Somewhere on the Outskirts of Bosstown<\/p>\n
AD7, Royal, and Oyintsa walk into the woods beyond Bosstown.\u00a0 The depressing city ruins ended a few decameters back.\u00a0 Nature had completely taken over these parts.\u00a0 Tall grass and weeds flourished.\u00a0 The occasional tree shot out of the ground shading the entire area.\u00a0 Not even the roads were evident here.<\/p>\n
As they fought through the weeds to gain ground, they walked over unnatural looking hills from time to time.\u00a0 They were more like aged piles of rubble.\u00a0 Each smelled of rust, rotting wood, and wild mushrooms.\u00a0 There was quite a bit of red gravel underneath them as well; and roofing tiles all around them.<\/p>\n
How could my beautiful city be overcome by nature so quickly?<\/em>\u00a0 AD7 tried to riddle it out; then face-palmed as she remembered again. \u00a0It’s been fifty years!<\/em> \u00a0AD7 wanted to read about the details of her city’s decay but Royal had taken her handheld back a while ago.<\/p>\n Besides, Royal and Oyintsa seemed to be getting more aware of their surroundings.\u00a0 They were cautious on how and where they stepped.\u00a0 They moved quickly and quietly.\u00a0 They made sure they gave every sound attention and could identify them.\u00a0 With that, AD7 realized they were in the wild now.\u00a0 There were many places for the wildlife to hide.<\/p>\n AD7 tried to do what they did.\u00a0 However, it didn’t help that they were each holding five fragrant sandwiches designed to attract meat eaters.\u00a0 She looked to the sky.\u00a0 Through the weeds, several birds flew overhead.\u00a0 The birds seemed uninterested but birds could change their minds at any time.<\/p>\n “Tracks,” Oyintsa stopped as he spoke.<\/p>\n AD7 stopped as well realizing that she was about to run into Royal.\u00a0 She looked at the tracks.\u00a0 There were several.\u00a0 They were everywhere.\u00a0 Each identical in shape, they looked like deformed hands, with claws.\u00a0 Among the prominent large tracks were much smaller tracks.<\/p>\n “Ratcoons?” Royal asked.<\/p>\n “Ratcoons\u2026 with cubs,” he said the last words with a bit of enthusiasm.\u00a0 Ratcoons were much like rats; only much larger, intelligent, and aggressive.\u00a0 Unlike rats, they actually hunted live food as well as scavenged.\u00a0 As with most animals, adults with cubs to feed and protect were much more dangerous.<\/p>\n Both Oyintsa and Royal shoved things into AD7\u2019s hands.\u00a0 Suddenly, AD7 found herself holding all of the sandwiches.<\/p>\n “Time to go,” Oyintsa said as he produces a long throwing blade from under his cape.\u00a0 He throws it in the direction they were walking.\u00a0 The blade gains power and speed as it mows down to weeds creating a path for them.\u00a0 After about a meter into the weeds, it returns to Oyintsa.\u00a0 At that, the three of them run down the path to get as far away as they can from the den.<\/p>\n AD7 didn’t know if they were in immediate danger.\u00a0 Still, she knew when to follow the leader and did her best to keep up.\u00a0 Warriors don’t run without good reason.<\/p>\n About halfway through the path he created, Oyintsa turns, points, and shouts, “Left!”\u00a0 There was a short powerful gun in his hand.\u00a0 He pointed it to the left and fired behind Royal who kept running passed him.\u00a0 The sound was deafening.<\/p>\n After being in stasis for so long, AD7 was getting tired quickly.\u00a0 She found new strength when Oyintsa yelled and even more energy when the beast screamed just to the left of her and stood.\u00a0 It looked like an enormous brown rat more than four decimeters tall.\u00a0 Black patches covered its eyes and large white stripes traced down its body.\u00a0 She saw a fresh wound just beginning to bleed on its left front leg.<\/p>\n AD7 looks at Oyintsa.\u00a0 He has already drawn another gun.\u00a0 He flexes and roars.\u00a0 Suddenly, his cloak expands and turns metallic.\u00a0 It’s not long before he’s wearing thickly plated spiked armor still accented with his clan’s crest on the back.\u00a0 His guns have gotten larger as well.\u00a0 He fires them and reloads repeatedly as he charges the beast gaining all its attention.<\/p>\n Only after it starts attacking Oyintsa does Royal step in.\u00a0 She pulls out two rather large swords from behind her cape.\u00a0 AD7 immediately thought to herself. \u00a0Where exactly did those come from?\u00a0 Did she have them this whole time?<\/em><\/p>\n There was no sign of them existing before now.\u00a0 At the restaurant, Royal even sat on them with no sign of discomfort.\u00a0 No matter if they truly came from nowhere, one of them spouted flames while the other was engulfed in frost flakes.<\/p>\n A Hanja on Royal’s leg glowed red then she leaps into action.\u00a0 The impressive jump took her over the weeds and directly behind the beast.\u00a0 As she landed, she turned and slashing downward with both swords.<\/p>\n Her cuts were clean and damaging.\u00a0 Oyintsa\u2019s attacks were annoying and painful.\u00a0 But the ratcoon was much larger than them and very fast.\u00a0 It was going to be a hard battle.<\/p>\n #1<\/a> \u2013 Awakening #21<\/a>\u00a0– Awakening #23<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Somewhere on the Outskirts of Bosstown AD7, Royal, and Oyintsa walk into the woods beyond Bosstown.\u00a0 The depressing city ruins ended a few decameters back.\u00a0 Nature had completely taken over these parts.\u00a0 Tall grass and weeds flourished.\u00a0 The occasional tree shot out of the ground shading the entire area.\u00a0 Not even the roads were evident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,79,3,90,10,102,99,11,103,101,52,170,100],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ad7","tag-ad7-person","tag-champions-of-battle","tag-hanja","tag-oyintsa-yuan","tag-protection-talent-set","tag-ratcoon","tag-royal-qiu","tag-sword-master-talent-set","tag-team-combat","tag-thermal-talent-set","tag-uncategorized","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}