"Huff… Hah!" Osar roared, chopping with his hand, and causing a tower tree to come crashing down.
Then, continuing to use his hand as a chopping blade, he neatly trimmed the entire tree from top to bottom, turning it into a cylindrical log.
"Phew, that's the last one." He breathed, shaking his hands to cool his palms down.
"It's easy to chop, but a hassle to bring back." Osar sighed, loosening his shoulders, then put a hand inside his shirt and rubbed his body.
After some rubbing, he successfully got a bunch of fur. He then rolled the fur in his hands into a tight sphere, then pinched and shaped it into an abstract figure resembling that of a small person.
He threw the fur-ball figure onto the ground, and with a thud, it transformed into an abstract version of Osar.
How abstract was it? Imagine something that looked like it was modeled by someone who had roughly spent three years of learning animation.
Despite its crude look, Osar seemed quite satisfied. He inspected his abstract self and nodded. "Mm, not bad. You can handle this log."
The abstract version obediently nodded, picked up the log from the ground, and hoisted it onto its shoulder.
With his abstract self in tow, Osar retraced his steps according to what he remembered.
As he walked, he continuously created more abstract clones of himself from fur balls.
He had scoured for suitable trees along the way earlier, chopping them down and shaping them. Now, on his way back, he could collect all these logs and bring them back.
Of course, it was these clones that did the carrying. After all, so many logs would be too much for one person to handle alone.
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About an hour later, Osar returned to the camp, leading a parade of several dozen abstract clones of himself. By this time, he was far from the relaxed figure he had been an hour earlier. Exhausted, panting heavily, and with his tongue hanging out, he promptly slumped down as soon as he reached the camp. The fur-ball clones instantly transformed back into fur balls, resulting in a symphony of logs thudding to the ground.
He had only sat down when he suddenly caught a whiff of a tantalizing aroma of meat. Looking up, he saw Liu Ji and Yaine each holding a bowl of steamed meat near the fire pit. And a little farther away, the frozen carcass of a huge bear was still giving off a cold mist.
"What the heck? There's meat?" His eyes lit up as he suddenly found the energy to get up and hurried over to the fire pit. As he lifted the lid of the pot, the rich and pure aroma of meat hit him full in the face. He inhaled deeply, swallowed his saliva, then grabbed a wooden bowl that was set aside. Without fear of the heat, he picked up the pot from the fire and poured himself a full bowl of bear meat.
After replacing the pot and its lid, Osar sat down next to the others, reaching out intending to grab a piece and throw it into his mouth.
At that moment, two sticks were suddenly shoved in front of him.
"Wait, don't use your hands. It's unhygienic," Yaine said, showing off her own chopsticks before passing a spare pair that Liu Ji had set aside.
Osar took the chopsticks with a baffled expression, scrutinizing them carefully before he glanced at Yaine.
Yaine smiled slightly, very slowly picked up a piece of meat with her chopsticks, and placed it in her mouth, then gave Osar a small nod.
Osar watched her hand movements, blinked several times, then looked again at the chopsticks in his hand. He carefully adjusted the positions of the sticks in his hand and gently squeezed.
A perfect cross was formed…
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On the precipice of a cliff, Mervant chewed on a thin blade of grass while gazing into the distance.
On his side of the cliff, the vegetation was lush and the meadows stretched endlessly. On the other side, however, was a boundless desert, its horizon seemingly boundless.
Gazing at the extremity of the desert, Mervant sighed listlessly and murmured to himself, "Cali, you guys must be alright, right?"
It was phrased as a question, but it sounded more like a prayer.
Mervant had hoped that coming here might allow him to find those he was waiting for sooner, but the more he stared at the endless desert before him, the more uneasy he felt.
With another sigh, Mervant leaned against the rock wall, dangling his right leg off the cliff, and began to hum a tune.
It was a ballad from his homeland, familiar to all his kin; anyone of his kind could hum a few bars.
Sadly, the number of people in the entire world that still remembered this melody now was few.
Humming the tune brought back images of Dragon City, his old home built of obsidian, the coolest city in the world. It was a place where the brightest flowers bloomed, trees laced with gold flourished, and humans and dragons lived in harmony. Even the streets were dazzling with jewels.
Back then, he loved to sneak out and roam the commercial streets all day with Calidora, dodging every adult they knew because being caught meant a stern talking-to at home.
Thinking back, the person who most loved to hum this tune was his strict father, though he wasn't very good at it—most notes were off-key, and one wasn't even on the scale, which always earned a tease from Mervant's mother.
Mervant was thinking of home again.
"Haa, what's gotten into me. Why am I acting like a kid," Mervant muttered as he sat up and spit out the grass stem.
It was about time to head back. Building the cabin was not a job for Osar alone; Mervant didn't fancy the roof collapsing on him someday.
Just as Mervant was about to head back the way he had come, he subconsciously turned for one last look at the desert behind.
In that fleeting glance, something about the scenery struck him as slightly off. When he turned back for a closer look, however, he saw nothing unusual.
Someone else might have dismissed it as eyes playing tracks on him, but Mervant paused, feeling uneasy.
He briefly closed his eyes, then suddenly reopened them, his pupils swirling with a golden glow, taking in the landscape for miles around.
In the next instant, he abruptly shut his eyes again.
When he reopened them, his eyes had returned to normal, but his expression was grim.
"Damn it, we left a tail," he cursed under his breath. With a swift motion, he leaped down the back side of the cliff, racing back to camp with utmost urgency.