Close

The masked venator had always kept an eye on the monster from afar and now that his preparations were done, he decided to lure the monster toward the traps, he took out a box from his large coat, it had shiny and mettalic appearance and was slightly off proportions to be a perfect cube, he turned it around in a fast movement and it made the sound of a wounded animal, a sound sure to take the attention of any predator but as of now, only one predator was around as the other had fled with their tails between their legs.

Hearing the sweet sound, the monster dropped down from the branch it had been holding onto using its hand-like feet without a sound and started advancing low to the ground toward the source of the sound, so low, the venator would have been unable to see it at all had he not been in an elevated position.

The beast approached the area silently but swiftly, listening to any sounds, sensing the vibrations in the ground, nasal cavities had appeared on its face and it sniffed the air, trying to get a whiff of the blood a wounded beast would have dropped, it smelled it, in front of it, a few meters ahead, blood was flowing from the corpse of a beast the monster couldn't know the appearance of, it was about to take a step forward but it suddenly stopped and completely froze.

The masked venator was intrigued by the strange action, it couldn't have noticed him, his odor was fully covered using a special lotion as well as a skill, his breathing was low and he was standing perfectly still, nothing should be around to take its attention and the group of girls further away had not moved or done anything out of the ordinary and yet, the monster acted out of line.

The venator analysed the sutuation and realised what had set the monster off, the animal the venator had used was already dead and the rate at which the blood was flowing out was slower than what a freshly killed beast should be letting out and the absence of the killer was obviously strange but the venator hadn't expected it to notice the discrepancies so soon.

The beast wasn't in the range of quite as many traps as it should be but seeing it about to step back, the venator had no choice and made all of the traps that were in range go off, making a pick-like trap swoop down and scratch the monster on the side, its body being too thin to actually be stabbed by it.

However, the spray of flames did get to it, burning its body a bit but not enough to cause much damage or to make the fire stick to it at all, leaving only a few light burns that quickly disappeared.

However, the spray had taken its attention long enough for the masked venator to get close to it and strike it in the head with his halberd which had seemed like a short axe before it had suddenly extended to its size.

The axe head of the halberd sunk into the beast's face, digging in almost halfway through it but drawing only a miniscule amount of blood considering the horrible injury it should be but the venator wasn't surprised, he knew of the monster's survivality but what surprised him was the way the beast's flesh started clenching around the halberd, attempting to block it in place as the monser started wildly swipping its claws in the venators direction.

The hunter simply made his weapon go back to its smaller size, pulling the axe head with great force, breaking through the fleshy grasp of the monster, the venator took a few step back, the monster didn't wait at all and moved toward him, a few steps were enough for the monster to be in range but as it advance, another trap was activated, sending out a strong sound wave that left only the monster disorientated, it couldn't hear anything and with the sudden apparitions of strong vibrations in the ground, it had no way of knowing where the venator was, resulting in the monster getting assaulted by many traps and attacks from the venator, who was aiming to immobilise the monster by chopping off it limbs.

He managed to cut the first one, sending a leg rolling away, he however was forced to step back as the monster sent a hit in his direction, the hit had given it a good idea of the hunter rough placement around itself.

Much to the masked venator's discomfort, the monster quickly understood his intentions and protected its limbs, stopping all movement to stop the activation of traps and crouched down.

The venator hacked away at the beast without being able to chop any other limbs, the monster stayed unmoving and completely silent.

The venator threw another strike, a downward strike that embeded itself into the monster back, trying to pull it out, he immediately noticed that his halberd at immediately gotten stuck, however it didn't feel like when the monster had clenched its own flesh, trying the same technique and brining the halberd back to its one-handed axe size, he saw a hand grasped into it thightly, not letting go of it even after it had been pulled out from inside of the monster's body, the venator grabbed a hunting knife from his back and started trying to cut off the extra hand.

He was however quickly interrupted by a most frightful sight, turning his head slightly to his left, he saw that the monster had slightly stood up, enough to let one of its hands in between, its body and its opposite arm, presenting the palm of it to the venator and in the middle of the palm, an eye was staring at him, an emotionless purple eye from which only a beastly killing intent was coming from.

Without being able to react after the momentary shock, the monster suddenly stood fully up, eye opening up all over its head and in some other parts as well, the monster thrusted one of its claws with a speed the venator had never seen from it and pierced the body of the hunter, all the masked venator managed to do was move a bit so that the left side of his chest would be pierced instead of his heart.

In a moment, filled with adrenaline and dread, the venator grabbed the arm that had pierced him and put his other hand, opened right in front of the monsters face, at but a few milimeters from it, two explosions were heard, one blew the arm off and freed him from the grasp of the monster and the other blew the beast's head off completely sending bits of flesh flying everywhere, the hunter used the moment, the monster went limp to crawl toward the hiding place he had prepared beforehand and used the last of his mana to close the small hole off, this was the last thing he did before collapsing.

Outside, some time passed as the monster slowly reformed its body, as it did so it seemed to emit a large amount of steam as the eyes and extra arm it had grown disappeared.

The area it was in was filled with the smell of blood from multiple beings, the smell of burnt surfaces and the smell of powder that was left by the venator's explosion spells, the beast had no idea where the venator had went and the environment was not helping, however, unlike the hunter had observed previously, the beast simply shrugged the encounter off and returned to what it had previously been doing.