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Chapter 267: Animals Hunting
🕑 Added 2023-09-22 17:36:01 +0000 UTCBy the way, if you want to buy some of the D&D one-shots my team is making at a premium price, check out our new bundles!
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Jack hid in the foliage. He’d smudged dirt on his face and bare chest, trying to make himself both stealthy and inconspicuous. If people thought him a prisoner at first glance, it would save him a few seconds of suspicion.
To that end, he’d also hidden away his purple robes, leaving himself with just a pair of boots and a short, brown set of pants—his undergarments, basically.
Pretending to be an inner disciple would also work, as he could then launch a sneak attack on the disciples from up-close. Unfortunately, Jack followed the Dao of the Fist, which disdained underhanded tactics in most situations.
Therefore, dirty and barely clothed, Jack stalked in the foliage, waiting for a team of inner disciples to fly overhead.
It didn’t take them long. Only a few hours after Jack got into position, he spotted four dots approaching in the distance. He clicked his tongue—four was perhaps a larger team than he’d like to start with, but he felt confident enough. He couldn’t afford to take it slow.
As the four dots approached, they revealed themselves as cultivators dressed in elegant yet simple attire. One was a human wearing long, green robes. Another was a turtle-human—a turtler—wearing only pants. The third person was a bearfolk in leather armor, and the fourth was a sharken, much like Shard Presht of the Integration Tournament, wearing simple leather.
All ranged between levels 130 and 160.
The four of them flew far overhead, zooming into the distance. Jack was quick to follow. He couldn’t take to the air or he’d be discovered, so he did his best to navigate the forest below, flying over and under branches, around tree trunks, and generally trying his hardest not to ram his head into anything at multiple hundred miles per hour.
The inner disciples who came here to hunt had a device which gave them a general indication of each prisoner’s location, so they didn’t have to spend weeks combing through the forests. Right now, they were probably following that device to the location of a nearby prisoner. All Jack had to do was not fall too far behind.
Fifteen minutes later, the cultivators slowed, then stopped mid-air. They hovered a mile above ground, at the edge of Jack’s perception, and seemed to be talking with each other. He assumed they were formulating a plan. That meant a prisoner was nearby, and since Jack didn’t want to appear yet, he made sure to remain a respectable distance away.
Since the prisoners could not hide, most opted to find a suitable location and turn it into a stronghold. They peppered it with traps and treacherous terrain, optimizing it to give them the best fighting chance against their hunters. Of course, not many traps would work against immortals, but it was better than nothing.
And, if all else failed, they could resort to running.
Jack settled in to wait. He felt for the poor prisoner who was about to be murdered, but he couldn’t appear just yet. The extent of the Warden’s control over the prisoners was unknown. For all Jack knew, if they saw him, so did the Warden. Therefore, he had to wait until the inner disciples and the prisoner were done fighting, and then swoop in to finish the job.
He could not give this prisoner salvation, so he would settle for revenge.
The four cultivators came to a consensus. The green-robed human spread his arms and shouted something. Suddenly, the forest around Jack came alive. The ground shook. Trunks moaned. Roots speared out of the earth, tearing into the nearby trees and each other.
Jack didn’t wait to see what else would happen. He bolted away, sprinting until he exited the spell’s area of effect, and only then did he turn around to witness the destruction.
And destruction it was. An entire three-mile-radius area of the forest had collapsed, filled with fallen logs and sharp roots. Various animal carcasses lined the ground, and where the soil was visible, it was upturned and violently dug out. It was like a giant had grabbed this part of the forest and put it in the blender.
One thing remained, however. A woman with dark hair so short her scalp was visible, wearing nothing but dirty undergarments. Her gaze was defiant.
Human (Earth-103), Level 159
Faction: -
No faction, no visible title. Her status was as bare as her body.
From the sky, three cultivators dove down, leaving only the robed man afloat. The woman didn’t back down in the slightest. She gritted her teeth and pushed her hands out at them, shouting, “DIE, TYRANTS!”
Instantly, the air turned chaotic. The Dao stirred and span until spectral swords filled the air, flying at the three incoming cultivators. Each could cut through iron.
Jack whistled. That woman was strong.
Unfortunately, so were the Animal Kingdom’s inner disciples. The turtler rushed ahead of his teammates, crossing his arms and flying head-first at the swords. A solid green aura manifested around him. Clashing against it, the swords were easily deflected, sent spinning away. Any that remained were swiped away by the bearfolk, while the sharken swam between them and easily dodged everything. She cultivated the same Dao as Shard Presht, the Dao of Momentum, though at a far higher degree of proficiency.
The prisoner wasn’t discouraged. She clapped her hands and forced all swords to still in mid-air, then dive back towards her at almost double the speed they’d shown before. Clearly, she’d been holding back. At the same time, a blade of pure Dao materialized in her hand, so solid that Jack thought it was an actual sword at first. She charged.
The three inner disciples had broken through the wave of swords before, so those swords were now behind them. As they converged at the woman, the swords came at the cultivators from behind, while the prisoner herself was rushing them from the front.
Again, Jack couldn’t help but admire her battle prowess. Who knows how many low immortals she’d cut down with this combo. Perhaps individually, none of her four opponents could match her.
But they were four.
Without a word, two of the inner disciples—the turtler and the bearfolk—turned to meet the hail of blades. One tucked into his shell and the other unleashed a storm of claw attacks, stopping anything from approaching the sharken woman, who met the prisoner’s charge.
The sharken wore fin-blades on her forearms—large, triangular blades shaped like a shark’s fins. It was the same weapon Shard Presht had used. As she clashed against the prisoner, both her body and the fin-blades accelerated and decelerated instantly, making them almost impossible to predict. At the same time, the prisoner’s attacks suffered some sort of slowing effect, making her lose her rhythm.
The sharken quickly seized the upper hand and started pushing.
The prisoner could barely fight back. The flying swords were a large part of her strength, but they were stopped by the other two inner disciples. The blades that made it back were few in number, and her control wasn’t good enough to control them accurately in battle—all she could do was fling them out and pull them back.
As a result, she was pushed back until she almost reached the ground. Her gaze remained defiant, but there was also a hint of dread. Jack caught her glancing around, looking for avenues of escape.
The inner disciples weren’t going to let her.
The sharken did not let up in the slightest, pressuring the woman even harder so she didn’t have time to retaliate. Cuts began appearing on her body. At the same time, the other two were done with the hail of blades and rushed over. The prisoner was surrounded and attacked from three sides at once. She tried to summon a few more blades, clearly overdrawing her powers in despair, but no matter what she did, her defenses were swiftly crumbling. It was a matter of seconds.
Suddenly, roots speared out of the ground and wrapped around her limbs. Her ankles and wrists were restrained, leaving her defenseless. The inner disciples weren’t showing a hint of mercy; even when the woman’s defeat was practically certain, they’d still employed a sneak attack by their fourth member to guarantee their success.
The woman was suspended mid-air by roots, unable to move, surrounded by three armed inner disciples. “Fuck you,” she spat out.
What followed was butchery. Fin-blades, claws, and spiked knuckles rained on her body, chopping her up into a thousand pieces. She died in a shower of blood.
Within seconds, almost nothing was left of this proud woman who fought to her last breath.
“Alright,” the sharken said, shaking her fin-blades to clear them of blood. “Do we have time to get a couple more?”
The bearfolk shrugged. “If they’re this easy, sure. But we have an appointment at sunset.”
“Oh, I remember. Hey, Anker, where’s the closest prisoner now?”
Jack gritted his teeth. After chopping up the woman, they simply let the remains of her body fall to the ground and…ignored it. They never even looked at it. Not the slightest hint of honor for this brave warrior they hunted down and mercilessly executed in unfair combat.
He wished he could have helped. She did not deserve to die. Not like this. No matter what she’d done to end up a prisoner, he refused to believe that someone with such strong spirit was an evil-doer. In his mind, she just a victim of the Animal Kingdom’s tyranny.
And who knows how many others died such deaths every day. Good people shouldn’t have to suffer.
The thought of Earth becoming a territory of the Animal Kingdom suddenly disgusted Jack. He pictured his friends and family running away and being brutally cut down by these monsters. He wouldn’t let that happen. Rage boiled inside him, bubbling and seething, and he let it rise freely. It wouldn’t consume his reason or hamper his fighting, but would make it so damn satisfying.
The man with root magic was descending towards his friends. “Let’s see,” he said, looking at a device on his wrist. “Ah, not too far. Only a thousand miles to the—”
He froze. Space fluctuated behind him, and suddenly, a person was there.
“Think you’re hot shit?” an angry voice reached his ears.
This inner disciple was a hardened veteran. When someone suddenly appeared behind him, he didn’t even turn to look, just dashed forward at full speed. “HEL—” he tried to shout, but neither his voice nor his retreat were fast enough.
A punch connected with the back of his skull. The man was flung downward head-first and was nailed into the ground hundreds of feet below almost instantly, buried in his own roots. His friends froze, alternating their gaze between the root man and the strange prisoner who’d suddenly appeared mid-air.
Jack growled at them. “I hope you haven’t prepared any coffins, because you won’t be needing them. You’ll be left to rot on the soil, as you would have done to this woman.”
The three inner disciples glanced between each other, considering whether to run or stay. They inspected Jack, finding him to only be Level 147.
“Two for the price of one,” the sharken growled in response, grinding her blades against each other. “You should have used your invisibility to escape, prisoner. You took Anker; I’ll make sure your death is agonizing.”
“Try me.”
“Don’t let him run!” the sharken shouted, charging at Jack. The other two disciples followed her only a beat later. All three of their domains manifested, pushing down on Jack, who stood there and endured the strain.
He was stronger than them, or so he hoped. However, the point wasn’t just to beat them; he had to make sure nobody escaped, and for that, he needed them close. That was why he’d used his trump card, Space Walk, to assassinate their wizard, and why he hadn’t utilized Meteor Punch when doing so. He didn’t want to scare them.
In truth, they could have realized he was not a prisoner, as the wizard had mentioned that the closest prisoner was a thousand miles away before dying. If they’d ever seen his wanted poster, they could have also recognized the Bare Fist Brotherhood in his inspection screen. However, in their minds, the only people here were inner disciples and prisoners. He looked like a prisoner. What else could he be?
In the few seconds of time, and clouded by rage, they hadn’t made the connection. They charged.
And now… Now, they had approached him.
Jack grinned with violence. “Bring it on, Animal Kingdom!”
