(Part 1) The Small Scale Gathering, Oniga and Epic Beast Hunt.
10: Chapter 0004
(Part 1) The Small Scale Gathering, Oniga and Epic Beast Hunt.
10 YEARS AGO, 10450, SPRING MONTH 1, DAY 30 , YEAR 10,450 SAMURAI COUNTRY NAGASUKE.
Skrylla Yokuta still kept his distance, spoke to his sword whenever he could and tensed up whenever someone got close by reaching for his weapon.
With the CavityBracelet, he needed only to keep one sword on his person, so it was easier.
This still made Hashna Drisnyl, Tsuoyo-ya sigh but what could she do?
Besides, he was already slowly thawing to them.
So, she might as well take it easy.
Plus, now they all had an objective.
This day – the 1st day after they had left – Skrylla Yokuta spotted a Dawn Epic Beast Deer.
The Mistress had already told him that Epic Beasts have 2 classifications; Grade and Class.
Grade was the power that built up to class.
The strength built within a beast’s potential limits or capabilities at the time.
Class was the Evolutionary jumps, or DNA upgrades or Mutations developed as the Epic Beasts cultivated.
Unawakened meant that it hadn’t yet broken its limit, but with animals such events were committed unknowingly.
Although each had its own growth measurement of Dawn, Morning, Noon, Dusk, Midnight and Twilight.
Dawn in an Epic Beasts’ classification was roughly equivalent to the 1st 6 levels of any human cultivation trilogy.
Using the first Trilogy – the Genesis Trilogy – as an example;
Dawn was equivalent to Divine Early Level 1 to Divine Early Level 6 of human Cultivation.
Noon was Divine Early Level 7 to Divine Medium Level 2,
Dusk was equivalent to human cultivation of Divine Medium Level 3 to Divine Early Level 8 and Midnight was Divine Medium Level 9 to Divine Late Level 4.
Twilight was Divine Late Level 5 to Divine Late Level 10.
So, on a tree he sat, grabbing mangoes from its branches as he perched there.
They had walked a considerable distance from the village, talking in hushed whispers so as to not scare game away when she sensed something and told him to move ahead and scout.
He didn’t know how good her senses were but he couldn’t wait to reach that level, excitement tingling in anticipation.
He kept low and moved with his body tempered by both External Chi and Supplements like a lithe predator until he climbed up the mango tree like a snake across the ground.
It shook, he noticed.
She smiled.
When he signaled her with taught hand movements, she immediately sent hand gestures to her other subordinates and they fanned out in large circles, with Skrylla watching over everything.
He waited until they were both in position – Gejiro on the extreme left with a crude Short Sword on its west, Karin on the creature’s east with her makeshift Gladius and Jin with his rough Jian crouched at its north – all 50 meters from the deer.
The village Mistress was at its south, her hook swords all ready
Skrylla Yokuta cut his hand down, decisively.
Maybe he did it too fast but it was at that moment the Epic Beast jerked its’ head up to notice Gejiro with his Short Sword approaching it.
And Skrylla had been told how cultivation started after limits were broken but he wasn’t ready for the speed in what was supposed to be a gallop as it seemed to appear just before Gejiro who barely managed to defensively raise his sword to his front before it had struck with its front hooves, preceding it kicking off him and sending him into the air.
While Skrylla Yokuta was trying to process that, it turned around to find Karin with her Gladius, stretched out to pierce its back.
And it met her halfway; its head ducked so that her stab went through its antlers and over its head, before it snapped its head upward, throwing her over itself before she added her foot atop its rising head so that she seemed to jump over the creature below her, only getting off with a long but shallow stretch of a cut under her biceps from a horn.
Jin had expected that it was well distracted by now, but when it also raised its hooves, after forcefully twisting its waist to face him, and he deflected the front legs with a downward swipe from his left, he was still thrown back by a step while it wasn’t fazed at all.
Quickly rushing forward – entire body thrown to the movement and two hands clasping the handle of his blade this time – he next thrust with all his might which the creature intended to meet head on after Divine Energy burst out from underneath its feet in a puff of Light Blue.
Skrylla Yokuta who was barely able to keep up with what he saw as everything seemed to be on fast forward for him, was shocked once again as a sound of ten thunders exploded not too far away from him.
Next, the Mistress disappeared from where she was, only to appear with the curved ends of her hooked blades yanking back the head of the deer from its antlers after a brief struggle for a millisecond.
Throwing it over herself, the momentum allowed Jin’s Short Sword to skim a shallow injury across its chest to its shoulder and Skrylla Yokuta saw his opportunity.
He threw knives towards the deer as it was mid-air, just before Drisnyl Hashna Tsuoyo-ya jumped over the incoming trajectory of the flying blades until they were at her proximity.
And when the flying knives reached her, she knocked them at the beast before she landed, then jumped away to allow her subordinates more chances to learn from experiences, as the weapons landed on its tough back.
“Add Divine energy to your attacks, they will help.
“Skrylla Yokuta good support, the rest of you, pincer!”
Some blades had sunk into the creatures back, while others had either been deflected by its antlers or dodged by its’ body snaking wildly while it had been airborne.
When the Dawn Epic Beast Deer was on the ground again – the sunken knives having distracted it – Jin jumped back to see any openings, Gejiro was halfway to the deer and Karin was quarter the distance to him, swinging a cut.
Obeying their leader, they all released Divine Energy to boost their movements in practiced synchronization.
BOOM.
Gejiro met it first but he missed as it had jumped as they had approached, activating its own Ko-jin just as they did theirs, so that he only cut the top of its ear; nothing too painful.
Jin appeared before it with a swipe to its neck and only managed to nick off a portion of its antlers.
But Karin stepped on both her comrades’ bodies one after the other and reached well high above the creature, drawing her blade point that barely manage to pierce into its skin before dragging the Gladius’s fine point about the knives that were punctured its’ back by the Mistress from before, having made it think it had successfully dodged her attack.
Being in a blind spot had helped her too.
So, the weapons fell out of its body, drawing lines that were deeper than any attacks before which let good amounts of blood flow.
Next, she hit the falling weapons towards Skrylla with her Gladius but the others with their feet, and the Mistress passed them to him finally with a measured flicker of her blades on his, which he caught in his honed reflexes that made him smile in pride of his progress these few months.
Gejiro then took advantage of the handicapped Epic Beast in its current weak state and aimed for a hoof to make it stagger but it jumped over that only to meet Jin who stabbed into that legs’ hip joint area.
Gejiro rushed in to make sure he got a hit and impaled its’ neck to the floor once it landed on its feet and faltered.
“Gotcha!”
“Karin, Jin, Gejiro, Skrylla.
35, 30, 19.5, 13.5.” Drisnyl Hashna Tsuoyo-ya rested a hand in her hips.
“In that order pick your spoils.
I take core and hide and liver.
Skrylla picks twice.”
Karin smiled widely, “heart, kidney, lungs.”
Jin spoke up, “brain, pancreas, bladder.”
Gejiro didn’t waste time, “Half body meat”
Skrylla thought slowly “Antlers and limb bones.”
Jin was about to comment when the Mistress raised her hands to silence him.
“You do know the value of this corpse, right?
Any Epic Beasts’ organs sell a good price, they nourish the body, some can even remold the body and traditionally, they are used to store Ko-jin about the system.”
“I have a plan in regards to the antlers and the bones.”
Karin laughed, “You want a sword, right?”
“Y-yeah, how did yo-”
“Kids are so straight forward.” Drisnyl Hashna Tsuoyo-ya smiled dotingly then stood up, “Jin, teach him to skin the animal, Gejiro, prepare the meal, Karin harvest everything.
He is to watch you guys and learn, start now!”