Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

The village chief had a few things to discuss with the party regarding the task. It seemed that the target had been staying in the hills just a bit north of the town. Since they approached from the south, that made sense as to why there was no sign of such a creature during their travels.

It also was most active during the day as it actually had relatively poor eyesight. At night, it retreated to a small cave in the hills that were a little hard to get to without attracting the attention of other monsters.

Their best bet was to wait for it to get hungry and begin hunting. Lucky for them, they arrived around noon, so they would be able to get started on tracking it down. The plan was to enter the twin-headed bear's hunting grounds and wait for it to attack something. They would then wait to strike until after the fight was over so as to avoid having to fight multiple monsters.

If they stayed close enough to the bear, then the weaker monsters would avoid the area and they would be able to fight it alone. Also, by attacking it right as it is about to eat, it will have already expended at least some of its energy prior to them having to take it down. It was an E-Rank Beast, so they could manage it well enough.

Lethen and Jen combined should be able to manage a D-Rank monster well enough.

However, it was important not to get cocky as one small mistake could end everything. As per usual, Lucius was put in charge of tracking. Rena and Paul provided covering fire, and Lethen and Jen would take the front line. They agreed to replenish their stock of supplies in town before gathering at the northern exit to head into the woods.

"Everyone have what they need? Once we head out, we aren't coming back till the job is done." Jen informed them. She looked at each member's face and nodded with satisfaction. "Alright, Lucius, put your nose to the ground and lets go."

"You know my the beastman half of me is feline, not lupine, right?" He protested.

"Well, the way we rely on your nose, I'm beginning to wonder about that." Jen joked.

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Everyone had a short laugh, even Rena. In all honesty, it was a funny joke, so he chuckled a little as well. They headed into yet another set of woods, this time to track down a beast that would make the Alpha Deer piss itself.

For the most part, the trek was simple. With his sensitive hearing and nose, he was able to avoid most interactions with monsters. His eyesight also helped, but since the area was forested, the other ones were a little more useful. They saw all kinds of monsters just like the ones in the village.

There were common wolves, as well as monstrous variants, both ranked and unranked, like the Fanged Wolf (F-Rank), a Red-Eye Wolf (unranked), Shadow Wolf (F-Rank) and a few others.

Unranked monsters were usually stronger than their non-monstrous counterparts, but were not quite strong enough to contend with Beginner Rank fighters. They were maybe one and a half to two times stronger than their non-monster brethren.

There were also a handful of Goblins (unranked) and Hobgoblins (F-Rank) patrolling the woods. They were low in numbers and each group appeared to be separate from the others. Normally they were not threatening because their territorial nature lead to them fighting with other groups rather than joining up with them.

On the occasion they would band together and present a rather dangerous problem to cities and towns since their breeding members would work together to rapidly produce an army that would outnumber a village in a matter of weeks. Something like that required a C-Rank variant of a goblin though, and they were extremely rare.

While they could easily have thinned the population of these monsters, since humanoid monsters were much harder to tame, they decided against it. Avoiding all fights was better in the long run for them for both energy conservation as well as preventing their real foe from discovering their whereabouts early.

A few hours passed and by this point, Lucius had to guess that it was about four in the afternoon. He could not reliably check the sun's position in the sky thanks to the treetops filtering all the light through to them, but he felt like he was relatively close.

"It's getting close, but the bear should still be…" Lethen started before Lucius shushed him quickly.

He thought he picked something up off in the distance, somewhere to the northwest. He waved the group to lower themselves to the ground and wait, while he darted off between the trees. Ever since becoming a retainer to Rena, he still maintained his father's training regimen on top of the one his various trainers had for him.

Because of this he was able to maintain a rather lithe form despite all the different workout regimens his trainers put him through.

This fact helped him quickly dart in, out, and between different trees and clearings as he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound he had heard. For a little while there was nothing. But then there was a strange roar, as if it was two slightly different pitches opposing one another.

"That should be our guy…" He muttered to himself before returning to the group.

Thanks to him remembering where he left them and the path he had taken, he reached them much quicker than it had taken him to get to the spot where he pinpointed the target.

"It's several hundred feet off in the northwest. I heard it's strange two-tone roar. I don't know if it's attacking anything yet, but I found it."

"Good enough, lets go before it tries to flee to it's den." Jen said with a nod.

Lucius turned around and led the party the direction he had identified the bear in. Since he had returned to them it had slightly changed location, but it was still in the same relative area. Once again he gave the group non-verbal signals to quiet down and let him scout a little bit ahead.

Just a few hundred feet in front of him was a small gap between the trees. It was not a natural gap. Several of the trees in the area had deep claw marks as if the bear was marking its territory to ward off anything dumb enough to wander nearby.

Some of the trees had been snapped at the base or completely uprooted and there were hundreds upon hundreds of divots in the ground which appeared to be signs of previous battles against other beasts.

The monster was planning on making this a permanent home and was cordoning off its little slice of the forest. That village chief's son certainly was a fool.

Finally, Lucius laid eyes on the creature in question. It was easily two or three times the size of a normal bear. Even when down on its four legs, it stood about twice as tall as he did. Also, as the name would suggest, it had two massive heads joined at the neck. It seemed to give it just shy of perfect three hundred sixty-degree vision.

There was no way in hell that it could see directly behind its own massive form, but it definitely was close.

The beast exuded power spades beyond what Lucius was capable. Every step it took shook the earth around it. He felt a cold sweat run down his back.