Ever since the first identified attack of the beast, which while had been brutal, hadn't been nearly as wicked as what was now happening.
Grayson and company had thought that tracking down a beast would be simpler than potentially going up against something with the same or possibly even greater intelligence as a human.
It seemed like they wouldn't be lucky as that wretched beast was also an intellectual it seemed, the sightings and stories of various people pointed toward it being some kind of wolf-like beast but the trio believed that this belief might be nourished by the fact that the danger in those areas was mostly wolves and beasts that look live wolves.
The peasant had not much knowledge of anything else, this thing may not like a wolf at all apart from walking on four legs.
The first attack believed to be from the beast had happened a while back, when a young sheperd had been bitten to the back of his head and tossed around like a ragdoll.
The beast had paid no attention to the animals at all, something that would stay constant, the beast never attacked any of the cattle or any animals that wouldn't try to get in its way, guard dogs brave enough to try to stand up to it where slaughtered swiftly, all decapitated from a single bite.
As time had progressed, the more the beast had started to act as if it was a person rather than an animal or monster, it had an habit of leaving the corpses of women undressed in peculiar way, clearly it had not been the result of clothes being ripped off in the attack but an action carried out after the death.
The beast remained mostly unseen, carrying out its attacks without any witnesses, the only living people who had seen it where people who had just happened to meet its path rather than being tracked by it.
It was said that the beasts had eaten an iron pitchfork after stopping it right in its track when a farmer had tried to attack it, biting through the iron with ease and sending said farmer flying with single movement of its neck.
This sort of things seemed to have happened multiple times as well, the farmers around these parts were pretty quick to get on the offensive.
The trio of otherworldly men did their best to put an actual team of hunters to assist them in finding the beast but it was apparently in on every of their moves as it kept on slaughtering those who agreed to participate, resulting in no hunters willing to try their luck at finding the beast.
Few adventurers guilds had put up quests for the head of the beasts but it wasn't conclusive either, it was smart, quick and stealthy despite being capable of utterly destroying a human body in seconds.
And as time went on, the stories were getting more and more convoluted as well as bizarre, some saying that they had seen the beast walk on two legs or proclaimed that there was more than one beast or even accusing some local nobles of being behind the attacks.
The attacks went on without any clear pattern anyways, the trio was ready to give up and try their luck somewhere else when another group arrived on the scene, with an actual way of finding the beast.
A group of four women with another otherworlder amongst them.
It was Laura of course and with her divination skill, finding a lead on the beast would be tremendously easier.
Aiden's analysis skill had been unable to give any information on the beast itself, it appeared that like the bag head and face stealer, it was under some sort of protection, preventing his analysis for yielding any result on it.
It was a good sign, if it was also protected then it could only mean that it was coming from the same person.
Laura's divination were handy and particularily effective when the thing she was searching for had been so active, the skull head had been harder to get a good image of, this was an indicator that he had been unwilling to be seen, unlike the beast who didn't seem to care much as the picture was quite detailed.
It was hard to tell exactly what it was or whether it was male or female due to the numerous, long dark strands of fur that covered its while body, some of them dragging on the ground, it was hard to imagine this creature running at high speeds without stepping on its own fur coat.
The fur also covered its head, making identifying its head shape impossible, same for the tail as it was either nonexistent or camouflaged with the rest of the fur.
All that was certain was that it was huge, it seemed capable of wrestling a polar bear, impossible to say what it was, bear, wolf, some guy in a suit, the fur rendered identification impossible.
But the beast itself wasn't what Laura had been hoping to get a clear view of, but of its surroundings, it must have been resting somewhere between its kills and if they managed to locate that location, they could find the beast, as simple as that.
Finding places where the beast could have been sleeping in would have been possible with people to help search the nearby forests but with the whole hunter mawled to death thing, it had been impossible to do so.
The picture didn't seem very conclusive at first, only showing the inside of a cave but, in the background of it, signs of human habitation were visible inside of the cave.
Everyone's first thought was that its master lived in there but Jake spoke of something else.
"Seems like everything is in a bad state, must be an old hunter's hideout" he said.
Aiden just analysed the picture.
*An image of ? inside of a hunter's camp*
'Sounds about right' he thought before sharing his finding.
The rest should be fairly simple, even if they were too scared to participate in anything, surely the local hunters wouldn't mind telling them about old camps in the surroundings forests.
The beast had quite the gall to set up inside a hunter's camp, not that it seemed any of the local hunters could possibly do something against it but quite insulting nonetheless, a sentiment the questioned hunters didn't miss the chance to share even if they weren't invited to.