Chapter 35: Trail

Chapter 35 - Trail Hence, they moved in the direction of the horde, cutting down their search area to 300 meters. Along the way, they managed to find more sensors and hidden cameras in the area, but most of them were broken due to the stampede.

"Well, this is surprising!"

Ruby exclaimed looking at the path they had been following until now.

Right in front of them, the path left by the horde of Kraalox. The straight path had just taken a huge turn to the left.

"What do we do, should we follow or continue our straight path?"

She asked Kieran and Jake.

"I already made my choice earlier, but I'd go with whatever Kieran says."

Jake said, not wishing to push any further.

With this, they all turned again to Kieran waiting for him to give his opinion.

Looking at the two shameless beings who had dropped all the responsibility on him, he felt like his headache was going to come back.

SIGH!

"Fine, I'm also curious. Besides we found a lot of sensors along the way."

He said after giving it a bit of thought.

They had indeed come across an abnormal number of military devices, most of them broken by the stampede; but some looked like they were specifically targeted by something and Kieran had an inkling that the beasts in this area were too dumb to do that.

The high intelligence beasts didn't reside in areas like this and even if they did, most of them were too lazy to go around destroying hundreds of sensors as long as they didn't cause them any issues.

The only ones who might actually do something like that were those at the top of the chain like the Girith, but the military never bothered to put sensors in the territories of beasts like that.

Right now; based on the training he had received so far, finding out the cause of those deliberate attacks on the equipment, and Kieran had a gut feeling it had everything to do with the cause of the stampede.

"I like you more, Kieran. You have the courage of a man! Now, let's go slay some beasts."

Jake exclaimed in excitement, placing his sheathed blade on his shoulder, taking the forefront once more.

Turning to Ruby with a raised eyebrow.

"What? It's not that bad..."

She commented on Jake's carefree and rather daring attitude

SIGH!!

Sighing for the second time in the span of a few minutes, Kieran shook his head and followed behind Jake; the day was going to end soon.

........

"That was uneventful."

Jake said, his shoulder drooped in disappointment.

They didn't come across any beast, even after going so deep into the forest. This was a blow to Jake who had been wanting to fight someone or something for a while now, they had already entered beast territory!

Kieran had already informed him of the possibility of something like this happening; the beasts being scared away by the stampede, but he didn't seem to have listened, hence his disappointment.

"What do we do now?"

Ruby asked, addressing the bigger issue at hand.

The extremely glaring trail they had been following until now had somehow, mysteriously disappeared and they were now stuck, unable to come to a decision.

"I say we rest for now and wait till tomorrow and start investigating. Everything about this seems suspicious, but can't do anything now that it's dark."

Kieran said, gaining the agreement of both Ruby and Jake.

They had no better suggestion and Jake was currently too demotivated to the lack of an opponent so far.

This time, they didn't bother searching for materials to make a fire. They had already made the mistake of wondering blindly into the beast territory, they would be considered foolish to do something that could attract them like lighting a fire.

So, they sat in silence; watching as they sky grew dark and blinded the forest.

"Take rounds? I'll go first."

Jake said standing from his position the moment Ruby fell asleep.

She had been really active during the day, she was the one carrying their team on the main objective; majority of the sensors and other equipment they found were because of her, she had an exceptional scouting ability, being able to guess places where the camp might install such sensors.

"Three hours."

Kieran replied, stating the length of each interval.

PAT! PAT!!

Kieran opened his eyes feeling, Jake's hand on his shoulder. Three hours had passed already and it was his turn to watch guard.

"Find anything?"

He asked.

"No, but something feels off. It might just be the cold, but be careful."

Jake replied, looking the trees around them.

Visibility had decreased to a few meters and there was a light fog at the forest floor slowly creeping around.

"Alright."

Kieran replied.

He had also noticed these points, but for now, he wanted to pin them as something that occurred naturally in the forest. He didn't bother looking out for small details like this when making his research, the time given to them was short after all.

Taking the level 2 B3 handheld railgun strapped to his back in his hands, Kieran moved forward in the direction opposite from where Jake had just scouted while making sure he didn't wander too far from their location.

.....

Kieran had been walking slowly in different directions for the past hour and half making sure he maintained a distance of 400 meters between them.

So far, he hadn't encountered anything, which just put him on high alert.

The forest was dead silent, for a place so deep that was supposed to be filled with different beasts; that wasn't normal.

SNAP! CLUCK!!

The moment his ears heard the snap sound, he tightened his hold on the rail gun and aimed in the direction of the sound, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

Thanks to his enhanced eye sight, his could see farther than Jake could, but the mist still obstructed his view.

All he could see in that direction was a small bush. Straining his eyes further, he made out a small humanoid shape moving away from his position.

"A humanoid beast? What the hell is happening here."

Kieran muttered to himself in utter confusion, he was starting to doubt the information he had gotten from the library in the underground carve.

Everything he had seen so far was absent in the Information, the stampede, the type of beasts here, the mist and now a humanoid beast??

Kieran knew that this was a result of something that might have happened in the forest.

The humanoid beast races were few on the planet, majority of them having been wiped out by the humans when they landed on the planet. The beasts weren't that smart so it was easy to drive them to near extinction.

The few tribes that had managed to survive being killed by the soldiers were those that ran into the two extreme points of the planet.

To the camp, they were dead the moment they stepped into those two forbidden regions.

From their documented research, even the top beast avoided those regions, if they somehow got into one of those forbidden regions they would only survive for a few hours or days at most before succumbing to the extremely violent conditions.

In the instance that they managed to survive, the camp set stations at the boundaries of the regions, constantly trying to figure a way to get into them without sending their soldiers to certain death; if any creature managed to come out of there alive, those stations would be the first to notice.

Silently tailing the already fading figure of the short humanoid beast, he sent a message to Jake to wake Ruby from her sleep and to remain alert.

After chasing behind the beast that in his opinion was too fast for its size, he arrived at an area void of trees. Looking out from his high position, his brows furrowed into confusion.

'How?'

He thought.

The beast had just walked in confidently into a military outpost. His watch started beeping lightly, indicating the presence of military equipment around and when he looked closer he noticed the broken walls of the outpost, clear signs of a fight.

The outpost was occupied my small humanoid creatures the size of a four-year-old.

The looked like the goblins he had seen in the picture books he read as a kid.

'Hmmm, with all these interplanetary stuffs. They might actually exist.'

The thought flashed through his mind.

Unlike what he had read about those goblins, the creatures in front of him, whatever they were called, had blue skin and horns on their head.

Although most of them were the size of four-year olds, he spotted some that were the size of normal man.

The outpost was too big for their small numbers, so, they based themselves around the command unit building a small wall around it. Well, it looked more like a shabby demarcation than a wall.

It was just a couple of sticks with beast skulls on them placed in a rough circle around the station.

There was a large space in the "wall" where two of those big looking creatures stood with clubs in their hands looking around carefully. Kieran assumed that was the entrance they had made.

After studying the place for a moment, Kieran slowly retreated, making his way back to Jake and Ruby.