Chapter Nine: the First Hunt

This morning I woke up earlier than usual, to shower and prepare myself mentally as we are finally going on our first hunt. I go to the room where our stuff is stored, and find Farina already there putting her armor on. I look at the neat pile that my new armor is placed in, then I start to put it on having worn it when we were picking it out. I hear the door behind me open and Aura steps into the room looking nervous, I finish putting my armor on and side my chain onto its loop, sheathe my new-ish dual cutlass swords to my sides, check the throwing knife sheathes at my sides, and drop my full quiver onto its spot on my hip. Aura is still struggling to put her armor on; "Here let me help you." I say, pulling her shaky hands away from the straps, and tying them tightly for myself.

"Thank you for helping me, but I'm almost good now, maybe you finish up and we give these maids something to talk about..." Aura says exhaling a deep breath. and relaxing her body for me to tighten the straps around her chest piece. I finish with her chest plate and help her with her gauntlets, archery glove, boots I then strap her Quiver to her side ant tie the frog for her saber. The last piece of equipment we have to put on is our head bands, we found a really old manga in our school about ninja's who wore a headband with a metal plate bearing the emblem of their homeland, so as a joke the four of us decided that on missions as our helmets we would wear the emblem of the orphanage, of course its actually the crest of Aura's family, but it's a promise the four of us made years ago and we all will keep it, so after she ties mine on, I pull up the camera on my holo-watch, still the same one that was assigned to me in school, and take a picture with Aura and I together arm in arm. "Are you going to share that publicly."

"I don't know, why?" I reply sending it to her first, then to Bear and Grim

"I just was wondering, I think it may be a good thing, we can use that to explain our proximity in public as boyfriend and girlfriend. You are too young to be a bodyguard for the moment, so it will be more believable, the only downside is that Jealous guys and girls will be gunning for us, mostly guys right now though." she explains then watches in amazement as I push the share publicly button. "What did you just do that for, you big dummy?!" she scream asks me

"I got the ball rolling, they'll assume that we're dating anyway and now the challenges will be made more publicly less knives in the dark. and once we get going and bring in huge hauls no guys asking you out and less girls asking me out, you know how much of a training freak I am, and you have other more important things to worry about, so post a picture once or twice a week add a caption and even if we aren't together, it will keep others off our back." then Eliza comes in already fully armored and wielding a massive Warhammer. She snickers as she looks down at her holo-phone.

"If you want to do damage control, we can do a group one with all of us in our combat gear we just have to wait for Aug to get here." and it freaked me out with how he literally walked into the room a minute later, fully armored his rapier at his side. "Also hunter, why aren't you wearing your Tachi katana?"

"The style I am training in for katana, is one where my master does not believe I have advanced far enough to use my sword yet, he said 'you must see the death around you before you may wield the sword that can make blood fall like rain' and has asked that I not use his style, nor disgrace the blade grandpa gave me by using a lessor style."

We depart the room and get into a hovercar that Eliza drives to the drop zone hub for hunters, it takes us a while to choose a spot for our hunt as there are many to choose especially for hunters at our rank, once we decide, the hub asks us for our guild badges, and a small contribution. The spot we chose was nick named the 'howling grove, because the spirit beasts, living there are wolf and coyote types, there are three elemental varieties earth wind and water with a small chance that there might be one or two with a seed ready for harvest, but we shouldn't get our hopes up. the shuttle takes us to the edge of the grove and tells us that if we want to come back yet tonight there will be another shuttle bringing hunters back at 3:43, and again at 9:17. We thank him and head into the grove, I let Rexis near the surface, and Aura brings her Olivia near the surface, walking for a few miles until we find ourselves the prey, a pack of wind coyotes six in total surrounds us and by us we mean just the two of us the others are high in the trees, watching only stepping in if we need it. Aura draws her bow, and I decide to use the chain and I unclasp it as the first coyote lunges, I watch the arrow fly and miss its mark entirely then glance back at Aura to see the second one lunge for her, I swing my chain and it strikes the coyote, but also rebounds off and almost hits Aura, before I can get it back under control I feel an arrow go past my head and a coyote falls at my feet an arrow in its head. I step forward and set myself to Aura's back "You try to kill them, I'll do crowd control this spot was terrible for my chain, but hey nice shot babe!" I say and it only takes a few more minutes for us to defeat the monsters around us.

"Thanks for having my back, literally." She says and gives me a kiss, which I was not going to reject especially before going to collect the cores of the monsters. I then go towards the coyotes and drag them all to a single spot and slam one of my axes into its head splitting it's skull and rummage around in its brains until I find the core, I repeat this 5 more times and collect their cores. "Do you want to keep their meat?"

"Yes, but I'm only keeping the best cuts the tenderloins and the Backstraps." then I proceed to butcher them or two of them, as I wanted to keep some room in my back pack for the others. We continue on after washing my hands in a water bottle. it takes another hour or so before we find more monsters to hunt, and this time we find a group of water wolves, the strongest monster of the particular region we are in, she looks apprehensive especially seeing there are almost fifty, and the still haven't noticed us. "Hey if you don't want to we don't have to hunt them, but while we still have the element of surprise, we can take down a bunch of them from range with our bows." she nods and we jump into a low branch and take up our bows, I she aims at the closest one and lets her first arrow fly, my own first arrow flies soon after, we pick the wolves who are on the edges of the group, and as much as we are enjoying this they catch on before we down ten of them and I decide to drop from my spot and draw my swords, the wolves see me and charge circling and lunge, I let the short amount of training wash over me, lunging and slashing my swords carving into the wolves, not really caring, I trust Aura not to shoot me, then I hear a crash as my slash releases a wave of lightning, but I feel weak immediately, but the last wolf drops to the ground dead. I feel Aura's arms around me. She goes around pulling the wolves to a central pile the way I did and opens their heads while I recover my energy, after a few minutes Aura screams, and I'm jolted back to life, I rush towards her noticing that the others haven't dropped so she's probably not in danger but still I go to check on her and ask "What happened are you hurt?"

"No dummy I just found a seed where there should be a core, you managed to kill a monster with a seed do you know how much money you just made?" she's still squealing like a little girl I lightly smack her on the head and that quiets her down, we pocket out loot and start heading back to the shuttle station and we're nearly there when another group of hunters appears and this time we're in a clearing 'I've got a bad feeling about this' I think to myself.

"Hey little girl we heard you and you boyfriend got a seed, why don't you give it to us?" he questions loudly

"No he killed the monster and got the seed fair and square, so no we're not giving it to you."

"Are you sure, I'd hate to be too forceful on you. or is no your final answer?"

"Are you deaf." she says to the guys

"Then we'll just have to beat you and take it" and his two guys charge us, I draw my chain knowing that in an open area like this I can really let loose. the first guy lunges and I snap him with the chain dragging it across his chest and then the second guy is in range, this time I snap the whip forward it's bladed end piercing his heart and then I turn and throw my axe at the guy who spoke, leaving the first guy that I just knocked out to just chill, then I walk to the speaker who is down from the axe in his spine, and I rip his dantian out, then go to the other one and take his eating them both, it feels disgusting, but I know that it will make me stronger. I check the time. It's 8:45 already, we rush to get to the shuttle station. and then the drive back home Aura tries asking me what's going on in my head after killing those two, but I just ask her for some time, we won't be going on a hunt again for a while, because of that fight all of us got our guild badges suspended for two months, and it's only because of my pass that I didn't get into more trouble, they did say that they would be watching me incase I started killing for more dantians, though. after arriving home we declare the hunt a success and go to bed the next day is a free day.