"AH...AH... AH... THAT WAS HARD!" Robyn said. He and the rest of the group just slaughtered a group of thaids. Before engaging, Erik explained how these creatures were called: Noks. They had a brain crystal power that allowed them to produce venom; apparently, this was a frequent type of power around New Alexandria's outskirts, so they weren't that surprised to find this kind of beast.
The thaids were in a group of two hundred, and they could find them quickly thanks to Judith's hounds and Erik's expertise in thaids. Anderson was very surprised by Erik and his capability to lead them to hunt for thaids, it was like he had already done so, but that was, of course, impossible.
The Noks were not that big for thaids; they were around 50 centimeters long and were omnivorous. They had four short legs, with which they skittered around, a square head, and medium-length antennae. However, on their head, they had five yellow-green eyes and a long proboscis with some teeth at the end, which they used to capture and eat other insect-like thaids.
The Noks' backs were covered in long hairs, which were brown-green in coloration, and that helped them hide from predators. It wasn't simple to find them, but Erik, knowing what to search for, managed to do so after a relatively short time.
Robyn, Judith, Elena, and Anderson were glad they followed him since they were ranked first on the leaderboards. That was in itself a surprising result.
Yes, they had Anderson on the team, who was a very powerful individual. However, there were teams with much stronger individuals than him, meaning that strength wasn't all that mattered in this competition; it was knowledge.
With Erik, they could find many thaids, especially the ones on the weak side. It was convenient to hunt such beasts since it didn't matter what you killed. What only mattered was that they slaughtered as many thaids as possible.
Robyn and the others didn't know that. Still, Erik believed that the militaries planned this outing to thin the thaids population around the city. He thought that because of the foreign monsters that wandered the surroundings, such as the Leylarhads and the Criculs. Something made it so that thaids traveled west, increasing the number of creatures around there.
In fact, Erik was aware that the number of creatures was much higher than usual. When he first got out of the city, he had the opportunity to see how the situation was, and seeing thaids wasn't that simple.
There were much fewer creatures around here. Now it was different; the local thaids were reproducing like they were obsessed, and many foreign species invaded their territories. It was a mess.
"Let's rest for a bit, guys. It would be dangerous to fight without stamina..." Erik said, noticing the exhaustion in everyone's but Anderson's faces. The students agreed and sat down on the ground. Their bodies needed rest more than anything else right now. Even though the thaids they were facing weren't very strong, they still required energy to be killed.
Erik put his sword inside the scabbard and wiped away the sweat on his hands while looking up towards the sky. Gwen had sent a communication half an hour before saying that there were flying thaids around here but that the military was taking care of them.
That was alarming; the young man knew that there shouldn't be flying thaid near New Alexandria because of the city's defenses, yet, they appeared, adding another danger to them. Erik often glanced upward to see if the canopy above them was big enough to let such monsters spot them from afar. For this reason, he and his team tried to stay under the tree shades as much as possible.
"Judith, how are your mana reserves?" Erik asked.
"Since you asked me to use the hounds only to scout, I have most of my mana. Why?"
Erik looked at the young woman with a contemplative look. The truth was that, while traveling here, he did find several traces left by a Wiangrine, a dangerous beast he had no intention of fighting.
Besides, it wasn't worth it in terms of points. For this reason, the young man went in the opposite direction than the Wiangrine; however, he did find other traces even here.
Since he didn't want to risk it, the young man intended to let Judith scout a couple of kilometers ahead while telling her what to pay attention to.
"Listen to me. I need you to go east and scout. However, you need to be particularly careful about two things," Erik said.
"The first are some traces on the ground; they should resemble a cat's, but much bigger in size. You should be able to distinguish them from other footprints because there are small dots in front of them, left by the creature's claws," the young man added with a serious look.
"You must also keep attention to claw marks on the trees. What I'm searching for uses them to shorten its claws, but the marks should be evident. If you find something like that, follow the traces and search for the beast. I need to know where it exactly is." Erik said while looking at Judith. The young woman immediately understood that whatever the young man was searching for was dangerous.
"Just give me a second..." The young woman started channeling mana through her neural links, making it flow from the brain crystal to the brain and then to the rest of her body. After a short while, the mana went out of her and started taking the shape of two medium-sized hounds. Once the process was ready, the two appeared again.
"Go..." Judith said, and immediately the beasts started traveling east.
"It will take a while," the young woman said.
"What do we do now?" Anderson asked.
"Well, we don't have much choice; I found this beast's tracks in two different places, one heading northeast, the other to the east. So, we should head toward the southeast, and I don't want to do that. The problem is that the most dangerous beasts reside there since we would get closer to the mountain."
"So... what do we do?" Robyn asked.
Erik thought about it for a bit and then had an idea.
"I need pine cones..." he said.
"What? Pine... cones?" Elena replied.
"Yes. Pine cones, this forest is full of such kinds of trees. I need you to help me collect them. They must have the seeds in it, so search carefully."
"What do you need them for?" Robyn asked.
It was at that moment that Anderson chimed in. He had a rough idea of what Erik wanted to do.
pαпᵈα-noνɐ1·сoМ "Do you know that Erik is an awakener?" he said, leaving the other students flabbergasted.
"You are what?" Judith shouted.
"Yeah, I am an awakener, and I've got the power to make plant life grow faster..." Erik said.
"Ok, but why do you need pine cones for?" Elena asked.
"Just for precaution..."
There was no point in arguing. Erik apparently knew what he was doing, which must have been related to his powers.
Even Anderson didn't know what he wanted to do or how he would use his power; however, he had a fair amount of trust for the young man.
So he didn't say anything else; however, his previous words were enough to make the other students comply.
After half an hour, the students returned to Erik with ten pine cones each, so Erik could gather around fifty of them.
That was a good amount. The reason why the young man asked them to collect the seeds was to use them to grow trees and throw them to any monster they could not directly fight.
Maybe that wasn't enough, but at least it would injure the creature in question. Erik decided that the best thing to do would be to fight the Wiangrine, in case they spotted it, and that going elsewhere was akin to suicide.
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