章 8: 8. Loss and Gain
'An… Egg?', Liam thought in disbelief, the egg was poking out of a sort of pouch and seemed perfectly intact. An idea flashed in his mind, he was going to try and hatch it, at best he got a partner-pet-mount and at worst he got fertilizer for his plants.
He never tried to tame the animals of this world, first, it wasn't going to be like the main method in the game where he knocks them out and force feeds them their favorite food while they are unconscious.
Second most creatures seemingly wanted him torn to shred and in their stomach, one of the rare exceptions to these rules was the Tapirus. The problem was, even if he managed to tame one, which would be fairly easy.
What was the point? If it was for using them for labor like horses, he was both stronger and faster than them without the need to be trained, so it was pointless, the other option was to use them as a food source.
For that, he needed a breeding pair, if not multiple, AND invest time AND resources he didn't really have all of this for minimal if not negative gain throughout a long period of time. And in both cases he will have to protect them 24/7 otherwise they would be eaten by a predator. It simply wasn't worth it. And when he took an endeavor like this he took responsibility.
However in the great austrapede case or wolverine bird as Liam called it. It was worth a try, he may hate the beast but he also respected it and it was sad to let the egg here.
'It's kinda fucked up though…', Liam remarked, he was going to raise the hatchling after having killed the father or mother. Walking around the huge claws, a shudder went down his scarred spine at their proximity. Phantom pain washes over him for a split second.
He took out a dagger with a viperwolf's fang for a blade and delicately started cutting the pouch open, the inside of it reminded him of soundproof foam, it explained how the egg was intact. Putting the palm of his left hand against the smooth eggshell he focused on his inventory.
The biology of animals on this moon never ceased to amaze and surprise him, the latter point leading to an event such as the suicidal screech.
While he waited for the watermelon-sized egg to be stored in his inventory he looked up at the sky and if his face wasn't covered in blood and grim the rapid paling of his tanned skin would have been noticeable.
All around in the sky, he saw black-purple spots flying, they were stingbats, forming each a swarm of thousand individuals and all those swarms formed one bigger than he ever saw. So much so that they blocked the sun and the world darkened.
It didn't take a genius to understand why this was happening, the screech woke them up, it was the middle of the day and those giant psychopathic bats with literal pea-sized brains at the earliest and latest were out lat in the dawn or early in the twilight.
"Fuck!", he swore, it was bad, extremely so, and even more considering two dozen bats dived right where he was a while he was internally urging the speed at which he was storing the egg while gritting his teeth at the increasing headache.
Storing it was a delicate process not helped by the thing in question being as large as his torso. It could store living beings but only if they lacked a great deal of sentience and were immobile or if he had access to cryopods.
What was he doing out of greed and stupid? Maybe, probably, but he didn't want to lose the egg, not after everything he had undergone and it would leave an unpleasant aftertaste in his mouth.
He would have killed the beast and gotten injured for literally nothing, it would be a loss on all points. He didn't want that, he hated losing as childish as it sounded.
One bat chirped and recklessly plunged at him, its maw full of sharp teeth wide open, it slammed against the claw above caving its skull and dying on spot. Another followed this time weaving around the claws, thrusting his dagger he stabbed the bat in the head killing it. He then flicked the dagger of the body and blood.
Another flew in followed by two others, one screeched next to his ears making the newly regrown and sensitive eardrum ring painfully while trying to claw and bite at his armored back, thanks to whatever deities those little shit were beyond retarted. It barely leaves any scratch marks on the bronze cuirass.
The egg finally vanished into his inventory, it only took seven seconds but that was a time he didn't really have and Liam beyond pissed grabbed the bat by the upper jaws, uncaring for the small cut he got from the needle-like teeth, and then he slammed it against the claw behind him, crushing its spine and insides.
Bloodied dagger in hand he jumped over the great austrapede arm, slashing the wing of an approaching one making waver and fall, there were too many of them.
He threw the tooth dagger he held in his right hand at another bat, the force of the throw still enough to kill another one behind and cripple a last one on its fall. Three bats, one dagger.
After that, he covered the short distance between him and the hole he dug to walk up in less than a second. Inside he tore off the wood support and backed away as it collapsed, crushing three more stingbats and sealing this exit with a heavy dust cloud, only one left to go.
Using his implant as a flashlight he arrived on the other side and did the same as before sealing himself 6 meters (19ft7) under. There were not a lot of places but enough for him to sit, his back against a wood beam.
Now that he was in a safe place he reviewed what happened, it was all his fault yet at the same time it wasn't he couldn't have predicted that, in all cases, he could and should have done better. It also was a reminder that the control he thought he had was illusory.
The bats at the moment were surely feasting on one another and his prize he refrained himself from punching anything out of frustration. Anger was still present. And this fucking headache was not helping him in the slightest. He couldn't do anything but let it happen, it was life.
Slowly breathing in and out he calmed down a bit and focused on his inventory where the egg was put in stasis where all biological activities were slowed down to a crawl, and it was fertilized from the information he got in the scan.
Fundamentally he didn't lose much, he gained in fact, the hide and meat of the giant bird were just that, meat and hide, but the egg if he got it to hatch and raised the baby to full maturity… This made him slightly giddy at the idea to ride and command one such creature. But it was for the future.
A skin gourd full of crystal clear water appeared in his left hand and he poured it on his hands, cleaning them, the swell was already gone and his skin and muscle fibers slowly regenerated. In one or two days they will look as good as new.
He drank the rest before taking another one and pouring it down his head, laughing in contentment feeling the pain of the headache lower a bit.
After eating at least a good kilo of smoked Tapirus meat that was marinated in various aromatic herbs. After finishing eating he dozed off and fell asleep, all mental fatigue hitting him like a truck.
Sleeping while in extreme pain was something he was accustomed to. A bronze dagger was tightly kept in the palm of his hand and his armor was still on.
Day 26.
Liam woke, and his mind cleared the smell of earth and blood prevailing in the tunnel. His hearing was back and what a joy it was to not have the continuous buzzing and ringing noise of broken radio in the background.
Moving up to the lower exit leading to the pitfall he started to dig his way out, adding wood beams to not get buried alive and 5 minutes later he was happy to see it was the middle of the day.
His eyes landed on a skeleton, the great austrapede, the bones nearly cleaned of all things remotely fleshy, blood soaked the soil, and was accompanied by smaller half-destroyed stingbats' skeletons.
"Might as well use what's left.", Liam said, his hand trailing over the bigger claws of the right arm, it was needle-like, sharp, and longer than he was tall.
He observed this bird sharpen its own claws against various stones, and overall take great care of them. It was a highly intelligent animal close if not superior to crows in that same department.
Twisting the base of the claws it came right off, there was a bit of blood, holding it high he remarked how light it was, for him that is. He then collected all of the others, even from the feet and legs.
'Those things might as well be made of steel…', Liam thought on his way back to his base while he fiddled with a small hook-shaped claw from one of the two proto-back wing fingers.
He couldn't conclude without further information but the main element in the claws and their concentration made him think with the data he had that those things were some kind of biologically made steel, somehow. It also meant that the great austrapede had a way to get iron.
He supposed that when he observed but it was more of a dumb hypothesis and for it to be the actual case… Well considering everything from this planet with a spine had carbon fiber-reinforced bone it might not be that crazy. Not like there is some kind of brain juice that gives biological immortality.
Anyway, he wasn't a biologist but that didn't stop him from acknowledging how insane the biology of Pandora was and both marveling at it or hating it depending on the situation.
The rest day went over with Liam going and coming from his base to the pitfall recuperating a big part of the giant bird skeleton, two bronze spears, and a toothed knife. He wasn't going to forget about them, the spear in particular. Bronze was a pain in the ass to get, losing this much was a no in his book.
The day was shorter, not a strange occurrence quite the contrary, the day and night circle of Pandora was chaotic from an Earthling point of view, to say the least, and this without taking into consideration the seemingly random solar eclipse by the gas giant.
And even then he found it truly magnificent, a sight impossible from Earth, even a clear night sky was something you wouldn't see unless far from human activities but beauty and danger and danger more often than not come hand in hand. This held true even more in this alien world.
So being active during the night was his sight, even if marginally better than a human in all aspects, was still limited and this is without considering the frequent swarm of stingbats. Thought stingbats as dangerous as they were forget about you almost instantly if they lost sight of you. It was almost comical.
Up in his tree house, Liam was whistling the Aberration theme while working on a collar, a little thing he decided to craft where he would put trinkets related to events and important things to him. Tokens, and memories.
The egg was in a big satchel made of cords filled with warm moss, it was attached right to his side in a way his body's heat will radiate on the egg.
A very crude way of incubating an egg, one he wasn't even sure if what he was doing was working, either way, it was the only way he had at the moment. The time it will take to build an incubator and aliment it with electricity will be superior to the time the egg can stay in stasis by at least a factor of five.
クリエイターの想い 
The_Bip_Boop2003
The_Bip_Boop2003 Hello. Future baby murder chicken and the next chap is the first contact with Na'vi, in the timeline, he is roughly one year before Jake Sully comes to Pandora.
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