Dungeon Raider System

It was still early in the morning when the group set off and while Uriel still seemed gloomy after his bitter experience in the museum that turned out to be more similar to an auction house, his mood improved by leaps and bounds when the guards let them exit the city without charging them. The governor had sent specific instructions not to hinder them in any way and provide whatever assistance they needed for their task.

Unfortunately for them, they had no clue as to what they even needed to capture a cryptid. Not even Luna had the slightest clue on what to do, though the one thing they were all certain of was that the first step was to find cryptids.

The first ones they encountered were odd quadrupeds that didn't resemble any earthen animal they had ever seen or heard of. This was greatly appreciated by Luna who immediately took out her notepad and began taking notes at a speed only Uriel would have only been able to follow if he activated Dash.

After a short deliberation, the group decided the best approach was to get them separated and they stalked the beast level cryptids for about an hour or so until one of the cryptids got separated from the pack.

Uriel's ability to conceal his flux signature was particularly helpful for their current mission and thanks to Nika being able to hide in his shadow without emitting any flux whatsoever she was also able to get close to the beast without being noticed and they leapt towards the cryptid before it could even react.

Nika activated her trait and used her shadow tendrils to keep the beast in place, but she unwittingly used too much force causing the cryptid to burst into entrails and blood. All Uriel could do at the moment was to glare at Nika, obfuscated that their hour long wait was for naught, to which Nika replied with a shrug.

In most cases, stumbling upon a pack of carnivorous cryptids would have turned any traveler's day into a nightmare, but in this particular occasion it was a good thing that the beast pack was numerous as it meant they had many attempts.

Next time it was Uriel's turn and he was confident he would succeed where Nika failed given that he had a better control of his strength than Nika had of her trait. This took him a lot of practice and he made many mistakes in the past when he would accidentally behead an enemy rather than leave them unconscious, but he now considered he had achieved a level of constraint that should allow him to not kill the beast in a single strike.

The unsuspecting cryptid roamed around, sniffing the air as the smell of a human had caught its interest, but the lack of a flux signature that usually accompanied its meals made it lose its interest rather quickly. The moment it lowered its guard, Uriel leapt forward and struck the cryptid in the back of the head with his bare hand. Despite previously seeing another specimen of the same species entrails, Uriel would have thought the cryptid was actually hollow as the strike caused a clanging sound similar to someone knocking on a trash container.

The cryptid roared calling for help, seemingly unaffected by Uriel's strike and followed by pouncing on the attacker. Unfortunately for the mindless beast, this played directly into Uriel's hand as he was not only stronger but also much faster than the cryptid.

He activated Dash and grabbed the Red thread of fate, weaving the flux wire around the beast and rendering it immobile in seconds making it seem easy. However, through his perception of time it was a painstakingly tedious task.

"Why didn't you start with that?" Nika poked her head out of the shadows, then climbed out of it in an instant to block an incoming cryptid from attacking Uriel's back. The weight of a heavenly rank kick fell on the incoming cryptid's head and it fell unconscious on the spot.

"Why didn't you start with that!?" Uriel grumbled, all the while Luna gestured them to hurry up.

After hearing the roar of its companion, the rest of the pack was alerted not because it was a call for help. Their basic intellect was not equipped to deal with such complex emotions. That roar's meaning was actually an appeal to their most basic instinct, the one to feed and consumed anything that emitted even the slightest flux signal and with Nika standing right by Uriel they had locked on their meal.

The frenzied beasts started by taking laps around the hunters to cut off their escape route. They made the circle smaller with each lap, slowly but surely closing in on their targets. In response, Nika did the only thing she thought of in a last ditch attempt to confuse the cryptids and she hid in Uriel's shadow without knowing that once their feeding frenzy began, nothing but the taste of flesh could stop them.

Uriel didn't felt threatened by their display as he knew their coordination followed their instincts rather than strategy and he could think of a hundred ways to escape from them of the top of his hat. The problem with that was that all those possibilities required him to let go of the two beasts he just captured.

Luna remained at a distance watching the beast's movements with great attention, but without providing any insight on what Uriel should do. She was immersed in her research of their behavioral patterns and at the time couldn't care any less about their mission.

Uriel remained alone and getting surrounded by enemies the size of bulls, which made them fantastic specimens to turn in to the governor, but incredibly difficult to deal with. Killing them would have been extremely easy for either of Uriel, Nika or even Luna, but capturing any of them had proved to be more of a challenge than Uriel expected.

Uriel attempted to break their formation by blocking their way, but despite being just of the beast level the quadruped cryptids were too heavy to stop in their tracks. At least not without killing them. This attempt resulted in Uriel being pushed back a few meters, before falling beneath the legs of the creature he attempted to stop and getting stomped and kicked repeatedly for almost a full minute.

Thanks to his rank and experience, Uriel managed to grasp one of the cryptids legs and straddle himself on top of its loin which proved to be a wrong decision as the cryptid in question was able to fully rotate its articulation. Not just that, instead of hooves their limbs finished in what Luna described in her notes as 'thorny hand-like grasping organs'. It was both an accurate depiction and prediction of their use as the beast used its extremity to launch Uriel back into the center of the gnarly stampede.

Without a choice, Uriel activated Dash once more and jumped over the pack that continued their maddened race until they reached the center finding no hunters but their two fallen kin. Escaping with his head over his shoulders should have been a relief, but the headache caused by the infuriatingly difficult task made him second guess his relief.

Especially after he saw the beast rank cryptids killing and consuming the two incapacitated beasts with complete disregard to them belonging to the same species.

"This is highly valuable information...," Luna jotted down on her notepad. "cannibalism in this case is not just to feed, but also serves as a defense mechanism. It's clear they're against being taken, which shows an amount of awareness creatures like that should not possess."

"That's good and all, but how does that help us?" Uriel asked.

"This means it's probably harder to separate them than to take them all with us." Luna explained.

"If you're suggesting I tie them all up, you're not just crazy but the next thing." Uriel growled.

"Did you figure out how did our fellow Dungeon Raiders managed to get cryptids inside the city? They can't conceal their flux like you or hide inside shadows like Nika and to my knowledge, none of them had traits that could have allowed them to even incapacitate cryptids without killing them."

"Except for Medusa." Nika butted in after exiting the shadow.

"Now that it's safe you show up." Uriel fumbled as he dusted his clothes.

"As far as we know, Medusa can't petrify living beings without killing them. You are an outlier and a scientific curiosity that baffles me to this day. No, they don't possess any trait that could make this even possible. But they did have the Pegasus. Most likely, they lured a few of them inside the Pegasus, kept them busy and then dropped them off in mid air." Luna explained.

"If you knew this was going to be a waste of time you could just have said so." Uriel glared at Luna.

"Who said anything about a waste of time?" Luna said with an innocent face before pulling a rope out from who knows where and continuing. "we just need to lure them inside the city and we have the perfect heavenly rank bait."

"No, guys... seriously. I can't even..." Nika stuttered.