Tom knew what he wanted. And now he just had to figure out how he could achieve it. Between him and the place where the battle had taken place stood around a one-kilometer of open ground.

This time he was sure that he had to get the drop on the creature, as he didn't wish to be anywhere near it when it decides to execute its little lighting attack.

He had only seen it disappear around the other hill. He had no idea if it had its nest somewhere near the hill or if it had come here to hunt from further away. But the only point he could start his operation from was to examine the scene of the battle, and that was exactly what he planned on doing.

He wasn't going to take any chances, as he knew that he was at the bottom of the food chain. And he was going to act like his newfound status demanded.

He started brainstorming ways how he could move around unnoticed. And the only option that sounded even somewhat reasonable was to turn himself into a part of the environment, make himself a moving bush.

He started by cutting the bushes around him placing them on himself and his backpack trying to make it look as natural as possible.

While he was putting everything together, he realized that he had the camouflage stick, and just maybe, he could use them? He placed them on his makeshift cover, testing how they actually worked.

He soon noticed that using them would be a lottery. They seemed to blend into whatever was around them and hid only themselves. Not willing to give up so easily, he took one into his hand and was about to start focusing on it to examine the mana inside of it. But as he moved the stick, he realized that the movement seemed a lot softer, like nothing had truly changed, and he had just imagined the movement.

He immediately remembered the creature from whose home he had gotten these sticks. No matter how hard he had tried, he couldn't spot it when it had tormented him, jumping from tree to tree around him, making him search for it.

"So that's how it was so hard to spot..." He did some more tests and realized that his initial experience had been correct.

"So what if I just surround it with the bushes..."

He tied his camouflage mana sticks together, creating a shield of sorts.

Then he gathered bushes and tied them to his shield. He created a wooden plate with bushes on top covering its whole surface.

And as he moved in front of his eyes, it looked like it had barely moved, as if his brain refused to believe that it could even move.

When he was done with his crafting, it was time for the moment of truth. He started walking, hefting his shield-like contraption in front of him.

Of course, if he wanted to be truly sneaky he could have crawled, but after testing it for a couple of meters, he had realized how bad an idea it would be to do it for a whole kilometer, not to mention that he would be dragging along a heavy backpack.

He would rather hope that the camouflage mana the sticks held would be enough to mask his movement from passing glances. He was conscious of not setting his exceptions too high. Everything that was above the bushed that came up to his knees would stick out like a sore thumb, and he would be part of this croup.

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He hoped that the shield would be enough to evade the passing glasses of those creatures he didn't spot. Naturally, if he were to spot something first, he was going to hit the ground as fast as he could.

Tom had placed every single stick he had into the shield, so he only had some visual protection from one direction, but it was better than nothing.

The tundra seemed dead as he walked through it. Of course, the fact that everything dumb enough to move out in the open could be seen from a kilometer away was quite good motivation for everything to sit and wait in an ambush or for the night.

Tom had also considered it, but it would have been an even dumber idea. He would only hinder his own vision, while most of the creatures would have some form of advanced sensory ability that worked in the dark.

Tom walked ridiculously slowly, making sure to approach the hill in a straight line.

He was crouched down so that he wasn't towering over the other bushed just maybe twice their height, bending his knees as much as he could. This was one of those experiences that made him appreciate his awakened body just that much more. He had walked almost the whole way on completely bend knees, he could only imagine how much his joints would be screaming at him if he hadn't made them better in every way.

The rest of his journey went by without him spotting any movement. Making him feel like he had wasted his time, but then again, couldn't it also mean it had been a great success? He didn't care to argue semantics with himself, as he started closing the last fifty meters to the point where the fight had taken place.

He took his time with the last meters, this time actually crawling forwards, even if it most likely wasn't necessary, as he had seen it as the other creature had dragged the other's corpse away.

The nearer he got, the more he started seeing the aftermath of the battle. All the vegetation in a ten-meter area had been torn to shreds, their violent fighting destroying everything that had gotten in their way.

The sight offered disappointingly little information. However, there was one positive thing, the dead creature had suffered enough wounds so that it had left a bloody trail behind it, leading around the hill.

He slowed his advancement, even more, knowing that if he wanted to succeed, he couldn't be seen and give away his element of surprise. It was the only way he could see himself pulling this off. He had no idea how powerful the lighting attack actually was, and he had no intentions of finding out. If he had his way, this time it would be his opponent that didn't even know what hit it, it was time for him to fight dirty.

After around ten minutes of crawling forwards, he saw how the blood trail stopped, and in front of him was just a pile of bones.

"What now..." Tom thought as he looked at his trail going literally cold.

Dejected, he made his way to the top of the hill carefully, not daring to drop his cover, determined to see if he could notice something from up there.

And once he was up there, he could see nothing new as he scanned all around, looking for signs of the lighting creature to no avail. Nothing stood out to him, just the same old tundra, it was like the whole area was asleep.

He felt it as disappointment started to creep up on him. "Maybe if I had just come here right away? Maybe, I could have seen where it went?" Tom started to doubt his choices.

With nothing else to do, he posted up on top of the hill, hoping that just maybe the creature would show itself again.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, he was starting to get bored. Just sitting around and hoping that something would happen wasn't his cup of tea.

So he started trying to do all kinds of things to amuse himself while keeping a token focus on his surroundings. First, he started looking into the vegetation around him and trying to see what their mana looked like, and then he moved on to the air around him.

The longer this continued, the more he allocated his focus to the air around him, subconsciously abandoning his boring watch. He was looking at all the different mana around him when he suddenly realized that within the chaotic mix, there was something he had been chasing.

From within the small hill, he felt a minuscule amount of electricity mana pushing through the ground.

He felt his excitement grow as he thought. "Electricity doesn't belong in the ground. Unless there's something special here."