Chapter 283
With a quick swing of her Axe, Caroline was able to bash a few small snakes with green, yellow and black scales on their bodies away from her - shortly after she came into the forest with the team, they were met with a small nest of these snakes. According to Paulo and Emily, these snakes were a kind of tree snakes that like to hunt in packs and they possess a kind of paralyzing poison that could temporarily disable a normal human male with just one drop.
But these snakes were not too dangerous to experienced and powered hunters with basic first aid or medical knowledge. So they had no trouble just dispersing them and driving them away from their route.
Blinker Racoons, they were not as cute as their names suggest, at least not from what Caroline had read - they were quite destructive to the natural order of the environment they were in if their herd grew too large, and due to their affinity to some tricky space magic, namely short to mid distance teleportation, their population was also quite hard to manage. What made them more troublesome to even the hunting ground rangers, was that they had a highly intelligent social structure, which made it so that just simply eliminating a few hunting packs of them would not make too much of a difference in controlling their population. The core of their herd needed to be broken up, which meant the breeders and the core protectors, while the hunting packs that almost always caused great damage to the environment were just made of drones and workers and could be replaced easily by a fertile group of breeders.
“So, beside their names, they’re nothing like actual racoons.” this was Caroline’s reaction after reading the pamphlet given to her prior to this hunting trip.
“Well, most of them still look like racoons.” Emily chuckled at Caroline’s reaction: “Just be ready. I believe racoons are a nuisance in the civilian world as well, no?”
“Yeah. But they can just be dealt with using a shotgun.”
“You’d be surprised how useful shotguns are when dealing with THESE racoons.”
Back to the hunting trip, when the team of four cleared the nest of snakes from their path, they finally saw tracks left by their targets - trees with a lot of their tree barks chewed off, bodies of animals with their chest and abdomen cavities emptied and organs ripped off. These, according to the pamphlet Caroline read were the classic signs that a Blinker Racoons pack was nearby. Though it was not unknown to her before hand, Caroline still felt a bit disgusted when she saw the emptied out bodies of animals - they did not just consist of small animals like squirrels, birds and gophers, they also consisted of bigger animals, like bears and hogs.
“Huh, they didn’t even spare one of their own.” Paulo lifted up a body from beneath a pile of leaves and broken tree branches - it was a body of a huge rodent, with prickly fur, bristles on its back, and razor sharp claws. It also had its body torn open and organs all ripped away.
“So this is the body of a Blinker Racoon? It’s bigger than I imagined.” Caroline went to Paulo’s side and examined the body for a short moment, “This is almost the size of a medium sized dog, could even be bigger when it was alive.”
“It’s definitely on the bigger side.” Emily said while nodding: “The body is still quite fresh and bloody, which means we’re close. Let’s be careful.”
Just this moment, Caroline saw a few ripples of energy waves in the air right before her, and right out of the center of the energy waves, a racoon with silver hair on its face and with claws reflecting a shine like that of polished metal lunged at Caroline’s face.
“Bang!” the racoon’s face clashed with Caroline’s translucent shield glowing in orange and red light, and with Caroline’s arm swinging to the side, the racoon was bashed out of its original trajectory and was sent flying against a tree on Caroline’s left side.
“Poof” the racoon’s body disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“This is their teleportation spells?” Caroline asked, “They’re not that impressive.”
“Hard to impress, huh?” Paulo laughed out loud: “Well, be glad that they’re not jumping out of the air in packs.”
“No no, what I mean is, I thought by teleporting they’re able to get rid of some unfriendly energy on their bodies - like in some of those video games. I can kinda sense my power left over on its body.” Caroline pointed to her front-left side: “It’s there - and it’s moving, I think it’s trying to find the way back into its pack.”
“Nice! Didn’t know you can do that. You’d make a great tracker.” Emily smiled and said to the team: “Let’s follow it, be careful and on alert.”
The team started following the direction led by Caroline’s sense of the remnants of her power, left by a simple shield bash.
“Stop! Stop!” just when they were about to go past a small patch of heavily damaged trees, Michael Cooper raised his hand and said: “There are hostile forces closing in on us, they’re trying to surround us.”
“Fuck! It’s a trap!” Emily cursed and hastily ordered: “Fall back! Fall back!”
Just when the team was about to turn around, more of these ripples of energy waves appeared in the air around them, and more Blinker Racoons leapt out from thin air and started attacking them from all angles.
“Boom!” Caroline swung her axe against the largest Blinker Racoon in front of her, and after a loud and fiery explosion, the racoon’s entire body was torn in several pieces and flew across the air.
Emily shot an energy arrow at the sky, the arrow exploded in the air and turned into a few dozens of balls of lightning and started falling around them. At the same time, Paulo swung his sword and released a green energy blade at the racoons right in front of him.
Michael concentrated power and conjured an energy dome to protect himself, just the moment the dome was complete, the claws of two raccoons collided with the dome and made a deafening scratching sound.