Chapter 474: Hippo meet Hippo
=Probably not, no.=
=I believe Archanidame and Lacerage are watching them alongside the other children back at the estate.=
=The insectoid one?=
=Lemme check…well, on the positive side, they’re still alive.=
=Downside is that they’re on Dozing Salamander, meaning any chance of a fun coincidental meeting this time around is nil.=
=Last I checked they had managed to figure out how to do human transformation and has determined they were gender fluid.=
=Apparently they liked the look on people’s faces when they couldn’t tell whether or not they were a boy or a girl that day.=
=Indeed. Glad to know they’re…hold up, something interesting is happening.=
=Interesting dangerous, I guess? Those sincerely sound like synonyms.=
=Looks like…otters.=
=You recall we’re in Roaring Tide?=
=There we go.=
________________________________________________
“A premonition is like…a gut feeling? Basically you feel like something is going to happen because the universe feels like being an ass,” Zhen Liu answered.
“Uhhh…”
Rianna still looked somewhat lost at Zhen Liu’s explaination, in no small part because most of her knowledge in regards to language and the world outside of the insect Hell Jungle was imbued to her by a monster woman made of jade. She may also have spent a few weeks with the rest of the Zhen Clan, but that didn’t change the fact that she was still a wild child at her core.
Thankfully, she had a mentor type relationship with a certain lady to help her out.
“What Xiao Liu is trying to say,” Jin Fang interjected, “is…you know how you get that feeling that you’re being stalked by some nasty predatory beast?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s like that but instead of an obvious mantis or centipede gunning for your throat, it’s something more general and vague. Intangible dread, wait did Nepherage give you the definition for intangible?”
“Oh…is that why my senses are telling me that we’re about to encounter something as big and dangerous as Tiny?”
“Exac-wait, what?”
“Grunt?”
“Over there.”
Now alert by Rianna’s warning, Zhen Liu, Jin Fang and even Tiny turned their senses towards the direction the former was pointing.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t immediately upriver as Zhen Liu had expected, but instead, in a direction off to their left and up river, directly into a copse of trees and into some swamplands.
However, aside from what appeared to be miles and miles of trees and still water, when they looked in the direction that Rianna had indicated…they saw nothing.
“I don’t see anything…wait a minute…”
As the three of them kept staring into the swamplands, Tiny naturally ended up stopping as her senses became more and more focused in that direction. As a result, the entire caravan fleet ended up halting since she was in the lead, causing a ripple effect of alarm among the caravanners.
________________________________________________
“Huh? Why’d we stop?,” asked a member of the branch clan.
“Gah! Sudden splashing!,” a Skyscales clerk complained as the sudden brake soaked his reports.
“Aren’t we supposed to camp like three miles ahead from here?” a member of the main branch pointed out.
“That hippo from the Zhen Clan side branch just stopped out of nowhere. Its owner and his girlfriends are just sorta standing and staring in some random direction.”
“What the fuck are you guys talking abou-wait…do you guys hear that?”
At first, cries of protest and annoyance echoed throughout the rafts as they tried to figure out why the upstart young master stopped his giant pet hippo, some assuming he did so so he could act lovey-dovey with his passenger lovers, until they heard a strange rumbling and splashing in the direction that
the aforementioned hippo and young master were staring in.
It sounded very distant at first, but as time passed, they began to notice it was getting closer and closer by the second.
“That is a very loud rumble…”
“What the hell is that sound? It’s like a mix between a hyena’s laughter and a seal’s bark…”
“Wait…oh fuck no, I know exactly what makes that kind of noise!”
“You do?”
“Groaaa!”
“Whoa!”
From the tree bursted forth a hippo-like aether beast with a rock-like hide, glowing red vein-like cracks, fangs like obsidian and steam emanating from its back.
Normally, the sudden appearance of such a beast would cause most people to panic, as evident by the reaction of some of the caravanners present in this moment.
“That’s a third tier Geyser Hippo!”
“What the hell are one of those things doing here?! We’re way too far from any of the known hot spring regions! Unless one popped up around here?”
“Dammit! I do not want to deal with a beast wave right now!”
However, some of the warriors present with sharper senses and reaction times noticed something odd about the Geyser Hippo that worried them even more.
“Wait, check out the scratches on its side! What the hell kind of beast can leave injuries that deep?!”
“We’re about to find out! Incoming!”
“ARFHEHEHE!”
“OH FUCK! RAVAGER OTTERS!”
Following not long after the Geyser Hippo had made its dramatic appearance, came forth a pack of vicious looking otter monsters the size of wolves, splashing in and out of the water and jumping off of tree roots, their claws ripping the bark off their respective perches, as they chased after the Geyser Hippo.
“Wait, otters?! I thought they were normally cute and small!”
“Not on Roaring Tide!”
Ravager Otters were a type of second tier otter family aquarii aether beasts known for two thing: viciousness and pack hunting.
Out of the water, they hit about as hard as the average second tier aether beast, nothing too special.
In the water, however, they can easily topple third tier opponents, one on one, with ease. Granted, this is under the assumption that the third tier opponent weren’t equally amphibious.
Flexible, hydrodynamic bodies combined with powerful jaws strong enough to shatter diamonds and vicious barbed claws that could rip through most types of armor like wet tissue paper, these alone were enough to make Ravager Otters a top tier predator amongst the second and first tier aether beasts. Add to the fact that they could also naturally coat themselves in layers of Aquarii aether in order to propel themselves and empower their attacks, Ravager Otters would be almost unstoppable if not for the very convenient drawback of them needing access to large amounts of naturally occurring water to perform this enchantment.
Now, take all of this information applied to a single otter and apply to a pack of otters numbering in groups of four to twenty.
A singular, fully grown, Ravager Otter with water access could take down a a third tier aether beast, no problem, a full pack of them could take down a fifth tier beast no problem!
In other words, the wounded Geyer Hippo was about to become a Geyser Hippo corpse in front of the eyes of the entire caravan.
“Well shit, looks like we just have to watch as nature takes it-why is that Geyser Hippo charging towards us?”
“Oh fuck!”
Just as the carvaners were about to count their lucky stars that they weren’t the target for the Ravager Otters hunt, that hope was quickly dashed as the Geyser Hippo that was the original target suddenly started running in their direction, bringing the otters with them.
The carvaners closer to the front of this incoming stampeded of beasts could see how the eyes of the Ravager Otters started to subtly shift from the injured Geyer Hippo to the healthier and more plentiful mortals sitting in rafts next to a selection of caged beasts.
Some of the more empathetic ones could feel the encroaching blood lust.
“Fucking how and why?!”
________________________________________________
The fucking because:
“Whoa!”
“What the fuck are those things?!”
“A rocky version of Tiny?!”
“Grunt?!”
Zhen Liu, Jin Fang and Rianna were simultaneously shocked as a Geyser Hippo being chased by a pack of five or so Ravager Otters had all burst through a swampy treeline like some kind of surprise encounter in a video game
Fortunately, unlike a video game, Zhen Liu and company didn’t have to intervene if they didn’t want to and letting mother nature do it’s thing.
Unfortunately for them, the injured Geyser Hippo had other ideas.
“Groa? Groa!”
“Grunt?!”
“Oh fuck no! Go away!”
The moment the Geyser Hippo caught sight of Tiny in the corner of their eye, it immediately course corrected in order to run towards the much bigger and scarier Raijin Hippo.
Needless to say, this was unwanted attention at its finest.
“Fuck me sideways!,” Zhen Liu cursed as he got to his feet, “looks it’s gonna be a fight!”
