Ajax woke up late in the morning, he had a hard time going to sleep from the itching, not only that but his stamina was near bottomed out from the day of fighting. He was used to spending his stamina but not with the repeated use of it for an entire day was something else that left him drained.
As he got out of bed he noticed that Kate and Tom had already left. Only Fluffy was still in the tent sleeping on her improvised bed in the common area. He scratched the sleeping feline in greeting before heading for the food tent, he had a scavenger hunt to go on and that wouldn’t do on an empty stomach.
He only took two steps away before the cat nimbly jumped on his shoulders not wanting to remain alone, and most likely wanting some food as well. Ajax was glad for the company as Fluffy might be able to act as a detector for whatever the shadowcat wanted as long as he brought her close enough.
Together they headed off to breakfast. The tent was relatively deserted with piles of food being served buffet style. It seems that despite his late wake-up a lot more people were sleeping in longer on their off day.
After finishing their second helping, and receiving a glare from the cook when they looked like they might go for a third they headed off into the woods. Once they were a decent way from the camp and Ajax was sure there was nobody else there to spy on him he started using [Syphon Mana] to pick up the pace.
Once they reached the area where he had first found the shadow cat he slowed down and started looking for any old tracks in case he could backtrack her steps for anything valuable. Despite the tracks having to be at least four days old at this point he didn’t lose hope as it hadn’t rained at all so the chances of finding some were still high.
After searching for almost an hour with nothing to show for it he was thinking about giving up on looking for tracks. This was still a decently leveled stealthy creature with a natural inclination towards shadow mana, finding old tracks was never going to be easy but he didn’t expect it to be so hard. Just as he decided to forgo looking for tracks and head out in a random direction Fluffy jumped off his shoulders and started slowly into the direction of a bush. Her nose was stuck to the ground so he guessed she was following a scent.
As he followed the cat past the thick bush he found the first reliable tracks that had to be left by her mother almost one hundred feet from where he fought it. He supposed this also made sense since, as he was the prey at the start of that encounter the hunter would have been careful stalking up to him, he also chided himself for not thinking of this sooner.
Finally having some tracks to follow he picked Fluffy up and moved at a faster pace. The tracks led him all the way to a big burrow they must have been using for shelter. Inside he found the body of an even bigger shadow cat that lay in a pool of dried blood. Content orıginally comes from 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅•𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾•𝗇𝖾𝗍
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With that taken care of he gave the burrow a good onceover but found nothing else of value in it so he exited and looked for tracks leading in a different direction than the one he came from.
He spent a good three hours running down different directions the tracks had led in. Each one turned out to be a wash with the track cutting off at some point and a scene with some dried blood being found about fifty yards from that point where the shadow cats had probably caught a meal. One such site also had the broken tusk of a boar left over, something he picked up but this was not the prize he was looking for.
All of the tracks he had picked up so far had all ended less than half a mile away from the burrow, he knew that whatever he was looking for had to be further away as no smart predator would nest next to a valuable resource unless it knew for sure it could defend it from others looking to partake. These cats were strong but still only around level twenty, maybe in the high twenties for the big one he found dead in their home, not high enough to monopolize anything in this forest.
It took a while but he finally found a set of tracks that led on for longer than a mile. As he followed them he also noticed quite an uptick in overgrown vegetation. The grass was almost halfway up his shins, this made him slow down and start paying close attention to his surroundings. Whatever it was that stayed here was dangerous enough that herbivores would avoid the plentiful food.
Luckily the increased vegetation also gave him more clear markers for following tracks, though they reduced the accuracy of what he was tracking. More than once he had to stop when the shadow cat tracks met with another's and spend a good few minutes differentiating between the two.
As he followed the tracks for another mile he finally found something. A massive clearing in the trees opened up to a small lake. It was about ten times the size of an Olympic swimming pool back on earth. Most importantly his [Sense Mana] was picking a deep concentration of pure mana in the water.
As he carefully approached the edge of the pond, as this wasn’t big enough to call a lake as he could easily see the shore on the other side, Fluffy was much more relaxed and eagerly jumped down from his shoulders to start drinking from the clear water.
A few seconds after he started drinking the mana signature started picking up in intensity. Nowhere close to how it did when he chowed down on a mana core but this was just a few sips of water already making a difference. He looked towards the center of the pond on a small patch of land where a tree not much taller than the rest of the forest but four times as thick took up nearly all the space. Roots thicker than his legs could be clearly seen making their way into the water. On a closer look he could also spot numerous fruits on its branches, from the size and green color as well as the season they were in he could tell they weren’t ripe yet.
With nothing else to do he quickly emptied nine of the ten waterskins he was carrying and started filling them up at the edge next to the thirsty feline. He wouldn’t dare drink any himself as he didn’t know what effect pure mana would have on a human if ingested. As he finished capping the eight flask and reached for the ninth [Danger Sense] spiked. He dropped the flask infused [Syphon Mana] and jumped back grabbing Fluffy with his free hand a moment before something smashed into the bank of the pond.
He didn’t see what it was even after the impact but could barely make out some scales from the mud that stuck to whatever appendage had been used to attack them. Just as he lowered the mana skin he had activated on instinct a jet of water shot off towards him. Since he was already on edge he had no problem dodging out of the way without taking his eyes off the water.
In the water he could now clearly see a big fish with a long tubelike tail. He recognised it as a trapfish, Hatchet had given him the rundown on a lot of odd creatures that adventurers should be wary off and this was one of them. The fish was more of a nuisance at lower levels but once it gained access to mana he would use it to camouflage himself for a surprise attack with his tail followed by a long-range water jet should its target survive.
Having switched his mana from the stealth to water manipulation did leave it without its stealth. Ajax instantly used [Judge Threat] as soon as he laid eyes on it. What he got in return surprised him. For the first time since he spent his stat points something other than Hatchet came back as dangerous to him. Now while the feeling was a bit weaker than the one he got from using the skill on Hatchet it still marked the fish as being in the mid to high forties.