11. Meeting Humans

It had now been a month since Zion had reincarnated to this world. His days consisted of hunting other beasts to become stronger and then eating most of them.

His routine was mundane and repetitive, but he was at least progressing. He focused on levelling up his current skills more than trying to make new ones.

[[Status]]

Race: All Seeing Rainbow Fox

Name: Zion

Level: 7 (EXP: 145/700)

Rank: D

Magic Affinity: None

HP: 300/300

Mana: 270/270

STR: 22

AGL: 26

CON: 22

DEF: 23

INT: 27

CHA: 29

Skills:

Bite (E) (Lv6/10) - Slash (E) (Lv6/10) - Analyse (SSS) (Lv4/10) - Pounce (D) (Lv5/10) - Kick (E) (Lv4/10) - Tree Run (D) (Lv3/10) - Dash (E) (Lv3/10) - Tail Flick (E) (Lv2/10)

Spells:

None]]

With such a dull yet essential lifestyle... things were highly overdue for a change.

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Zion woke up during the night when he noticed it was unnaturally hot. He raised his head; ears perked as he noticed faint traces of smoke at the roof of his sleeping chamber.

'Smoke? Is there a fire in the forest?!' He immediately stood up then, keeping his head below the smoke, he moved towards the nearest exit that was the coolest.

He came out just outside of the river and turned to see that, indeed, the forest was on fire, and many beasts were frantically running away from it.

He looked around everywhere, but all he could see was fire, and the air was chokingly hot and filled with smoke.

He whimpered as the smoke burned his eyes, then immediately jumped into the river and started paddling downstream. He had explored enough to know that down the river would lead out of the forest.

He would stay underwater for as long as he could before surfacing to take breaths of choking air, but he had no choice. The water at least kept him cold.

After swimming for at least 45 minutes, he finally saw the river becoming too small to swim and knew he had reached the river mouth where it leaked out from rocks, forming the river.

He surfaced once more and looked around. He was still in the forest, but he only had another 10 minutes of running to reach the forest edge, and the fire around here was significantly less than in the deeper parts where he had been.

He climbed out of the river and immediately dashed towards the forest exit. He had to dodge branches breaking from the burned trees and the occasional other frantic beasts that were bigger and likely to trample him.

He eventually reached the forest edge and ran out into an open field, panting heavily, his white fur now littered with ash and a few burnt parts from the trees that had fallen too close to him and were still on fire, catching his fur.

He turned around to look at the forest, his ears slightly lowered. For the past month, this place had been his home, so he felt sad to see it up in flames.

Due to him being distracted, however, he didn't notice the footsteps behind him until it was too late.

Hearing a soft crunch of a boot on dry leaves, his ears perked up, and he immediately spun around only to suddenly be grabbed around the muzzle, causing him to release a muffled yelp of annoyance, trying to claw at the hand holding him. Still, they wore strong leather gloves so that his claws couldn't hurt them.

The human skillfully bound his legs together and put a sort of muzzle around his mouth, then picked him up by the tail, causing Zion great pain and making him snarl at the human.

As the human carried him, he heard them speak but couldn't understand a word they said. The human seemed to be a guy from what he could tell, although he wore a face mask, probably to protect himself from the smoke billowing around them from the forest fire.

The guy carried him towards a nearby camp with a large carriage and a few various-sized cages, some open while different beasts occupied some.

Zion even recognised a young Lightning Deer, a lightning affinity beast from the middle zone of his forest, in one of the cages, covered in a few burn marks.

The human raised him to about chest height and spoke again. Two more humans raised their heads from one of the cages and replied to him.

All of them had masks around the bottom half of their faces and thick clothes to protect them from the struggles of the beasts they were grabbing.

The two new humans were a male and female pair. The woman walked over and leaned down to look closer at Zion, then said something as her eyes sparkled with greed.

Zion growled from within his muzzle and waved his bound paws angrily, causing the other guy to laugh and speak.

The one holding him walked to a small cage and three him in before shutting the cage door. Then he at least cut the bindings off his legs, allowing him free movement in the cage.

Zion immediately moved to the front of the cage and looked around. He figured out what happened already; these people were most likely the cause of the fire. They start a fire to scare the beasts in a specific area of the forest, and then when the beasts run to escape, they catch the ones that are more likely to sell. Strong ones, ones with an affinity, or pretty ones like himself.

These people were beast trappers... Zions' first encounter with humans in this world was not very pleasant, to say the least.