Hero's Return 13 Then & Now

Sora and Seiju were currently sitting on the wooden cart that all the hunters had to sit on to make the movement as fast as possible, mages had already set up magic on the cart to make it go faster, due to this mission having a high danger-level every hunter had a vast amount of experience in the field, Sora would often go on high-level missions as the sudden burst of strength he would get sometime during the fight would always happen without fail, with it happening so much he basically wasn't worried about any of the hunts anymore and would only go to train before he got that sudden burst of strength, but now things were different. He heard a voice telling him to be careful, this had never happened to him and he knew he wasn't making the voice up, it wasn't impossible for a sudden voice to appear in one's head either, if you were talented enough in magic or aura you could easily send mental messages to anyone. He was much more on guard this time compared to his previous experiences where he was only excited about his training. "What was the strongest monster we've hunted so far?" Seiju asked, Sora took some time pondering and remembered a beast akin to a small white tiger with flames to at the end of it's tail and at it's four paws, whilst it was small it's speed vastly surpa.s.sed all the hunters, during the hunt Sora's perception of reality began to slow down and he could easily keep up with the beast, but he was no confident this time. "It must have been that really fast white tiger, that one put the old ones in retirement." This hunt took them over a day to complete and it was giving ma.s.sive injuries to each hunter, including Sora - until he had his sudden burst of speed he was not a match for the monster, it was most likely the highest ranking monster they had fought against to this point, he began thinking more about the monsters they had fought up to this point.

"Sora." A voice woke him up from his thoughts, as he turned to look it was a blue-eyed blonde hunter that looked to be in his mid-20's, he wore leather from top to bottom and wielded a metallic bow "Kuo, you came on this hunt too?" Kuo walked towards where Sora and Seiju were sitting and sat down with them "Of course! Why would I miss out on an oppurtunity like this? High-level monsters are the most fun to hunt against plus we don't even know what this one looks like, apparently the hunters who encountered it barely escaped with their lives, all they could remember was that it was fast and had a tail, other than that they were too busy running to see." Sora's excitement rose once more "Is it really that strong?" High-level monsters were all monsters that generally had more power than most others, which means that any monster with a specific level of power could be cla.s.sed in this level, there wasn't any level higher for the villagers so some would be exceptionally stronger than others even though they were on the same basic level. "Apparently, otherwise the hunters wouldn't have come back so scared - when they came back they all looked like they were one push away from breaking down, how scary does a monster have to be to make full grown men like that..." Kuo began to think about what would happen if the monster was too much for them to handle but then instantly remembered "Oh but it doesn't matter right? You'll kill em eitherway right?" Sora was surprised to hear this but he regained his composure and scratched his head "Um, yeah... uh... don't be surprised if I can't take it down easily this time around" Kuo was shocked and looked back at Sora "What?! Why?!" Sora looked forwards into the distant forest where the monster was lurking and just sighed "I don't know, just a feeling I've got." As Sora looked towards the distance he lay back down onto the wooden cart "Hey, Seiju, Kuo, I'm gonna take a nap, wake me up when we get there." As he lay down with his arms behind his head Seiju and Kuo agreed then kuo moved to a different area of the wooden cart to talk to other hunters whilst Seiju stayed sitting down, staring at the sky.

In a distant forest where a beast who hid in the shadows lay, slowly creeping through the forest it shattered trees and killed animals without it even noticing, the aura it emanated by itself was enough to do all these things, anything close to it would either be completely destroyed or quickly rot. What was truly surprising was that it couldn't even be properly seen, it's own aura was so dense that it acted as a shadow over it, all that could be seen were a pair of moving, yellow eyes. As it moved, with each step it left behind footprints akin to a lion's but the sound it made as it moved forward slowly was a slightly high pitch growl, suddenly, it's yellow eyes quickly s.h.i.+fted to the side and it switched from it's slow prowling pace to a savage sprint, instantly disappearing from it's initial location and leaving behind a path of destruction where it ran past.

Sora opened his eyes only find himself in a tent, "Huh? Where am I, wasn't I on the cart?" Sora stood up from the bed that he was laying on "Did something go wrong with the hunt?" As he sat down on the bed staring straight at the floor his desire to find out what was going on only increased, he slowly stood up and walked out the tent to find himself in a dark forest where there were four subsequent tents lay down and a doused campfire, the moon was the only light he could see, "Only four tents? There were way more hunters, where the h.e.l.l am I?" Sora's first intinct was to immediately check the other tents, as he walked to another tent to check who was inside someone walked out of one of the tents that were set up further away from his, Sora expected to see someone he knew but what he saw was completely different, he began to slowly panic as he tried to take in what he saw in front of him.

What was in front of Sora was a a humanoid figure dressed in purple clothes, they looked to have feminine traits and were very short, everything he could see clearly but their face was blurred, the panic came from the fact that this 'blur' was not disappearing, "What are you doing up? Didn't you just tell us all to go to sleep?" Sora was instantly taken aback "Huh?! I- I didn't tell anyone to do anything! Who are you?" The young woman in front of him was shocked aswell "What? Who- Who am I?! Leader, you got enough sleep, or are you pranking me again???" The short woman walked towards him and seemed to be looking him in the eye, Sora had sensed no evil intent from this figure so he let her walk towards him without pacing back "You look tired, you should really go to sleep, after the fight yesterday all of us are exhausted, I'm gonna go get a drink then go back to sleep, you should too." As she said this the figure walked away into the forest leaving Sora there completely confused.

As he stood there contemplating what just happened to him he heard a familiar voice behind him in the forest. "Sora, hey, we're here." Sora immediately recognised the voice "Seiju?! Why is he over there" Sora immediately plunged into the darkness of the forest and what he could see slowly grew darker and darker, the world seemed to be shrinking as his vision went completely dark, almost as if he had shut his own eyes. Opening them he found himself back on the cart with Seiju and Kuo standing above him "We're here, everyone's waitin for ya" Kuo drew his bow as he finished waking Sora up then jumped down from the cart. Sora immediately stood up then jumped down too, he stared at the floor and began thinking about the previous experience "A dream? What a bizarre dream to have though, it seemed to real to be a dream... But... I couldn't even see that girl's face, I don't even recognise her..." Whilst Sora was thinking Seiju jumped down from the cart and looked at Sora who was currently staring blankly at the floor beneath him "Um, what's so interesting about the floor?" Hearing Seiju's voice Sora instantly found himself back in the real world and looked at Seiju "Um, sorry, haha..." Seiju didn't respond back, he only looked to the other hunters in front of them and signalled at Sora to start following them, they had to run for a bit to catch up but they eventually caught up and started slowly walking with the rest. Sora still thought about what that dream was but he eventually discarded the thought to begin preparing himself both physically and mentally for the monster they were about to hunt.

The hunters walked for a short time before arriving at a clearing in the forest, with a little time spent on investigating the area Kuo found traces of shattered trees and rotten wood and foliage in a straight path, he immediately called out for the other hunters and they all began to follow the path, the path of destruction was quite small and was a straight path, with a couple of paw marks in the ground, the hunters eventually reached the end of the small path only to find an area that seemed to have been ravaged by some sort of explosion, the trees looked to have exploded and the ends of the trees were splintered, the ground had been completely destroyed and caved in and the explosive destruction only continued down another path. "Such an explosive change in power, to me it looked like the thing was lurking for a long period of time until it noticed something and began to chase it. But... There's no other tracks in the area for us to follow..." Seiju pondered what to do as he balanced out the potential danger this beast could hold and why it had suddenly exploded in power, Sora looked at his friend pondering and looked at the destructive path in front of him "Well, we came here to hunt whatever that thing is, I don't think anything else we've found fits the description of a high-level monster more than this." All of the hunters looked at eachother collectively then to Sora and nodded, after a short pause they all began to follow the path.

The destruction only grew more and more savage as they traversed down the path, the area where the destruction was spread only seemed to grow as they followed it, Seiju stopped walking and stared at the ground whilst he was pondering, Sora also stopped "Seiju? What's wrong?" Seiju kept staring at the ground beneath him.

Se: "I think I have a basic idea."

So: "Hm? Basic idea of what?"

Se: "Of exactly what kind of monster we're tracking... I've been getting this really bad feeling since we left, like this isn't the kind of monster we're used to. You've felt it too right? You were talking about how you weren't confident this time."

So: "Um, I guess... But... that isn't the reason I had that feeling, I just had a hunch that this one would be different whilst I was at the gate, it wasn't cause of the monster or anything."

Se: "Well, that's how I've felt, ever since that explosive change back there I've been wondering why it even happened, I clarified that there's no other tracks when we were there..."

After a moment of silence.

So: "Sooooooo... What do you think? What's this basic idea you have?"

Taking in everything he had seen so far Seiju looked directly at Sora.

Se: "Taking everything into account... the explosive increase in power, the fact that there was nothing else in the area and the complete change in direction. I think that the monster was able to find or sense it's prey from an extremely long distance and began chasing after it. It's not impossible."

Sora pondered for a second before responding.

So: "Yeah... I guess you're right, but... no monster that we've fought against has been able to sense something from this far away, we've been walking along this path for quite a long time now."

Se: "Yeah but think about it this way, the destruction only grows as we follow the path right? Maybe... maybe the monster is getting more and more excited as it closes in on it's prey, increasing the destruction it causes, it makes sense. Right?"

So: "Yeah I gues your right but-

K: "Hey! You guys! You're falling behind! Come on we need to keep going!"

Kuo shouted at them after noticing that they were falling behind, Sora and Seiju, with their hypothesis in hand traversed forward much more carefully than before, with the risk of this monster being so powerful they weren't going to be as careless.

After a long time walking. All of the hunters were growing tired, they had been walking for hours now and had not even reached the end of the path of destruction, more and more hunters were convinced that the monster had just ran away at full speed, not caring for the destruction it left due to how fast it may have been.

So: "We aren't getting anywhere."

K: "Yeah, we've been walking for hours now and we haven't found anything else besides the trail this thing has left behind."

So: "True, maybe we should take a break here. Did you carry the camp here?"

K: "Yeah, we got some of the less experienced ones to carry the tents and stuff, we should be able to quickly set one up. Oi! You guys! We should take a break!"

The woman in charge of the hunting group turned to look at Kuo, looking at the state all of the hunters were in she agreed and shouted "Set up the camps!!! We're resting here!!! We'll continue tomorrow!!!" After being told this all of the hunters began to set up camp and set up fires to roast some meat that they had brought with them, it was an extremely quick process due to how much the hunters wanted to eat then go straight to sleep.

In the dark of night, with the only light being some fires spread around the camp and the light from the moon. Sora, Seiju and Kuo were sitting on some rocks drinking and eating, there were talking about many things, the hunt, how it is back home and some idle chat, a woman holding a mug walked up from behind them and sat down on the rock next to them.

K: "Del, how's it going?"

This woman was named Del, she was the one in charge of the hunt, she was the one who blew the horn before they left and the one who ordered for the camp to be set up. This woman was short, had jet-black hair and extremely dark brown eyes, they almost looked black too, the clothes she wore could be compared to a light, black leather armor, whilst the protection it gave was small, it was very easy to move in. She gave a glance to Kuo then sighed.

D: "This hunt is already much harder than it needs to be, at the very least we should be fighting it by now, by this time in other hunts we would have already been packing up to return home. This one ran quite far."

So: "I wouldn't be too sure of that, even if we did find it earlier, I don't think this one's gonna be as easy as all the other ones."

Del was intrigued by this statement, coming from the person that was usually so confident, who proved he could back it up with the explosive strength he would reveal. If he was saying that he wanted to be careful, it would be strange for someone not to be intrigued.

D: "Oh, how so?"

Sora and Seiju looked at eachother and, after a moment of silence, began explaining their theory to her, as well as why they ought to be careful.

D: "Well, that does make sense, I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility. But, there is one flaw that I can't seem to get over."

So: "Oh? What's that?"

D: "If such a beast was so powerful, why would it run so far?"

Sora was taken aback by this, he really hadn't thought of this, Seiju also did not think of this and just lowered his head to think about it.

So: "Haha... you got us there captain..."

Sora scratched his head and no longer continued with this theory. However, while Sora was laughing at the idea now, Seiju's expression had grown more solemn, noticing this Sora spoke up.

So: "Seiju? You alright?"

Hearing his name he instantly propped his head up. His face more solemn than before.

Se: "No... We're thinking about this all wrong... it's not..."

Seiju's expression suddenly grew cold and he looked as if he was in both major disbelief and extreme fear. He looked to Del and shouted.

Se: "Captain!!! Wake everyone up!!! There's no time!"

Seiju almost never shouted, on the rare occasion that he did everyone would pay attention as there would most definitely be a reason, but even so, this request was quite sudden and with no context the captain was sceptical.

Del: "What?! Why?!?"

Se: "A monster that can sense us from an unbelievable distance... explosive power capable of shattering trees... it didn't run away!!! It-"

The surrounding area suddenly grew cold, almost frozen. An impossibly strong aura rang out from deep within the darkness of the forest and it was now moving at an extremely fast speed towards the camp. From within the darkness a four - legged monster jumped out and the aura around it was so dense that you could only see the faint outline of it, it looked to be a lion with a mane made of spiked metal instead of fur, any other details were masked by its aura. Landing directly in the middle of the camp it began to ravage the surrounding area, tearing through the tents and almost killing anyone unlucky enough to be in its path, luckily they were all high rank hunters and could survive even hits from beasts like this, but just barely. Sora, Kuo, Del and Seiju watched in shock as the monster destroyed their camp and fatally wounded the other hunters. "It... It already knew we were here to begin with!!!"