Chapter 48: Fresh Meat

  Marcus took a look around and found very helpful signs and even arrows on the pavement. Although most of the arrows were hidden beneath the sand that seemed to be covering every surface. Kou shielded his eyes against the sun and inspected the distant landscape “You can see the large mountains from here, they are much greener. The whole place feels like Africa, well some parts of Africa.” Kou was right Marcus thought, but it was not a big surprise, comparable environmental factors create similar results. The real questions was why so many planets were so much alike Earth in the first place.

  They followed the signs to the main building and tried not to get run over by light trucks with hunters and heavy trucks with monster corpses. This was a large operation and Marcus wondered how much money was made here every day. It must be in the millions he decided.

  The main building was climate controlled and they quickly found the person in charge of the hunter organization, Mr. A. C. Hornfogger. Mr. Hornfogger (everybody tried not to laugh) was a small man with a receding hairline and he wore suit pants, a vest and a white shirt. In contrast to what the name suggested he made a sharp impression. He took care of the bureaucracy efficiently and then showed them a large map that had dozens of small markers on it. “Do you have a target or preferred area? You are free to go where you want but we like to know where everybody is in case a problem arises.” He came straight to the point which Marcus liked “We are going after the Death Stinger Scorpion. Can you recommend an area for the hunt?”, he said in a polite tone.

  The man gave them a look and then pointed at an area to the north that was situated between a river and the mountains.“You can find them in this area for the most part. They also exist further south but they are more sparse there. Which is not a bad thing by the way.” The team looked at the map and Marcus made a photo. “Do you know what to expect and how to handle the monsters?” Mr. Hornfogger asked.

  Marcus and Kou explained their knowledge and the basic tactics they had read about. He nodded and added a few points “What the information material does not tell you is that those bastards are smart and devious. Do not take them for mindless brutes, they hunt too. The second thing is that they can very well work in groups. Make sure you only engage singular monsters of this type.” and after a few seconds added “Don’t rush, if you can take one down in your first week you are on a good trajectory. The most deaths we have here come from people trying to get rich fast or overestimating their own abilities. Slow and steady wins the race.”

  After this surprisingly helpful meeting, the team left the building and got all the gear they needed for a whole week in the field. All the equipment and provisions were very expensive but there was no way around paying a premium on a different planet. They got one of the reinforced pickup trucks and a handful of corpse retrieval beacons and a powerful com system (yes, that costed extra) for the truck in addition to the provisions. Their target area was roughly 200 km away and was several thousand square kilometer large. According to the local time they were still a few hours away (22hr day) from nightfall and the white sun burned heavily down on them. Marcus was fine but the rest already ached under the heat. Kou looked especially down trodden, but Marcus was not sure it was because of the heat.

  Because Achara was driving, and not Janette, they reached a viable place for camping as the sun finally vanished behind the horizon and the air slowly started to cool. It was not their first camp in the field and everybody knew what to do, which made things go fast. It was back to prepared meals for all of them but they were not half bad. Janette and Achara were discussing something about clothes, while Kou sat a bid away from the rest and Marcus decided not to be a chicken and see what was going on. He sat next to Kou and after a moment Marcus said “Are you going to tell me or are you going to make me ask?”. “Remember when I asked you to help Achara and I said I don’t need it because I’m a support?” Kou said while staring into the night. “I feel different now. I feel like I’m holding you back or at least not pulling my weight.” Marcus had feared it was something like this.

  “You know that your class is a late bloomer. Eventually you are going to be a priceless addition to our team. Every clan looks for Spatial Mages.” Marcus said after a moment. “I can not wait ten years before I get useful to the group. I need to be useful now or you have to replace me.” Kou said with a somber voice which made Marcus angry “Listen, you have been more than helpful in the last encounters and your quick reaction in the centipede fight has most likely saved Bianca’s life. Don’t say you are useless or that you should be replaced. I will punch you.”

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  Kou gave him a thankful smile. “But you know what I’m talking about.” and Marcus nodded. More time went by as Marcus worked out how to deal with this. “First you have to decide if you wan to stay support or try to change to a damage dealer.” Marcus said with a firm voice and Kou was surprised but quickly said “I want to stay support.”. Marcus had hoped to hear this answer even so he would have supported Kou on a different path too.

  “First, you should only be a few levels off your third ability which will open up a lot of new options. Second, I will think of a better way to use your abilities in the group but it will most likely be very demanding on you.” Marcus explained and Kou nodded with a smile. Taking care of the problems and growth of the members, Marcus felt like this was part of his duties as the clan leader.

  The night went by without any troubles and the next morning Kou looked a lot more energetic, which made Marcus feel better too. After breakfast they got ready and slowly moved through the hunting area with their truck. Janette stood on top of the driver cabin and acted as look out. By now her eyes were better than any binocular and after half an hour she spotted one of the “scorpions”.

  They left the truck behind and approached on foot. Death Stinger Scorpions are wicked monsters with sharp senses and before the group could get into an ambush position it became aware of them.

  Instead of running away the monster charged them, but not in a straight line but in an angle. Marcus moved to intercept the beast while Janette gave off her first shot which hit but without major effect.

  Like before Achara went invisible and Kou moved to support Marcus, who came into striking distance. The DSS was over 1,5 meter high, three meter long (without tail) and weigh over a ton, but it was extremely agile for its size as Marcus learned. The fiend dodged Marcus’ attack and continued to circle around him, going after Kou. In only two seconds it was at his position but Kou was more than four meter in the air which caused the beast some distress. Achara struck in the same moment, her blade pierced right between two armor plates into the skull of the scorpion. It died.

  “Ehmm.” Achara said not yet fully sure that the fight was over. “First frag.” Janette said.

  They celebrated with a series of high fives. Afterwards they brought their truck over and called in the retrieval team. Janette sat down on the cabin of the truck to avoid any unfriendly surprises. It took several hours before the large truck came into sight but the process itself only took five minutes. “You guys don’t need to wait around really. It barely never happens that somebody tries to steal a kill. We are very strict about shit like that.” Said the driver of the truck.

  After hearing this was their first day he congratulated them “You got lucky to find one this fast and make a clean kill like that. The price for them went up lately because demand is much higher than supply. You will get 400k for this one, most likely.” The general morale of the troop improved after hearing this.

  With the same method they managed to take down two more of the monsters before the sun went down. It was common sense not to hunt at night and they decided to make camp a bit outside the hunting area. As it had turned out, Kou’s floating and Achara’s invisible attacks were a deadly combo against the beasts. In addition, Janette’s eyes were the key to finding the illusive monsters so quickly. The only one who did not do much was Marcus. He had to take care of the food and cleaning up to compensate. “Still, remember what the clerk said. The moment we get careless we end up in a coffin in the back of Johns driver cabin.” Marcus said and reminded everybody that this was not a game.

  His predictions became true much faster than he would have liked. The next day, as they fought with another scorpion, a second one suddenly shot out of a dip and charged Janette from the back. Marcus rushed to her while she ran his way and they passed each other, just a second before the beast came into range. Marcus prepared to engage the monster as he suddenly felt a terrible impact and pain, the large stinger of the scorpion had punched right through his armor and shoulder in blinding speed. The stinger was stuck in Marcus and the monster tried to push him down but Marcus resisted it with Anchor. Janette side stepped and put two rounds through the eyes of the monster from a short distance and ended the attack.

  Marcus held on to the tail and slowly moved backwards pulling the stinger out. He nearly lost consciousness from the pain and Janette stood next to him with a white face, completely forgotten was the other scorpion. Luckily, the other two had finished the first monster off and joined them quickly. The 40 cm metal stinger had pierced Marcus’ flesh and had shattered his collar bone but as soon as it was removed his body started to heal at unbelievable speed. They watched as flesh and bones reformed and even broken bone pieces were discarded. Ten seconds later Marcus was fully healed but his armor had a big hole.

  He moved his shoulder and there was no pain left but he felt a wave of exhaustion. Marcus had expected for some time that there would be an endurance cost to the healing but given the damage it did not seem a lot.

  “Thank you.” Janette said and touched his shoulder. “I would have hated to have such a hole in my armor.” She laughed but Marcus could see the shock in her eyes. “Let’s put down some beacons and take the rest of the day off.” Marcus said and nobody disagreed.