The fourth group spent another stressful night in the open with most disciples trying to cultivate to recover their strength at least a little bit. By now everyone realized there was lack of Qi in this realm and could only curse their superiors for being stingy with the Qi recovery pills. The ten each of them got would last for ten serious fights at most and with that in mind the earlier scheme of the team leaders made a lot of sense.
The mood was considerably lifted when around noon they began to see few bushes now and there and in the afternoon one of the disciples sighted a mountain goat. Needless to say the poor animal was killed within a heartbeat and few moments later already cooked on a small campfire.
Nathan extended Leo’s punishment and he had to watch the rest cut the meat and roast it on their swords as if they were oversized skewers. While a couple of disciples felt for the poor boy who was the smallest and youngest in the whole expedition, most considered getting rid of him altogether – it was not clear why the elders added him to the roster because the kid was weak, stupid and useless.
About the last part Leo’s seven team members were proven to be wrong later in the evening. When the sun was about to set, they stopped for the night and made another campfire, this time larger, and began to dismember the three goats they killed on the way. The general mood was much better, because during the second part of the day they saw more and more mountain goats and all signs pointed at a high chance for a change in scenery.
One person was very upset though. Seeing he was not going to have anything to eat again, Leo went out to hunt by himself. The first few attempts to catch up to goats caused loud laughter to reverberate through the mountain slopes as the other disciples watched him struggle from the distance while having somewhat raw and slightly burnt roast for dinner at the same time.
Out of breath once again, Leo cursed the nimble goats who easily ran away from him jumping from rock to rock and bleating as if making fun on him. It almost seemed they were playing around by letting Leo come closer and then ran away of again. Of course, he cursed master Shaw as well for making him carry that stupidly heavy weapon and only after the third failed attempt he realized the master wasn’t around and no one would care if he took off the Cleaver for a bit.
What happened next stupefied the onlookers – with a loud boom the oversized thing Leo carried at all times fell to the ground and the boy covered the twenty yard distance to the closest goat in a heartbeat. The other disciples could swear they heard the poor animal’s spine crack under Leo’s kick and before they could blink he was already pulling it by leg towards the camp.
Half way there though Leo realized that he’ll probably have to share his game with the others who just a moment ago laughed at him, so he stopped to think while scratching the back of his head. It didn’t take long for him to figure out he could make his own campfire and he dropped the goat, quickly broke off the closest bushes and lit them up using piece of iron, flint and a charred cloth.
Besides Cleaver, a small, sharp knife and a bottle of water, these were the only things he actually took along him on the expedition. He would’ve loved to avoid carrying anything because of the Cleaver’s weight, but living on the island with pygmies taught him the value of a cooked food.
A while later Leo sat by himself and slowly chewed on the goat’s meat that turned out to be surprisingly tasty. He was baffled by his own performance earlier and soon came to a conclusion that he had to continue with the weird training practice and maybe even intensify it. Since from now on he shouldn’t lack any food, there was no reason to hold back. Of course, he’ll still get dead tired from carrying the Cleaver for a whole day, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do some extra exercises in the morning and before dinner.
For some reason the next morning Leo woke up completely recovered and full of strength. Without much thought he decided to not even bother to try and join the group, but purposefully trailed behind. When around the noon everyone was about to settle for a break, he hunted his own lunch, neatly cut it and before roasting rubbed with few herbs he found on the way.
Jamie’s cookbook proved to be the most valuable item Leo had ever possessed – the knowledge it provided allowed the seemingly random herbs Leo used to improve the roast greatly, although he had no clue if there were any medicinal effects. Of course, he wished he could’ve taken it along on the expedition, but Cleaver was so heavy, there were moments when yesterday he even considered to loose the piece of iron and flint. Thus he could only go by his memory and so far the results were great.
The second half of the day went by in a similar fashion with Leo preparing the dinner by himself, but in the morning strangely enough he felt invigorated again. Apparently eating a goat by himself let him fully recover during the night, but just to be sure he intended to test it during the upcoming days.
Unfortunately things didn’t go as smooth.
After climbing another mountain in the morning the eight disciples loudly cheered. They were all fed up with the deserted mountains they hiked for days and the view of the forest covered hills beneath immediately improved the mood.
In order to celebrate they killed few mountain goats for lunch and this time even Leo was invited. He joined the other disciples after hunting his own goat of a larger size and just as he was about to cut it the group was sneak attacked by a cougar pack.
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Since the moment they left the cave, the disciples from the Sacred Order considered themselves to be at the top of the food chain around here. But because they were too busy with themselves and too arrogant at the same time, no one noticed the pack of beasts that trailed them for quite some time. They showed up unnoticed from behind the rocks and silently pounced at the strongest humans in the group.
One had to give the proper respect to Nathan and the three other Foundation establishment stage cultivators – Tim, Arthur and Xander. They managed to react on time and only Xander got light scratches from the initial attack, but the next part didn’t go that well.
Around twenty crazed cougars charged around the camp cleaving everyone on the way while mostly focusing on the four strongest humans. This time no one, not even Nathan held back and used their best techniques to quickly kill the beasts.
The four Qi gathering stage disciples, including Leo, had slightly easier time since they were not the primary targets of the assault and actually provided real assistance. At some point even Leo surprised everyone when after his heavy kick landed on cougar’s neck it’s spine instantly broke and the beast fell down, spasming in agony.
The fight didn’t last long and in the end the eight humans were left standing, but everyone was heavily panting in addition to being covered in their own and beast blood.
“What the actual f*ck!?” Xander cursed tending to his wounds while trying to catch his breath, “What in the world was that?”
No one from their group came out unscathed and he and Arthur got few particularly deep wounds.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Nathan had the same idea, “Even if there was such a large pack, after realizing they had a strong opponent they should’ve taken few weaker prays and left instead of all dying in frenzy. And they should’ve attacked the weakest members form the start – that’s how beasts have always behaved in all realms! “
Everyone’s heads turned towards Leo who was by far the smallest of them, but while he understood the logic, he could only sigh in relief it didn’t go as Nathan described.
“At least we got some beast cores now.” Xander sighed, “It’ll help us to actually recover Qi. Otherwise another fight like this or maybe two and I’m dry. These were rank four, right?”
“Let’s see …” Tim said. He had the lightest injuries and decided to not bother with them, but already was splitting skull of the largest lynx. But soon he became confused.
“There … there is no core!” He said.
With a bad premonition the rest of the Foundation establishment disciples began to check the other beast bodies and few moments later the mood of the group plummeted.
“What the f*ck is this? Judging by their strength these were at least rank four beasts – why there are no cores?” Nathan angrily kicked the body he just dissected.
Even though he had the largest amount of Qi recovery pills, he stealthily used one earlier during the fight. In fact, he had to – there was no way he would show any weakness in front of the rest because he could easily taste the same fate as the four disciples right after the arrival. The only deterrence preventing Tim, Arthur and Xander doing anything was him being the strongest, but an unfortunate injury or two and not only he might not be the leader of the group – he could ‘accidentally’ die as well.
Nathan’s last sentence instantly changed the expressions on the faces of others.
The implications were just too serious – if the beasts in this word didn’t have any beast cores, the few Qi recovery pills they had was their most valuable asset. And the three remaining Qi gathering stage disciples besides Leo, who left his pills in the sect, didn’t have any pills left at all – during the hike the strongest ones persuaded them to voluntarily give pills over for ‘safekeeping’ and it now became clear they would never see them again. On the other hand the four Foundation establishment disciples involuntarily stepped back increasing distance between each other weary of a sudden backstabbing.
The situation became too tense, but fortunately before anything regretful happened, Nathan said, “Alright, we’ll think of something later. Now let us wash up and move away from this spot. The amount of blood here might soon attract more predators."
When the group set another camp for the night, this time at the foot of the mountain at the edge of a pine forest, the atmosphere was gloomy despite the large bonfire they made. They still had the usual dinner though and afterwards Nathan, Tim, Arthur and Xander went to the side for a heated discussion.
Leo and others couldn’t hear what they spoke about, but after a while the four seemed to have come to an agreement. Nathan’s face was particularly sour when they fished out the Qi replenishment pills and redistributed between themselves and the whole process was accompanied by looks full of hate and jealousy from their younger sect mates.
But the next moment the jealousy transformed into wholehearted schadenfreude. Arthur was contently commenting on something while holding the pills in his hand, when from who knows where a ghost-like blur dashed out from behind the trees and directly right though the group of four leaving behind a spurt of blood and Arthur’s howl of pain.
The other three Foundation establishment disciples bathed in blood spraying from the stump that once had Arthur’s hand attached to it and stared in disbelief at the creature that held it in its mouth. The fist was still tightly clenched holding the pills that once belonged to the human, but now became the property of this weasel-like beast. It was at least double the size weasels normally were, but the speed and the agility it showed was definitely that of a high ranked beast.
Surprisingly Arthur was one who reacted first. With a roar full of anger and pain he charged at the beast, who immediately dashed back into the forest and disappeared between the trees. Nathan, Tim and Xander followed them for a few moments, but soon returned to the bonfire where the Qi gathering stage disciples still stood with blank faces.
The other three were in deep shock, but Leo was frozen because of the epiphany he just had. The whole situation reminded him of something he had seen before – on the ‘Auguste’ after the fight with crabs when the two huge rats appeared. Back then they eyed the beast cores the sailors had gathered and even though the humans threw the cores away, they got massacred anyway.
‘This …’ Leo came to realization, ‘They are coming for the Qi gathering pills! There is no Qi in the air and the beasts can sense the pills from a mile away! That is why even the mountain goats were reluctant to escape and that is why cougars mainly targeted the Foundation establishment disciples who had the pills on them! Anyone who holds a Qi gathering pill is acting like a beacon inviting predators from all over the place!”