As their voices slowly faded I crept out from behind the tree and looked in the direction they vanished. After making sure that they really left I breathed out a sigh of relief. After calming myself I resumed my mission. From my estimations... I would soon arrive at their nest.

Almost crawling now. I slowly crept towards the flickering light in the distance. The sound of their voices became louder and louder as I got closer. Lying on my stomach in a bush I tried to get a clear view from beneath dense leaves.

Their nest was quite large. Maybe a good 200 meters of distance from here to their weird tree. A few weird looking things were setup around the clearing as beasts lurked within them. Their attempt at camouflage seemed laughable with all the bright lights and loud voices coming out from within the strange things. Outside the strange objects a fire was brightly burning. A few beasts sat around each fire as they talked. Most of their words were about food. But I did not see any cores lying around... I found the situation very weird.

While deep in thought something even more strange happened. A few beast took some strange tool and pulled out something from the hollow iron hanging on top of the fire. That beast purred it into something in his hands... After a few moments he pulled out another weird tool and started shoveling it into his mouth. I looked closely at the scene with wide eyes. These beasts actually ate something else than cores or mana! The situation turned extremely weird as they laughed and ate that weird substance... It was pretty hard to hear what they said clearly... Seeing them all occupied I decided to get a better vantage point. As a hunter I knew that a favorable position were vital when gathering information on your subjects.

Slowly creeping backwards I left my spot under the bush.

Squatting down I steadily looked around. The open clearing sure made my job difficult. The brightly lit flames that I mocked just recently suddenly made more sense as I found it hard to creep closer. An genius idea suddenly appeared as I starred at a large tree next to me. Looking it up and down I found it quite good. Strong branches and lots of leaves. Making up my mind I started to slowly climb up as I made sure to stay aware of my surroundings. The loud sounds from their nest perfectly masked the sounds of rustling leaves as I slowly found myself sitting between a few strong branches filled with dense leaves.

Now in a more favorable position I resumed my honorable mission of making sense out of these strange creatures.

There were young beasts and old beasts. Some of the beasts had long hair like myself and some had short hair. The older beasts lacked some hair but most of those beasts had some growing down their chin. Touching my own chin I wondered if I would grow hair there as well when I grew older...

As I kept watching them and getting excited about their mysterious actions I would sometimes slip up and relax my body. When I did that I would quickly get myself under control again. But after a few slipups I noticed something. When I made an unconcious slipup one or two of the beasts dressed in plantfur would raise their heads and look around with an weird expression. After making this discovery I kept myself under stricter control as to not breath too loudly or let my mana leak unintentionally. All my training back at the waterfall ended up serving me well.