The 5th Hero is a Beast [Queer LitRPG Isekai]

The afflictions faded over time, but even though the chunk of health lost was trivial for the kjerrborn, it did not heal on its own.

They did not want to stop until there was distance between the hunter and the herd, looking over their metaphorical shoulder the entire journey.

With their keen sense of smell, the kjerrborn sought easy sources of food, letting the cub (and themselves) rest at berry bushes and growths of wild tubers.

The internal contradiction was confusing the kjerrborn, as the beast-mind would have insisted that they chase off or kill the attacking human immediately, while Hallvar's mind was reticent, if not outright fearful, of challenging Guillaume.

There wasn't enough thought-room for Hallvar to puzzle out why they were afraid.

It could be the fear of pitting beasthunter versus beastshaper, both human, one debatably so. It could be the morals of killing another human, a guild mate at that. It could be worries of inadequacy, of the inexperienced hero losing to the expert hunter.

The kjerrborn didn't care. The kjerrborn had the human and the gronfaine's scent memorized. It would fight them again, if necessary.

After few days, they stopped fleeing. They were halfway to the western border, taking up post at another stream to feed the cub and the akergryph.

The kjerrborn could traverse entire countries without stopping to eat, burning fat reserves as its high endurance pushed it onward. But, the two beasts in the kjerrborn's care were not as robust.

It was fall, too. Autumn. The forests in Amnasin were mostly evergreen, but the occasional deciduous tree was washed in yellow, colors beginning to turn as the weather shifted.

Hallvar could not connect the dots beyond a surface level, not with the kjerrborn instinct overriding their decisions so heavily. They only knew that they were ravenous. Hungry at every rest, every nap, every pause for the cub snack on berries.

The word was hyperphagia; the instinct to consume as much as possible before winter, to optimize chances at survival. If the kjerrborn felt the urge, so did the cub.

They feasted in the stream, eating as many fish as the daylight would allow, before following the river north, seeking the smell of vetta root once more. After digging up the roots and taking their fill, it was time to sleep.

[ fighter skill: sleep it off ] allowed the kjerrborn to rest in any situation, within moments of attempting. They could sleep up to eight hours, without interruptions; their awareness and luck dictated if external stimuli would disrupt their sleep.

It didn't.

But Pipkin did.

She naturally slept for half of any given day, easily snuggling in the bristles of the ambling kjerrborn's fur like a giant, mobile akergryph bed. But, she slept in shorter bursts, waking up to snack on caches of insects and nuts stored in the kjerrborn's fur and to adjust her position.

The gronfaine musk floated on the wind, impossible to mistake amidst other wilderness smells.

Pipkin went into high alert, tail flicking in fear and excitement as she called out with her quaa quaa sound.

The kjerrborn woke up immediately, informed by the akergryph alert and the beast companion notification, a subconscious sense of alarm that Pipkin projected toward the beastmaster.

The woods were thicker here; the kjerrborn was at an advantage, having just eaten a hearty meal, slept, and acquired the vetta tree's healing properties.

Meanwhile, Guillaume had a system-illuminated outline of the kjerrborn tracks, but ze was forced to hike the woods on hir own. The gronfaine was not made for riding; a horse would leave the slower beast behind and could spook without proper training.

The cub squealed, but she followed the akergryph after a nudge from her parent, having grown accustomed to chasing the tiny beast during daytime play.

Then the kjerrborn charged.

The trees were taller in this part of the country, branches higher off the ground. A dark canopy prevented much undergrowth, allowing the kjerrborn to rush their opponent. Small brush thwapped against the kjerrborn's sides, though they barely felt the obstacles.

They followed the smell of the gronfaine, colliding with it at nearly top speed in the dark.

Fortunately for the kjerrborn, the gronfaine was a beast made for hunting in the sands and pastoral plains of the western nations. It relied on smell and hearing for most of its hunting, the light of the moon illuminating large swaths of land.

Here, it was nearly pitch black.

The sharp-toothed armor pushed into the kjerrborn's skin as they bowled over the gronfaine, nearly crushing it beneath their mass. In the scramble to slap the venomous half-reptile silly, the kjerrborn felt a few bites from the fangs of the beast.

The poison counter started once more.

To the hunter, the gronfaine was expendable. As expendable as a custom-made weapon, a saddle tailored to one's horse. A tool that was broken in, whose use was second nature. That was why it didn't have a name.

With its armor and poison, it was a challenge for almost every other beast in Aestrux. It had natural predators, but they were few and scattered. The kjerrborn was not one of those predators, but neither was it the gronfaine's natural prey.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

The clash of tool and human inevitably led to the gronfaine backing down, weighing survival over success without direct orders from the hunter.

The cry of the cub sounded through the woods.

Where was the hunter?

The kjerrborn turned as fast as their bulk allowed, clambering toward the scent of the cub first, branching off toward the hunter's trail.

The human had a long object, the spear, but that was all the kjerrborn could assess before they rushed at the hunter.

Hallvar was frantically trying to convince their beast-mind to let the hunter go, to chase hir off, to do anything but kill. It was not successful, delaying the thought processes of the kjerrborn enough to mentally stun the beast.

The spear tip stabbed at the kjerrborn's bulk, glancing off of thick fur even as the beast swiped at the hunter. The massive claws slammed into the trunk of a tree instead, leaving thick gouges.

Another lancing blow from the hunter collided with the kjerrborn's shoulder, angled well enough that a small wound appeared. Nothing vital, or really concerning.

But the bleed counter restarted.

The gronfaine was at the kjerrborn's back, latching sharp claws into the skin of the larger beast. It became a weight that slowed the already cumbersome kjerrborn down more, restarting the poison counter as fangs needled in.

With a roar, the kjerrborn stood upright, intentionally stumbling backwards toward a nearby tree. The beast loved scratching their back on the tree bark – ridding themselves of a pest shouldn't be that much of a problem.

2200 pounds threatened to crack the gronfaine's skeleton, saved only as the attempted slam was off-center.

Taking advantage of their beast's situation, the hunter successfully reset the bleed timer by scraping the kjerrborn's stomach with the stupid stick.

That was it. As the hunter retreated out of range of the giant paws, the kjerrborn threw themselves downward onto their feet, another sprinting charge at the human.

The spear point leveled at the kjerrborn's face.

Behind the intangible blockade of the beast-mind, Hallvar practically screeched to stop, to run, to do anything but continue charging at Guillaume.

The human couldn't project or feel emotions properly in this half-existence, but their logical processes upheld the assertion that killing a human, a guild member, was bad.

The kjerrborn hesitated, thrown off by the internal fear, however, it couldn't slow down the charge.

The sharp blade of the spear sliced up from the kjerrborn's lip, locked into place by the curved tusk as momentum rammed the point in. It slipped easily through the flesh by the kjerrborn's eye; their sight on that side went blurry almost immediately, though the pain was more enraging than detrimental.

The human had to dodge away to avoid being crushed under the kjerrborn's mass.

The weapon was a beast spear, made with a leaf-shaped head and wing-like protrusions that prevented any beast from simply pushing down the shaft and making their death-knell into your death-knell.

The wings were caught on the double tusks of the kjerrborn, who swatted at the spear-shaft and broke it with ease. The head of the spear wrench sideways as the shaft broke; the kjerrborn's eyesight disappeared on that side, accompanied by confounding pain.

Fuck. The human thought pushed through as the kjerrborn roared, swiping blindly at the weaponless hunter.

Something collided and the hunter fell, grunting in pain.

Hallvar managed to wrangle control from the distracted kjerrborn mind, distraught by pain and muddled senses.

In a quick motion, they lifted both paws into the air, slamming them next to the stupid Guillaume's head and bellowed. The kjerrborn barely missed crushing the human's skull, paws pinning the idiot's blonde hair, roar rendering hir temporarily deaf.

Their humanity prevented Hallvar from killing the hunter; it earned them a dagger to the foreleg.

With a huff, the kjerrborn adjusted their attention to finding their cub, ambling into a lope as the gronfaine investigated the smell of their hunter's injuries from a safe distance.

The chimeric beast was not used to itself yet. Within one kjerrborn form, two minds were fighting for control. One instinctual, strong-willed, yet incapable of the kind of complex morality and strategizing that the other manifested.

Given that they were fighting one of the best hunters in this half of the continent, or maybe the whole continent, Hallvar-kjerrborn was doing pretty fucking well for not being a single coherent entity.

The cub was hiding among some broken boulders, rolled down from the Staargraven a hundred years ago just so that the cub's face could peek out around the rock in fearful curiosity.

She greeted the kjerrborn tentatively, sniffing the spear head lodged into the larger beast's face. Hallvar returned the inspection, grateful that the cub did not seem injured, merely scared by the hunter and intimidated by the blood.

Pipkin emitted little squeaks of distress as she climbed around the kjerrborn's face, deciding to perch in the beast's neck fur to keep guard near the injury.

Her vigilance was helpful, especially during the daylight hours as the kjerrborn and cub fled farther west. She snacked on all manner of insects that wanted to feast on the blood and lay eggs in the wound, even perching on the kjerrborn's tusks to catch tiny hornets attracted by the smell.

The little akergryph took it upon herself to warn the kjerrborn of impending collisions and dangers on their right side, letting out a series of warning chirps if a tree was in Hallvar's new blind spot.

Though the beastmaster was grateful, they didn't have the faculties to think much about how clever and wonderful the akergryph was.

They lumbered onward, drawing closer to the Amnasín border under the looming presence of the Staargraven. Over the next few days, the weather grew chillier and the kjerrborn's consistent motions grew more sluggish, labored.

There was nothing to do. Vetta root could only heal so much when the spear head was still trapped in the kjerrborn's eye. Hallvar learned quickly that pawing at the injury caused much more pain.

The cub was forced to walk more, her parent becoming unable to carry her weight for long as they stumbled onward.

Perhaps instinctively, the kjerrborn wandered toward a quiet part of the forest. They couldn't feel the invisible barrier as they passed through it, though the familiar confusion and meandering distraction caused by the magic did nothing to stop the kjerrborn's rumbling gait.

They had a goal – find a safe place to rest. They didn't care, or didn't notice the changes in the air.

The kjerrborn's poor vision – now worsened – picked up sight of beasts in the near distance. The smell was wrong, but the shapes and motions suggested deer one moment, horses the next.

It was good enough. Wild deer, wild horses. Neither would care about a kjerrborn nearby, or not enough to do anything about it.

The beasts didn't react to the kjerrborn's presence, at least not in a way that Hallvar could have perceived.

But that was encouraging to the kjerrborn. Such a large herd of deer, dozens, if not a hundred strong. That meant very few predators, very little threat.

Safety.

The cub was nervous even as the kjerrborn aimed for a large boulder in the clearing. Perhaps the adult couldn't see the deer-things watching, but with her young eyes, the cub noticed almost every one of the deer turn their heads to watch the kjerrborn's path.

It was so quiet and unnerving to the cub, who stuck close to her parent.

They grunted and huffed as they smelled water. A tiny stream coming down from the Staargraven.

After drinking as much water as they could manage, the kjerrborn nudged the cub toward the boulder. She curled up into a cleft in the rock, where her parent shakily groomed her until they were content to settle down themselves.

The kjerrborn turned so that their back would shield the cub from view, shifting positions once so that the weight of their head didn't rest on their injured side.

If the deer could rest here, so could they.

The cub was safe. The akergryph was safe.

They would leave again in the morning.