The small Black Taipan stared at us, its small black beady pupils gaze going through the car window, it seemed to be deciding whether or not to be bothered. After a few seconds, it decided we're a waste of its time and slithered back into the forest, leaving the corpses on the road to rot.
Completely terrified Chloe decided to get as far away as she can from the large trees, she weaved around the corpses and sped off. The boys had a sigh of relief. When the Black Taipan looked at them they could feel their blood freezing up in fear.
Another hour goes by after they've escaped the forest and the environment around them begins to clear. Beasts fighting could be seen everywhere, body parts were being torn and flung all around the place.
Fortunately, most of the beasts didn't seem to take notice of them. Rather, the beasts seemed to have seen them as humans would flies. Harmless and weak. Some beasts looked as though they would start charging towards them, but were stopped in their tracks by another beast.
However, the best thing was that after leaving the forest area the road seemed to be in better shape, a couple of cracks here and there but no roots piercing through, the road wasn't uneven and the number of beasts on it decreased.
Of course, some people would see this as a disadvantage. No massive roots going through the road mean no cover. Others would find it as an advantage because they were now able to speed on through without much to worry about. Chloe was the type to speed on through.
However, as there wasn't any shrubbery surrounding them, hiding the fighting. The scene around them was gruesome, with scorpions fighting snakes, kangaroos fighting snakes, lizards devouring smaller insects. It looked horrible, the blood dripping from the beast's teeth as they ripped their prey apart to eat. All the beasts had noticed them but were too busy fighting other beasts, of course, they were always terrified when a beast stared directly at them.
Unfortunately, it was getting dark, the evolution happened at 6:00 pm and it's already been two hours, it's still daylight savings in Australia so the sky didn't get dark too early.
Looking through the window Lachlan could see the clouds change their colours, giving off a nice orange and purple colour. However, although the beauty was nice, the dangers were high.
Lachlan's read quite a few books and websites about animals, especially during the time he was analysing so many of them. They always seemed to talk about how horrible night-time was in comparison to daytime. As if only the worst creatures wander the lands at night, but, with all he's seen it probably wouldn't be much different.
Seeing the sun go down caused Chloe to frown, "Looks like we'll need to stop at the next petrol station, stock up, refuel and sleep," she stated. Her eyes were beginning to get drowsy, today has been a rather eventful day filled with terror, she just wants to take a nap, maybe wake up and realise it was just a horrible dream.
Hearing that caused Jack, Adam, and Lachlan to quiver, as they had managed to see what happened at the previous petrol station, the terror could be seen in the person's eyes. They hoped it would be different, wishing luck was on their side.
Sarah was still sleeping. None of the commotions seemed to wake her which brought great relief to everyone. They were all too busy keeping their eyes open, no one wanted to have to deal with another thing while they were at it.
When they finally reached it they analysed everything around them, in front of the Roadhouse were a few cars, which can mean two things, everyone owning those cars is dead, or they're all alive and hiding in the Roadhouse.
When they parked out front blood could be seen splattered across the windows, similar to the previous station, certainly not a good sign and it caused the whole family to hesitate. However, they needed a place to stay, anything would be better than outside.
Maybe the beast that did it had already left, after all, there are plenty more beasts to hunt outside the station.
When they got outside of the car Jack did something which caused them to recoil back, shocked by what they saw.
...
Jack was constantly hearing a voice inside his head throughout the entire journey, 'Summon Me! Summon Me! Summon Me!' causing him a great headache, it was also annoying him as the voice was rather high pitched and wouldn't shut up no matter what.
When he finally got outside the car he finally tried it out, grabbing onto his left arm and holding it high he shouted, 'Summon Rocky".
His left arm glowed extremely brightly making it hard to see what's happening before quickly disappearing, everyone's vision was engulfed by a brown light, one it dispersed they looked towards Jack and in front of him was the Lizard, Rocky.
...
Lachlan couldn't help but get curious, the lizard looked slightly different stronger and fiercer, he didn't want anything to go wrong.
"Analyse"
--------------------------------------------------------
Name: Rocky (Giant Iron-Spiked Lizard)
Age: Adult
Attribute: Iron/Rock
Grade: Normal
Innate Talent: 6th Grade
Level: 0
STR: 37, AGI: 27, VIT: 35
INT: 16, PER: 23, WIL: 18
Weakness: Blunt force to the head
Strengths: Strong skin, teeth, and claws.
--------------------------------------------------------
Lachlan was happy to see such an increase, at least this meant they could partially protect themselves. However, it seemed that it added Jack's base stats to its own, suppose this is what they get in return for getting tamed by humans.
Hopefully, it also listens to the humans that tame it.
...
Chloe seeing such a thing happen bolted to Jack and grab onto his left arm.
"What did you do? When could you do this? Are you hurt?" she questioned her voice still containing the shock from what she just saw.
"It's alright mum, I've summoned just Rocky who seems completely obedient to me. I've been able to summon him ever since I tamed him, it was just never the right opportunity to, and no this doesn't hurt," Jack responded with, the voice in his head seemed to have calmed down. He could, however, still hear it talking telepathically.
Chloe sighed and calmed down. She needed to stay calm in every situation, it's just that everything was too much for her. She couldn't help but get worried at the slightest things.
"Protect?" Rocky asked simply, his master summoned it so that meant it had a reason to come out.
Jack patted Rocky, "Yes, the reason I've summoned you is to protect us," Jack explained. Rocky nodded then looked towards the station.
"Danger, there's injured beast that way," Rocky suddenly said as its head pointed towards the station.
"How injured?" Jack asked. Now he was regretting the fact they had to stay here for the night.
"Badly, easy to kill," Rocky explained.
"Alright," Jack nodded, himself and Rocky were in the front of everyone leading their way into the Roadhouse, what they saw was gruesome. Human corpses scattered around the place, some of them were ripped in half, others only had the head missing.
Lachlan's grip on Sarah increased, he turned her face towards him and away from the corpses. Fortunately, Sarah was still asleep, taking a nap. However, Lachlan didn't want the first thing for her to see by a pile of corpses.
*Crunch*Crunch*Crunch*
That was when they noticed it, the sound of bones being crunched on, their gaze snapped towards the source and far in the back corner was a giant spider, its body alone was 1 metre big, it was completely black and covered with little hairs. In front of the spider was the body of a large man, the spider was currently crunching down on his head, swallowing it whole.
All of them felt like vomiting at the sight but held it through sheer willpower.
Taking a closer look around them, they noticed the corpses had some sort of weapons in their hands, some had bats, others had smashed beer bottles. They most likely fought the spider and ended up getting decimated.
However, taking a closer look at the spider it seemed six of the eight legs had been snapped. There was broken bottles and shards of glass in its eyes, green blood dripping from all its cuts.
Taking the opportunity Lachlan analysed it.
--------------------------------------------------------
Name: Skull-Face Spider
Age: Adult
Attribute: Darkness
Grade: Normal
Innate Talent: 4th Grade
Level: 0
STR: 15, AGI: 20, VIT: 3
INT: 10, PER: 20, WIL: 19
Weakness: Lose of Eyesight, Fangs, Legs
Strengths: Fast Attacking Speeds, Strong Poison, Darkness Control (Dorment)
--------------------------------------------------------
Noticing its vitality, he realised it's almost dead, he quickly yanked on Jack's shirt causing him to turn around in fright, Jack also swung at Lachlan because of it.
"Ah. You scared me, what do you want?" Jack whispered.
"Attack now, extremely weak," Lachlan said.
Jack quickly knocked himself back to reality, "Yeah I know, I was just a bit shocked by the sight". The Jack this was the first time he's seen a person die in real life, let alone get crunched on by a spider.
As Jack was able to communicate with Rocky telepathically he quickly told Rocky to get the jump on it, no hesitation.
Rocky quickly opened his mouth, his tongue shot out towards the spider at some extreme speeds, the spider couldn't do anything in the state it was currently in, so it just accepted it.
The tongue had managed to hit the spiders head and stick, pulling his tongue back the spider's body came flying across the room with it. After Rocky pulled his tongue in he managed to get the spider's head in his mouth, biting down Rocky completely beheaded the beast and swallowed that head whole.
The spider's lifeless body collapsed in front of them, green blood flowed out and the stench was unbearable. This time the family got a powerful blast of the smell, it went right up their nostrils, possibly even burning their nose hairs.
The family finally couldn't take it, they began to throw up, it took them some insane effort to hold it until now but the stench and close up corpse was the breaking point.
The sudden ruckus woke Sarah up, she began to pour tears as she managed to get a glimpse of the spider's corpse and the mess that surround it, the stench also caused her to throw up a little. Chloe quickly ran over and took Sarah from Lachlan, she quickly began trying to calm her down, she didn't want the noise to attract anything else.
"It's alright Sarah, nothing to fear," Chloe said calmly as she rocked Sarah around in her arms.
"Really?' Sarah asked confused, she didn't doubt what she saw.
"Yes, Jack will keep everyone safe, you just need to follow your part which is to stay quiet no matter what, okay?" Chloe explained and asked.
Sarah nodded and relaxed, her lips were sealed shut.
After all that Jack tried getting Rocky to eat all the corpses, which it happily did. After the clean-up it was already pitch black outside, Jack and Chloe quickly grabbed the tables and chairs to barricade the doors and as much of the windows as they can.
Finally, they could go to sleep. Lachlan however, wanted to confirm whether the information from his eyes was reliable or not. Although after one kill it was likely to have no levelled up, it would be a blessing if it did.
So while staring at the giant lizard beside Jack, "Analyse"
--------------------------------------------------------
Name: Rocky (Giant Iron-Spiked Lizard)
Age: Adult
Attribute: Iron/Rock
Grade: Normal
Innate Talent: 6th Grade
Level: 0
STR: 37, AGI: 27, VIT: 35
INT: 16, PER: 23, WIL: 18
Weakness: Blunt force to the head
Strengths: Strong skin, teeth, and claws.
--------------------------------------------------------
'Damn' Lachlan didn't like how it didn't level up but expected that. Their luck wasn't something that rivalled great beings, it was obvious they were going to have to do a lot more killed for the lizard to finally level up.
Chloe and Jack quickly boarded up the windows and doors, although it probably wouldn't stop a beast from coming in, it might be able to hide them. She got some table cloths from the kitchen and made an area on the ground for them to sleep.
Laying down she kept Sarah by her side, everyone else began to lay down next to her from there. Jack choose to sleep closest to the door, that way he would be able to react fastest.
Laying down alongside his family, he slowly drifted to sleep.