Scent

After passing by and exchanging greetings with some of the herb gatherers and hunters scouring the edges of the forest, Edrick took his usual, strange route through the dense and treacherous areas of the forest to get to his little cave, it had remained unfound by anyone but him, most certainly due to the fact that few people ever went that deep to begin with, and even fewer would bother to get through the sort of obstacles and terrains Anoteros had to go through, the bushes covering the ground were everywhere around here, fallen branches, roots, and vines were well hidden in the greenery.

One moment of inattention, and you might just fall on your face, into some bushes if you are lucky, or into brambles and stinging nettles if you were unlucky, hunting here was a hassle to most, and the dense bushes did not leave space for plants and herbs to grow, Edrick had chosen this area wisely to keep his captive.

Entering the den, he found Muxing lying on her bed of fur, which had now turned from black to white, restrained in the usual manner, he had been taking good care of her, especially since he had noticed that her stomach was already beginning to bulge, which was... Abnormal, to say the least.

This speed was absolutely many times faster than for humans or sasquatches, for that matter, it left him dubious, wondering if this was normal or not, Muxing seemed to be doing just fine though, and had taken the visible proof of having been impregnated by what she believed to be a beast, oddly well.

Anoteros already knew that she had a rather big kink by now, but he had at least expected a little bit of panic or incomprehension, she had accepted it way too quickly- Like, what were the odds that out of all the women that had been present the day he decided to take a prisoner, that he would somehow end up picking the freak?

Not that he was complaining, he was sure that she would be an excellent mother for his ape-baby.

Anoteros undressed and transformed, turning into a white-furred sasquatch was still a bit odd as it required a bit more focus, as his body seemed to innately consider the dark-furred variation to be the base form, once transformed however, it was the exact same thing, he made his fur less dense and long as the cold was pretty much gone.

He fed Muxing, and much to her disappointment, did not mate with her today, not that he had decided to stop since she was clearly pregnant, but today was certain to be a tiring one, so he decided to leave the beast enthusiast alone after putting her bindings back in place before leaving the small cave, soon climbing up a tree and beginning to jump above the forest ground.

Edrick had become very adept at this, his attempts at bettering his connection to the Mountain Sasquatch Body cultivation technique had bore fruits, and right now, he could perform better than an actual sasquatch, the transformation was great, and adding on the other techniques and aspects of Anoteros, the regular mountain sasquatch simply could not compete in any aspect.

He had grown accustomed to these woods in particular as well, he had come to learn about many of the animal, beast and monster species living there, and the terrain as well...

Landing upon a thick branch, now deep into the forest, he thought back as to how, according to Irandelle, Bigfoot had indeed existed in his old word, but had passed away to a disease, the only wondrous creature of legend that was around, had died before its existence could even be proven.

But now, in this world, he had quite literally become Bigfoot- Well, mountain sasquatches didn't actually have very big feet, but they pretty nicely lined-up with the other features of the cryptid, especially their uncanny ability to go mostly unnoticed despite their great stature.

Standing above the ground, he scanned his surroundings, finding that there wasn't much to see, nearby was the old den of the white sasquatch that Edrick had devoured, it had remained unoccupied as Anoteros had placed his scent all over the area, and during his many outings, had shown the local creatures that he wasn't any nicer than the previous owner.

Speaking of scent, Edrick paid close attention to his sense of smell, rapidly catching a whiff of other sasquatches, this normally never happened, as even though he had looked in many places, Edrick had only ever found one other sasquatch besides the white one, these fellows were indeed competent at hiding, but now that mating season was just beginning, they started to emit a strong odour, females gave away their positions to the males, and the males made themselves smell as bad as was possible in an attempt to deter competitors.

Because apparently, the stinkier you smelled, the more dangerous you were, according to sasquatch logic, Edrick understood this naturally by now.

Thanks to his bloodline and superior strength, if he did the same, he could probably cause all the females within range to flock up to him, but Anoteros wanted to get as much benefit as was possible from this mating season, however, if he released his body odour, the males would probably desert the area in fear.

But how could he kill and eat them if they ran away? No, it was much more efficient and beneficial to track them down whilst they were kindly signalling their exact location to him, so that he could gather food, and then swoop down and gather all the breeding partners.

However, before doing just that, Edrick had noticed something was a bit off, being that he cultivated a technique that was specifically made after mountain sasquatches, and that his bloodline belonged to a mountain sasquatch, he had become very familiar with this particular species.

There were more sasquatch species however, and it was not lost on him that some of the scents he was picking up on were similar enough, but clearly different as well, which to him, indicated that there was more than a single species of sasquatch in this forest, which came as a surprise, as everybody seemed convinced that only the mountain variety was present.

But it seemed like those were just the ones that had failed to remain completely hidden, or the ones that were confident enough to stroll further away from the guts of the woods.

He could smell two more distinct types of smell, knowing anything about them from just that wasn't very realistic however, all that he knew, was that one of these possessed a particularly foul odour, when Edrick first took a whiff, it felt like rotten eggs and decomposing corpses had just been shoved in his face.

That was on a whole other level compared to mountain sasquatches.

Though, since it seemed like those other species were also entering into mating season at the same time, he wasn't going to just ignore them…