The Brown Bear

In just a brief moment, the massive brown figure pushed aside the last layer of bushes, revealing its full form.

It was a brown bear.

Standing upright from the thicket, the muscles on its shoulders and back rippled beneath its coarse brown fur. It stood nearly two and a half meters tall, with paws tipped with claws like blunt iron hooks.

The moment Roger saw the brown bear, his heart leaped into his throat.

If it were just an ordinary brown bear, a human wielding extraordinary power and armed with weapons would have no reason to fear.

But this brown bear was covered in twisted patterns, the kind almost exclusively associated with cultists.

Shouts and hurried conversations echoed from the distant woods. The laborers and conscripts gathering Firekiss Flowers nearby had clearly noticed the commotion over here as well.

However, the sounds were still far away. Roger quickly estimated the distance and realized it would take at least ten minutes for reinforcements to arrive.

For now, he was on his own.

The instant the brown bear emerged from the bushes, before it could even begin its charge, Roger had already channeled Life Energy into his legs.

A warm current surged from his thighs to the soles of his feet. He lunged backward and to the side to open up some distance. At the same time, he nocked a second regular arrow. Drawing the bowstring taut against his cheek, he aimed the arrowhead at the largest pattern on the bear's body.

In the next second, the arrow whistled sharply through the air, crossing the distance of less than twenty meters to sink deep into the bear's thick hide.

The brown bear let out a deafening roar, and the purple patterns on its body flared with sudden, intense brightness. Digging its claws into the soft earth, it charged straight at Roger, leaving deep gouges in the ground with every step.

Roger ducked behind the nearest thick tree trunk. A split second later, a massive paw slammed violently into the wood with a dull thud, shaking the entire tree and sending a shower of leaves raining down.

Using the brief second or two while the bear was still blocked by the trunk, Roger activated 【Iron Wall】.

At the same time, he pulled a third arrow from his quiver and sidestepped along the edge of the trunk, flanking the beast. The bear was turning its massive body to round the tree and pursue him, but this movement exposed its flank perfectly.

Channelling Life Energy into the arrow, he charged his Empowered Shot. The moment he released the bowstring, the arrowhead—wrapped in a white vortex—embedded itself precisely into the soft flesh of the bear's flank.

The bear let out an even more furious roar. The purple patterns on its body glowed even brighter, seemingly tinting the surrounding air with an ominous lavender light.

It spun around and lunged at Roger once more. Its movements had not slowed down from the injuries; instead, it grew even more frenzied.

“How is this thing still alive?!” Roger cursed under his breath.

With one arrow in its shoulder and another in its belly, the bear refused to fall, only growing more ferocious as the fight dragged on.

Seeing the bear closing in, Roger summoned his 【Arcane Hand】. A translucent blue hand materialized in the air, drew his arming sword from his waist, and hovered to his right.

He dashed forward toward the bear. Just as the beast raised its forepaw to strike, he ducked low and slipped in beneath its flank.

“Squelch!”

The sword's tip slid along the existing arrow wound, stabbing deeper into the abdominal cavity. However, the bear's fat and muscle were too thick; the blade got stuck after sinking barely halfway, unable to penetrate any further.

Roger did not overextend. Releasing his control over the Arcane Hand, he pushed off the ground and leaped backward.

Almost the exact moment he retreated, the bear's forepaw swept past his chest and slammed heavily into the ground where he had been standing.

Had he been half a second slower, that paw would have landed squarely on his head. Even with Iron Wall protecting him, he had no desire to test the limits of a magically enhanced bear's strength with his skull.

Blood poured from the overlapping wounds on the bear's belly, yet it showed no signs of stopping. Digging its claws into the dirt once more, it dragged its bleeding body forward to resume its charge toward Roger.

The blood splattered along the way left a jagged trail, but its speed did not decrease in the slightest.

Looking at the purple patterns on the bear, Roger did not need to think to guess the reason—the answer was staring him right in the face.

Like those who had lost control, those twisted patterns had likely used dark magic to suppress its sense of pain and fear of death, turning the bear into a living corpse driven solely by the urge to tear things apart.

His arms had recovered some strength, the soreness from firing three consecutive arrows fading slightly. Roger stopped in his tracks. The bear was less than twenty meters away, dragging its bleeding body in a final sprint.

He nocked a fourth regular arrow, Life Energy flowing through the arrowhead. Barely aiming, he released the bowstring at the oncoming brown mass.

The instant the arrow left the string, he turned and ran to put some distance between them.

He hadn't run far when a heavy thud echoed behind him, prompting him to turn around.

The bear's massive body lay collapsed on its side in a shallow crater of dirt. It made low, unintelligible gurgles, its eyes dimming as its heavy breaths grew fainter, its limbs occasionally twitching.

When the massive chest finally stopped rising and falling, the system's cold notification rang in his mind.

“Points +200. Balance: 300.”

Only then did Roger let out a sigh of relief. He walked over and pulled his sword out of the bear's carcass.

“It was a bit messy, but taking down a cultist-controlled brown bear solo without taking a scratch isn't a bad deal.” He wiped the sweat from his face, taking a few deep breaths to steady his breathing.

He quickly reviewed the fight in his head.

The previous goblin warrior had been worth six hundred points, and this brown bear's combat strength was only about a third of that, yet it had still managed to chase him all over the woods.

If the first three arrows hadn't worn down its stamina, and if the final arrow hadn't struck at the exact moment it was charging fastest with its own momentum, the outcome might have been very different.

If it had been a melee warrior of only Rank One or Two who wasn't skilled at kiting, getting cornered by this bear would have likely left them as a smear of meat paste beneath its paws.

The conclusion was clear: he was still quite weak.

“And my means of attack are indeed a bit too limited.”

He looked down at the shortbow in his hand. Since transmigrating, his offensive output had relied almost entirely on archery, and every enemy he faced had been taken down arrow by arrow.

“Once I save up enough points, I need to buy an offensive skill.”

The sound of hurried footsteps and rustling grass quickly approached, cutting Roger's reflection short.

He turned his head to see a group of soldiers standing behind the trees not far away, staring at him with expressions of shock and uncertainty.

They looked at the bear's carcass on the ground, then at Roger, who was drenched in sweat and splattered with blood but standing straight. No one spoke. A few laborers still clutched the freshly picked Firekiss Flowers in their hands; they had clearly witnessed at least part of the battle from afar.

Before long, Knight Stine arrived at the scene with his squires.

Roger pointed at the bear's carcass and shrugged, as if to say they were too late and he had already slain the beast.

Stine's lip twitched slightly, but he quickly regained his businesslike expression.

He walked over and squatted beside the bear, examining the fading purple patterns and checking the wounds on its belly. Standing up, he nodded to Roger and began his routine questioning of the incident.

Roger recounted the entire process truthfully, omitting only the part where he found the lizard carcass and stored it in his system inventory.

After listening to Roger's account, Stine turned and ordered the squire beside him:

“Go inform Scholar Brandon immediately to halt all gathering. There might be more magically controlled beasts in these woods. Until we conduct a thorough sweep, no one is allowed to act alone.”

The squire took the order and ran off, his footsteps quickly fading into the woods. Stine turned back to Roger, his tone shifting from commanding a subordinate to the solemnity reserved for an equal:

“Sir Roger, you may need to accompany me to explain the situation to Lord Raymond in person.