Editing Dark Elf:Volume1 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 6===

He felt the first blow land. Hard.

One of its antlers broke off and a warm liquid spurted from the animal’s head, but that was not enough to kill it. The struggling deer shook its head wildly. It was nothing more than luck that kept Klaus’s windpipe from being torn open. If the other antler hadn’t caught on a low bush, it would have scored a clean hit.

Then he swung down his blunt weapon again. He was fully focused. He couldn’t believe his weary body had this much strength left in it.

“Pant, pant!!”

How many times had he hit it now? He swung one last blow down on the animal that was now too weak to stand on its own. He waited until its convulsing legs came to a stop. He had won. But he was afraid it might suddenly get back up again.

That must have been a painful death. A real hunter would have been horrified by his handiwork.

“Yeah…this isn’t going to make a good gift for a girl.”

Klaus covered his face with his hands after looking down at the smashed head.

He was primarily after Slender, but he decided he should consider what Little Girl would think as well. He recalled how delighted she had been when she innocently climbed on top of him with a smile. He could never let her see a deer looking like this.

…''But what if you couldn’t tell anymore? Like if I made jerky out of it? Oh, but there are no factories in the forest, so the dark elves must make everything themselves. Would homecooked food even seem special to them?

His admirable thoughts were interrupted by the growling of his stomach. Maybe because he was thinking about food.

It was finally time to get cooking. No one could blame him for eating a little of it himself. Eating some meat would stave off the hunger for tonight. And if he indirectly ingested some magic derivative, he would have more uses of his camouflage magic stocked up. This was no longer a passive fight of running away, hiding, and surviving. His next step was going on the offensive.

If he had the time, he also wanted to meet with and get to know his future wife better.

With any luck she might even tell him where their village was.

She had seen through his camouflage using her hunter knowledge, but if she told him what exactly had been wrong, he could fix it. That would give him the means of sneaking into their strictly-guarded ceremony. He could not let the dark elves resurrect the 10km dragon that would bring doom to humanity. He was scared, but with his rotten teacher and the knights gone, he was the only one left. They could never have their wedding unless he resolved all of these many concerns.

Just one person’s help would make so much difference, so his first job was to reach a point where he could calmly think things through. He needed a flexible mind to figure out how to set his future wife’s heart aflutter.

The deer was collapsed on its side with a broken antler and a smashed head.

“Time to eat,” said Klaus. “I can get to work after I’ve had some food.”

But he couldn’t just chow down on this freshly-killed meat. Setting aside all issues related to the magic derivative, he would gag and retch it back up.

…''So I need to cook it. U-ughh. The work never ends.

He briefly recalled the scene of his future wife bathing. He could easily cook the meat by throwing it into the nearly-boiling water at the source of the hot spring. But he might not be able to find it anymore and the odds were good the dark elves kept an eye on those bathing spots.

He would have to start a fire on his own.

Camouflize was his only magic, so he could not shoot fire from his hand.

So he considered the simplest method he knew of: hold a stick between his hands like he was praying and spin it enough to start a fire with the friction. But that wouldn’t work. He could imagine the tragic result easily enough before even trying it. That was an expert technique. He might be able to do it through brute force if he Camouflized into a large bear or something, but he did not see any big animals around. Not that he wanted to see one. Which meant…

“I’m glad I killed it,” he said, rubbing his hand along the unmoving deer’s belly.

He was checking its rough fur. He rubbed his hand back and forth a few times to be sure, like he was cleaning a window with a rag.

Bluish-white light flashed in the darkness.

“Static electricity.”

Most people saw it as a nuisance that only caused a bit of pain when touching a doorknob or a sweater in the winter, but some at the royal capital’s school were trying to bottle it up and use it. They claimed they would remake the magical world into an electrical world if they succeeded, but he couldn’t tell how serious they were about it.

Anyway.

“This I can do. I don’t need any special tools or skills to start a fire!”

He took a look around and gathered up some dried leaves and cotton-like plants in the moonlight. The static electricity itself was small, but he could create as much as he wanted by rubbing the deer’s fur. As long as he could get a small fire started…

“H-huh?”

It didn’t work how he had hoped. The static was there and it was contacting the leaves and cotton. Fluffy and dry things had a greater surface area and thus burned more intensely, so he had thought something like cotton would be best. None of that was wrong. His information was correct, but he still did not receive the results he had expected. The fire would not start.

…''Of course it won’t. I’ve never heard of someone bursting into flames because they were having fun making their hair stand on end.

Fallen leaves and cotton were not good enough fuel. But he doubted he could find tallow or a flammable gas this deep in the forest. He could get tallow by rendering the deer’s fat, but that would require a fire.

…''Is there anything else that burns – that burns more? Hold on, wait. I’ve seen something like that already…

He thought, took a look at his note-taking stick, and then looked up.

He had completely forgotten.

“The torches. The dark elves were using torches when they tried to burn me alive!”