<Adventurers PoV>

A woman geared with a solid metal cuirass and similar armored gauntlets and greaves sighs and arches her back, letting the popping sound from her back joints echo in the quiet dark of the campgrounds. She was the leader of a 3-person group of adventurers, she was the frontliner, with her was a rogue who was a bit more flippant when relaxed but serious when needed, and and elven witch, a relative newcomer to the guild but competent as shown when providing support, not to mention how easily she picked up that wind magic earlier. Even trying and knowing it was there, the armored woman couldn’t detect it easily, and she prided herself on being a spellshield user.

After discovering the magic being used to eavesdrop on them, the rogue moved to the rear to keep watch, sure enough he spotted what must’ve been an ‘irregular’ or maybe even a ‘unique’ or ‘named’. These terms describe monsters that have managed to go outside of the normal path of development, sometimes evolving into unusual variants, this creature he spotted was similar to the Ember-Foxes found in the woods ahead of our current path, only this one had two tails and its colour was a shade closer to white than the typical reddish-orange that Vulpyros are known for. It seems to have kept their non-hostile nature as it never attacked, even now with most of us asleep it kept away, however it is definitely following.

Having been hunted by monster packs in the past, the woman can’t manage to relax even knowing that it is pretty much a harmless fox following them, the fact that its following is the weird part. It should be skittish and had run off, instead when spotted the fox hid for a moment and kept following us. For now the adventurers had decided to live and let live with the fox, though the witch had asked the leader if taming it was possible; the answer was absolutely not, even if it’s just an ‘irregular’ that would still make it completely immune to taming magics.

She was definitely sad at this news, even uttering how its a shame with how cute the fox is. Cute or not, the adventurers’ task was to see the caravan to the town ahead and couldn’t count on the members of the said caravan for help, one peculiar and possibly curious fox didn’t change much for them.

When dawn finally broke, the whole of the caravan packed up, making breakfast with a fresh hunted antelope thanks to the rogue. A quick water type spell from the witch helps flush the blood from the animal before it gets made into a quick kebob-style meal for everyone. The witch having a personal dislike for game-y meat leaves the meat on a scrap of fabric over the dirt, then the wagons finally move on. At their current pace, they hoped to reach the destination before sundown.

Having spent the night within earshot of the “caravan” turned out to have been the right choice, not only did I get to listen and understand the words the “persons” spoke, but one of them left behind food! I think it was that one “person” with the pointy ears and a stick, ah I mean “staff”. Apparently that means it’s a very important stick. More importantly! The food! It’s never tasted this good before, it was sooooo yummy! I could tell it was those things called “ant-aa-lopes”? Such a weird name for them but it tasted good, so whatever! 

But wait, if they gave me part of their prey, does that mean they don’t mind me following? I hope so, cause I definitely won’t stop now, not while they teach me so many tastes*cough* words! Definitely the words.

I went ahead and followed along as I did before, once again that one person spotted me, and I hid again and he made a weird noise when I did, it sounded like barking almost, one of the other “persons” asked why he was “laughing”, is that what you call that noise? I missed the rest of that conversation as someone else was talking and it made me curious. The person with the staff told the others that something felt off up ahead… and I know what she means, I can smell the territory marks even from here. We really shouldn’t be here, not even all of my former pack would’ve come into this territory willingly.

The people, oh yeah found out that people is what I should say instead of persons, made sure that everyone had some metal teeth that they call swords ready, the one person that kept seeing me moved to the front of the pack as they kept going. I start getting a bit nervous, I would never have come into this territory if the people didn’t go through it, and I’m wondering if *it* will notice all of us here, a pack this big would easily get seen from a distance… and I was right. It didn’t take long before the females of *that thing’s* pack showed up.

<Adventurers PoV>

The adventurers had warned the client multiple times about this, going straight through this path is safe in Fall and Winter, but middle of summer? Now they had the hunting group of a pride of Flame-Lions, thankfully it seems to be only a small pack by the 3 females in front of us, they all hope the Tyrant-Leo doesn’t show up, after all only the leader was C-rank, this situation with the Flame-Lions was already pushing what a D-rank party can do, and a Tyrant-Leo just by itself was already a C* rank threat meaning a party of C ranks would be needed.