352 352 Hunting
Wolfe and Grok crept through the woods, with the Goblin Paladin’s armour clanking with his slightly clumsy steps. That was an essential part of the plan, as they needed to draw the snake’s attention before the attack.
It was a massive magical creature, and Wolfe had no real experience telling how powerful they were exactly. Unlike Witches, who he could tell in an instant, he only got a sense of huge and powerful from the beast.
They were still ten metres away when the snake made its move, striking from a spot hidden in the trees while its lower body still lay across the road.
Grok’s Halberd flashed out, digging deep into the enormous bulk of the snake’s head thanks to the armour spell coating it, and Wolfe shifted to the side to avoid being swallowed whole. The snake must not have considered the smaller Goblin to be worth eating, as it continued after Wolfe, right up until he managed to cast a [Wind Blades] Spell that shredded the inside of its mouth.
The monster reared back in pain, and the Goblin hacked a chunk out of its side while Wolfe followed up with a blast of [Unholy Fire] down the creature’s throat.
Grok chopped out one of the creature’s eyes as it crashed to the ground, trying desperately to extinguish the fire searing its insides, and Wolfe started to build an Array.
He only needed a few seconds to finish it, but those seconds weren’t easy to come by in battle.
The [Wind Blade Array] removed the head from the snake, and Wolfe cancelled the Unholy Fire, avoiding having the snake’s valuable body burn to nothing.
“Good work, Paladin. Your first Evil Beast is slain.” Wolfe congratulated his partner, who was beaming with pride at the accomplishment.
“I think we need to enchant some weapons. Even my mighty halberd wasn’t enough to take out that beast on its own.” Grok sighed.
The head of the halberd was just over thirty centimetres across, while the snake was two metres thick, it was really no surprise that it was incapable of cleanly killing the monster, but Wolfe didn’t elaborate as he searched for the core that should be in the monster’s body.
It was a valuable reagent, and the Witches would pay huge money for it if they could get their hands on it, especially coming from a snake, which was a common animal called for in Dark Magic and Curses.
The jewel looked like a giant pearl, milky white with a rainbow sheen and almost as large as Wolfe’s fist. Once that was found, Wolfe looked at the rest of the body and realized that there was no way that they were getting this thing back without magic.
Wolfe carefully crafted a [Gravity Array] and folded the snake’s body into long lengths. That should let him pull it through the woods easily enough, even if it weighed over a tonne.
Grok collected the head and began to carefully strip the flesh from it as they walked, leaving a trail of bloody bits behind them that the forest creatures were stealthily snatching as soon as the two fighters weren’t looking.
Monster meat was even better for their development than it was for the Witches, and they wouldn’t let the chance to eat a morsel imbued with that much mana slip by them without a fight.
“Did you get it?” Christa called as she saw Grok come into sight of the clearing they were waiting on, then noticed the enormous head in his hands.
“What in the world was that? It’s huge.” She gasped while the Goblin pointed behind him to where Wolfe was walking with the body floating behind him.
“We found a year’s worth of snake meat in one spot. If we can preserve it, we should keep a whole backpack full and sell the rest.” Grok informed her proudly.
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“That should do. Let me at it, and I’ll cut off enough to fill one backpack, then preserve it with magic. We can smoke it when we’ve got more time.” She decided and took out a long dagger from her pack.
She ended up having to use water magic to cut the hide of the snake. Even after its death dispersed most of the magic on it, the hide remained quite resilient.
But once she was through that, the meat was quite tender, and a piece large enough to fill her backpack was quickly wrapped in a conjured leaf while the former contents were shifted to Wolfe’s pack.
“There we go. Now, let’s go find a patrol and get into the village for the afternoon. We’ve got a lot of haggling and trading ahead of us.” Ella announced with a wink.
Mostly they just needed to know if the rumours were true and that the villages were being run by a mixture of an independent Coven and the mundane army. But, trading all this excess snake would get them some more gear which would blend in with the locals and some spending money.
Chances are that they weren’t using the Morgana Coven coins anymore, so the group would need some of the new coins when they went further into the swamps. Assuming that they were all working together, that was.
It wasn’t hard to find the scouts, as they had dogs with them who warned them well in advance of the approach. The snake’s body was still dripping blood occasionally, and a well-trained dog wouldn’t miss the smell of it even if it weren’t bleeding.
“Halt there, what business do you have with the village.” The man with the attack dog called.
“We have found ourselves short on supplies, and we’ve hunted a magical beast to trade for what we need. Can we have passage to the village?” Wolfe called back.
“Oh, you lot. We were warned that you were coming. What did you, oh mother of the Goddess, what in the seven hells did you kill?” The scout asked.
This one wasn’t a human, though most of his companions were. He was definitely a male Witch, and that solidified Wolfe’s suspicion that the rebels and the mundane army were working together.