"Kira, it's your turn to take the front. I'll ambush this time." My hunting companion said as we ran at full speed, cutting through the snow like ghosts.

I gave no visible signs of answering, but Leiran didn't seem to mind as he drifted away from me, putting some distance between us as we ran.

Normally, I preferred to hunt with my mother, but for some reason or another, she'd been heavily insisting I hunt more with the others. I didn't really mind it all that much, so I didn't complain. Besides, she was the leader, so disobeying her wasn't something that I could just do, even if she was my mother.

I stared up ahead at the empty wasteland that I'd long since begun calling my home. I knew it'd take us roughly another three hours to reach the hunting grounds we were aiming for this time, so I allowed my mind to wander a bit as my muscle memory did its job.

It'd been roughly 12 years since I gained my second tail, and since that day, I'd worked hard every day to refine myself as a hunter and proper Northern-Tailed Fox, forcing myself to do twice, no, three times as much work and training that everyone else did.

Even with that, however, I was still the weakest in the tribe in almost all areas. It wasn't exactly surprising considering I'd recently discovered that mother was, in her own words, 'about five hundred winters old'. Funnily enough, she wasn't even the oldest, as that achievement belonged to the 900-year-old Liao.

From what I knew, lifespans could vary drastically between races, from the almost immortal elves, the millennias of life that dwarves could live, the five hundred or so years that demons lived, all the way down to humans, who could theoretically live for a hundred or more years, but in practice, most died around their forties.

However, amongst all these races, none were truly eternal. None, save the northern races.

I didn't really understand the theory or logic behind it, but from what I knew, those of us who lived in the north did not have any actual lifespan. We were, in practice, completely immune to the effects of time.

From what I'd theorized, it had something to do with our biology, and our ability to absorb mana from the corpses we ate. Still, even that didn't explain everything, but then again, I didn't particularly care.

Suddenly, my ears perked up and I stopped. I could hear Leiran stopping as well, likely having sensed the same thing I had.

"Humans..." I growled out, tasting the air for the smell that had become ever so disgusting to me through the years.

I hadn't personally encountered living, breathing humans yet, but I'd eaten them alright. All of those who came into the north were always either slavers looking to risk their lives to try and catch some rare and incredibly valuable nonhumans, or emboldened adventurers thinking they had what it takes to get rich in these lands.

I couldn't fathom why they would ever throw their lives away like this, as statistically speaking, only one in a hundred ever made it out of this place alive, and of those, only the truly lucky, strong, careful, and intelligent had any chance.

It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. This pointless greed and arrogance that led humans, and sometimes even demons, to enter into our lands as though they owned them.

Hell, one of our own tribe members had almost been caught by some of those very humans eight years ago, and only mother's timely intervention had saved our brethren. Needless to say, we feasted on human flesh that week.

I'd abandoned my humanity a long time ago. After all, kindness and love won't ensure you have a full stomach, and in the first place, the more stories I hear about humans from mom and the other tribe members, the less I can bring myself to associate humans with those qualities.

Humans were evil, greedy, arrogant, disrespectful, and weak. They treated lives like toys, wasted food, and sometimes even managed to kidnap our kind, they had all claimed.

But, honestly, it's not that I hated humans. Far from it, in fact. I respected them as both an enemy and understood them as a former member.

I knew not all humans were bad or evil, but those who came to the north? Those humans almost universally were.

And besides, even if they were kind and good, that meant nothing. They dared to intrude into our sacred home, and as such, they had to die.

Thus, without hesitation, I changed direction and ran to where I could sense the humans, Leiran following me from some distance away.

After ten minutes of running at full speed, we'd arrived. I didn't show myself, of course, opting to instead hide atop one of the few trees in the area.

The humans had formed a camp surrounded by wagons that acted as shields, with tents set up close to said wagons. In the middle, I could see approximately 20 people gathered, chatting and eating next to a campfire.

There were a few who were standing guard above the wagons, making sure no beast approached, but their number was pathetic.

I debated how to go about handling this. If mother were here, it would be easy to crush them under our foot, her power alone enough to slaughter ten times their number. However, it was just two of us, and while I was confident in fighting and killing all of these people using hit-and-run tactics, I didn't want to put myself at risk because of my overconfidence.

I felt Leiran swiftly climb up the tree and sit on the branch, resting shoulder-to-shoulder with me as he too scanned the camp. Once again reminded of his presence, I felt myself relax. As the older fox-kin here, it fell onto him to be the leader in situations like these.

Unfortunately for me, it seemed that he had other plans today, as he gave me a cheeky grin and whispered, "So, what's the plan?"

I blinked for a second, not understanding what he meant. Then, when the metaphorical lightbulb went off, I snarled at him, whispering back. "Asshole. You're the older one here."

"Yes, I'm older, so you've gotta obey me. So, what's the plan?" He repeated, amusement rolling off of him. Apparently, he wasn't considering the humans as even remote threats if he was being so casual, and considering that he was by no means an idiot, chances were high that his assessment was true.

The thought calmed me down, and I once more took stock of the human position from our vantage point. Upon further inspection, I understood just why he was allowing me to take charge.

Usually, humans had the advantage of better weapons and armor than us, an advantage that worked well against our utterly unarmed fighting style... Or at least, it would've, had our bodies not been so obsecenesly stronger.

However, the weapon of this particular group looked rather... poor.

They had virtually no bows or ranged weapons that I could see, and I didn't smell any particular amount of magic rolling off them, so that meant they also had no mages, which was less surprising.

As if that wasn't enough, they also dared to drink what I'm pretty sure was some kind of alcohol, judging by the heavy smell. That was akin to begging to be murdered in their sleep.

It was a request that I was more than happy to oblige. Humans didn't taste particularly good, but variety was key in a proper diet, and their flesh would be a nice addition at the weekly feast.

"Wait for them to drink more, then take the opposite side of here. Act when I do, and kill the guards, then everyone else." I ordered after thinking about it for a minute. A simple plan, but in most cases, simple was best.

Leiran grinned widely at me, jumping off the tree and quickly vanishing into the snow despite his crimson features. Despite the situation at hand, I found myself staring intently at the clear display of hunting prowess, feeling a strange heat build up within me as I did.

Thankfully, I was quick to shake it off. I frowned slightly, confused at whatever had come over me, but nonetheless pushed it to the back of my mind so that I could concentrate properly.

For an entire hour, we waited. The sun had gone down thirty minutes into the wait, and now, the humans were getting ready for sleep. After another forty minutes, I deemed the time to be right.

Without warning, I stalked out of the tree and sneaked over to the outside of the ring of wagons, unseen by any human eyes. From there, I carefully positioned myself until I was directly below one of the guards.

Then, I struck, leaping up with inhuman speed before grabbing him by the throat, before then dragging him back down, ripping open his neck so as to prevent him from screaming and alarming what few other guards still remained awake.

After separating his head from his body and then hiding both as best quickly and efficiently as I could by literally burying him under the snow, I stalked over to another one of the guard, repeating the process with him as well.

I scanned for more people to assassinate, but it seemed that Leiran had done a better job than I did, as he'd killed the three other guards already. An acceptable loss on my part, but one that I wanted to quickly rectify.

Still, despite competitive spirit, I didn't lose my hard-learned caution. After sniffing the air and twitching my ears back and forth like a hunting dog, I was ensured that no one had remained on watch and spotted our actions.

Feeling more confident, I stalked over to one of the lower-level tents. A foolish choice, that one, as while sleeping in the open air would have exposed them to the elements, it would have also allowed them to keep far better track of each other.

Once inside the tent, I was surprised to find two men resting naked in each other's arms. A cute spectacle for sure, but nowhere near cute enough to spare them the fate of having their heads ripped off their bodies.

They died silent deaths, deaths that would have never come about had they been smart enough to stay off our lands. After staring at their bodies for a few seconds longer, I let out a snort and focused back on the hunt.

There was no one else in the tent, and so, I left, heading towards the next tent and the helpless victims within it.

And so it went, with me jumping from tent to tent, separating heads from bodies without making a single sound. And, as I killed the last sleeping soldier present, I reflected on the nature of our tribe.

We were hunters, not warriors. Despite our strong defenses and overwhelming offensive capabilities, most of us preferred quickly dispatching targets rather than openly fighting.

Which, summed up, meant we had absolutely no problem fighting dirty.

Leiran had been overlooking my silent killing spree from above the wagons, making sure I didn't make any foolish mistakes that would require him to act as my safety net. Thankfully for both of us, I didn't, and as I reached the last tent and the only one with still-living humans, I paused at its entrance.

They were speaking together, talking about things that I couldn't understand. Their words sounded foreign to my ears, their language a far cry from the harsh tongue of the tribe, or the smoothly-flowing English I still remembered somewhere in the back of my mind.

After hesitating for a moment, I looked up at Leiran's position, asking for his permission with my gaze. He tilted his head, not understanding my gesture, but nonetheless waved offhandedly at me, knowing that whatever I did, the two humans in the tent would be no match for me.

And so, with my permission obtained, I strolled into the tent with a cocky confidence to my steps. I reveled in the surprised gazes and shouts of the humans who were too surprised by my sudden appearance to take immediate action.

I grinned at them, showing all of my sharp and bloodied teeth. I may or may not have taken a bite of two out of the previous corpses, and while I would like to say it was for intimidation purposes, it'd really been me being an absolute glutton.

The fatter man flinched back, raising his hand in a futile gesture of defense as fear and greed alike shone in his eyes for a moment, only to be replaced by confusion and hesitation.

The other man stared back at me with a mix of caution and some other emotion in his gaze, licking his lips as his eyes roved over my body, focusing on my chest, legs, and groin most of all.

My eyes narrowed. I'd gotten used to the general nonchalance that my fellow foxed held in regards to nudity, so to see a human, and one so disgusting at that, leering at me as though I was a toy for him to do as he pleased with... Well. Let's just say that it displeased me.

So, I attacked. His eyes widened in surprise at my sheer speed, and he tried to defend himself by throwing up his arms across his chest, fully willing to sacrifice them to buy himself a few seconds, but it was all so damn pointless.

I easily weaved my way through his defenses in an instant, and once I did, my clawed hand piercing into his torso, cutting through his ribcage like a knife through butter before grasping his still beating heart.

He screamed in agony, the sound of which actually hurt more than the desperate headbutt he tried to perform immediately after.

The only thing that brought him was a concussion. My northern body was simultaneously far denser and tougher than his own, and even ignoring that, he was already a dead man walking if the gaping hole where his heart used to be was any indication.

I smelled the disgusting odor of urine from the corner of the room, and I turned to it even as I eagerly took a bite out of the soft, gooey heart in my hands.

The man screamed loud enough that it would have woken up the entire camp if they had been alive. Unfortunately for him, however, there was nobody left that would come and rescue his sorry ass from me.

It was a rather anticlimactic end to this hunt. These men had all been pathetically weak, which was a bit disappointing. Generally speaking, the stronger the prey is, the better and more valuable its flesh is. It didn't always work out that way, but it was a good rule of thumb.

Even with that, however, I was rather satisfied with how it had all gone down. I slowly walked over to the man, licking my lips as I stared at him. Surprisingly, he actually fainted from fear, even as the puddle in his crotch got larger.

My nose wrinkled at the smell. Gross.

I left him there as he was, confident he wouldn't be able to escape even if he was awake, and walked out of the tent. Leiran stood outside, taking large bites out of an amputated arm.

"Why'd you leave one alive?" He asked me curiously, staring suspiciously at the tent's entrance. I snarled at him, although it really wasn't an aggressive gesture, just a habit.

"I want to learn their language. Don't worry, he won't live long." I promised, aware of his intense dislike of humans. After all, he'd been the one to get kidnapped by their kind and almost enslaved.

"... Very well. I want to kill him myself, however. I'll go call the tribe, these humans have a lot of nice things we can take." He said after a few tense moments. I nodded, watching as he sprinted away, easily jumping above the encirclement of wagons.

I kept on staring at the area where he'd left for a few seconds too long before casually bending down and picking up the half-eaten arm he'd left behind. No reason to let good food go to waste, after all.