Elemental Cats

The monotonous walking the past few days didn't bother any of them, Nil and Toz had mostly calm personalities, and Lucy slept almost all the time.

Although the river seemed to be almost brimming with fish, eating the same thing all the time would be boring, so they switched it up by eating some dried snacks because they were too tired to do anything else. Or if the river allowed it, they crossed over to the forest and picked some fruit or caught some game.

Lucy had discovered a type of berry that, when paired with roasted rabbit, made for a delicious meal. Although Toz was curious as to why that was, neither Lucy nor Nil seemed to care much about it as long as it was delicious. Still, like most interesting things he found, Toz made a note of it in his exploration log.

A couple of days had passed since they first heard about the ember deers, but Lucy hadn't forgotten about it, and most of his time awake was spent standing on Toz's head, looking around in anticipation before falling asleep with slight disappointment. Until finally, the trio noticed obvious traces of a large number of animals passing by. Where the grass was still there, it was significantly shorter, and clear bite marks indicated the reason why. The ground was trampled, and small hoofmarks were left on bare ground.

The tracks had left a wide open area in the grasslands next to the river. Since there were no signs of them crossing the river here, there was a possibility of them still being on the plains.

Lucy's excitement was infectious as Toz also started moving more energetically in search of the deer herd. It seemed the herd had followed the river to the point where Toz and his group came upon the tracks before moving deeper into the plains.

Since they didn't have to worry about food and had filled a few containers with water, the group followed the deer in the direction of the mountain that could be vaguely seen in the distance.

The ruckus caused by the herd had scared away almost every other living being in the area close to the path made by the moving deer. Since they didn't have to worry very much about external threats, with the added calm of walking through a deserted road, both Toz and Nil took the opportunity to train their mana.

Walking during the day and training their mana at night, the group continued walking in the herd's footsteps. Although they hadn't seen the herd yet, the tracks had steadily grown fresher. Lucy's excitement that had cooled down during the monotonous walk had reignited, and he would have run on ahead with a smile on his face. If not for Toz stopping him, Lucy would be unable to contain himself and almost immediately, upon encountering the deer, would have thrown himself over them.

A few days after parting ways with the river, Toz felt tremors in the ground. Since Nil and Lucy were riding on him they didn't notice until the deer could be heard. Toz kept walking while trying to suppress a smile, wanting to surprise the two cats a little. Unfortunately, they both had good enough ears to hear the barks and grunts and stomping a bit before Toz. Nil and Lucy exchanged a look before staying silent, with the same idea as Toz, wanting to surprise the other party.

If it weren't for Lucy struggling and failing to suppress his giggles, Toz wouldn't have realized the other two had also noticed the shrinking distance between themselves and the herd. Still, he didn't say anything and only kept walking.

As they followed the herd closer and closer to the mountain, the grassy plains slowly grew bumpier, with small hills popping up here and there, increasing in size until, finally, it finally became a mountain range. What from afar looked like a singular large mountain was several peaks arranged in a row, with varying heights.

As the evening came to a close, after reaching the top of a slightly bigger hill, just to the side of the path cleared by the deer, they finally saw it. At least Nil and Lucy saw it since Lucy insisted on covering Toz's eyes for absolutely no reason. Lucy tried covering his ears with his hind legs as well, but with no luck since they were too short.

"Tada!"

"Wow..."

Nil had already realized Toz knew as soon as he let Lucy cover his eyes with a chuckle, so he merely enjoyed the sight.

Spread out below the hill was a veritable ocean of deer, numbering in at least the tens of thousands.

There were a lot of young and old deer thus far, all of them had the distinguishing embers on their foreheads, but it still made for a mystical sight. The setting sun at the horizon, bringing away the previously bright day, leaving only darkness. The swaying embers shine on varying shades of brown and black fur. With the fur being darkest right where the embers sat, and gradually growing lighter along the body, the fur that could be seen due to the light of the embers was often of other deer. The body and ember moving irregularly turned the sight of the herd into something supernatural.

Even though they had caught a glimpse right before the sun completely went down, and all three of them knew it was all just a bunch of regular deer, it still sent a chill down the spines of Toz and Nil. Normally, their sight would hardly get worse during the night since two were cats and Toz was a second level twice refined mage with a natural inclination towards cats, but it seemed like the herd had absorbed any and all ambient light into their embers, turning them into the only source of light. The only one who seemed unbothered by the eerieness of the darkness was Lucy.

If not for the size of the herd and Toz holding him back, Lucy would have definitely crawled closer and tried to hunt at least one deer. Although Toz was restraining Lucy, he also felt like taking a closer look at the deer and maybe even grabbing one for dinner.

Since both Toz and Lucy wanted it, naturally, they would do it. The two of them slowly sneaked closer and Nil went back a bit to prepare a campsite while at the same time placing a few traps.

With a herd large as it was, it was impossible for all the deer to be asleep at the same time, and Toz had to rely on Lucy's dark vision to find a deer that was separated from the rest and an easy target.

It didn't take long for Lucy to find one. Several meters away from the closest deer was one, carefully eating some of the grass left in the area. Signaling Toz, they started to prepare. Usually, against a single first level wild beast, no preparation was needed. But when failing meant having to go up against a herd of deer that numbered at least in the thousands, with a lot of second level and maybe even third level deer, it was best to succeed. And all they had to do was take it down without making noise and without letting the deer make a sound to alert its herd.

Both Toz and Lucy gathered their darkness mana around themselves in order to conceal their presence even further. Toz also gathered a bit of metal mana in his right hand as they got closer.

Finally, after a few painfully slow moments, they were a step away from it, completely undetectable in the dark of night. Toz slowly raised his hand and condensed the mana into a hair-thin needle. He also coated the needle with darkness mana so it wouldn't reflect light from the embers on the deer's forehead. Controlling his mana and the needle so the deer wouldn't sense it, Toz moved the needle in front of the deer's right eye before plunging it in and covering the hole by turning the point left outside into a coin-sized circle. If any blood leaked, it would possibly alert the other deer.

With the prey killed, all that was left was to grab it and stealthily but speedily move away.

Toz grabbed the deer and slung it over his shoulders and, with the help of Lucy, covered it in darkness as he started walking to where Nil had set up camp. He had learned from experience that now was the most likely time to be discovered, so he didn't dare relax until he was more than a kilometer away from the herd. It would have been even longer if not for them being downwind from the herd. That was also one of the reasons why they had decided so quickly to go for it instead of circling around and scouting out the situation a bit more.

Toz quickly found the campsite Nil had set up since it was the only source of light within sight. After arriving, the three quickly prepared the carcass. Lucy and Nil were responsible for cutting it up into appropriate pieces, and Toz seasoned and grilled it over the fire. A few spices were needed to suppress the charcoal taste that sometimes surfaced in the meat. But aside from that, the natural taste of the meat was surprisingly smooth, which, combined with the tender texture, provided for a satisfying meal. Although the taste was good, it wasn't anything extraordinary, but the satisfaction it gave, having been the closest to real game during the journey, was noticeable.

The three enjoyed the meal in relative silence, as Lucy was eating so enthusiastically that Toz almost got worried the herd would hear it. After finishing almost the entire deer, they went to sleep with bulging bellies, at ease thanks to the traps that Nil had set up.