The Hunter Academy

~Çhapter Ęlęvęn~

"Tracking!" Mr.Freeman shouted."Yesterday many of you failed to bring back an animal for dinner well now you'll be catching your lunch and finding your breakfast. You'll also need water for today. Go!" He boomed and everyone sprinted off while Zac and I headed in the direction as yesterday.

"I don't understand the point of this," I said as I studied the ground for animal prints."We're meant to be learning but Mr. Freeman isn't actually teaching us anything."

"I think he's seeing what we know before teaching everyone stuff they already know or maybe we're being forced to learn by ourselves since in the real world we won't have a teacher reminding us of what to do and what not to do," Zac explained.

"You have a point," I sighed as I made my way to the same water source hoping that we'll find an animal trail there.

"How are you so good at this," Zac asked out of the blue as we walked and I shrugged while picking some chickweed and offering it to Zac since we hadn't had breakfast. I also picked some other plants like wild onions and cress as well as a variety of berries and nuts that were scattered across the ground.

"I enjoyed camping and I also went to summer camp but I enjoyed knowing everything I could about the wild, edible plants, tracking and all that stuff; nature is interesting, scary but interesting," I answered before making my way to the river from yesterday and filling my water bottles.

"That's your Hunter instincts, you learnt all that stuff because of your Hunter instincts, they're pushing you to learn things you might need," Zac told me and I nodded but didn't ask why he didn't learn. Laziness?

"Start filling your bottles," I told Zac and he didn't hesitate to kneel down and fill his bottles.

I thought about setting traps in the water to catch some fish or just regular traps to catch some rabbits but I decided against it as anyone could come across them and steal the game.

"What now?" He asked when we both finished.

"Find prints or animal trials, broken branches, eaten plants, whatever, just look for something out of the norm," I said and Zac nodded.

I stood up and started walking around the area carefully inspecting everything before Zac shouted,"found something!"

"What'd you find?" I asked as I ran over to him and saw him staring at animal prints in the ground; they were rounded prints with four toes, visible claws that dug into the ground and it looked like something had walked on two feet instead of on four paws.

"Fox prints," I whispered and pulled out two hunting knives from my belt; the bow was good and easy to use but I always felt more comfortable with knives in my hands.

I followed the prints until I came across a fox's den. I looked behind me to see Zac staring at me intently, I flicked my head to point to the fox's den and Zac understood. He nodded and we switched places. He threw his knives in and a whole family of foxes came running out, he hit every single one of them too. A shuddered breath came out without my consent as Zac put all the foxes in a burlap bag.

I turned away and looked into the foxes den before releasing a gasp as I saw a baby red fox in there, still sleeping. I picked it up and took it out of the foxes den before showing Zac.

"What do we do?" I asked and he stared at the baby fox in my hand.

"I don't think it can survive out here alone," Zac said and I saw pity in his eyes.