With a flap of his wings, Omelette emerged from his hiding spot and took to the skies once again. Even at his young age, he instinctively knew that he was simply too small to be soaring through the skies for more than a few minutes at most, and even then he often kept low to the ground.

He didn't want to be snatched away by a larger bird looking for an easy meal, after all.

Circling the clearing once, to get a good view of the situation, Omelette pulled his wings in close and leaned into a dive. Plummeting for a few seconds before spreading his wings once again and landing delicately on the shoulder of his companion.

He liked the bonded one, even if he wasn't quite sure what he was. But even still, he had been around his entire life, which wasn't very long, and had taken care of him. He felt connected to the big, two legged creature. If only he could find a proper sense of style and realised that the feathers on his back weren't enough. He couldn't even use them to fly, it was such a basic thing too. Oh well, at least he was good at finding food, so he wasn't totally helpless.

Shaking his tiny head in disappointment at the odd incompetence of the big one, and deciding that it was up to him to look after the poor thing, Omelette clambered down his arm and hopped onto the brown fur of the recently slain bear.

Crawling along its gargantuan form, he eventually came to his prize. Licking his lips, or more accurately the teeth jutting from his beak, before he stabbed his beak into the soft, gooey goodness of the bear's eye.

Struggling for a few seconds, he tugged and twisted, playing a miniature game of tug of war with the corpse as he fought over the right to dine on its eye and eventually won the game when it popped out of the socket.

Letting out a triumphant chirp, he tossed it further back into his mouth before biting down until the eyeball popped. He savoured the juices that ran down his throat, enjoying it the same way that a human might enjoy a grape. The ones with a little crunch were always the best.

***

Seth shuddered at the sight of Omelette enjoying his meal, his face twisted in an expression of utter disgust at the little Wyverns antics.

'I know he likes the soft bits but… ugh, Still not used to it.'

Desperate to banish the image, and sound, from his mind Seth turned his attention back to his puppets as they were in the process of gutting the bear under his direction. It was ironic, how he could cut it open and pull out its organs yet still shiver at the sight of Omelette enjoying a single bite.

Perhaps all those people were right, maybe video games had desensitised him to a lot of blood and violence. Especially with the surge in realistic and deeply immersive VR games, it wasn't a far cry to say that he had experienced sights like this plenty in his time before the apocalypse.

But who was to say if that was a good thing or not. At least he could claim that he wasn't completely broken or a sociopath, all he'd have to do to convince anyone is to let them watch Omelette with his treats.

As it turns out, having a pair of puppets dressing his kill was actually a fantastic way of training himself to handle multiple inputs at once, and it was certainly helping. While there were plenty of knife slips here and there, it wasn't like he was going to lose a finger over it.

However despite his mistakes he was definitely improving, the load was lighter on his mind as he adjusted to the burden of his powers.

The bear's hide was tough as old boots, but thankfully when it died the stone armour that it wore simply melted into mud and slopped off its body.

Speaking of armour, while he hadn't got a flashy new set of threads from the Jade Deer, slaying the armoured bear had given him a lovely new outfit that he was currently wearing.

It was an armour that, from his best guess, was styled off of a Viking raider. It was mostly composed of the bear's hide, with a fluffy lining that poked out of the sleeves, showing fur the same colour as the beasts, so that it wasn't rough against his skin and kept in the warmth.

Over top of the hide tunic was a sleeveless breastplate with an even array of rectangular plates made not of metal, but of a similar tough rock-like material that was surprisingly light and even more resilient than it looked.

A thick leather belt wrapped loosely around his waist, with loops already in place to hang any future weapons or other such objects. Just seeing them gave him the sudden urge to find a goat so he could make a war horn to complete the look.

The armour also had a, as Seth would call it, skirt that came from either side of his hips and reached down to just above his knees. These skirt flaps, or Faulds for someone who knew more than Seth, were made of a mixture of hide and, surprisingly, silk. Thankfully, in the gap between the two Faulds there was a separate under piece with more stone-like plates to cover and protect his most vital area.

Covering his left shoulder were a few layered pieces of the tough hide, allowing for the perfect blend of protection and movement, while his right shoulder was topped with a marble decoration of the bear's upper skull. The teeth of the skull ended just after his stump, so that no matter how much he tried, he could not manage to accidentally poke himself on the long canine fangs of the skull. Plus it wasn't like he was going to be using that arm much anymore.

Whether that was some form of magic or just good design, it wasn't clear to a layman like Seth. But he did appreciate the integration of his cloak into the design of the armour. Whereas before it clasped together directly at his neck and draped fully over his entire body, now the cloak was attached directly underneath the pauldrons, letting him move unimpeded but also allow it to be draped completely over his arms for the moments when he felt truly dramatic.

After all, why wear a cloak if you couldn't be dramatic? That was its main feature, in Seth's opinion.

Kitted out in his new armour, with his previous clothes underneath since the new outfit didn't come with any trousers, Seth was absentmindedly transferring the cut meat into Tupperware containers filled with salt.

It was one of the few things he made sure to collect when his puppets were scavenging during his recovery period. If he was going to be killing a lot of things, especially creatures of this size, he would be stupid to waste so much meat.

He certainly couldn't eat it all himself, even with Omelette's gluttonous appetite, so he relied on the teachings of the previous generations of hunters. It wasn't the most effective method, but it was better than leaving it to rot, that was obvious.

Much like any pet owner he fed the parts he didn't want himself, in this case organs such as the heart, liver, kidneys, etc, to his little living trash can. A bottomless pit despite his small stature.

Seth could only dread the thought of having to do this alone, constantly afraid of something attacking him from behind while he cut away at the kill. If he was alone, he'd have to leave the majority behind. But with his tireless army? He could harvest most of the beer and the deer's, apart from the one that was turned into mince meat by the deranged beast. The best part was he didn't even need to carry any of it.

Following the tutorials from his journal, he even took their pelts. Even if they were sloppily butchered as he was still a complete beginner.

As Bob and the Spirit Animal controlled puppets were packing up the last of the pelts, all while Omelette gorged himself on venison heart, Seth stood to the side with a pensive stare. Rolling a stick between his finger and thumb as he gazed at the butchered remains of the once mighty Apex Predator. The same question still nagging at his mind now that the loot goblin in his mind had gone back to sleep.

'Where did it come from? I know weird things have been happening, but this is different. Everything here so far has been local animals or pets. But a bear? No one would own a bear as a pet. Unless… '

Gripping the stick in his hand tight, until his knuckles turned white, he turned his gaze to the edge of the treeline.

'The zoo. It has to be. That's the only place something like this could have come from, unless someone was doing some illegal smuggling. But if it's the zoo, god only knows what has evolved from the animals there. Lions, Tigers, Bears, Elephants, Venomous Snakes.

I should have expected it. But besides that, where did you get this…?'

His eyes turned back to the stick he held in his hand, which had snapped under the intensity of his grip. But the broken shaft didn't bother him in the slightest, the part that tickled his curiosity was the pointed, metallic end that had been lodged in the bear's back.

He had pulled this out of it when he was skinning it, along with a few dozen more arrows.

Movement in the corner of his eye snapped him out of his stupor as Seth whipped his head towards the source, where he found yet another perplexing sight to add to the pile.

Sitting atop the gutted remains of the once armoured bear, was a black cat. Not a tiger or a panther. Just a simple, black house cat. The only odd thing about it was the white circle of fur on its chest and the silver, human-like eyes that were currently staring at him, as if peering into his soul.