Lukas Junill

Lukas Junill was a man in his late 50s, roughly 183cm (~6') tall with a strong and burly physique. When he was growing up he had fought on multiple battlefields, first as a conscripted soldier, then later voluntarily.

He never had high hopes for his life, never pursuing a military career despite his skill in combat. Instead his passion was a quiet one. He hoped to become a decent carpenter and live out the rest of his life peacefully.

Fate must have held other plans though as one day a customer of Lukas' small woodworks store left behind two books on accident. Lukas had waited for the man's return but it never came, and only after a week did Lukas decide to keep the books, employing what little reading ability he had to flip through them.

Words could not describe his shock at their contents. They were cultivation manuals each! Alas, Lukas was not capable of reading much of them, having come from a rather small village.

It had been a hard choice to make, but the opportunity presented before him ignited a small amount of ambition in Lukas, and he resolved himself to sell his store and valuables, paying to learn how to read.

Years later, Lukas from Junill had made a name for himself as a rogue cultivator, a beacon of inspiration for other lowly commoners. He felt truly happy he made the decision to embark on this path, and felt his life suddenly worth more than the simple peace he had once sought.

But none of that mattered now. It was all ruined. He had done it again, gotten so drunk and out of control that he did something stupid and people got hurt. Worse, this time he had killed someone. A young man no older than his early twenties. And for what? Because the boy bumped into him? Because their egos clashed?

It all went downhill from there. He never meant to kill the kid, but that didn't matter to the others. He suspected the young man was someone important, and he was right. A great deal of people in the bar attacked Lukas, some commoners outraged at his actions, others he thought were guards of the young man keeping a low profile.

It ended bloodily. Too many people died, even more injured. His cultivation art, it wasn't a clean one. None of them were left in a presentable state.

So now here he was, disheveled and dirty, hunched over in the woods stalking monsters while hiding from his own.

'I need to leave Demia.' he thought.

'It's too much. First the bar fight, and then the confrontation in Helbeck. Too many people know what I did now. Maybe Toubia will have me. I can fight in their wars. I'm not the strongest, nor the most profound, but I can be a damn good warrior.'

His thoughts stopped at the sound of leaves being pushed aside in the canopy above him.

'The next one'

Clenching a fist, Lukas Junill readied himself for the beast above to show itself, and the inevitable battle to begin.

——

Thirteen, Nine and Ten had left their horses at the sparse woods, closer to the plain in which the nearby village sat, but just out of view. It was certainly likely that the horses would be killed or stolen if left tied there, but they couldn't bring them in. The woods got very dense the further east one went, and the three were expecting—hoping for battle.

As they ventured deeper into the woods, Thirteen's eyes were glowing with Lifesight, every critter and beast that crossed his field of vision, even so far as half a kilometre away were unable to hide, their forms a shining silhouette of life.

Nine too employed his sensory arts. He cultivated the Heaven's Eye Script which included three different techniques to train; The Mind's Eye, The Heaven's Eye, and The Eye of Fate. Years ago, when they stalked the Deadwood Serpent, Nine had only achieved the first two stages of the Mind's eye, enhancing his every mundane sense, and gaining the supernatural ability to detect movement in all directions at limited range.

Now however, he had achieved the first stage of the Eye of Fate, and the second stage of the Eye of Heaven.

The former was less of a technique and more the cultivation of a unique extra-temporal sense. It was a very, very difficult art to master, and Nine was a long way from doing just that. But even still it was a potent ability, granting him momentary flashes of foresight, no more than a second or two ahead of his current place in time. This allowed him to read and ready himself for an opponent's strike before the person in question even knew they were to make it. The only downside was that it served as more of a natural reflex, and not something Nine could activate of his own will.

The Eye of Heaven was a lot more straightforward, allowing Nine to perceive all manner of energies in the world around him, and facilitating all of his senses, mundane or supernatural, to pierce through matter.

While none of these powers stand out as directly combat oriented, the ability to perceive the energy within a person, predict their actions whole seconds ahead of time, and sense all movement in every direction with his eyes closed made Nine a fearsome opponent. All the more so with his recently awoken agility and perception attributes.

It was becoming harder and harder for Thirteen to maintain his dominance when they sparred, but his pride wouldn't allow him to let Nine overcome him.

Their silent travel through the woods was interrupted as both Thirteen and Nine stopped at the same time, Ten reacting a brief moment later as she too ceased her movement.

In Thirteen's glowing eyes, he saw a very, very faint silhouette in the distance, it's coloration implied a low amount of lifeforce, similar in tone to the soil beneath their feet. It was a corpse. Not of a person, but of something very similar in shape.

"Monkey" he whispered.

"Mostly eaten, it's been dead for days." Nine followed up as they began to move forward again.

Despite the amount of leaves, twigs, and stones on the ground, they made almost no noise as they traveled, placing their feet very deliberately, almost by instinct at this point.

When they closed in on the dead monkey, they confirmed their suspicions. It was about the size of a human adult, though obviously with a different frame and posture. It lay dead on the ground, it's stomach cut open by something sharp, while most of its insides and two of its limbs had been devoured by beasts.

Thirteen looked to Nine for confirmation.

"Crater Monkey" He confirmed with a nod.

"So at the least, he was here a few days ago, and is definitely after something specific within the monkeys" Ten said "Can you track him?" She asked Nine.

"I can try."

Nine lowered himself slightly as he lifted his head, sniffing the air around the corpse. His face grimaced as he did, no doubt the stench of death was overpowering, but he continued to search for what he needed.

*cough* "Found it. Canine's tore the thing apart, but a human definitely killed it. Follow me."

Employing his greatly enhanced senses, Nine tracked what he hoped was Lukas Junill by scent.

——

Panting ragged breaths, Lukas Junill stood among four bodies. Each almost as large as he, with long arms and prehensile tails. Kneeling by the side of one of the dead Crater Monkeys, Lukas drew a wide knife and stabbed the dead monkey in the chest, dragging the blade down to dissect it.

It was a bloody task, and honestly Lukas didn't like it one bit. But he had at least gotten somewhat used to it over the past few days. With both hands deep into the bloody guts of the creature, Lukas employed his strength carefully, breaking rib cages and anything else that got in the way, cutting what he could with his knife. Both of his hands were deep inside the corpse as he searched for one particular organ, something he believed unique to crater monkeys.

"There it is." He grumbled in a deep, gravelly voice.

When he extracted his hands from the bloody mess of a creature, they held a small, nondescript sack-like organ, severed from its connections to the body. The Liquor Sack. A strange part of the Crater Monkey's anatomy. It was an organ that generated a unique bodily fluid in response to the use of a Crater Monkey's peculiar abilities. That fluid seemed to be useful for reducing the stress the monkeys' abilities raught on their body, but it was also a very powerful liquor with unique properties for alchemy and cultivation.

Setting the small liquor sack—no larger than a golf ball—down on a cloth, he set to work cutting up the other corpses too. When he was done, Lukas was truly exhausted, but thankfully as an augmenter, his exhaustion was mostly mental. It was very difficult to exhaust the body of a successful augmenter, at most they may feel sluggish and tired, but their bodies would forever remain stronger than others. (AN: just a reminder that 'Augmenter' is the term for a body cultivator who has surpassed the fundamental realm.)

After obtaining what he needed, Lukas' eyes met those of the other beasts of the woods. Those scavengers and predators who thought themselves hidden behind the foliage.

'Time to go'. He decided, as he began to walk away, leaving the bloody corpses of the Crater Monkeys to the animals around him. There was a chance that after devouring the rich flesh of the Crater Monkeys, the offspring of those animals would be born mutants or monsters themselves. Lukas didn't know this, but it was certainly possible. They would simply lack the 'shortcut' that was Flux induced mutation.

——

After a day searching through the woods, Thirteen and his group had found a great deal of dead Crater Monkeys, most with their heads crushed by great force, and their bellies cut open by a sharp blade.

Just recently, they had passed a set of four such monkeys, Nine determining that they were not more than a day behind their target. Anticipation swelled as the two groups grew closer by the hour, Lukas unaware of his hunters, and the children unaware of yet another party, scouring the woods with furious indignation.