Chapter 15 Antics

Nil and Lucy easily agreed to Toz's suggestion of taking it easy for a few days, while waiting for the egg to hatch.

After having gone through a pretty dangerous experience down in the pit the main objective for the trio was naturally to get stronger, thus a large part of their day was spent refining their mana. Although Lucy already did it all the time subconsciously in his sleep, he was much more efficient when doing it awake and consciously. Unfortunately he possesses unnatural amounts of mana, having to refine it all takes time and effort which puts him slightly behind Nil and Toz, who were both steadily approaching the third level.

Aside from training they also played around a bit, sometimes including the egg, although they were very careful with it since they didn't want to disturb the spirit beast inside. Unfortunately the egg didn't seem to make any further progress in it's hatching.

The group didn't intend to wait for an eternity but they were patient enough to atleast wait several days without issue. The one that would have been the most restless was Lucy, although he slept most of the time he still found the opportunity to explore every piece of mountain in their surroundings. Although he hadn't explored the entire mountain range he grew bored and used the excuse,

"It all looks the same anyways," before sleeping or making trouble for the wild beasts.

The groups of wild beasts still lingering in the mountain range were already at the edge of an uproar and with a little devil sneaking around, stirring up the pot in various, devious ways, things escalated.

Lucy originally just hunted some food with no malicious intentions but when he noticed how the group his prey belonged to reacted, a dangerous glint passed through his eyes. He had grabbed a pigeon and since he made it disappear without a trace the group didn't know who did it, but the flock seemingly on guard against a group of crows started acting aggressively toward them after losing a member. The murder of crows was originally at a loss but since backing down or not reacting could be taken as a sign of weakness and lead to them getting attacked they got angry and started picking fights.

But since the pigeons weren't completely sure and the crows held no previous grudge nothing really happened. Until one crow went missing. Sad, but with the state of the beasts in the mountains it wasn't the first time and they would have only gotten more careful if not for an import find. A feather had been found at the crime scene, and not just any old dark crow feather, it was a pale feather, suspiciously akin to those from a pigeon. Since the crows and pigeons had tussled a few times already the crows were intimately familiar with what a pigeon feather looked like, and what kind of attitude the pigeons had towards the crows.

With the conflict successfully escalated the squabbles had turned into full-on fights. It wasn't to the extent of mutual destruction but the two groups were both getting more desperate and instead of fighting when spotting each other randomly while looking for food, they began actively searching for the other party, laying ambushes and using overwhelming numbers to take down small gatherings of the other kind of bird.

With the two groups of birds going head to head, Lucy had a satisfied look on his face as he ate a roasted bird leg. Seeing the chaos wrought by his hand made him tremble in happiness. Playing with food had never been this fun before.

Since he had with great success instigated a fight between two of the smallest groups in the mountain range, he decided to step it up a bit now, to try and see how much chaos he can create.

Against weaker prey Lucy could easily make the victim disappear and then plant evidence, but against stronger, bigger and smarter beasts, other tactics were needed.

To begin with he gathered and pushed down a bunch of rocks on several boar swimming in a pond right next to a mountain in the inner layer. Close to where he pushed the rocks from a bunch of badgers had made a nest.

Although the falling rocks had only given them a few scratches and bruises it was still an open provocation. And they knew who had come seeking death so without further ado they charged up the mountain and started picking a fight with the badgers since they wanted it that badly. The boars had chosen this pond to take a swim because they knew the only ones close by were the badgers, and although the two groups weren't on good terms, they weren't on bad terms either. Or so the boars thought.

The boars were ready to brawl as soon as they came into contact with the badgers but things didn't turn out as expected. The ground seemed to grab at their feet, making them trip repeatedly on the way up. When they finally reached the nest they only found a bunch of badgers taking a nap in the tunnels they had made.

They were ready to face of against a group of ready-to-fight badgers, instead they were greeted with snores. Although they were suspicious the boars realized that rocks falling off a mountain maybe isn't that strange and went back down to continue bathing.

And not all that surprisingly rocks came tumbling down the mountain, into the pond and onto the bathing boars. Since it had already happened once without any obvious culprit they ignored it, it wasn't even dangerous, just irritating. But as it happened again, and again, they got more annoyed and headed up the mountain to check where the stones came from, like before the ground seemed to want to hold onto their feet. They found nothing except a small plateau, with perfect view straight down to the pond. They examined the ground around the plateau but found no lose rocks or anything. If it happened again it was definitely deliberate.

Looking back suspiciously at the mountain they started headed back, done with their bathing they wanted to rejoin the main herd, when they heard snorting noises from the tunnelsystem where the badgers had dug themselves into the mountain.

When the ground grabbed at them again they knew they had been played.

This time they charged at the tunnels without letting themselves trip and when they saw the badgers fury blazed in their eyes. A few of them kept huffing through their noses, suppressing sneezes, but to the boars, it looked like they were holding back laughter. Unable to restrain themselves they charged at the badgers, leaving a trail of glowing footprints in their wake.

The badgers were naturally awoken due to the ruckus, and very upset about being attacked when asleep. Although the first couple of badgers weren't fast enough to react before being trampled by the rushing boars, the rest were and began using their surroundings to block and counterattack the boars.

As an earth attribute beast the badgers suffered from a small disadvantage considering they were in a fire realm but since it is a low level one and they were in direct contact with the ground the disadvantage was negligible. However the battle took place inside a tunnel that the badgers had made themselves, with that glaring home field advantage the boars quickly lost the benefit of the surprise attack.

Although a complete cave in would bring trouble to the badgers as well they moved further inside the tunnels before shutting the rest down, completely crushing the boars and burying the remains of their comrades. After that they went back out by digging a new tunnel since there was a risk of the rest falling down on them in their sleep. It didn't take long since the tunnels curved and were still close to the surface.

When they came out they saw a slightly smaller boar running off in the distance. Unlike the others that had been strong enough to charge through the obstructing ground it had gotten completely stuck, unable to move until the cave came crashing down, when the shadows holding onto it's feet let go. It knew it's friends had been killed and ran it's fastest to alert the main herd.

The badgers were completely lost and had confused and angry expressions on their faces, even the ones that kept sneezing from the pepper dust that had somehow made it's way into their very sensitive snouts.

Nevertheless, they had been attacked and someone had seen them retaliate with overwhelming cruelty. The badgers quickly began making preparations. War was inevitable, if they can't stop it, they might as well welcome it.