The forest didn't appear to have changed much from last year, which was good. It meant that hunting would probably be fairly normal.

Lan sent a few Rangers out leading other groups of hunters. He, himself, was leading one such group, and their Tracker had found something promising. From the looks of it, a small family of erhnvulpen, fox-like creatures with quills in place of fur along their back. There was no sign of any deviation from their normal abilities.

The tracks were relatively old, possibly a day. It appeared they didn't come through this area often, either. But both of those things combined actually made it easier to follow, even if they weren't relying on the Tracker's Skills.

They crept through the thinner underbrush of the thick forest toward their prey. Maybe it was more accurate to call it a jungle by now, but it'd been named a forest on official maps for years. There was a miniscule amount of magic polluting through the air, not enough to get in their way, but a slight annoyance as it made it more difficult to use Spells.

For this mostly-experienced group, however, there was no issue. There was one individual for whom this was their third real hunt, but with the other four, she'd face no issues. They didn't even rely much on Spells anyways.

Finally, they'd come up to a spot where it looked like the prey had come by multiple times. A fresher set of tracks led another direction, and considering the time, it was probably the family going to their den.

Gruesome as it was, they'd probably be coming out of it dead or dying. Lan always tried to make the kills quick and painless. It's how his father had taught him, to express compassion even in the necessity of killing. Torture was for the arrogant and barbaric Nobles.

It was only a minute later when they spotted sure signs of the den. It was a messy rearrangement of the forest's underbrush, creating a thick barrier shielding two sides of a small dugout, with a tree stretching oddly to cover the last side and top. If you didn't know to look for the dried mud mixed it, you wouldn't have even noticed it.

Lan readied his crossbow, and the group maneuvered to get clear lines of sight of the inside of the den from only 20 meters or so away. They had to move slow and soundless, lest they scare their prey awake. It was another agonizing three minutes. By now, it was already near time for the Guild to have set up a camp three hours deep inside the forest.

A light breeze whistled its way through the trees above them as they set themselves up to fire. Five visible targets, they had enough to take each out instantly if they didn't miss.

Lan wordlessly signalled the newest one to take aim at the second-largest erhnvulpen, a target that was likely the best mix between her actually being able to kill it and the lowest possible chance of missing. His Tracker took the smallest target, being the most accurate among them, the two others took somewhere in between, and he aligned the largest one in his crossbow's aim.

He tapped his crossbow lightly once, twice, thrice, and on the next beat they all fired. Shots to kill. Good.

Unfortunately, not all shots killed. Two beasts were easily dead, and a third was probably dead as well. But the smallest and the second-largest still lived, the second having been hit but still alive. and the first having been missed entirely, the whimpers and nudges from hitting the others waking it.

Both immediately made to run, the smallest moving quick. The tracker and two experienced hunters followed, knowing what to do. The rookie hunter wasn't panicking, but seemed to be trying to reload their crossbow instead of putting it away for their hunting knife.

Lan pulled his out immediately. The largest surviving erhnvulpen, seeing that its efforts to run would be futile, immediately made to turn around and Leaped straight at the rookie, the easiest-looking target, soaring past the three others who continued to chase the smallest.

The rookie again dove out of the way instead of bracing with a stance to catch the creature on their knife. Lan was close, though, and already had his knife out; he'd somewhat expected this, and didn't plan on leaving the space between the vulpen and the rookie empty. The vulpen tried to shout as it charged, but its lungs were both punctured; death was coming soon for it, regardless of what happened next.

What happened next was it impaling itself on Lan's outstretched hunting knife, held in one hand and supported by the other. The new wound went right into its heart, with a little tearing. He set the creature down underneath, checked to see if the rookie was okay, and reloaded his own crossbow. In only a few moments, the other three came back with one carrying the bleeding fifth erhnvulpen over her shoulder.

This was an acceptable hunt, even if there was a bit of a mess.

"Sorry for that." whispered the rookie behind Lan, as they moved to ensure that all the vulpen were dead and pick them up to bring back to the camp. The Tracker laughed a little before stopping.

Lan gave both a sharp look, and then to the rookie whispered, "It's fine. Happens to the best of us." He couldn't see the Tracker but he knew they'd be paling a little. Well, that's what you get for missing your shot entirely. At least she crippled it.

It was a good, relatively peaceful hunt. Nobody was injured, they hadn't needed to flee from anything, and all five of them were carrying sizable creatures. It was a bit awkward, with the quills of the creatures, but that was fine.

At least, it was, until the Tracker signalled for them to stop by tapping his crossbow. They all moved to a crouching position and looked around.

Lan felt it now, definitely. The creature that worried the Tracker was directly ahead. It was dangerous, that much was certain, and it was coming towards them.

He peeked past the edge of the tree. An urseridae, of some kind, but Lan wasn't certain which type. It might be of a kind he'd never even seen before. A large, bear-like creature with scales in place of fur and a very, very good sense of smell.

Not good. They could probably take it down, but they wouldn't be able to sneak past it with the fresh kills. If they could bring it down, they would also find themselves bloated with corpses on their way back. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if they weren't still about an hour away from Morval, according to Lan's senses.

He lowered the erhnvulpen corpse, and mimed for the others to do the same, then signalled for each to spread to a different position on the opposite side of the small clearing the urseridae would be wandering into soon. If it was hungry, it'd move to check out the stack of erhnvulpen, led by its smell of blood.

Unfortunately, that same smell of blood would likely lead it to be more cautious. That was why they were all spread out as they were, so that at least one of them would be able to land a kill shot when it lowered its guard.

The easiest way to kill an urseridae was by shooting it through the eye. They usually kept them closed, relying on smell, the strange tasting of their air they did with their tongue, and something that was similar to vision but not exactly the same. That's what his father had told him, at least. He'd had a kind of urseridae as a familiar, and described Sensation with it as "confusing but correct."

As the urseridae broke through the clearing, the hunters were all their own kind of dead: silent and unmoving. Lan's senses showed that there wasn't anything else that should be threatening nearby... but there were some creatures capable of avoiding detection. Lan hoped none of them were in this forest. They shouldn't be, but at the same time, the urseridae before him looked completely different from what he was used to.

The pattern on the scales was wrong, indicating that the normally larger scales that ran along the back were split into smaller ones. The colours were completely different than he was used to seeing, and the creature was much taller than it should be without losing any of the bulkiness.

This creature, even discounting the other possible differences it likely had, would likely be worth a lot of experience.

Lan started to crystallize a small amount of raw mana on the tip of his crossbow bolt. Slowly, as to not attract the urseridae's attention. It didn't seem to notice... yet.

As the creature neared the makeshit bait, it waved its head, and further its tongue, around. Sensing nothing as it closed the distance, it investigated the corpses themselves. So they seem to be wary of traps, but not traps in the bait itself. That could be exploited.

The creature demonstrated the flexibility of its newly segmented back for Lan as it bent in such a way that his father's familiar couldn't, reaching straight down to the erhnvulpen and sniffing them directly. The crossbow bolts, still in the creatures, didn't seem to worry it at all as it retracted the scales that kept its eyes hidden, and selected an area to bite at.

Lan aimed and fired. So did two others. Both of them bounced off the shell just above the eyes while Lan's bolt pierced right in it and, gruesomely, the raw mana detonated, causing the creature's head to explode. It was a loud sound. The very air around them stilled, Lan making sure nothing new was heading their way before closing in with the new body.

It was spilling its blood in massive quantities from the newly liberated neck. Lan caught the attention of one the hunters by snapping lightly, and pointed at the neck, miming wiping his hand along it. The hunter nodded, moving to cauterize the neck with a generous usage of the Heat Spell.

That hunter would get stuck carrying the newest and heaviest kill, being the physically strongest among them. Lan would drape their erhnvulpen over his other shoulder to carry both, resetting his crossbow. When they were all set, the rookie hunter looking at the urseridae in a curiously disgusted manner, they set off back in Morval's direction.

That little distraction had taken them another five minutes with Lan barely noticing that long had passed. He must've been too caught up in observing the creature's differences. They'd definitely be later than the other parties, at this rate.

Another party wasn't facing so much luck as the rest, unfortunately. Their Tracker hadn't even found anything to go off of yet, and the Ranger was nearing the point of calling them back. Then the hunter behind him screamed, falling to the ground.

He whipped around, not having sensed anything. Damn it. There was a medium-sized najan already coiling around the leg of the hunter, its head buried within the mess of its snake-like body. It was firmly latched on; there was no removing it without killing it.

A task which would risk the hunter's leg.

He dropped his crossbow and pulled out his knife, going straight for the considerable section of the najan which hadn't yet joined the coiling mass, and slicing roughly through it with considerable effort. This wasn't just a newborn najan at all; this one was probably many years old.

He moved on to the ball of shifting scales, and started shoving the knife into segments that were well clear of the hunter's leg. It had almost engulfed his whole leg, now, and the hunter in question had pulled out his own knife to try and stave it off from getting any further.

A second hunter joined him in trying to peel it away, layer by infinite layer, while the remaining three held their crossbows out in different directions, surrounding them.

The Ranger and pair of hunters continued ripping away at the snake, its slightly acidic yellow blood dulling their knives over time. They could be sharpened, or reforged, in fact they would have to be, but the hunter's leg wouldn't be able to be replaced, and its venom was even more corrosive than its blood. This would put an end to this party's hunting, either way.

Despite the size, it didn't take too long to cut the najan down to just barely its head and gently stab it through the brain. Afterwards, the Ranger carefully sawed the lower jaw apart from the rest of the head, and the second hunter pried the now-separated jaws off the victim's lower leg, allowing the ranger to change to his skinning dagger for when they'd need to bleed the venom out.

Of course, a corrosive venom like the najan's wasn't nearly as simple, as over time the veins would be dissolved. Fortunately, the venom hadn't spread more than could be expected to extract. They'd have to carry the injured hunter back, but they could be healed.

He found the point at which the venom seemed to have gone furthest and cut open the skin a short distance above it, then gently sliced downward through the leg to get the venom out as fast as possible. It was already leading through a few extra holes in the leg, widening them.

The second hunter moved to tie a rope tightly around the leg just barely below the knee. As they did so, more blood and venom was squeezed out of the newly made cuts, and when they finished they moved to pick the injured hunter up over their shoulders, careful not to let any of the spilling venom land on them.

Unfortunately, they wouldn't have the time to make it a pleasant journey. They were roughly two hours away at a gentle walking pace; they'd probably be storming through the brush, cutting it down to as low as 20 minutes.

They started running.

When Lan finally got eyes on the camp, it looked a little frenzied. That could be either very good or very bad, or a mix of both. One of the other Rangers made to intercept him as his party closed in.

"Yours is the last party to return," she started. "And it looks like the most bountiful. And least injured."

"What are the injuries?" Lan asked, straight to the point.

"A rookie stung by a verifous plant, a Ranger that took a swipe from an erhnvulpen, and... well, one hunter took a Najan to the lower leg."

"Where? And take these." he ordered, handing the two erhnvulpen corpses off to the other Ranger.

"Near the other edge of the camp. The healers are already with him." Lan told the rest of his party to follow the other Ranger and ran off to find the hunter. He probably wouldn't be able to do anything, but he wasn't going to not check up on the people who were injured on his duty.

As he moved, he passed through the center of the camp, where most of the frenzy was. Of the six hunting groups sent out, most appeared to have come back with a pretty good amount of meat, and in the case of the forager group, a respectable amount of what looked like edible fruits and otherwise useful plant parts. A lot of erhnvulpen, erhnpanter and a few urseridae were being skinned, bled and cut apart.

He made a mental note to remind himself about studying the new-looking urseridae. Maybe have some of Itval's better students help him and the Rangers study it for other notable differences.

When he passed the main frenzy, he saw probably the second largest frenzy of the area. The wounded. Only three notable wounds, but one was particularly nasty, and Haim was curled over the unconscious hunter's leg. Lan approached but didn't speak, careful not to break his consciousness.

The wound looked worse than it probably was, if Haim was this engrossed in dealing with it that he didn't notice Lan. He'd probably already started extracting the venom, and that was why it looked so terrible. Even still, this hunter would have to sit out for the day-ish they'd be staying here.

Truthfully, the Guild was lucky they didn't have more injuries to take care of, right now. While they could sustain themselves in this environment for a considerable amount of time, they didn't plan on staying here for long at all, so any injuries would have to be healed either quickly or transported carefully, which wouldn't match the pace Morval planned on keeping for the next week at least. They only had two mages who could heal, and the people still learning of doctoring hadn't earned the magic Class for it yet, as such not having the Skills that the mages did. For most injuries, stalling the damage was about the best they would be able to do.

The Guild hadn't had so few mages for decades. If Lan could, one day, he may actually go back and burn down the forest responsible, even if it meant losing his Class. That wasn't this forest, however. It could stay... assuming it didn't kill more of his hunters.

Zenith's prying construct was silent to all of Lan's senses except for his own two eyes. It observed the process of healing all three injuries, with a learner wiping the minor scratches of one hunter with a salve while Haim and Delil pulled the venom out of the wounds of the najan and verifous respectively, the latter under watch by two Rangers.

The forest had changed since they'd last been here. Lan would have to tell Morval he'd be joining the night's watch.