The Phoenix [Cultivation, Reincarnation, Tower Climber]

Mammoths are surprisingly hard to find. You wouldn't think that a ten ton, six-legged pachyderm would be good at hiding, but apparently, they are nomadic herd creatures, meaning that they travel in groups and never stay in one place, and apparently the place I'm in is not one with any mammoths. There are lots of very aggressive elk and leech-wolves though. They usually back off after I kill one of them, but they still keep showing up randomly, and I've probably killed five of each so far.

One of the things I had been confused about when I first got to the Tower and learned about the hunting Quests was what happened to all the corpses. It would be inconvenient for a group of people to take back even a single wolf corpse, let alone a mammoth, and I'm just me. I didn't want to have to take a bunch of tagalongs with me just to handle the spoils of the hunts. Fortunately, the first Floor has a solution for that, and it's in the form of the constructs that seem to be everywhere here.

If you ever find yourself with a corpse that you have no way of dealing with, you can bring a little bell–silver this time, not golden–and it will summon a construct that disintegrates the corpse. Of course, if you do this, it doesn't make you any money beyond the basic hunting quest reward, but the Hall of Quests recommended that I do this instead of leaving them around. I'm not entirely sure why that's better than leaving them around, at least here in the north where they'll freeze before they can rot, but who am I to go against them?

I harvest the most valuable bits–the wolves' claws and the elk's antlers–but everything else gets turned to dust. And you're not allowed to do this with human corpses either. Well, you can, but they won't be disintegrated. Instead, the construct will take them back to the main city so that their deaths can be recorded, and to give their friends a chance to bury them and grieve if they want. I didn't want that kind of attention yet, so I just left the attackers Trinity didn't take lying around, and by now, the leech wolves have probably gotten to them.

I try to offer Trinity a bit of each kill, and while she will happily gorge herself on the meat, she refuses to replace the human corpses in her voidspace with them, and when I stop to eat, she pulls one out to nibble on. It's really unfortunate, but I guess I'll have to look a bit harder to find something that she prefers to human. Maybe the mammoth will be that thing.

It's only when the sun is about to set that I finally spot the first sign of the beasts. Here in the foothills, the snow is deeper, and would reach all the way up to my shins if I was standing in it. I'm using a weight distribution technique to stay on top of it, but the mammoths have no such thing, and they leave wide trails wherever they walk. The trails that I find are at least a day old, and they have a layer of fresh powder on them, but they're still very obvious.

I sigh. I was about to give up on finding the mammoths, and I was searching for shelter, but I can't just ignore the tracks right in front of my eyes. I glance up at the sun, then start trudging alongside the tracks. I didn't really have a particular destination in mind, so I might as well just look for shelter while following along.

I follow for about an hour until the sun has fully set and I have found neither shelter nor mammoths. Another hour passes before I finally find a small rocky outcropping that provides at least a little shelter from the wind. It's not perfect, but with my tent, I can make do. I spend about an hour meditating with Trinity, then another hour experimenting with transmutations before I sleep again.

The next day, I finally find my targets around noon. There's a small valley between a few hills where a stream runs through the center. The stream is covered in a layer of ice on either side, but the ice in the middle is shattered, and the flowing water is visible underneath. The ones that shattered it are all sleeping in a three-layered concentric ring with the youngest at the center.

I'm laying down in the snow, peering over the edge of the valley, and even from here, I can sense their oum. They're not 2 star beasts, but their sheer size means that each of them probably has 100 times more of it than I do. Although they appear to be asleep, I can also sense that the outermost ones are quite alert. They'll wake up as soon as anything gets near.

This poses a mild problem. There are more of them than I thought, and though it shouldn't be a problem to take out one or two, but if the other three dozen form a stampede and charge toward me, I will actually be in danger. Just by sheer mass alone, they could kill me in a single blow.

Honestly, do I even need to hunt them? Their tusks are valuable, yeah, and I did want to hunt them, but my main goal is the ginseng. The mammoth hunt was going to be a good way to get myself warmed up and used to combat again, but between the Shin family idiots and the constant ambushes from other wildlife, I'm already getting plenty of that. Attacking now would be an unnecessary risk, and waiting for them to get up and start moving around so they're distracted would be a waste of time. I wouldn't be surprised if they spent the entire rest of the day sleeping.

I think for a few minutes longer, then sigh, and start to get up to leave. It's disappointing that one of the main reasons for coming out here turned out to be a bust, but oh well.

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However, not 15 minutes after I leave and start walking toward the mountains again, I feel a faint rumbling in the ground behind me. I stop and turn around, listening carefully. It's getting closer. That's not good.

I look around for some place to take cover, but the trees in this area aren't very dense, and there really isn't any other cover. I move more quickly, getting up higher on the hill I'm currently climbing, but the rumbling keeps getting louder and louder. Another minute later, I finally see its source, cresting the hill across from me. The mammoth herd has woken up, and they're angry, and unfortunately, the man who is the target of their anger is running straight toward me.

***

Niccolo snuck around the edge of the valley while the others prepared for the hunt. Their target was in a slightly bigger herd than usual, but it was otherwise a normal hunt, and he was following the normal procedure.

As one of 3 2-Star members of their hunting party, he had one of the most important roles, that of the decoy. Mammoth stampedes posed a threat even to Late 2 Star Climbers if not managed properly, not to mention all the 1 Star newbies he was helping chaperone.

The procedure was fairly simple. Once Niccolo was in position, he would fire off a bit of oum. This would wake the mammoths, and also serve as a signal for the others to begin their part. While the mammoths were still drowsy and waking up, Arlene, a mid 2 Star, would then fire a spear at their chosen target, killing it in a single strike. As the mammoths woke up and found their comrade dead, they would notice Niccolo, standing on the hillside, flaring his oum with a smile on his face. He would then kite them away for as long as he could while the others quickly dismantled the dead one and gathered what they could.

Niccolo was easily the fastest in their group, and sometimes even boasted about being the fastest on the Floor, behind only the King and the Princess. He wasn't foolish enough to challenge them.

That is all to say that he would have no trouble outrunning a few mammoths. In fact, in past hunts, he even had to slow down a bit to make sure he stayed in their line of sight so they could keep chasing him. Eventually, the mammoths would either give up on catching him, or he would decide it had been long enough, and he would speed away and circle back around to the camp.

At first, the plan went off without a hitch. Arlene's spear immediately killed one of the older bulls, and the enraged mammoths locked onto Niccolo. He danced around them for a minute or so while the youngest ones took some time to get their bearings, and then once they had all awoken and noticed him, he started running.

This went exactly as planned too, and he was able to lead them all out of the valley and into the hills where he led them further into the northern region, occasionally pausing to shout taunts and throw rocks to make sure they were still after him. He did this for about 10 minutes, and that's when things started to go wrong.

He was deep in the wilder parts of the northern region. The path that the normal Climbers took was miles away, and Niccolo's group had been tracking this mammoth herd for weeks, and there were no signs of any normal Climber groups targeting them. There shouldn't have been anyone in that region at that time. And yet there was.

It was a young girl, probably in her early 20s, and though she was a bit too far to tell for certain, Niccolo was sure she was still only 1 Star. She was standing not more than a few hundred feet away, looking at him with surprise.

Niccolo tried to veer to the side to lead the mammoths away from her, but a few of the ones chasing him broke off and started going toward her. From a pragmatic standpoint, that was no good. If they broke off to kill her, by the time they caught her and stomped her out, Niccolo would have already passed by. Most likely, they would try to catch up to the rest of the herd chasing him, but there was also a chance they returned to the valley where Niccolo's group was still cutting up the dead one, and that would be bad.

From a personal standpoint, Niccolo didn't feel good about getting a young Climber killed. When he became a Stray, he tried to cut off his feelings of empathy toward normal Climbers, since he knew most of them would kill him for the bounty if they could, but in this case, she hadn't been hunting him or his friends. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He should at least give her a chance to live and keep quiet.

He corrected his course, and started going straight toward her again. She was already running at that point, and to Niccolo's surprise, she was actually quite fast. So fast he questioned whether she was really a 1 Star. She was still not as fast as him though, and as he drew nearer, he confirmed his senses. She was a 1 star, and only a Middle 1 Star at that. Her movement skills were very, very impressive, but Niccolo could tell she was quickly running out of oum.

He accelerated to get closer to her so he could pick her up, but when he did, she somehow managed to speed up even further, and even drew her sword while glancing back.

"Wait!" he said. "I'm trying to help! Let me carry you! You won't survive otherwise."

She surveyed him with a cold, and oddly calm expression before sheathing her sword. A moment later, she stopped and jumped up into the air right in Niccolo's path. The action surprised him so much that he almost didn't catch her, but after stumbling slightly, he regained his footing, and the chase resumed.

With her in his arms, it was a bit more difficult to stay ahead of the herd, but it was nothing he couldn't handle. He ran at their speed for another half an hour before a few of them started flagging and running out of breath. He took that as his cue to speed up, and a minute later, he crested another hill and exited their line of sight.

He kept going for another few minutes to make sure they weren't still after him before he finally slowed down and set the woman down. Niccolo found it odd how calm she was as she dusted herself off. When he caught her, her heart was beating quickly from exertion, but within a minute, it had calmed down, and her breathing remained steady the entire time. Even now, she barely seemed to care that she had almost just died, and was instead regarding Niccolo closely with deep green eyes.

"You're a Stray, aren't you?" she finally said.