open the belly of the creature.

It was not the first time John was cleaning out an animal. In the past year, he had learned a great many things. Many experiences were those he had sought out. Hunting was something he had done little of. Too much of a time investment and it stimulated similar brain functions as running dungeons did. Gutting animals was more easily come about, especially since they got the Farm. Aclysia regularly picked the animal they would eat over the coming month herself and John sometimes helped in turning it from one carcass into a great variety of cuts.

Metra still had way more experience with this.

“If it’s hard to cut, you’re doing something wrong,” the ancient weapon told him.

“This isn’t exactly a normal… creature!” John stopped in the middle of his sentence to try and sever the connection between one of the wooden spikes on the back and fur. The cut he made was jagged and he slipped out of the body. Almost, he cut his own hand. “Christ!” he cursed, more out of frustration than shock.

“Gimme that,” Metra demanded and wrestled the knife from him. After a few seconds of analysis, she jabbed the knife into the creature’s spine. Little blood flowed as a layer of fat was protecting the fibres further down. “There’s a ring of… what do you call the soft-bony stuff again?”

“Cartilage.”

“Yeah, that, around the thorns. Just cut around it.” Metra handed the knife back, after she had demonstrated. John failed at cleanly executing the advice around the second spike, but by the third he had a good handle on this. “It’s always surprising how little your genius translates on you actually using your hands.”

“Well, I’m the son of an engineer. I can solve puzzles nicely, but my hands lag behind my brain,” John responded and smiled over his shoulder. “Makes it more educational to step out of my comfort zone.”

“Most romantic date ever,” the First of Wrath purred and she meant that. Metra was a simple woman, after all. Practical and violent, always looking for some way to be physically active. “Kings should be able to hunt.”

“I think everyone should be able to hunt,” John returned, while starting the hand-staining work of separating skin from muscle. “Or at least be able to slaughter. Makes people more aware of what goes into it when a steak conveniently appears on a supermarket shelf. I’m speaking from experience when I say that most people aren’t quite respectful enough of what goes into their conveniences.”

“What do you want to come out of that? Less meat eating?”

“Not really, if they want their meat, the people should have it.” John stabbed into the exposed muscles. He was careful to cut along the fibres. The sharp knife practically glided through the red, raw flesh. “I would recommend people do the same for farming and such. It’s just nice when everyone has the skills to assure their own survival.” He reached into his inventory. “We’ll be here all day if I do this on my own.” He presented Metra a second knife.

The two of them carved away at the corpse and chatted. Halfway through, John heard a most unusual noise from Metra. It was that particular slurping sound of someone sucking in saliva before swallowing. When he first heard it, he thought that the First of Wrath was making some kind of cryptic joke. Not two minutes later, she wiped her mouth with a clean bit of her arm.

“Everything alright?” John asked, interrupting their current topic.

“Yeah, just… feeling empty. Physically empty,” Metra said. “You ever feel like there’s something missing in your stomach and you just don’t know what to fill it with?”

“…That’s hunger, Metra, you’re describing hunger.” The hesitation in his answer came from how unusual it was that she felt that way. Artificial Spirits only ate metals or other materials when they wanted to expand, not out of urgency. Metra, whose body composition was largely set, only engaged in this to replenish or to get into a buzzed, drunken state by swallowing badly made enchantments.

Only Claire with her Voracity Perk felt anything like hunger.

“Okay… but why?” Metra shook her head. “Must be something else. Let’s just get this done.”

They carved what they wanted out of the boar’s corpse and left the rest behind. John did typically have a waste-not attitude, but he also didn’t care too much to leave a corpse in a forest. All manners of carrion feeders would see it returned to earth within a matter of weeks.

They found a clearing and started a small campfire. John sharpened a few sticks and made improvised skewers. Six of them were lined up around the campfire. They washed their hands with water stored in his inventory. He continued to talk to Metra. An effort that was swiftly proven useless. The blonde was staring at the meat, saliva dripping from her chin. “Yeah, this is definitely not normal.” Metra didn’t even hear that. He almost snapped his fingers to get her attention. That would have been the wrong kind of attention. Instead, he waved his hand in front of her eyes.

“What? Sorry, I zoned out there…” Metra looked around, as if she had to reorient herself. “The fuck is going on?”

“You should try one,” John stated, plucking one of the skewers out of the dirt. It looked serviceable.

“It’s a fucking pain to get decayable stuff out of me,” the First of Wrath reminded him.

“I know, but there are exceptions,” John moved the skewer left to right and saw her eyes track it like a cat did with a light on the wall, “to that rule, for specific substances, and to that rule in general. Your instincts are telling you something, so give it a try.”

Metra took the skewer from him without any further hesitancy and immediately ripped one of the pieces of unseasoned flesh off it. Her eyes went wide. Chewing for less than three seconds, she swallowed and went straight for the next piece of meat. Swiftly, she had wolfed down the entirety of it. Her tail was wagging behind her. More saliva dripped off her chin like the meat juices off the sizzling flesh.

“You can have all of them,” John told her with a smirk. Taking that invitation, the wolf girl began her feast. To observe her eating was fulfilling, for the sole reason that she was so absurdly happy while doing it. John reached up and scratched her behind the ears while she got her fill.

Her ears were as soft as the rest of her wild, golden mane. Warm, they invited John to softly rub them between his fingers. The tail wagging intensified. Hair whipped harmlessly against John’s side repeatedly. Constant movement of his fingers transformed the expression on Metra’s face from satisfaction to entranced relaxation. Tilting her head, she let John easily access both of her ears for further scratches.

The devouring of the meat became more civilized, by virtue of her slowed down motions. “Hmmm,” she hummed, halfway down the last one. She turned it over to John, who gladly took the gift. The meat was too red for his taste, doubtlessly to do with it having not been left to bleed for a particularly long time. Still, it was yummy for what it was.

As soon as John tossed the used stick into the supernatural wilderness, Metra dropped her head into his lap. Now with two hands, he rubbed her ears and chin. The seasoned warrior of countless wars was just a happy little lapdog at the moment – and that was fine. Every badass needed their soft side.

“It’s probably some odd manifestation of your Fenrir aspects,” the Gamer theorized. “If you can’t digest things, then that will be an issue. Let me know.”

“Sure thing, my King,” Metra responded. Her tail was now flopping about, unable to wag properly with its base stuck under her shapely behind. “You still not budging on that?”

“I’m afraid so,” the Gamer returned. “Would it suffice if I married Lydia and became king-consort?”

“No.” Metra kept her eyes closed as she responded. Her face was relaxed. They’ve had this conversation so many times, neither of them reacted particularly intensely to any aspects of it anymore.

“Figured.” John ran a hand over her head. No order was established to her chaotic, Rave-inspired wildness of a mane by that gesture. The positive aspect of that was that he could scratch her ears as much as he wanted without causing a mess. “I love you.”

“I love you more, John,” she dared suggest.

They had a back of forth for nearly five minutes.