A Serpent's Tale
Chapter 271: Monster Hunt

Chapter 271: Monster Hunt

As soon as we entered the cave, we noticed the damp atmosphere, which was a tiny bit unusual, or so I heard.

I’d never been here before so I wouldn’t know, and it’s not like we had any reason to care. It’s just boars. Probably just some unique environment within these caves if I had to guess.

Anyways, we delved into the winding tunnels for a while until we came across a patch of hollow, interconnected caverns which each had a small lake within them and lots of flora as well.

The first cavern we came across had no monster boars in them at all. That wasn’t because we didn’t know what they looked like, simply because there was nothing but plants in this area specifically.

We headed into the next area and were able to easily find traces of these boar monsters. And these tracks would lead us to their herd, or pack or whatever the fuck a group of boar monsters are called.

Either way, we followed along the tracks left behind by the monsters, which are apparently supposed to look like giant furry beans with tusks.

In the next cavern, we did indeed find some monster boars.

And they did indeed look like furry wild beans.

They had four hooved feet which dropped down from the sides with short tails coming off their backs. Their faces had large-ish fluffy ears and a slat snout at the very front.

Some had tusks, some didn’t. They had somewhat beady black eyes as they all huddled up together and drank from the lake.

The fur on their beany bodies however, was where the most interesting thing was. A single lightning bolt like pattern on both sides of their body, typically in a grey colour. There were a couple with a red stripe though and one that had a blue stripe.

The one with the blue stripe was the biggest of them all, and it had the most intimidating aura of them all. Not to mention it had a second set of tusks, making four in total. Two curving down then pointing up, and another two that curve back then to the front.

We observed them for a little while before coming up with a plan.

Said plan was basically just to kill as many of them as possible before they could run away. Very simple, and very easy to execute.

And with that plan in mind, we both decided to attack from two different directions.

After less than a minute, we were ready to strike. I had to go a bit further away from where we observed them, so the signal to begin would be me jumping out of the foliage.

Which I did. Quickly.

Within just a second I was already at the side of one of the regular boars, cutting at its neck with my claws, using [Divine Claw Slash], and lobbing its head clean off. Or at least, what I thought constituted as its head.

There was a momentary silence among the boars as Lily then leaped out and hurled a volley of [Hell Fire] arrows at her side.

I took their momentary lapse in processing the situation and started slashing away at as many boars as I could, slowly filling down their ranks.

They finally responded to our aggression as the big blue stripped one suddenly gave out a loud and commanding roar.

*GRRRAAAAAHHHHH!!!*

The boars then started to run away as the big blue stripped one and the three red ones made a charge for us, with the red one’s going for Lily and the blue one, whom I took to be the leader of their herd.

I too started to hurl magic now as I threw several [Aura Slash]’s at the running fauna.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to get many of them as my aim kind of sucked ass to be honest. Kind of rusty.

But I didn’t have time to think about that though, as my focus was now drawn to the monster in front of me.

*Huff*

The big blue stripped boar was now stood before me, scraping on of his front hooves on the ground in preparation to charge.

I too got ready to take it on, getting into a lower stance, which it was as a sign of weakness indicated by the gleam in its eye before it began charging straight at me.

It stomped its hooves on the ground heavily, sending small tremors through the ground as it quickly closed the distance between us.

I cocked my left arm back and covered it with some regular flames, adding some [Fire Runes] to both the flames and my fist.

Words such as, ’impact’, ’power’ and ’force’. Things that would make my punch a lot more devastating.

I was not however expecting the monster to also use magic as blue sparks started to streak across its body as it suddenly burst forward with twice the speed, instantly closing the distance.

Unfortunately for it though, I was faster still, and was able to react as I threw my flaming fist out and loaded it with a [Fireball] which, empowered with everything else, created a searing shockwave upon impact with the monsters snout.

*BOOM!*

I punched the snout of the boar as it rammed into me, and I could see sparks of lightning coming off of its tusks as its skull cracked from the impact of my punch which sent it flying backwards.

The body of the monster skidded across the floor to the edge of the lake and I chased after it before it could get up.

Using my immense strength, I jumped up into the air using my tail like a springboard as I then twisted my body sideways in midair and used [Tail Whip] as I came down and slammed it into the monsters side,

*BOOOOMMM!!!*

There was an extremely loud and thundering boom as my attack smashed the monster into the ground.

Dust was blown everywhere and I was thrown off to the side from the shockwave generated by my strike.

*Cough* *Cough* *Cough*

I waved my hand with a powerful force, which created a gust of wind that blew all of the dust away, and when it receded, I saw the result of my assault on the giant monster.

The side of its body had caved in on itself, indicating that I had broken its bones. There was also the large pool of blood where its face was that was slowly growing in volume. The ground was cracked like a crater and water was starting to flow into the pit.

I went up to the boar with caution in case it might have one last trick up its sleeve. There was still a light in its ayes and upon seeing me, it instantly released a burst of lightning.

The lightning erupted like a dome of deadly energy as it grew bigger and bigger.

I didn’t stay to see if I could take it and just escaped before the blast of energy could touch me.

Said blast wasn’t able to make it far but it did leave a lingering crackling in the air around the area of the burst.

Seeing that it had passed away after its last desperate attack, I looked over to see how Lily was doing and saw that she had managed to beat the three monsters she had to deal with, though clearly not with as much ease as I did.

There were a few scratches and bruises covering her body, but nothing that wouldn’t heal over time. She also appeared to be a little out of breath also.

"Phew, that was tough. I can tell you haven’t even broken a sweat though despite taking on the big guy." She remarked as she walked over to me.

"Yeah, I haven’t really gotten a real gauge on my strength yet, so something like this seems to be a walk in the park for me. I won’t get complacent though, don’t want to make a mistake I might regret later on because of my hubris." I replied in a somewhat sombre tone.

"We should probably finish this quest up now. I’m sure that we’ve got more than enough monsters for this quest to be considered completed."

"Yeah, you’re right. Plus, it’s probably getting late, and I don’t want to worry everyone else after disappearing for a couple of days without notice."

"Mmm." Lily agreed with my sentiment and we then got to work putting all the monster corpses into a special item called a Monster pouch, which was basically the same as a Gold pouch, except it stored monster parts and corpses obviously.

We tallied up the amount of corpses we collected and counted a total of thirty-three regular monster boar bodies, the three red stripped one’s, which Lily suspected were some sort of berserk variant. And finally, the big blue stripped one, which I assumed was just a rare lightning variant of some sort.

With all of the monster’s pack away we left the way we came and scaled the mountains once more to leave, then back out of the tunnels until we got out from the dungeon just as the sun fell over the horizon.