927 927 Is This Civilized
It was nearly midnight when they returned to the camp, and Max was ready to get out of his Mecha and take a proper shower.
It was one of the great drawbacks of being in a Line Mecha instead of a Super Heavy or Titan Class unit. He had gotten used to having all the amenities at his fingertips and a nice, comfortable bed. But while the seats in the Line Mecha were designed to be perfectly ergonomic, and you wouldn’t get stiff or sore from sitting in them for long periods of time, it wasn’t the same as being able to stand up and stretch your legs, or lay down in a nice comfortable bed for the evening without leaving the safety of your Mecha.
Both Nico and Huntress Khan were in a great mood when they gathered at the communal showers that evening, and there were plenty of Huntresses waiting outside to hear all the details of how challenging the Bosses of the camps went.
They wouldn’t judge Khan harshly for not being able to defeat the enemy. In fact, they viewed it as an honour to find a target that you could not defeat and challenge it anyhow. In the Huntress mindset, the only real way to grow and advance your skills was to challenge someone stronger than you and live to learn from the experience.
Khan had definitely done that. If she hadn’t been in the Hunter Suit, there would have been no contest at all. But the pure speed of that overgrown Myceloid was enough to shock everyone who was listening to her story while she showered.
Khan paused, framing her thoughts on how to explain the next part of the battle, so Nico jumped in with her observations. Her tone was light and joking, reminding everyone that she wasn’t looking down on the Huntress. But her words definitely didn’t make it sound like the fight was in her favour.
“I wish you all could have been there. I have footage of the fight, but to see that axe work in person was something that everyone should experience. Right from the start, Khan was on the defensive against the double attacks. That Boss is definitely ambidextrous, and the flow of his attacks was impeccable.
It was like a conductor leading an orchestra of battle, and Huntress Khan was the one dancing to his rhythm. One single blade and a Hunter Suit that wasn’t as fast as her opponent had her doing nothing but evasive footwork and minimalist parries for the first few minutes of the battle.
But the best part is that she managed to hold on so long that Max didn’t even get to issue a challenge today. The two of us took all day to get through our fights.” Nico laughed.
The Huntresses giggled at that. It was one of the most annoying experiences that could happen while hunting in a group. Everyone else you were with found their targets, and then you were left without anything to fight, just watching everyone else.
Even worse than that, everyone else would have a great story to tell when they got back, and the best you could say was that you were there to witness it.
For the Huntresses, it was tantamount to torture.
Khan finished her story with the description of the strange Myceloid with the spare parts headband that came and stopped the fight, and the listeners burst into laughter.
“Do you think that is their cultural uniform for a referee? Or perhaps he’s some sort of weapons technician, and it marks his position within society?” One of the Senior Huntresses asked.
Khan shrugged. “It could be either. We didn’t get a chance to ask since it was already dark, and we wanted to get back to camp before something happened, and we ended up fighting a night battle out in the open with only five hundred Mecha.”
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They were mostly just existing when we arrived through the Anomaly, primitive and without any sort of real defensive weapons. Most of them barely showed signs of intelligence.
Even a few days ago, they were more of a hive mind. The strongest of them did all the thinking and gave the orders while the others just followed along.”
There was a lot of intense discussion on the topic, and even footage and data sets were brought out to support the various interpretations of the level of civilization that these creatures had before they arrived and when it changed.
Max looked over the data and realized they had a point. When he had opened the portal to the other layer, and the being that was overseeing the battle there had noticed him, some of that immense power seemed to have bled through to the Myceloids here and given them a level of cunning and organization that they lacked in previous engagements.
[It’s like they went from being nothing but brutes to Cunning Brutes. I like it. They’re perfectly at one with their nature as a species.] Nico was thinking as she listened to the Huntresses talk about the change.
Max thought that was an excellent description. They were missing the cunning aspect of their nature before. Now that they had it and were starting to organize a civilization of sorts, it was likely that they would start fighting in an entirely new way.
“It’s like they went from the Stone Age to the industrial revolution in a matter of seconds,” Max suggested. That was the most accurate way that he could describe how they had changed, with the new structures that they were building and the move from simply wandering the world to building fortified villages and establishing more complex leadership.
Huntress Khan nodded. “I think we might be seeing the birth of a new civilization in the most unconventional way possible.”