When I woke up after a night of very poor sleep, I understood even more that I could not be alone in there, at least, for now, anyway, what made me realize that was an enormous blue and yellow striped jaguar, I was literally trembling in fear, luckily enough it didn't catch up on my smell yet.
'Analyze'
[Purple-Lightning Jaguar]
[This creature loves to hunt down its preys and play with them before killing them, be aware of its almost infallible sight and agility
-]Lv:13
-]State: Curious, Hungry
[Warning, the jaguar has yet to notice your presence, be mindful of your actions]
'Staying here or running away?' i thought while I was checking on the jaguar movements, he seemed to follow some kind of smell on his own, all I was begging now was that the wind would stay fair to my position, only a small change and the jaguar would spot me.
In the end, I decided to try to move and put some distance between me and the jaguar, as I made my way out of the small aperture I tried to keep fair wind, it was actually pretty easy and logical, all I had to do in the end was to keep my pace from making loud noises.
In the time I was spending on the track of my family I spotted traces of hunters, there was a campfire still warm and several footprints that were still fresh.
An unsettling feeling started to push on my chest making me very anxious and full of worry, on my way I managed to use analyze a bunch of time and it reached level 4
[Analyze lv.3 --> lv.4]
And once I finally managed to reach my parents, I was petrified.
Blood, burnt ground, three human bodies, and two adult foxes laying side to side full of wounds, I couldn't bear to look at that anymore.
"Kit... you're alive... run, they took your brothers, if they see you they'll take you as well..." Said the dying body of my mother, her eyes were opaque, almost empty.
As a pup, I couldn't speak, even more for not being a soul beast.
A rage was growing louder as my eyes were looking at the bodies of the humans laying there, they looked like the cultivators from the novel I used to read, with long hairs and elegant robes, still, they looked kind of poor and shabby compared to the description the authors used to make.
"Hey, kit look at me... I know that you're the weakest among your brothers, but I feel something different about you, I know you'll make us proud one day, I'll give you something so you may survive and run away from here" she said while coughing profusely.
Her white fur was all stained with blood, the same thing was on my father's body, but he had also a large cut on the abdomen and it almost seemed like something was ripped from inside, at that point, I understood that the hunters took his core.
My mother started to move and contract her muscles on her belly and after some of the most agonizing minutes of my life, she regurgitated a light blue translucent spear, her core.
I started to whine "No, no... don't..." but before I could do anything to save her, the spark in her eyes was already gone.
My anger was replaced with many different feeling, and in the end, all I did was to store everything in the deep of my heart, I knew that one day I would have had to finally try to understand and give those emotions their time to pass, but now it wasn't 'the right time to mourn those who are not among us anymore'.
All that blood would soon make someone come, be it the hunters to pick up the core from my mother, or some beast to eat the dead bodies, I sighed in my mind, and then took the core of my fox mother between my small jaws, it was bigger than the one I found in the squirrel so I choose to move from there before trying to swallow it.
The bodies of the cultivators probably had useful things on them, but my current situation didn't possibly permit me to bring things with me.
'System, do you have any internal storage or anything similar, right?' I asked the system as I started to trot fast in the direction of a bush
[The System has ha storage, but to be unlocked it needs some sort of spatial skill or object that can store items]
'Wait, wouldn't they... no being greedy it's not something I... you know what nevermind' I thought as I turned off all my morals and started to search their bodies, and as I thought, I found two low-grade spatial rings and a spatial pouch I put down the core and use my jaws to take the spatial pouch.
[Warning, the item cannot be used by your current race]
[Is the Host willing to make the system absorb this item?]
{{y/n}}
'Hmm, dunno if it's the smartest choice but yes...' As soon that I thought yes the spatial pouch disappeared from my hands, at a certain point I understood where the fraud was, the object that belonged to the cultivators was in the rings, but when I absorbed the ring and the pouch, everything inside them disappeared.
I mentally sighed again but in the end, it was still a cheat, I had now a storage where I could put my belongings, it had the space of a mid-level spatial ring, which in the end I found out was around 10 object or 5 cubic meters depending on how I would set the storation system on the storage panel.
I picked up the core my mother gave me and laid it in the storage, after that I started to smell the air, I was going to free my brothers...
I knew how much it was actually difficult and that I could easily end killed, but as much I would want to turn off my morals once again and turn my head, I was kind of affectionate to those two goofy furballs.
After a while, I could track a scent that was similar to the one the hunters had, and slowly I started to, using the daylight and the shades on the ground to pass unnoticed, to march towards the hunters camp.