“Pant, pant, pant.”
I hid against a tree dyed pure white, gasping for breath.
Had I run too desperately?
My lungs swelled and contracted as though they were about to tear apart, and my legs, which had been moving without pause, finally gave out beneath me.
Why did I have to go through something like this? As that thought crossed my mind, sorrow washed over me in waves.
“Sn-sniff!”
But the reality was that I couldn't even let myself cry freely and give in to my feelings.
That thing was surely still chasing me.
“ROOOAR!”
A bear's roar echoed between the snow-white trees.
I forcibly held back the tears that threatened to spill at that terrifying sound and crouched down, holding my breath.
Why did this have to happen?
All I'd done was enter the White Forest Gate to kill some weak animal-type monsters and sell their Mana Stones....
Yet the moment I'd entered the Gate, I'd encountered a predator in the White Forest Gate, a place where predators were rare.
And not just any predator, but the White Forest Bear, the apex predator said to be the strongest monster there apart from the Gate's boss-level monsters.
I'd Awakened a few months ago, completed the basic training required to become a Hunter, and was only just taking my first step into the profession. But there was no such thing as beginner's luck for me.
If anything, I was practically the perfect example of someone with absolutely rotten luck.
“ROOOAR~!”
And why was that bear so persistent?
I'd thought it would have given up by now, yet it continued to pursue me relentlessly.
I didn't want to die.
I couldn't die in a place like this.
I had a younger sibling to support.
I'd been lucky enough to Awaken and had finally become a Hunter, a profession with a high income. I couldn't die like this.
But didn't they say that misfortunes came all at once?
On this day filled with nothing but misfortune, good luck wasn't about to arrive so easily.
Drip.
“...Rain?”
A tiny drop of water fell onto my head.
Weather conditions inside Gates were usually fixed, so the weather almost never changed.
Wondering why a droplet had fallen from the sky, I looked up. There stood a bear on its hind legs, its head resting against the tree above me as drool dripped from its mouth.
“ROOAR?”
“Ah.”
No wonder the bear had seemed strangely quiet for a while.
“Phew....”
The choice I made immediately afterward was the same one most humans would have made.
From thousands of years ago, when humans still carried stone axes, all the way to the modern era, it was a method thought to be one of the reasons humanity had survived as the rulers of creation.
Run as fast as possible and flee.
“AAAAAAAH!”
CRACK—!
“ROOOOOAR!”
I screamed and kicked off the snow-white ground, fleeing as the sounds of a tree crashing down and a bear roaring rang out behind me.
It was a terrifying situation, but I did have something of a plan.
I remembered something an instructor had said during the basic Hunter training sessions I'd found so tiresome.
‘If you encounter a powerful monster that you cannot defeat, do you know which option gives you the highest chance of survival?’
‘I don't know, sir!’
‘Running away. There are many reasons humanity became the dominant species, but one of them is endurance. No other creature on Earth can keep running a distance as long as 42 kilometers over an extended period the way humans can.’
‘The same is true of most monsters. So running away with everything you have will improve your chances of survival, even if only a little.’
In other words, if I could just keep running, I might somehow survive.
I have to hold on, no matter what!
“ROOOOOAR!”
“EEK!”
‘Well, that only applies when there is some distance between you and the monster. If you encounter a monster like that at close range... perhaps you would be better off praying.’
...Come to think of it, that Hunter training really was useless.
That was what I thought as the bear's forepaw, which had already caught up to me, struck me and sent me flying.
Perhaps I'd never had any hope from the beginning.
I didn't trust people, so I hadn't joined a guild or a party of Hunters.
And since I distrusted people, I also distrusted the Constellations who called themselves gods and had rejected even their offers of help.
Nor did I possess any special skills or particularly high stats.
So here I was, alone with my mediocre abilities, about to die without even being able to hope for a helping hand.
Maybe deciding to become a Hunter in the first place had been my mistake.
My body came to a stop when it struck a snow-white tree, and soon the surroundings, like a pure-white canvas, were stained red.
I struggled to move my arms and legs, desperate to survive, but I couldn't feel anything in them, as though they'd been severed. They wouldn't move at all.
Worse, my ribs seemed to be broken. I could barely draw even the shallowest breath, and the whole world looked red, as though I were wearing red sunglasses.
Am I going to die like this?
Is this what dying feels like?
No....
Someone... anyone, help me....
Please.
FWOOOSH~!
“ROOOOOOOAR!”
As though someone had heard my wish, a shooting star suddenly flew in and lodged in the bear's right eye.
No, looking more closely at the bear's face, streaked with bloody tears, it wasn't a shooting star but an arrow.
“CLACK!”
Then came the sound of something rattling.
The bear soon recovered its senses and directed its hostility toward me.
No, toward something behind me, farther beyond.
FWOOOSH!
Another arrow flew in, as though its shooter paid no attention to the bear's hostility.
THUNK!
This time, however, the bear took several steps backward to dodge, and the arrow buried itself in the dirt.
“Thank... you....”
Whoever it was, they were clearly trying to protect me.
So I gathered what little breath I had left and offered my thanks in a faint voice.
“ROOOOOAR!”
But the bear had no intention of backing down so easily.
Perhaps it had realized the archer was trying to protect me, or perhaps it simply intended to grab its prey and flee. Either way, the bear charged straight at me.
With an arrow lodged in one eye and saliva flying from its mouth as it charged, the bear looked like the Grim Reaper himself.
“CLICK!”
I closed my eyes.
Was it because I believed someone would save me?
Or because I wanted to turn away from the death approaching me?
I didn't know myself.
Perhaps the clicking sound I'd heard, almost like an auditory hallucination, had seemed to be telling me to close my eyes.
“CLICK!”
“ROAR!”
As I lay with my eyes closed, listening to the rattling sound of something and the bear's savage cries, an overwhelming wave of sleep soon descended on me.
After all, this was my first time entering a Gate, and I'd been chased and injured by a monster.
In a single day, I'd endured things that would have made an ordinary person faint or die long ago.
The only reason I'd lasted this long was the strong body and willpower I possessed as an Awakened.
But even those seemed to have reached their limit. I could no longer resist the drowsiness crashing down on me like a landslide.
‘Please, let me open my eyes again....’
With that final thought, I lost consciousness.
***
“AAAAAAAH!”
I was wandering through the forest, looking for monsters on which to test my new bones, when I heard a scream.
The moment I heard it, I ran toward the sound and soon spotted a woman and a bear attacking her.
Watching the bear slowly approach the woman, I calmly grew my bow and an arrow, then drew the bowstring.
THUNK!
When I released it, the arrow pierced the bear's right eye.
“ROOOOOAR!”
Yet the bear didn't seem to notice me. It continued toward the woman, shedding bloody tears and radiating murderous intent.
“CLICK, CLICK!”
To protect the woman, I stepped in front of her and faced the murderous glare of the bear's remaining eye.
Only then did it occur to me that I looked quite monstrous myself. What if that woman saw me?
Fortunately, whether by luck or otherwise, she had closed her eyes and seemed to have passed out.
Then there's nothing holding me back.
CREAK...!
As I drew the bowstring, the sound of twisting bone echoed in my ears.
“ROOOOOOOAR!”
The bear charged with enough force to seem capable of smashing everything in its path, raising its right forepaw.
“CLICK.”
Not so fast.
SQUELCH!
“ROOOOAR!”
The moment I released the string, the arrow pierced straight through the bear's forepaw and flew far beyond it.
Before I'd used [Bone Replacement], my arrows had barely been able to pierce its hide and lodge in its flesh.
Now they could penetrate straight through bone.
It was a moment that clearly demonstrated just how effective my new bones were.
“Rooar...!”
But although the bear had lost one forepaw, it hadn't lost its fighting spirit and continued charging.
Even an ordinary monster might have been frightened enough to flee after an injury like that. The fact that it still came at me made its resentment unmistakable.
But it was slow.
Not slow enough for me to fire another arrow before it reached me, but certainly slow enough to dodge.
I leaned my waist slightly backward to avoid the bear's attack, then kicked off the ground to open up some distance.
“R-Rooar?”
The beast seemed bewildered, apparently not having expected me to dodge.
BANG~!
I released the bowstring toward the bear.
A sound much like a gunshot rang out as the arrow flew through the air and struck the space between its eyes.
“ROAR!”
Those were the bear's last words.
With that final cry, it died, the arrow still lodged between its eyes.
“CLACK! CLICK, CLICK!”
I couldn't help laughing at the sight.
After all, the bones in My left hand and pelvis had also once belonged to a bear..
That bear had been quite a difficult hunt.
When it charged at me, I'd shot its legs to bring it down, but it was so tough that it kept charging even with arrows stuck in it.
I'd suffered several injuries during that battle myself, and the damage remained on the parts of my body where I still used my original bones.
That was how difficult my fight with the White Forest Bear had been. Yet now, a bear like that had become an opponent I could hunt with just two arrows.
And that wasn't all.
Before, I'd barely managed to dodge a bear's attacks. Now I could avoid them with ease.
My Growth was truly tremendous.
At this point, I think I've more or less finished adjusting to my new body. I should be strong enough to land a blow on my senior.
Ah, but first, I need to collect that bear's bones.
White Forest Bear bones provided substantial stat increases, so as long as I avoided parts that overlapped with my current bones or couldn't be replaced for structural reasons, I could become even stronger.
“CLACK~ CLICK, CLICK!”
In high spirits, I used [Bone Manipulation] to create an arrow, intending to dismantle the bear's corpse.
“CLICK?!”
Suddenly, I felt dizzy.
Caught off guard by the abrupt sensation, I racked my spinning head for an explanation.
Low blood pressure? No. Probably not high blood pressure, either. A concussion? A stroke? A migraine?
No... I'm nothing but bones to begin with. There's no way I could get dizzy for any of those biological reasons.
Then....
Ah.
A realization flashed through my mind.
One of the reasons I'd decided to end my hunt with that wild dog earlier.
An inevitable phenomenon I'd completely forgotten about in my excitement over my overflowing strength.
Skill Overload.
The arrow I'd used to finish off the wild dog had been my forty-third arrow, and I'd made two more while hunting the bear.
On top of that, I'd created a new bow and had just made another arrow....
Wow, you stupid bastard.
You made another arrow when you were already close to your limit?
This was clearly my own mistake.
I suppose I'd gotten too excited at the thought of finally paying my senior back, even a little, for everything he'd put me through.
Damn it. Now I can't just ignore the arrow-making lessons my senior keeps trying to teach me.
I'll study hard when I get back....
CLATTER! CRASH!
With that final thought, my skeletal body collapsed into a heap, and my consciousness disappeared.