Prey And Predator
She rose up as Sophie requested and sat beside her.
"Well, we only have one mission left to complete, so we have to set off as soon as we recover." Kathleen commented with a smile as she noticed sophie's face returning to normal.
"Why did you hesitate?" Sophie asked, she fully regained her consciousness, but her legs are still paralyzed. It will take some time for her to become normal.
"What do you mean?" Kathleen asked as she didn't understand Sophie's question.
"I mean, I kinda knew that you hesitated because of the boar was in pain, but it was hard to believe you have such a soft heart when people talk about the black dragon duchy as some evil place. Some people even think that Duke Oliver actually practices demonic magic." Sophie asked with a curious voice, she knew she was being rude by asking this, but she just wanted to know Kathleen's real self which she didn't understand fully till now.
To the people of the aurora world, deaths are very common thing. The children of noble families are always been trained according to the ways of the world, that's why, they can kill people without batting an eye.
"Demonic magic, pfft, no, my father won't use such things. But, trust me when I say darkness is more scarier than this demonic magic thing. As for me hesitating, I just thought the animal was innocent as I am the one first attacked it, probably that's why this happened."
Hearing this, Sophie can only think Kathleen was innocent.
"Oh, if you think that way, it will be hard for our next mission. This world was created in a way that if you're weak you can only be a prey that was waiting to be eaten by a Predator.
The Beast tides which occurs in black dragon duchy in every few years was the perfect example for that. Monsters will brutally attack villages and towns to eat human flesh, they will also rob resources from noble families. If they were not stopped, the tide will only continue consuming more and more territories of the black dragon duchy." Sophie spoke while trying to check if she can move her legs or not.
Seeing that she can move a little, she rose up and put her legs down on the ground from the flat rock.
'Preys and Predator, huh'. Kathleen muttered in her mind.
'The world I am living was a world without rules, unless I can overcome my weaknesses; forget about hunting a boar or a wolf, I will be the same female lead that I read in the novel. Being pushed into unknown situations without any freedom to walk on my own path.
However, there was always a way to overcome anything, for now, all I need was 'strength'. As long as I am powerful enough, I can overcome all the dangerous situations that I know which will happen in the future.'
"Kathleen, Kathleen."
She woke-up from her reverie as she heard Sophie calling out for her.
"Sorry, I just spaced out a bit." She apologized before turning towards Sophie.
"Don't worry about it. I think I can walk now, let's move out quickly. We have to complete the missions before the sun goes down." Sophie's said as she stood up, her legs are responding according to her will but she was still in no condition to fight. She know a few minutes of continuous walking will solve that problem so she wanted to go out immediately.
Kathleen nodded as she also recovered her hands fully. They both came out from the cave as the bright sun light directly fell on their faces.
Kathleen recalled the information they collected when they set out from the academy.
They moved towards the direction where they can find the Sky Wolf's pack. Since the pack has always been moving around in the forest, they have to search for more than two hours to find the traces of this wolfs.
Kathleen walked in infront, following the marks the sky wolf's pack left behind and Sophie slowly followed Kathleen while scouting their surrounding.
They both reached infront of a cliff as they looked deep into it. While it's width was quite long being 30 meters, it's depth was only 15 meters deep.
"This is where they're staying i think-
"Kathleen look at that." Sophie cut off Kathleen's words and pointed her finger on to a place in the cliff.
Kathleen looked towards the place where Sophie pointed, her eyes widened seeing a stream of blood which was flowing out from a cave in the clif. She looked around to see if they're being spyed on by any beast or human as she suddenly felt suspicious after seeing the blood.
But she didn't find or sense anything abnormal causing her to have a frown on her face. She jump down the cliff, to find what happened in the cave.
"Kathleen, be careful, there might be beasts hiding in the cliff." Saying that, Sophie also jumped down following behind her friend.
"I know, but there are no vibrations coming from the ground, showing that there are no living creatures around us. Of course, i can't tell exactly if they hide their presences, but that blood was fresh, indicating something happened here just an hour ago or even just minutes ago." Kathleen said slowly walking towards the cave where they identified the blood.
As she reached closer to the cave, her nose picked up the pungent smell of blood. And her eyes started noticing where the blood was coming from, she suddenly gasp seeing the gore scene in the cave.
Numerous sky wolfs which are half a meter hight and had grey colour hair were laying on the ground with different injuries on their bodies. She and Sophie walked into the cave slowly.
In the middle of all the wolf corpses, there was a big one with white fur surrounding it's neck. It was also laying on the ground with two holes in it's stomach.
"This...who are responsible for this?" Kathleen spoke out loud while inspecting the corpse's injuries with her eyes to figure out what caused their death.
"Kathleen come here and look at this." Sophie called out to her as she was still outside the cave.
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Bonus Chapter (4/6)