Limits

My days looked the same again. I trained from the morning till evening while helping Shelly in its training once in a while. We would also hunt some animals. The forest became a bit more populated, maybe due to the mass deaths the animals experienced and so they breeded more often. That was only my guess but it seemed plausible.

The dream I had about many dark figures fighting each other didn't appear again, besides that one night. I knew that I would have to kill people in order to experience that dream again. On the other hand, I was dreaming of a dark figure who trained by itself. I always joined in but limited myself to doing only one cycle and then rest. Sometimes I would skip 2 cycles just to be properly rested.

I soon got used to those exercises and noticed improvements, even with all the weight I was carrying. Days passed and soon came the spring. The ice melted and the grass started to apear around the forest and barren areas, desolate due to the winter. Flowers started to sprout and trees became alive again, after the winter season. Small animals left their homes in search of food and even bigger animals were getting more active.

We stayed in that shelter for over 3 months. There were ups and downs while we were there. After the human party incident, some animals came to our shelter. We didn't have any animal guests before and when meat served itself on a plate for us, why shouldn't we take it? Soon more beast started appearing in the area of our shelter and things looked critical. I had to tell Shelly to kill any packs of animals nearby so that we don't have a horde of them attacking us.

Because the animals were coming to our doorsteps, we didn't have to go deep into the forest in order to search for them. This saved us some time but also made things more dangerous. We had to do regular cleanings of the area. That was in order to prevent the animals settling and breed like crazy under our noses.

Fortunately we managed to contain the migration of the animals and things quieted down. There was another event worth mentioning. In the middle of the winter season, the nights became so cold that even within the shelter you could feel the chill. I decided to build some kind of fireplace out of stones. If we had no fire inside we would potentially freeze to death, even with all that fur we had. I remember that the outer layers of fur used as covers was frozen solid, that was how cold it was during the night.

The fireplace took me awhile to build. I needed to get stones and stack them in such a way, that I would be able to make fire inside. At the same time I had to do it in such a way that wouldn't burn the whole shelter down. I placed stones on the floor near a wall and built up a tower that reached the ceiling. There was a channel inside the tower, It was for the smoke to travel upwards. I of course needed a hole in the wall in order for the smoke to escape somewhere but that was easy enough and didn't take long.

When the fireplace was finally built, I was stunned myself that it could hold like this without any sort of mortar. I made the fire inside and after an hour of keeping the fire burning well, it became much more bearable inside our shelter.

As for our training. Shelly managed to train its instincts to a point where I had to use 4 puppets. It wasn't very well skilled with 5 puppets yet but it could manage for a while and then get totally lost. Shelly was also making improvements when it came to hunting. It could now plan and use different tactics against different opponents.

I later allowed Shelly to hunt by itself, instead of us going together. I made a special strap for Shelly to attach the bag that I found on the woman from the human party. Shelly wasn't very keen about dragging stuff around but it got used to it. Shelly was fully convinced when I said that the bag belongs to it and all the food inside will be its not mine. Shelly liked the idea of owning the bag and of course food that would fit inside it so it had no problems carrying it around later.

When Shelly hunted nearby our shelter, it would notify me when the hunt was finished and show me the location of its prey. I needed to extract and then cook the meat so I still had to waste some time on that but I was still happy that Shelly became independent to a point.

As for me. I was already adjusted to the weight on my back and it didn't really bother me anymore. I even increased the weight on my arms as well as added new weights to my legs. If I were to drop all that stuff down, I would be many times stronger. I decided not to do it and train my skills with the weight still attached.

Towards the end of the winter season, I started to train my skills instead of body and managed to get back in form with my aim. I also practiced my bow shooting for about an hour each day and managed to get better at it. As they say "Practice makes perfect" and besides learning the bow, I also trained in the Stringed Hidden Weapons. Although I was still on the 1st dagger, I could now better retrieve and throw it compared to the past.

When I trained my skills, I would be dreaming of a dark figure talking away. During the time I spend on improving my skills, I managed to figure out the meaning of another two words that the dark figure spoke. The first word was Ki which could potentially mean "Do" or "Does" it could also mean both as it could be interchangeable between the pronouns. The other word I thought I figured out was Rei. It could mean "Can" as in "I can" or "You can". With this, I had now managed to find some kind of meaning for 6 words out of 10 that I decided to translate.

I decided that it would soon be the time to leave our shelter and move on towards different direction as much as the map allowed while exploring the regions not specified by Nick's map.