Chapter 15

Jack looked around and saw plenty of hunters staring at their pagers or rushing out of hunter’s plaza to the jobs and requests room. Jack decided to follow their lead. He quickly walked through the doors into the med vendor room before continuing into the requests room. It was there that he saw a large gathering of dozens of hunters standing before the main notice board all standing around talking to each other in groups.

The notice board itself had gone white except for the large red letters scrawled across it. ‘PRIORITY HUNT ISSUED. VOLUNTEERS NEEDED. ALL OTHER JOBS SUSPENDED’. Jack slowly walked over to join the large gathering of hunters and waited to see what would happen. He watched as more hunters slowly trickled in through the main doors from the main atrium and eavesdropped on the conversations of the hunters around him for ten minutes or so.

“What's going on?”

“I heard there’s an outbreak.”

“It’s an A+ rank monster again! Like the Titan!”

“Some more villages were attacked again, lots this time I heard.”

“EXCUSE ME! Can I have everyone's attention please!” A middle aged man in a suit appeared on the upper floor balcony right above the main notice board. He was pale and had dark hair with a salt and pepper beard but looked fairly tall and well built. The chatter soon petered out and everyone was silent.

“I’m Adrian Welts, the director for the North Yorkshire branch of the United Kingdom’s hunters guild. I would like to thank everyone here for their quick response to our message. Now, let's get down to business. As you all know a couple of days ago a high class A ranked monster was caught in the middle of the city, it has since been confirmed that it broke out of the Dire Woods and managed to make it all the way over here. The fact that it managed not come into contact with any humans or villages on the way is a fucking miracle. But at the same time it’s taken everyone by surprise and now we’re scrambling to contain the aftermath, several swarms of weaker monsters followed it’s breakout trail in the Woods and have begun to run amok between here and the Woods. I need as many volunteers as possible to join an effort to eradicate the monsters immediately, any hunter teams will be kept together and solo hunters will be temporarily placed on teams. Once we’re organised everyone will be shipped out to various points on the map between here and the Woods. We’ll also be coordinating with the Army in a limited fashion during this so please try to cooperate with them when necessary. Anyone who wants to volunteer, please see our admin team members in front of the notice board. Just have your licence handy and they’ll tell you where to go. Just to warn you though, we don’t know what exactly each team will be facing just yet, so it's possible you’ll be facing monsters of a higher rank than yourselves, please remember to work together. Once again, I thank you all and good luck.” With that he stood back and left followed by several other people in suits and uniformed soldiers.

Once Adrian Welts had left the excited babbling erupted once again amongst the groups of hunters and there was a steady move towards the notice board and the row of large desks set up there. Jack was in the middle of the crowd and didn’t bother trying to extricate himself, even though someone’s ostentatious shoulder pauldron thingy had spikey bits that kept nearly stabbing him in the face. He was going to volunteer, he didn’t know if this was a good idea. Most people who knew he was a lightning cultivator would tell him no, this was definitely not a good idea idiot, but he knew his own strength and was confident, he’d always been stronger and faster than people gave him credit for and his recent successes had bolstered his confidence. He eventually made it to where the admin team was set up beneath the notice board.

As he was waiting he looked to both sides and saw several desks over that Cheryl was manning one of the desks. She no longer looked bored but instead looked very professional as she handed back a hunter his licence, typing on a computer and speaking to him before pointing towards a nearby door, the hunter nodded and walked through. She looked over briefly in Jack’s direction, her eyes widened momentarily as she recognised him before she was forced to turn back to another approaching hunter.

“Next.” A voice in front of Jack startled him before he turned to the front and found the admin guy in front of him, sitting at the desk looking at Jack expectantly.

“Uh, right. I’m volunteering too.” He quickly stepped forward and gave his licence over. The admin guy took it and seemed to compare the image on the licence to Jack’s face for a couple of seconds.

“Are you already on a team? If not, I'll need to assign you to one.” He asked Jack.

“I’m not no.” Jack replied.

“Fine, I’m assigning you to Red team, go outside to the main entrance and one of the coaches there will be labelled red team. Climb on and once all ten members are present the driver will transport you to Boroughbridge. Once there you’re to exterminate any monsters you find, if you’re in over your head use your pagers to request additional help.” He gave Jack his licence and looked to the next hunter in line. Jack took that as a dismissal and walked around the edge of the crowd to the double doors leading to the atrium. He joined the various hunters walking through to the main entrance. Some looked excited and visibly pleased, others looked nervous and pale faced. Jack didn’t yet know what to feel, both at the same time maybe as a nervous energy welled up inside him.

He walked outside and across the courtyard he could see a line of a dozen or so coaches parked along the road with small crowds of hunters standing around each one. He strode quickly across the courtyard up to the road and peered to either side. Each coach seemed to have a person holding a small coloured flag standing by the coach door, Jack spotted a man dressed casually in jeans, trainers and t-shirt one coach over, he was carrying a red flag and a clipboard. He walked over and introduced himself.

“Hey, I’m Jack, is this the red team coach?” He said.

The casually dressed man looked down at his clipboard which had a touchscreen. “Yep, Jack? Ah, I got you here, just climb on, we’re waiting for one more person and then we’ll set off, not long now.”

Jack nodded and unhooked his spear and axe from his back and carried them in his hands before climbing aboard. The coach was large and nearly empty with only eight or so seats filled up randomly by different hunters. It was an odd mixture of humanity if Jack was one to judge. He’d only rarely interacted with entire groups of hunters up close and the experience was one he usually found bewildering, the general public opinion varied slightly but most individuals when asked agreed on one thing; hunters were a bit odd. It probably had something to do with the drive to purposely seek out life threatening danger, when the alternative was to just not. Or maybe the excessive cultivation beyond the norm messed up a human’s brain chemistry.

Jack began slowly edging his way down the aisle, naturally trying to find a seat as far as possible from everyone else since that appeared to be what everyone else had done. On his way he passed a large fellow with a shotgun resting on the seat next to him, he was trying to shave stubble from his face with an axe, a young woman was leaning forward biting her nails and hiccuped so that a small amount of smoke escaped her mouth, another man with a thick scarf wrapped around his neck and lower face was coughing violently.

Jack passed them all and sat near the back close to a slim dark haired, pale skinned woman who was laying down sprawled across the entire back seat looking very relaxed, she had a hand stretched upwards and appeared to be directing a stream of air towards another male hunter seated further towards the front. The male hunter had long unbound hair and the wind kept making it flutter around in his face, he kept looking around in irritation but couldn’t see anyone doing anything. The pale woman noticed Jack nearby and she grinned at him. He smiled back and sat down, as he sat down another hunter carrying a large warhammer got on the coach and sat near the shotgun wielder, the driver soon followed him on, he remained standing to address them all.

“Ok, we’re setting off now, if you forgot where we’re going it’s Boroughbridge, we’ve got reports of some sort of wolf-like creature with large fangs up there so be ready. It’s gonna be about twenty to thirty minutes til we’re there. Ok, we’re off!” He sat at the wheel and they were on their way.

They drove through the streets and all traffic made way for them, after a mere ten minutes they’d gone beyond the city limits and were driving along the A59 dual carriageway to Boroughbridge. As they drove Jack stared outside his window and realised this was the first time he’d left York at a significant distance in more than a year. There were a lot more abandoned and destroyed homes and buildings than he remembered, they passed the burnt remains of a petrol station that looked like it had been subjected to a fiery explosion; which it probably had. They drove through a village which had become completely overgrown with what looked like years worth of forest growth. The church steeple further in appeared to have been wrapped in some sort of vines that released a kind of purple blossom in the wind.

In the distance Jack saw helicopters flying in the direction their party was headed, it was only then that Jack began to feel that this was serious and that he may be out of his depth. That feeling of nervousness welled up inside him, he gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. He felt his pager buzz in his pocket and he took it out, it had two messages. One said hunt accepted on it and the other read hunt updated. He tapped on both to acknowledge and and the second message brought up the monsters they would probably be facing. Someone had apparently managed to get a picture in Boroughbridge and sent it to the hunter HQ. ‘Bloodletter Wolves’, that could be trouble, considered a D rank monster, they hunted in packs of up to thirty. They were around the size of a normal Timber wolf, which was pretty damn big regardless but had large black manes like male african lions which made them look much bigger. What made them deadly however were the large lower canine fangs they all sported, which resembled a sabertooth tiger’s. Any bite from those was going to shred any flesh they came across, but if that wasn’t bad enough the wolves were capable of secreting a type of venom in their fangs that made blood clotting impossible, so even if you managed to extract a limb from a wolf’s maw then you were still likely going to bleed to death very quickly. That was likely where these things got the ‘Bloodletter’ part of their name. The fangs were considered relatively valuable along with the pelt.

Jack looked through all this information and gulped nervously, he looked around at the others. Most were still scrolling through their screens, one guy with dark hair was standing up in the aisle and talking to another hunter, the girl in the back appeared to have fallen asleep.

“We’re ten minutes out guys, if you wanna get, you know, organised, now's the time.” The driver's voice sounded from speakers on the coach.

“He’s right, we need to get organised, we need a plan.” The hunter who was already standing spoke out, looking at the rest of the coach. He was wearing fairly sleek dark armour with a fur lining and carried a katana, a popular choice of weapon these days.

When no one said anything and just stared at him he took that as an affirmative and continued.

“Right, what elements do people have?” He looked expectantly at everyone. Again no one volunteered to speak. “Er, ok, I’ll go first, I’m a fire element.” He smiled and nudged the man he’d been talking to earlier.

“Oh, er yeah me too, I’m fire element also.”

Jack heard the woman behind him snort in amusement. Everyone shouted out their elemental affinities, five people were fire elements with two more being wind, one person being earth and another being water. So far Jack had avoided telling anyone his affinity, he was currently sinking down in his seat hoping no one would notice. Unfortunately the first hunter who had spoken up and was so keen to get organised saw him.

“And you? What element are you?”

Jack sighed quietly. He knew these sorts of moments were inevitable but that didn’t mean he had to like them. “I’m lighting element.”

There was a moment of silence as the rest of the group craned their heads to get a better look at Jack, even the girl in the back opened her eyes and stared at him.

The hunter looked a little awkward and scratched the side of his head. “Oh, lightning you say? That's er….” He trailed off.

Yep, that was one of the reactions Jack had been expecting. The rest of the coach looked at him with expressions including pity, incredulity and annoyance. The girl still laying down at the back of the coach spoke up with a raised voice.

“Hey! You said we were gonna organise right? So organise us Mr. Leader.”

“Oh, hey Racheal, mind helping me out here?” He replied.

“Hey, no.”

“Ok, well, the guild says we’re facing a pack of wolves, I think the best thing we can do is to stick together and take them out as we find them.” He explained. This garnered some odd glances and confused murmuring.

One hunter raised his voice. “Er, is that it? Just stick together?”

“Trust me, it's better to keep the plan as simple as possible for when things inevitably go wrong.” He replied with a grin.

“What are we gonna do about him?” Another hunter spoke up and pointed at Jack. Everyone was looking at him again. He waved cheerfully at them. The girl in the back snorted in amusement again.

“Yeah, erm, what's your name?” Mr leader asked.

“Jack.” He replied.

“Jack, it might be best if you stuck to the centre of the group, or better yet stay on the coach.” He looked at Jack with a measure of pity again.

The driver's voice on the intercom sounded again. “If he stays on the coach he doesn’t get paid.”

Mr leader looked frustrated. “Ugh, fine, just stay close to us Jake.”

Jack frowned. “It’s Jack -”

“For fucks sake! Now we have to babysit some sparker?!” The large fellow with the warhammer spoke up. “Just make him hide inside a car or something!”

That generated some discussion and argument amongst the coach and all Jack could do was sit quietly and stew, this was why he preferred a solo career. Mr leader spoke up again. “We don’t know the exact situation yet, we’ll handle the details when they come up, anyway it looks like we’re here.” He pointed outside and everyone looked through their windows. The coach passed a sign saying ‘Welcome to Boroughbridge, Historic Town, Please Drive Carefully’, right next to the sign was a burnt out car. They drove slowly past it before pulling up to a stop at the side of the road.

“Ok, this is Boroughbridge, if you’re getting off now’s the time.” The intercom sounded again. The driver opened the coach doors and everyone began filing out. Jack waited and left at the end, he stuck to the back of the group, hoping to fade from everyone's attention.

Mr leader began walking down the road and motioned for everyone to follow him. A few hundred metres later they arrived at the first houses, at first nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except it was quiet, eerily so. They walked as a group down the centre of the road encountering no people on the street and no driving cars, although occasionally they did spot moving curtains and people poking their heads out from behind.

Up ahead they heard the sound of howling and everyone tensed, they began drawing their weapons and moved slowly forward. Jack unhooked his spear from his back. The large guy with the warhammer looked at him and snorted in derision.

“What you gonna do with that?” He said with contempt.

Jack ignored him and concentrated. As they moved closer to the village they began to see more and more signs that all was not well, several crashed cars and debris littered the road. Blood stains became more common as did various bloody drag marks. Mr leader held up his hand and everyone stopped moving. They could hear growling and a wet crunching from around the side of a house, a blood trail of drag marks led there. He motioned forward again and they slowly and quietly approached. Mr leader peeked round and held up three fingers. He looked at the group of hunters and pointed to two of the hunters in the group and motioned for them to follow him, he silently worded the words ready at them, they nodded at each other.

They gripped their weapons and quickly ran around the corner, Jack and the rest of the group hung back but stepped around the corner as well. Jack saw a horrific sight. He saw three very large black and grey wolves surrounding an actual human body actually getting eaten! He didn’t have time to fully absorb the horror however as the three wolves paused in their meal to look up and snarl at the rapidly approaching hunters. Mr leader drew back his katana and stabbed it straight into the eye socket of the first Bloodletter wolf making short work of it, another hunter also got a one hit one kill on the next surprised wolf with a large axe. The third hunter however fumbled and only managed to lightly wound his wolf with a sword, the wolf whined and backed away up to a wooden fence. It snarled at them, but then started to howl loudly.

“OH SHIT! KILL IT! QUICK!” Mr leader shouted. Rachael, the girl from the back of the bus, moved incredibly fast from the rear of the group and used a spear to stab the wolf through the throat. It let out a strangled gurgle before collapsing and bleeding to death.

All around them in the distance loud howls could be heard. Everyone looked around frantically. It was then however that the hunter with the axe and shotgun spotted a flash of grey and black from the road and ran after it with a yell. Mr leader shouted at him to get back but was ignored. He swore and ran after him with everyone following. They ran into the road and spotted the shotgun wielder further along towards the centre of the village before losing sight of him. They continued running after him, as they went Jack began to see more and more blood smears and drag marks. After a few seconds several gunshots were heard up ahead and they quickened their pace. The group approached another corner and just before rounding it they heard a scream of pain and another gunshot.

They rounded the corner and saw the shotgun wielder on the ground while two Bloodletter wolves played tug of war with an arm and a leg. He screamed wildly while the wolves growled and savagely tore into the hapless hunter, red blood and gore flew everywhere. Before anyone could make a move to save him one of the wolves dropped their chew toy and suddenly bit into his throat, ending his struggles. The two wolves turned to look at them and growled.

It was then that growling could be heard from all around, surrounding the group of hunters. From behind cars and buildings large grey and black maned wolves stalked out and slowly approached the group from all sides, snarling and growling. Jack did a quick count and could see at least twenty of them, maybe more. Surrounded, outnumbered and one hunter down already, this was not looking good. It was then that Mr leader spoke up.

“Fire elements! Give it everything you’ve got!” He stepped forward and generated a large plume of fire straight into the slowly approaching wolves on his side. He waved the plume back and forth trying to cover as much area as possible. The wolves yelped and scrambled back in sudden panic, one of the wolves wasn’t fast enough and was fully set aflame. It ran a little before collapsing in a greasy smoking heap. The other fire elements saw what happened and decided to follow his lead, they all produced the same flamethrower attack and succeeded in killing two more wolves and scattering the rest of the pack.

“C’mon! We’ve got them on the run!” One excitable fire element shouted before running off in pursuit of the wolves he’d sent packing.

“Wait no! We need to stick together!” Mr leader shouted but it was too late, what little cohesion there had been, disappeared when the group split apart in pursuit of different quarries without anyone looking to see who was following who. Eventually it was just Jack, Mr leader and the girl Rachael remaining. Everyone else had lost their heads and run off.

“Shall we?” Rachael said in the sudden quiet after every other hunter and wolf had run off, she strode calmly off further into the village with her spear resting on her shoulder, Jack could see a church over some of the buildings ahead of her. Mr leader sighed in resignation and followed her after bending down to grab the shotgun wielder’s hunter licence, Jack could see he was getting left behind and hurriedly caught up.

“This is why I hate working in groups, this always happens.” He complained to Rachael in frustration.

“What? Everyone running away from you? You do have that effect I must say.” She said with an amused grin.

“No! Just…….People……..they……..they don’t……..”

“Do as they’re told? Ya can’t control everything all the time little brother.” Jack who’d been eavesdropping disinterestedly raised his eyebrows in surprise and did a double take of the two apparent siblings. Rachael noticed Jack's expression and smiled. “I’m Rachael and this control freak is called Zack, my ickle baby brother.” Zack frowned and rolled his eyes.

Jack nodded at them. “Huh, nice to meet you I guess.” He turned away and kept a wary eye on their surroundings, not particularly in the mood for levity after the things he’d just seen, continuing to walk through the village. He heard growling further ahead and quickened his pace, getting his spear ready.

Up ahead were two wolves gnawing on what appeared to be red bloody bones next to a crashed police car, they immediately noticed Jack and co and began growling and barking but didn’t make any move towards the trio. Jack seized this opportunity and dug out his pager from his pocket, he accessed the camera function and quickly brought it up so that he along with the two Bloodletter wolves and a confused looking Zack and Rachael were immortalised in that particular moment. He took the shot and put the pager away before taking up his spear again. At this point Jack didn’t see the point in caution and so began running towards the wolves, he channelled lightning energy into his spear and within a few seconds reached his first target. The wolf was crouched down and hopping side to side growling and barking. As Jack came close it tried to lunge and snap at him but Jack’s spear gave him greater range and he buried it within its ribs, the wolf let out a strangled yelp before jerking and spasming before Jack ripped his spear out sideways leaving a massive bloody and smoking rent in it’s flesh. The other wolf attempted to bite Jack's legs but he was ready for it and managed to get the rear end of his spear in the way, as its jaws closed around the spear shaft it yelped and backed off from the strong current of electricity present in the blade. As it was trying to recover Jack quickly thrust his spear into its hide and finished it off.

As he allowed the dead wolf to slide off his spear he felt a little frustrated, it had happened again. During the fight, time had seemed to slow down, this was definitely a useful skill, but also inconvenient if he couldn’t actively control it, and especially inconvenient when it gave him a killer headache afterwards, which he could feel the beginnings of now. He took out his water bottle which was attached to his harness on his lower back as well as some painkillers from his first aid kit.

Meanwhile Rachael and Zack jogged over, both wearing astonished expressions.

“What in the actual fuck was that!? I thought you said you were some weak helpless lightning element?!” Rachael exclaimed in shock then grinned and let out a delighted laugh.

“That was pretty impressive, you moved fast, those wolves barely knew what hit them.” Zack gave Jack an appraising look and nodded.

“Oh, you know, the adrenaline rush and all that, plus a couple of lucky hits.” Jack waved them off trying to act modest.

Rachael knelt down and prodded the still smoking massive charred wound of the first wolf Jack had killed. “That's some luck you’ve got there, did the monster just happen to spontaneously combust at the same time you stabbed it? Or did a bolt of lighting that we didn’t see or hear strike the exact same spot as you? Huh?” She looked at him and smiled widely.

He stared back at her with a slight smile. “That sounds about right.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Shall we?” And walked with his resting spear on his shoulder off to find more Bloodletter wolves. Rachael caught up to Jack.

“Hey, send me a copy of that picture later will ya?” She asks with a grin.

In the end they found and killed seven more wolves over several encounters whilst wandering the village. Zack’s favoured method was to start off with a sudden gout of flame directly into the face of a monster before using his katana to swiftly finish off his injured and distracted opponent. Rachael did something similar by channelling a strong concentrated burst of wind into a monster’s face before killing it while it was blinded and still reeling. Jack killed two more wolves himself and made sure to use his spear’s superior reach and lightning augmentation to make any encounter quick, his little time dilation ability failed to manifest for which he was slightly grateful, he didn’t want to be reliant on painkillers after every fight.

Unfortunately the Bloodletter wolves were not the only thing they found. Human remains became a common sight, some of the corpses were relatively intact whereas some would be unrecognisable if it were not for the skulls nearby. They also came upon one wolf eating one of the hunters they had arrived with. They made certain to grab his licence as they had done with the shotgun wielder.

Overall it took them about an hour before they decided to head back to the coach, having not encountered any more wolves since the last one for a while. On the way back they harvested from their own kills, prying out teeth or whole jawbones carefully while Jack also discreetly used his own kills to cultivate. As they made their way back, harvesting valuables from the Bloodletter wolves, Jack watched Rachael and Zack put on thick gloves and fiddle around attempting to pry out teeth or chop off jaw bones after attuning them. That seemed a little labour intensive to him so before cultivating from the downed beasts he simply chopped off their whole heads with his machete and made sure to attune them before putting them in a strong black plastic refuse sack he took from a roll in his harvesting kit. This made Rachael and Zack look up from their work, still kneeling on the floor as Jack shoved a head into his sack and leaned against the wall relaxing.

“What are you doing?” Zack asked, looking confused.

“Harvesting, am I doing it wrong?” Jack asked with a shrug.

“Er, I’m not sure. Did you actually manage to attune the whole head for those things?” Zack asked, perplexed.

“Yep, the whole thing.” Jack responded cheerfully.

Zack and Rachael despondently looked down at their own kills and the absolute mess they’d made as well as the ragged looking bloody handfuls of wolf teeth and jawbones they’d amassed.

“Huh, never heard of anyone being able to attune such a large area before, especially not a single person by themselves.” Rachael said thoughtfully.

Jack smiled at them. “What can I say? When you're good you're good.” He smirked.

Rachael let out an amused derisive snort which let Jack know exactly what she thought about that. Zack looked more pensive.

“If the guild or anyone else knew you could do that, you’d be able to go on much higher ranked hunts with other teams. That's a really useful skill right there, is it because you’re a lightning cultivator?” Zack asked.

Jack shrugged. “Could be, but I don’t want to go on high ranked hunts yet. I’m fine working my way up from the bottom. Anyway, are two done yet? Can we move on?”

They finished up and moved on to the next set of wolf corpses they’d left behind. In the end Jack had only been able to cultivate from two of the Bloodletter wolf corpses, his core was still feeling full from the previous day's hunt and the second wolf left him feeling shaky with a slight headache and the occasional twitch in his muscles. Once the harvesting was finished they set off for the coach at the edge of the village.