The Primal Hunter

Jake smiled as he walked out of the lodge and jumped upwards to get above the trees, allowing him to see the speeding green murder ball fly straight toward him.

He could easily feel that he was not the only one who had reached C-grade, and from the looks of it, the little bird had evolved quite a bit before him. Jake knew Sylphie was powerful and that she would grow into her power with time, but he still found himself pleasantly surprised by her progress.

[Juvenile Sylphian Hawk – lvl 204]

However, he was a bit surprised to see that Sylphie had indeed manipulated her own form using the Polymorph skill to change significantly. And when Jake meant significant, he meant that she had changed some of her feathers to a lighter shade of green to better match the color of her small vest from Treasure Hunt.

Seeing Uncle reminded Sylphie of something else!

Whaleman was weird.

Whaleman was one of the funniest things she had ever seen, mainly because he was a Whale and not a Whaleman, so why had he started to look like a Whaleman? Whale couldn’t even swim fast while looking like a Whaleman, but now Whale had become a Whaleman nearly all the time. At least the big annoying eating worm was better than that, knowing that being a human-looking worm would be mega weird. Why would anyone even bother looking like an Uncle or a Punching Lady? That would just be silly.

Besides, Sylphie thought very smartly, humans had some big flaws. Like how big they were.

As she flew over to Uncle, she did a pivot in the air and landed right in her nest on top of Uncle’s head. It felt a bit different than before, but it was okay, and she used her talons to put all the hair in the right places before sitting down and making herself super comfy.

Silly human beasts couldn’t sit in her nest on Uncle’s head, so why would she ever become human-looking?

That would just be silly.

“Hey, Sylphie?” Uncle asked her, making Sylphie look down and ask what he wanted.

“Ree?”

“When did you evolve?” he asked while smartly not moving his head.

“Ree!” Sylphie promptly answered very accurately.

“An entire month, huh?” Uncle said, raising his hand to give her the scratches.

Sylphie liked the scratchies.

“But you need to be a bit careful if you wanna go to Nevermore,” Uncle reminded Sylphie.

“Ree! Ree!” Sylphie complained as she had, of course, known. Big Bird had reminded her. Sylphie considered pecking the scratching hand for his wrongness, but she allowed him to continue. She was really nice like that.

“Of course you knew,” he correctly corrected and scratched her under her chin. That was the best spot, so Uncle must have truly realized he said dumb stuff.

Suddenly, he stopped and lowered his hand, making Sylphie prepare to tell him that it wasn’t okay as he spoke:

“What do you say to a little bit of sparring? I wanna test myself a bit and not just stand here in the middle of the sky.”

Sylphie looked down at Uncle for a moment. She considered but then realized something. If Uncle used that…

“Ree?”

“No… I won’t try to hit you with my cauldron; why would I even-”

“Ree!” Sylphie thus issued her challenge.

Uncle was truly underestimating her by not even using his ultimate weapon!