The blade strangled through the neck, and the carcass in his hand jerked violently taut and convulsively, emitting a tremor disproportionate to its tiny size, as if to burst forth with all of the little drops of life contained within. --As the warm, fishy liquid gradually dripped down into his mouth, the trembling between his fingers faded and then dissipated. Asa squeezed the mountain rat as hard as he could, not realizing that the stomach contents were being squeezed out along with it. Only when the last drop of body fluid slowly dripped down did Asa drop the twisted and deformed rat and stuck out his tongue to lick the blood from the edge of his mouth.

  I don't want to die.

  The taste of blood steamed up from his stomach. A low growl came from his throat of its own accord, dull and ambiguous and long and deep, not as if it came from an organ, but from some fold in his soul.

  It was a sound he remembered from when he was three years old, hiding in a tree, watching some hunters from the village round up a wounded wolf. He was shaken by the low growl the wolf emitted, not with fear, but with the feeling that a chord deep in his soul resonated with it. For some time afterward he was obsessed with understanding the language of animals.

  He now realized that the sound was meaningless, just a hiss before the threat of death, a release after the overflow of a strong desire to survive and a nearly insane animalistic heart.

  Three days of blood and extreme nervousness, and the physical strength of the critical. The threat of death trailing behind him and his own strong desire to survive, the torment of both turned him into almost a complete beast. But fortunately, reason still ruled all actions.

  Asa was well aware of the gap between himself and his pursuer's abilities. He remembered clearly how the heads of the two infantrymen in the third unit had been smashed like watermelons in a single glance. The only thing he could rely on now was the advantage of having insight into his opponent's intentions.

  The hunter did not pursue him with all his might. It wasn't a chase, the hunter didn't want to catch up with him quickly and risk injury and a desperate beast tearing into each other. This was the hunt, keeping after the prey, letting it weaken in fear and desperate flight, waiting until it was a dozen times more certain before coming along and killing him like a rat, cutting off his head. Whether it was a physical factor or a skill to survive in this swampy, dense forest, there was no way he could get away from the chase. That much the chase and escape both knew very well.

  For the past three days, Asa had acted as the desperate escapee that his pursuers wanted to see. Physical fitness was dropping as fast as a real desperate escape. Without the ability to build a fire, there was no adequate food, and eating the flesh of any animal raw in the lizard swamps was a death wish, and the parasites inside were deadly enough for a human body, so instead they had to seek out some non-toxic insects to eat raw. While raw animal blood is safe and can be replenished slightly, it is not enough to cope with the loss of sweat and stamina from heavy exercise. The scarcity of salt and food had almost reached the limit of its endurance, and it was necessary to put an end to the illusion of truth which had been spread during these three days, by an action which could not be blundered in the slightest degree.

  By very good luck, three non-poisonous worms were soon found on the surrounding grass and shrubbery. The size of a fingertip and energetically tossed from side to side in their hands. By pinching the head with a finger and slowly strangling it down, the green feces was squeezed out. Not to use too much force to break the worm's body, causing the nutritious juices to splash, but also to measure the amount of potentially poisonous feces to be discharged, this was an extremely delicate craft, and after using it for the past few days, Asa had already become very skillful at it.

  The tender worm flesh quickly became a thick paste between his teeth, the slippery bitter flavor reverberating against his taste buds like the air of this swamp stuck to his skin. Asa carefully ground it with his teeth, scrutinizing his tongue for any larger chunks of meat that had slipped through the paste, making sure that the entirety of the worm was able to be reduced to potentially smaller units for easy digestion. Every drop of nourishment was precious, a motivation for what was to come next, a hope for survival.

  Digging a hole about a foot in the ground with his knife, he buried the body of the mountain rat. For every animal he had killed in the last three days, he had buried the body without sparing his precious energy.

  Negating the knife on his back, he examined himself carefully, flattened every protrusion of clothing by measure, stepped cautiously onto the mound of earth where he had just buried the mountain rat like a careful sentry stepping onto a narrow watchtower, then slowly crouched down, fell on his back, and like a giant deformed worm, slowly moved toward a puddle of sewage beside him.

  He focused all of his attention on this ugly movement, carefully controlling every muscle in his body so that his body might stretch against the ground without leaving a single conspicuous mark on the loose dirt floor. Any single movement out of control and uncoordinated would make three days of heartfelt effort completely wasted.

  Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he slowly slid down into the chest-high sewage without letting it splash in the slightest. The weight of the knife was just enough to keep him from floating, paddling through the silt under the water in the direction he remembered. The pool of sewage led to a makeshift creek created by the rains, he had walked here on purpose, and had chosen this terrain to bury the body, all planned.

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  There was a slight pain in a few places on his body, the leeches were negative. Asa did not bother, sucked enough blood they will release their own mouth, forced to pull the opposite will let the sucker left in the skin to cause infection, now the important thing is to dive out of the next time before the change of air may be far away.

  In his mind, he reexamined every detail of what he had just done. It was flawless, and the great joy of being born was overwhelming. The only problem now was just the body of the mountain rat, which had to have decayed enough to give off a certain odor before the hunters arrived.

  All I needed now was a rotting luck.

  Asa, who paddled his limbs like a scavenging lizard on the muck deposited by the rotting matter, prayed hard.

  In the afternoon, a rare glimpse of the sun in the lizard swamp showed its face.

  The sunlight fell in bits and pieces, cut by the branches of the trees. The damp ground turned the sun's corpse into a barrier that swirled between the branches of the trees and the ground. All swamp life in this sweltering, humid curtain barrier grew and grew and grew again so fast and died so fast for other life to grow and die that even the speeding *** seemed businesslike.

  The Chaser watched in silence as a large group of scavenging lizards gleefully scrambled over the corpse of a mountain rat. He hated the smell of slime on these ugly scavengers, it was too much for his keen sense of smell. One of the larger lizards triumphantly snatched the body and turned to flee, and the others immediately swarmed after it and disappeared into the forest, leaving behind only a scavenged mound of dirt and a trail of tracks.

  The prey was quite good for a human, with good speed, agility, and strength. The pursuer was intrigued, and had a fair amount of certainty that he would kill him in a head to head fight.

  But only a fair amount of certainty was not enough. This was not a battlefield, but a hunt, and it was necessary to utilize the considerable certainty to evolve gradually into sufficient certainty. Since yesterday, the tracks had begun to gradually become weak and vapid.

  Now, the pursuer feels he has enough certainty.

  But it was also a strange hunt. Though it was indeed being pursued, the tracks showed none of the disarray and panic that should characterize hunted prey. The feeble steps revealed a strange firmness that was not just a flight for life, but something else hidden within.

  The three days of covering their tracks had been good, but there had been one stupid mistake - burying the carcasses of animals that had finished drinking their blood. This was completely counterproductive, as the lizards would dig up the carcasses for the smell of decomposition and eat them. The hunter pretty much just has to follow the stench of the hordes of lizards.

  The feeling of an incomprehensible mindset, a stupid mistake, and a seeming connection between the two if nothing else, struck the chaser as a bit odd. But it was only just limited to strange; after catching up, killing, and cutting off the head, there was nothing strange about it. No animal could get away with tracking itself in this swampy, dense forest. This was something that the chaser was absolutely confident of. Absolutely.

  But the chaser was immediately surprised to find that all the tracks only went as far as here and did not extend in any direction.

  The only thing left in the air was the strong stench unique to swamp lizards. The pursuer bent down and scrutinized any trace on the ground. Though the lizards had made a mess of the ground around them by crawling and scrambling for food, the traces of this prey were still visible to the chaser's superior observation and experience, and it took a while to survey all the surrounding tracks clearly.

  Somewhat frail but not panicked steps, no sign of backtracking back to the road with his own footprints, just a few turns in the bushes around him, about looking for food. The chaser was even able to tell that the first food he found was from under two goat-horn ferns, probably a worm. The first half of the two footprints there were slightly deeper, showing the weight forward of the stooping motion. But beyond that, nothing was found. The footprints stopped only short of the mound where the body had been buried.

  This was completely outside the realm of experience accumulated over the years of heritage of the hunter's tribe. Fleeing, covering up, the gradually decreasing physical ability of the hunter only relied on his own mind to connect these, hoping to draw something other than experience from it. But a mind that lacks the ability to think logically can hardly accomplish this task. Upon realizing that he was, as this fugitive expected, caught step by step in a strange trap, an uncontrollable rage frantically took over all his thoughts.

  A lizard shook its head and crawled back, sniffing around the side of the mound, expecting to still find something favorable. But it immediately became the object of the rager's fury next to it. The large body flew high into the air with a furious blow, then landed in a pool of sewage, stirring up rushing sewage and silt to splash around. Along with the muddy water came a few leeches, squirming awkwardly as they tried to get back into the water with their rounded, satiated bodies. The Chaser noticed, picked one up for a closer look, snapped it open and tasted the liquid that flowed from it. Then a grimace appeared on his face that no other race could understand.

  Pressed against the ground, the keen sense of smell throughout the continent finally discerned a hint of the flavor he had hoped to find from the stench of irritation and the putrid smell of mud emanating from the slime on the lizard's body. The smell extended to the sewage puddle.

  The heart was to be ripped out while it was still alive, torn from the teeth of the hot, still pulsing thing, and swallowed into the body through the throat along with the blood that contained the freshness of the inside, turning the cunning contained within into its own strength.

  There must be no damage to the skull. The brain marrow is slowly scooped out of the eye sockets and eaten, the skin and flesh are stripped away, and a good craftsman is called in to grind the skull. This perfect trophy could be placed on the tombs of the ancestors. As an offering, a further testament to the tribe's proud hunting skills.

  You are my good prey.

  A long-lost exuberance filled the running pursuer's entire body, a feeling that had only ever stirred in his body when he was just maturing and chasing that beautiful female of the clan.