"Is this really going to work Loren, I feel like we're just wasting time." Balto said as he slung his spear over his shoulder, he was tired from carrying both his weapon and a shovel at the same time.
"Don't worry... it'll work," Loren replied in between tired gasps."Ugh, help me out here"
2 hours had passed since the hunt had begun, and Loren's team was currently wrangling a large rabbit down into the ground, it was a 1st stage beast called a Crop Hopper and was worth 3 points. It was brown and had large black eyes, it had small appendages at the bottom of its feet that swung wildly as Benson and Malto held it in their arms.
Balto went to the beast and helped hold it down. "Alright, but we better be doing this for a good reason."
"Lunceen, arrow." Loren grabbed an arrow from Lunceen and stood in front of the rabbit, calming his breath and preparing for the kill.
He grabbed its shrieking head and inserted the arrow in its ear, digging into its brain and killing the cute beast instantly.
As Loren proceeded to cut off its ear Relia looked at him with a grimace. "Do you have to kill it so gruesomely, it seems cruel."
"Cruel or not, it's the only way to kill it without a mess. And aren't these beasts pests for your people anyway?" Loren said with a wry smile.
"I guess..."
Loren picked up the crop hopper and handed it to Bort. "Same as the last one, try and find a hovel that looks like it would be its home."
Not saying a word, Bort took the beast and walked off, following Loren's instructions.
'Is it always going to be like this between us? At least he's doing as I tell him...'
Loren stood up straight and looked around, after a moment he whispered to Salrie. "Alright, that's a full circle right?"
"Yeah, it should be in the middle of the formation we made." 10 meters in the sky, Salrie gave Loren a thumbs up as he observed their surroundings.
"Alright! We're done with the crop hoppers, everyone follows me." The group sighed in relief, they'd been running around catching beasts in this way for the entire hunt, and it was draining their stamina.
Loren followed Salrie as she flew further into the forest, eventually after a good 5 minutes, they arrived in an open plain, with a large mound in the middle. Seeing the mound, Loren's eyes lit up.
"Everyone, grab your shovels. We're going to dig here for a while. Don't start resting yet."
The eyes of his team twitched, they knew Loren bought the shovels for a reason, but didn't truly think they would spend the hunt digging into the ground. They were going to be knights not miners for Goddess' sake!
***
[Mana art: Burst Acceleration!]
Releasing her spear from her hands with a burst of mana, Carol watched as yet another crop hopper was skewered, adding towards her team's points.
The mana art, Harpoon Throw, was specifically taught to her by Lory, her personal instructor, for the hunt. Increasing the sleekness of her skin, the art allowed her spear to slide out her hand at break-neck speeds before she would let out a burst of mana at the apex of her throw, propelling her weapon even further.
Carol walked up to the beast before sighing in disappointment. "Another one..."
The beast was already dead, its ear removed.
Carol's teammates shouted in fury, this was not the first time they'd found a beast like this. "Seriously! Which group is doing this, It's just a waste of time, isn't it?! Argh!"
Carol lowered her head, understanding their frustration.
"Let's just head in a different direction, someone is obviously doing this to all their prey. We shouldn't waste our time."
As Carol walked away she looked in the direction most of the dead beasts came from, a certain person appeared in her mind as she wondered who the perpetrator who piled clean corpses all over the forest was.
***
"Alright, Loren! It's been 2 hours, are we finished yet? At least before we gained points, but we haven't killed a single beast since we started digging." Loren's team had started to get fed up, he only told them what they had to do, not why. The twins were actively protesting while the others stayed quiet, not disagreeing with their grievances.
Relia, who knew more about the forest than the others, knew what lay in the mound they were digging near, but was still confused by Loren's actions. The beasts that lived in the mound wouldn't be easy to kill even if they dug for the entire day.
Not replying to the twins, Loren looked at the hole they had painstakingly dug with a look of satisfaction. Surround the mound like a trench, starting one meter away from the mound. The hole went 2 meters deep, it was just deep enough and far enough away to not disturb the beasts living in the mound.
Loren turned around and looked at his teammates with a smile. "Well done everyone, we're finished. Ready your weapons, we're about to dive to 1st place."
The team halted with their complaints. They were finally free? Though still annoyed, they looked no with curiosity, now about to find out the reason they'd spent 2 hours digging.
Loren cut off the end of his shovel before attaching his sabre to it with a rope, he needed a longer weapon. Pulling out the bag of flowers he'd received from Carol, he placed the blue buds all around the hole before pulling out a fire starter and burning them. Before they started to smoke he quickly ran out of the hole.
The team looked at him in confusion, wondering what those flowers would do, Benson recalled seeing them in Carol's garden and remembered she stated they weren't worth much. He didn't know why Loren had wanted them until...
*SHAKE*
The group felt a tremor in the ground, feeling it move. Before long, the walls of the hole broke down, dirt flying into the air, as the beasts within the mound dug out. As the dirt settled, small creatures with white carapaces and dagger-like claws revealed themselves. A hybrid of beetles and rats in appearance, they came out in troves, almost a hundred of the little beasts had filled the hole. Lunceen looked at the mana beasts with disgust.
"...D-dung slingers?!"
They were stage one beasts worth only a single point, the wide tail placed between their rectum and reproductive organs were used to fling excrement at predators. If crop hoppers were the pests of farmers, then these foul beasts were the pests of every lady in Belmond.
Lunceen had already been disgusted, but she turned further apprehensive when she saw what exactly the dung slingers were doing.
"ARE-ARE THEY..."
Relia's cheeks turned crimson as she saw what they started to do. Loren's team started to gag.
"Yup, they're copulating." Loren had a malicious smile.
Loren's plan was first formulated when he saw the flowers in Carol's garden, they were called 'Evening Dew' and were foreign to Belmond, hailing from northern Alphonse, Carol's words weren't incorrect, they didn't have much use outside of their beautiful appearance but in the footnote of a textbook Loren had read, it was discovered they had a single, strange use...
They acted like an aphrodisiac for dung slingers. Of course, this wasn't well known, evening dew flowers came from Alphonse while dung slingers were mostly found in south Belmond. No one cared for the discovery since most wanted to exterminate the population of Dung Slingers, not increase them.
In the list of beasts that the teachers had handed to the leaders, dung slingers were the least recommended. They spend most of their time in their homes and have a large, connected array of tunnels they could use to escape in the case of anyone attacking them. They were also just really, really gross. No student wanted to be covered in dung as they hunted. They were only on the list of viable beasts because they had a home in the forest.
But fusing a piece of incremental information he'd gained from a textbook he'd memorised as well as the least valuable beast no teacher expected their students to hunt, Loren saw a way to gain hundreds of points with ease.
Loren immediately threw out his original plan when he saw that Carol's family had the flowers and started to prepare to hunt dung slingers.
"Alright everyone, let's hunt shall we? They'll be too busy to notice us stabbing at them."
The group had mixed feelings when Loren revealed his grand plan, while it was an ingenious way to gather points. It just felt so... wrong.
But they were not idiots, the group quickly gathered around the mating beasts and started to slash away, carefully aiming at their exposed stomachs, holding back the urge to vomit.
Relia was frozen in silence, looking at the team kill the dung slingers as they mated. 'I-is this, how knights hunt?...'
***
After a good half hour of slaying dung slinger upon dung slinger, the aphrodisiac effect finally wore off as the remaining beasts ran off, slinging excrement at their hunters.
"Run!" The group scattered, not wanting to ruin their clothes, Loren huddled behind Benson, using his tall friend as a shield.
His shield was now dirty, Benson turned to see his leader cowering behind him. "Loren..."
"Haha... ahem. Guys come here, each take one." Loren looked the other way before pulling out a group of thick strings.
Malto tilted his head, wondering what Loren wanted.
"We're drawing straws," Loren pointed to the filthy hole. "the shortest straw goes and collects the ears."
Their faces turned white as they ran to Loren, each pulling out a straw and praying they didn't lose.
Relia's eye twitched as she looked at Loren's hand. "Um, Loren? Why are there 7 straws?"
"Well you wanted to experience an actual battle right, this is the aftermath of an actual battle." Loren had a devious grin as he spoke.
Relia's complexion turned ghastly.
"I only wanted to spectate!!!"
***
As the sun started to fall on Galan, Karen had just finished forging a collection of commissioned swords, she leaned into her chair yawning. It was a lot of work, but she was promised 10 silver for the job, so she worked throughout the night to finish the job in time.
As she began to rest, a rotund man walked into her store, Karen stood at and greeted him, excited to get her payment.
"Burnson! I'm finally done, I don't know what you want with so many swords but I better get my payment."
The man smiled as he rubbed his short beard, but a small amount of anxiety lay in his eyes. "Already? Good job, here's the payment."
Burnson handed Karen the silver, much to her pleasure. Karen had no idea why he wanted so many swords made nor how he could pay for them, but as a blacksmith in a village with little to no traffic, she would never refuse a job.
Karen turned around and grabbed one of the swords, handing it to Burnson.
"Pretty good... Is it alright if I test it out?"
She had already turned her back, counting the coines as she placed them into a box. "Sure, the training dummies are to the outside-"
Karen stopped talking as she felt something stab into her back, she turned to see Burnson holding the sword as he plunged it deeper through her, directly pushing it through her body.
She tried to ask why, but blood had already entered her lungs and began to suffocate her, blood spat into the ground as she tried to speak, and her eyes started to go dull.
Burnson had a regretful expression as he pulled out the sword, letting Karen's body fall onto the floor of the forge. "Sorry Karen... Really, sorry, but I can't spend the rest of my life in this backwoods village. You understand right, you always wanted to leave too."
He wiped the blade clean and gathered the rest of the swords, walking outside to greet one of the guards who worked by the gate of the village.
"Are you done?" Burnson nodded towards the man.
"Alright, I'll go open the gate, you hand the swords to the group when they enter."
The two walked through the village they were raised in, ready to see the streets filled with blood.