The rise of the pervert primordial - Chapter 724 - 724: The second day of the development trial (part 3)
Listening to the positive answer that the little wyrm translated for them, the snakes immediately expressed their happiness by lowering their heads towards Espi, which made the little wyrm proudly gaze at Aster clearly asking to be praised which made Aster chuckle.
“I get it, you are an amazingly “royal snake”, you little smug girl, now let’s start moving, you guide us”, jokingly said Aster, which made Espi hiss to both complain and communicate the snake’s answer to Aster’s previous request, as she slid through the ground in the direction indicated by the snakes.
Speaking of which, this time the young snakes with which Aster and the exploration team has dealt before, stayed behind, only the adult and larger snakes followed the group, or more accurately Espi, from a respectable distance while they told her the way.
While they were moving through the forest, towards east very much to Aster’s relief, since the bear had a preference for the west side, the little wyrm translated what the snakes were telling her to Aster.
“Oh, now that’s killing two birds with one stone”, said Aster in response, naturally this little conversation left the other members of the group who were running next to Aster, a bit confused.
After all, only Aster, Kana and Mira could directly talk with the little wyrm, due to different reasons and in different ways as well, Kana was able to “interpret” Espi’s intentions due to her strange affinity with nature, but it wasn’t perfect, she had to grow close to the other party for it to work, which is why though she is able to communicate with the little wyrm, Aster didn’t take her for this mission.
Aster’s method is related to their contract, he is Espi’s spirit tamer and she is his contracted spirit beast, which allow the two of them to speak without any language barrier, as for Mira, well, in her words she has learned a high ranked reptile type language.
And that is both why she can understand the little wyrm, but at the same time why she has no idea what the snakes are saying, because they aren’t high ranked enough to have had their way of communication included in the language that Mira learned.
But that was not her main concern as of current, the grumpy ligress girl couldn’t help but frown at what she just witnessed.
“I understand that those snakes are beings naturally prompt to revere that little one, but it’s so weird to see mortal beasts that don’t have an ounce of spirit energy in their bodies, show such signs of wisdom, when there are spirit beasts that can’t reason prior to entering the Transcending realms…”, she mumbled to then say.
“Leaving that aside, I don’t think we should meddle too much into the balance of the forest, I agree to kill the peacock if it’s what is needed to achieve our goal, but exterminating them to tilt the scale for the snakes will cause troubles in the long run, unless we are talking about these mortal beasts growing into a proper civilization of course”.
“That’s an interesting point of view and I do understand that there is a reason as to why both snakes and peacocks exist and that they both play a role in the balance of nature, however it seems like our target is not one of those, but an “anomaly” like the scarred lynx we are looking for”.
“This peacock is “bloodthirsty”, it doesn’t hunt to eat or to protect its territory, but just because of it, which is why other members of its race are not following it, but turkeys that were subjugated instead”.
“That being said, we’ll try to minimize our interference, besides the peacock let’s just kill a couple of turkeys for their meat and feathers, we’ll leave the others to the snakes”, said Aster.
Their performance was not only being graded but also taken into account for the rewards they got due to it, based on the benefit they got for a Perfect score at the end of the first day.
And Aster has learned that brute force is not something the flaming board has in high regard, or more accurately it values more to see the participants giving more thought to their actions, just like how killing those spirit beasts that were a welcome gift, was a bad choice.
“Wait, does that mean that the peacock they want our help with is like the bear?”, asked Tiana, to which Aster shook his head.
“Not quite like the bear, apparently the older snakes do know about nor only the bear but also the scarred lynx, unlike the young ones we met before… from their parents, who were told the same information by their parents”.
“So, we are talking about animals that had survived hundreds of years, without an ounce of spirit energy now”, concluded Agnes.
“It’s never boring when I follow you brother Aster!”, exclaimed Erick as he thunderously laughed, making Sophia sigh.
“Ahem, in the words of the snakes, the peacock we are targeting is more like the giant toad which voluntarily offered itself to be captured, it has no different characteristics than other members of its race, but has developed a much more refined sense of self-awareness”.
“The only difference is that this one is inclined to aggressiveness, unlike the toad, but that’s better, if we see how it behaves it might be useful to deal with the bear, and to make things better, the scarred lynx has been seen sleeping on a tree near the territory of that peacock a few times before by the snakes in charge of watching the border of their territory which is adjacent to it”, said Aster.
With a bit of luck, they might get to see the lynx at the first stop, while dealing with the peacock, or at least that’s what Aster hoped until they reached the area described by the snakes.
It’s worth mentioning that like previously stated, the forest is massive, as it is probably a natural barrier set up to keep the participants, both separated from really important resources, but also protected from the real dangers.
‘Ah damn it, of course that guy couldn’t be at the first stop’, cursed Aster to his insides as he saw the tree mentioned by the snakes, near the border of their territory, which was empty, so no lynx.
On the other hand, their secondary target was within sight, in fact it was nearly impossible to not notice it, due to how eye-catching is a peacock with its ornamental feathers extended to form the characteristic fan which one would relate to a peacock, which also meant this is a male peacock, and quite a cocky one considering how it was watching from the back at how its subordinates, the turkeys were having a quarrel with the snakes in charge of watching over the border, all this while it was feeding on the corpse of a snake, clearly provoking them.
Interestingly enough, the moment the peacock noticed Aster’s group, it fixed its eyes on the little wyrm while it swallowed a large piece of the snake it was eating, which made Espi hiss with disdain.
“Hissss”, she had beaten a real snake predator senseless before, as in that eagle which tried to attack her, so that peacock was nothing in her eyes.
“Squawk!!!”, angered due to the clear contempt showed by the little wyrm, the peacock let out a loud squawk and then, the turkeys which were just facing the snakes without actually attacking, charged towards both the snakes and Aster’s group.
“We’ll help the snakes fend off against the turkeys, Espi, give that arrogant guy a nice beating”, said Aster, which made the little wyrm happily hiss before she shot into action, quite literally, because Espi skillfully slid through the battlefield at high speed.
“A bit weird, but I guess fighting against a turkey is a new experience”, said Vivian as she placed her backpack on the ground to then take out a wood spear.
Amidst the clucking sounds and hisses, result of the turkeys clashing with the snakes, Aster and the others contained the other turkeys that under the orders of the peacock, tried to swarm the snakes in groups of three, it’s worth mentioning that the group led by the peacock was of around sixty turkeys, so yeah, they more than doubled the total of snakes and members of the exploration group.
But then, the peacock which was about to order a couple of the turkeys it had kept at its side to charge at the white “snake” that had perfectly avoided the chaotic battlefield, was taken by surprise as said white snake vanished from its sight.
“Hissss!”, with a loud hiss that appeared to come from everywhere, one of the three turkeys guarding the peacock was sent flying into bushes, whether it was alive or not, was unknown to the peacock, just like how the little wyrm’s position was a complete mystery.
“Squawk!”, following the orders of the peacock, the remaining turkeys started attacking everything in sight, pecking and scratching the fallen leaves, thinking that Espi might be hidden below of them, this lasted for more than a minute before the turkeys exhausted themselves, a second later their bodies flew into the distance clashing against a tree, to then stop moving.
“Squawk!”, while no one could understand what the peacock was saying, its tone was obviously a provoking one, as a result of it the little wyrm stopped camouflaging herself, however contrary to what the peacock expected, when it violently turned around to then use its beak to attack, Espi wasn’t behind of it.
“Crack!”, the peacock’s beak made a hole into the soil after piercing through a stone that was on the ground.
“Hissss”, at the same time a mocking hiss came from the right side of the peacock, who tried to use its claws to scratch in that direction, only for its neck to be caught by a though thin and elegant, incredibly strong white scaled tail.
The peacock tried to attack with its claws, but it only managed to scratch the ground leaving not so shallow marks on it before the tail raised it into the air to then… smack it against the ground.
“Boooom!”, what followed was the sight of Espi calmly smacking the peacock against the ground a couple of times with enough force to break its neck, killing it on the spot.
“Hisss!”, with a victorious hiss, the little wyrm raised the corpse of the peacock in the air, as if to announce its death, which of course drew the attention of the turkeys who immediately ran away in all directions.
The result was a dozen of snakes which suffered a few scratches, some deeper than others, and around eight dead turkeys, besides the pair that Aster’s group had killed just as it was decided beforehand.
The little wyrm quickly returned to Aster’s side, placing the corpse of the peacock in front of him, while she clearly had the words “praise me” written on her pretty face, which earned her a few head pats from Aster, especially because of what she told Aster while claiming her reward.
“Hissss
~”.
This time, Mira who felt the gazes of the rest of the group, with Lieze and Nina who didn’t know of her real appearance as the exception, translated in real time for Vivian and the others.
“That little one said that the peacock was around three times stronger and faster than what she judged a member of its race would normally be”, said the ligress girl.
Which made sense, if the peacock would have been overwhelmingly stronger than the snakes, they would have all been hunted down by it at this point, not to mention that if it was stronger, it wouldn’t have gathered that group of turkeys, but would travel the forest freely like the lynx.
“That can’t be normal for a mortal animal, I could think of it being up to two times stronger than normal without spirit energy involved, because of having a good ascendence, but more than that is too much”, said Aster.
We are talking about a normal peacock here, in case you think about a certain little wyrm that can break trees in half with a lash of her tail even as of current, Espi is a dragon, she has higher base “stats” than a mortal peacock even while being limited to be a mortal herself.
“Hisss”, speaking of the little wyrm she hissed at Aster, which meant that Espi thought it was a dumb bird, the little wyrm disdained both the eagle and the peacock, however she didn’t think the eagle was lacking in terms of intelligence.
“A diminish in intelligence combined with an increase in physical aspects and aggressiveness, that sounds similar to the bear, maybe that peacock was experimenting the early stage of whatever that crazed bear has gone though”, concluded Aster after thinking about it for a moment.
“There is an easy way to obtain a few more hints about it, but it will have to wait until later, for now…”, Aster grabbed the turkeys and hanged them by their legs, to then cut their necks in order to bleed them, before removing their innards which were handed over to the snakes.
Not the ones from the peacock though, because Aster didn’t know if eating any part of it would trigger a change similar to the one the peacock experimented, in them, in the snake’s words they weren’t particularly neither attracted nor against the idea of eating the peacock.
So Aster sealed them in a container, being extra careful of not using the same knife or anything which he used to prepare the turkeys, he was sure it’s not a disease or anything of the like, because though full of bloodlust, the bear which is supposedly in an advanced state, was completely healthy, it was just extremely aggressive but it’s not contagious, otherwise there would be way more cases of it.
“I’ll take them back to the camp”, said Nerissa as she saw Aster packing the turkeys and the peacock in a backpack.
“We’ll wait for you to return, they can prepare the turkeys for consumption, but the peacock and its parts are to be inspected by Mylene with utmost care, it’s not poisonous, tell her to just see what she can find about it, ah right and bring new wood spears please”, said Aster.
With a slight nod, the dual blue toned haired girl grabbed the backpacks and rushed back from where they came from, because she will be completely safe within the snake’s territory, until she reaches the outer area of the forest where she can use a colored powder signal, to call someone to carry the package and the message back to the camp, courtesy of Mylene and the girls from the Green Lotus who made the colored powder yesterday before dinner.
Aster wasn’t the only one that sent people back to his camp, some snakes left while dragging the dead turkeys, of course the main thing they were carrying back to their nest was the news of the death of the peacock.
“Once Nerissa is back, tell those snakes to take us to the other places where they have seen the lynx, if we don’t find it today, they’ll have to be on the look for it in our stead, I trust there won’t be any complains from their part given how fast we got rid of their enemy”, said Aster to the little wyrm who translated the message for the snakes, that happily nodded in response.
Apparently, they knew a couple of things about the scarred lynx, first and formal, it never attacked the snakes, not as in they aren’t a part of its diet, but as in the lynx didn’t attack anything that didn’t attack first, with the sole exception of when it needed to eat and never more than what it needs.
So, the snakes weren’t afraid of it, it’s worth mentioning that the little wyrm specified that her group wasn’t trying to start a fight with the lynx, they just wanted to try and talk with it and since the snakes are doing the exact same thing through Espi, then they weren’t against the idea.
Also, what they know about the bear is that it kills everything it sees, in part that’s why the snakes retreated from the inner part of the forest, they don’t have poison nor grow as big as other snake races that live at the inner area, so they would have been pushed all the way to the other side of the middle area, more specifically to where the bear sometimes wanders on.
Which is why their ancestors willingly came to this part of the forest, where they don’t have to worry for anything in particular, well, that was until that peacock suddenly started specially hunting them.
While in the middle of the conversation between the little wyrm and the snakes, Aster heard the sound of leaves moving without any care, coming from a bush not too far from them.
“It’s an herbivore, though that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous, it’s not big enough to really represent a problem for us”, said the ligress girl.
Aster had better sight due to his dragon eyes, but Mira has better hearing in their current states, also she knew what the steps of a predator sounded like.
And she was right, what came out of the thick bushes a moment later was a foal and judging by the reactions of the snakes that wasn’t a common sight.
“Hisss”, with a few hisses which were translated by the little wyrm, it was confirmed that not only had they never seen a horse in area before, but they haven’t seen one ever.
“They haven’t explored past the area where the peacocks live which is two or three territories ahead, but considering how big horses get, the fact that the snakes haven’t even gotten a glimpse of one before, means that they live really far from here”, said Aster.
And things didn’t end there, the moment the foal saw them, it froze in fear, though that could be a certain fierce ligress girl’s fault, the thing turned back and ran away on the spot.
“Shouldn’t we follow that small horse brother, we could use a few horses as mounts?”, asked Erik to which Aster nodded in response.
“It’s young and afraid, it will be easy to follow the traces left behind by it, so no worries, our priority is to find the lynx”, he said.
Nerissa arrived a couple of minutes later with backpacks that had clean wood spears in them, and now the group could continue their way, she was a surprised by their most recent encounter which was told to her by Lieze.
“Throw the spears you used to fight against the turkeys, we don’t want to smell like blood while in the forest”, said Aster, that’s why he asked Nerissa to bring new spears for the group.
With the snakes guiding the way, the group advanced through the middle area of the forest, further to the east, on the way they passed through a raccoon area, which was surprisingly not conflictive, they apparently didn’t want to fight with the snakes, they are opportunists after all, and would rather eat fruit and smaller preys like insects and the like.
The problem was the next area, where moose lived, the snakes normally passed it by climbing through the trees, but that wasn’t an option this time, which worried them, because the moose fought by clashing their antlers which caused a loud sound to echo through the forest… normally.
“Didn’t they say that the moose area was always filled with thunder-like sounds?”, asked Aster to the little wyrm, who passed the question to them, not only was the area in complete silence, but they couldn’t see a single moose in the vicinity.
According to the snakes, they had seen the lynx here a few times too, the group walked very slowly looking at the trees to see if the lynx was up there, so imagine their surprise when they saw a bunch of moose surrounding the foal from earlier.
Well, a foal which had some bruises on its sides and was half collapsed on the ground unlike earlier though, which didn’t make sense, why would a whole bunch of moose would attack a foal, maybe if it provoked them a few would, but all of them, it didn’t make sense.
And speaking of things that didn’t make sense, Mira suddenly gazed in a specific direction, from which a spotted figure appeared like a flash.
“Grrrrrrr!”, a loud growl, drew the attention of the moose that were about to attack the foal once again, the moment they heard it they stopped in their tracks, and the origin of said growl was none other than the lynx which Aster was looking for.
But we can leave aside that for a second, to ask something else, like why was a lynx defending a foal and why was the foal not afraid of the lynx, when earlier it ran away the moment it saw the snakes and humans as well.
“Your turn Mira”, said Aster to the ligress girl, who by the way was frowning since the lynx made its appearance.
