Following the traces

This was the second time leaving the city for Uriel, but it was nothing like last time. The heavy traffic made their way outside almost insufferable for the hunting party and it took them much more time than what they expected, but Uriel was in a daze looking out the window.

Most of his life had been going from home to school, then from school to home and he rarely got an opportunity to see other places. That was one of the reasons why he was so ignorant about many things.

"Whew! Finally some fresh air!" Medusa said as she opened the armored vehicle's window.

"You never get used to it, after a while you'll feel suffocated inside the city." Miss Dragonfang smiled.

"I have a question, I know our objective is to hunt cryptids but, how will the agency know how many of them we kill? It's not like we can record it, will they be fine with just our word?" Sam asked.

"Of course not!" Miss Dragonfang laughed merrily. "Whenever you kill a cryptid, you have to wait until it disappears, then it will drop an essence orb... those things are used to create ammunition and gear, even weapons for melee fighters, so they're really valuable."

"Dammit!" Uriel cursed.

"What's wrong?"

"If I knew that from before I would have picked some, after all, Shaker killed a lot of horned rabbits. I even lost a book and got nothing in return..." Uriel still regretted using his book as a weapon to fight against the cryptids.

"If you call coming back alive and with a trait, no less, a loss, then I don't even know what a win is." Miss Dragonfang replied.

The inside of the vehicle felt more spacious than before since there were less people in the group. The two lines of seats on its sides allowed everyone to see the landscape over the window in front of them, but Uriel soon got distracted.

The road was bumpy and miss Dragonfang was sitting right in front of Uriel, her modest but shapely bosom performed a discrete jiggle every now and then, mesmerizing Sam, the geeky student and Uriel alike.

"What are you looking at? huh?" Medusa, who was dressed in her usual clothes that reminded Uriel of the 'rock & roll' style of old, nudged on his ribs with a frown on her face.

"I... uhh... nothing I'm just sightseeing." He replied.

"Yes... sightseeing..." Sam echoed, but the geeky student had something different to say.

"Look, there's a dog!"

"Don't look at it!" Luna, who had been silent most of the time, shouted.

"For the love of the... whatever! why did you yell like that!?" Miss Dragonfang said in a scolding tone of voice.

"It's a black dog! You can't look at them, they're death omens!" Luna argued.

The dog wasn't even in their way, it just stared at the group from the top of a small hill on the distance. But as soon as they came close it started running behind the vehicle.

"That thing? that's a cryptid, but it's not nearly as dangerous as the things we'll be facing. If something like that scares you off, maybe we should turn back right now." Miss Dragonfang replied.

"Turn back!? We can't turn back, we spent a lot of money paying for the tickets!" Phlox asserted. "Don't worry about that thing, we'll leave it behind in no time." She said as she stirred the wheel from side to side, making turns and dodging any obstacle in the way. Within just a couple minutes, the dog was nowhere to be seen anymore and Luna was finally able to rest easy.

"Hey Luna, I don't mean to offend you and believe me, I have an open mind about cryptozoology now but... why did you get so scared by a mere dog?" Uriel asked.

"That's not a regular dog, didn't you listen to miss Dragonfang?" Sam attempted to silence Uriel, but Luna replied anyway.

"Black dogs are supposedly creatures that come from... well, no one knows where do they come from, but they drag people to their deaths. It's not just a dog that happens to be black, sightings reported them as black dogs with bright red eyes that were able to disappear in the blink of an eye. Not just that, people who saw one, always ended up..."

"Let me guess, dead?" Miss Dragonfang said mockingly. "I know I don't look like that, but I'm actually pretty strong. I've killed like a dozen of those before and they're as weak as the horned rabbits you faced."

Uriel's eye twitched when Miss Dragonfang called the horned rabbits that gave him so much trouble weak, but at the time he didn't even possess a trait and, even when he did get one, he didn't know how to use it.

Now he was counting on the slight physical boost passive ability he obtained from storing the swiss army knife and, hopefully, he would also be able to find more artifacts to store and get all sorts of abilities or boosts.

"Lieutenant D... I mean, miss Dragonfang, we've arrived at our last drop off location, should we advance?" Phlox said as soon as they passed the spot where they started walking.

"Proceed." Miss Dragonfang replied.

"What, we're not going to walk from here? I thought it was impossible to go on from this point on a vehicle." Uriel said curiously.

"That was an army operation with more than a thousand people involved, some of them were ascended and even a couple of heavenly rank. We were supposed to draw as much attention as possible, now it's the opposite. We'll be going to our previous camping spot and we'll leave the vehicle there." The hunting party leader replied.

"Yes! I'll be able to get my stuff back!" Medusa celebrated loudly and the rest of the team joined her. All of them, except for Uriel, because he didn't leave anything behind.

Thanks to moving on the vehicle up to their previous camp instead of walking, they were able to regain all the time they lost in traffic which led them to arrive at about the same time as before.

The students grabbed all their belongings that were left behind, they were a bit weathered but they were still happy to recover them. Especially the geeky student who, like Uriel, wasn't wealthy enough to afford losing his stuff.

It was precisely that student that eventually got Uriel in a strange mood. It was awkward for him to spend so much time without knowing his name and he was just about to ask him what his nickname was when Phlox, the former corporate, spoke loudly.

"Hey nerd! help me out here, will you?"

A couple seconds passed and when no one replied she spoke again, but no one replied to her. Uriel stared at the geeky student expecting him to say something, but he didn't.

"Hey U... I mean, Sage, I think she's talking to you." Medusa whispered in his ear, it was still difficult for her not to call him by his name.

"Me? No way... I'm not a nerd... Look at that guy" He replied pointing at the geeky student.

"First, you are a nerd. Second, you're the only evolved here besides me, there's no way I'm speaking like that to an ascended. Especially someone with a trait so powerful..." She directed a quick glance at the geeky student and then proceeded. "And third, since you're the only other evolved, it's your duty to help in chores... like setting up the tents."

Uriel had no choice but to follow her command. She wasn't only her senior, but she had also been in the army.

'Now that I think about it, everyone here is more powerful and better trained than myself, I'm again at the bottom.' He sighed as the unloaded the tents from the vehicle.

"Why are you guys setting up the tents now? aren't we supposed to go hunting or something?" Medusa asked placing her index finger on her lips on a pensive pose.

"What if we come back late? we won't be able to do any of this without daylight."

With that, the group made all the preparations and even enjoyed a frugal lunch together. They were in high spirits, but something seemed to be worrying miss Dragonfang.

As soon as they were ready, they set off to explore their surroundings. This time, the strange device used to detect the presence of strong cryptids was on Phlox's hands, but it was mostly useless since Sam was the one in charge of spotting them.

The way up to the nearest campfire was short, the creek was flowing ever so clear and the remains of the campfire where they stained their boots with blood were still there, only there was no trace of blood.

Suddenly, miss Dragonfang crouched and touched the ground, then she stuck out her tongue which was long and bifurcated now like that of a snake.

"This is... odd..." She muttered, but everything seemed in place for Uriel who still remembered how they sunk their feet in the shallow water of the creek last time they were there and wanted to do it again.

Miss Dragonfang then led the group to one place, then another, repeating the same process over and over again.

Uriel couldn't make anything of her strange behavior, but he didn't miss any of it. He also took notice that her tongue was completely normal and human like one second, then the next it was like that of a snake.

'That's her trait! She can shapeshift to a certain extent... shapeshift... shapeshift...'

"Are you tracking the shapeshifter!?" His loud yelp startled everyone and they glared at him.

"Of course I am, why else would we bother coming all the way here? there's shorter ways to the lost city..." The former lieutenant replied.

"But, why? aren't we supposed to be hunting cryptids?" Uriel couldn't believe they kept such an important information from him.

"Because..." Miss Dragonfang lingered for a few seconds. "We're here to avenge those who died."