Chapter 4

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

Jack woke with a start and instinctively scrambled around for his phone, he grabbed it and put it to his ear before answering tiredly.

“Wha-? Hello?”

“Hey Jack! I’m here! Come outside!” Nate yelled cheerfully down the phone.

“Ah! Ok ok.” Jack recoiled from the phone, who could be so energetic so early in the morning? “I’m coming down now, just need to get dressed.” He hung up and got out of bed before looking around for his clothes. It was at this point he regretted just tossing his sodden clothes and armour into a pile now that he had put them all back on again.

He cringed a little and dragged his damp clothes and armour back on before heading outside, squelching slightly. He thanked the hostess of the bed and breakfast as he stepped outside, making a mental note to grab a bacon sandwich before he left.

He found Nate waiting outside looking as cheerful as ever, he was equipped in camouflaged light plate armour with what looked to be a large sword almost as tall as him and about a foot in width slung over his back and a short sword on his hip.

“Jack! Naughty naughty, sneaking off on an adventure without your buddy, urgh, I’m so hurt! How could you betray me like this!?” Nate theatrically placed his hand over his heart and made pitiful noises of anguish. Jack rolled his eyes before grinning.

“Yeah yeah, my bad, next time I decide to come out into the unforgiving wilderness I’ll remember to bring you along at the start.”

“That's all I ask,” Nate solemnly responded with a regal nod of his head before they both cracked up and laughed at each other.

“Seriously though,” Jack said, looking at Nate. “Don’t tell Stacey or Cheryl about this, they’ll never let me hear the end of it, I think Cheryl might actually try to ground me or something,” he implored.

“Yeah man, don’t worry. I’ve done plenty of stupid stuff that I never tell Stace or the others about, most of it I’m kinda proud of but I know they probably wouldn’t find it funny. Bro’s before….you know.” Nate shrugged with a crooked smirk and Jack smiled back at him in relief.

“Thanks Nate, anyway, are you ready to go?” he asked.

“Absolutely! Can’t wait, what did you say this job was again?”

“Harvesting elemental crystals, the job is a bit low paying, it's two thousand pounds split between me and you,” Jack told him.

“Oh? Can’t we sell the crystals at the end? They usually fetch a good price, even the low grade ones,” Nate enquired as he leaned against a nearby lamppost.

“Erm, not exactly, it's part of a deal I set up with Gary the smith, he supplies me with weapons, armour and custom jobs and the like, in return I do jobs like this for him, like getting him materials for equipment minus the selling price of the actual materials I retrieve. So no selling the crystals to him, sorry,” Jack sheepishly explained.

Nate however simply shrugged and grinned. “It's cool, there’s plenty of stuff in these old nature reserves that we can kill and harvest, so we’ll make plenty of money anyway. Besides, before I came down here I nabbed a job we can do for this place, it's not really my thing but it should be decent money since we’re down here, you can help me do it while I help you with your thing. That should fulfil my quota, just in time too, phew! It's nearly the end of the month.” Nate mimed wiping his forehead in relief.

“Really? What's the job?” Jack asked.

“Umm, I’ve got to take pictures of as many different species of mutated animals in the nature reserve as possible. It's part of some big study some wildlife conservation government group is doing, I dunno. We just need to take pictures of everything that looks like an animal but weird, that's all.” He shrugged.

Nate didn’t seem too enthused but to Jack that actually sounded fairly interesting.

“Huh, that sounds pretty cool, I’m up for that, taking pictures of the wildlife and killing everything that gets too close, what could epitomise the life of a monster hunter more than that?” he asked with a grin and Nate nodded back with a smile. They decided to set off, before they left Jack grabbed two bacon sandwiches and said goodbye to the hostess, he passed one sandwich to Nate and they ate while walking the two miles to Skipwith nature reserve.

While they walked they spoke about various things. Half way through their journey Jack asked Nate, “So a while back you said you’re only in it for the fight, I think I understand that, I kinda like it too. So if that's the case then why not just be out here all the time, I was barely in the nature reserve for thirty minutes before I almost got murdered and eaten and had to crawl out in defeat. That could be you too if you wanted.”

Nate sighed regretfully. “I would if I could but the guild forbids freelancing, you actually need an excuse to come out here.”

“Freelancing? What do you mean?” Jack asked in confusion.

“Moonlighting? You know, basically going out and looking for a fight. It's in the contract we signed when we joined, not that anyone ever notices when they sign it. You can’t just wander around looking for monsters to kill,” he explained.

“Oh! I get it, well I suppose they have their reasons, maybe.” Jack stopped and thought to himself.

“Yeah, the guild's official reason is so that no one puts themselves in ‘unnecessary danger’.” Nate put up air quotation marks. “But Stacey told me the real reason they don’t like us going out without an official hunt.” Nate leaned in slightly, almost conspiratorially.

“What? Why?” Jack asked.

“It's ‘cause if monsters get taken care of without the guild acting as a go between, then the guild doesn’t get a cut. You see, they lose money when hunters act on their own,” Nate whispered almost triumphantly.

Jack thought about it for a second as they kept walking, it made sense, the UK hunters guild had essentially cornered the market as far as monster hunting was concerned and it didn’t want any competition. But at the same time that was a little unfair, there was no way the various aspiring monster hunters of the UK would be anywhere near as efficient at dealing with threats to human life if they weren’t a part of a centralised organisation. For the moment the UK hunters guild appeared to be enjoying the best of both worlds, the complete authority of a state sponsored organisation performing a vital service, and the freedom of a private civilian company in a capitalist society with zero large competitors.

“HA! We’re here! It's time to kill things!” Jack was broken from his reverie as Nate cried out in excitement and energetically fist pumped numerous times before running on ahead. Not for the first time Jack wondered if excessive cultivation really did do something to the human brain, or was this a natural condition?

Jack ran to catch up with Nate who was already starting down the patchy path towards the wooded area. They both trudged along and soon arrived at the edge of the treeline, without hesitation Nate plunged in with Jack close behind.

As soon as they entered Nate acted as if he knew exactly where he was going, he slipped between the trees and walked onward with purpose. They soon came to a clearing in the trees about twenty metres across, the ground was covered in moss, dirt and patches of foot high grass and some sort of flower.

“You can pick those flowers, but watch out for the grass, it's Burrower grass,” Nate told Jack.

Jack nodded and started forward, carefully avoiding the grass, he got to work harvesting the flowers and soon had a bag full. Meanwhile Nate was busily going around the clearing perimeter touching various trees with his hands. Once Jack felt like he had enough and had made certain not to over harvest the area he stood up and looked over to Nate. It was then he noticed that Nate was wiping his hands on the trees, he looked closer and with shock he realised Nate was wiping his own blood on the trees from a cut on his hand.

“Er, what are you doing?” Jack asked.

“Attracting prey,” Nate answered with a wide smile. “Remember to stay off the grass,” he added.

“What the fuck are you crazy!?” Jack exclaimed.

Jack didn’t even have enough time for a follow up before he heard a deep moaning howl in the distance. Then more screams and growls sounded, then the surrounding trees and bushes began to shake before the first nightmare burst into the clearing.

It was some sort of snarling monkey thing with a mouth full of fangs, it howled a hateful scream of bloodlust before Nate came up to its side and immediately beheaded it with the large sword he carried.

“First kill to me!” he cried triumphantly.

Another one of the creatures arrived at the clearing and rushed at Jack without hesitation, he hastily grabbed his axe and swung, he caught it in the chest and it went down. Despite having a large axe buried deep in its chest it still frantically reached out with its claws towards him, Jack channelled some lightning into his axe and a few spasms later the creature fell still.

He wasn’t allowed a reprieve however as the real fight began, from all around them mutated animals and monsters burst out of the brush into the clearing. All manner of creatures were present from four legged animals to multi legged nightmarish monstrosities.

He didn't have time to think or plan, the first monster leapt at him, it was a feathered canine of some sort, he dealt with it quickly but heard something behind him. Another beast had been about to leap on his back but was instead struggling and stuck to the ground. It was forced low and the grass it rested on quickly wrapped around it before blood began to leak from its body.

Jack turned around, trying not to vomit, he flooded his axe with lightning energy and began to swing at the monsters that attacked him. First a bird creature with razor sharp claws, then a scuttling insect menacing him with large mandibles, its carapace cracked easily under his axe.

More and more kept coming and Jack just kept swinging, trusting the patches grass of all things to guard his back, again time seemed to slow down almost imperceptibly letting him view the world around him with greater clarity and forethought. Some sort of mutated bear thing roared at him and charged, by this point Jack was beginning to enjoy himself, fully lost in the fight, he met its charge but he was overconfident. The bear knocked him onto his back and one of his arms landed in the Burrower grass, it immediately wrapped around his arms and sunk in through the gaps in his armour.

Jack hissed in pain and channelled lightning into his arm and ripped it away. He got to his feet just before the bear reached him, he swung his axe upward into its jaw and it went down and landed in the grass. This stuff was getting a feast today.

Jack looked around, it didn’t look like this was going to end anytime soon. Nate seemed to be having the time of his life, he danced around and rapidly swung his gigantic sword around with an odd combination of wild abandon and expert precision, the sword was wreathed in flame and whatever he cut burst into flames and easily came apart.

Jack turned back to his own fights and continued. He rushed forward, he dodged and danced around letting his axe do its thing, he flooded his axe with more and more lightning, he pulled more energy from his core and felt it fuel his muscles, he moved faster and faster, hit harder and harder and everything that came at him went down. He found that if he passively channelled a small amount of lightning around his body and kept it flowing, then any creature that managed to touch him received a painful shock. He grinned savagely and let out a delighted laugh, Nate echoed him.

It took awhile but after a couple of hours of on and off fighting the waves of monsters and bloodthirsty mutated animals seemed to end. The last creatures to arrive at the clearing were several clusters of slowly crawling slimes, Jack and Nate dispatched them with ease.

Finally, Jack felt the adrenaline and euphoric aggression slowly seep out of his system. He crouched down and breathed in and out heavily making sure to fish out some painkillers for the headache he could feel coming, Nate was just standing up straight looking around at the carnage with a satisfied smile.

“Nate, don’t take this the wrong way or anything but I think you might actually be insane,” Jack told him.

Nate let out a small cackle which didn’t alay Jack's fears or suspicions in the slightest. “Trust me, this was the best way to go about this,” he tried to convince Jack, Jack simply looked around the small meadow and the corpses of mutated animals and monsters spread around before turning back to Nate with his most sceptical look plastered on his face.

“Killing all these monsters was the best way to go about what exactly?”

“Exploring the area of course! All the predators and scavengers of the nature reserve are going to be busy with this place for hours while we go about doing our thing. Trust me, if we’d just gone straight in we would’ve had a much harder time of it, always stopping to fight things and dodging ambushes and stuff, always watching our backs. This place is really dangerous, you know! It's much much safer to do it like this, first kill everything that wants to eat us, then set out a big meal for all the things we missed, then go and explore the area safely,” Nate explained, nodding as if he actually believed any of that.

Jack stared at him for a few seconds. “That's a stretch and you know it, plus you have a very skewed sense of the word safety,” he told Nate seriously, Nate just shrugged before getting out his pager and began taking pictures of various dead mutated animals.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“The job, we need to take pictures of mutated animals in their natural habitat for this animal census thing, remember?” Nate responded with another shrug as he took a picture of a mutated deer he’d cut in half earlier.

“Yeah, in their natural habitat, not……this.” Jack gestured to the carnage surrounding them.

Nate looked around in confusion. “What's wrong with this, it's a forest, they live in it, they're in it right now, seems pretty natural to me.”

They bickered back and forth for several minutes but in the end Jack finally got Nate to agree that driving dozens of mutated animals into a wild blood frenzy, then luring them into a killing field before mercilessly cutting them down did not constitute any part of their natural habitat. They decided to actually go into the woods and take pictures of whatever they found there along with searching for elemental crystals and harvesting anything else of value.

“You still up for the fifty-fifty split of everything we find here?” Jack asked and Nate nodded with a smile. “Great, why don’t you harvest what you can from the monsters here, I have something to do.” With that Jack bent down over the nearest monster and began to cultivate, wiping the blood and gore from his face and hands before doing so. He knew Nate would ask questions but there was no way Jack was going to leave all this cultivation material untouched, waste no want not. Nate watched him with interest and confusion for a second but could see Jack’s look of concentration and so decided to ask questions later.

Half an hour later Jack stood up from the last monster corpse he had cultivated from, he felt full but not bloated, he didn’t cultivate to his limits as he was still in dangerous terrain. Nate was standing next to a large wolf creature, watching him. Multicoloured light and vapour had begun to seep into the air from the slain monsters and various creatures had arrived at the clearing edge, looking at the meal laid out before them.

Nate jerked his head, motioning for them to set off out of the clearing and into the forest.

They entered the brush together and continued walking for several minutes before Nate spoke up after giving him the side eye.

“What was that?” he asked.

“What was what?” Jack replied.

“You know what, you were fondling those dead monsters while I was harvesting stuff, what was that?”

Jack thought through a few excuses, but he’d never really been one for lying and manipulation. He generally just preferred to either tell someone an uncomfortable truth if they asked or to not not bring up the topic at all if they didn’t ask. Now Nate was asking.

“I was cultivating, I need monsters and animals as a cultivation source,” Jack told him simply with a shrug as they walked.

Nate was silent for a few seconds before he spoke again. “Oh ok then, I thought it was something weird.”

“What!?”

“Yeah, you had this really strange look on your face, like you were trying hard not to shart or something,” Nate explained casually, not sounding bothered at all.

“Not trying to….I was concentrating! That's my concentrating face…you…..nevermind. You’re not bothered or surprised that I can cultivate then? It's sort of a big deal, kind of,” Jack asked cautiously.

“No, I already knew,” Nate answered as they climbed over a large fallen tree.

“What?”

“Yeah, Cheryl told me, then she threatened me not to tell anyone else. She actually physically pinned me against the wall then lifted me up with one arm. I have to admit I was a little scared and a little horny at the same time. Yeah, so don’t worry. Not that I would’ve told anyone anyway, I got your back Jack!” Nate gave Jack a reassuring smile and thumbs up.

“Thanks man.” Jack smiled back and felt relieved.

They continued walking through the woods, they made certain to take pictures with their pagers of the various mutated animals they saw. They witnessed several giant variations of normal animal species, other animals had extra limbs, others had developed scales or chitin carapaces where there should have been fur or feathers. Others had extra heads or had developed wings. Other animals however had malformed limbs or looked to be blind, others had patchy diseased looking hides and looked very unhealthy.

Not all the animals looked to be flourishing, whatever the new energy known as magic was, it had a clear mutagenic effect on various living creatures. Sometimes the mutations were beneficial and gave an animal increased strength, a tougher hide or sharper senses, other times the mutation seemed to cause the exact opposite effect.

Jack and Nate documented it all and gathered dozens of pictures, the animals were even all alive when they did it too. At the same time they harvested various samples of vegetation including flowers, herbs, mushrooms, moss and fungi, they were constantly scrolling through their pagers trying to match the things they found to examples shown in the harvesting guide section. They managed to gather a fair amount, that combined with the loot Nate had harvested from the monsters they killed in the clearing should net them a tidy profit.

They didn’t quite get the safe wander through the woods Nate had promised however, they were attacked several times and had to defend themselves. The attacks were mainly from monsters, the mutated animals tended to leave them alone as long they themselves were left alone.

During one attack, a creature emerged from the ground in front of them. What the two hunters had thought was just a man sized moss covered boulder lodged in the ground was actually the shell of a bear-like monster spawn. It stood on short, thick hind legs and had extra long arms ending in massive paws with its knuckles dragging on the ground, the claws at the end of each appendage looked to be over a foot long. It was covered in long shaggy, reddish brown fur and even though it was heavily hunched over it still stood taller at its head than both of them at seven feet, the rocky shell however added several more feet. It let out a low rumbling growl from its muzzle and both hunters took a look at its mouth filled with sharp teeth.

It was then that Jack got a first hand look at how Nate fought without anything to distract him. Without a word Nate stretched his right arm to the side, simultaneously a basketball sized ball of orange fire appeared to the side of the monster, Nate swept his hand inward and the ball of fire impacted into the side of the monster's face before it could react. It recoiled in pain and gave a low pitched shriek as it stumbled around with its head on fire, Nate threw a couple more fireballs at the beast and while it was distracted he reached around to the giant sword on his back, he unhooked the sheath and drew the sword. The monster's face smouldered but it tried to attack them anyway, Nate didn’t give it a chance as he deftly thrust the point of the sword through its large open maw. The monster gurgled and dark green blood jetted out of its mouth, Nate thrust the sword in even further and out of the back of its neck, the monster gurgled one last time and then keeled over as Nate withdrew his sword. The entire thing had taken ten seconds at most.

Just like that Nate had dispatched a monster that would’ve easily torn its way through any population centre without a hunter to kill it. Nate inspected the shell of the creature as Jack approached him.

“Hey Nate, have you ever tried to get promoted to C rank? You’re a D ranker, right? Are you eligible for promotion yet?” Jack asked.

At this Nate looked uncomfortable. “Um yeah, I’m a D ranker, but um……I don’t really want to…..apply for C rank….its too much um…hassle, ya know? Nah, not my thing. Anyway what do you think this thing is? A turtle bear? A turtle sloth?” Nate tried to change the subject, not looking Jack in the eye. Jack frowned, sensing a hidden issue but decided not to push it.

“Hmm, since it's on land I would’ve thought it would be a tortoise bear or tortoise sloth, meh, who knows.” Jack shrugged. “I suppose anything of value on this thing would be the shell.” They both looked at the large heavy boulder, Nate kicked it with a tough boot to see if it really was as heavy and dense as it looked. The shell didn’t move at all.

They turned to each other and spoke at the same time, “Nah!”

They moved on. Eventually after an hour of wandering, they managed to find the first of the elemental crystals. A clutch of crystalline growth rested in the shade beneath an outcropping of rock, the crystals were a mixture of brown, gold and black, they seemed to shimmer and change colours and shades similar to a lenticular image, they were earth elemental crystals. Small amounts of multicoloured light and vapour seemed to manifest and coalesce around the crystals before being drawn into them, the rock immediately surrounding the crystals looked warped and stretched in comparison to the rest of the rest of the outcrop. Jack and Nate approached a clutch, Jack got out a hammer and chisel from his premium harvesting kit and used them to extract several crystals, they were elongated, rod shaped and about the size of a finger but felt somewhat heavy.

They split up and searched around the base of the rocky outcrop and managed to harvest earth elemental crystals from several other clutches. Once they’d searched around the entire small area they reconvened.

“I think that's all we’ll get from here, we should head over to an area with water to find some water elemental crystals,” Nate told Jack who nodded in agreement. “They’re low grade and small but that's to be expected,” Nate said.

“Huh? Low grade? Why’s that to be expected?” Jack asked in confusion.

“Skipwith nature reserve, even though it's a hotspot for monster spawns, isn’t considered a high level area. It's got a low concentration of magical energy according to the guild,” Nate told Jack.

“Low concentration of magical energy? How did they quantify that? What instruments did they use? What unit of measurement do you use for magic energy anyway? Magic points? MP?” Jack asked in a barrage of confused questions.

Nate looked equally confused for a moment as well as frustrated. “How the hell am I supposed to know? Anyway, less magic means the natural resources that grow around here aren’t as dense or rich in magic either, so you won’t get anything really valuable growing around. Otherwise known as low grade.” Nate gave a significant look to the crystals they carried. “It works the same way with monsters too by the way, there's nothing in here that's above D rank.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’d never have tried that thing back in the clearing in a place like the Dire Woods or another place like that.”

“Oh.” Maybe Jack had misjudged Nate and been a little harsh.

“It was fun though, wasn't it? We’ve got to do this again.”