Jule’s next goal in Many Worlds was to meet up with his friends. For that, he would need money. Transportation between cities wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t unreasonable. Jules found it odd that with such obviously advanced technology, the cities were far and spread out. In addition, there weren’t any roads between them. Presumably, there was a good reason, but Jules didn’t know what it was.
Jules could work with Irikan making toys and such, and he certainly did, but he was also interested in other ways of making money. With danger came money, and hunting some of the beasts on Uesmeth (the planet, as opposed to the language, Uesmethi) was very dangerous. Of course, Jules was aware this world was real, but he also had the ability to come back to life here. Thus, it would be interesting to try. Plus, he had pain settings reduced, so it shouldn’t hurt to badly even if he did die. Not that he was actually going to fight anything dangerous at first. He needed to see if he could even hurt anything.
The weapons Jules had at his disposal was a (space) combat knife, and telekinesis. He didn’t particularly fancy his chances in melee combat. Of course, there were small animals, but they would just be able to run away. Thus, Jules was going to hunt plyk, which were something like raccoons. However, they ate everything. They were very bad for plants and trees because they would eat their leaves and roots, leaving them dying. plyk also bred rapidly, so they were basically just large vermin. They weren’t good for much of anything, and were certainly bad for a whole lot of things. Thus, they were the kind of thing that it was highly encouraged to kill them if you saw them. There were regulations on seasons that certain animals could be hunted, but not for plyks.
Not long after setting out, Jules encountered the first problem with hunting them. That is, there was a lot of area to search. He had found locations of recent sightings, which was good, but unlike a normal game, or perhaps it was more correct to say a real game, animals didn’t just hang out in a small area, blatantly obvious. Also, there was literally an entire wilderness around, not just a few places that were interesting and highly populated. Jules did see a few things, but there were more animals around that he didn’t see. At least, not with his eyes. He noticed quite a few animals relatively nearby, birds in trees, and even some burrowing creatures. Presumably, there were more beyond his approximately 3 meter sensing area. Though, it didn’t extend as far under the ground. However, he finally found a plyk after two hours because of this ability.
The plyk was hiding behind a tree. It did seem about the same as a raccoon, but Jules thought it probably had a bigger mouth, and more teeth. Not that he had even seen a raccoon in real life before, or studies any movies with them closely. Jules walked around the tree so he could see it, at the same time taking out a rock he’d brought with him. This area was more forested, so it was fortunate he’d brought some “ammunition”. He wasn’t confident in his ability to do anything with the branches that were around.
Jules launched the rock at the plyk, but it was already moving and avoided it. It dodged back and forth as it ran from him, and soon his small supply of rocks was exhausted. Of course, he could re-use the ones he’d launched, but his ability to pick them up at a distance was limited. Jules thought about the various mistakes he’d made. First, his speed of attack was too slow. It took him over a second to concentrate enough to throw the rock- reducing its mass, speeding it up, then increasing it was hard to pull off. Second, his accuracy was pretty terrible. The plyk probably hadn’t needed to dodge at all. The third mistake was he himself moving at all. He hadn’t needed to go around the tree- though he hadn’t been near it, he came into visual range. That wasn’t necessary, because throwing rocks with telekinesis, he mostly relied on his sense of where things were through his telekinetic powers anyway. Even if something was farther than his normal senses away, he could “see” further by narrowing the vision elsewhere, and extending it in a certain direction.
Fortunately, Jules had finally entered plyk territory, and thus he was able to find them about every 15 minutes, on average. Sometimes, he wouldn’t find any for half an hour, sometimes he found them sooner. The fourth one, he managed to graze. The fifth one he actually hit with a sneak attack, and killed it. One good thing about using telekinesis to attack was there was no crunching of leaves or movement of branches to give away the location of the attack. Certainly, if you saw a floating rock, you could recognize it as a danger, possibly. However, animals weren’t sure how to react if they were even looking the right direction. After hunting a few more, he found that they sometimes heard the sound of the rock moving through the air, and could slightly avoid. However, that was only sometimes.
At the end of the day, he had managed to gain a level, but more importantly he’d become significantly more skilled at using telekinesis to attack. Perhaps he would try fighting something bigger… though he could still just purchase a gun. There was also the option to use his combat knife as a projectile weapon, though he only had one of those. However, he found it was quite well balanced, and capable of taking out a plyk by itself, if he was accurate. Jules had also worked on extending the range at which he could control things. It was always going to be harder to move distant objects, but he could have some effect at 3-4 meters. Enough to retrieve things, anyway, but not enough to give them enough force to attack. Still, Jules was pleased with his progress.