Limits

Chapter 42

I was running through the forest and Shelly was tagging along behind me. We encountered some wild wolves but those were no longer a thread to me. I decided to dispose of them. To my surprise, Shelly attacked one of the wolves and actually won. Shelly used its speed and the hard shell to ram into the wolf countless times and then bit it to death when it was incapacitated.

I then saw Shelly eating the wolf. I thought it will eat only fishes but I guess I was wrong. Apparently Shelly will eat any meat it likes whenever it's wolf or fish. 'In that case I don't really have to worry about fishes, as Shelly can eat other types of meat' I thought to myself and the said "Come on Shelly, we shall continue our travels".

The road ahead was quite dangerous due to the animals living on the path we took. We meet loads of wolves and even some bears. Shelly would not go against bears because it couldn't inflict any substantial damage to them. I took care of the bears that we encountered while Shelly would take care of the wolves and boars.

Of course I wouldn't just leave Shelly to die and if the situation got dangerous, I would kill a wolf or two. Those situations were quite rare which shocked me. Shelly typically managed to kill couple of wolves by itself and didn't need my help. This turtle was very crafty and the agility it had was out of this world for a turtle.

We continued like this till late afternoon where I stopped and said "We shall make a shelter and stay the night here to rest. When we are rested, early the next morning we will move on". Shelly nodded its head and tried to help me with building the shelter. It collected some branches that were thick and long enough for shelter and brought them to the place that would become our shelter.

I was already a bit experienced with shelter building. After a bit over 20 minutes, we had our shelter ready for the night. I didn't have to go anywhere to hunt for food as I collected a lot of meat during the journey here. It was already cooked partially, I just had to reheat it and cook it more properly.

When I cooked the meat and started to munch in on it, shelly came over and looked at my with what I could only describe as cute eyes. 'Who could guess that a turtle can actually show that type of expression?' I thought to myself. I asked Shelly "Do you want some?" and it nodded. I gave it a piece of cooked meat and the turtle ate it, then looked at me again. 'It seems that Shelly liked cooked meat as well' then another thought entered my mind 'Wait, didn't Shelly eat quite a lot today? Usually it would eat only something like one or two fishes but now it actually ate couple of wolves and is still begging for food'.

I was baffled by this change of character in Shelly and asked out loud "Shelly, why do you suddenly eat so much?". I didn't expect answer because Shelly couldn't talk but it still tried to show me why. It jumped around a bit then ran around a bit and showed me an eating motion. A sudden thought entered my mind 'I think Shelly is trying to say that because it moves so much and at such speeds, it needs to eat a lot more. It would make sense because when it ate one or two fishes, it would go to sleep'. I asked Shelly "You mean to say that because you need to move a lot, you also need to eat a lot right?" to which it nodded its head.

I took one more piece of the meat and gave the rest to Shelly. I was not full yet and I could surely eat more than just this one piece but I decided to give it to Shelly. Besides, Shelly was the one that hunted most boars not me and that was the meat taken from boars.

I gave Shelly about 2-3 kilograms of food that was left over from today. I stocked so much because you never know if you need food and besides, my old habits dictated my hunger. I could eat a lot as well, although I didn't get any fatter. Shelly gobbled down the food in matter of minutes and laid down in the shelter next to me.

I must admit that I grew attached to this turtle. It always wanted to follow me, it was intelligent and it was also skillful. I started to treat it like part of the family and the turtle seemed to treat me in the same way. After the dinner, I laid there reading the Great Scriptures of Evil Medic and tried to relax a bit.

I needed to be rested for the next day as the pace we were going at was quite fast. Also because of the path I chose to take, we had to face a lot of animals such as wolves and bears. After a bit of reading I felt tired, I hid the book back into my shirt and noticed that Shelly is already asleep next to me. With that I went to sleep as well.

The night was very uneventful, probably because we killed a lot of animals in this area and there were simply none left or those left were scared away. I woke up Shelly and said "Alright, it is time to go. We will hunt on our way. This way you can refill your energy". Shelly nodded its head and followed after me. We were about 2 days away from the Grasshill Village. My estimates were that I would travel 3 days to the Grasshill Village while Rond and the rest would travel about 4 days. I should be able to arrive before them.

Even though I encountered many wolves and other animals, I should still be ahead of them. I tried to do minimal breaks but because Shelly needed much more food due to the pace, I did stops and let it eat or hunt to replenish that energy. Shelly could run for about an hour at full speed but then it would need to consume enough meat to create a wolf. In other words, it would have to consume one wolf to replenish its energy.

I also ate a lot but due to my weird constitution, I could run at full speed for about 3 hours and only then would I be hungry. Of course I could do it for longer but then hunger would change into starvation and that would be a problem. I didn't want to weaken my body anymore, hunger was fine but starvation was already crossing the line and this would damage my body.

Even though we ran at full speed for an hour and then did about 20 minutes of break, we traveled a bit more than I expected before the nightfall. Late in the afternoon, I chose a place for our second shelter and started to build it. Shelly helped me again with twigs and what not, it seemed happy that it could help. A while later the shelter wa built and I cooked food again. This time because I knew Shelly would eat as well, I prepared about 20 kilograms of food. It was like some kind of grand barbeque. About 5 kilograms of that would be probably eaten by me while the rest would belong to Shelly. This guy was only about 40 centimetres big yet it could fit all that food no problem. I think it had similar constitution to mine.

I was much bigger and therefore 5 kilograms of meat is a lot but proportionally to my size, it could be eaten somehow. Yet, a turtle that is over 3 times smaller than me? Eating 3 times more than me was mind blowing. After the meal, I decided to read the book again and I already saw that Shelly went to sleep.

While I was reading I heard a very loud howl and then another, and another and so on. I thought 'This must be a whole pack of wolves'. I put away the book and got a bit agitated. The amount of howls I could hear was not small and one of the howls was very distinctive and different. I then heard more howls that were getting closer to our location. I waked up Shelly and said "We have trouble. It may be possible we will have to run through the night". Shelly was a bit sleepy but still nodded its head.

The howls got closer and closer. I stood up and said "Follow me Shelly, we need to get out of this place".