Chapter 455: What is up with all of these Vengeful Beasts?

The next morning everyone had a bit more energy in their movements as they all seemed excited from the news that they had gotten last night. Even so after talking about it a bit over breakfast they honed in on the expedition at hand especially since they planned on heading back soon and they wanted to get as much as they could out of this expedition before they headed back. They weren't going to spend more than another three days exploring the prairie so that they'd have plenty of time to get ready for the tournament. They could just take a portal to exit the prairie, but they wanted to find a good land mark for them to return to the next time they decided to go on an expedition there.

After a quick breakfast they were all up on the back of Momo and were on the move once more. Throughout the first day of looking for the second guardian site they did get in quite a few battles. Most of these fights were against coyotes and bobcats, but there was the rare occasion where a small flock of prairie chickens flew over to them in an attempt to find worms while they were making their way through the shorter open areas. These fights were a bit more hectic since the prairie chickens tended to just cut lose right away without prioritizing any specific targets.

The group didn't have too much trouble in any of the fights they came across that day and Joshua had even gained enough experience to reach level eighty-three. He did notice that the closer he got in level to the creatures they were fighting the longer it would take for him to level up, but he was used to that being the case by this point. Many other members of the group had also gained some levels throughout the day and now the lowest level member in the group was level seventy-eight. Soon enough no one in the entire group would feel any major type of suppression from the beast in the prairie which would help them out when they started taking on the guardians of the prairie.

One thing Joshua did notice was the fact that he always felt that sudden sense of danger coming from nearby whenever they started fighting something. It didn't matter if they were fighting coyotes, bobcats, prairie chickens, or even vultures. Joshua would still sense that feeling of danger hanging nearby. The only time he had gotten that feeling before was when he fought the snake and it felt exactly the same. The fact that he couldn't spot the threat with his aura sense also made Joshua believe that it was the snake lurking nearby waiting for an opportunity to strike.

This kept Joshua on edge every time he went into a fight. Every time they fought a group of beast Joshua had to split his focus just in case the snake tried to attack the back line while everyone else was focused on whatever beast they were facing at the time. Luckily the snake never went on the offensive since the fights they had gotten involved in didn't seem to be enough to give the beast confidence to ambush them. It was smart enough to realize the last time when it had three bobcats to take the brunt of Joshua's group's attention that it wasn't enough. It was going to need more of a challenging group to attack Joshua if it wanted to be successful.

That's why the snake continued to wait and the amount of time that the snake spent waiting only put Joshua more on edge. For the next couple of days they went through a similar routine of fighting small groups of beast while they searched for the next guardian site. The entire time the snake was following them and there was nothing Joshua or anyone else could do about it at the time since whenever they tried to go in the direction of the snake it would move away from them. The creature was just biding its time and the fact that it hadn't attacked them during any of their other fights up to this point was not a good sign. The snake was going to attack them when they were put in a horrible predicament so they were going to have to keep that in mind when they run into other beast.

The time when all of the tension would finally come to ahead occurred on the third day after they had ran into the snake for the very first time. At the time Joshua was starting to notice something strange about the beast they had been encountering for the past couple of days. The main thing he noticed was that the type of beast they were running into was narrowing down to just two different groups. They were constantly being attacked by coyotes that came after them in small packs and vultures that only came at them one at a time. This situation seemed odd to everyone in the group since they stopped running into bobcats or even prairie chickens which seemed to be the most common type of beast in most parts of the prairie.

At first Joshua thought it might be because the guardian site might be nearby and would somehow correlate with the type of beast that would be found in nearby areas. That would explain why they were only finding two types of beast at the moment. The territory would belong to the coyotes and the vultures were able to go into any area since their territory was the sky itself. That would explain why these were the only two types of beast they were coming across lately, but it didn't explain why they were coming after their group in such a strange way. This was the first time that the coyotes came after them in such small numbers at a time, even when they were starved in some other areas. The vultures were even weirder coming in one at a time.

That's when Joshua started paying attention to little things he was noticing with his aura sense during their fights against the coyotes and the vultures. It wasn't actually the fights themselves that had gained Joshua's attention but more the way the coyotes and vultures were approaching their group. The coyotes would keep their distance and sneak up at first which was normal in Joshua's opinion, but with each group of coyotes they fought the better the coyotes seemed to get at judging Joshua's perception range.

At first Joshua could prepare the rest of the group for combat with plenty of time to spare since he could sense the locations of the coyotes while they were trying to sneak closer to the group, but soon enough the coyotes had gotten to the point where they were already charging towards them the moment they got within range of Joshua's aura sense. This gave Joshua little time to warn the others and made the fights a little bit more hectic at first even if the groups of coyotes they were facing were smaller than normal.

The vultures adapted in a similar way as one by one they would increase the range they attacked the group from. At first they were staying far enough away to avoid Aito's shots or Natalie's arrows, but after a couple of them were taken out of the sky by lightning they started to attack from above the clouds so Robin's spells wouldn't be able to one hit kill them. Their attacks became far less dangerous since they became less accurate the further away they were when they attacked the group, but it made it extremely hard to take the vultures down quickly. That was even more the case whenever a vulture decided to time its attack with the timing of one of the coyote packs.

It seemed like the beast in the area had a plan of attack for any invaders that included three things. First they had large numbers, but didn't just go all in at the same time. It might be because each pack was working on its own, but Joshua could tell that none of the packs that had been attacking them over the past couple of days had a leader. Trying to overwhelm the group with the shear amount of beast that just kept coming after them was a great tactic that some of the other beast in the prairie like the chickens used often and very well.

The second part of the plan seemed to be focused on observing and adapting to Joshua's groups capabilities. From all of the little things Joshua had noticed it was clear that each pack or vultures that came after their group seemed to have a better idea of how Joshua's group would react and when to go in for the attack. This tactic was clearly being used well by the way the coyotes were able to get around Joshua's aura sense.

The last part of their plans seemed to be the long game of wearing Joshua's group down. Although they didn't come at them in large groups at a time they didn't give Joshua's group much time to relax throughout the day. Momo was always on the move since the coyotes didn't give them any time to relax. If it weren't for Lilly's newest beast companion Joshua knew their group would have had to turn back already from exhaustion. Momo being able to out run some of the groups of coyotes while avoiding the vultures was the only reason they had made much progress through the area at all. If they tried to do so on foot then it would be a nightmare.

After days of going through this it finally got to the point where all three types of beast would go after Joshua's group at the same time. While riding on Momo's back a large amount of feathers came down from above the clouds trying to attack her as she weaved in between them. Once the feathers stopped pouring from the sky three vultures came down from the clouds and were gliding above the group preparing to attack. It wouldn't have been too much of a challenging fight if Joshua didn't suddenly feel a little more than a dozen coyotes suddenly charge through the edge of his aura sense as they all rushed towards Momo preparing to go on the attack. Lastly the dangerous feeling he got from the snake started getting closer to the group as an all-out battle was on the horizon.