Hajin ran, hearing the thing behind him crashing through the underbrush.
'Of all the times,' he thought, lungs burning, 'I get chased out of my mind by a monster when I haven't eaten in two days.'
He threw himself sideways as the thing lunged past him, its antlers tearing through the air with scary precision. He scrambled back to his feet while it turned, watching purple drool run from its mouth.
It looked like a deer from a distance, with two Shards orbiting its antlers in a slow rotation, lighting up faintly as it lowered its head and charged again.
He ran, cut left around a thick trunk, grabbed a low branch and hauled himself up in one motion while the thing slammed into the tree below him. The bark splintered while the wood gave a cracking sound as it backed up and tried slamming into the trunk again.
He pressed himself against the trunk and looked down, watching it ram the tree repeatedly.
'Dammit, I'm just a one-Shard adventurer,' he thought, watching the trunk shudder under the impacts, 'no, I am worse than one-shard. People who are the same rank as me can easily kill that thing, so why am I so powerless?'
The tree groaned and he felt it suddenly tilt.
He climbed higher, fast, but not fast enough, because the deer hit the trunk one more time and the whole thing went down with a crack that sent leaves and splinters everywhere.
He wasted no time, the moment the tree hit the ground, he rolled to his feet fast and sprinted away while the monster was still pulling itself from the wreckage.
'If my summoning ability actually worked,' he thought, feeling his legs starting to burn a little, 'I could at least pull something out to distract it but my ability never worked.'
It has been like that ever since he awakened at sixteen when the awakening crystal registered him as a summoner. He tried everything he could to use his ability but all it ever did was make him dizzy.
He started to wonder that maybe he didn't have enough mana, but how else can you growth your core without using his ability? He was essentially stuck, with no way to grow.
'I guess it's only natural a talentless person like me was exiled,' he thought, looking back and seeing the deer gaining on him, 'after all, no great family will want to have someone that will drag down their reputation.'
He spotted another tree with low branches a few meters ahead and pushed himself harder. He jumped, grabbing the branch and swinging himself up, pulling himself onto a thicker limb.
He crouched there for a moment, looking down at the monster while his arms shook and his breathing got heavier.
The deer circled below, snorting, its antlers scraping bark off the trunk as it moved them side to side like it was sharpening them.
He tried to catch his breath and his mind wandered back to the exile, which was strange because he understood it, he really did.
The Flints had a reputation to protect and he was the living proof that the patriarch had made a mistake with a servant, so stripping the name and dumping him in a border city slum made sense.
It was the logical move, except they had also told him never to use the Flint name, not even accidentally, and the way the elder had said it in a calm, cold tone, was the part that still sat wrong with him even now, three years later.
'They didn't even seem to hate me,' he thought, watching the deer ram the trunk below, 'hate would have been something at least but this was something else, I can't even begin to explain it.'
He jumped to the next tree without thinking, catching a branch and landing on a thick limb, then jumped again to the next one, moving by instinct while his head was somewhere else entirely. He kept remembering memories from years ago, like how he was never allowed to train with the others or how he was never given a maid of his own like his siblings.
He was so lost in thought that he didn't hear the deer stop chasing.
What he heard instead was the roar, a deep guttural blast that hit the tree he was about to land on like a battering ram, cracking the trunk sideways and splintering halfway up. By the time his brain caught up to what was happening his foot was already reaching for a branch that wasn't there anymore, causing him to fall.
The ground hit him in the back and shoulder, knocking the air out of his lungs in one gasp. Before he could roll, move or even blink, the deer was on him, its antlers scooping under his body and tossing him like he weighed nothing.
His back slammed into a trunk with a crack he felt more than heard, something inside him shifting wrong as his mouth filled with the taste of blood before coughing it out.
He lay there for a second, staring up at the canopy through blurring vision, with his ribs screaming and something wet running down his chin.
'This is so unfair,' he thought, looking at the monster standing in front of him. He was nineteen and had never done anything wrong to anyone but the world kept treating him like a thing to be stepped on.
From the Flints to the guilds that wouldn't take him and now this stupid deer that wouldn't stop chasing, but he wasn't the type to cry about unfairness.
He was never the type to cry about anything, not when they stripped him of the Flint name or when the guild recruiter laughed at his class and not even when he ate scraps from a trash heap last winter.
There was no big reason behind it, he just knew that crying and feeling sorry for himself would not change anything, the world will keep moving forward.
"Haaah, goddammit," he pushed himself up with one hand while the other gripped the sword at his hip.
It was a cheap iron blade that the guild had given every one-Shard adventurer as a starter weapon, dented along the edge from practice against training dummies and never once drawn against a real opponent.
He pulled it free and planted his feet, the blade shaking in his grip because of how tired and hungry he was.
'Did I break a few ribs?' he thought, touching his side where he felt like his ribs were grinding against each other, 'this has been such a bad day, I just want to go home and rest.'
He looked at the deer as it pawed the ground, ready to charge again.
"I've never killed a monster before," he said out loud, smirking at the deer, "but there is a first time for everything right?"
He charged and the deer lowered its head, meeting him halfway, its antlers aimed at his chest. He dove left at the last second, the tip of one antler catching his shoulder and ripping through muscles, making his whole arm go numb.
He ignored it, rolled, and came up behind the deer, swinging at the back of its leg. The sword bit into flesh, hitting bone with a jolt that traveled up his wrist.
The deer screamed and kicked sideways, the hoof connecting with his ribs on the broken side. He felt something crack for real this time, pain whiting out his vision for a second while he stumbled back and spat another mouthful of blood.
'Well, that was stupid,' he thought, gripping the sword with both hands because his left arm couldn't hold weight anymore, 'can't trade hits with a two-Shard after all.'
The deer turned and opened its mouth, the jaw stretching wider than it should as the roar built in its throat.
He didn't waste time thinking, he took that chance and ran straight at the deer.
The roar hit him in the chest and he felt his skin ripple, followed by something in his ears popping but that did not stop him.
He got closer and shoved his sword into its open mouth, driving it up through the roof of the jaw with both hands and all his weight, the blade punching through into the skull with a wet crunch.
Its roar cut off into a gargle that made it thrash in pain, slamming its antlers into his side and throwing him off, the sword ripping free from his hands but staying lodged in its head.
He hit the ground on his back and lay there, watching the deer stagger in a circle, its legs buckling while blood poured from its mouth and nostrils. The Shards on its antlers flickered and went dark one by one.
After a few minutes, It collapsed sideways with a heavy thud and didn't move.
He stared at it for a long time, breathing in shallow gasps because his ribs wouldn't let him do anything else, while blood ran from his shoulder, his ears, and somewhere on his side he couldn't see.
Then he started laughing, coming out broken and wet, each laugh rattling his ribs and making him cough but he couldn't stop because it was too absurd that he actually killed a two-Shard monster.
"Haah... haha... okay, okay, I need to stop," he muttered, pressing a hand against his ribs, feeling like laughing might kill him.
"I seriously need to find somewhere to rest before I bleed out next to this thing and before more-"
A golden light bloomed in front of his face, making him flinch back and smacking his head against the tree behind him.
"Fuck, I can't seem to catch a break today," he said, rubbing the back of his head while his eyes looked at the floating panel.
"Am I hallucinating from blood loss?" He asked, reaching out to touch it but stop halfway after text began appearing, "just what am I looking at?"
[Conditions met]
[System activating...]
He stared at it, forgetting the condition he was in, "conditions met," he said, scratching his head in confusion, "and what's this system activating stuff?"
[ Soul Energy: 0 ]
[ Scanning host... ]
[ Host identified: Hajin ]
[ Bond initiating... ]