Some more Zeldi training - Kiko was finding she loved this on, it was so cool! - stamina building and strength building exercises and an hour of what arently being enlighteo the flow of the universe through all things. It arently magic reted, and Kiko used that to catch a quiap because it was not going well for her at all.
After all this activity - and a restful night that was very serious because Ele didn't even ask to bed Kiko tonight - came the m. The kitsunes were outfitted with proper shoes, leather jackets to go uhe uniform, and ons of choice. Kiko picked up a Zeldi to match Ele, and a brace of knives. She wasn't super talented with throwing shit, but she had manual dexterity ah of vision down enough to make an accurate throw if needed.
The excursion was a lot more than just a few guys going to cut trees; carts prepared and followers bringing rods for fishing, baskets fathering herbs, bows for hunting. Apparently people took advantage of the situation to get a bit of everything, which was uandable. Feeling nervous and not sure if she was going to be able to ect properly with the guards and Fatherborn, the carava out!
Not tent to just smack the closest tree and call it a day, they wandered for an hour until they got to a specific grove of trees. Darker tharees that surrou, and thrice as tall, this was what the Kitsune Woodsmen were looking for, as tools were retrieved and work began. The followers had dispersed, taking a guard with them to fish and gather, or leaving aloo hunt. Splitting into four quadrants of five men to cover each dire, it was here that Kiko found why the party was se.
Far from the patrolled cities and policed outskirts, in the depths of the forests and mountains, stalked the Beasts. First sighting was called by one of the Watchers, a pair of Scraps approag the noise. Scraggily looking dogs with little cohesion, they were known to attract their own kind with baying howls ohey had found an point of i. Furious and cadaverous, they were little threat to a trained warrior, but did have a habit of appearing in rge number and could overwhelm small groups of two or three. Smaller s had to set traps and clear out a parameter befathering, but rge s like Yeni's would just match the number of Beasts wholesale ahem head on.
The howls came, signalling the attra of it's kin, and a few seds ter the howls stopped as Kiko threw a k it. Not a shot that would kill instantly, but ohat caused a great deal of pain. The sed beast would rush into the group of Kitsunes and be impaled oightly packed formation of spears and Zeldi.
This was the hour, Watchers calling breach points for each quadrant of Kitsuo cover, as being sin. Kiko got ser focused on the ining targets and thrusted for the skull as accurately as possible, fog on ign the blood and jolt of driving the metal through flesh and bone. Just whehing seemed to be going well, a nearby tree was almost obliterated when a bulky suit of armour was smashed into it. Following, came a trio of giant bull-men, taller than the suit of armour and massive in muscles. The front bull was bleeding out of numerous wounds, and then died when the suit of armour unched a twelve inail through it's eye with a resounding crack.
Pushing out and off from the tree, the suit of armour met the charge of the sed bull-creature head on, catg it's horns and digging short spikes into the ground with it's feet to reinforce posture. From here, the suit smashed it's head against the bull's skull and then activated high beam lights from the eyes, burning the bull's retinas. While it seemed the suit was doing pretty well against this bull creature, the Kitsunes had their own problems with the fact that the sed creature had decided to not bother trying to deal with the suit, and turn it's head towards the Kitsunes gathered instead...
