I watched Sam skin and butcher the bear as my mana regenerated.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked as I watched him confidently cut into fur and start separating it from the rest of the body with his hand.

  “We used to go hunting. Especially when we were reenacting. My folks tried to keep it as legitimate as possible…I was almost a teenager when I found out most people didn’t sleep with furs as top blankets.” He made it look easy. I paid attention to what he was doing as I might have to learn to do this myself.

  Once done he separated the bones and the organs he didn’t want and stored the rest. He looked over at me, my mana was only half full.

  “Want to learn how?” he asked. I nodded and walked over to join him, swapping out my Battlestaff for the Gather’s blade I’d been given the day before. Sam had produced two of the rats which were roughly the same size as each other and placed them side by side.

  “First we are going to make sure it doesn’t rock around too much.” He put it on its back, positioned its limbs spread out, and showed how it wouldn't move too much. “Don’t want them moving around while we do this.” I copied him.

  “Next we make a shallow cut into the skin to create a flap.” I started to copy him. “Not too deep, we don’t want to be hitting organs, the skin is a lot thinner than most people think.” I followed his instructions, we peeled the warm hide enough to get a good grip on it and then carefully pulled it off the corpses, only cutting when the resistance of the hide couldn’t be overcome by pulling on it and we absolutely had to.

  I stared down at my first hide and smiled. It was a bloody mess…but I’d done it.

  I skinned another two rats, and unlocked the skinning skill while Sam proceeded to skin and butcher the boars we had collected.

  By the time we had finished the area we were in was an utter mess, but I was happy to have gained a new skill and Sam was already planning what he was going to cook using the bear meat…apparently he had always wanted to try a bear burger.

  My mana full and Sam’s [Inventory] considerably less full, we moved on with our hunt. It seems the bear was quite the territorial beast here as it was in the real world. We found evidence that rats had made a nest a couple of buildings over, but all that was left of them were some bloody stains. Between a few warehouses and the large empty factory buildings it didn’t take us all that long to cover one half of the tier and head down to the docks.

  Despite the fact we did kill quite a few of them, we knew the Sail Loft would still have a large swarm of rats, so we had come in on the opposite side of the docks with a hope that they were the largest group of mobs to kill and we would have gained some skills or stats in all the fighting to get to them.

  The docks were interesting to my eyes. The pier extended around in a semicircle around the edge of the sheltered bay, creating a crescent moon. There were a few stone jetties going out, but mostly consisted of ramps lowering down into the water with metal tracks on them. Someone more recently had added a couple of wooden piers down the middle of the bay. Directly opposite where Sam had moored his boat, on the far side of the bay, was a small squat building, with a sign declaring it to be the Harbour Master’s Office.

  On the landward side of the pier, the tracks coming from the water led into one of several long warehouse buildings. Here it seems the Explorators had left more of a mark. The first warehouse had been converted into a bunkhouse.

  Someone had brought down a bunch of the office dividers from one of the office blocks to give each person their own area, some cots from one of the blocks of student accommodation, and a selection of furniture to give it a more homely feel. A few of the cubicles had hammocks rigged up, most didn’t. There was a strange smell that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  The far corner had been set up into a bit of a communal area. A long sturdy table with stools on either side, not far from the remains of a stoned lined cooking hearth, with the remains of a log fire used for cooking and warmth. Some larger sofas surrounding some coffee tables. A table with the markings to indicate it had been used for a knife game of some kind. There was also a dart board set up in the corner, that I couldn’t resist throwing a set of the darts at it, which might have turned into an impromptu game if a clump of a thick white slime hadn’t come down on my outstretched arm.

  My eyes fell on the slime, there was a dark streak in it, and then the smell hit me, a fresher stronger version of what had underpinned the warehouse. I retched slightly…I’d just been shat on.

  You know in the horror movies where the plucky hero stops and then turns to look in the direction that the audience knows they will regret looking in. My head tilted back, and I looked up.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The rafters of this warehouse were maybe 10 meters above me. Perched on one of them and directly above me, almost hidden in the shadows, was a dark grey bird, a hooked beak dominated it’s head and as if it felt me looking up at it, its head twitched down to look at me with beady red eyes.

  It pooped again, and let out a screech.

  The screech echoed around the room and was then taken up by other birds. I looked around and could see movement in various other shadows around the rafters.

  And some of those shadows were huge.

  I heard another shriek, a flap of wings and turned to see a bird diving from the far corner, straight for Sam. I started casting a and aimed it for the diving bird. I could feel the adrenaline starting to build within me in that way when time seems to slow down. “Sam” I called out to the man who was turning and aiming a pistol he had pulled out over towards another corner. “Duck!”

  “Nah, they’re Gulls!” he responded instinctively, as he ducked down while pulling the trigger.

  My hit the gull just after it had skimmed his ducking head. There was a thud to my right, and I turned to see another one with a meter long wing extended slide along the ground towards me. I pulled my battlestaff out of [Inventory] and used it to hit the thing. I’m sure Sam’s shot had killed it, but hit it anyway just to be sure. I could feel the crunch of bones as the light creature was crushed. I turned to look at Sam and saw him finish off the one I had stunned with a solid kick. Two more of the creatures were diving at him and from him drawing two pistols and aiming above me, more were coming down in that direction.

  I dived for the long table, a going after one of the birds, I didn’t see if it landed. I really needed a chain spell. “Cover” I shouted out to Sam, hoping he would get out of the open. There was a thud on the table above me. I heard Sam’s fourth shot and then saw him scrambling under the other end of the table.

  “Birds? Really?” he shouted out, over the loud caws and flapping wings. I saw he had three bleeding gashes down his face crossing over one eye.

  There was another thud on the table above me. A huge bird hopped down from it and turned to look at me. It spread its wings to its full 2m wingspan and screeched in my direction. I thrust my staff at it, but it responded by flapping its extended wings and pushing itself back away from me, narrowly avoiding my blow. I heard movement behind me and spun around with the battlestaff extended. It collided with a smaller bird which was trying to sneak up on me. The blow knocked it into one of the nearby dividers hard. They were very light.

  I released a into one which had landed behind Sam. His focus was on the larger bird, which was taunting him from just outside of his rapier range. A dagger appeared out of nowhere, sticking out of its chest. Right, Sam carried more than just those pistols for range attacks, even if he did have to keep wiping the blood away from his eye with his sleeve. It was almost like fighting intelligent creatures the way they kept trying to bait us out of cover.

  The birds kept coming, their brittle bones meant they didn’t survive my attacks that landed. Every one of my bludgeoning attacks left broken wings or legs at least. But they were nimble. Enough so that any mistake on my part resulted in an injury and they kept trying to swarm us. Attacks coming from angles we weren't watching. So we had to constantly watch out for each other’s blind spots. I took out a large one when it was paying more attention to Sam and didn’t dodge my slower moving . The next fell to Sam, when it came at him just after the first pistol had finished recharging.

  They came at us harder every time one of us tried to move closer to the other. The moment we managed to get close enough to better cover each other, marked the turning point in the fight. The largest of the birds we had seen yet came in and grabbed at my Staff when I swung for it, its talons gripping with surprising strength as it tried to rip it out of my hands. It fell when I released my first of the fight. The shock broke it out of its hold, which coincided with Sam’s rapid tat-tat of two pistols firing in rapid succession. I then thrust my Battlestaff into its face, forcing its head into an unnatural angle with a crack.

  The rest fell to us after that, almost like all organisation evaporated and they were feral beasts once more. Every ten seconds, as long as they were relatively close, Sam was able to easily dispatch four of them. Once we had their flock whittled down, we started ducking out of cover to attack the ones who hadn’t been so brave before. I missed a few sparks where they moved in the air in a way I didn’t expect, but if they were grounded, they were pretty predictable.

  Not sure what came over me after the fight was finally over and the adrenaline left me. After checking on our injuries to make sure they weren’t too bad and would heal up themselves, I found myself wondering what these birds might taste like. Sam had followed my gaze to the cooking fire, grinned and set about getting a fire going while I went about collecting the corpses of the fifty birds we had killed.

  I ran a hand over the table, it had taken a beating, but it definitely was responsible for saving our lives. “Are we keeping the feathers?” I asked, as I plucked out another handful from the giant bird before me. “Might have value…”

  “Sure, it would make sense.” He confirmed as he passed me half of a smaller one he had spit roasted while we plucked, butchered and stored the rest.

  I paused on my third bite.

  “Is this becoming a thing?” I asked

  “Is what becoming a thing?” he replied, taking a bite out of his half of the tasty bird.

  “Us killing and then butchering the creatures we fight…” I responded.

  “If I can…sure.” he answered. “When my Gramps took me hunting, he insisted on it. Life is precious, and if you must take one, you should honour it by doing as much with its body as you can. So, to be honest, leaving corpses on the ground in other games always felt wrong to me, so here, where I don’t have to…well…” He shrugged. “But don’t feel like you have to, just my way. I do appreciate the help though.” He smiled.