Chapter Thirty-Nine

They wove through the jungle, but at every turn, the Changed teams seemed to always re-orientate themselves in their direction. Unfortunately, because of the dense jungle, Ione couldn’t simply outrun them in fear of hurting her mother, forcing them to take only the less dense areas as they zigzagged around looking for another path which seemed elusive for once.

Suddenly Ione slid to a stop. As her hackles raised, she sent what she saw to her mother. The dozen turned into six dozen coming from all directions.

Elysia’s rotated on a swivel looking for a solution while trying to resist the lightning thrumming with desire to fight. Despite her elemental pride nudging her to stand her ground, she knew she stood no chance against so many. One or two teams maybe, but even if she attacked one side, it would leave her open to the others. She needed a quick escape, or at least an escape they couldn’t follow.

Her eyes gravitated upward at a particularly large tree. A flashback to Ione scaling the cave wall sparked hope. She just hoped she wouldn’t be part of the stereotype cat stuck in a tree. Ione was far smarter than some house cat. There was no way they would run into the same situation.

A quick message to her bond sent Ione in motion. Far faster than she scaled the cave wall, Ione streaked up the tree trunk, which towered a hundred meters up. When the tree began to thin too much for their combined weight, Ione sprang to the next tree with one graceful hop. With her claws, she anchored herself without effort as Elysia clung to her back.

As Ione tensed her muscles to jump to the next tree, Elysia glanced downward to find the now nearly one hundred Changed converging on where they were, only to pause. Her eyes narrowed at several Changed who kept looking at a watch. A quick count showed each team had one person with a similar watch.

Just as several of the watch bearing Changed looked upward, Ione jumped to the next tree, now out of sight of the Changed. Though the slight swaying of the normally unnaturally still trees gave away where they went, not that they could do anything about it. At least that’s what Elysia hoped, as they quickly made distance.

Were they really here just for her? Was she that special? Considering so many gathered to either capture or hunt her down so quick she must be. An entire fleet chased after her sister, so she guessed it made sense. But how were they tracking her?

It’s pretty obvious it has something to do with the watch, but how? She doubted she had any GPS transmitters on her. If GPS was even a thing anymore. A lot happened since she last encountered Changed and they hadn’t gotten close enough to do anything since Port Alberni.

Maybe there was some magic way to track her. That would probably make more sense. How else could they keep track of her sister on a small fishing boat in the ocean if they didn’t have a method of tracking? Probably the same way they tracked down newly born elementals before anyone else.

Wait, why did she lump in the Changed with the elementals? Other than their magic, they had nothing in common. Just from the off-putting feeling they gave off, she doubted elementals would want to work with them. Maybe older elementals had more resistance to it but just being near them made her uncomfortable and the way Ione sent her feelings of disgust the feeling didn’t seem to be isolated to her.

Whatever the reason, she needed to put some more distance between them and her, but how? They would probably find her wherever she went. Actually, maybe not. Dungeons interfered with many things. Maybe they interfered with the watches, too. It would explain why they didn’t find her right away in the last dungeon. They weren’t even aware of her until she struck. Thinking back, the older Changed of that team had a similar watch too. Did she unintentionally out herself? Maybe they were tracking her lightning somehow. She did zap them, after all.

Change of plans she needed to find out more. There was no point in running around trying to avoid them when they could possibly track her anywhere.

A quick relay of her plans to Ione elicited an excited purr.

Finally, they would hunt. The disgusting fake elementals wouldn’t see it coming.

They continued to hop from tree to tree as both their senses focused outward, looking for a worthy target. However, annoyance soon built, as there appeared to be nothing within several kilometers. There wasn’t even any living monsters. Though the scattered bodies with various elemental wounds told a story of their fate.

If one Elysia could wreck so many, thousands of Changed were an ecological disaster for any monster. One thing that confused her was the lack of Chrotile, but since she didn’t see any bodies either, she assumed they were in dungeons. It wasn’t like there were much obstacles in their way if the Changed cleared all the creatures and focused their attention on finding her.

She found it hard to believe any Chrotile team had a chance to win whatever the system offered against such a methodical slaughter. About the only one that might have a chance was that prismatic Chrotile team, and maybe her team if her kills counted toward team 36.

That was if she could get these Changed off her ass. She wasn’t doing any dangerous hunting that left herself open when hundreds of Changed could converge on her. They had to stay in top condition at all times to escape.

They kept searching from their treetop vantage point, refusing to believe they couldn’t find a single target. There were thousands of Changed on the island, after all. They just had to find one isolated team. If only she had thought to interrogate the first team she incapacitated.

Though in hindsight it would’ve been nearly impossible to escape if even a dozen Changed entered the dungeon to find her. They needed to be quick about this, even if there wasn’t a way to get them off her ass. She hoped she would at least find out how they tracked her.

Not that she had much hope a random team would know much. From what she could tell, they seem to be run like military units and so they probably implemented the in her opinion deeply flawed need to know knowledge distribution. Though in this case, it might work to their advantage. Still, they had to know more than she did.

They continued to expand their search radius, staying out of sight of any larger Changed groups, though despite their height every group without fail looked up. Fortunately, each time they looked, the dense forest canopy protected them as they moved on. It would be suicide the target large groups like that even with their speed. The Changed teams seemed to like to group together by the dozen, unlike the first team she ran into and the Chrotile.

One thing she noticed as she observed each group was they all appeared much weaker than her, at least according to her instincts. Maybe that was why they grouped together in such large numbers. They didn’t have the natural defenses or robust bodies of the Chrotile.

Aside from elemental magic, they were essentially humans and weak ones at that, if her own stats had any indication. She had yet to see a buff Changed. They all seemed to follow the castor stereotype with lean bodies.

Many didn’t even have a weapon on them, probably solely relying on their magic and teammates. The more she thought about it, these teams were just foot soldiers. They probably had stronger teams scattered about. Like the team she encountered in Port Alberni, but she had yet to run into them.

Maybe she was even stronger than them. She gained a ton of levels since their last meeting, and even then her lightning easily overpowered them. Though something told her they trained just as hard if not harder than her, especially if they were in a military like environment.

Finally, almost five kilometers from where they surrounded her, she spotted a group of five Changed navigating through the jungle. A glance told her they were stronger than the other Changed, though not by a ton. If they were quick, they could probably pull off an ambush.

From their tree vantage point dozens of meters above them, Elysia activated chain lighting while actively suppressing the amount of lightning in the strand. Like when she overpowered it, her lightning followed her wishes, contracting to half the size of a usual attack.

While a top Ione, Elysia aimed her right hand adorned with her ring and released a chain lighting just as the team looked up. Unfortunately for them, they were far too slow as the chain lightning descended. With the help of Ione, who directed it to target the center most Changed, all five crumbled to the ground in a twitching mess.

Lightning was awesome for stunning. Though if she wasn’t careful, she might kill someone she wished to stun. From the looks of it, she nearly did that with them. It couldn’t be healthy for their bodies to contort like that.

She had no doubt some of them were down for the count. One doesn’t just walk away when one’s knee hyper-extended that far. Also, that reverse back arch taco probably felt great. If they could feel anything at all anymore. They should recover eventually, if they healed even close to as fast as she did.

In hindsight, it was a miracle she didn’t kill any of them. At least she didn’t think she did. No kill notification came, but maybe something internal broke, causing a delayed death.

Elysia froze. Why was she so cavalier about hurting what were essentially humans? Sure, she wasn’t a human anymore, but she used to be. Her race twisted things further than she thought, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She would just live the way she wanted to, even if her race tinged her actions at times.

Before they could recover, Ione and Elysia descended to the ground. Not that she had any confidence they anytime soon. Still, they had to be quick in case more teams came and going by how they’ve reacted so far back up would arrive soon.

Her gaze zeroed in on a thirty something woman with bloodshot deep brown eyes denouncing her as an earth changed or something similar. Unlike the others, her body appeared at least somewhat naturally orientated. Though the slight twitching and the pained expression told her the attack did some damage.

As if reading her mind, Ione took off into the jungle to scout as soon as Elysia hopped off.

With unworried strides, she approached the paralyzed team and lifted the woman’s arm to inspect the watch. It had a screen like a smartwatch with an arrow pointing directly at her. As an experiment, she stepped to the side and found the arrow followed her movement. As she thought the watch was how they tracked her, but how did it do it? She needed answers and from the looks of it she wouldn’t be getting anything until the woman recovered, though the pain filled defiant eyes glaring up at her told her it would be a battle.

Images reached her mind of dozens of Changed converging on her, but according to Ione, they were still a kilometer out.

She didn’t have much time. What should she do? There was no way she could get answers from the woman in the few minutes she had. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? She didn’t care about whatever they were doing as long as they didn’t involve her, but they seemed obsessed with her for some reason.

Elysia eyed the woman, sizing her up. Time to put her strength attribute to the test.