Reiji Kurozuma stood up and put on his katana so it was diagonally across his back from his left hip to his right shoulder.
He threw out the untouched body parts of the deer and then jumped out of the hole. He then buried them under the snow. The eaten leg was thrown away into the distance.
Looking at the fire for a moment, he decided that he was going to let it burn and then walked away from his hole, the sun almost fully set.
After walking for a while he came up to a drop off that no human nor animal could survive. It was a steep and rocky cliff.
He walked along the cliff's edge, the sun now fully set, plunging everything into darkness.
The only sound that accompanied Reiji was the cracking of snow under his boots.
After walking for a while he reached a part of the cliff that angled downward, it was a pathway down the cliff to the village Thornwick.
With a cliff this long and in a place filled with mountains it was the only safe pathway to the village. Thornwick itself could only be reached by foot.
Opposite to the cliff there was a forest that was on a more tame mountain but to enter Thornwick from there would need a loop around that was itself too dangerous.
Reiji looked down at where Thornwick approximately was but he couldn't see it because of the darkness.
After a moment he turned and very slowly made his way deeper inside of the forest that started from the cliff's edge.
After walking for what felt like forever, he stopped. He looked around, slowly looking from left-to-right and back, just in case he could see anything moving.
Reiji always hated this part, his heart was beating out of his chest and he was very nervous. He knew they were watching.
"Come on!"
Reiji screamed and after a moment the wind picked up, making the ends of his obi flap in the wind. It was as if the world itself had sensed something supernatural and didn't like it.
An arrow then flies directly at his head from his right. He saw it in the corner of his eye and moved at the last second, his left shoulder getting a small cut from the arrow's head.
"Can't you just lay off for a couple days? I need to catch up on my sleep."
Reiji spoke in the direction the arrow came from. His words were met with another arrow. An arrow that he dodged.
He quickly ran towards a tree that would block the archers line of sight. He then looked at his left shoulder. It was a shallow horizontal cut that caused blood to slowly trickle down his shoulder.
"Come on, I just stole this a week ago. Sorry to the one who made this."
Reiji muttered, his white outfit was definitely getting stained tonight.
Reiji's attention was caught by the sound of snow crunching somewhere to his left. It was such a small sound, as if there was a rat in the snow. Not much different from a rat, a small creature, about the height of a ten-year-old child, ran at him with a spear twice its height.
It seemingly snuck up to Reiji's position before running at him full speed. But this small humanoid wasn't cute, no. It was faster than any human alive.
But size is size and Reiji slapped the spear head with his right hand and grabbed the little man by his winter coat with his left hand.
The speed at which the little man was running caused him to almost break free of Reiji's grip but Reiji pulled it back and up, slamming it into the snow.
The little man was wearing a fur coat, fur pants and winter boots. He also had a white mask with dried blood on it.
The mask had deer antlers, eye and breathing holes. He was also wearing mittens.
Reiji then stepped on the creature with his left foot before it could do anything, causing it to let out a wheeze.
A short moment after he stepped on the little man he turned to look at where the archer from before was shooting at him.
After nothing happened he took the spear, dropped to the ground and crawled towards a tree that was closer to the archers last position.
"Where are you?"
He muttered to himself. He then crawled to the next tree, waited and repeated.
While he was crawling, an arrow whipped past over his head from his right. He quickly got to the next tree and started crawling towards the direction the arrow came from.
The archer had moved to catch Reiji off guard.
Will he move to the left or right? He just went left so going in the opposite direction is the obvious move and that's why he won't do it but if he knows I expect him to go left again he'll go right.
Reiji then sighed.
This is going nowhere.
The wind got even stronger while he was in this predicament, it's howls masking most sounds.
He decided to crawl to another tree and purposefully show a good portion of his body. An arrow came from the exact same spot and missed.
Reiji stood up and ran towards the direction of the archer, running behind the trees.
He ran and didn't stop until he finally saw the archer. His bow aimed and ready to fire at Reiji. Reiji quickly hid behind a tree.
Standing behind it for a moment, he took a deep breath and came out from behind it, throwing the spear at the archer and hitting him.
The archer dropped to the ground, the arrow flying off into a random direction. Seeing this, Reiji dropped down and crawled over to the little man. He looked at the spear that he threw. It pierced through its stomach.
It had a similar attire, winter clothing but a bag with eye and breathing holes instead of a mask. He saw that it had no arrows left.
I think it shot five arrows, the fifth one being after I killed it. That means this one carried five. Five to seven arrows is what these things usually carry.
After a moment he decided the coast was clear and stood up. He broke the bow it had and threw it in a random direction.
He then stripped the body of its clothes and the bag on its head. This frost person had no gloves. Its skin was pale like the moon and its face was that of a child, though a bit creepy.
He balled up its clothing and took the boots into his left hand. With the ball of clothes pressed against his chest, he left the body there. He then walked over to the other body and did the same, but he crushed its mask.
Reiji wanted to make sure the Frost people couldn't just come back and retrieve their weapons and clothes. He wanted to stop the expansion of their territory to protect human life.
He balled up all of the clothing into one ball and tied the laces on their boots together.
As he was about to leave, rhythmic stomping was heard. It got louder and louder, closer and closer until he felt it in the ground he stood on.
He tossed the clothes and boots to the side. He sighed and reached behind him, grabbing the handle of his katana.
What was currently hurdling at Reiji at a speed upwards of 30 kilometres per hour was a Frostgnasher. A creature thirteen meters in length, three meters in height and weighing eight tons.