The buffalo was very huge.
This was not a profound observation, but it was the one Kaito's mind produced in the first second, and then his instincts caught up with his thinking and he was already moving, pushing up from the ground and putting distance between himself and the animal in a fast, graceless way.
The buffalo tracked him.
It turned slowly, then it lowered its head, and the horns came forward, and Kaito understood with complete clarity that this thing was going to charge.
"Inosi," he said, keeping his voice level. "This would be a good time to intervene."
"Actually i want to see you fight it," Inosi said, from somewhere behind and to his left.
Kaito's heart began to hammer in his chest.
"It's D-rank, Inosi."
"I know."
"I'm F-rank."
"Also true," she said, with the tone of someone finding a conversation mildly interesting.
Kaito glanced back at her. She had her spear in both hands, but she was standing at ease, watching him.
From her posture it was obvious that she wasn't coming to his aid, he was alone in this.
'She is absolutely a crackhead' he thought. 'What functioning person gambles the life of their summoned hero on a D-rank beast encounter in the first hour of training? A crackhead. That is who does that.'
He turned back to the buffalo and put his hands up in what he hoped was a universal gesture of non-aggression.
"Hey, buffalo, Let's think about this."
The buffalo huffed loudly and charged at him.
Kaito threw himself sideways.
The horns passed close enough that he felt the displacement of air against his cheek, and then he hit the ground hard, shoulder first, and the impact rattled up through his collarbone and into his teeth. He lay there for a half-second taking stock, determined that nothing was broken, and got back up.
Inosi was still watching and it didn't seem like she was going to intervene.
A thought arrived that was cold enough to stop him for a moment despite the circumstances. Givelle had sent him out here with one of her generals, what if she had instructed Inosi to take him to the forest and kill him there, making his death seem like an accident.
It would explain why Inosi had chosen to go to the outer forest and why she was now watching him get chased by a D rank buffalo
He began to sweat profusely and his heartbeat triplled in force and frequency, soon he is entire body was covered in a sheen of sweat.
As he faced his near death, a sudden stubborn motivation came to him. He was not going to die here, he could not. He had asked for a second chance and he had received it and he was not going to lose it in a forest to a buffalo on the first evening because a possibly-crackhead general decided to stand back and watch.
The buffalo rushed at him again.
He moved, and this time barely got out the way. The horn grazed the air above his back as he went down, he hit the ground on his palms and pushed himself up immediately, breathing hard now.
He looked at the animal.
It was big, and it was strong, and it was faster than it had any right to be, and the dagger in his hand was a small and unimpressive piece of metal, but it was what he had, and he was not going to keep running in circles until he became tired.
He made himself look at it properly. Past the size and the momentum, at the shape of it, the way it moved, the places where the mass was distributed. The chest was too thick, the skull was obviously too strong, and the legs would not register a dagger. But the head — when it charged, when the neck extended and the chin came up slightly with the force of the movement —
There. The underside of the jaw, just where the neck began. The skin would be softer there, and if he hit it right and hit it deep enough —
He set his feet and waited.
The buffalo read him correctly, or well enough — as he moved to commit, its head swung in a motion that was faster and sharper than it should have been for something that size, and the dagger spun out of his grip and hit the ground somewhere to his right, and Kaito's hand was empty.
He stared at the buffalo.
The buffalo looked at him triumphantly and raised its head to gorge him.
Then the spear came over his shoulder.
In one motion, Inosi moved past him, and her spear found the animal with a precision that seemed almost unreasonable. The buffalo made a single sound and then it collapsed to the ground, unmoving.
Silence returned to the clearing.
Kaito looked at the animal, then at Inosi, who was retrieving her spear with the casual efficiency of someone completing a familiar task. The movement had taken perhaps two seconds, beginning to end and she wasn't even breathing harder.
He stared at her.
"She's genuinely gotten hotter," he thought. "That was incredible, the way she killed it.."
Inosi turned to look at him.
Kaito's mouth closed.
Her expression was somewhere between amused and appraising, her head tilted at a slight angle. "What did you say?"
Heat moved into his face at a speed he had no control over. He had said that out loud. He had said all of that out loud, beginning to end, while she was standing two metres away.
"Nothing," he said. "Combat delirium. Post-adrenaline. It's a documented phenomenon."
Inosi held his gaze for a moment longer, and a slow and very deliberate smirk moved across her face.
"We should continue," she said, and turned back toward the forest,
Kaito looked at the sky briefly and followed her.
The next two hares took longer.
The first one he missed entirely on the initial approach, misjudged the angle, and spent a frustrating several minutes relocating it before finally getting the distance right and completing the kill cleanly.
The second one was worse — it evaded him twice in a row, and Inosi watched both attempts without comment, which he found more difficult to endure than criticism would have been. He caught it on the third try, and the satisfaction of killing it was proportionally larger than it should have been for an F-rank creature.
The system notification arrived, and then another.
He pulled up his profile.
[KAITO MURA]
Level: 4
Class: F
STR: 40
AGI: 10
VIT: 40
INT: 40
Mana: None
Skills: 1. Hidden — 2. Mana Acquisition
He was now much stronger than he was initially, infact he could feel the difference already in his body.
He smiled, small and private, down at the screen.
"It's time to go home," Inosi said.