"That one was actually tiring" Mx replied while he sat down nearby an insectoid beast, a Skitterfox. It was a beast with long, lean body with segmented chitin armor with six limbs, front one looked like claws, middle one were used for balance and the back pair for jumping. It moved in short fast bursts, it was his first time ever fighting one because the traps could not injure its armor properly and it moved too fast. He killed it after a battle based on stamina. He kept his distance to be able to react to its movement and only counterattacked at the same point to break the armor.
After he saw the crack had widened enough, he struck with his sword using all his force. Which caused many cracks to appear in his sword and if he hit anything with his sword no matter the force it would break. He needed another sword to continue so he decided to rest for a while and then return. He also had blood over his pants after it flew when he severed the paw of one of the wolves he fought earlier. He had fought with 3 wolves, a silk veined spider and now this beast. All at level2 leaving one wolve at level1, hunting the beasts at level 2 felt quite easy but he didn't want to fight a level 3 beast just yet.
Max moved towards the village while carrying the chitin armor of the Skitterfox. It could be useful in making an armor for him. The beast hide he was wearing didn't provide enough defense.
When he was making his way back, he noticed something strange happening in the forest. He saw tracks of different beasts moving together in a group. The beasts leaving wolves would never move in group even if of same species, they would kill each other before that. A few months back he saw two silk- vein come across each other, it was as if the moment they saw each other, they started fighting and the winner drank the blood of the fallen, "When two beasts with similar or same bloodline meet, they drink the other's blood after killing them to improve their bloodline purity." That was what his father had said, and whenever he came across two beasts at the same time, they would always be fighting.
'What is happening for the beasts to move together?' Max didn't have a good feeling about this so he rushed towards the village, going to warn the people about the moving group. The beast horde was not walking towards the village , but heading towards the inner region. As Max returned to the village, he saw that the hunters were crowding nearby the village head house. The village head, Mathias, was a cultivator at level 6. He was the strongest cultivator in this village. Max moved toward the crowd. The cultivator saw him and grew more concerned, Max was walking alone with his pants covered in blood. It was known to everyone by now that Max always went hunting together with his father.
Seeing him come alone, they worried whether something had happened to Alaric, Selene, the old woman who helped Anastasia deliver Max and was like a aunt or grandmother to him, asked before anyone could," Max, where is your Father?" Max finally understood why they were all looking at him with such eyes," He is home, I went hunting alone today. I noticed something strange happening in the forest today. There were footprints of different types of beasts moving together towards the inner region." As Max completed the last statement, the hunters face grew paler." Max, recently some hunters have gone missing, it usually doesn't raise such alarms but the number of hunters are too much for this to be a simple case. We thought it was due to a high leveled beast appearing in the outer regions from the inner regions but it seems it maybe due to the horde of beasts. Did you see how many, they were?" Selene replied," No, but judging by the number of footprints, it would be dozens, they were all moving towards the inner regions." " The inner region? Can an inner region beasts round up other beasts like that?"
" A hypnotic Veil Serpent. If the beasts are moving together like you said then the hypnotic veil serpent should be controlling. The last time it was born, it nearly gathered half the outer region beast and marched into the inner region, it was only due to the help sent from the Duke that we managed to survive." " I will be asking the Duke for help, so until I receive instructions on what to do no one is allowed to venture into the forest from now on, tell everyone about the ban." Mathias spoke after hearing all the details from Max and if he was right they might just prevent what happened last time by eliminating it quickly and if he was wrong he will see to it at that time." What is a Hypnotic Veil Serpent?" Max asked the question going on in everyone's mind. "The Hypnotic Veil Serpent is a beast that appeared a hundred years ago in this forest, It is a mystic beast that primarily uses mind control and has a mist like veil around it to protect it from attacks, it can control beasts of lower level just by looking at it and of same level just by touching them.
It had managed to gather nearly half the population of beast in the outer region under its control before the then village head finally contacted the Duke for its eradication. It was already at level 8 and was travelling towards the inner region when the duke's forces intercepted it, the soldiers were wearing runic armor which helped them counter its mind control they still received many losses due to the shear number of beasts it had under its control. The beast itself was said to be easy to kill due to the fact that it heavily relied on mental attacks and had very low physical attributes. Even after being awakened it had lower strength, speed than normal humans and the fact that it had a very fragile body with low healing.
The current Duke was the one that led the charge towards the horde and the one that defeated the beast itself. The strategy he devised had saved many fatalities in the fight though many deaths were unavoidable.
I believe I described enough about the beast for you all to take its emergence very seriously, I don't want any casualties because of overconfidence or recklessness. Use the food wisely because we don't know how long the reinforcement from the Duke will take and be on guard from now on. There will be guards stationed near the forest but you all should still be careful. That is all and you all can go." Mathias finished giving all the warning about the Serpent and the measures to take after which everyone returned toward their houses. Selene walked with Max while he walked towards his house, " So you became a cultivator, huh." " how did you figure it out?" Max asked, he had not told anyone leaving the twins and his parents because he only became a cultivator yesterday." Well, you don't really hide your aura and Anastasia wouldn't have let you go into the forest alone if you hadn't become a cultivator and the fact that you are literally having a corpse of a level 2 Skitterfox armor on your back." Anastasia replied with a smile and pointed out why most of the people were staring at the duo, " You know, most people don't go advertising their hunt and walk in bloodied pants in the streets of the village so you look like trying to show off." Anastasia kept on making fun of Max, while he kept on looking forward while walking, not daring to look towards her because he knew if he looked at her now she would simply make more fun of him.
Fortunately he didn't have to act for long as they arrived at his house with Anastasia sitting with a bunch of different animals on her lap, shoulders, head and on the grass around her. She was humming a happy tone while petting a sweet little cat with her hands.