As soon as Nick poked his head out of the door, another arrow came flying. Fortunately, the tentacle hadn't lied about its capabilities. It reached up from under Nick's slanted chest and caught the arrow, breaking it in half and tossing the pieces to the side.
After only a couple of seconds, another arrow soared toward Nick's face. Nick had barely recovered from the first. He didn't even have time to react.
Fortunately, he didn't have to react, either. The tentacle did all the hard work and caught the arrow again.
Nick cleared his throat and pushed open the door further, taking a step out. He wasn't scared of the arrows.
He was, but he wasn't going to show the shooter that.
After Nick stepped onto the porch, the tentacle caught three more arrows before there was a halt to the attacks. During the pause, Nick thought a little about what could possibly make someone try and kill him just because he existed.
He couldn't come up with a specific reason, but he realized that throughout history, people had often killed without reason. Outsiders, foreigners, strangers, and people who 'didn't belong' were often targets of baseless killings.
The one trying to drop arrows into his brain probably didn't have any grand reason.
After a while, Nick saw something move at the edge of his house's clearing. It was a…
'A cat?' Nick squinted as he tried to see the figure clearly. It looked a little like a cat walking on two legs or a person mixed with a cat. They had two soft, small, and slightly fluffy ears on top of their head. Glossy black fur that shone in the porch's light covered their arms and parts of their face. The eyes were yellow and very much like those of a cat, including the vertical slit pupils that were barely more than straight lines as they stared at him.
From what Nick could remember about cats, their eyes were like that when they were very angry.
Nick looked a little closer.
That wasn't all.
There were tears in the corners of the cat person's eyes.
"Why won't you die?!" They shouted.
From the voice, Nick could tell they were most likely a kid. They were small, so he had suspected it already, but since Kai's parents were bigger than ordinary humans, he figured there must exist tribes that were smaller than ordinary humans as well.
Nick held up a hand and stayed the tentacle, preventing it from diving out and grabbing the cat kid.
He wouldn't have stopped the tentacle if whoever was attacking him was some ruthless person who just wanted him out of the forest. But a crying child? He was not okay with them ending up food to the monster in his basement.
Clearly, this kid had issues.
"Why do you want me dead?" Nick asked.
"You're a human! All humans deserve to die!" The bow and strung arrow in his hands trembled.
Nick's eyes widened. That was some intense racial hatred.
"I'm going to disagree with you, kid."
"I don't care! Humans killed my mother! Humans should die!" The kid let go of the arrow and let it fly. But his emotions had grown too powerful, and his hands weren't steady enough for the arrow to fly true.
The tentacle didn't need to do anything. The arrow lodged itself into the wooden panels next to the door.
Nick didn't care about the damage to his house. His eyes softened as he looked at the child.
He didn't know the full story, but he could somewhat understand.
If the kid lived in a forest without humans, where humans were considered outsiders, it wouldn't be strange for him to lump them all together, even if he didn't have a reason to dislike them.
It was just simpler. Humans were humans, after all.
If the kid then also had a reason to hate and fear humans, it was all the more reasonable for him to direct his hatred toward any human.
But it was still wrong.
"I…had nothing to do with that," Nick said, unsure about how to word it so that he reached the kid. Just saying that he didn't do it wouldn't pierce the wall he had put up.
"I don't care!" The kid shouted as he retrieved another arrow from the quiver on his back.
'As expected,' Nick sighed. He wasn't sure what to do. With the tentacle by his side, he knew he didn't need to fear anything. He was relatively calm. But talking to kids, especially angry and grieving ones trying to shoot him with a bow and arrow, was not something he prided himself in.
But he had seen a couple of movies.
Usually, when someone was trying to avenge a fallen lover, family member, or a close one, the ones trying to talk them down would use that person against them.
"Is this what your mother would want, kid? For you to kill an innocent person in misdirected anger?"
"D-don't talk about my mother!" The kid shouted, loosing the arrow at Nick.
This time, it was close enough that the tentacle grabbed it. It then turned toward Nick as if asking if it should do something about the kid. Nick shook his head and looked at the kid.
The kid narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the tentacle but didn't seem to care about anything other than putting an arrow between Nick's eyes. The different reaction compared to Kavam and Lora was a little interesting, but now wasn't the time for that.
"Of course, I didn't know your mother. Maybe she would want you to take revenge. That's understandable. If someone killed me, I would want someone to avenge me. If that's the case, I'm sure your mother would be proud of you."
"Shut up!"
"But this isn't revenge. I didn't kill your mother. And you won't be able to kill me. If anything, you're the one who will end up dead if you continue like this. Your mother's death will forever go unavenged."
"..." The kid gritted his teeth loud enough to make them squeak and crack as he glared at Nick with hot tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Assuming whoever killed your mother is still alive, that's the only target you should have. You should train, find them, and plan your revenge to perfection. You should make them suffer more than enough to make up for your mother's death.
"But the moment you involve innocent parties who had nothing to do with your mother's death, you become the same kind of scum as the one who killed your mother."