....Z looked at Scarlett and started to feel sadness well up in his heart. She was going down a path that he had followed long ago, he was determined to see her change her path.

"Sergeant Scarlett, I know how you feel, but honestly, even if you had succeeded your mission, you would most likely have lost more people. By sacrificing more men did you think your heart would feel better than it did before?"

"I... Don't know.." Scarlett looked towards the ground, as if deep in thought.

Let me give you a phrase that someone told me before

"The only battle worth fighting is the one where everyone lives to fight another day."

Z started moving from his position, walking onwards and resuming the prowling. Scarlett seeing him already moving off started walking to catch up with him, her face was hot as the words that Z had said ran through her mind.

Walking through the forest at night was therapeutic when no one is speaking it was just ambient noises. The sound of soil moving beneath the feet as dried leaves and twigs cracked as they walked.

As they passed by an empty clearing by the side the soil became damp. Z felt his shoe stick to the ground and as he looked down he realized that it wasn't mud at all.

"It's blood", Z told Scarlett, "there's a blood trail."

"let's follow it, once we get the situation we'll report back" Scarlett replied as they both got their artefacts and weapon on the ready.

Scarlett took out a small orb that lit up the area, holding it in her hand she made a small opening and shone the light down so as to follow the trail of blood.

Upon following the blood trail to a clearing, Z instinctively felt a chill run down his spine he felt like he was being watched. They found a mangled body of one of the recruits, his legs amputated from the knee down.

Upon seeing the corpse, Scarlett immediately took out her commswatch, ready to send out a report to notify the area. Z put his hand on her commswatch while putting his finger over her mouth.

Immediately he reached for his thigh and pulled out the knife that Lieutenant Raff had given to him. He turned around and with a flick of his wrist, he sent the knife soaring through the air pinning a lizard to the tree, killing it instantly.

_______________________________________
Somewhere within the forest a black robed figure wearing a mask with the number 12 on it grunted in displeasure.

"Tch, some kid killed my monitor lizard. Judging from the way it was killed it was the same f*cker that killed my bat too."

A man with the number 8 on his masked came out from the shadows,

"Oh? Did someone manage to find your monitor lizard? That's a big surprise. Leave it be, we have our mission to complete. Have you planted the poison bug with one of them?"

8 spoke directly, he was someone who didn't care about the loss nor feelings of others.

"8, I told you, I lost vision if I have no Vision how the heck can I control the poison bug?"

"Tch, if it wasn't for the mission being for the kid to die in an accident I wouldn't even need to bring your useless ass around to screw everything up, I could have handled this mission solo."

8 shook his head as he sat down on the ground.

"They'll be on the move again tomorrow, we'll find an opportunity to strike then. I got an idea..."

12 sat down in front of 8 as he immediately told him of his brilliant plan.

__________________________________________

After killing the lizard Z walked over to take a look, the dead lizard was still twitching from its muscle spasms as Z approached and removed it from the wall.

"What did you kill? Was it posing a threat to us?" Scarlett asked as he walked beside Z.

"This is... a monitor lizard. They usually come together in pairs and they share each other's vision. But the fact that one of it is here alone is really weird."

Z picked the monitor lizard corpse as he put it into a sack. Turning his head towards Scarlett he nodded as she gave the report and their coordinates to Lieutenant Raff who was back in the base who in turn reported to HQ.

Soon, the corpse retrieval team arrived. They slowly moved the corpse and put it on a stretcher as they shifted the corpse away.

"The recruit's from 13B and was declared missing since afternoon. No one knew what happened to him, but now after seeing his mangled corpse, it's probably an attack from some rat beasts."

Lieutenant Raff spoke as the two of them returned from their prowling duties.

"Lieutenant, the bloodstains, they don't seem like they were from someone running away. It was more consistent with being dragged. If it were the rat beasts, they would have consumed him, where they stood, why would they drag his corpse to that corner?"

Scarlett asked, wondering if her analysis was correct.

"Also, there was a single monitor Lizard at the scene."

Z said as he placed the lizard on the ground in front of him.

"Hmm, so many beasts are acting uncharacteristically recently, there are a few possibilities behind it.
1) There is a strong sentient beast there that is giving commands.
2) Someone is pulling strings from the shadows.
All of these are likely, but the 2nd scenario gives me the chills. I'd rather face a dozen sentient beast than a scheming human being."

Lieutenant Raff took another drag of his newly lit cigar exhaling the smoke from his mouth.

"In any case, when we move out later, we should stick together in a close formation, there is too much risk if we move in a spread-out formation."

Z and Scarlett both nodded as they looked for a space to rest. The sun had already risen, everyone within the camp had woken up, the strength of the barrier started to weaken as well.