The stars were beautiful. An uncountable number of glowing dots in the sky, with no light pollution to diminish their beauty. Each one a snapshot of the past, of a star millions of years old. Some so distant that their source had already faded from existence or gone out in a supernova. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to be.

There were no stars in the sky. Ever. In his first few months of being here, Lucas saw no indication of there even being stars. At first, he thought that it was just some clouds blocking the way. But then one week passed. And then two. Then a month. And he never saw a single star. There were two moons, however. A white one that seemed incredibly distant and a yellowish one. The white one was significantly smaller than the moon that orbited Earth. It could have been smaller or farther away; he could not really tell.

The other moon was massive in the sky. It was at least four times larger than the other one, but this was because it was closer. Alarmingly close. What was interesting about it was that it was perfectly smooth. An untouched satellite in the sky, unblemished by meteors. Every night, he had seen them. And every night, they were full. Always hanging in the night sky. He was grateful for them since they provided light at night, but they unnerved him.

There were so many other peculiarities about this new world.

The forest was alive. Not the individual aspects of the forest, like trees and animals, but the entirety of the forest. It took him a while to notice, but some things were just not adding up. Trees moved, terrain shifted, and food that he had been saving up, simply disappeared! However, that may have been because of his siblings.

Luckily, the forest never underwent drastic changes. It was usually some little things, like a group of trees moving away to make a clearing or a small hill that slowly formed after a week or so. The changes were slow but gradual and confused Lucas to no end before realizing what was going on.

The one thing that stayed constant for the past few months was the river. It was too small to be a river, but also too large to be a creek. Kind of in a middle gray area of water size. Its waters were always crystal clear, and he could clearly see through it. It was so transparent, so perfect, that it scared him. It scared the other animals too. No fish lived in it, no animals drank from it, and no plants lived close to the shore. There was just a wide strip of sand one-fourth as wide as the river itself.

Speaking of the animals, they absolutely terrified him. He never noticed it, since he was not the one hunting, but they were scary. Like incredibly scary. And extremely aggressive. Once they realized that escape would be impossible, they would stop at nothing to try and injure him, even if it meant their death.

When they were dead, they looked normal to him. They just contained a surprisingly little amount of fat in their meat. But when they were alive, that was an entirely different story.

A week ago, he had spotted his first deer in the woods when he was hunting by himself at night. He had gotten massive extremely quickly, and he was almost the same size as the adults. Before this encounter, all he ever hunted were some rabbits and squirrels. But the rabbits were cannibalistic, and the squirrels had teeth that could chew through wood.

Lucas was excited when he found it. He had wanted to be the first out of his siblings to bring back prey of that size. Chuck had tried to take on a deer but was wounded in the process. He was found limping back to the rest of the pack with a piece of an antler stuck in his side. He was one of the lucky ones. Ben, another one of his siblings, had been found dead. A massive gash down the left side of his body.

He understood that they were dangerous. He was fairly sure that they just rammed into them but was not entirely sure. Scouting out his prey would be his current best course of action. He did not know what they were capable of, and he had no backup coming. He would have to be just far away enough so that they would not sense him, but close enough so that he could efficiently stalk them.

One of the downsides of being a massive killing machine was that he was, well, massive. Any indication of sound would usually cause his prey to bolt at a moment’s notice, so there was not a lot of room for error. There were a lot of other things that he had to pay attention to while hunting. Most notably, the location of his prey, the location of possible predators, and the location of where he was located relative to the pack.

Luckily, he did not have to manage all of that by himself. After months of hunting, his instincts had become accustomed to managing the various scents of things around him. If he strayed too far away from the main pack, he would become edgy. And if he sensed a large threatening entity coming in his general direction, then it would tell him to run.

Everything also had this kind of danger aura around it. The more dangerous something is, the more threatening aura it would give off. Out of his siblings, Chuck had the most dangerous aura. He was a close second. But that was still minuscule compared to the majority of the adults. His Alpha, however, had a massive danger aura, one that he could usually feel no matter where he went.

It was a useful bit of information, in determining which prey he could easily defeat, and ones that may injure him in the process. But no matter how much danger animal something possessed when it was alive, it would quickly dissipate if the animal had died. As he had never seen a living deer, he was unsure of how dangerous it was compared to others of its species. The one that he was stalking had significantly less than one of the adults, but that was still a great deal more than he gave off.

But he was determined. He wanted to win. He wanted to be the first. Better than his siblings. He wanted to sink his jaws into its neck and rip its head off. To puncture its hide with his claws. To dig into its delicious….

Lucas refocused his train of thought. He needed to focus. He could not let his mind wander or else he would fail, and failure sometimes meant death. Watch his steps, track the prey, and analyze his surroundings.

He stalked the deer for hours, without it doing much. It just walked around and grazed a bit. But after the fifth-hour mark, his wolfy-sense picked up on another predator approach him. Judging by its path, it seemed to also be heading towards his prey. But it was not dangerous, judging by its aura, it seemed to be a fox.

He was neutral to the foxes, whom he saw every few weeks. They would stay out of his way, and he would stay out of theirs. He was quite fond of the ravens. They would come every once in a while, and accompany him. While he was still a puppy, they would play with him. Now, they occasionally lead him to unsuspecting prey.

Unfortunately for the fox, it did not seem that it was careful when stalking prey and accidentally stepped on a stick. The deer immediately went into high alert, and quickly spotted the fox. But instead of running away like Lucas thought it would, the deer ran at the fox. And it ran fast. Terrifyingly fast. It sprinted straight at the poor fox, without regard to anything in its way. Bushes and trees did not matter to it. One of its antlers clipped the side of a tree, causing a small section of it to fall off, but it continued to charge unhindered.

The unfortunate fox stood there, frozen. Its autonomic nervous system too overflowed by signals from the hypothalamus to respond, resulting in reactive immobility. Eventually, it reacted, but it was way too late. As soon as the fox tried to turn and flee, it found a foot-long antler pierced through its body.

Everything happened so fast, only in a matter of seconds. The buck had sprinted at a speed twice as fast as he was currently capable of. It went so fast that it left gouges in the ground. It paid no heed to its own wellbeing and only focused on killing the fox. But it was not over yet, as something more terrifying happened.

The buck rammed its head into the side of the tree, breaking off a section of the crown that the fox was still impaled on. Then, it bent over the corpse of the fox and began to eat it. Antler and all.

Similar to his old world, the bucks here also had flat teeth, which were not suitable for eating meat only plants. But it mattered little, for the buck began to use brute force. The sound of its teeth grinding through flesh and bone was the final straw for Lucas. He determined that at his current ability level, he stood no chance against the buck and would probably end up like Ben. And so, he turn tailed and ran away.

Or at least he tried. As he backed up, he did an extremely stereotypical action and stepped on a stick. The buck’s head immediately twisted to face him, and they stared at each other.

The deer’s mouth was still chewing on the fox and was completely covered in blood. Its eyes were a bright yellow, almost as if they were shining. Its right antler was broken apart and covered in blood. But as they stared at each other, it began to regrow.

It grew from the jagged stump, like a coral reef in a timelapse, until it looked completely new. It only took a matter of seconds. However, an almost perfect mirror to the deer’s other antler was created.

Lucas stared in disbelief at what he had just witnessed. It should not be possible; cells did not divide and grow that easily. Usually, deer antlers grow from the base up. Here, the extra bone just formed on top of the existing antler. It was as if the deer had just summoned bone out of the air, which should not be possible. It would conflict with the law of conservation of matter. Right?

But Lucas knew that he could not run away. He was physically unable to, too weak and too slow. There was only one way that he would be satisfied with the outcome of this encounter. If he called for help, then it would not be his kill. It had to be his. He had to do it himself. And if he was injured? Then he would be killed. And Lucas most certainly did not want to die. He would win and triumph over the most dangerous and terrifying animal he had encountered yet.

He shifted his weight to a fighting stance and bared his teeth.

Similarly, the deer shifted into a running position.

They stared at each other for a few more moments.

And then the buck charged.