Chapter 71: The Price of Mercy
The wood of the spear let out a terrifying, splintering crack right in front of Nuan’s face. The pressure was immense.
I’m done for, gruh!!! Fuck it, I’m taking my chance. Either I die right here, or I sacrifice my shoulder to get an opening!
Bracing herself, Nuan deliberately let go of one side of the cracking spear shaft. She violently twisted her torso, throwing her right shoulder completely out of the path of the incoming tusks.
With the sudden loss of resistance on one side, the boar’s massive forward momentum backfired. The beast stumbled heavily into the clearing, its sharp tusks and snout plowing deep into the wet mud.
"Shoulder secured!" Nuan gasped through her teeth.
Wasting a single millisecond meant death. Nuan willed her hunting knife straight out of her inventory into her blood-slicked left hand.
Dragging her useless, screaming right ankle through the muck, she threw herself over the stumbled, disoriented beast. She pinned her entire body weight onto its side, crawling frantically onto the struggling animal before it could find its footing.
With a surge of raw adrenaline, she shoved her bare fingers directly into the bloody, open gash her second spear had torn into the boar’s flank, using it as a gruesome handhold to anchor herself.
The boar let out an agony-filled, high-pitched shriek, its massive body jerking violently beneath her. But Nuan was relentless. Leaning over its head, she drove her hunting knife deep into the side of its throat. She began slicing furiously—her arm moving up, down, up, down in a frenzied, desperate rhythm, sawing through the thick bristles and muscle, driving the blade deeper and deeper into the neck.
The boar’s small eyes widened in utter horror and pain. It thrashed its heavy head, trying to throw her off or catch her with a tusk, but Nuan kept her weight centered, her weakening hands driving the blade through the vital arteries.
Slowly, the violent, mud-splattering kicks of the boar’s legs began to lose their power. The aggressive twitching slowed... and slowed... until the massive beast finally went entirely still beneath her.
Nuan’s hands and arms were completely bathed in dark, steaming blood. She let go of the knife handle, leaving the blade buried deep in the beast’s neck.
Her entire body was shaking uncontrollably, her heart thumping like a frantic drum against her ribs. Her breathing was shallow, and her head spun with a dangerous wave of dizziness from the sheer exhaustion and blood loss.
Sliding off the massive carcass, she collapsed flat onto her back, sinking into the wet mud right beside the dead boar. She stared blankly up at the early morning canopy, her voice barely a breath.
"I am really... fucking bad at boar hunting... even after twelve years of experience."
Nuan stayed like that for the next five minutes, letting her dizzy brain slowly regain its stability. The dark spots dancing in her vision cleared, and her ragged breathing and frantic heartbeat finally leveled out into an even, steady rhythm.
But the moment the adrenaline faded, the sheer agony in her right ankle returned full force, throbbing violently with every pulse of her blood.
Groaning through her teeth, she slowly sat up. She dragged her body across the slick mud toward the edge of the lake, desperate to clean herself up. She washed her blood-bathed hands in the cool water first, then scooped up a handful to splash directly onto her face to get her scattered thoughts together.
She let out a long breath, her wet palms traveling from her forehead to the back of her head, slicking her hair back. She kept her fingers entangled behind her head, her elbows touching tightly in front of her face as she leaned back to stretch her tight neck.
"Sigh... that was the most thrilling hunt of my lif—"
Before Nuan could even finish the thought, a blur of motion exploded from the thick reeds on her right. Something powerful, fast, and completely silent charged at her. Driven by pure survival instinct, Nuan didn’t drop her arms—instead, her elbows glued themselves even tighter together in front of her face, every muscle in her upper body tightening into a rigid shield.
BAM!
A solid hundred pounds of pure muscle slammed into her, pinning her left side violently into the muddy ground.
Instantly, a devastating crush of a bone-crushing bite force clamped down aggressively onto her left arm. The jaws were aimed directly for her throat, but by absolute stroke of luck, her interlocked hands and forearms were protecting her neck at that exact moment.
Her heart rate spiked to a terrifying, chaotic speed. The sudden trauma of the ambush and the crushing bite sent her nervous system into shock—her brain couldn’t even process the physical pain in the first few seconds because everything was happening too fast.
Nuan’s eyes darted upward, glancing through the small gap between her forearms at the predator trying to rip her throat out. The moment her gaze locked onto the piercing, yellow eyes of the beast, her heart skipped a beat.
It was her.
The exact same cougar she had spared yesterday in Bramor’s abandoned territory. The big cat’s eyes were burning with pure, unadulterated revenge and primal aggression. With a vicious shake of its head, the cougar bit down, ripping a chunk of skin and muscle off Nuan’s tricep, spitting the bloody flesh away as it snarled.
The cougar’s heavy paws slammed and raked against Nuan’s sides, its sharp claws tearing through her loincloth to get her to drop her defensive arm shield, but Nuan’s entire body was locked in a vice-like freeze. In extreme danger, the body chooses fight, flight, or freeze—and for the first time in her survivalist life, Nuan’s body chose the third option.
She was completely paralyzed. Her hands wouldn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t kick.
Taking advantage of the freeze, the cougar leaned in again, its fangs clamping down and tearing another bloody strip of skin from her bicep.
That’s it. I’m going to die right here because I showed stupid, modern kindness to a wild beast. Fuck!!! Nuan gritted her teeth internally, a wave of profound self-loathing washing over her. This isn’t Earth where you shouldn’t kill animals for no reason. This is a brutal beastworld. How could I fuck up this badly?!
Her mind frantically tried to calculate an escape, but the math was zero. My spears? One is splintered to pieces, the other is stuck out of reach in the mud.
My knife? Still buried deep in the boar’s neck meters away!
My arrows? They’re in my system inventory, but a thin, sharp arrowhead only works when it’s shot at high speed from a bow, not when I’m trying to stab a thick-skinned cougar with my weakening hands.
Tsk... this is it... this is how it ends for me.
Nuan closed her eyes, a cold numbness settling in as she accepted her fate. Even if she could use her mind to summon a weapon from her inventory, the exact millisecond her hands left her neck to grab it, those powerful jaws would snap closed around her throat, ending her life instantly.