Legends: The Emerald World

Ase lunged from her seat, rushing toward Shin with a baffled face. How did he manage to hunt a deer, those creatures are fast, even for her. She pushed that thought to the back of her head and took the heavy load off his back.

"We must bleed it out first." She grabbed the deer's carcass with a bite to the back of the neck. Shin had seen this before, but seeing it this close always felt unsettling, seeing a human mouth open as wide as that of a big cat, revealing a set of sharp fangs supported by powerful muscles and a rough tongue.

Ase dragged the deer to the top of the tree she was sleeping under and handled it down from a branch, the holes made by her bite enough to let the blood down. She usually never did this, a beast like her can eat raw meat without getting sick, but since she isn't alone now, she has to make sure Shin doesn't get sick.

She looked at Shin who was staring at the flowing blood. She has a feeling he would eat raw meat if she doesn't cook for him. "What are you thinking about?" He noticed her gaze and asked.

"That you might eat raw meat." She was honest, but still, her answer seemed to confuse Shin even more, he expected her to ask about how he hunted the deer.

"It'll upset my stomach, but since we're in a survival situation, I wouldn't mind eating raw meat if I don't have anything besides it. And especially if lighting a fire would attract monsters." He looked around, "I didn't sense any major monsters around, so we should be fine to cook."

He sat down, "Don't you have any other questions?"

"Like who are you, how did you know how to escape the dragon, why did you transform like this, and how could you hunt a deer after being starved for weeks?" She jumped down, landing beside him with a thud.

Shin's eyes immediately noticed something that scared him a bit, when she landed, her breasts didn't bounce even though they were big, now that he is thinking about it, he never saw them move… Muscles, a lot of them.

"Do you know about cultivators?" He asked, quickly shifting his gaze to her face.

"Yeah, but don't even get me started about them." She shook her head, "We rarely see face to face, we only agreed once, and that agreement was that we shouldn't get in each other way."

"You? And all the cultivators?" He lifted an eyebrow, confused even more.

"Sorry, I'm not good with words. I meant us…the people using the system." She was as confused as him, "Don't you know?"

"I don't, please explain." Shin sat down and she explained everything. The war with the demons, how the empire had turned into a tyrannical oligarchy of rich nobles and warlords. And lastly about the feud between systematics and cultivators. The main difference is that the systematics kill monsters and do quests to level up and grow in power, while cultivators collect rare artifacts and rare magical items to absorb their power and grow stronger.

"Cultivators are known to be thieves, obnoxious ideal-driven fools." She sighed, "Not like we systematics are better, we're known as blood-thirsty murderhobos, violent killers with no morals or a red line."

Shin giggled, "You're making cultivators sound better…I'm kinda glad." He leaned back and Char who was crawling on his head jumped to his shoulder.

"Both sides have bad and good." Ase smiled, "If you are a low-level human or a beast, systematics won't even bother you, you won't be worth the effort. The masses love them since they kill monsters and keep the peace."

"And cultivators? Do they sit ideally sipping wine?" He remembered his students sneaking around to cultivate beneath the world tree while he sat and sipped his wine. At that time, he had already reached the peak.

"No, they are adventurers. They deliver deep into uncharted lands, labyrinths, and monster-infested caves in seek of artifacts and glory, most of the land and labyrinth concurred, probably a cultivator's doing." Ase looked at the massive oak trees surrounding them.

"This forest was once infested with green exploding monsters that creep up on you and blow up. A cultivator had cleaned them all up for free…I mean, no one paid him, but he did take all the monsters and their secrets with him." She looked at the deer, "It's almost done."

"One last thing I wanted to ask about… What is this voice popping around, like notice this and that?" He stood with her as they were getting ready to pull the deer down and start cutting it.

"What's that?" She looked back at him, "A voice?"

"I just hear it every now and then, tell me that I leveled up or something." He looked at her, confused.

"Leveled up? We check our levels with appraisal crystals, you shouldn't be able to know otherwise." She looked at his head, "If you're hearing voices, it might be a unique skill that you were born with. Some people are like that."

At that moment, Shin realized that something might be off, putting two and two together and getting five. He is leveling up, as well as cultivating, is it possible to do both?

"Can you be both a cultivator and a systematic?" He asked and Ase giggled, "Puff! Of course not, that isn't possible."

The two pulled the deer down and Ase used her claw to cut it to pieces, since they were on the move and had no way to store the meat, the best they could do was eat their fill and keep a few for later.

As cut the meat off the deer's thighs and arms. Shin on the other hand found a good place to bury the organs and everything else.

As Shin returned, Ase had already snacked on the meat and was waiting for him. "Do you know a way to light a fire? Magic isn't my thing."

"Magic? Spells." He looked at the ground, looking for dried branches and bushes. "I only know one way to make a fire that I can do now. It's boring, exhausting, and extremely unpractical." He lifted a branch and started swirling it on another piece of dry wood, occasionally putting dried leaves and branches around it.

After several minutes of hard work, he finally got a spark. As Shin cooked the meat with Ase, Char went out to hunt something more palatable for a spider.

Now that Shin had recovered some power, Char had felt amazing, unbeatable. Unlike the other spiders, she could jump from one tree to another, punch birds away, and even run faster than most small animals.

Feeling all that power coursing through her tiny body made her more daring, today she'll feast on her worst enemy, large lizards.

"Just wait for me, scale brains. I've got the power of titans behind my back." She giggled, licking her fangs.