Chapter 81: 80

Since the party got back onto the open road, Natalie felt confident that this would be the best time to practise with the energy inside of her. Keeping her eyes forward on where she was walking, she slowly focused on getting it move back and forth between her chest and stomach. Her control still felt clumsy and poorly directed, so she kept away from her limbs for the moment. For if any actually started being used, she would just get exhausted as she had before bed the night before. She did note that it felt just as difficult to move the energy as it had both the night before and this morning. That ruled out the idea that time would make it easier to handle. That left two ideas, and one she was testing out now. Thankfully, none of the group felt a need to talk while travelling. Staying quiet and aware of their surroundings proved to be a much more important endeavor time and time again. That, and they knew that she was trying to get a handle on the new energy. The canines were excited for their Alpha to become closer with them, while Shannon wanted to be able to use all of her partner's findings for when she got access to the power herself.
After an hour of them travelling down the highway, the changes were minimal at best. There were no signs, scents, or tracks of any monsters along the road sides, and a peaceful quiet enveloped the land around them. As for Natalie's practice, she could feel that it was getting easier to move as time went on. Slowly, she felt that while it was still hard to direct it, moving it in a direction was getting easier. The more she learned about this ability that she, and probably all other bonded humans, had access to, the more she was convinced that it was similar to a muscle. At the beginning, they were like newborns, not even knowing it existed, and using it just got easier and more coordinated over time. Knowing that practice with moving it translated directly to being more proficient at it, just gave evidence to the practice makes perfect theory they had originally. Now it just led to the question, what would bonding with more animals do to this energy? Would it increase the amount she had? Would it increase the max she could have? Would it even have an effect at this point? Too many variables and nowhere near enough samples to draw the information from. At this point, for all they knew what they ate would determine the amount of energy they had.
After another two hours of walking and training, they finally were able to see the next town they had to pass through. Claaresholm loomed in front of them. Well, maybe not loom, as barely anything was two stories tall, let alone three. Before they even entered the town, Shannon called out, "Hey Nat, I want you to remember not to bring anything in or out of the Soulscape unless it is absolutely needed. Am I understood?" At her words, Natalie could do nothing but nod meekly.
When Shannon saw the meek nod, her glare intensified, almost as if it her eyes were a threat all in themselves. "Alright, yes, I understand. Only in emergency situations will I utilize the Soulscape." At her words, Shannon let up with her death glare. Apparently, the incident of two days ago was still a prevalent fear for her. To be fair, it also scared Nat quite a bit as well. She had used the ability around smaller monsters before, and nothing seemed to be amiss then. Was it only with the bigger monsters? Did they just get stronger or did other senses grow as well? Or was it just all monsters growing and able to do it from that point on? More questions, but these Nat was fine to leave unanswered. Getting results for that would mean purposely goading monsters into attacking them and giving away their location, and that did not sound like a recipe for a good time, no matter how many canines she had alongside her.
Entering town, they carefully moved down the sidewalk of the main street. The parked cars and eighteen-wheelers gave at least a modicum of protection from being spotted. Walking down the centre of the main road of a town that potentially could be a monster den just did not seem like the smart call. As they went down, they passed by a number of businesses, including the animal shelter. It was a struggle to not go inside, despite the heavy smell of death that came out of the broken windows. Having now been almost two weeks since the events, it was extremely unlikely any animals would still be alive after being neglected for so long. Her finding Scout was probably about as lucky as she was going to get in terms of bringing in animals that were not able to provide for themselves. A few doors down from that however was a horseback outfitting retailer. Praising the luck for the farming towns of southern Alberta, they made a brief stop inside. Once there, they quickly made sure no monsters were inside of the store before doing a fitting for all three wargs. They had a wide variety of saddles in stock, making it just take a matter of time for the wargs to each find one that they felt comfortable with. Just in case though, they did store and duplicate each and every saddle that was there. No idea on what would happen in the future after all.

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Heading out of the store stocked up and excited, the group got back to the sidewalk and continued down highway 2. After Nat's extravagant looting spree that she had on the way to Lethbridge, most of what they needed was already taken care of, and what wasn't was either specialty or acquired when they looted Shannon's old house. As they headed down the street, dried blood accumulated slightly on the sidewalk, but none of it was in the shape of drops. All of it were sets of bloody footprints, and all of them belonged to either gobs or hobs. Thankfully, this seemed to rule out orcs as possible combatants, but there could still be large numbers of the tiny monsters as well, just overwhelming with brute force. Taking care, they made most of the way through town without incident. However, one second of carelessness was all it took.
*CLANG*
Everyone froze at the noise, watching as a can bounced past them as they approached the grocery store. Looking back, four sets of eyes laid upon Shannon, whose face had turned into a sight of fear. After a few seconds, all of them slowly relaxed, believing themselves lucky, when a shrill shriek sounded throughout the air. Seconds later, it was mirrored by many more similar sounds. Turning around, the group laid eyes in the direction of the grocery store. Flowing out had to be dozens of goblins and at least a dozen hobgoblins. At this point in time, every single member of the pack had the same thought simultaneously.
"Fuck!"
Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Jake, Viktor, Nikolas, Saganatsu, Eeleater, Eric, Corgi, Lachlan, Adam, John, Nicholas, Jacob, Onean, Erudual, Hades, Neal, Sebastian, Sir Hellington, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 25 patrons, which I will then open up an official discord for everyone to come and discuss the story in and hang out!

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