14 (14) Hunted

Five more hours passed, during this time-skip Kraton had successfully hid like a coward from most of the human parties. There were occasionally some small or weak-looking parties who wondered too close to Kraton's disguise and they vanished in a stream of white light a few seconds later. By now, Kraton had adapted to hunting in the forest by employing guerilla warfare tactics, or by being a chicken and hiding from them.

Kraton was around a mile away from Hell's Dungeon, and it would take around ten more minutes to arrive. Although feeling relieved that he was almost there, Kraton made sure to stay alert for ambushes or high levelled parties.

*Clash* *Thump*

The sounds of a brawl resounded not far from Kraton's location, there was a symphony of metal clangs as well as booming echoes of a much larger figure.

Being a stupid moron, Kraton edged his way towards the commotion and caught sight of five people in shining silver armour attacking a large lion-bear hybrid beast with twin tails and a sharp looking point at the end of them. It was easy to tell that this chimera[1] was a rather strong monster, probably a boss monster two or three levels above Kraton.

The chimera was cornered by the five silver humans, their excellent teamwork and strategy had forced the chimera into a tight spot, forcing it to defend and not giving it a chance to attack. As the silver party advanced, closing in the chimera, they thrust their pikes, swords, spears and projectiles at whatever chance they had. The golden hide of the chimera was torn with raw cuts covering it's body, and the majestic mane was dyed with streaks of crimson red.

As a last resort, the chimera inhaled deeply, growled menacingly at the surrounding humans and then shot her tails forward. They extended to almost triple their previous length, aiming towards the hearts of the two nearest people, however these people were elites, they were prepared for any last ditch attempts and almost perfectly parried away the tails, slashing the tips with their blades with the pointed tail to counter. The chimera retracted its tails and backed away, its eyes darting around in order to find a possible escape route.

Somehow, the chimera's eyes landed upon Kraton's shadowy figure, upon discovering Kraton's presense, it looked towards him, pleading with it's eyes as if Kraton was its guardian angel.

Kraton recieved the message in its eyes, at first he was bewildered at how his disguise failed him, but then he turned serious. The party attacking the chimera were elites. Their equipment were far superior than the raiders that entered his dungeon, and the coordination between members did not need audible communication. If he helped the chimera, would Kraton even be able to do anything? If he couldn't, he would die for no cause, and if he did manage to beat them, what would he recieve?

Upon weighing the odds in his mind, Kraton figured that they might have a chance to repel the attacking party if both him and the chimera attacked together, however a small part of his mind was wary that the chimera would flee, leaving Kraton to sacrifice his life in order to get away. After all, they were monsters.

Under his cover, Kraton tensed his legs up and prepared to dash forward, his power surged though the muscles in his leg and gathered throughout his limb. Like a wound up spring, Kraton released all the energey and sprang forward, his loose metal armour bellowing out like a cloak. The wind whistled through the small gaps in the metal sheets and shrieked out like a siren. The elite party heard the sudden, strange noise and four of them immediately ducked or leapt out of the way. One person turned around to locate the source noise instead of diving for cover like the others. Out of the five, he was the only one who disregarded his instinct and so he was the only person to recieve the impact Kraton's body slam.

The metal cloak provided an extra addition to the attack, some jagged edges pierced the human's skin as they collided, ignoring the armour that encapsulated the human figure and instead cutting up the exposed flesh. Shallow cuts appeared on the person's hand and neck as he was flung to the side.

"Aaaargh!"

The man squealed in pain as he tumbled on the ground. The damage recieved was not that much, but pain was another thing. His bones felt like crushed paste and the impact left him out of breath. Unfortunately, he rolled right in front of the chimera. Baring its teeth, the chimera bit down on the dazed person, decapitating him in seconds.

The rest of the party didn't move, they were still processing on how an elite member, albeit a mere navigator, got murdered within five seconds.

Kraton and Kim didn't give the party time to recover as they both immediately pounced onto them, killing the party one by one. The last member put up a valiant effort to take Kim down with him, however he was bitten in half just before his sword cleaved her head off.

Kraton slumped down in fatigue, his health slowly regenerating after the battle. The battle had taken roughly two minutes, yet they had still managed to half Kraton's health in that time. He was lucky that he did not face the party by himself, otherwise he would have already been sent back to his dungeon.

Looking at his level bar, Kraton sighed, his level bar was now one-tenth filled, however this encounter was far too difficult for him. It would be very unlikely that he would be able to defeat another party like this by himself any time soon.

Kim walked up to Kraton and curled up near him, resting from the battle as well. She groomed herself as much as she could to remove the red stains on her mane and fur and then dropped her head to rest. Her cuts were already healing up at a slow, but visible pace, another sign that she was quite a few levels ahead of Kraton if her regeneration was this fast.

Kraton reached out her hand to stroke her, a subconscious thought, however before he could, Kim jolted away and growled at Kraton, baring her fangs and raising her two tails. It was obvious that she had yet to fully trust Kraton, as bosses, they both knew all too well that there were always monsters who fought to raise their standing in the hierarchy. The victor would raise their standing and have their victory recorded, whilst the loser would have the loss recorded as well, if a higher levelled monster was defeated by a much lower levelled monster, then it would be shameful to have a permanent record of that loss on their black stone tablet.

They were ten minutes away from Hell's dungeon, and with around 6 hours until the gathering started, Kraton didn't mind resting for some time, after all the journey had exhausted his stamina. With two bosses in the same area, who would even try to attack them.

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[1] Chimera: A single organism that is made up of cells from two or more different "individuals". - Basically a creature with multiple sets DNA, or an abomination/hybrid of different creatures.

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