Challenging the Herd (p)

Bent through his knees, a hooded mean wearing a coat of thick grizzly fur was rubbing his hand across the floor, actively looking for something he deemed interesting. For the past couple of hours, he had been in the act of stalking a small herd of beings that had been summoned from entirely different plane of existence. These creatures, called Lladd'Sidan by the being that had first summoned them here, were beasts that had been brought here for the sole reason of corrupting their environment and spreading as much chaos and mayhem as possible. Devouring just about anything that got in their way, they did not make a whole lot of distinction between living beings or plant life as they could not taste the difference. The only reason why they killed and devoured living beings aside from the stationary plants and trees that made for easy targets was simple, they liked the sport of hunting down and killing things.

As he traced his hand along the ground, his enhanced senses were of great benefit to him as they made him into a far more well equipped hunter. Moving aside some fallen branches and leaves, the young man uncovered several hoof-tracks that were relatively shallow, making them hard to spot by the naked eye when one was not expressly looking for them. What had allowed him to track them this far was his sense of hearing, as the trampling noise made by hooves was rather distinct, as was the nauseating scent they left behind in their wake. Rising back to his feet, Solmar started running, following the direction the tracks had gone into towards a small forest that had not gotten the chance to properly grow into a woodland like Sakuramori. From the looks of it, people frequently came here for the purpose of logging wood and picking flowers and plants, likely the work of an herbalist. Watching as the tracks went deeper into the forest, Solmar took an altogether different path.

Walking further to the east, he could see why there had been so much logging in this part of the land. It was because there was a rather large settlement nearby at roughly a one kilometer walk away. Looking closer to see that there was a small mountain at the center of what seemed like a large city, he could tell that there was a structure standing at the very top of it. Taking out his map, he established that this place was called Era, though that was about all that he knew about it. With the forest being this close to the city, it was only a matter of time before the Lladd'Sidan would work up the courage to stop running and hiding and head towards the city. Though there was no doubt in his mind that these creatures would eventually be stopped by some at the very least capable mages, they would probably not get to do so before lives were lost. And if there was one thing these creatures seemed to be good at, it was extinguishing life while being able to take quite a beating before actually going down for good.

"I don't like this Sol, they're really close to the city."

"You're right Fellis, that's why we're not going to give them the chance to slip away from us. They'll die here before they work up the appetite for city folk. Head on up, see if you can locate them from above, but stay out of their reach."

With a simple nod, the Exceed flew out of his fur coat and up into the sky, starting to locate the place where the hulking monstrosities had gone off to. Because of their size and noise, it would most likely not be all that long before Fellis had found them. So for now, Solmar just waited at the edge of the forest so that he could turn away any of the city folk that might get too close for comfort. After all, if someone were to accidentally stumble into the forest at this point in time, chances were that the Lladd'Sidan would get their first kill before they even made their way into Era. As that would not be something he wanted to have on his conscience, he would just wait out here until Fellis returned to him with news of their location, after which he and his sword would massacre every last one of the monstrosities that existed for the sole purpose of eradicating life in every shape and form they encountered.  


(757 // Solmar Total: 757)

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"Dangerous?"

That was one of the words these two kids brought up that stuck out the most to him. To say that he had been quite surprised when these two girls just popped up and claimed that they were Rune Knights, he almost signed a bit, though not out of frustration but because it amused him a bit. As it were, the Rune Knights were among the guilds he had seen the most people of so far, Shane being the one he had seen the most of up until now. That said, there was also Rune, another knight with a rather fitting name that had accompanied him on a hunting job that was quite a bit different from the one he was on right now. Having originally started this particular hunt with Gangting, whom he had encountered entirely by accident, the two had broken apart shortly after finishing what they had set out to do in the first place.

Once the two demon slayers had banded together in order to straight up murder an extraplanar threat to their world in the depths of a dark and damp system of caverns, her children had seen the death of their mother as incentive to either straight up attack Solmar and Gangting or make a run for it. The creatures he had been chasing after leaving the caverns had ended up in these small woods, though he knew that they would not last long in hiding. No, like their mother, these creatures were ravenous and would soon forget about their fright as their hunger started overruling their sense of self-preservation. Such was the nature of these beasts that had come from the stars, they were here only to devour everything and grow in strength until nothing was left but a barren wasteland.

"I'm not much of a civilian since I don't own a home. Also, you have no idea exactly how dangerous this place just became kids, though it's good that they have patrols reaching this far out of the city of… Era was it?"

Not being the kind of person that ever frequented cities at all, all he had really seen of the civilized world were the smaller villages, as well as Hosenka and Cedar. That said, he knew how lax people were when it came to proper defenses. They were only ever afraid of other people threatening them and their wealth to the point where they hardly ever thought of monsters or creatures such as these monsters from another world, and it showed. Unable to count on his fingers the amount of times where he had to mop up after a guild or straight up take jobs out of their hands and take care of the issue by himself around smaller villages, he had never really thought that highly of guilds. That said, the Rune Knights were starting to become a bit of an exception to that feeling, considering the people he had met from that group that had actually been carrying their weight. Extending one of his muscular arms into the distance, he pointed deeper into the forest as if to help illustrate what he was talking about.

"I tracked several creatures into these woods that uhm… are not from this world. They're frightened right now, but once their hunger starts to peak, they will attack that city over there to kill and eat whatever they can before the guards will finish them off. I intend to put them down before they get the chance, and I reckon eight eyes are going to be catching up on more than four."

Right now, it probably would not make much sense for the kids as they most likely hadn't seen his Exceed Fellis flying off into the deeper woods in search of the herd. Whether that meant that these kids would end up believing that he had four eyes or not did not really matter to him, all that mattered was whether they were willing to aid him or not. Though he did not feel right letting children accompany him on such a dangerous undertaking, he figured that if they had been allowed into the Rune Knights, they were more than likely capable of protecting themselves. But if they had what it took to survive against these hungry monsters was a different question altogether, but one that would undoubtedly be answered soon enough.


(732 // 1491)