His Strength had been enough to hold the animal down but his Intelligence at 42 had been working overtime during the fight, analyzing attack patterns and counting heartbeats and running damage calculations without him asking it to.

If that jaguar had been Level 30 instead of 24 this would have ended differently. If it had been one of the big ones with the scars and the experience instead of this young one I’d be the one bleeding out on the ground right now. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

He pushed the body off and stood up. His vision swam for a second and then steadied.

[Congratulations! Your skill Pain Resistance (Uncommon) levelled up]

-Level 1 > Level 2

[Congratulations! Your skill Physical Durability (Basic) levelled up]

-Level 3 > Level 4

And it kept going..

[Congratulations! You have learned a new skill]

[Enhanced Healing (Basic) - First Evolution League]

-Passive: Increases natural healing rate by 10% per skill level. Accelerates the body’s biological repair processes

-Current bonus at level 1 : +10%

A healing skill from almost dying huh? This looked like the system saying "you got hurt bad enough that your body learned how to fix itself faster dumbass." His weird and prideful cat side rebelled against that thinking and his animal feelings almost protested for the healing skill like it was an insult.

But Eren was in pain and he needed to get home quickly. The blood was attracting attention already and his Apex Predator Awareness was picking up several creatures in the area changing their movement patterns to converge toward the smell. His Hunter’s Tracking and Observe skills were running constantly now and painting everything within his range with threat assessments.

He jogged. It hurt with every step because his left thigh was torn open and the muscle underneath was exposed and every stride pulled the wound wider. But jogging hurt less than being eaten would.

His tree appeared through the canopy about fifteen minutes later and the climb up to his platform was the worst part because his left arm was nearly useless and his Extreme Climbing skill had to compensate by shifting almost all his weight to his legs and right arm.

He used half his stored water to clean the wounds. The arm cuts were deep but relatively clean. The thigh gashes were worse, ragged and wide and still bleeding despite the pressure he was applying with a wad of leaves.

Then the Poison Resistance notification appeared.

[Congratulations! Your skill Poison Resistance levelled up]

-Level 5 > Level 6

The claws were poisoned? That jaguar had venom in its claws?

JUST GREAT..!!

That explained why the wounds weren’t clotting or why the bleeding was happening so random and in random amounts too. The wounds were bullshit in the logic of his biology lessons and common sense from Earth. The poison was an anticoagulant, something that kept blood flowing by preventing the natural clotting process and apparently his Poison Resistance was fighting it but at Level 6 against whatever concentration the jaguar had delivered it was going to take hours to neutralize.

He wrapped the wounds as tightly as he could with broad leaves and strips of bark and tied them down with bits of his old rope. The blood soaked through the first layer in about five minutes and he wrapped another layer on top and then a third.

Night came and Eren didn’t sleep with pain. It was unbearable for an ex city boy.

The pain was constant and deep and his body temperature climbed through the evening until he was shivering and sweating at the same time. Fever. His immune system was fighting the poison and the infection and the tissue damage all at once and the only thing his new Enhanced Healing skill could do was make the process ten percent faster than it would have been otherwise.

He lay on his platform with his teeth clenched and his fists gripping the bark and stared at the stars through the gaps in the canopy while his body burned. Every hour he checked his wounds and every hour they were still open and weeping.

So what actually keeps you alive in this forest? Not Strength because I had plenty of that and still almost died. Not Perception because I saw everything the jaguar was going to do and still couldn’t dodge fast enough. Maybe it’s just being too angry to quit?

..

Seven whole days of pain and slow suffering later Eren climbed down from his tree for the first time since the fight.

His stored food was slowly but surely finished yesterday. He’d rationed it carefully, eating small portions twice a day but six parcels of meat and a stack of dried fruit only lasted so long when your body was burning calories to repair damaged tissue. His water was down to the last cup which he’d been sipping from since yesterday.

The wounds had closed but they hadn’t healed properly. His left forearm had three raised scars that pulled whenever he flexed his hand. His thigh was a mess of pink scar tissue that ached when he put weight on it. The claw tracks on his back had closed over into thin lines that itched constantly.

He looked rough. He could feel it in the way his body moved, slower and more careful than a week ago and favoring his right side for everything. But he was alive and standing and his fever had broken two days ago and his Enhanced Healing skill had done its job even if the result looked terrible.

I need better options for next time. Something to stop bleeding fast. Something to fight infection. Some kind of emergency kit that doesn’t rely on "lie down and hope for a week."

The last week was miserable and it changed his way of seeing the forest now.

He looked at his tree one more time. The vine from the wyvern mountain was growing along the trunk and had produced two tiny green buds since he’d planted it. The centaur fruit branch on the other side of the tree looked dead but his Observe told him the bark still had living tissue underneath. Maybe it would root eventually.

"But before any of that I need to wash.." he said out loud and started walking toward the lake. "I smell like something a dog buried and forgot about.." he muttered while stepping carefully over a root.

His cat instincts had been generating a constant low-level anxiety about the filth the entire time he was healing and now that he was actually moving the urgency to get clean was almost painful.

He walked carefully. His Enhanced Healing had given his muscles back most of their function but the scar tissue was stiff and the deep thigh wound sent a sharp reminder through his leg every time he overextended his stride. No running today. Just walking and being careful and paying attention to everything his Apex Predator Awareness was telling him about the creatures between him and the lake.

He was about five hundred meters from his tree and could already smell the lake water through the trees when his Awareness painted a new heat signature ahead of him.

Large and quadruped. Moving with the heavy controlled gait of something that owned the ground it walked on and getting closer.

It stepped out of the trees about forty meters ahead and the morning sun lit up its body and Eren stopped walking because he recognized it instantly.

A centaur. Not the alpha but big enough to be some kind of senior member. Its upper body was the same kobold-like build as the alpha with long muscular arms and a flat face full of teeth and its lower body had the powerful horse-dog hybrid legs that he’d seen in the territory two days before the jaguar fight.

It saw him at the same moment he saw it.

Its eyes locked onto him and something in its expression changed from casual scanning to immediate focused rage. It knew what he was. It recognized him or at least his scent as the thief who’d stolen fruit from its clan.

The centaur opened its mouth and let out a sound that was half war cry and half bark, deep and resonant and carrying through the trees with an intensity that was clearly meant to signal others within hearing range. A fire spear began condensing in its right hand while the sound was still echoing.

"Fu*k off! It was just two fruits damn it!!!" Eren hissed without realizing he looked like an actual cat and started running at insane speed.

His left thigh screamed in protest and his barely-healed body objected to every part of this but his Kinetic Flux Runner skill engaged regardless and the trees started blurring past on both sides.

Day thirty-eight wasn’t starting well!