The Martial Unity

The herd began relaxing as they settled down, resting as the sun had almost completely dipped under the horizon. Rui observed carefully, waiting and hoping for the target of his mission to show up. As the night grew darker, he couldn't help but wonder how the target of his mission had managed to hunt so voraciously and yet be so elusive.

The Shaia Plains were gigantic, meaning the herbivore population was immense. In order for a single or even a handful of beasts to hunt so excessively that they significantly impacted the herbivore species and be still be so elusive that the Ministry had a hard time learning more about it, he couldn't even imagine how such a thing came to be.

It didn't matter how powerful one was, hunting a huge number of herbivorous animals everyday was not something that could be done very secretively. If it was just one or two animals, it would be one thing, but as many as would be needed to affect the ecosystem?

Was it really possible to do such a thing uncaught?

Rui intended to find out. Out of all the herds he had detected, he had chosen the largest herd. Chances were that the target of his mission would go for larger groups of prey because of the greater amount of food it could eat. Thus, increasing Rui's chances of being able to ambush the predator.

Of course, it was entirely possible that the predator roamed around the Shaia Plains in a much more random fashion, hoping to get lucky enough to stumble into a small heard that he could then completely devour.

If that was the case, perhaps Rui's strategy would not necessarily increase his odds.

('Can't be helped.') He shrugged. The Shaia Plains were enormous, there was a limit to what could be done by him. There was even a chance he would fail this mission and the Martial Union would dispatch a team of Martial Apprentices to aid with the reconnaissance and extermination of the target or targets of the mission.

Or he would get lucky.

using

And waited some more.

And some more.

just a little

waited so long that the sun began

knew this would take patience and perseverance. But

he ceased the static surveillance

standard gear for reconnaissance hunting missions, he was easily able to divide the Shaia Plains into squares, positioning himself at the center of the squares and began applying Seismic Mapping to

capabilities to a high extent. The problem was that it became harder to form a clear image of distances deep unground than it was to form on land, because the human mind found it harder to parse information

the target of the mission via direct surveillance, so he especially kept a look out for any seismic signatures that were either unknown, unusual or could match the estimated appearance of the target of his

few hours later that he ran

corpse. It could barely be called corpse, since almost only the bones had been left behind. Yet the remnant flesh had not rotted much at all,

fresh as far as time since death goes.') Rui thought to himself, he was no forensic expert. But he could be reasonably

('Last night.') Rui realized.

than the one Rui had been trailing. His

deer corpses could be seen, all in a very similar condition. This was very odd to Rui