Ch17: Hunting & Hiking
Again, this chapter also contains a very small amount of sex, just at the beginning this time. It ends at the horizontal line.
Cuddling, Emotionless Sex, Non-Consent
“Mmmm...” Krvavy slowly comes to, stretching her legs out into the warm water of the hot spring. Even though she can feel the uneven stone beneath her, she isn’t sore in the slightest. In fact, she feels completely relaxed and well rested. If only she could sleep like this outside of the game...
Lazily opening her eyes, Krvavy bolts awake as she sees the Orc resting in her arms. Her brief moment of panic quickly subsides, as she can both see and feel the Orc gently breathing. Krvavy didn’t mean to fall asleep in the water, especially not with this unresponsive Orc. What if she had fallen in and drowned? Krvavy will have to be more careful.
“Hahhhh...” She sighs in relief, bringing a hand up to her Orc’s head and running her fingers through the damp hair. This is... weird. It might be romantic in a different situation, but she is basically just petting a living mannequin. Hmm... Petting...
It is almost like this Orc is her pet.
A very high maintenance pet that doesn’t do anything and will almost certainly stop being a pet as soon as she wakes up. But pet sounds a bit nicer than slave, and a whole lot better than mindbroken fucktoy. Then again, Krvavy has had sex with this Orc multiple times now, and thinking of her as a pet kind of makes that feel a bit awkward...
Gently shaking her head, Krvavy puts those thoughts aside. She needs to get herself and this Orc out of the water. And she needs to clean up everything she brought home last night. Dammit. It’s definitely all crusty now...
A wave of pleasure rolls over Krvavy as she shifts her body to get up out of the water. It seems that her cock is still inside the Orc. And it is fully hard. Morning wood. The more she has to deal with it the more annoying it is.
Krvavy had previously just ignored her morning wood, as it went down on its own eventually. But she doesn’t think she can do that today...
The Orc’s folds tighten around her cock, with a quiet moan escaping from the Greenskins lips. Well, guess that settles it. Krvavy might as well use her Orc to get herself off. She is already inside the woman, after all.
Reaching a hand down to her Orc’s hips, Krvavy begins grinding the Greenskin onto her cock while slowly thrusting upwards. She already feels pretty close to the edge, but no point in rushing this. Besides, she doesn’t mind wasting time dealing with her morning wood. Especially because she has to go clean up a bunch of filthy things afterwards.
She then bends her head down to place a gentle kiss atop the Orcs head. Thinking of this Greenskin woman as simply her Orc is kind of weird. It is too impersonal feeling. A bit dehumanizing. Or deorcanizing? Deorcizing? Either way, it doesn’t seem right to just keep referring to her as Orc.
But it also doesn’t feel right making up a name for her. She already has a name, Krvavy just doesn’t know it. Hmm... Well, she doesn’t need to make up her mind about this right away. She can give her Orc some time. If the Greenskin woman is still unresponsive in a couple days then Krvavy will think about naming her. Until then she will simply remain as Krvavy’s Orc.
Now, she should really enjoy her Orc while she can. Enjoy the tight tunnel squeezing down around her dick. Enjoy the feeling of a firm green ass beneath her fingers. Enjoy the breasts pressing against her own and the head resting on her collarbone. Because once this is over Krvavy has work to do. And she should probably try her hand at some hunting too. She now has another mouth to feed, after all.
“Dammit...” Krvavy grumpily grumbles as a small flock of grouses scatter into the air. Her little hunting trip isn’t going so well. She has been out here for a couple hours now, but she doesn’t have a single thing to show for it. Honestly, she doesn’t know what she was expecting. Krvavy has just been throwing rocks at small animals all day.
She can’t exactly kill a bird with her two-handed axe, after all. Krvavy already knew that though. She didn’t even bother bringing the thing with her. Hopefully she doesn’t run into anything dangerous...
At least this isn’t a complete waste of time, as Krvavy has gained a few skills while failing to hunt. She is now level one in Running, Stealth, and Tracking. Granted, she could have gotten more exp by focusing on gaining and levelling her skills, but she isn’t trying to be optimal here. She is trying to not starve.
Spotting a few Frost Scaled Quails ahead of her, Krvavy immediately crouches down low to the ground. The birds are pecking around in the grass further ahead, seemingly oblivious of their surroundings. They aren’t, obviously, so Krvavy has to be very careful as she selects a good stone to use.
Finding a fairly round rock, Krvavy slowly takes aim and throws it. Something about her movement must have alerted the birds, as their heads jerk up in unison. That turns out to be very fortunate, for Krvavy at least, as the quail that she targeted lifted its head directly into the path of the thrown rock. She would have missed otherwise.
Critical Hit! 60 Damage dealt to [Frost Scaled Quail]
[Frost Scaled Quail] has been slain!+25 Experience
With the sudden appearance of the rock and the sudden death of one of their own, the surviving quails begin to scatter in a panic. Krvavy didn’t expect to actually get a hit, so she had picked up more than one stone. Without really thinking about it, she rapidly throws the rest of the rocks at the fleeing birds.
24 Damage dealt to [Frost Scaled Quail]
The only other bird that she was able to hit plummets back down to the ground with its wing bent at an unnatural angle. She seems to have scored a glancing hit, crippling it instead of killing it. And so, she quickly rushes over to the downed quail to finish it off before it flees. Grabbing it firmly and thinking back to the videos she watched, Krvavy carefully snaps its neck.
80 Damage dealt to [Frost Scaled Quail]
[Frost Scaled Quail] has been slain!+25 Experience
She sighs in relief as those notifications fill her vision. She was worried that she would mess up and just unnecessarily hurt the bird. Even if this is just a game, she would rather not go around torturing animals like a serial killer. She has already done enough fucked up things to and with her Orc...
The notifications in this game are slightly annoying to Krvavy. For instance, she has no idea how much health these quails have. It has to be more than twenty-four and also less than sixty, but it could be anything in between. At least she is getting used to how they pop up into her perception... That doesn’t really bother her anymore and she can simply just ignore them if she wants to. And from the look of it, that is exactly what Krvavy just did, as she got another skill after hitting the second bird.
Thrown Weapon Proficiency: The skill of hurling weapons and objects at others, one of the earliest forms of hunting & combat. Associated attributes = Dexterity & Might.
Hopefully she’ll be able to reliably hunt now that she has that skill, but she has a feeling that won't be the case. She did just spend a couple hours failing before miraculously getting lucky here.
Shaking her head and putting those thoughts behind her, Krvavy gathers up both of her freshly hunted birds. They are fairly plump looking, but she doesn’t think that they will be enough. This body of hers is pretty big and she is convinced that her mystery meat jerky is magically filling, as there is no way that she’d be able to live on just a few strips of meat each day. Not to mention that she ate a lot of the Orcs’ stew before feeling full... And she has another mouth to feed now, so she’ll definitely need to continue hunting.
But does she need to gut these birds first? If she remembers correctly, large game animals should be prepared as quickly as possible so that their guts don’t spoil the meat but it is fine to carry small ones home to butcher there. She doesn’t really know where small ends and large begins, but that doesn’t really matter here as these birds are definitely in the small category.
That said, she doesn’t exactly want to have animal guts laying around in her cave, rotting away. So... she might as well gut them here. At least this way carrion eaters can come along to clean up the mess for her.
Grabbing the thin knife that had previously been stabbed into her thigh and untying it from her loincloth's belt, Krvavy gets to work. Immediately, she learns that there is a big difference between seeing something done in a video and doing it herself. Granted, she is using a medieval fantasy Orc knife instead of a fancy modern one, so that doesn’t really help either.
Removing viscera is a bloody and gross job, but it isn’t too bad. Maybe that is just because these are fairly small animals? Or maybe it is because she has experienced far worse in other IVR games. The seemingly obligatory sewer levels in horror games can be really traumatizing when you have a sense of smell and taste. Compared to that, this is fairly pleasant.
Just as she removes the last of the guts from the second quail’s torso, a notification pops into her vision.
Butchery: The skill of slaughtering animals, dressing their flesh, and preparing the resulting meat. Associated attributes = Dexterity & Perception.+50 Experience.
Well, she isn’t going to complain about getting another skill. Especially if it means that she gets free exp. But with the two quails gutted and not leaking much more blood, Krvavy is done here.
After binding their wings down with some strips of fabric, which also helps to keep the birds' bodies closed, Krvavy ties them to her loincloth and sets off again. Hopefully she’ll be able to catch some more food. Or at the very least level up some skills and get that sweet experience.