'This is really taking a lot longer than I thought it would,' Theo thought as he tried to get himself as comfortable lying down on a tree branch as he could.
Still, there was a limit to how much a man could relax while actively hiding in a tree's canopy, especially when he picked his branch not for its comforts, but for good visibility on the spot just a bit ahead and enough room to properly move around.
It's been over an hour since Theo concluded his fight with the hobgoblin colonizers and around fifty minutes since he extracted whatever was of real worth out of their corpses before leaving their bloodied remains out in the open.
And yet, even though his scent has most likely disappeared from the place for quite a while now, no monsters worth their name approached the spot yet, not even with all the blood that he made sure to scatter to better bait them out.
'At this rate, I will have to go bonkers on that camp,' Theo thought, pressing his lips together as just the thought of doing that was enough to make his body shiver.
He could single-handedly bring carnage to the goblins' camp he aimed for. But him being able to do something didn't mean he was happy to pay the price of doing so.
Especially when he wasn't anywhere near desperate to resort to such dangerous means as what he would have to employ to solo the goblin horde.
Yet, as time continued to pass, the calculation of risk, cost, and benefit continued to change, making the option of just going bonkers more and more enticing.
'The sun's already setting,' Theo thought as he looked up to what little sunlight passed through the tree's leaves to where he perched up. 'At this rate, I might really need to…'
The unnaturally loud rustling caught Theo's attention.
Before he could even finish his thought, his mind cleared, leaving him perfectly focused on the bloody area ahead and then its immediate surroundings.
'There you are.'
A small smile crept on his lips as his eyes locked on a low-bearing, mid-sized creature creeping through the forest undergrowth.
'Bloodfang,' Theo thought, recognizing the way in which the patterns of the monster's fur made it blend with its surroundings, obscuring the outline of its body and making it rather hard to spot it from anything on the same level as the monster.
Yet, watching from above and looking out not for shapes but movement, Theo made the task of spotting the monster rather easy for himself.
'And since one is already here,' he thought, closing his eyes to kill his focus before opening them again and then scanning the area as far out as his eyes could see.
Then, his smile widened.
'The rest of the pack is bound to be somewhere close.'
Just like goblins had a tendency to live in colonies, evolve as their numbers grew, and then send their elites to establish a new colony once their domain could no longer support the size of their nest, bloodfangs had their own set of habits to follow.
'There they are,' Theo thought to himself as he raised the shortened spear in his hand, his eyes jumping from one elusive figure in the bushes below to the next.
There was a total of seven bloodfangs, horse-sized cats that low-level adventurers would consider the apex predators of the borderlands.
And to a degree, those low-level adventurers would be right. Because when it came to the outskirts of the borderlands, those oversized cats indeed were one of the toughest opponents to fight with, even if they were but prey for the real monsters hiding in the deeper areas of this place.
After taking quite some time to scan the area for dangers, be it through smell, sight, or hearing, the scout of the pack finally emerged from the bushes and approached the neat row in which Theo arranged the vivisected corpses of the hobs. Then, after taking just a little bit more time to inspect the site, the bloodfang raised its adorable head before… barking at the rest of its pack, signaling for them to come out and feast upon their findings.
'Well, that's my cue,' Theo thought, allowing himself to lose the balance only to then swing down on his branch and carefully lower himself down to the ground, landing in the precise spot where he removed all the twigs and sticks from, leaving nothing but soft, moist moss.
Thump.
Even with how careful he was, Theo's landing still created a tiny bit of noise. Yet, as he perked his head up and looked through the bushes ahead towards the feasting pack…
'Good.'
Once again, just like he did before when he was about to deal with the hobs, Theo stretched his hand out, as far back as he could, even going as far as to twist his body at his hips. Then, for the next several seconds, all he did was just stay frozen in place, his eyes registering every tiniest movement of the bloodfangs ahead.
The way they would bite into the hobs' meat only to then sharply pull with their neck, twisting and turning their heads all the way to the point where they would tear away the hobs' flesh, allowing them to comfortably swallow their prize.
The way the blades of their shoulders protruded from their backs as they all laid down low while feasting, trying to make themselves as small of a target to spot as possible while eating and thus vulnerable.
The way each of the bloodfangs would dutifully hold back from eating and raise its head to look around for threats, only allowing itself to go back to eat when the next oversized cat in the group would raise its head to take on the warden's task…
Theo took all of this in, quickly constructing a pattern of movements of the pack. A pattern that was only slightly different from what he had learned years ago.
But for his plan to work, precision was of paramount importance.
'Okay then,' Theo thought, taking a deeper breath than before only to then go through the motions again, string-snapping his body as he twisted at his hips and threw his spear.
Before the first projectile could even reach its target, Theo already grabbed the other, no longer caring about making noise. Because by the time he grasped his second spear, by the time the bloodfangs all perked their ears up and raised their heads…
The first spear shot right past the cat nearest to where Theo hid, grazing its side and leaving a long, bloody cut over its hide.
"RAWR!"
No longer having any need to stay silent, the wounded cat made the noise to alert the rest of its pack…
Only for Theo's second spear to soar in from between the trees and pin another cat's left hind leg to the ground.
The bloodfangs jumped.
The pack split up without a single bark, roar, or other form of primal communication, instantly dividing in half, leaving one perfectly healthy bloodfang to defend its wounded packmates while the other four dashed in the directions the attacks came from.
By the time they leaped up and came crashing down at the spot Theo was hiding at, however, the young man was already running for his life with all the might of his well-trained body, caring not for the noise he made or the quite obvious trail he left in the wake of his nigh-crazed dash.
A wake that obscured the markings left behind tens or maybe hundreds of goblins that treaded the path before him.