The howl echoed through the forest a second time, lower and closer than before.
The sound carried through the trees with a familiar predatory weight that immediately pulled Traise back to the earlier chase through the forest, when a full-grown Moonfang Stalker had nearly killed him.
His body reacted before his thoughts fully caught up.
His grip tightened around the Silverhorn Bone Dagger while his shoulders stiffened instinctively, every survival instinct warning him not to ignore the danger hidden deeper within the darkness ahead.
But unlike before, he didn’t immediately run.
That realization alone felt strange.
Hours ago, hearing something like that would have sent him fleeing blindly through the forest without hesitation.
Back then, he had barely understood how The Upgrade System worked, and every creature larger than a rabbit had felt like an unavoidable death sentence.
Now, even with the lingering fear twisting inside his chest, things were different.
His body moved differently.
The Silverhorn Boots still made every step feel unnaturally light beneath him, while the constant Dexterity increases had sharpened his reactions enough that navigating the forest no longer felt impossible.
He still wasn’t strong, but he also wasn’t helpless anymore.
Even so, the howl sent tension crawling down his spine as he moved carefully between the trees.
The deeper sections of the forest remained unnaturally dense in some places while opening into sparse clearings in others, creating long shadows between clusters of glowing plants and twisted roots.
Every distant sound immediately pulled at his attention now.
Rustling leaves.
Cracking branches.
Wind shifting through the canopy above.
Several minutes later, he found the first sign.
Something small and furred lay half-hidden beneath a tree, its side ripped open violently enough that exposed bone and viscera could easily be seen.
Fresh blood still stained the surrounding dirt.
Traise crouched beside it carefully.
Still warm.
His stomach tightened immediately.
It’s nearby…
The thought had barely formed when movement exploded from the darkness to his left.
Traise reacted instantly, throwing himself backward as silver-gray fur flashed through the space where his throat had been moments earlier.
Claws sliced through empty air while the creature landed several meters away with unnatural smoothness, barely making a sound as it repositioned itself between the trees.
Traise’s eyes widened slightly.
The creature was smaller than the previous Moonfang Stalker, but “small” definitely wasn’t the right word.
The creature looked leaner and shorter than the adult Moonfang Stalker from earlier, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
Pale blue eyes locked onto him immediately, while silver-gray fur blended unnaturally well with the shadows surrounding it.
Every visible movement carried the same predatory confidence he remembered from before.
It’s a Moonfang cub…
The thought appeared instinctively, but any expectation that the creature would therefore be weak vanished almost immediately.
The Moonfang cub moved again without warning.
Fast.
Far too fast.
Traise barely twisted aside before claws tore across his ribs hard enough to send sharp pain through his entire side.
[You have taken 4 damage]
“Damn it—”
He stumbled backward while the cub immediately circled away instead of continuing its attack directly.
Its movements felt disturbingly controlled.
The creature wasn’t charging recklessly like some wild animal.
It watched him carefully while repositioning through the trees, waiting for an opening, the same way an experienced predator would pressure wounded prey.
Even a Moonfang cub was still a dangerous hunter.
That realization settled heavily inside his mind as he forced himself to keep moving.
If he stopped reacting for even a second, he was dead.
It suddenly lunged again.
This time, Traise reacted faster, sidestepping while slashing with the Silverhorn Bone Dagger at nearly the same moment.
The cub twisted unnaturally mid-motion, avoiding most of the strike, but the blade still cut shallowly across one shoulder before the creature landed several meters away again.
Blood dripped through silver fur while the cub snarled low in its throat.
The wound clearly hurt, but not enough to slow it down.
Traise’s breathing grew heavier while blood continued running down his own side.
Even with 20 Dexterity and the movement bonus from the Silverhorn Boots, he still felt pressured constantly.
The cub’s speed exceeded anything he had fought so far except the first Stalker, and worse, it knew how to use that speed intelligently.
Every attack forced him to react immediately, while the creature itself committed to almost nothing.
His eyes flicked briefly toward the surrounding terrain to look for options.
The cub attacked again before he could fully think through a plan.
Traise forced himself not to retreat directly backward this time.
Instead, he shifted around a thick tree trunk while the Moonfang cub lunged past him, and he immediately drove the dagger downward toward its side.
The blade struck deeper this time.
The cub twisted violently and slammed into him anyway.
[You have taken 3 damage]
The impact threw him hard against the ground while claws ripped across his shoulder painfully enough to numb his arm for a moment.
The cub managed to recover first.
The creature spun immediately and lunged toward his neck before Traise barely jammed the dagger upward in desperation.
The blade pierced into the side of the cub’s jaw.
A violent snarl exploded directly in front of his face while hot breath washed across his skin.
Blood dripped from the wound immediately, but the creature still fought with terrifying force as it tried to tear free from the dagger embedded near its mouth.
Traise planted one boot against its chest and shoved with everything he had.
The cub finally ripped itself free before landing several meters away again, blood now dripping steadily from its jaw onto the dirt below.
Its eyes looked even colder afterward.
[Minor Regeneration Mastery increased: 13 / 100]
Traise forced himself upright while clutching his injured shoulder.
The cuts across his body already burned slightly less than before.
Minor Regeneration had activated automatically again, slowly closing the shallowest wounds first, but the healing felt painfully slow compared to the damage the cub could inflict in a single clean hit.
If that thing had landed a strike on his throat, regeneration wouldn’t matter.
Then the cub vanished.
Traise froze immediately.
No movement.
No sound.
His pulse hammered inside his ears while he turned slowly between the trees, desperately searching for even a glimpse of silver-gray fur through the darkness.
Then instinct screamed at him.
He ducked.
Claws tore across the side of his neck instead of fully ripping through it.
[You have taken 4 damage]
Pain exploded instantly.
Warm blood spilled down his collarbone while Traise nearly collapsed from the sudden impact.
The cub landed behind him silently before beginning another slow circle through the trees, still patient despite its injuries.
Still hunting carefully.
The realization hit hard.
This thing wasn’t panicking or fighting desperately.
Even wounded, it still viewed him as prey.
Traise’s breathing became ragged while blood continued dripping from multiple wounds across his body.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he truly understood how dangerous the power difference between creatures could become.
His stat increases were real.
The equipment bonuses were real.
The levels mattered.
But none of that erased experience.
None of it erased instinct.
The cub was born for this.
The next attack came low and fast.
Traise reacted differently this time.
Instead of trying to evade it entirely, he baited the creature intentionally.
The moment the cub lunged toward his injured side, he deliberately shifted later than he normally would have.
Claws tore deeply into his thigh.
[You have taken 2 damage]
Pain nearly made his leg buckle instantly, but the cub had finally committed too far forward.
Traise grabbed the loose fur near its neck with one hand and drove the dagger downward repeatedly with the other.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The creature howled violently while thrashing beneath him, its claws tearing across his stomach during the struggle.
[You have taken 1 damage]
Traise ignored the pain completely and slammed the dagger down one final time directly into the creature’s throat.
The cub convulsed violently beneath him before finally collapsing against the forest floor.
Silence returned.
Traise remained there for several long seconds while blood dripped steadily from his body onto the dirt below.
His entire body shook uncontrollably now, not from exhaustion alone, but from adrenaline and delayed fear finally crashing into him all at once.
If this fight had happened when he first arrived in this world, he would have died almost immediately.
[Minor Regeneration Mastery increased: 14 / 100]
Traise let out a weak breath while staring down at the collapsed cub beneath him.
The fight had been brutal from beginning to end, and even now, his entire body still shook from the aftermath.
Every wound burned.
Blood soaked through his torn clothes.
His heartbeat still hammered hard enough that he could feel it in his throat.
But beneath the pain and exhaustion, something else slowly surfaced.
Excitement.
Not because the fight had been easy.
It absolutely hadn’t.
The cub had nearly killed him several times despite being smaller and weaker than the adult Moonfang Stalker he encountered earlier.
But that was exactly what made the realization settling into his mind feel so important.
He survived.
Hours ago, a creature like this would have torn him apart almost instantly.
Now, even if barely, he had managed to kill it through strategy, adaptation, and sheer desperation.
The Upgrade System wasn’t making him invincible, but it was making him stronger fast enough to survive things that should have completely overwhelmed him.
Traise slowly pushed himself upright and looked toward the Silverhorn Hare corpse from earlier.
The body still lay where he left it before the ambush, and now that the immediate danger had passed, curiosity returned to the front of his mind.
Should he carry it somewhere to cook for later?
Traise focused on the corpse as he examined it when a prompt appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Store Silverhorn Hare Corpse?]
Estimated Weight: 11kg
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His eyes widened slightly.
“…You can store entire bodies?”
Until now, he had unconsciously treated the inventory like a place for loot and supplies, not full corpses.
But if entire creatures could be stored, then transporting kills, harvesting materials later, and preserving meat suddenly became much easier.
After a brief hesitation, he mentally confirmed the action.
The dead Silverhorn Hare vanished instantly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Silverhorn Hare Corpse Stored]
Current Inventory Capacity:
21kg / 65kg
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared at the numbers while mentally piecing things together.
Twenty-one kilograms meant the inventory had apparently been tracking the weight of everything stored inside it from the beginning.
The meat, furs, water, and other monster materials all counted toward total storage capacity.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Sixty-five kilograms maximum.
His current Strength was thirteen.
If his math was correct, that was around five kilograms per Strength point.
“So inventory space scales with Strength…”
The realization made more sense the longer he thought about it.
A stronger body didn’t just improve combat ability.
The Upgrade System apparently treated Strength as the overall carrying capacity, extending that same logic to spatial storage itself.
It also explained why equipped items hadn’t seemed to affect storage weight so far. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The gear he wore was excluded from inventory calculations.
The system really did think in terms of mechanics.
Traise exhaled slowly before limping towards the Moonfang cub corpse.
His body ached with every step now, but another random thought surfaced as he considered his stats affecting the system.
Mana.
His Intelligence had increased, yet his Mana remained exactly the same.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[The Upgrade System]
Mana: 10 / 10
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise frowned slightly.
“That still doesn’t make sense…”
In most games, Intelligence and Mana naturally scaled together.
Even in fantasy stories, magical energy usually increased alongside mental ability or magical understanding.
But despite gaining Intelligence earlier through adapting his combat tactics and learning how the system worked, nothing about his Mana had changed at all.
Maybe Mana simply had other conditions?
That possibility lingered in his thoughts while he crouched beside the Moonfang cub’s body.
Store.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Unable to Store]
Target is Alive
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise froze.
Then slowly looked down.
The cub’s chest still moved weakly.
His eyes widened slightly.
It was still alive.
Even after the dagger through its throat.
The realization hit him immediately.
The earlier experience notification had appeared because the creature was effectively defeated, but not fully dead.
If he had walked away carelessly, there was a chance the cub could have survived long enough to attack again later.
A dangerous mistake.
One he would not forget.
Traise exhaled slowly before driving the dagger down one final time.
The body twitched violently once before finally going still.
Then the system both spoke and appeared before him.
[You have killed an adolescent Moonfang Stalker]
[You have gained 10 Experience]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Level Up]
Level: 3
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Warm energy spread through his body almost instantly.
The exhaustion dulling his muscles eased slightly while fresh strength flowed through his limbs, though the pain from his injuries remained painfully obvious beneath the sensation.
Almost immediately afterward, he noticed the active quest hadn’t updated.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Quest: Kill 3 Moonfang Stalkers]
Progress: 0 / 3
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared at the unchanged quest progress before letting out a tired breath.
“So the young ones really don’t count?”
Honestly, considering the difference between this thing and the adult Moonfang Stalker from earlier, the distinction probably made sense.
He focused mentally on the corpse again.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Store Moonfang Stalker Cub Corpse?]
Estimated Weight: 25kg
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Store.
Traise’s eyes widened slightly.
“Heavier than I thought…”
The creature was smaller than the adult Moonfang Stalker, but its body still carried dense muscle beneath the fur.
After a brief pause, he mentally confirmed the action.
The corpse vanished instantly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Moonfang Stalker Cub Corpse Stored]
Current Inventory Capacity:
46kg / 65kg
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise leaned heavily against a nearby tree afterward while Minor Regeneration slowly worked across the shallowest injuries first.
Every part of his body hurt.
Blood soaked through his damaged clothes while the deeper wounds continued throbbing painfully beneath the slow healing effect.
Still, beneath the exhaustion and pain, excitement slowly returned.
He had survived a fight that should have killed him, and the realization alone made the pain feel strangely worth enduring.
Then another notification appeared.
The system window looked different from the others immediately.
Larger.
More noticeable.
Important enough that even Traise’s exhaustion faded slightly while staring at it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[New System Function Available]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared at the message while his heartbeat began quickening again.
“…What now?”