As if celebrating March's arrival at the second planet, the storm that was covering the skies slowly started to dissipate, allowing him a clear view of the night sky.
"Testing. Hello? Anyone there?"
Just for test March tried to open communication with the base, but in the end he received nothing but static noise and not a single word.
"Damn nanomachines! How can the sky be so clear but not a single message is able to get out? They really should fix this or at least find a frequency for emergency communications..."
Walking stealthily through the newly born forest, March continued to talk to himself as if to distract his mind from the situation he was in. This was by no means a good plan, but at least it prevented him from falling in panic or worse, and considering he couldn't think of a better option, this was the best option he had left to ensure a mediocre performance in this mission.
"Target sighted. 100 meters west, moving south east... who the hell am I talking to? I'm completely alone in this god damn planet! Damn, this silence is driving me crazy!"
Of course everything has a limit and March was a few steps from hitting his own. Taking a deep breath to calm down, he looked through his rifle's scope and aimed right at the middle of T-Rex's eye.
"If it hits, will it die or just go blind? I have no idea about dinosaur anatomy so I can only guess..."
As he spoke out his own thoughts, a pressing of the triggers made his rifle shot out a burst of 5 shots at once before stopping shooting so he could see the damage dealt to the creature, at almost the same time, the five shots hit the T-Rex's eye, exploding it like a balloon.
"Great! It's a hit!"
The big lizard screamed in pain for reasons that I will leave to your imagination and shook it's head while trying to make sense of the sudden spike of pain and the change of his world view. Not allowing any time for it to recover, March continued to shot at the eye's hole, trying to dig into it's skull through what appeared to be the easiest path to the dino's brain.
GROWL!!!!
Feeling the pricking needles entering through it's wound, the beast let out a growl before charging straight at March's direction, not caring about not knowing the exact position of the assailant as it's pain would show the way.
Seeing the mad rex charging at him, March took a second to decide the next actions he would take. He could stay his ground and risk taking a t-rex bite on his head, or he could move out, dodge the attack for sure but lose all stealth advantage he had...
A quick calculation was not even necessary for him to know that a bite would mean at best one less arm or at worst one less life, and considering he had no spare life he could waste he decided for the second option without much hesitation, jumping out of the way while opening fire at the Dino's head without worrying about his aim.
"Fall already, you overgrown gecko!"
The shots penetrated the the leather of the T-Rex's face but they stopped as they all hit the big guy's skull hidden underneath it. The real damage was minimum but this didn't stop the giant from feeling pain, causing it to growl louder than ever, it trembled and tried to follow but March's armor's flying speed was faster than it could run. March expected the monster to go down then and there but just as signs of fatigue started appearing on the clumsy dinosaur body, another one appeared probably due to all blood smell.
"Oh no!"
Getting catch in a piercer attack, March had no choice but to fly high, out of their reach, which resulted in both dinosaurs colliding against one another.
"Damn! I need to end this fast before more arrive!"
The dino servants had just been released so even if they had designed to act alone, because they were too close to one another, they would end up like a mob if March was not careful.
"Do I really have to use it? ...Damn! Let's give it a try!"
Noticing the rifle was not doing enough damage, March decided to risk using the sword. If this was a normal sword he would surely never try such a crazy move, but this was the sword that cut through his special armor like butter, so it was anything but normal. So, without further ado, March grabbed his sword from the back belt, turned it on and stored the rifle on it's place.
"It's now or never!"
Taking advantage of the two dinos who had still not recovered from colliding on each other, March dived like a hawk telegraphing one huge vertical cut right in the middle of the new T-Rex's neck.
SLASH! BANG!
As March fell from the sky, his swing cut through the giant neck with little to no resistance, resulting in him half crashing on the floor.
Looking back to see the damage of his strike, March could almost not believe in his eyes as he saw the reptile split in two like some game's death animation. The sight made his blood run cold, acknowledging the danger of the weapon in his hand, but he had no time to rest as the other opponent would recover anytime now, so maybe this was his last chance for a free strike.
"Haaaaaaaa!!!!!!"
Activating the thrusters on his back and legs, March spun around as he approached the wounded opponent. He saw the opponent greeting him with an open mouth but he didn't dodge at all, diving right inside it as fast as he could. And then, on the last moment, he adjusted his flight path to just pass centimeters from the animal's head, allowing him to deliver a horizontal swing that split the unlucky guy's head in two.
"Haaa~~!! Haaa~~!! Haaa~~!! Haaa~~!!"
Panting and feeling as if his heart would escape through his mouth, March stared at the result of his hard work.
"This weapon is too dangerous! I bet it can cut open a spaceship's armor if one get's close enough! Though I doubt I will ever see foot soldiers jumping over a spaceship with this kind of sword..."
March imagined the ridiculous scene in his head, hundreds of soldiers equipped with similar swords jumping at a spaceship and shook his head.
"Yeah... there is no way this will ever happen! The ship's turrets would annihilate them all...but it would still be an epic scene for a movie. Maybe I should look at the movie catalog latter to see if anyone made something similar before. But that's for later. Right now we got bigger problems in hand..."
March stared at the giant pile of meat in front of him.
"How do I bring this back!?"
--//--
Although Apollo dismissed Bacon's complaint right away, it was not like he completely ignored her words.
In a way it could be said that they had a big moral problem in their hands. Apollo tried to separate the wild boars from the tamed ones, but essentially they were pretty much the same, to the point even Bacon admitted it.
Truth be told, Apollo didn't have the luxury to worry about this kind of problem up until now. When survival is at stack, morals are just a luxury. But now that their survival had been secured, it was the ideal time to worry about this kind of subject before the problem could grow out of control.
Apollo didn't want to give up their only source of meat, but at the same time the idea of eating a servant didn't sit well with him either.
This was not just about having a healthy tasty meal. Meat was also a component required to make specific types of servants like the cat girls, the Oni, and maybe even more, so the lack of meat would result in limited options when creating servants.
Apollo already had problems with the lack of cat eye jewels and mandrakes limiting his servant production, so, artificially creating more problems was not exactly something smart to do. Of course, because of the expanding types of servants available to him, his options also multiplied, but still...
Caught between a rock and a hard place, Apollo remembered Negi's camp fishing farm. While fish meat was not boar meat, at least it was also meat, right? Then maybe it could be used as a substitute until another option could be found. Apollo had already in mind the plan of building one anyway, so taking advantage of it made complete sense. Who knows? Maybe this would be the best alternative until Apollo started suspecting those fishes had something to do with the fake mermaids....No, please! NO! Let's stop giving him ideas! Let's pretend I never said this at all, all right?
"Not my favorite, but at least it will lower the weight in my conscience until we find another solution..."
Satisfied with his temporary solution, Apollo patted his own shoulder in praise and continued his way back to his base.
"Master?"
"Ugh...n-nothing!"