Miko swipped her claws over the girl's face, which left deep gashes on the girl's face. Blood was slowly dripping out of the wound, like a leaking roof.
"H-ho-w-what?" The girl said, unable to make a coherent sentence. Miko used this opportunity to run away, lest she get caught and become some rich and idiotic girl's pet and fox cub mill.
"Aimi!" The boy gasped, quickly kneeling down to look at her wound. It was quite deep, and required immediate medical attention. Luckily, Miko was not a poisonous type of earth kitsune, such as Asura, which meant that the girl's - or Aimi, which seemed to be her name, wound was not poisoned. She was lucky Miko was a moon type of heaven kitsune, and that she was weakened.
The young boy reached for his satchel, searching its contents for something that could heal his sister. They had only intended on traversing the outskirts of the forest and were not expecting to encounter strong beasts, so they only packed some low level healing pills. He fed the few pills he could find to his sister, hoping it would work. The different levels of pills have varying effectiveness, and this level of pill did not seem to be effective enough. Most low level pills are able to heal scabs, cuts, small burns, bruises and scrapes, while medium or level two pills could heal deeper cuts and 2nd degree burns. Unfortunately, Aimi's cut was so deep her cheek had already broken and you could see her teeth throught it. Tears of agony spilled out of her eyes as she tried to not scream in pain in fear of attracting more beasts to their area. Although the beasts could be weak, they certainly could not take a whole horde of them at once. Her brother searched the bag some more, and fed her a medium grade healing pill. There goes the last of their healing resources...
The wound started to close, and the bleeding appeared to have lessen. The area was still bright red, but at least the blood had stopped dripping out like a leak. Her brother asked, "Are you alright?"
"NO! OBVIOUSLY NOT! THAT FOX SCRATCHED MY FACE! I MAY EVEN GET A SCAR! MY FACE WOULD BE IN RUINS! I WANT TO CATCH IT! AFTER THAT, I WILL TORTURE IT IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE AND MAKE IT REGRET ITS DECISION SO MUCH IT WILL BEG FOR DEATH!" The girl was seething in anger. If looks could kill, Miko would certainly be dead. The boy looked helplessly and agreed. He had already warned her about how intelligent that beasts here were, so he was only a little suprised the beast could seem to understand human language. That could be the only reason why the fox lashed out, when it seemed to at least be tolerating his sister earlier. They continued their hunt throught the forest, this time with a new intended goal in their minds...
Miko had ran out of energy after running at full speed for about fifteen minutes. She had intended to tolerate those humans, but what that girl said had definitely crossed the line. Maybe it was because of her long slumber, or the lack of experiences with other humans, but who would want to be treated like a breeding tool, especially for the benefits of others only? She lashed out and escaped, only to realise now she attacked someone two levels ahead of her. Well, at least they can't find her right?!
"IT HAS TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE! I SWEAR IF I FIND IT I WILL... wait how should i punish it?..." The girl wondered. After pondering a shortwhile, she said," Alright, I decided. If its a boy, I'll castrate him to make him disabled, since he technically disable me through my face, and its a girl, I will not give it maids to take care of it and just use her for the cubs! At least that will be more worthwhile!" The boy just sighed in resignation, knowing this whole ordeal could have been avoided if he just never took his vain sister out of the Marquis's palace.
After resting awhile, Miko decided to continue through the forest to the kitsune village. She would be safe there, at least from those two humans. However just as she leapt off the branch onto the forest floor as it was easier to traverse there with her decreased agility, she smelled the scent of the two cultivators previously after her!
"Something's there! I heard it!" The girl's voice seemed to exclaim. Miko hurried into the bushes hoping to hide, when she saw the feet of the cultivator pair before her. The young girl used her ability [increased senses enhancement] to scan the surrounding area. Miko knew through her previous experience what to do, and immediately hid her aura and scent. That was when she realised something very bad. In the heat of the moment, she jumped into a random bush, while she was in her pink fox form! She definitely stood out in it, so much that it was as good as not hiding at all! Miko immediately activated her cultivation, but her innate magic was not strong enough to cast the entirety of her concealment spell, [moonlit concealment]. This spell would typically enable her to become invisible, conceal her aura, scent and the noises she made. However, she was weaker now, so she could only conceal two of the four, with scent and aura being the easiest. Miko tried to change the concealment spell to make her invisible only, but even that could not be supported by her current cultivation. She could only remain still, and hope that they were stupid enough to not notice her.
Just as Miko saw their turn away, she heaved a sigh of relief, only except it was too early... The girl spun around and immediately said,"What a boring game of hide and seek! Couldn't even run and hide well, how are you intelligent in anyway?" She then chuckled to herself, towhich Miko spun around and bolted. The girl immediately started giving chase, grabbing her crossbow and firing at Miko. Miko could easily dodge those, as her senses such as hearing and smell could detect the arrows quickly, even as they were slicing through the air. She bounced on the tree trunks to gain momentum, and tried to place distance between her and her chasers. Although, she would be quite naive to think that third stage core formation cultivators did not have tricks up their sleeves.
Miko glanced behind to peek at her chasers. She noticed that their goal had never been to shoot and kill her, even after she scratched one of their faces. It was to trap her. With every arrow that missed her and impaled the forest floor, a mechanism in it was triggered such that the back of the arrow would open and shoot out a net at least one meter in radius. Although useless against larger beasts, it was extremely effective against small beasts like her. It was clear those two cultivators long intended to hunt beasts like her here.
Miko continued to run faster, but she seemed to realise a little too late that this game of hide and seek, or now tag, was not really a race of sprinting, but that of stamina. After nearly twn minutes, her stamina had began to run out again, and the cultivators seem to be tired out to. Miko used the last of her cultivation stamina, and began to use her cultivation power to boost her speed instead. She still had thirty minutes to go at her current speed to reach the fox village and protection, however, she could not spare their lives there anymore. Given that they were young, Miko had wanted to spare them since she had most probably disfigured the girl, which would have compensated her for keeping the male fox she had wanted to breed Miko with at home captive. However, if she did manage to reach the village, the stronger foxes would kill them since if word got leaked out to the humans, their village would have been in danger. But now, the problem was that she wasn't even sure if she could reach the village. Miko could feel the last of her magic draining away and her speed decreasing. The cultivators would have probably ran out of stamina long ago, since they could not convert their cultivation magic into more stamina, and certainly didn't learn how to use it to boost their speed. The only reason they were keeping up was due to them buffing themselves with speed increasing talismans. Seeing Miko slowly slow down, the girl licked her lips, aimed her crossbow and whispered a soft, "bullseye". The arrow flew out, hitting the tree next to Miko. In her exhaustion, Miko had thought it was a complete miss, only to be reminded that she always thought too early when the net exploded out the back or the arrow, trapping her inside.
"Oh? I thought you were rather tenacious. Didn't think you would lose this game so soon," the girl replied, a gogeous, sly smile covering her now hedious face.