Demonbeasts

Oculux Stones revealed the parameters of any living being whether it be plants, animals or whatever else someone came across. Oculux Stones are lower quality versions of Oculux Crystals so the more crystalline the Stone the higher its quality.

The higher the quality the more information is revealed. Low quality Stones don't exactly feed incorrect information but it's always incomplete which can make it misleading, while on the other end high quality stones can reveal too much information making it a bit cluttered. And the fact that that information is delivered straight to your spiritual sea can be headache inducing to Sovereigns and deadly to some Knights depending on the creature being appraised.

It was this information that the succubus was currently going through in her head while ignoring the slight headache, the dazed look in her eyes and the slightly twitching smile showed she was trying her all to not curse out at the Heavens.

She got almost nothing.

She got all the personal parameters such as her base strength, agility, Constitution and Spirituality. But when it came to her bloodline parameters, it only said she was a lesser succubus, it didn't even reveal what variant she is nevermore the quirks of her race.

This simply meant that whatever variant she is is significantly higher tiered than the Stone's quality. Which either meant the Stone's quality is pretty much crap or her race is too powerful. She didn't have enough information to determine which is it and she wasn't going to get it anytime soon. Getting the Stone properly appraised would mean actually mean revealing she, a Commoner, has it. A relatively low-quality treasure is nevertheless still a treasure.

Presenting herself, a potentially powerful and rare variant, for appraisal would mean gifting them an interesting lab rat.

Sighing to herself the succubus decided to rest for now. She set down simple detection and concealing formations after which she went to sleep.

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The succubus woke up a bit after sunrise the next morning. She had just discovered that peaceful sleep isn't exactly a thing in a danger zone. She couldn't relax properly with the thought that a random passerby could and would kill her without much trouble. To say that she was happy to start her trip and live this place behind would be an understatement. So after taking down the formations she started the journey south east.

She had to travel about 400km to leave the plains and since she had some injuries, she estimated that it would take her about a week. That was if she didn't come across any of the Plain's denizens. If she did she might have to add days if not weeks to her travel time.

The map she had on her only gave the bare minimum information about Nael Continent. She could find all the large cities, some important roads and notable regions on the map. If you scanned a certain region in the map with spiritual energy you'd get basic information about each area but from the map's formations she could see it wasn't limited to basic information. That information revealed that she had to be careful of human elements immediately upon leaving the Plains. But aside from that, the map wouldn't be much help for now so she put aside.

Some time into her travels her grumbling stomach brought up another important problem, she was a bit low on nutrients since she used quite a bit for healing so she needed some food. Lesser succubi made better prey than predator, so meat was off the menu. Edible plants were unlikely to grow in the cold, tundra-like environment that was the Plain's of Warring Frost, she couldn't even see a single tree from where she was. Which meant she most likely had to go a good bit of the journey while hungry les she do something she preferred she wouldn't have to.

11 days eventually passed with the succubus waking up early every morning to collect mist to drink. The trip took longer than expected because the area wasn't even, she also stopped every time she came across tracks to determine whether or not she should continue straight or go around. She also had to repeatedly heal her feet since she didn't have any shoes, using whatever nutrients she had left.

On the 11th night her instincts jolted her out of her sleep, she couldn't tell why at first but she didn't move, she stayed quiet as a mouse and listened carefully to the sounds that permeated through the Plains. It was soft at first, she couldn't tell what it was, then the sounds got close enough for her to make it out. There was roar, then there was growl, they sounded far, the succubus was tempted to get up and run but she controlled herself. She was still injured and so couldn't run and with the state she's in even using the teleport formation wasn't a good idea, it could only be used when she had no other choice. So she stayed there.

The growls got loud and the succubus could feel the ground shake as each roar bore into her bones. She could tell that there were two creatures fighting - either demonbeasts or monsters. They were strong. The succubus could tell that if they came across her, they could kill her with the swipe of a paw. This terrified the demon, the pure helplessness of being weak and being unable to fool yourself that you could survive more than one move.

At first she chose not to move, but now she couldn't move. The fear had paralyzed her. She couldn't think at that moment. She only listened . She listened to the fight with not a breath audible from her. She could hear everything. She immersed herself in the sound and the memory ingrained itself in her.

The succubus didn't know when the fight stopped, all she knew was that it was still before dawn. Even so she didn't move just yet.

It was late morning when she finally raised her head. She stayed like that for a while before propping up her body with her arms and sitting on the ground. On her sitted position she looked around, she couldn't see much. So after much self-coercion she forced herself to stand up.

A few hundred meters away she saw two masses lying on the ground, one white and the other black. The ground around the two masses heavily damaged. There was snow still falling on that one spot around the two masses showing that the two creatures were of the ice element.

The succubus moved slowly towards those two masses. The white mass was closer to her, she stayed around 30 meters away from it and quietly observed it for a while. It was a snow wolf type demonbeast around 7 meters long. Its white fur dyed red with blood from numerous wounds. She couldn't see the head properly from where she was but she could see that it had 2 puffy tails with blue fur at the ends. 15 or so minutes of observing the demonbeast its chest hadn't moved a bit therefore the succubus picked up a stone, moved back by quite a bit and threw it as hard as possible at the wolf's back. It still didn't move.

At this point the succubus was almost sure that it was dead, but she still chose to exercise caution. She slowly moved to the wolf's body before pulling out a snow white dagger. She felt it suck her stamina the moment she grabbed it but she held on. She swung the dagger at the wolf as hard as possible resulting in a barely noticeable stratch but the wolf didn't react. This made the succubus certain that it was dead and this allowed her to relax a little.

At that moment the succubus couldn't help but think of her stomach, she now had some meat to eat. But before that she decided to check on the black demonbeast. She circled around the wolf, all her attention on the black demonbeast around 60 meters away from the wolf. She slowly approached it for a while until she stopped at 40 or so meters, she felt a slight pressure coming from the demonbeast. She decided against moving closer and observed the demonbeast from there. It was a black bear with a frigid cold air coming off of it. It was roughly 11 meters long and lay facing towards the demon. It was heavily injured just like the wolf, but the succubus was almost certain that it was alive.

As if feeling her studious gaze, the bear opened its eyes to stare at the succubus instantly increasing the pressure the succubus felt. She looked at those eyes and got entranced, what she saw was fairly simple, they looked tired but victorious and there was a tinge of pride. These simple things showed that the bear was in the early stages of getting its conscience.

When the succubus got back to herself, she had already subconsciously backed up all the way to the wolf and the bear had closed its eyes to rest. She calmed herself down before circling around the the wolf to put it between her and the bear. From how she sees it the bear would take at least 3 days to recuperate enough to move. That means she had 2 days until she had to leave if nothing unexpected happened. She had 2 days to eat her fill and rest.

After finding a relatively good spot she once more took out her dagger to cut at the wolf without much success. In the end she relented to drinking its blood, it couldn't provide her with the nutrients she needs but the blood of stronger creatures was always a good source of energy, and if she was to spend the next 2 days cutting at the wolf she'll need a lot of energy.

Now with energy to spare the succubus started cutting at the wolf, this time she chose to concentrate on one of the large open wounds so that she didn't need to first deal with the thick skin. Even so, it took more than an hour to get a piece of flesh the size of her palm. She activated her mana conversion array to change her pure mana to water mana which she used to collect and melt the snow which she then boiled using fire mana and used it to wash the meat as much as possible. She had to constantly feed fire mana to the water because the residual frost mana in the snow wolf's meat kept cooling the water. This drained a lot of energy but luckily for the succubus there was more than enough blood to replenish it.

When the meat was relatively clean she took it out of the water and pulled out as much moisture as she could. Then she tried to use fire mana to cook it but failed miserably because of the residual frost mana that was more powerful than her own mana, forcing the succubus to eat it raw.

The entire process was difficult for the succubus, but with the help of magic, an hour or two after midday she had finished eating her food. It would probably take some time to properly digest the food, but she should have enough nutrients by night to fully heal herself.

She slept down next to the wolf to rest once she had set down a perimeter. Getting up once it was way past night she first healed herself and since she still had a bit of energy she continued to cut up some meat to eat. She didn't need that much since the wolf was significantly more powerful than her. By dawn she had collected about 3 handfuls worth which she froze using a formation and stored in her void box.

After resting for two hours she immediately continued her trip. She was less than a hundred kilometers away from the forest right now. If there were no problems she'd probably sleep there tonight.