A few hours went by, a relatively peaceful scouting with no interruption. By the time he carved the number 30 into a tree, he decided to stop there for the day and head back. That's when his ears heard it. The frightened bleating of a baby sheep. He became cautious as he knew that the creatures in this world may have resemblances to creatures from his world, but they were different. 

Following the sound, it did not take him long to see that, with its legs stuck in the root of a particularly large tree, a small creature was stuck. Its body had the same shape as that of a baby sheep, but it did not have any wool. Instead, its body was covered in red serpent scales and the only fur on its body was the blue lion-like mane that it had around its head. It had the same sheep-like eyes that he knew the sheep back on Earth had, but its eyes were a bright blue color. It did not have hooves and instead had paws similar in shape to those of a toad.

Looking at the creature, it seemed like it could not get its leg out, and it was crying for help, most likely from others of its kind. Given its size, he assumed it was probably calling for a parent if this creature was a baby. Looking around, he wondered why no such creature had arrived yet to aid it. Checking above him in the trees, he saw nothing. Looking further, he also did not see much until he heard a sound in some nearby bushes. That's when he saw the familiar green chitin just barely peeking out from behind the bush. 

Moving closer, he grabbed his pistol. The creatures seemed to be hearing the young babe crying for its parents, but they did not come to kill it. Getting at an angle where he could see behind the bushes, he discovered that they were too busy and gorging on the corpses of the newborn creature's much larger parents. 

Part of him felt that he should leave the creature to its fate, but as he heard it crying more he decided that this was the kind of thing he was looking for. He needed to level up, and these creatures would kill the youngling once they were done with the parents' bodies if he did not intervene. So the Infuse Flame spell on his pistol. As he thought about what the spell says it can do and tried to envision it in his mind, the mana began to flow, and fiery symbols appeared around his pistol. A magic circle made a flames formed in front of the barrel of his gun and shrunk down so that it could precisely coat the bullets in a magical blaze. 

The casting was successful, and he lined up the first shot and fired twice into the largest of the three insectoid wolf creatures he still did not have a name for, who were huddled behind the bush. The magical flame almost seemed to make the bullet function like both an incendiary round and an explosive round in one. Creating a minor yet powerful explosion that broke through the chitin exoskeleton and burned everything on the way through the body and out the other side.

It seemed to destroy and cauterize most of the creature's internal organs as it fell over bleeding out. The other two creatures then looked in his direction getting ready to strike, but he was quick as he shot a bolt of lightning from the tips of his fingers at one of them using Minor Electro Manipulation. He maintained the lightning for just long enough that he thought it would be mostly internally fried by the electricity or significantly paralyzed so that he could handle the final one. 

As the final one began to try and charge at him, he simply shot it in the head. The impact on the skull of the final creature with his enhanced bullets essentially made its skull explode like a gory firework. He then approached and fired a shot at the skull of the one he had electrocuted just to make sure it was dead. 

Looking at the one he had fired two bullets into to start, it was still barely clinging to life as it was bleeding out heavily. He went ahead and finished it by making the ground beneath it shoot out a single spike of stone that pierced through its head. With that, they were all dead, and he received a notification saying that he had earned 30 XP. He was now 10 XP away from his next level up. 

Realizing that the young creature nearby could probably produce enough XP for him to reach level 3, he looked over to it. He pointed his pistol at it, and he thought about putting it out of its misery since its parent was dead. But as it cried, a part of him felt bad for it. 

Sure, he had hunted animals in the past, and he was no stranger to putting down some animals that had been trained by enemy soldiers during his time in the army, but part of him felt off about this. As he looked at it starting to cry actual tears, it reminded him of some of his pets from his childhood. They were the only things about his childhood that were actually good memories. His pets had helped him get through the hard times of his terrible parents and his equally awful siblings.

Fighting with himself mentally on whether to take the shot, he ultimately decided against it. Cursing aloud, he berated himself, "Damn it Ben. Why the hell do I have to be so damn soft? Sentimentality is going to be the death of me." 

He put his pistol back in its holster, seeing that the magic also faded from it while he was deciding on what to do. He walked back over to the young creature, and he started trying to calm it down. Using his almost two decades of experience dealing with animals, he tried to use common tactics to get it to stop crying. 

Surprisingly, this somehow worked as the creatures stopped gradually crying and allowed him to get close. It even let him pet it to try and reassure it that it was safe. As he petted the creature, he used his geo manipulation to alter the size and shape of the root, so its foot could come unstuck. It didn't even notice that it was free as it had started to become more comfortable being petted by him. 

He even started talking to it like it was a puppy, "That's right. It's okay now. Those mean creatures won't hurt you. I'm here now. You're going to be safe."

Even though he knew it did not understand him, it snuggled into his embrace more, allowing him to carry it. As he held it in his arms, he continued to pet it as he slowly got up and started walking back to his cabin with the new creature. Following the trail of bark chunks and numbered trees that he had set up for himself, he was able to return to the cabin where he took the creature inside and began to let it walk around the inside of his cabin. 

He left the door open for now, since the area around the cabin was all safe. The creature seemed to adjust itself in this new space and started becoming more comfortable. At the same time, he started grabbing some of his food and drinks from his makeshift shelf. He drank another bottle of juice and some saltine crackers and a can of chili that he heated up over the fire from his fire pit.

He tried to see if the creature wanted any of the food he was eating, but it sniffed the chili and did not like it. It then walked out of the cabin and went close to the river. He watched it carefully to see and make sure that nothing bad happened to it. He would hate for all that effort he put in earlier to go to waste if it got carried off by the current of the river. 

To his surprise, it handled itself just fine along the river and even showed that it could easily swim in the water against the current just fine as it started looking for food. After about 15 minutes, it came out of the river with about three fish in its teeth. That's when he finally got a good look at its teeth and saw that its mouth was very similar to that of a canine but with a couple more flat teeth. It brought some of its catches over to him almost as if offering some of those odd-looking fish to him. 

It seemed very proud of itself as it waited for him to take some of the fish. The fish that it brought looked like some of the fish he remembered on Earth, but with a couple of extra eyes and a little bit bigger with some more fins. He wasn't going to try any fish yet, so he decided instead to take one of the fishes and cook it over the fire for the little creature while it ate the other two raw. 

When the fish he had cooked for it was ready, he offered it out and the creature seemed intrigued by the smell of cooked fish, but gladly ate it. He and the creature started to snuggle up by the fire after they ate, and for the first time in a while he felt a little happy having another little critter around. It was a sweet moment as the little creature began to slowly fall asleep, resting its head against his thigh.

He had even gotten very comfortable petting it, when suddenly he heard screaming. It snapped the little creature awake and scared it to the point where it ran to hide by his bed. Listening to the sound of the screaming, he thought a monster was coming at first, until he heard a woman screaming at the top of her lungs for help.

Realizing she was speaking English, he immediately grabbed his gun and his knife and exited the cabin. He saw as the sun was setting, and through the tree line a woman was running towards the clearing that his cabin was in while being chased by a pack of those insectoid wolf creatures. She seemed to be holding something that was also screaming. 

As she came out of the tree line, he saw that she was holding a little creature that looked like that original monster he had killed. He saw the four-eyed rabbit creature with horns in her hands, but it was a much smaller one, most likely a baby. She was being chased by a dozen of those bug wolf creatures. 

As she saw him she immediately called out in fear for her life, "Please! Help me! Sir, please help!" 

Realizing that things had taken a more drastic turn than he thought they would, he looked on the brighter side as he cast Infuse Flame on both his pistol and his pocket knife. He did hope to level up today, and he only needed 10 XP to do that. He knew that killing one of those bug wolf creatures gave 10 XP each and now 12 of them were coming his way. For some reason, he began to smile at that idea as he started rushing towards the danger.

He shouted in excitement, "Let's fucking do this!"