"So... when do we start?"
Nero and Cyrus had just been waiting around for 30 minutes or so. No Nightmare creatures had actually shown up yet, and this whole thing was starting to get kind of boring.
Cyrus was taking his time to respond, and it was then that Nero noticed he was asleep.
'Should I just go back to the jeep?'
There was damn near nothing in this land for quite a long distance, except for the wind which didn't blow, and the mounds of dirt. So when he heard the sound of something crumble in the distance, Nero flinched.
He quickly turned his head to see what it was, however it had already scuttled away somewhere.
He turned his head back to Cyrus, before smirking.
Without any hesitation he ran up the dirt mound, with his footsteps leaving imprints in the ground. Using his Aspect lightly, he felt his strength and speed suddenly double as he leapt into the air.
There, he saw footsteps that certainly did not belong to a human. They were small and beastlike. Scanning them quickly, he noticed a small grey figure moving in that direction. It looked like some kind of wolf the size of Nero's leg.
"Easy!"
His heart was rushing with excitement, and a warm feeling swelled in his stomach. It was small, so it couldn't be that strong. A Dormant monster at best.
Nero instantly charged towards it, with saliva dripping from his mouth. The small wolf turned its head to see what was chasing it, just to see a human even more terrifying than itself.
"C'mere little puppy, I just wanna pet you, just little~"
It yelped as it started to run even faster. Although it was just a Dormant creature, its natural physiology was enough to make it match Nero in speed. In a few moments, it was already disappearing far beyond the horizon.
Nero paused while panting. That pup was able to tell that it would lose to Nero in a fight, so it ran away before he got too close. If he wanted to catch it, he would need to use more than just force. Using Erlking's Agent would be easy enough, but what kind of a sleeper would he be, if he couldn't even kill a dormant creature without it?
He knelt to the ground to catch his breathe, and felt his hand easily dig into the slightly muddy ground. Just then, a smile spread across his face.
**
The wolf pup Nightmare creature was slowly making its way back towards where Nero and Cyrus used to be. It saw that Nero was an obvious threat, but Cyrus appeared to be just a sleepy head. Killing him and feeding on his flesh would be easy. So it wanted to see if Nero had left.
If he did see him though, it would run away. Even if he wasn't that smart, it knew that it was at least faster than him.
It returned back to that dirt mound where he had originally spotted the both of them. Peering over its edge, it saw Cyrus who was somehow deep asleep while standing up.
Panting heavily with excitement, it wasted no time to run down that hill with its tongue hanging out.
Free food, and it was an awakened too. He might even finally grow up and evolve.
Right when it crossed the halfway point though, the ground in front of it suddenly began to rise, and from it, the demon which chased it earlier emerged.
Its body covered in dirt and grime, a terrifying wide smile expressing nothing but madness stretched across its face, but more importantly were its eyes that were filled with malice and insanity.
"You took your damn time."
The pup tried to sharply halt by digging its paws into the ground, but it was already going too fast and ended up crashing right into Nero who embraced it in a tight hug.
Nero quickly activated the 2x boost from his Aspect, while ending up in a tight struggle with the pup. It tried to break free by doing all sorts of things, worming around trying to loosen his hold, scratch his face which started to leak blood, and even take a bite out of his shoulder which made him yell.
But that only fuelled Nero's desire to kill it sooner, as he tightened his arms around the cub.
"You monsters are smarter than beasts, but your still not very bright. The second you saw him, you didn't even consider if this might be a trap!"
It screamed, it cried, it could feel its bones dislocating and breaking, parts of itself that weren't ever supposed to move, were ending up in places where they shouldn't be. It tried to take another bite out of Nero, but this time it ended up being bitten instead.
The humanoid demons bare teeth sunk deep into its neck, which it quickly let go as he spat out blood. Not his own, but that which belonged to the small wolf cub.
"EW!"
And yet it still didn't let go. The cub could feel its life slipping away from it. This struggle was draining, yet the demons grip had only grown even stronger.
Right when its strength was at its lowest though, the demon swiftly moved his arms around its neck, before turning them with all his might.
The sound of neck snapping echoed throughout the outer lands, and the pups body went limp.
[You have slain a Dormant Monster, Feral Beasts cub.]
Nero's back collapsed to floor, he felt utterly drained. Who knew wrestling with a Nightmare creature was such tough work?
'No memories though..'
His work wasn't over yet, now he needed to extracts its soul shard.
'Since its a monster, it should have two, right?'
He didn't have any kind of tool or knife to tear the cub open, so extracting the soul shards was going to be difficult. In the end, he decided on waking up Cyrus and getting him to do it.
But life had other plans.
Right when Nero got back up, the shadows of two creatures fell on him from above. When he turned his head to see what they were, his heart froze.
Two Wolves that looked identical the the Feral Beasts cub were standing there, watching him. But unlike the cub, they were just as big as Nero himself.
The second they saw their puppies dead corpse in front of Nero though, their eyes filled with madness as they bared their fangs towards him.
These weren't just mere cubs, but fully grown adults.