The new people were completely trying to take advantage of what they had already done. If they set out now, they would need to find some beasts to kill and bring back. Then there was also the waiting period that would delay them. They also had the terrible condition of their trailers to contend with.
It was obvious that they were proud of their trucks and that the trailers were either a secondary concern or rentals. Either way, there was no guarantee that the fan and other functions in them would work properly.
So, it made sense that they would want to piggyback on to an already in-process expedition. It saved them from waiting around and let them get right to the action.
Nate’s parents didn’t say anything about them after letting them join. “Does something like this happen often?”
His father looked up from his place at the back of the trailer and waggled his hand back and forth. “Meeting other groups is pretty common. Even during the week, your mother and I will encounter a couple of them. Their choosing the site right behind ours would have been completely normal. Asking to join another expedition’s hunting site is a little stranger. It still happens but is significantly more rare.”
Aura was resting at the foot of their trailer, where she could hear everything going on. Her presence had raised a few brows, but none of their visitors had said anything about her.
“People who only do the required expeditions are an interesting bunch, I’ve always thought.” His mother said from beside him. “The way they act, and think, is so different from the way those of us who do this as an occupation. Meeting them out here is always a nice breath of fresh air.”
That was a sentiment that Nate could completely understand.
The entire time they had been talking, the fan had been blowing at full blast. With more cultivators and two more trailers to fill, they were going to need a lot more beasts. Still, Niall cut the power in half after another minute, raised the windows three-quarters of the way, and then partially closed the shrouds. He would let it keep running in the background for the time being with those settings.
Aura’s ears began to twitch as she heard noises in the forest, too distant for the humans to hear for the time being. It was nice to have the early warning, as it let the three know to start getting ready.
A minute later, Aura stood up and shook the gravel from her hair. “Can I use my techniques, or should I stick to claws and mouth?” She sent to Nate.
He glanced at their new companions and gently shook his head. “You’re playing at being a mostly normal fox beast for the moment, so no techniques. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Sticking to the inside of the first dungeon was getting a little boring anyway. It was starting to feel wrong to continually kill my people, even if they did betray my family. Unfortunately, the second dungeon is too strong for me to do anything in alone.”
He knew what she was talking about. The blighted elves were no joke. That reminded him that he needed to check on the energy expenditure for the traps. After all the changes he had made to the traps, it had gotten better, but it was still in the red in terms of operating cost. The only reason they could afford to keep going was because of the shared energy pool that the first dungeon was donating to.
He was hoping that researching the laser technology would drive those costs down and finally put the dungeon in the black.
The research time for that particular project was two and a half days when he started it. That meant there was still plenty of time left on the timer.
“Sorry, I needed to make a dungeon where I could get items more often. The drop rate for them in the first dungeon was abysmal, since your people don’t use items in the first place.” It had made him question why he had gotten the items he had more than once. All it had come down to was him still not understanding how the dungeons worked.
“You could have just asked me if you were curious,” She chided him, reminding him that she now knew more about the dungeon system than he did. “You specifically had a need for those items, so the dungeon itself generated them. They weren’t taken from the beasts you were fighting at the time. If you had taken a look at the resources right after those items were created, you would have noticed a dip each time.”
He nodded along as he listened to her talk. “So, the items I gave my parents then, those actually came from the blighted elves and not the dungeon itself?”
Her head shook from side to side. “Kind of. It’s more like the base blueprints came from the items the blighted elves were carrying, and then the dungeon modified them some. The cost isn’t nearly as egregious as when they are created from nothing, but they still have a cost in resources.”
He took a moment to process. “So, I probably shouldn’t go in there with the intention to get items of some sort too often then.”
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“No, probably not, especially not in the second dungeon.” She agreed.
That was easy to understand when she explained it that way. He really needed to put in the effort to ask her for information more often.
By that point, the first of the beasts had started to make their way through the trees and out into the open. The first three were whip-tailed leopards, each with three tails signifying they were at least in the core creation realm. A bolt from Nate and an arrow from Nina eliminated two of them, while Aura handled the third.
She nimbly dodged the strikes from the cracking tails. Occasionally she would knock them aside with one of her own if the situation called for it, and she could get away with it. Her tails might have been disguised to look like they were one whole at the moment, but they were all still there. It was only an illusion, after all, not a transformation.
Her claws raked through its neck and stopped it cold as it fell to the ground, dead.
Niall whistled softly in appreciation. “Those were some nice moves, Aura; those whips aren’t easy to dodge.” He hurried over and began pulling the bodies toward the trailer with her help. If they were going to get swarmed, then they wanted the area to be as clear as possible.
There was some rustling in the brush behind them, and a large porcupine beast waddled into view next to the two new groups.
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Its appearance took them by surprise, but this wasn’t their first expedition, and were ready to meet it a few moments later. The makeup of their party was interesting to Nate as they didn’t follow the normal format.
When he and the girls had been intending to party together, they had all chosen specific roles that fit them, but still mostly helped the party. It was admittedly a little hard to do with only three people. However, you typically had a striker, defender, and then someone in the back acting as a controller doing long-range attacks. With more people, you could, of course, improve the format, but that was the basic setup and the one they had gone with.
The two parties he was watching were nothing like that. The weapons they carried were ones that didn’t require much training to use, at least as long as they didn’t try to get fancy with them. One party carried spears, the other carried clubs, and they all carried crossbows. They hadn’t picked their weapons based on personal preference but on ease of use.
Hunting was a chore for them, nothing more. It was something to be completed as quickly as possible so they could get back to their daily lives.
As he watched, they lowered their spears to meet its waddling charge, while above their heads, their friends took aim. The crossbows they were using were powerful and came with cranks that could be attached after every shot to help them pull the powerful bows back into position.
Slow, but powerful. That was all he had to say about them.
Yes, the bolts could punch through a tree, but the crossbows were incredibly slow to reload and looked to be rather heavy as well. However, the great thing about crossbows was their extreme power and how easy they were to aim. Not to mention, with all of them carrying one of them, the setup worked halfway decently for them. Granted, they weren’t getting swarmed at the moment either.
A pair of raccoons, their long sharp claws digging through the crumbling pavement, followed after the porcupine just a short time later.
It was here that Nate truly got to see how the two teams worked together. None of them were expert marksmen, however, they were all decent enough shots. The spears kept the raccoons from getting close and restricted their movements enough that the crossbow users could land a hit.
That was all it took, and a few short moments later, they were loading the corpses into their trailers.
He wouldn’t say it was impressive, not really. But they were making decent use of what they did have along with their abilities. At least in his amateur opinion.
That was all he had time to take in, as they had their own beasts to eliminate after that. A large pack of coyotes had chosen that moment to make their appearance.
“These aren’t beasts,” Aura informed Nate as she took in the sight of them. “They are evolved animals though, which means they will be smarter than normal.”
“Will they still have a core?” He asked aloud.
“They should.”
His parents both shot him a glance. “Just talking with Aura. She was telling me that these are evolved animals, instead of beasts from the dimensional zone.”
Niall nodded. “They will, but dealing with them is a pain. Evolved animals in general are usually annoying as they are smarter in general and have learned from us humans over the years. Of course, it should go without saying that some animals are naturally smarter or craftier than others. Some, like the rats, have barely seen an increase in their intelligence.”
Not all the rats they encountered were evolved animals, some were beasts from the dimensional zone. Regardless, they both seemed to be equally reckless with their lives.
Seeing as they were in a pack, Nate decided to try something and used his basic ties skill. Threads between each of the coyotes sprang into his vision. They were all interconnected, but the majority of them led to three coyotes in the middle of the group. There might be no such thing as an alpha, but every group had its leaders, regardless of species.
Nudging his mom, Nate pointed to two of them while he aimed at the third. With a thumping jerk against his shoulder, the powerful crossbow released the bolt.
He missed, not by much, but it didn’t kill the coyote. The bolt scored a bleeding groove down its side as it jumped away, but that was it. The two his mother had aimed for fell over dead without complaint like good giant coyotes should.
Instantly, a large portion of the threads holding the pack together and as a cohesive element frayed and snapped. The evolved animals were still smart, but without them working together as part of a whole pack, they were much less dangerous. It would also be easier to scare them off now. Some things about coyotes never changed, and that was one of them.
Aura and Niall dashed forward, and over the course of the next two minutes, twelve more of the coyotes fell to their efforts.
At last, with a beaten look, the coyote Nate had skimmed with his bolt gave a high-pitched bark. The remaining pack turned and fled into the night, disturbing a couple of moose who had been minding their own business nearby.
With a bugling roar, the two moose swung their heads and wiped out a few more of the coyotes. A huff of annoyance passed through their large lips as they shouldered past the trees, cracking them, and vanished.