Masked venator

When the village girl woke up, unlik most people tended to do in such situations, she didn't scream her lungs out about getting killed or anything and instead silently woke up with her eyes wide open, she could feel that her face had been cleaned off of the blood and that someone had changed her clothes to something else.

Analysing her surroundings, she found herself in a tent, she could hear the sounds of fire crackling, smell that food was cooking and also hear the voices of multiple people chatting with one another.

It didn't seem like anything was wrong, it even seemed like everything was great for her but she clearly remembered how that monster had mimicked the voice of a person to make her open the door, so she slowly and carefully took a peek outside of the tent.

She was only met with the sight of four women sitting around a fire and eating some meat, one of them noticed her peeking out of the tent.

"Hey you, you're finally awake!" spoke the one who noticed her, the village girl had never seen anyone with that many freckles in her entire life.

"Come over here and eat" she offered.

After a bit of staring at each other, the village girl came out and sat down with them looking everywhere around her as if she was on the run.

"Hum, so what's your situation exactly? We found you collapsed in the forest, are you alright?" question Matina a bit awkwardly, the village girl remained wide eyed as if she was in a constant state of high panic while also acting eerily calm, making for a scary feeling to emanate from her.

The village girl once again looked around as if she was going to speak confidential information of the highest importance and whispered something clearly.

"It arrived and slaughtered them all, ripped their bodies apart, gutted them, spilled their blood and guts everywhere, shattering bones their bones and breaking through anything, it didn't care about their attempts to fight back and killed them, devoured all of their bodies alongside their clothes, bones and hair, sometimes eating them alive if they couldn't struggle anymore, it mimicked a voice and tricked me, spit in my face and used me as bait to slaughter soldiers by the dozens, it must have finished devouring them by now, its coming for me, I'm sure of it, I can feel it tracking me, it won't give up on its prey" she said while maintained eye contact, her eyes still wide open and her calm tone unchanging.

"She's fucking bonkers" commented Ulmidl, making a most accurate statement.

Ramine was simply frozen at the story and looked like her brain was having trouble understanding everything that was just dumped on her.

Lalanina was simply focusing on her beverage and chose not to try and take part in a conversation with this girl.

"Ah, I see... how about we bring you back to the city? You know someone in the city?" asked Matina, rubbing the girl's shoulder, trying to confort her.

"No, I never left my village and it does not matter, it will follow me, I'm sure of it, I'm telling you" responded the girl as she looked around once more.

Saying the girl had freaked out the four adventurers would be an understatement.

"Erm, you keep mentioning 'it', what are you talking about?" asked the freckled girl.

The village girl described the monster she was talking about in great details, she had had time to analyse it as it had stayed still, watching her for days.

"I have no idea what that could be, any ideas?" asked the leader of the groups as she turned to her teammates but they simply shook their heads from side to side.

"Oh and I almost forgot, what's your name?" then asked Matina.

"Telikoritsi" responded the village girl.

"Would you mind if I called you Teli?" questionned Matina, there was no way she would remember that name.

"I don't" simply answered Telikoritsi.

_________________________________________

Not so far from the five girls, a masked man dressed in a very similar fashion to the monter's first human victim was placing various mechanical and enchanted traps around the area.

The man was a venator, after the old venator had went missing on a mission that should have been simple, he was sent to find out the reason of his disappearance and to possibly dispatch the monsters responsible for it, he was more specialised in taking care of strong monsters.

As the venator was placing traps in complete silence and with a terrifying efficiency, he was muttering something under his breath, sounding pissed about something.

"Who the hell would send a single person to investigate the disappearance of a senior venator? I am not even that experienced, seriously, what are they thinking?!" he softly spoke, a sound so low, it was almost inaudible.

He had arrived too late after managing to find the track of the monster found near a spot stained red, the only indication that it was the remains of the venator who had disppaered being the medaillon all venators carried with them, it had been covered in a thick mantle of saliva mixed with blood, the monsters must have spat it out after initially gobbling it up.

The venator had disappeared a little while ago at the time of the discovery and the madaillon still had been clearly covered with the spit of the monster.

After tracking down the monster with difficulty as it seemed to switch between moving in the trees and walking on the ground, even sometimes seemingly making fake or covering its own trails.

However, the masked venator was versed in tracking down monsters and had managed to find the monsters, after it had already slaughtered a whole village as well as soldiers of the kingdom and a prince, the venator only knew that soldiers and a prince had been killed because he had arrived moments before it had happened, witnessing the monster sticking it own head back on and cleaving through all of them with powerful swipe, one thing was learned through this, engaging the monster head was a stupid idea and also, after analysing its behavior from afar, the venator was able to learn of at least two of its abilities and some of its weaknesses.

The monster could change its own shape, for now, it had only changed things regarding its head and it seemed to lack some senses.

The monster was blind and anosmic, it generally navigated through sounds and by sensing the vibrations in the ground, although it sometime was able to react to things that it shouldn't be able to, although this occurence seemed very random.

Using one of its abilities, it could get completely rid of its anosmia and smell things with utmost precision, its other confirmed ability allowed it to mimick sounds, it had used it to mimick the mating calls of animals and lure them directly toward their death.

The monster was a vicious hunter that seemed to not make any exception in terms of prey, feasting on both predators and preys, devouring rotting carcasses and going out of its to devour animals that were usually left alone due to their abysmal nutritional values.

Apart from the sounds it mimicked, it very rarely made any sounds and even then, if they were truly its own sounds was unknown.

One more thing to note was that it seemed to be adamant on not letting any prey go as it was currently following after a survivor of its previous massacre, some animals and monsters, even without possessing sapience could be vengeful but he had never heard of one having this kind of behavior.