When Elene opened her eyes, the world was flooded with colors. She had never seen anything so vibrant, so alive. There were bird-like creatures soaring the skies, cat-like creatures that prowled on the ground, and in the distant river she could see fish with wings that dipped in and out of the water. The sky was more purple than blue, and the green hues of the trees and grass were a darker emerald than she remembered. "Beautiful..." She whispered with sparkling eyes.
"What is?" Aldar asked. He didn't think she could sense mana yet, so how could she call something beautiful? "Oh right... You can't see... I feel sorry for you, for not being able to see this view." She looks at the sun rising over the edge of the forest, setting the snow on the mountains aglow, and the river winding around shone with the brilliance of many stars, the light flickering gently.
"Wait, then what do you think is pretty? You can't see, so it must mean something different for you." Elene says, turning to look back at Aldar. "A person's mana levels. Since there's only two reasonable ways to increase it, a person's mana level is proof of their hard work or charisma. That strength or talent of theirs is what is truly beautiful. We can talk about this later, I need to get to work." Aldar says, swiftly moving on to the task at hand.
Aldar pulls out his gear from his inventory. He equips his iron claws and grabs the long pole on his back. His inventory materializes a blade on the pole, and it becomes a scythe. "Stay here." Aldar says to Elene before he jumps off the cliff and charges towards the nearest monster, a tigerooth. Elene was surprised at the sudden appearance of the weapons, but swiftly adjusted. When she went through the portal, she was given some information by the magic, which is why she was able to adjust so quickly upon being told she was summoned to another world. That was the magic's gift to people summoned by the intelligence portal, the ability to swiftly understand and adapt to new information.
Elene watches Aldar as he runs at the beast. The beast turns to leap on him, and Aldar jumps over the beast's head. Aldar turns his body using the scythe, which cleanly cuts off the beast's head. "Wow..." Elene says quietly as he lands. Aldar changes the scythe blade into a spear point with a short gesture and rushes towards another beast, a deer-like creature. The creature leaps at him, and he stabs at it. The stab hits the creature, and Aldar gets sent flying at what seemed to be a controlled angle because he delicately landed on a thick tree branch. "Active Recoil?" Elene says under her breath, stunned. She became incomparably excited as she watched Aldar do things no human in her world could ever achieve.
Aldar managed to get a few more beasts even though he only continued hunting for another shifting of the sun. He pockets the beasts in his inventory, along with his weapons, and charges at the cliff. He runs up part of the way, and climbs the rest of the way. His bloody, mud-covered figure was far from handsome, but Elene gazed at him with admiration.
"Wow Aldar, that was amazing! Could I learn to move like that?" Elene asked in awe. "Good, you could tell what I was doing. I wasn't sure since you can't sense yet. I could teach you to move like that, but you'll have to work hard." Aldar said in a chipper tone, pleased by the days haul. "I will!" Elene said excitedly.
"Good. We have a bit more time, let me see how much you know." Aldar decided a quiz about the creatures he caught and how he moved would help him better understand Elenes current knowledge base. "Let's start with weak points. Did you find any on the beasts I killed?" Aldar asked what would be a freebie amongst clan members, at least any that watched the hunt.
"No, I'd have to dismantle the corpse to understand its anatomical structure." Elene said, switching into student mode. "I could give a few guesses based on the skeletal and muscular systems I learned in school, but they are completely different beasts. Still, there should be some overlap." Elene mutters thoughtfully. Aldar wasn't sure what she was talking about, and almost decided to label her ignorant. However, he was curious and he was in a good mood from the easy kill.
Aldar took out a beast from his inventory. "I'll give you a few minutes. Find what weak points you can." Aldar said, handing her a knife. This particular beast was almost flavorless, and the adults were only prized during winter months. In the winter it hibernated, only waking for brief periods to dig up some of its hidden stores for its children before returning to hibernation. The children couldn't go through the whole winter on their body fat alone, unlike the parents. The parents made for an easy target and could feed the whole cave for a day or more with just two adults. Elene barely registered what he said, she started sketching in the ground with a stick.
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Elene broke down the beast into four animals she found at least relatively familiar. Its appearance seemed to be a cross between a bear and a squirrel, but the texture of the meat she found was not unlike a catfish's, and the relatively large size despite the youth apparent from the teeth that were not fully grown in, that the fourth animal was probably something like a mammoth. The creature had a long bushy tail, and long wire-like fur. The four buck teeth at the front indicated a type of animal that used their teeth a lot, like a beaver or squirrel, but considering there were also omnivorous teeth at the back, she leaned towards it being a squirrel.
Elene measured the claws, and noted they ranged from 2-4 inches, ideal for a bear-like creature to climb trees. Well, at least in its youthful stages. If it got much larger than this, the tree would snap. Elene examined its nose. Usual strong sniffer, typical for animals in the carnivoran category. After hesitating for a small moment before the intelligence blessing helped her focus on the task at hand. Elene took a rock and hit the nose hard, breaking it. "The nose would be this creature's first weakness. Hit that, you take away one of its best means of understanding the world. Also hurts pretty bad." Elene said, briefly glancing at Aldar.
Elene returned to her work analyzing the creature, while Aldar concentrated his sense on the outlines she made with wonder, not seeing them the way Elene did but 'seeing' the traces of life and mana she left behind in an otherwise generally dead spot on the ground. There were inaccuracies, sure, but she had a pretty good rough outline of the bones inside the creature.
Elene sketched out the field of view, then rotated the creature's limbs. "If you attack it from right here, right in front of it or here, right behind it, it wouldn't be able to see you. If you masked your scent and stepped lightly, you might be able to land a sneak attack, but I wouldn't recommend it. I'd instead focus on attacking this joint attaching its arms to its body. It's made of a relatively weak collection of bones, much like a human's knee, and once it's damaged it will take not only one of its means of attack, but also its means of running."Aldar was silent for a moment. Then, he turned and dashed down the cliff again. A few minutes later, he returned with another one of the creatures. "... You were right, a Squirrelaire can be terribly weakened by attacking that joint." Aldar says, half frustrated they hadn't figured this out sooner, and half awed by Elene's ability to figure out the weak points of a dead animal- the clan had to observe the live animal for days to figure out some of the less obvious weak points. The freebie question he asked her earlier was only a freebie in the sense that he killed the creature in about three moves, and to anyone with the ability to sense, it would have been obvious that the stab to the nose on his second attack was what decided the battle. He was silent for a while.
"So, how did I do?" Elene asked Aldar nervously. "Think you could do that with any animal?" Aldar throws a question back at her. "Probably, though the more different the animal is from my world the more time I would need with it." Elene said after a moment. "Could you figure this out during combat?" Aldar asked, trying not to get excited. Elene was figuring out new weak points, if she was quick, her help on large hunts might reduce the damage to the cave hunters.
"I might be able to come up with a few guesses, but I could only really be certain if I dissected it first. The two I gave you were just conjectures based on the wounds and the materials of the body parts I specified. If I was just watching, I might figure out a pattern, but my results would be far more accurate if I could dismantle them first." Elene explained. Aldar was slightly disappointed- Elene felt like she could see dog ears flop down on his head.
"I see. Well, I'll see if I can get you a few corpses to take apart. I will go ahead and say you don't have much in the way of basic knowledge, but you have a unique knowledge set that lets you figure things out. You pass for now, I'll figure out a regime over the next few weeks." Aldar said. He was pleased with his new understanding of Elene. Intelligence was also respected in the clan, though it was much more subtle and needed to be proven, whereas charisma or strength was evident by the amount of mana stored in their mana core. They return to the cave, Elene taking one last look at the outside world before returning. The realm of darkness closed in on her. Aldar carried her to the crevice they slept at, and there she sat as he went off to do... something.
Elene had all the time she wanted to think again, and she already had her topic- why wasn't she bothered by all the blood and gore? Why was she so... astute? She was so quick to figure out where she could deal the most damage and ways to kill the beast quickly. She had dissected small creatures before, but modern life never really gave her a chance to interact with the freshly fallen.
Elene could still feel the warmth of their blood on her hands, but it didn't bother her in the way that it should. Now she worried that something inside her changed when she came to this world. It scared her that she might become numb to blood, to the life of other beings. She gripped her hands tightly, deliberating over how she might go clinically insane if she stopped caring about others. She breathes in and out, trying to regulate the emotions that are already shrinking like they're a drink for the thirsty.
Sneakers meowed and forced Elene to pet him, rubbing his chin along her hand. "Sneakers, stop, you'll get all dirty!" Elene said in a mildly stern voice. Sneakers just licked her palm, and Elene calmed down. "Silly..." She murmured with a wistful smile. She loved Sneakers just the same. She hadn't gone numb. Everything was going to be fine... Right? She clutched Sneakers to her chest, the scent of blood filling her nose. The foreign scent seeped into her skull and she reminded herself she must never forget that all life is precious.
