End Of Season

"Oh goddamnit…" Edrick slumped onto the ground, sighing heavily, he had just spent most of one day, a whole night, and then an entire day until nightfall, doing nothing but killing three different breeds of cryptid apes and mating with their female variants, he had greatly underestimated just how many of these guys there were in these woods, he had also underestimated just how large the forest was, especially because in its deeper, more hidden parts, it was a lot more vertical than one might expect, with deep ravines and rather high peaks covered in flora, the former was home to both the small and large variety, whilst the latter was obviously the primary dwelling area for the mountain sasquatches.

These guys were actually quite numerous, which only spoke of their talent at concealing themselves, as the fact that they were typically solitary meant that they were spread out all over the place, and still, they managed to nearly always evade attention, the small and large sorts especially, as he was fairly certain their existence wasn't even known to people around here.

It could be attributed to the fact that they kept to the heart of the woods more than the mountain variety, but how the huge, grey variety could remain unheard of was still somewhat surprising.

When he had gotten to their favoured area, however, staying sneaky was much harder, as the females were sought out by many more males on average, so Anoteros simply couldn't slaughter them all without at least one managing to escape for his dear life, and he had even gotten to feel what it was like to get struck by a grey sasquatch, as he had thought, those guys were more ballsy and willing to challenge the lord, but although rather intelligent, they were still beasts, and did not have the presence of mind to learn how to properly employ their incredible strength, humans and other sapient species had martial arts, the sasquatches did not.

So although bestial ferocity was definitely threatening, the hits Edrick received were simply enough to mitigate- He still got one of his shoulders dislocated though.

However, after a few brutal killings, the grey sasquatches fell in line as well, they must have been reminded of the previous lord when they realised that Edrick was also in the habit of eating them, but that lead nearly all of the males to decide that reproduction was not worth it this year, so he lost out on a lot of food.

Instead, there were only the females left to take care of, many of them.

And he had to shoot his seed once for every one of them, and by sheer force of number, he ended up drained even harder than when Ting and Ku teamed up to milk him, so at the moment, Anoteros was just laying with his back against the wall, back inside of the cavern that previously served as the heart of the former lord's territory, the piles of bones had grown a fair bit, and females of all three sasquatch species were lounging around.

Because even when he had tried to leave after feeling exhausted, lots of them had followed after him! Indeed, he had once thought that the sasquatches might have an inbreeding problem if the old lord had been mating with all of the females, but that definitely wasn't possible to have ever been achieved, Anoteros had special means to do it more, so the white sasquatch had probably not even bothered trying to seek more than he could find nearby.

He was in dire need of some rest, and the mating season seemed like it would come to close soon anyways…

Though, taking a nap in this cave wasn't exactly ideal as far as security went, so Edrick pushed himself up, swung by the little grotto in which he kept muxing, checked up on the girl to see if she was alright, and then got dressed after cancelling his transformation.

As he had expected, the toll of using the energy granted by his dual cultivation technique and his recent feeding on many sasquatches was not sustainable for very long, it could only be a good substitute for stamina for a day at best, after that, the efficiency was drastically reduced.

Not to mention that there was also the internal energies he had accumulated and he wasn't really able to funnel into anything, so on top of simply sleeping, he would have to 'digest' all that excess energy, he knew that it was possible to do even without using it for anything, so he should not randomly burst like a balloon as a result.

On his way out of the forest, after making sure that his clothing looked like they had gone through a beating and been torn due to much contact with thorny vegetation, he needed to make it seem like he had been tracking down the murderous sasquatch instead of repopulating the entire species.

His face was still bruised from when he had gotten thrown around by the challenging grey sasquatches, so it was especially convincing today.

"Edrick! Are you alright?" surprisingly, he ran into Yin outside of the woods.

"I am fine, but what brings you here, Yin? Aiming to challenge the sasquatch too? Because let me tell you, if you want to fight some wild beasts, I have some information that might interest you…"

"Really? But let's speak of that at a later date, I just heard from Hui that you had gone to the forest for more than a day, apparently during sasquatch reproduction season? I don't know how anyone knows that, but I thought that I should swing by and check, Hui would be mortified if something happened to you"

Unlike one might assume, Yin was genuinely just here because she was worried for Hui rather than Anoteros's own well-being, the inner disciple wouldn't interfere in another fellow disciple's ventures, especially since she had heard that Edrick was seeking the killer sasquatch for the betterment of a cultivation technique, but since Edrick was her friend's husband, she was naturally more inclined to make sure he hadn't gotten his brain splattered somewhere in the wilds.

"Ah, did Hui get worried?"

"Well… No, she has blind confidence in you, a bit too much honestly, a little bit of pessimism isn't poisonous, but she doesn't have any when it comes to you- Anyways, good to know that you are alright, you're injured though, did you get the creature?"

"Alas, it was still too slippery, that creature is bizarre, I managed to track it down, but no matter how long I waited, it did not seek out any female to copulate with, I am confident that it's the mating season, but this guy did not give a damn, and in the end, I didn't even get to try and kill it, I ran into another sasquatch though- That's where it gets interesting, I am sure someone as involved in the matter of cultivation like yourself will appreciate a new challenge"

Although feeling like he could lay down and take a nap on the ground right here, he seized the occasion to converse with Yin and try to get her in on a little scheme…

Nothing too difficult, Yin was a genius cultivator that was said to cultivate three techniques at the same time, and although not hailing from any clan, as the lack of a last name implied, she had the perfect mindset of endlessly pursuing might.

Novel challenges were a good way to sharpen one's blade, so his plan was simply to inform her about the presence of the powerful grey sasquatches deep into the woods, in a place where only he would be able to guide her the right way- A convenient excuse to eventually get her to be alone with him.

And anyways, he was also quite curious how she fought.