We’d set off early the next morning, marching through the dry fields southeast of Warminster – moving towards the east. A cluster of light-grey clouds were floating nearby with promises of rain in an otherwise clear blue sky. As long as it came after we’d got some kills in, else it would make this march tougher than it needed to be.

  The five of us walked side-by-side, a few metres apart, with Kian and Charlotte on my left and Carmen and Kaelyn on my right. Davies and his troop were walking a few metres ahead of the five of us.

  Kaelyn was in the same leather outfit that she’d arrived with. I hadn’t seen her wash it at any point, but it didn’t seem to bother her, though I could understand why she wore it. It was more like a bodysuit than fashion. The leather seemed supple, her knee-high boots with their flat soles easy to move in. As for the rest of us, Captain Davies was kind enough to dig out a couple of sets of military fatigues for each of us, though we left the helmets back at the houses. It was unnecessary weight.

  “Are we sure they didn’t already all run?” Kian asked.

  “Doubtful,” Davies said. Looking beyond him, the countryside stretched before us. Rolling hills with gentle peaks and troughs, covered in grass that seemed to have been in the sun too long, with only a smattering of green. There were sparse pockets of trees dotting the fields, their branches swaying softly with the breeze. What there wasn’t, were animals. We hadn’t seen a single one so far, and we’d been walking for an hour.

  “They might’ve been spooked by last night?” I said. “Maybe they moved on?”

  “Maybe,” Davies replied. “If anything, they might have moved further east, but we have teams on the southern side as well, ready to take out any runners. We stick with the plan. Let’s see what the scouts find. We’ll be camping out here for the next three days anyway, so we’ll have plenty of time to find prey.”

  “What?” It was news to me.

  Captain Davies laughed deep in his throat as he glanced over his shoulder at us. “Sorry, did I forget to mention that?”

  We didn’t reply and continued trudging behind him, our weapons by our side, fingers near the triggers. It was a massive area we were trying to clear – equivalent to a quarter of London, and it was doubtful if we’d manage to clear even that in three days. We did all have full backpacks full of ammo and food, but I hadn’t seen anyone pack a tent.

  Our group of ten were the ones closest to Warminster. The other three teams were to our right but each a hundred or so metres from the others. There must have been more teams sent out from the local forces to even further south. The scientists that had come with us had been left back at the base. They were setting up labs back there. Earlier in the morning, a small convoy of soldiers had been sent out on trucks to retrieve several of the deer we had killed the previous night, no doubt for the scientists to run some tests.

  Those kills hadn’t just levelled me up in rank. Kian, Charlotte and Carmen had all reached Common, Rank C, and the loot we’d earned had allowed us to max several abilities. Well, max out for our rank at level six. I’d decided to max out both the [Gravity Circle] and the [Frost Circle] and I picked up [Fireball]|[Level 6] as well.

  “Kaelyn,” Carmen said, as we plodded on over the uneven ground. “I was wondering why you’re not attacking anything. You’re just letting us do it.”

  “I don’t need to right now. These are low-level creatures. And you need the SE more than me.”

  “How did it work at your training institute?” I chimed in. Kian and Charlotte on my other side were also listening in. “Did you go out on hunts like this?”

  “We didn’t leave the institute. The prey were brought to us and we would fight them in our training rooms. As we got stronger, the opponents got stronger, sometimes two to three ranks above.”

  “You never went outside?”

  “Never to hunt. There was a city nearby, and we got to go there on days off. Me and my class would go there.”

  “Were the cities there like ours?” Charlotte asked.

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  “No. It was much smaller than London and the buildings weren’t tall. The largest buildings was the institute but even that wasn’t bigger than five storeys, but it covered a lot of space for all the training. We had open areas like this, which we used to hone our skills against the prey we were brought.”

  “Did you fight against beasts like these?”

  “When I was around your rank. There’s far scarier things to fight when you’re strong enough,” she said with a smile at us.

  “How many of you trained together?” I asked.

  “There were twenty in my class,” she said, looking at me with a melancholic smile. I tilted my head at her. “Some of them died in the fight against Tiananmut. I don’t know what happened to the rest.” She turned back to the ground in front of her, and I could tell she was thinking about those friends she had not seen. It had only been a couple of days since she got here, but who knew how long it would be before she could see them again. Or at least, find out what happened to them.

  “We’ll get you home,” I reassured her. “I promise.”

  She looked over at me again, then she smiled and laughed. A sorrowful laugh. “I had a really close friend there. Like a brother to me.” Her smile became flat. “I said the same thing to him.

  “I’ll be home, I promise.” She turned her face forwards, and we walked a few metres in silence before Kian spoke up.

  “Well, don’t you worry,” he said. “If there’s one thing I know about River, it’s that he always breaks his promises.”

  He left the words hanging there, but a moment later Kaelyn barked a proper laugh, before the rest of us joined in, though there was a sour taste to mine.

  It wasn’t long after that a pair of scouts sent out in the morning could be seen sitting atop a hill a few hundred metres ahead of us. When they saw us headed their way, they waved us over. Multiple teams of scouts had been sent out ahead of the hunting teams, with orders to stay in a visible location when they’d found targets and keep watch.

  Captain Davies picked up the pace and as we crested the hill, and joined with the two scouts, we could see a large herd of animals at the bottom of the valley on the other side. A herd was an understatement. There were hundreds of them, huddled close together, casting cautious glances towards the east, like they were watching for something. That wasn’t the only odd thing.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen National Geographic,” Private Jackson said, “but is that normal for all of them to be together like that?”

  The herd wasn’t just one type. It was a selection of cows, sheep and deer.

  The cows were like the wolves and the deer before them. Twice as big as they should be – around 10 feet at the shoulders. There was a selection of brown and black, and the odd white cow, some with spots. There were many bulls around too, a few feet taller with muscular shoulders and legs and curling horns on their heads. It was more like facing off with rhinos. The bulls stood along the outer edge, facing towards the east, like a barrier between the herd and whatever it was they kept searching for.

  Alongside the bulls, were stags that stood as tall as the cows, a little smaller than the bulls, but with large, long antlers on their heads. The other deer, alongside the sheep, huddled further in the middle of the large mass.

  “There must be four or five hundred down there,” Sergeant Hill said, standing beside Captain Davies. “What do you reckon’s got them so spooked?”

  “No idea. You two,” he indicated the scouts, “while we deal with them, I want you to go around them and find out what we face ahead.”

  “Roger,” one of them said, before they headed towards the north to give the cows a wide berth.

  “Well, this is a bit of a pickle,” Davies said. The mass of animals ahead was like a large coffee stain on a light brown carpet with splotches of white. They covered a portion of ground that was like the size of four football pitches. Even with the help of the other teams further south of us – the closest of which I could see had stopped as well – this would not be easy. I almost felt it would be better to avoid the animals entirely, but this was far too many to leave to roam free. Even if we didn’t plan on killing all the creatures in the surrounding area, we definitely needed to thin them down and move them further away from the base.

  “Can’t we just get some kills in on the north side and send them towards the south? And the other teams can pick off what they can?” I asked.

  Davies looked at me and stroked his bearded chin. “Given the defensive posture they’re showing, I think it’s just as likely that they’ll ram through us to get away.”

  “We can’t leave them like that though,” Hill added.

  Davies glanced over to Kaelyn. “Miss. How many do you think you can take?”

  She looked at him with a look of surprise on her face, before looking back to the mass. “Hmm. If they were more separated, maybe fifty or so. But as they are, not many before they charged me.”

  “What about if we use our abilities?” Charlotte asked. Everyone turned to her. “I’m sure some of your soldiers have their classes, right? And we have ours. There’s forty or so of us. So, that’s like eleven or twelve–”

  “What are they doing?” Carmen cut Charlotte off. We watched as a bunch of the bulls and stags that were on the eastern side were moving around the cows, deer and sheep and were coming to stand facing us. A few moments later, all of the animals had turned in our direction.

  “Shit!” Davies shouted, but he didn’t get the chance to bark an order over the ungodly rumble that began ahead of us, as the bulls and stags started trotting in our direction, followed by the hundreds behind them. Did they sense us? Or were they still running from whatever they had been. It didn’t matter. They were coming towards us, about a hundred metres away and that wouldn't take long for them to cover.

  I moved to the front of our group.