The Ghost Shepherd

Hunting in the Red Zone (part 3)

Clayton heard Allan’s warning but didn’t want to listen. He felt that he needed to fight the Demon in front of him, he had a hunch that it was something that shouldn’t be alive.

“What are you?”

“Sly!! A human” The razor sharp teeth made an appearance but he quickly closed his mouth and smiled awkwardly making him look even more creepy.

“I am serious here!!! One individual crossed the perimeter followed by 7 more, they will be here in 3 minutes. Clayton!! We need you to hold the line while we take care of the Dracos. Anku get ready... Alice please try to get a good shooting position. We will attack the ones Clayton holds back with everything we have and stall them while Anku and Sly grab one a piece”.

“Friends?” Sly smiled again and held his hand out but Clayton rejected the handshake, he was convinced that he almost died a moment before and he was right. It was not Sly’s intention to hurt him but the resentment everyone felt from him was real, and then that last attack really shook Clayton to the core.

Clayton moved to get his Lance and then towards the entrance to get in position.

The Barak race was very straight forward and was filled with good nature individuals that liked to live peacefully on their beautiful planet. The war had forced them to take up arms and now they were fierce warriors helping against the Argonian invasion and were very unforgiving to individuals that somehow lost their trust.

Sly understood Clayton’s attitude and had to let it go for the time being, he focused instead on listening to K.C talk about the findings. She told him that the two new techniques spent Resentment and Spirit energy (as she called them) in different amounts and that it was the reason the core shifted towards the Dark color since his Spirit Energy was at a lower level. The core, like everything else in nature, was looking for homeostasis but she still had not quantified the resource per se so it was hard to predict the amount of abilities of each version he could use.

The next three minutes were the longest each and every member of the team had experienced before, their hands were sweating while they tried to keep their eyes glued to the only entrance.

"He is coming, " said Alice, who climbed on a tree beforehand and was ready with her bow to lay some cover fire.

Gonzo passed by the entrance and to the back while the sound similar to a stampede came closer and closer.

10...9.8.7...1

The first Draco passed the entrance and then the second and just when the third Draco was about to make it through, Clayton came running from the side and tackled him shield first into the shoulder and sending him backwards against the slower dracos that were behind him.

Crash!!

The two that came running inside were picked up by Anku and Sly after a barrage of bullets from Gonzo that turned around and let them rip.

Praraaa… Praraaa

Two salvos of 5 bullets came flying towards the first Draco and hit it across the front of his body while a Scythe made out of dark energy came flying towards the second one. It was the ability he had used before that slowed and blinded the creature it hit.

The blinded one smashed into the first one that had eaten the barrage of fire bullets making them both lose balance but in the meantime, a horizontal swing of Sly's weapon cut his head in an instant.

It all happened really fast, the cut was so clean that if the Draco was standing still there was a chance his cells would just try to reconnect. By the time the head fell to the floor Sly was already running towards Clayton.

Allan did his job beautifully as well, he manipulated the gravity around the small area where 3 dracos were trying to get up and to everyone's surprise a rain of ice arrows dropped right on top of them making the floor slippery as well.

Anku also took care of her Draco with one swing and with the adrenaline firing in all cylinders she followed after Sly that jumped into the air and swung the scythe down tip first killing another one before taking his plasma gun and shooting the one right next to it.

Clayton was defending against the two that didn't fall down and the help came like a gift from heaven.

In a matter of seconds the tables had turned and the dracos were now at a numerical disadvantage.

During the fight , the Spirit, of the dead Dracos rose up and the core absorbed them immediately. With the renewed Spirit Energy, the core shifted towards the blue version and as Sly used his ability, it went flying with a diagonal spin towards one of the 2 Argonians attacking Clayton.

The Draco put his hands up to protect himself from the ability but it was not Physical so his resistance was for nothing. The blue Scythe went inside the Draco and then out came a roar.

The Draco didn't know what was wrong but he couldn't move and felt like a stranger inside his own body. The Draco felt numb and then when he least expected, he had a hole in his throat from the plasma gun and then he closed his eyes for good.

Woosh

The soul was sucked in and then before Sly could change his attention to the two remaining Dracos a giant fire arrow came flying in and hit a Draco in the heart.

The last one standing fell to a barrage of bullets and arrows that hit him from a distance while Clayton stopped him from advancing. The fight took 2 minutes from start to finish but even after the danger had passed the Barak still kept his guard up against Sly.

"What the f**k Gonzo, next time just roll over and die. Don't bring us your problems" said Anku.

“I am sorry… I was careless. I saw two of them hunting a freshwater slink and I thought I could bring them here so we could kill them. When I got close enough to use my guns… I let them have it before running back but then I saw, it was actually a pack of five and then... I picked up the other two along the way”

“Lucky for us Sly does not suck at killing Dracos… Good job buddy” added gonzo with a smile.

Sly was distracted by the incredible urge he had to eat the brains and it all seemed to have started with the digestion of their spirits. Allan started looking for cores and the sight of the organs opened sly’s appetite even more forcing him to do what he must so he ran over to ‘help’ Allan with the task. The rest of the team didn’t see anything strange about it, it was common practice to go over the bodies and extract the cores to sell them separately to the many industries and maximize profit, but they failed to notice that the brains were disappearing without a trace.

It was hard for Sly to stop his saliva from rolling down his chin and act disinterested but at the end of the day he was able to collect them all. Nobody seemed to notice that the brains were disappearing or they didn’t think anything of it except for one person that was looking at Sly like a hawk, Clayton.

“Ar...are they trophies? Serial Killer for sure..” mumble clayton under his breath.

It was good that Clayton didn’t have a clue of their actual purpose or he would have left the team immediately for fear of one of his organs going missing while he slept.

Sly put up a conservative smile and gave Allan all the cores to be distributed at the end of the hunt before placing one of the Dracos in his Space Folder to conserve it until Steelforge came back.

Overall the team worked well together and were able to surpass the crisis without any casualties. Gonzo continued to speak about what he had seen and the best thing that came out of it was the fact that he had to go 30 miles out in order to see the Dracos.

Apart from Dracos, there were also a few Sellids that looked like giant crustaceans while they rested but like gigantic armor humanoids with claws once they stood up. The majority of the time they ate a particular type of flower by streams but were pretty brutal against the members of the alliance, they were at war after all.

After the report was done, Sly excused himself and went to a corner and faced the trees, he had a stupid smile on his face and as he huddle in a corner, he pulled out a Brain and started to devoured it with ecstasy unaware of the incoming person.

“Hey!!” Allan put his hand on Sly’s shoulder and then said, “Thank you for your help today, it could have been a disaster”

“Won’t man ti on it, We are a team”

“You should...ah ...clean your cheek… ah you have a little bit of brain hanging around”

“AHHH... It has been weird after the enhancement”

“I have seen worse… and some from people without the enhancement. If you can fight like today because of it...well… go ahead and eat some more”