Chapter 162.1: Hunt

Chapter 162.1: Hunt

PART 1/2

We checked out of the town relatively easily. The guards even gave us a little ticket for adventurers on jobs saying that, if we came back within a week, we wouldn’t have to check in the normal way—we could use a smaller side-entrance instead to skip any lines that happened to form. Not that I was worried we’d get stuck in line; it was around eight at night by now, so I highly doubted there’d be some boom in tourism suddenly.

Once we were outside the walls, I closed my eyes and attempted to contact Ainash, but I was having trouble making that connection between her over such a long distance. I effectively had to re-connect what I was used to having already available.

“Just told Ainash we came out,” Erani said.

I opened my eyes to see her looking at me. “Oh, nice. I was just trying to, having some trouble.”

“Yeah, took me a second to figure it out. Here, let me show you while we walk to where we’ll meet.”

“Father!” I felt a message coming through to me from Ainash, this one much stronger than the ones I’d received when trying to contact her before. Glancing around, I looked for the messenger, who was obviously close, if it was this clear.

We’d moved out further from the walls while we waited for Ainash to find us, waiting near a road intersection so she could locate us more easily.

“Do you see us?” I asked.

“Yes! Yes! You are on the road! Standing next to mother!”

“Well, yeah, that’s not exactly a unique circumstance,” I laughed. “Where are you?”

“Am right...”The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.

I looked around, and suddenly found something tackling me from behind.

“Here!”

I stumbled forward, keeping myself up with the help of Expedite, and laughed, turning around to see Ainash hugging my back tightly. I shifted so I was fully facing her, then brought my arms around to hug her, too. “Hey, kiddo. How’d you sneak up on me so well?”

“My skin is grass color, so could look like grass!”

“Ah, nice. That’s smart.”

“Did you make any friends while you were out here?” Erani asked, repeating her messages aloud so I could follow along in the conversation—same as we always did.

“Did not meet any Humans, but saw many animals. They are strange, have never seen these types of animals before.”

“Yes, we’re pretty far from home. I’m sure we’ll see lots of things we don’t recognize.”

“It’s good to see you again,” I said.

“So no killing monsters?”

“Not while we’re not with you. At least, not for now. Just don’t go out hunting on purpose; it’s fine to fight in self-defense, obviously. But if there’s an occasion like that, you should let us know anyway.”

“Okay!”

“Anyway, you said you thought you saw some of those monsters we’re looking for around here, right?”

“Yes. Were wandering around and spreading gunk mist all over.”

“Gunk mist? You mean that smoke they breathe out?”

“Yes, they put it everywhere! Kill all grass all around and leave purple gunk behind.”

I frowned. Left it behind? I didn’t remember seeing the one I’d encountered leave anything behind. It just killed some of the grass. “Do you mind showing me where, exactly, that gunk that they left behind is?”

“Okay!”

Ainash led us over off the road and into a field. I was honestly really proud of her sense of direction—I knew her life as a Nymph would naturally lead her to be much more comfortable navigating the wilderness, but I’d have gotten completely lost walking along this featureless road in the featureless plains and lose any memory of exactly where I’d seen a pack of random monsters. Much less would I be able to lead someone to an exact location where I saw them breathe out on the grass.

As we walked out into the fields, up and down the gradual hills, we soon came to a point where, as Ainash had said, all the grass was dead. A big patch of gray. But...

“There’s no purple here.” I looked over the field. “You said the gunk was purple?”

“Um...” Ainash looked around, frowning. “Was here! Definitely was here.”

“Erani, do you know anything about this?” I asked, stepping forward and examining the grass. There was no hint of any kind of ‘gunk’ or purple coloring.

“No, no. Never heard of Gloomspurs, either. I know Classes, but you probably know more about monsters than I do. I certainly don’t know anything about stuff from the empire.”

“Well, I guess the gunk just goes away after some time,” I shrugged.

“Mhm.” Erani bent down and looked at the patch of dead grass. “Looks like they left a trail. Think we could follow it?”

Sure enough, the trail led us straight to a pack of Gloomspurs, meandering across the fields, breathing their poison gas everywhere and leaving a lazy trail of destruction behind them.

I could tell why the town wanted them gone so badly now, at least. With the amount of smoke they were exhaling, even this single pack could deal significant damage to the landscape. And if they wandered into farmland...that could end up as quite a bit of damage to the economy, too. It felt like highway robbery for them to pay us enough for a piece of bread to kill something that could destroy an entire wheat field. But, well, that was what happened when there were so many adventurers to fit the demand.

Looking out into the pack, I counted three of the things. No, four, counting a baby one I hadn’t seen at first. We needed twenty to be able to afford a night at the inn. And that wasn’t counting expenses for food, clothes, everything we’d need to survive aside from housing.

I looked over at Erani and Ainash. “Well, let’s get hunting.”