The smell of blood is overwhelming in the water now. Originally we only smelled is distantly, assuming that a predator probably caught a meal.
However after only a few minutes of following the smell, all of the crabs and turtle were able to tell that this was not some simple hunt.
Propelling themselves along the ground occasionally jumping down from rocks as they traversed deeper and deeper into the water, eventually Carn and the crabs arrived upon a clearing where they were able to see the blood stained water.
Jurn, the turtle, swam down closer to them from up above in the water and spoke to Carn.
"Elder Carn, this must be those of the Synok tribe."
Both Carn and Hugo nodded their heads, despite the question not being directed at the latter, and elder Carn turned around to face the remaining members of the group.
"We will be proceeding with caution, so prepare yourselves. I know that while most of you have hunted snakes before, some of you have yet to have your first run in with the Synok tribe."
"But these aren't wild snakes. If you think like that, you will die." Hugo added in as all of the younger creatures nodded while the more experienced ones kept their eyes in the direction of the blood.
Seeing the affirmation in the crabs eyes which he was looking for, Carn peeked at Shelton out of the corner of his vision so as to not make it obvious he was looking at him.
He wanted to keep a close eye on Shelton during this because frankly, at this point, Shelton's life was worth more than his own, even if he didn't know it yet.
With the Synok tribe being close to them at the current moment, it is even more important than Shelton's identity is not revealed.
'While it is unlikely, it's not impossible that we are being scouted at this very moment by those snakes.'
Confirming that Shelton was paying attention, he turned back around and began crawling more towards the blood followed by the rest the creatures.
...
The first signs of the snakes in the area was the trail of blood which they had been following for a little while now, however at some point, they had stopped seeing only the blood of victims and spotted the actual remains of the creatures.
Most of the time they only saw the occasional limb, most of the time a fin or flipper of some sort, however there were some corpses of squished and squeezed white and unranked creatures who were entirely untouched, most likely killed without the intent to eat them.
This was one of the things which elder Carn hated the most about the snakes. It was their damn arrogance!
Sure! The Carak tribe may also think themselves better than wild creatures, however at least they didn't leave their corpses rotting in the sand after killing them!
As Carn's anger was getting the best of him he finally spotted the thing they were searching for.
Snakes!
Unfortunately, it looked like the single small, most likely orange ranked snake spotted him as well in his angry marching, and immediately dashed off into marine plants behind him running away.
"After him!" Hugo next to him shouted unnecessarily as most of the creatures had already dashed behind the fleeing snake.
Cursing himself on the slow uptake, the large crab lowered its pincers and jumped forward himself, falling into the plants below as they followed the single snake.
Elder Carn has been one of the first creatures to react to the take off of the snake, and as he chased after it, he extended his pincers as they gained an incorporeal green light to them.
"Vine trap!" Carn commanded, as multiple of the plants surrounding the snake suddenly froze before shooting straight for the limbless fellow.
"Aaarghhhh!" The young snake yelled out as parts of its body were not only cut by the surrounding plants, but also as it was squeezed and crushed by an ever increasing amount of vines surrounding it.
"Now!" The snake suddenly shouted, and Hugo who had almost caught up to the immobilized snake at this point felt a piercing pain on one of his eyes, before suddenly that eye stalk's vision went black.
"HUGO!" Carn shouted as a large sand colored snake emerged from beside the ensnared snake before it swiped it's tail which appeared to have some sort of shell or spike mutation on it's end cutting straight through vines.
Elder Carn stared at his injured fellow elder before turning his attention to the much larger predator.
It was roughly 3 times as long as elder Carn himself and most likely weighed even more. Covered in rough yellow colored scales which blended into the floor below them, and at the tip of its tail was a jagged black spike which looked even more dangerous than most of the fangs he had seen on snakes before.
Finally, looking at the snake's face, elder Carn felt himself feel slightly nervous, and the reason behind this was... He had no idea who this snake was!
It should be known that any yellow ranked and above creatures in the area were rather well known, especially intelligent ones which were in the local clans.
The fact that elder Carn didn't recognize the snake in front of him meant one of two things. Either this was a wandering wild snake who had gained intelligence, most likely due to the flood, and decided to join the Synok tribe, or even worse, this was a younger member of the Synok tribe who had managed to achieve the yellow rank!
The yellow rank was no joke around here! Most creatures who achieved it qualified for an elder position in the various clans and had experiences and mutations which made their danger levels increase several fold compared to their previous self!
Elder Carn was no pushover, however even he had only 2 mutations. Growing without the help of the flood meant that his chances of getting a mutation during evolution wasn't nearly as high and better yet, neither of his mutations were very combat oriented!
From his white rank to red rank mutation he had obtained a swimming leg mutation which allowed him to traverse easier in the water, and his other mutation which he was rather fond of despite its non-combat focus, was his eyes!
His eyes were one of the main reasons why he was able to follow the path of becoming a mage, and even then he barely qualified with the help of them!
However, magic users at this low of a level were rather few and far between making many creatures not know how to properly fight them.
But looking at his opponents mutations, elder Carn couldn't say with confidence that he would be able to win this fight. Stall? Sure maybe for a few minutes...
Run away? He could... but that would mean leaving behind the rest of his group including Shelton and Hugo, so he couldn't do that.
Ultimately he had no other option to fight, however this was both calming and nerve racking.
It was calming because this snake wasn't that much more powerful than him, meaning that it probably wouldn't be able to kill him, at least not immediately.
On the other hand, Carn had no idea how many reinforcements the Synok tribe had. There were more of them. That much was obvious.
A group of only 2 snakes? Not even the Synok tribe was that cocky.
What if they even had another yellow ranked creature? Technically they would still have the advantage with himself Hugo and Jurn, but Hugo was already injured and Jurn had a hard time fighting snakes with his limited mobility.
Studying his opponents, Carn tried to identify what mutations the snake had.
The first and most obvious one would be his tail. No snake, at least none that he knew of, had a naturally occurring jagged tail which could be used to cut like that.
In fact, most snakes rarely used their tails to fight due to it being harder to fight with both sides of ones body.
Another mutation which the snake had was probably it's yellow scales. They appeared rough, akin to perhaps sandstone or maybe even sulfur, but it was obvious that they were quite flexible as well considering the movements the snake had performed on Hugo moments before.
Finally the last and one of the scariest mutations was the snakes fangs.
The Synok tribe was known for being a python tribe, which generally meant that they were more of a fan of crushing their enemies to death, rather than biting or poisoning them.
However in every clan, there were always deviants from the norm. The snake in front of him especially gave off a dangerous vibe when one looked at his jagged fangs which looked like they were made to rip creatures apart rather than poison.
This did also however make Carn relax in relief a little bit. Based on the fact that it's fangs were rough and looked like they were made to rip and tear more than inject poison into anything, it probably meant that elder Hugo wasn't injected with any form of venom.
Of course, Hugo had still lost an eye, but that didn't mean that he would be useless for the upcoming fight.
If there was one thing that Carn really liked about Hugo was that he made up for his foolishness with his tenacity.
Even Carn considered Hugo to be on the bulkier side of the creature spectrum, which meant a lot given his amount of power.
As both of the yellow ranked creatures stared at one another, the snake swallowing the eyeball lost by Hugo moments ago, and the large green crab slowly accumulating green light in his pincers, the struggling crab on the sand a little bit away from the snake stopped it's panic and got up looking at the python with a steely gaze using his one remaining eye.
"Bastard!", Hugo shouted before he threw himself at the large python.