Inside of Alistairs shadow, the shadowy creature saw that Alistair was just about to relax before being interrupted. The outline of his shadow vibrates in frustration, unknown to Alistair.
Alistair follows in pursuit of the creature making the loud noises, being careful not to hurt himself on the overly hard branches again. The chase does not last that long as he is able to see what is causing the noise moving ahead of him.
A furry creature with abnormally large feet about four feet tall is seen jumping in place repeatedly. With each hop, the branches and roots make a deep metallic sound.
*Clang Clang*
It is jumping up and down while biting at some slightly off colored yellowish branches above it. Getting a better look at it, Alistair sees that it has no arms, no eyes, and a fleshy vibrating ring just under where its mouth is.
It gives none of its attention to Alistair as he stares at it.
"Wow... an Echo-Eater... Why is it above ground though? These guys usually stay underground eating minerals."
Alistair recalls reading about these creatures in one of the textbooks about known wild creatures.
'It is generally considered a peaceful creature unless provoked. It feasts only on metals and other minerals. When provoked though, it is almost impossible to escape from within a twenty mile radius.
It uses the fleshy ring under its mouth for locating resources and prey through amplified echo-location.'
Realizing that maybe this might be more than he can handle right now, Alistair tries to slowly back away and regroup. Before he can though, he sees a weirdly shaped rock come flying from behind him and hurtle towards the Echo-Eater.
He hurriedly looks behind him to see who can be so stupid to provoke this creature, but he sees no one. Without giving it a second thought though, he looks back towards the Echo-Eater and sees that it is facing its entire body in Alistairs direction, no longer jumping.
"You got to be kidding me..." Alistair grumbles in his heart before seeing the Echo-Eater jump towards him. Alistair tries to think as best he can on how to get out of this situation. The Echo-Eater does not jump in a fast manner, almost as if it is scoping Alistair out.
'These creatures are known to be very cautious towards any hostility shown towards them. They will stalk their aggressor until they are completely sure they can take down their target. One creature alone is not much of a threat, but these creatures live in large packs, aggravate one and they will all chase you down.'
Alistair thanks his lucky starts that this Echo-Eater is all alone. He remembers that their hearing is very powerful and gets an idea as it creeps up closer to him.
He slowly moves his hand next to a metal-like branch next to his face. He looks behind him and sees that there is a small hole that he crawled through to peek at the creature prior to this. After making sure that all of his options are covered, he makes a sudden motion causing the Echo-Eater to lunge at him.
It's jaws open wide to reveal rows of sharp tiny teeth and it lunges its face towards Alistairs neck in one swift motion. Before it could sink its teeth into his flesh though, Alistair uses [Knuckle Burst] while punching on the hard tree branch without focusing the blast. Afterwards he dives backwards immediately into the small hole for safety.
This causes a loud sound akin to a metal hammer smacking down on an anvil. Overloaded with this loud unexpected sound right next to its face, the creature falls to the ground screeching in pain.
Not missing this opportunity, Alistair grabs the now broken tree branch and begins stabbing its chipped and rigid end into the fleshy ring on its face. After a long bout of repeated stabbings, Alistair sees the creatures body go limp.
Without any hesitation, he begins devouring the Echo-Eater in large bites. As if afraid of his meal being taken away from him, he starts biting faster and faster. It does not take long before all that is left are two overly large feet.
He tried eating them too, but they are so big that he could not fit them in his mouth, and they are too hard to break off into pieces.
"It's as if these things are made of a harder material than the roots around here." He knocks his fist against the feet and hears a crisp *Ting* noise.
The noise does not stop though, not for Alistair. It keeps ringing louder and louder before it starts to die down. Shocked by this phenomenon, Alistair moves his hand to inspect the feet closer thinking they must have something unique about them.
*Whoosh*
He hears his hand ripping against the wind. It occurs to Alistair that it's not the feet that are special, he must have extracted a trait from this creature like he did with the Cockroach. He then slowly reaches towards his ears after feeling the vibration from the noise still lingering in his ears.
He feels a fleshy ring on the inside of his ears. Shocked that he acquired a watered down version of the Echo-Eaters hearing, he realizes how troublesome acute hearing can be if he is able to hear too many things at once. He feels the energy inside his body being pulled towards his ear drums as they are constantly rupturing.
"I'm going to need to find a way to reliably use this for my benefit." Luckily, the amount of energy needed to repair his ears is not a large amount. But it does leave him with momentary losses of hearing.
Refocusing on the feet in his hands, he realizes just how solid they are and begins thinking of ways to properly use them.
"Maybe I can use this to improve my [Living Metal] technique along with the other creatures shell? I'll need to find some way to break it down into smaller pieces though..."
He reaches into his backpack and is about to try and put the feet inside before he notices that one of the biggest pieces of Cockroach shell is missing.
"Huh?" He begins looking around him on the ground in the off chance that it could have fallen out. He then looks back towards where the Echo-Eater was originally standing before it noticed him and sees the shell piece lying on the ground over there.
Walking up to it, he becomes perplexed at how it could have ended up here. He then remembers the incident that started all this was the thing that was thrown from behind him. He reaches down to look at the shell piece and sees that everything is the same as it always was with it.
"What the...?" He turns it over to look at it and can see a faint hand print on it. He starts looking all around him in a panic realizing that someone could be following him.
"But if they had enough time to steal this from me and throw it at the Echo-Eater, how come they didn't just take that opportunity to kill me themselves? Unless.... Was it some really powerful person stopping by to mess with a kid for the fun of it?"
Although unlikely, it does have precedent. Veterans have been known to play pranks on rookies many times before just out of sheer boredom. Thinking things through, this is the best conclusion he can come to at the moment.
"Still, it's better to be safe than sorry. I need to be more vigilant and scout out the area to know who is here with me."