Chapter 36: Chapter 18 – Hit-and-Run

Anger was not an emotion that I was particularly familiar with. Frustration at a failed hunt? Sure. Annoyance at being teased by my fellow fox-kin? Of course.

But... As I snarled ferociously at the four steel-clad men trying to surround me, the pure, unrelenting fury in my heart had long since eclipsed practically any other emotion I'd ever felt, having even surpassed the fear I'd felt whenever I faced a life-or-death crisis.

I launched myself downwards, burying myself into the waist-deep snow. Contrary to these humans who were clearly struggling to fight properly in this harsh terrain, I'd been raised here. I'd trained, fought, lived, and struggled always surrounded by snow, and it definitely showed.

The men panicked, trying to spot me as I burrowed my way through the snow like a missile, practically vanishing from their perspective.

But, while they could not see me, I could definitely sense them.

I reached my target, and with a bloodthirsty grin, I smashed my fist into his knee, shattering his kneecaps and causing him to fall down, which was exactly what I'd wanted.

I fell upon him like a man-sized piranha, tearing open his chest even as my jaws found their way to his neck, tearing out a bite-sized chunk from it in an instant.

The other men were screaming, trying to run their way here, but between their heavy armor and the fact that they couldn't just jump through the snow, thus avoiding having to slowly dredge through it, they might as well have stood still with how slow their charge was.

I leaped away from my fallen prey, my eyes flashing as I scanned the situation.

The humans were losing, but they were not losing as fast as I'd have liked them to. Already, I could see them rallying around the golden-armored man, the one who'd managed to survive my strike.

Alone, the humans were easy pickings for us, their cumbersome movements and heavy armor utterly useless against our sheer speed and steel-rending claws. But, by working together they managed to become a much more serious threat, something that was rapidly proving more and more true as each minute passed.

I glared at the golden-armored human, feeling my hackles rise up as he glared right back at me, clutching his fancy sword in one hand and his equally fancy shield in the other.

Most humans present carried medium-length swords which they used both hands to wield, a fact that was exceptionally advantageous to us. After all, had they had spears, they could've sort of kept us at length. With shields, they could've defended themselves from our strikes. But with nothing but a single sword?

The moment their guard was broken, they were dead men walking.

But enough about that. I kept on running, leaping across the snow in graceful jumps that easily cleared dozens of meters of ground, and through that, I was able to arrive at my target very quickly.

The human never even saw me, focused as he was on boxing in Leiran, who was holding off five others alongside my target. With a silent snarl, I rammed both my hands through his back, piercing so deep that they punched through his entire body.

The man shrilly screamed in agony, as I ripped my hands back out, casually casting his dying body to the side as I charged at the next closest human, who'd been alerted by the first man's scream.

Without the advantage of surprise, this human was quite a bit tougher to kill, as he desperately tried to backpedal towards his comrades, who unfortunately for my target, were being bogged down by a snarling Leiran.

He didn't even try to strike me with his sword, simply holding it in a defensive posture even as he fell into a similarly defensive stance. In response, I fake-lunged, pretending to swipe at him with my right claw, watching as his eyes immediately focused on that limb even as my hips twisted.

The tail strike that caught his unprotected left flank was a brutal one, as my fluffy tail shattered bones and crushed organs. The human was sent sprawling to the side, where he let out a faint wheeze.

I stomped down on his head, crushing it like a grape. He thought he could invade our home? Steal our things? Kidnap our people?

I'd showed him just what I thought of his arrogance, just as I'd show all the rest of these low-life scumbags.

Had I been any less furious, I might've stopped and thought about my own feelings. I might've realized that I was being irrational, that I was being uncharitable, or whatever else.

But as it was, all I could think of was about how good it would feel to rip my next victim's head off his shoulders.

Leiran soon joined me, having forced two of the humans to run away even as he'd butchered the other one. We nodded at each other, and together, we scanned for our next targets.

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But alas, there were none left to be had. Or at least, none that looked like easy pickings, as the only humans still alive had all clustered together around the golden man and what I was pretty certain was a mage if my nose hadn't lied.

"Where is mom?" I asked Leiran, even as the two of us circled around the humans, trying to find a weak point. I could see the rest of the tribe doing the same, a few of them sporting some rather nasty-looking and yet already healing cuts, having evidently not been as lucky as I'd been.

"Yiera's acting as the safety net." He grunted back, giving me a quick explanation when I glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "If we look to be in trouble, she's the one to bail us out. She's also remaining back to act as the tiebreaker."

"Ah," I murmured, accepting his explanation. "That's good. It'd be awful to lose anyone to these humans." I said, finding myself unconsciously snarling as I said the word 'humans'.

Leiran merely inclined his head as we rejoined with the rest of the tribe. Minus mom of course, who was probably hiding somewhere.

The reason for us doing so was because, at this point, attacking the humans by our lonesome was too risky. It was basic hunting knowledge, after all, to always go after the outliers in a herd. The weak, the wounded, the young, and those too far away for the herd to defend.

Attacks on the herd itself were to be avoided as much as possible, for that was where they were strongest, and we weakest.

And so it was that seven fox-kin- no, wait, eight. Arias had joined the battle at some point, it seemed. Eight fox kin glared against the much-diminished group of humans, who now only counted somewhere around twenty strong, compared to the fifty or so they'd been at the start.

"He's strengthening them." I heard Liao speak up as our two groups glared at each other. I didn't look at him as he said it, choosing to instead keep my eyes on the slowly retreating humans, but I did twitch my ears in his direction.

"It's one of those weird human magics. Kill the gold one, and the rest will fall." Liao added after a moment, and when he did, I immediately knew that those words weren't directed at us.

No. They were directed at our strongest.

"Spread out and encircle. Get ready for Yiera to act." Liao ordered a moment later, his ears twitching as though he was listening to something far away. "Give them an opening. Don't let them fight to the death."

Once again, I couldn't help but approve of Liao's quick thinking. As our second strongest, and definitely oldest, it was his duty to act as the leader when mom wasn't present, and his age definitely showed in his strategies.

By giving the humans a chance to escape, they would, without doubt, take it once all hope seemed lost. After all, why fight to the death if survival was possible?

My memories of my past life were incredibly foggy at this point, but I faintly remembered some group of people using this tactic. The mogols or something? Manganels? Mignols?

Throwing those useless thoughts out of my mind, I refocused on the present as I stalked around the humans, keeping over two dozen meters in between us. I could see some of them staring fearfully at me, clutching their weapons tightly.

In response, I merely kept walking for a few more moments until I reached a corpse. Then, I crouched down, and began to eat, making sure to make it as messy and gruesome as possible, keeping my eyes on the humans all the while.

My psychological assault worked wonders, as some of them began to look green, their eyes widening in horror. Hell, one of them even puked!

I gnawed on my meal's spine, keeping myself as tense as I could, waiting for the instant that mother would act, and the battle won.

A moment later, I amended the thought as I watched several of my tribemates imitate me, each of them grabbing a human corpse so that they could feast upon it before their ex-comrades' eyes.

This was no battle. It had never been, for despite their numbers and equipment, these humans had never stood a chance.

And, as mom erupted from below the snow, her blood-red hair and tails giving her the illusion of being a devil rising from the depths of hell, I decided on what exactly this not-a-battle was.

A slaughter.

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