As Aster made her way down the hill she considered her next course of action. She could try and surprise them again like she had the day before, but that didn’t feel right. Maybe she could bait them into coming to her? Then, at least, she’d have the high ground.

  A small, dried up creek bed ran down the hill about twenty meters to her left, and she saw where it had dug deeper into the hillside at a bend. If I can position myself there, maybe I can get them to come at me without trying to flank me.

  Her plan was easy enough to set up, and within a minute she’d gotten the dinosaur’s attention. They were busy kicking over rocks and sniffing around under them. One of them had managed to find a lizard and was greedily chomping it down when Aster tossed a rock down the hill.

  The one with the lizard looked up, and the other took that opportune moment to snatch half of the lizard away from the other’s jaws. They tussled, screeching angrily at each other until a second rock came down the hill, catching their attention again.

  Aster had her spear in her right hand and was holding two fingers up with her left, setting the dinosaurs at the V between her fingers. She caught the sun with her spearhead and reflected it at the back of her hand. It was an old trick she’d read of for flagging down search parties from a distance, and judging by the way the dinosaurs locked onto her position, it was useful for baiting prey as well. A breath later, and they were making their way up the hill towards her.

  Aster shrugged her shoulders, fighting between the instinct to run and the thrill of an incoming challenge. She wasn’t particularly afraid of these raptors, as she had proven herself capable against them already, but pre-game jitters were real, and these stakes were naturally higher than any in her pre-cancer life.

  As she’d predicted, the two dinosaurs tried to split and flank her, but the easiest way up for them was the narrow, dry creek. It helped to funnel them together, though the one that had briefly left it to try and flank her had fallen behind a bit. Fine by me, thought Aster as she strengthened her grip on her spear.

  When the first raptor was ten meters away, she struck. Her toes dug into the hard dirt, granting her exactly the brace she needed to start running— and run, she did.

  Never in her life had she moved at that speed. Not when she’d broken her clavicle snowboarding, or even when she’d nearly lost control of her dirtbike going down a steep slope. The wind whipped against her skin, her sleeves flapping loudly as they rode up.

  Her post-System Strength and Agility helped her blaze a trail as she shot toward the surprised dinosaur. It stopped in its tracks, looking like it was second-guessing itself. She took the opportunity to step first to one side and then the other, feinting before colliding with the raptor spear-first.

  Wood creaked in her hands as the spear sunk deep into its chest. It might have gone deeper, but Aster remembered vividly how difficult it had been to get her spear out of the first raptor she’d killed the day before and adjusted her grip to stop it. She was close enough to see the whites of its eyes, and when she didn’t immediately get a kill notification she twisted the spear in deeper, causing a gurgling cry to erupt from the dying dinosaur.

  *You have slain [Hatchling Springclaw Raptor - lvl 7] - Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level. 48 TP Earned.

  That was way too easy, Aster thought before twisting to the side to avoid the second raptor. This one was faster, though still not as quick as she had been just moments before.

  She yanked her spear free and leapt back, flailing her arms wildly as she vastly underestimated the strength of her legs and found herself falling to the ground almost twenty feet away. Her head snapped back into the red dirt hard enough to give her a concussion pre-System, but now she’d barely even registered it before rolling back and getting to her feet.

  Her HP had dropped a few points from her own maneuver, but she considered herself lucky that that had been the only damage she’d taken. If I’d been a hair slower I’d be in that thing’s jaws. Though the grown up version from earlier had been much, much stronger, it hadn’t been able to propel itself quite so fast as these ones could.

  On instinct, Aster braced the butt of her spear against the ground, readying herself to repeat her feat the day before of skewering a mid-air dinosaur, but the raptor hadn’t leapt at her again.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Instead, it was approaching slowly, circling more carefully, which was fine by Aster. It gave her enough time to find a better defensive position as she put her back to a boulder. “Come and get it,” she said.

  The raptor did just that. After closing in, it attempted a feint of its own, but she didn’t fall for it. Instead, Aster deftly hopped out of the way, careful not to throw herself too far this time.

  At close range, the raptor was far from capable of taking her one-on-one. In fact, she concluded that, at least at this stage of their growth, the dinosaurs were forced to hunt together simply due to their incapability of handling prey alone. Up close, it was as awkward as a baby chick. A baby chick that could jump crazy distances and that had teeth and claws the size of Aster’s thumb, but a chick nonetheless.

  Putting her Agility to the test, Aster let the raptor take a few snaps at her, seeing how close she could get and still be able to dodge. She flipped her spear around, wielding it with the blunt end forward.

  The raptor sprung at her, but more controlled than before. Aster sidestepped it without thinking, feeling a thrill at the way she could anticipate the flow of the fight. She smacked it with the butt of her spear as it passed— a hit that, had she used the spearhead, would have hamstrung the beast.

  It turned, its eyes wide with anger and frustration. The raptor hopped at her, its jaws shutting down on air with loud, repeating snaps! Aster stepped back with each lunge the raptor made, again using her spear to smack it repeatedly. It hopped at her, so she sidestepped and stabbed at its stomach hard enough to bruise. It jumped again, so she hit its muzzle and drew blood. It lunged, trying to tackle her, so she caught its momentum and tossed it like she was back in Judo.

  It turned out that with her Basic Reflexes and godlike Agility stat, she hadn’t needed to set up for this battle in the first place.

  The dinosaur seemed to realize at the same time as her that it was utterly outmatched. It began to turn, bracing itself to leap away with one of its overpowered jumps, when metal flashed in the sun and a spear pierced its thigh.

  Aster narrowed her eyes and decided playtime was over. Prolonging this further would just be cruel, she thought. The moment slowed for her in the way it did when she saw a bump and a set, knowing even before it happens where the ball was going to be for her to get there. There was enough for her brain to pick up on to know exactly how this was going to end.

  It was inevitable.

  A moment later and the dinosaur was dead. A pair of deep gashes marked both legs, and another ran nearly the entire length of its side. Finally, she’d ended the crippled beast with a thrust through its heart.

  *’DING!’ Class [Warrior (Medium)] has reached Level 9 - Stat points allocated, +1 free point*

  She wiped her spear off in the dirt and smiled. Another point for Agility, I think.

  ----

  Without someone looking over her shoulder and asking why she was taking so long, Aster was able to spend as much time as she wanted to study the hatchling springclaw raptors.

  The first thing she did was bring both of the specimens closer together, laying them on their sides. She cursed the System for not providing her with paper on which to take notes, and briefly considered writing on the backs of her hands or something— being ambidextrous was useful like that. However, it wasn’t like she was going to be finding paper elsewhere in this desert, so she resolved to just speak her observations aloud and do her best to commit them to memory, like she would do if she’d had a recorder and was taking field notes.

  “Both specimens are approximately the same size, about one-point-five meters tall. Their heads appear oversized for their bodies, consistent with the System’s description of them being ‘hatchlings.’ Their tails are short and stubby, making up only a third of their length. The most notable features of the specimens are their legs and hindquarters. This springclaw raptor species has displayed coordinated hunting behavior, flanking and distracting their attempted prey before surprising them by lunging at them with great speed. I’ve observed them doing this several times now, and they open their jaws wide, greater than ninety degrees, as they fling themselves at you.”

  Aster took a break to check out her surroundings and make sure she wasn’t being snuck up on by anything. As she wasn’t in any danger, she continued.

  “Their skin is… pebbly? Perhaps more like a monitor lizard, though thicker and with larger dermal ridges.” Honestly, she’d put good money on some craftsman being able to make cool-ass armor out of the stuff.

  “Teeth are large, ranging from one to two inches in length. Arms are stubby. The claws on their feet, which are also proportionally large, are triangular, with only a slight curve to them…”

  This continued for half an hour, with Aster comparing sexual dimorphism amongst the two after discovering external sexual organs and characteristics, such as a small, bony protrusion on the snout of the male. Then she took note of their colorations, eyes, nostrils, and everything else that wouldn’t be fun to read about. Needless to say, she was thorough. Something that did need to be said, however, was that she felt something from the System. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but as there hadn’t been any notification, she took note and moved on.

  When she was finished, she considered what to do with the bodies. There wasn’t time to bury them, and she didn’t want to spend even more time to start a fire. In the end, she took several strips of meat with her and left the bodies where they were.

  Stepping down to the bottom of the hill, she considered where to go next. The canyon? Or the beehive? One of those definitely felt like a spot she’d be looking out for in a video game. The kind of spot that could hold some cool shit.

  With a smile, she headed toward the structure.