Chapter 236: The Silent Bird of Prey

Once the sun had set in the prairie the area grew dark extremely fast. Joshua however didn't have much trouble leading the group towards finding a place to rest since with his aura sight he could easily use the giant glowing beacons that were the fruits in the bush trees to see the prairie. To Joshua the fruits filled with aura were like giant lanterns that lit up the prairie as long as he had his aura sight activated. Although this was incredibly helpful in some regards there was also the issue that so much aura all over the place would make it harder for Joshua to actually see a beast through aura sight or his aura sense that was skilled in hiding their presence.

This was an issue that Joshua needed to figure out a way to get around so that they could safely stay in the prairie overnight without being ambushed. That's when Joshua got an idea that would make the most sense. He planned on doing something similar that he had done with the deer in the first area of the prairie. Although the expedition group was big it was still small in scale in comparison to a herd of beast and Joshua new that any predators would be far more attracted to a smorgasbord of meat in one of the bison rather than trying to attack a group of explorers that were more of a snack than anything else in their minds. Even a baby bison was nearly two stories tall and would be more than enough food for a whole pack of hyenas to feast on for a day.

With this idea in mind Joshua used his aura sense to try and find another group of bison further into the prairie that they could use as a distraction while they rest. After half an hour Joshua was able to find such a herd on the edge of his aura sense and lead the group in that direction settling down a couple hills away. The location was close enough to the bison where predators would focus on trying to ambush one of the bison instead of going after Joshua's group while at the same time far enough away where the bison wouldn't be weary of them.

The group decided to eat some more of the aura fruit for dinner since there was currently so much of it around and they didn't want to make a fire throughout the night and draw any attention towards them or spook the bison away. It was a cool night, but nothing sleeping bags and blankets couldn't remedy so they all enjoyed a quick dinner before getting some rest through the night with night watch shifts rotating. Joshua also made sure that any of Lily or Thomas's beast companions that stayed out for portions of time had to be in a shrunken down form that wouldn't draw the attention of the bison. They rotated their beast companions so they could each get a meal while also making sure to keep an eye out for any danger throughout the night.

Eventually Joshua was woken up for his shift during the night. He made sure that his sift would be during the middle of night since that was likely to be the time when any nocturnal predators might make a move. If Joshua was hunting the beast he knew that he would want them to be in the middle of sleep with as few of them on guard as possible. Therefore the middle of the night was the perfect chance to strike and Joshua wanted to make sure that he was awake to see if that was going to happen. Joshua knew that there had to be something attacking the bison in this area. It was clear that all of the other predators they had seen in the prairie up to this point weren't aggressive against the bison yet for some reason the bison were full of scars that showed signs of fighting in the past. It was unlikely all of the bison that Joshua could see with injuries from the past got them from fighting against each other in territory wars or struggles for leadership.

When Joshua stayed up for nights watch he sat at the top of a nearby hill with Tank sitting next to him shrunken down to a size where he was not much bigger than a regular tortoise. Tank wasn't amazing at hiding his aura, but he was able to weaken it enough to the point where the vigilant bison weren't alarmed by his presence. Joshua wasn't sure if Titus or Tails were capable of something like that, but Cinder and Imperia both seemed incredibly skilled at it.

While watching the bison Joshua noticed that there were only three bison that were currently awake out of the few dozen of bison that were in the group. This herd wasn't nearly as big as the other one that they had seen earlier with well over fifty bison in it and that was another reason that Joshua had a feeling that this group was likely to get attacked. The lead bison of the group was level eighty eight unlike the other group where the strongest bison was level eighty-nine and had four stars to its name. This group was definitely weaker, but this portion of the prairie was definitely designed for herbivores to grow stronger as long as they were willing to take the risk.

Although the bison had three members ready to warn the others in a case of attack Joshua could see that they weren't quite as experienced as the other herd had been. They protected the children bison well enough but some of the young adults that were on the fringe of the group were a bit to spread out. Joshua knew that if Cinder wanted to she could probably take down one of the smaller adult bison sleeping on the edge of the herd quickly enough and make off with her prey. The bison weren't nearly agile enough to keep up with her and it was clear that they weren't prepared for such an ambush. Joshua highly doubted the other group would be so spread out and lousy about their watch.

It was while watching the group of bison that Joshua suddenly had a heightened sense of danger. His intuition was nowhere on the level of Celia who could actively use it while fighting in a chaotic battle, but it was enough to tell him when something was wrong. Whatever the threat was he wasn't finding it on his aura sense. The aura fruit around the area made it difficult to sense out beast, but even with that it was impossible to completely hide from Joshua's sight if you were a big threatening beast that was powerful enough to try to take on one of the bison. Then that's when a thought came to Joshua's mind as he looked towards Tank sitting next to him. The turtle looked up towards him questioningly, but Joshua didn't respond as he realized whatever the threat was that was coming towards the area was able to shrink down in size just like Tank, Cinder, or Imperia.

With that in mind Joshua realized that looking for a large aura presence was pointless and instead tried to focus on any source of aura that was moving through the area quickly. Soon enough Joshua was able to spot out something that was moving through the air just above all of the bush trees. When Joshua focused in on the creature he noticed a few things about it outside of the fact that it was able to fly above the trees making it far more dangerous than any beast he had in mind initially. The first thing he noticed was the fact that the predator was incredibly good at hiding its presence. Even now Joshua was having trouble pinpointing it as it made its approach towards the bison from above.

The other thing that Joshua noticed about the incoming beast was how silent it was moving through the sky. The prairie was fairly quiet with only the rattling of leaves from the bush trees and the slight breathing and grunts from the bison. The fact that Joshua didn't hear a single flap of wings from the approaching flying creature showed just how stealthy it was. It was when thinking along these lines that Joshua realized exactly what was coming in to hunt down the bison.

He was surprised by the fact that the creature that he had been so curious to find out about was something that he had already seen on the prairie before. The bird of prey was the well-known silent hunter of the night, an owl. At first Joshua didn't believe that the owl he had seen all the way back at the watering hole would be big enough to take on the bison, but now that he knew that they had the ability to change size to hide their presence there was a good chance that the owl he saw at the watering hole was shrunken down in size a bit. The owl then wasn't all that much bigger than the vultures so it didn't come across as all that threatening at first, but the fact that the creature could hide its aura so well meant that there was a good chance it could come across as far less threatening than it actually was.

Thinking back on it Joshua realized that the bison at the watering hole did stop to glance at the owl several times while they were getting a drink. Even if there seemed to be a sort of rule of not fighting at the watering hole the bison still felt extremely threatened when around the owl and that should have been a sign that the only predator that was dangerous to them at the watering hole was the owl. They didn't care about the bobcats or the hyenas, hell they didn't even give the vultures a single look. It was only the owl that came across as a threat to them and Joshua currently had no idea just how strong the owl back at the watering hole was in comparison to the one that was gliding up above them waiting for the right time to go for the kill.