Chapter 5

They reached their next location with little difficulty. However as soon as they reached the edge of their quarry’s known territory, Sam made sure they stayed extra quiet and instructed them all on the creature’s various tracks and trails.

They moved through the thick brush and luminescent fungi, observing large clawed footprints in the ground and large claw marks carved into the tree trunks. They crept further and further until they came upon a small shadowy glade, inside it were three enormous bears. Two of them were lying down while another was snuffling around the edge of the glade at the far side.

They were the size of humvee’s, if not larger. They had thick brown pelts covering most of their mass except for growths of bone-like spikes growing from their upper backs and the the backs of their forearms, their lower jaws were also covered in large bone plates resembling massive fangs jutting upwards. However, one of the bears, the one not laying down, was slightly larger than the other two and the bone spikes on its back were significantly larger than the other bears and appeared to have black tips.

“How are we doing this Meredith?” Jack asked, remembering his promise.

She watched their quarry intently with steely eyes. In just about every situation he’d ever seen her in, Meredith generally appeared to be a little awkward, shy at times, modest, uncertain and meek. However, in the middle of a fight, with a monster in front of her, she became an entirely different person. Some people were just like that, Jack could relate.

“Katie, I want you to take out the one laying down on the left, one shot to the head if you please. Jack, I want you to use those steel marbles of yours and do the same to the one on the right. The rest of us will circle around the edge of the trees, the big one should come running when it sees its fellows die, when it does we’ll flank it,” she explained her plan clearly and confidently. Noah nodded along. Everyone agreed and began to take up positions.

As Meredith, Noah and Nate left, Katie put an arrow to her bow string and Jack grabbed a handful of steel marbles. With the steel marbles he was able to generate a strong electromagnetic field of repulsion that let him throw the marbles several times faster than a speeding bullet. When he’d first come up with the technique he’d tried just throwing one marble, but aiming the attack was extremely difficult, so in the end he usually just tossed entire handfuls of marbles. Like shooting a shotgun with buckshot, he was guaranteed to hit something, it was usually overkill but at the same time it was a guaranteed kill.

Beside him Katie raised her bow and aimed down the arrow shaft, she exhaled slowly before releasing the arrow. It zipped across the glade and went straight into the first bear’s head, it died instantly, barely making a grunt. Jack wasted no time in copying her actions, he set up a powerful field of electromagnetic propulsion and threw his payload. He also got a one shot one kill, however his kill was significantly messier that Katie’s as the bear’s entire head and some of its shoulders disappeared in a shower of gore and bone shrapnel.

The large Spined Ursa at the other end of the glade took note of what was happening and with a furious roar it charged over to its two dead compatriots. That was when Nate, Meredith and Noah emerged from their hiding places and attacked its flanks.

Nate tossed several handfuls of fire at the beast before smashing his sword down onto its back, Noah went straight in with an enlarged stone hammer strike and Meredith plunged her sword spear into its neck. The monster yowled in pain, rearing up and lashing out with its massive claws, everyone scattered back. The beast went back down to all fours and focused on Noah to attack, Noah pulled up a large sheet of earth from the ground to shield himself but the bear demolished it with one swipe of its claws.

The monster beared down on Noah, who backed away calmly. Suddenly, a large arrow hit the beast, Katie had been aiming for its head but instead only managed to hit the jaw bone plates. It only snapped off one of the large bone fangs but succeeded in distracting the beast. With a roar it rushed over to Katie and Jack, they scattered and narrowly dodged its immense bulk as it barreled into the brush surrounding the glade.

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It quickly reemerged back into the glade in an explosion of snapping tree branches and scattered shrubbery. The hunter team stood in scattered positions around the glade, pelting it with elemental attacks, however they were doing little damage, its pelt and bone spines were too thick.

Jack attempted another blast using his steel marbles while Katie tried again to shoot it with her bow, but the monster was moving around too fast, thrashing around with its claws in an enraged frenzy, forcing everyone to run and dodge lest they get shredded or mauled.

While it was distracted by running after Meredith, Jack took advantage of the respite and pulled out the earth crystal infused black chain Gary the smith had made for him. He approached the monster from behind as it swiped its claws at Meredith, she dodged with preternatural swiftness and lashed out with her sword spear, though she only managed light damage. While it was preoccupied, Jack swung the chain around the bear's enormous body, the chain looped around once and Jack flooded it with lightning. The chain grew heavier and contracted.

The bear reacted immediately with a pained, strangled howl. It attempted to turn around but there was a crunch from its ribs and it flopped onto the ground. Jack ran around the bear and looped more chain around its body wherever he could before pouring more lightning in. There were more crunches and cries of pain from the bear, then it started wheezing before the chain actually started cutting through its hide and bone plates and into its body.

With that the fight was done, the bear gave out one last gasping snarl before falling still.

Jack let the chain fall to the ground and took a deep breath.

“Nice work Jack!” Meredith smiled at him.

“What was that? How did you do that?” Katie questioned him.

“The chain? My smith made it for me. It’s infused with an earth elemental crystal, it gets extremely heavy and starts contracting when you run electricity through it,” he told her as he retracted the chain now that the electrical charge had run out and it was back to a normal weight.

“Mm, his smith’s name is Gary, he’s over on the highstreet in York if any of you are interested. He’s making something special for me too.” Meredith smiled smugly. “Anyway, Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you attune all three corpses please? That way we can harvest everything, or at least the entirety of the pelts,” she told him. He nodded and made his way over to the first two they’d killed. It took him a few minutes but he managed to attune all three Spined Ursa. After that the team set to work skinning and harvesting the thick brown pelts from the monsters. While they were doing that, Jack used the largest bear to cultivate from.

As he knelt down and drew out as much power as he could from the beast, Sam came by and sat down on its rump. She pulled out a packet of nuts from one of her pockets and proceeded to noisily crunch on them as she observed him with interest.

“Heard about you ya know,” she commented between crunches.

“Mm,” he responded, too distracted to actually converse.

“Hungry Jack. The first ever lightning cultivator. The guy that eats monsters.” Crunch.

“Everyone……eats……monsters,” he grunted distractedly.

“Ha! You know what I mean.” She grinned. “Anyway, the one you're snacking on right now? I think that's a male, with the other two being female. You can see the spikes on its back are much bigger, we think that's both for offensive capabilities and for attracting females. Sort of like a male peacock’s feathers,” she explained.

“Oh…yeah?”

“Yeah. That's the current theory anyway. We had this guy with us, Humbridge, he was a naturalist and he came here to study the wildlife, that's how he explained it to us,” she said a little sadly.

“Where’s he…..now?”

“Now? Oh he died, yeah he barely lasted a week,” she informed him sadly. Crunch.

A few minutes later he stood up, he’d drained as much energy as he could from the beast and had just about reached his limit. He felt full, absolutely stuffed. His muscles randomly twitched lightly all throughout his body and he had a slight headache, but the symptoms were nothing serious.

Jack and Sam stood around and waited for the others to finish harvesting the pelts. A little while later the team had three thick, gigantic, blood soaked bear pelts. The pelts were too large to easily transport through the forest but after some finagling they worked out a system and set off back to the base.