Chapter 182: The Most Dangerous Aurora Creatures (Patreon)

"There's something in the trees."

As if to prove Hayasaka Ai right, the moment her words fell, a dark figure loomed out of the conifer forest on the outpost's east side.

No, "dark" wasn't quite the word. Look closely and you'd see the silhouette was actually deep purple.

Isac locked eyes with it. Its eyes gave off an eerie glow, like two big lightbulbs hidden in the woods.

"That's..."

Yukinoshita Yukino frowned, trying to work out what species it was. Before long, an animal surfaced in her mind.

"A moose?"

Kaguya blinked at Yukinoshita Yukino's words. "A moose? That big?"

It wasn't that Kaguya was easily impressed. She knew perfectly well that the moose is the largest member of the deer family on Earth. Supposedly one can reach 2.6 meters in body length, 2.4 meters at the shoulder, and weigh as much as 1,400 kilograms.

Maybe those numbers don't mean much to you. Think of those little Smart cars you see on the road. Three meters long, only 1.6 meters tall, and a curb weight somewhere between 600 and 900 kilograms.

Put it this way: a full-grown moose is basically a Smart car.

And the black shape lurking in the conifers was even more ridiculous than those numbers. If an ordinary adult moose was a Smart car, then the shadow in front of them was that Smart car's pops: a full-size minivan.

"This has to be a special aurora creature, right?" Isac phrased it as a question, but his tone was dead certain.

If this wasn't a special aurora creature, he'd go celibate for a month once the aurora night was over.

"But why isn't it attacking?" Hayasaka Ai asked, puzzled.

Weren't aurora creatures all mindless war junkies? So why did this one keep hiding in the trees, with no intention whatsoever of coming at them?

"We've got a flashlight at home, don't we? Shine it over there," Isac said.

A standoff like this was getting them nowhere. With the branches overhead blocking the light, the aurora barely reached into the woods. The target was far away, too, so visibility was terrible. Even with Isac's enhanced eyesight, he could only just make out a rough outline.

Yukinoshita Yukino and the others could see little more than a lump of shadow, and only by concentrating hard.

Yukinoshita Yukino nodded, took a flashlight out of her shoulder bag, and pointed it toward the shadow.

Naturally, she didn't aim it straight at the thing. She crept the beam over inch by inch.

That was because aurora creatures hated light. Hit one with a beam head-on, and if it got spooked and bolted, that would be bad news.

From past experience, probing slowly like this made them dodge, not flee.

Then again, some of the nastier aurora creatures would get even angrier at the flashlight and charge them instead.

The moment the beam crept close, the shadow of the suspected special aurora creature visibly stirred. Yet for some reason, it still didn't move.

Yukinoshita Yukino looked at Isac, asking whether she should keep going. The beam was already at its feet, and at the edge of the light she could make out a pair of huge hooves.

Going by the shape of the hooves, it really was a moose.

"Keep going," Isac instructed.

He wanted to see how long it could hold out.

Anyway, until he knew what they were dealing with, he wasn't going anywhere near those woods.

As for why they didn't just shoot it, the distance from the cabin to the treeline was about a hundred meters.

A rifle could certainly hit at that range, but there was no guarantee of a one-shot kill. If they fired and failed to kill it, the thing could just turn and run, and with all those trees in the way, they'd have no chance of chasing it down.

And during an aurora night, letting a wounded one slip away was the ultimate bloody loss: all that lead spent for nothing.

So without absolute certainty, Hayasaka Ai and Kaguya, the two riflewomen, both kept their trigger discipline.

With Isac's go-ahead, Yukinoshita Yukino kept inching the flashlight along. Kaguya and Hayasaka Ai already had their rifles up, sights trained on the dark shape.

At the slightest wrong move, they would shoot without mercy.

But the instant the flashlight beam fully lit up the shadow, all four members of the survival squad wore the same strange look.

"It's... stuck?"

Yukinoshita Yukino raised the flashlight and saw that the moose's enormous antlers were wedged tight in the tree branches. At that angle it couldn't get any leverage. So even as the light panicked it, its four heavy hooves could only kick up snow and brush, and it couldn't go forward or back.

All it could do was watch helplessly as its whole body was exposed under the flashlight.

Why did this scene feel so familiar?

In Chinese it wouldn't hit you, but in the language Yukino and the others grew up speaking, the flavor came on instantly.

The Saint Stuck in the Wall

Stop. She couldn't keep thinking about it. Damn aurora. This had to be Slaanesh's doing.

Kaguya lowered her muzzle and turned to Isac. "What do we do now?"

"Can you guarantee a direct hit? If so, just give it a quick death."

Isac, at least, had a kind heart and couldn't stand to see an animal suffer.

Rather than leave it here to die stuck in the trees, they might as well send it off to paradise themselves.

And while they were at it, they could finish the quest and unlock the "boat ticket."

A win-win, really.

Actually, two wins for them.

"Should be fine."

Kaguya was quite confident in her marksmanship, but to be safe, she turned to Hayasaka Ai beside her. "Let's fire together, to make sure one shot... two shots does it."

Hayasaka Ai nodded.

"Bang." x2

Two gunshots rang out, one right after the other. Two bullets carrying tremendous kinetic energy flew straight into the giant moose. One burst a big eyeball, and the other tore through its chest and punched clean through its heart.

Special aurora moose: deceased.

Isac looked at the moose in the distance. Its limbs had gone completely limp, but because its antlers were hooked in the tree, its upper body still stood stiff and upright. He couldn't help but joke, "This has to be the most pathetic special aurora creature we've ever met."

With antlers that huge, it could've gone anywhere, and it had to go charging into the woods.

Then again, you had to admit that it was lucky it got stuck. With those long legs, the ice wall they'd sweated over these past days would've been nothing to it. One lift of a leg and it would've been over, the wall useless as protection.

Well, of course, whether it could've survived their firepower was another matter.

Hayasaka Ai took out her phone, glanced at it, and told her teammates, "The quest log says the kill is done."

She held up the screen to show them.

Under the fourth condition of the Homeward Journey quest, "Experience at least 3 auroras, hunt three types of special aurora creatures, and obtain the corresponding materials," the number in the parentheses had changed to "3/3."

"Speaking of which, what's this moose's corresponding material?" Kaguya was curious about that.

Yukinoshita Yukino thought for a moment. "Probably... its antlers?"

The moose had died in a rather sloppy way, but the antlers on its head were truly magnificent. If it hadn't gotten stuck and had come charging at them with that enormous rack, the mere thought of it would have sent a chill down their spines, guns or no guns.

"Are moose antlers good for anything?" Kaguya asked.

"Ordinary moose antlers aren't, really. At most you'd hang them up as decoration. But this moose is so big, I can't say." Yukinoshita Yukino shook her head, admitting she didn't know either, then added, "And it might not be the antlers at all. Whatever it is, we'll have to wait until the aurora night is over."

Based on their experience with that giant black wolf last time, they wouldn't need to harvest the material themselves. Once the aurora faded, it would be left behind on its own.

Rather than guess blindly out here, they might as well wait patiently for the aurora to pass.

Isac looked around, sounding puzzled. "Don't tell me this moose is all we're getting tonight?"

Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed since they spotted the special moose and killed it, and not a single aurora creature had attacked in all that time. Surely tonight couldn't really have spawned just this one moose?

"Let's wait a bit longer," Hayasaka Ai said.

"Guess that's all we can do."

After all, if the aurora creatures didn't come to them, they certainly weren't going out to look for them.

Compared to survival points, safety was what mattered most.

Survival points could be earned on any aurora night, but you only had one life.

Survival Game, Survival Game: the most important part was survival.

Only once your life was secure could you play the game.

About half an hour went by, with Isac and the others standing outside taking the cold wind for all that time. Fortunately, persistence paid off, and they finally sensed movement again.

It came from the plains to the south: three faintly glowing green clusters of light closing in on them.

No need to look closely. They knew exactly who these old friends were: Aurora wolves.

There were just a few too few of them. Only three.

Well, hey, even a mosquito is still meat. I'll take your wolf heads...

Isac was just about to raise his revolver and collect the points delivered to his door when, to his surprise, the wolves didn't charge straight for their position with single-minded purpose like the Aurora wolves they'd met before. Midway, they veered off course and rushed into the woods.

It was as if something in there was drawing them in.

Isac: o_O?

Seeing this, Isac's first thought was that the Aurora wolves had grown brains. Were they learning to flank?

But he quickly realized the wolves hadn't grown brains. They were just damn hungry.

The three Aurora wolves ignored the four members of the survival squad completely, plunged into the trees, and pounced straight at the dead moose.

Either the moose's hide was too thick or those three wolves had lousy teeth.

They tore at it for ages and never broke the skin, like a eunuch wandering into a brothel: plenty of drool all over the place, and nothing else to show for it.

In the end, they seemed to realize that with their teeth, there was nothing they could do to this moose. They turned around and started eating the snow on the ground instead.

More precisely, the snow soaked with the moose's blood.

Isac narrowed his eyes and hesitated no longer.

"Fire. Kill those three Aurora wolves first."

If it could make Aurora wolves suppress their urge to attack, that moose blood had to be something special.

It was very likely the material the quest mentioned. And even if it wasn't, the wolves had to die anyway. Isac wasn't about to stand by and let three Aurora wolves mess with the game they'd bagged.

By royal decree: what I don't give you, you don't take.

Thanks to the "delicacy" blinding them, the survival squad took them out with barely any effort, and all three wolves followed the moose to the grave.

They now knew the moose was a treasure, but there wasn't much they could do about it.

Just from its size, it clearly weighed tons.

Even if Isac ran over there right now, he couldn't drag it back.

Better to leave it for now. Judging by those three wolves, ordinary beasts couldn't even bite through its hide and could only lick the blood leaking from the wounds. Leaving it there meant no worry about scavengers stealing a bite.

Besides, since this moose was such a draw for other aurora creatures, powerful enough to make them swallow their urge to attack just to lick a little blood, they could use it as a temporary mob magnet and lower the odds of running into danger even further.

"Since it's come to this, let's just sit tight and see what happens."

As he spoke, Isac dragged the bench out of the cabin and told Hayasaka Ai and the others to quit standing around like statues. Sit. There was nothing to do right now anyway.

This was a bit too relaxed, wasn't it?

Kaguya was about to say so when she saw Yukinoshita Yukino sit down first.

Meeting her startled gaze, Yukinoshita Yukino said calmly, "What are you looking at? I can't conjure up aurora creatures for you. Sit."

Kaguya thought about it. Right. Standing around like idiots wouldn't affect the aurora creatures' spawns, so she might as well sit and save some energy.

Come to think of it, why not go back inside and warm up by the fire?

The thought had barely crossed Kaguya's mind when she found the answer.

If they went back to the fire, someone would have to stay outside. As the saying goes, it's not about having too little, it's about it not being shared fairly. Better for everyone to take the cold wind out here together and enjoy the view of the aurora.

Hayasaka Ai took the chance to speak up. "Once the aurora ends, let's have Kaguya and Yukino enhance their physical attributes first. I'll hold off and do mine next time."

Hayasaka Ai hadn't come up with this idea lightly. Nobody knew what would happen if you bought a physical enhancement while fully awake.

If all three of them bought the enhancement and left Isac alone, there'd be almost no margin for error if something went wrong. And that was before counting the trip into the woods later to retrieve the moose's material drop.

So obviously, with Yukinoshita Yukino and Kaguya upgrading, she'd leave hers for later.

Today was only the fourth day, with three more to go, so there was still a decent chance of a third aurora night. And even if this Aurora Week only brought two auroras, it would just mean a three-month delay.

Her starting physical attributes were already the highest of the group, plenty even without enhancement, so there was no need to rush.

Besides, not upgrading had its perks too...