“Hey Jason, this is not a good time.” Caroline held her phone with her chin and her right shoulder, while concentrating her Xuanli on her palms with Michael watching on the side: “What’s wrong?”
“Yeah I know, hunting trip, hunting teleporting raccoons and stuff. But I’m just giving you a warning here.” Jason said: “I was just followed, by someone who really knew what they were doing.”
“Followed? What do you mean followed?” Caroline released her Xuanli from her hand and projected onto a slashed wound on Paulo’s arm and shoulder, the warm and gentle fire energy was absorbed by Paulo’s skin, soft tissue and muscles, thus was temporarily granted with enhanced ability to heal themselves.
“Stalked, tailed - whatever words for that, basically someone was keeping tabs on me while I was getting back from a meeting at the arrays club.” Jason answered: “I was not able to take a good look at him - it’s a pretty shady guy. And I don’t know what he wants. It’s definitely not friendly, so I’m just calling you to warn you, some pretty shady people are out there somehow interested in us, be careful.”
“Thanks. That does sound a bit worrying.” Caroline saw that the wounds on Paulo’s body were healing nicely and let out an exhale in relief: “But right now I have something else to worry about - we are having some raccoon troubles. Looks like they are smarter than we thought.”
“Okay, need any help? ”
“No, I doubt they’ll allow you in when we are in the middle of a hunt.” Caroline chuckled: “Thanks, but I think we’ll have to figure things out by ourselves. You be careful though, do not engage if you have other options. Maybe let the academy know.”
“I’ll be informing the academy, but I seriously doubt they’ll get anything out of it.” Jason sighed and said: “Anyway, I’ll try to find out as much as possible - and I will let you know.”
“Alright, keep me posted.” Caroline hung up.
Right now, the wounds on Caroline, Emily and Paulo’s bodies were mostly healed, and they were able to fight as normal. Yet the day is getting late, and the sun had already set, it was no longer opportune for them to keep on looking for the pack of Blinker Raccoons.
The team had a planning meeting around the bonfire with everyone about the strategies to take the next day. They all realized that the situation was not what they planned for, yet they were not entirely unprepared. For one they still had the strength and basic supplies to fight, for two they did not come here to quell all the Blinker Racoons, they need only to provide enough proof that they had hunted down a decent amount, or provide detailed information on the pack to the department in the academy that managed the hunting ground, their mission here could be considered complete.
“Let’s rest. Michael needs way more rest than us to construct the anti teleportation seal. So we should let him sleep through the night.” after the meeting, Emily sighed and said to the whole team: “We will each take turns in keeping watch. Let’s make each turn 2 hours. As the lead of the team, I will take the first turn. Paulo, you take the second and let Caroline take the last turn.”
“Understood.” Paulo nodded.
“Thank you.” Caroline did not object to this arrangement as well, with the amount of energy she spent in the earlier fights and healing Emily and Paulo’s wounds, four hours of sleep might be barely enough. But this was an overnight hunting trip, being tired and and even exhausted was nothing unexpected.
Four hours of sleep seemed to have gone by really quickly. When Paulo woke Caroline up, she felt that her muscles were still sore, and the weariness was still fresh as it was yesterday. This kind of tiredness and sore was from that of an intense battle and fight and not was not simply caused by expending Xuanli, and even though Caroline drank a bit of wine from her almost empty flask before she went to sleep, they were only relieved and not completely cured.
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“Sorry to wake you. You want some chocolate?” Paulo asked while still holding his sword.
“Thanks Paulo, I’m good. Sleep tight.” Caroline stretched and patted on Paulo’s shoulder.
The night was still quite dark, and Caroline took out some special chocolate from her own pouch - this was something mentioned in the hunting club’s pamphlet and she simply took note of it. This kind of chocolate was made with milk, specially enchanted cocoa beans and enchanted coffee beans. It was more bitter than sweet, but could serve as a good source of energy while in the field.
She took her time with the chocolate, as keeping watch could be quite boring and eating chocolate that was not exactly tasty was her only way of relieving the boredom for now. When she finished half a block of chocolate, something disturbed the trees on Caroline’s right side. She immediately raised her axe and shield in that direction, ready to strike and alert the team if anything dared come out.
“Caroline...” a whispering and echoing voice came out from the woods.
Caroline was immediately on alert, activating her Xuanli and was ready to attack at any minute.
“Caroline.... Caroline...” the voice continued, drifting in directions: “Where did you hide it? … Where did you put it?”
Caroline’s thoughts slowly became fuzzy and blurred as she looked around trying to locate the source of the voice, pieces of past memories started somehow flashing back right before her eyes.
The flashbacks started small and unimportant, like the food she ate earlier in the day, the books she read and preparations she made for this trip. Then the pieces of memory became more important, like the moments filled with excitement and sense of accomplishments - like the day she became a member of Daryl’s Hunting Club, the moment where she knew she passed the test, and the moment she knew she was able to master another element - wind.
Then, the memory replay seemed to have concentrated on one thing - the clay bottle, with three sips of medicine inside that helped her with the breakthrough.
“What is this? Where did you put it?”
“I shall be the fort. I shall be the rock. Sticks and stones and blades, firm stand till I fall.” sensing this was extremely unnatural and dangerous, and out of the self protection instinct of not getting spied on and pried, Caroline started chanting her first personal scripture.
A sharp headache struck her, as the fuzzy and blurry feeling in her mind was swiftly swept away. When she came to her senses, she immediately looked around at her teammates, luckily they didn’t seem to be harmed in any way.
Cold sweat started running down her face, a severe sense of mental fatigue rose up from her head. But just when she was about to wake up the others, a strange piece of memory that did not belong to her appeared in her head.
“Bring the codex out, by any means necessary.” an old woman with a cold and even dangerous smile on her face said to the person to whom this piece of memory belonged: “There will be contacts on the inside that would help you when you ask. Threaten certain board members, bring down more faculty to force them to send everyone home, I don’t care.”