The Preparation

The outside of The Walls is vastly different from the inside of it. While on the inside, there is a huge city, filled with the beauty of the towers and lights. The citizens of the city can see at the edge of the it is just a plain but big grey wall with mostly concrete and armed guards, on the other side, it is full of turrets, wires, and boot camps.

The purpose of the men on the edge is to force others to return into the city if they do not have special business. And to protect those people from the outside horrors that may create destruction, The Walls are equipped with heavy guns and manpower.

If the people on the edge of The Walls are merely keeping watch of those on the inside, the guards on the other side are allowed to kill anything that does not represent a human or does not have a pass. On the ground, blood and traces of animals are always visible.

Thanks to the surveilance system of the inside and the protection of the outside, the truth of the world has been kept away from the rest of its population.

No one besides the most of the elites know about the weird world that is now The Old World. And they want to keep it that way. The fact that the people are living in containment is what helps the world from breaking completly apart.

The smell of human flesh is extremely alluring to The Creature. Its entire body shivers by the sheer amount of the scent that is technically oozing from the walls.

Tracing the scent of the human, The Creature has found an entrance to the city. That is currently the best place which has the best smell, but it cannot possibly enter. The number of people and the number of the weird looking "animals" that it has seen before may actually be able to kill it. Also, it is curious about the contraptions that are mounted on the concrete wall. While staying under the shadows of the trees around it, it has seen a lost deer with gigantic antlers trying to run toward the walls. When the thing go just a little closer to the entrance, it did not even last for a second because an automatic turrets dissipated the poor animal.

The soldiers were staying on alert all the time. Even though the deer was killed faster than anyone could react, they still double checked and triple checked with guns ready on their hands.

To The Creature, there seems to be a big difference in defense and offense capability between the team located here and the team sent to kill it.

Simply logical. While soldiers in front of the entrance are always on alert, it is because they could afford to be 100% focus all the time for a shift, then someone else will replace them for them to rest. The troops sent to the dangerous areas of The Old World even though are also elites. But firstly they are scouting teams and they had to travel days after days without proper rest. Because of that reason, the amount of stress and fatigue accumulated through all the traveling and possible battles with other animals rendered them weaker and more vulnerable.

If The Creature would like to keep its life and go through the entrance, it would need a full-proof plan, or else it would die instantly.

The Creature retreats back into the bush without anyone notice, back to its nearest hiding place. Its small size worked in its favor.

At the temporary nestm The Creature lies there, thinking about a plan.

First, it would need to do some experiment. To somehow go through the entrance, it first needs to get rid or at least stay alive under the fire barrage of the turrets. To do that, it needs stronger armor, or its skin will be puntured through just like the previous deer. The difficult part is that it does not know how to create armor or grow armor on its own. Because of this, it needs to borrow something like a meatshield from the outside. Tools are obviously out of the question. It is smart, but not smart enough to develop an item.

The Creature knows a few animals which can do the trick. After a few months of surviving on its own, it has learned through fighting the characteristics of some other species. The criteria it is looking for at the moment is toughness that can withstand the heavy machine gun turrets, and a size at which The Creature can cover itself underneath the animal.

Additionally, the animal it is looking for should live in packs, so that they can be a proper meatshield while it is hiding.

With all of that reason, a candidate slowly emerges from its mind.

They are the elephants. These elephants are luckily not changed to the extreme through the process of mutation caused by the C-virus like the horrifying state of the pig-like creature. They maintained the general neutral attitude toward everything but very protective to their younglings. The difference of these elephants with their old version from the old days is that they have incredibly tough skin.

The Creature remembers an almost deadly encounter with this species.

It was when it just got out of the nest its mother made for it. The Creature had just faced the human, it was arrogant for defeating such bigger foes and eating their corpses. It thought it was the king of the world.

After a couple of days after that, it met the pack of the armored elephants.

They were huge, every single one of them. The height of the largest one of the pack was almost 12ft (~4m). The adults were covered in a black yet thick scale-like armor. Lastly, most of them had dark tusks with sharp points. The only one in the pack which did not have these features were the younglings, and they were protected at all times.

Since it was still a new born, The Creature did not have any experience in dealing with those animals. It just got out of a fight with the human, and it was ecstatic. Using the drill skill that it created itself while fighting the soldiers, it plunged forward to one of the adults of the armored elephant pack. The damage was so small, it was negligible. Only a little of contact was made, and only a small wound which did not even have any blood was opened. But the impact made the pack aware of The Creature.

They roared in anger. Then, the alpha male, the biggest of the pack, and some other elephants immediately ran to its place with their tusks pointed directly at it.

Had it not run away, it would have been crushed into mush by the weight of the elephants alone.

The armored elephants let it go, since they did not consider The Creature as a big threat. That was the only reason it was not chased.

That was the first time it had to run away from a fight. So it remembered the event clearly.

There was one crucial element that The Creature noticed.

The younger elephants did not have the same color or the same tusks as the adults. In fact, they looked rather fragile. The legs were wobbly and they could not even stand properly. Their skin was not covered with scales, but they were a slightly smooth texture with a hint of pink. The same kind of skin that The Creature has.

The skin of if was damaged fairly easy in the fight that it had with the soldiers.

If so, its drill can get through the skin of one youngling. And from there, The Creature will force the young elephant to run towards the settlements of the human, forcing them to kill it.

Lastly, since the adults are so attentive, they would definitely chase after the younger one.

When the pack reaches The Walls, seeing their own kind killed, they would immediately start a rampage, making way for The Creature to sneak in.

That is the plan the pig-like animal has created. It is certainly not entirely full-proof, but it is the only thing that it can think of at the moment.

Thus, it started commencing the act.

It will need to go back to the place where it first saw the armored elephant pack and find them from there. There is no guarantee that it can pull of such a plan. It is so desperate to taste human one more time that it has disregarded many other things.

The situation it is in right now has made it unable to turn back. The Creature's addiction to the human brains and the scent of those things are so close to it. It needs to do something to get into the city, no matter what.

It goes back to the first place where it saw the pack and started searching. The tracks of the elephants were huge, so tracing them was relatively easy. It did not to do much at all.

After a few more days, it has found its targets.

The adults are still gigantic as before, and the younglings are as fragile as before. Nothing has really changed in the 4 months since their last encounter. If anything, The Creature has grown to be smarter and more cunning.

This time, it knows there is no chance for it to fight them head-on. The Creature needs a divergence to capture one of the young elephants. Because of that, it started stalking them.

When they are drinking water, the younger elephants usually play a little. That is probably the only chance that The Creature has. Besides that time, they are always in a circle created by the biggest of the pack. It has only one shot, so it needed to make the efford counts.

One day, the pack reaches a stream.

Instantly, The Creature knows what it should do.

It looked at the flow of water, and found out the way it was moving. Thanks to that, it ran to a specific location where no male was found, and jumped into the water with its nose popping upward for air. It put out its tentacle to above the surface of the water to vibrate, absorbing the information regarding the environment and situation.

At one point, everything retracts into its body, and it swims deeper into the water.

As it body gets closer to the elephants, not one detected its movement. They were all looking towards every other angle, but not into the water.

The water brings it closer to its target: a young elephant, drinking happily.

*Spash*

It flies out of the water stream and immediately latches itself on the face of the poor animal.

"OOOOOO!"

Startled, the young one screamed, and it ran straight forward. Being so young, it does not know how to handle something like this so it just kept running. The pack follows right after it.

The direction is the human city.