The soldiers finally understood their leader's plan.
Crane had been a soldier for only 3 years, but he had been a hunter all his life, he lived and strived for survival so close to beasts that he understood a lot about their ways and hierarchy also.
When the hints being left by the marauders became too much, his brain worked as intended as he quickly deduced that this was a deliberate leading.
If he followed blindly, he would fall into a sure-death trap.
The easiest option here was to not follow the hints again and retreat, but they could not, the mission was that they should rescue the commissioner by all means which meant that they needed to do it even if they had to die.
Crane had no intentions to die though, this was why he improvised his plan. By now, he already guessed that the marauders were a tribe and their lair was probably here, so his planning was on how to confront them.
After thinking hard, he thought of the night idea.
If they met them at night, the marauder's plan would no longer be as full-proof which would open more opportunities for them to make mistakes.
This would increase his and his soldier's survival chances but it was still not reliable enough. This was why Crane thought more and his thinking paid off, he arrived at the most dangerous but most reliable plan.
From his years as a hunter, Crane knew that every mystic beast pack that dominated a region divided themselves into ranks to govern their territories.
The most common ranks were the alpha, beta, and omega ranks.
Already knowing that the strongest Swamp Spider in this swamp was an advanced mystic beast, Crane concluded that he was the alpha.
Below the alpha, there should be at least 3 betas who should all be intermediate mystic Swamp Spiders. Then below them would be the Omegas who could be weaker intermediate mystic Swamp Spiders or those of the basic rank.
This was information that was not written in the textbooks, hunters learned them through experience.
Once Crane arrived at this, he started consciously searching for signs of a beta Swamp Spider. His search was fruitful, he found one and he told his soldiers to rest just a kilometer away from the one he found.
Below the alpha, betas were the strongest beasts of a territory and thus were not as vigilant as other beasts. They were notorious deep sleepers, the only way to wake them was to ruffle their feathers.
Crane did just that by cutting the webs of this beta Spider. Once he did, the spider woke slowly but he already escaped with his soldiers.
The beta Swamp Spider followed their trail all the way to the lair of the marauders, and this was when all hell broke loose.
On seeing the massive Swamp Spider and seeing the fear on the faces of the marauders, the soldiers finally understood the genius of their leader.
At this moment, they remembered Crane's words. "The mystic beasts are not just our enemies, they are the enemies of the marauders also, we will use them to our advantage to escape".
Not only did the poison of this massive Swamp Spider deal irreparable damage to the marauders and their lair, but her manipulation over mud also triumphed that of the marauders as she collapsed their wall of mud.
This was what enabled Crane to rapidly escape on top of his Crane.
For a brief moment, Rex hesitated due to the lure of completing his 1st system sub-mission but he slapped himself into realization.
"This is f*cking survival mode!"
When he came to, Cassandra was nowhere to be seen. Rex cursed before choosing a random direction to escape.
Of course, escaping was not going to be that easy. Rex had to fight his way out of the horde of marauders and Swamp Spiders, his efficient mystic swordsman fighting style became a great boon here.
The marauders became the victims. Wherever a beta Swamp Spider went, a swarm of Swamp Spiders was sure to follow and they arrived in just seconds.
The marauders were reluctant to leave their lair, this became their death bed as the hundreds of Swamp Spiders wreaked havoc and destruction.
They may have lived in this forest for years and in this time completely understood how to deal with the Swamp Spiders, but against a beta Swamp Spider, experience alone could no longer make the cut.
The few that survived went after the soldiers for revenge.
…
2 hours later…
[You have killed a Basic Mystic Beast: Swamp Spider!]
[You have gained 2 mystic energy points!]
[2nd Sub-mission: Kill 100 mystic Swamp Spiders!]
[Mission Progress: 29/100]
After killing another Swamp Spider, Rex got 2 mystic energy points to replenish his reserves. As he already knew from his training days with Ben for the past 2 months, killing mystic beasts gave him mystic energy points.
This way, he had a more efficient way of replenishing his exhausted mystic energy than the generic way of absorbing mystic energy from the atmosphere.
This was what kept Rex going for the past 2 hours.
Crane's plan was really the most dangerous and most reliable. It was reliable in the fact that they at least already rescued the commissioner and her daughter from the marauders, but dangerous in the fact that they awakened a beta Spider.
They caught the marauders off-guard, pulling off their rescue in such a bad-ass manner mostly because the marauders underestimated them.
For these beasts though, they were too unintelligent to know what underestimation meant. They became the biggest obstacle to Rex.
The annoyed Beta Swamp Spider had no intentions to let any of them live. Despite being a distance away from her already, Rex could still hear her loud hissing that encouraged the other Swamp Spiders to hunt with more energy.
A Beta mystic beast's sleep was never supposed to be disturbed.
At times, Rex heard screams in the swamp of another person dying, he had no idea if those were his teammates or the marauders.
With the Beta Swamp Spider waking up, the swamp became a lot more dangerous. Rex survived only because, at night, he was no longer suppressed and could finally make use of his full powers.
In 2 hours, though he tried to avoid them, he met so many Swamp Spiders that he ended up killing an additional 21 already.
After journeying for so long with only 4 hours of sleep in-between, Rex was exhausted but he dared not rest. Rest was not what troubled him most though, what troubled him most was that he lost his bag of supplies.
In his bag of supplies were the 5 blood bags that he brought for this mission.
Without blood, Rex was screwed. The last time that he drank blood was more than 24 hours ago due to traveling with his teammates and the effects were already showing.
Rex's vision was already beginning to turn hazy.
Another fact was that due to the Beta Swamp Spider, the concentration of Swamp Spiders was too much. He could not escape; he could only go deeper into the swamp to save his life which in the long term was not a reliable solution.
Rex was forced deeper into the swamp for another hour during which time he killed another 14 Swamp Spiders, taking his total killed to 43.
Rex's situation did not improve much though, his sanity continued to be eroded the more his hunger for blood grew, and he was afraid of what he would do.
[You are hungry!]
[You must drink human blood within the next 24 hours!]
[For every hour that passes without blood, your intelligence will keep on degrading till the extent that you become nothing more than a beast!]
[For every 2 hours that passes without blood, you will lose 1 HP!]
It was during this dilemma that Rex met one of his teammates, he met an injured Turan who was still with the daughter of the commissioner.
Just like him, there was no opening for him to escape and he had no choice but to keep on going deeper into the swamp.
Now, together, these 2 soldiers were trapped in the swamp but Rex was more worried about his lingering hunger than he was about being trapped.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺