Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 164 - 24 White-backed Poison Gland Fox_1

Chapter 164: Chapter 24 White-backed Poison Gland Fox_1

(263...084...458... Book friend skirt, those who want, join the group. PS Passers-by friends ask for collection and recommendation, your support is my biggest motivation. In addition, can you all give more advice? Thank you. PS2: The book title has been changed, please see the relevant works)

As Catherine slowly pulled out her long sword from behind the jungle spider, Pannis had already picked up the branch again and began to move forward. Time had ticked into the afternoon, after resting in the morning, Pannis and Elrad took turns leading the way, swapping spots twice, and now it was Pannis’ turn to lead at the front of the group again. Since they were on the edge of the Shining Forest, the magical beasts were relatively weak, aside from occasional encounters with a gold-ranked magical beast, they were just some iron and bronze-ranked beasts, who posed no serious threat to the ten-person team, at most slightly slowing their progress. In fact, they hadn’t encountered that many magical beasts along the way, after all, the beasts were only interested in hunting, not throwing their lives away.

However, this did not mean the journey was easy. The longer they stayed in the dense forest, the more their noses filled with the unpleasant smell of decaying wood. The monotonous rustling sound of kicking fallen leaves accompanied their steps, and the sight of tree trunks surrounded them. The greyish-brown trunks felt like the only objects in the world. In contrast, these were not the hardest parts of their journey. The countless vines and shrubs that could trip the travelers, and the abounding hidden branches were the real obstacles blocking their path. The greatest obstacles, though, were the hidden mud traps beneath the dried leaves. The concealed small swamps were deadly for ordinary people. Although high-ranking professionals could escape by releasing the shield to expel the mud, the time wasted and traces left were still unavoidable.

After a day’s journey, even though most of the swamps were avoided thanks to the leaders’ warnings, three people still accidentally stepped into the traps. Gold-ranked Catherine, with her superior physique and reaction speed, activated her aggression shield to bounce out of the trap before it had any effect. But the Shadow Wolf and the groundhog were not so lucky; their trousers were full of mud. In the forest environment where the light was weak and damp, even the leather armor couldn’t stop the uncomfortable wet and slimy feeling from the mud. Not to mention the constant smell of the mud, forcing everyone to stay far away from them, fearing the smell would rub off on them.

"Pannis, why do we have to walk for twenty-two hours today?" Considering the other victims, Lina cautiously followed behind Pannis, almost walking in his footsteps. "Will this be a regular occurrence?"

"It might happen sometimes," Pannis responded casually while using his tree branch like a trident to accurately kill a small red snake that had just emerged from the leaves. "At least three to four more times."

"Why?" Lina asked curiously. "It’s really physically demanding."

Pannis grinned mysteriously. "You’ll find out why in a while."

"Mysterious, I hate it." Lina’s curiosity was always high.

"Stop," Pannis suddenly lifted the tree branch he was using as a cane. "There’s an issue."

The line-shaped team immediately changed formation, quickly closing the gaps between each other. The mercenaries formed a circle to protect the guides in the center, and the three girls of the adventure team formed an outward-facing triangle, back to back. Catherine, who was facing Pannis, asked, "What did you find?"

"Signs of a fight." Pannis walked solemnly for a dozen steps and squatted under a big tree, pointing at the trunk. "See, it’s signs of burning. Judging from the range, it doesn’t look like natural fire. It’s probably the traces left by fire-attribute magic or skill. Hmm, interesting, there are leaves cut in half on the ground. The traces haven’t been there long, it seems we have company."

"Could it be a magical beast’s mark?" Groundhog, who was originally a solo professional near the Mountain Country and mostly familiar with the cave environment, had only recently encountered the forest after joining the mercenaries. Hearing Pannis’s words, he couldn’t help but ask. But as soon as he finished speaking, he realized that the other nine people were looking at him as if he were a fool, and he scratched his head and asked hesitantly, "What did I say wrong?"

The four members of the adventure team were too embarrassed to say anything, but Night Owl, who was also a mercenary, couldn’t help but ask with his hoarse voice, "Have you seen any fire-attribute magical beasts in the forest in the past two months?"

"Huh?" Groundhog thought hard for a moment, then shook his head. "I haven’t seen one indeed. Are there no fire-attribute magical beasts in the forest?"

"Of course not," answered Shadow Wolf, who was also covered in mud. "Playing with fire in the jungle, you would be burned to death even with a hundred lives."

"Ah, I forgot about that." Groundhog didn’t mind being teased, and he pounded his palm. "Indeed, when you go to a new place, there’s always a lot to learn."

"Shovel." Pannis, crouching and looking at the ground, reached out his hand and shouted.

The oldest and most staid female mercenary among them, an Illusion Fox, handed over a folding shovel. She also squatted by Pannis, following his gaze to observe everything, clearly learning from his exploration experience. Catherine, clad in chainmail, was squatting beside her. Seeing the actions of the two women, Pannis was taken aback momentarily. Understanding their intentions, he smiled and, rather openly, pointed out several traces to them before excavating.

"This is a burn mark. Look at the range, radiating evenly outwards from here, this is the characteristic of the Fireball Technique. But now it’s autumn, the trees aren’t too dry, so it didn’t cause a major fire. Look here, carefully observe the colour of these leaves, there are subtle differences from the others right? These are likely the lower leaves that have been flipped to the top, this situation is confined to this small area, indicating that someone had buried something here. Also there, look closely at the fallen leaves and the one under our feet, do you see the broken leaves? That’s a footprint, this kind of shape represents that it has been crushed by humans, and that someone had stood there. In total, let me see, four, no, five people. This is based on the degree of leaf breakage and depth, different weights cause subtle differences, this is purely an experiential judgement." After pointing out all the traces one by one to the attentive pair, Pannis unfolded the folding shovel and forcefully thrust it into the position he had pointed out earlier. After a few digs, he furrowed his brows: "Prepare yourself, it might be visually stimulating."

"What is it?" Lina asked curiously, "A corpse?"

"Correct, it’s a corpse," Pannis confirmed, "As for the perpetrator, it should be a white-backed poison fox, I smell the scent of their sprayed venom."

"Poison gland fox?" Lina flipped through the Magical Beast Handbook in her hand, and very quickly located the page she wanted. She glanced at the illustration. The fox depicted was entirely grey and yellow, with a narrow white stripe of fur on its back. Its cheeks were swollen; the skin of the cheeks was thin, looking translucent. "In Shining Forest, there are only three magical beasts that use liquid spray as a weapon. Have we encountered two of them in these few days?"

"We haven’t encountered them yet," Pannis corrected, "We only discovered a corpse that died from their venom."

As the shovel continued to dig, the other members of the team could smell the pungent, irritating odor. The victim gradually appeared from beneath the layer of fallen leaves, the condition of the body could only be described as horrific. The White-backed poison fox is a medium-small magical beast that prefers to live in groups, usually with twenty to thirty in a pack, with bodies only the size of domestic dogs. Unlike the acid-spewing Terror Beast they had previously encountered, which possessed multiple attacking **organs, the most terrifying weapon of the venom gland fox is its venom. However, in corresponding to this, their storage of venom is large. They can continuously spray it dozens of times and its volume large, its speed fast, and it has a wide coverage area. Plus, tens of them typically spray their venom at the same time, making a small area seem like a deadly poison rain. When encountering this kind of magical beast, if one cannot escape the coverage of the venom in time, the only option is to hold up a shield in defense. But because of the venom’s high corrosiveness and high spraying frequency, even with the Aggression stored by a Silver Rank professional, it would not be sufficient to hold up until the venom is depleted. So the danger level of this medium-small magical beast, which only ranks as high as Silver, is relatively high.

Clearly, this victim did not have time to activate their shield, or their shield could not hold up until the venom of the fox pack was exhausted, so they got a face full of venom. The back of the corpse’s head was intact, you could see thick golden hair, but the front of the head was completely unrecognizable, not a bit of skin or flesh remained, only a skull covered with green and black mucus, occasional streaks of blood can be seen in between the mucus. Some parts of the skull were a horrific white, while other parts were black from venom corrosion. There were still some flesh remains on the sides of the skull, and residues from the corrosion remained on the leftover flesh. The corpse’s eyes had been corroded away, its mouth was stuck open, as if it was left in a painful howl right before death. The body doesn’t have too many wounds, only a small amount of venom splashed on it, corroding through the fabric and flesh to create several large holes.

Pannis pressed the corpse’s hands and feet, then turned over the remains of the victim’s belongings, and pondered: "He died around six hours ago, a casting-technique type professional, judging by his physical condition he should be of Silver Rank. Based on his belongings, he should be an Elementalist, and those burn marks were perhaps the result of his spell. It appears their squad was ambushed by a pack of foxes. He was likely killed due to his carelessness in neglecting to raise his shield in time when under attack. The others probably aren’t in a good situation either, they buried their companion, but looking at the degree of how hastily it was done, it doesn’t bode well. After burying their teammate, they chose to flee. As for the fox pack, they must’ve pursued them."

"Could the other party be associated with the bandit gang?" Catherine asked with a furrowed brow.

"How would I know?" Pannis shrugged, pointing at the corpse, "I just asked him, but he didn’t want to answer me."

"Maybe there’s a connection." Catherine began pacing back and forth, "Let’s go and take a look."

Pannis chuckled lightly, so did Vivian, Lina followed suit.

Dora rolled her eyes and retorted irritably, "Sis, if you want to go and aid them, just say it. Why find such non-convincing reason like this? Even if there are Mages in the bandit gang, they are still a rare resource, why would they let a Silver Rank Mage participate in the action of a small team? Obviously, this was just an adventure team. Besides, mutual aid is the first rule of survival theory for professionals in the wilderness. No one will blame you for making a decision like this, so why the need to find excuses?"

Catherine chuckled awkwardly, she then asked Pannis, "Which direction did they escape to? Is it trackable?"

"No." was all Pannis replied, "They were still smart enough to escape into the trees. Otherwise, they would have had no chance to escape at all. But in doing so, I won’t be able to track them."

"Is that so." Catherine paused disappointedly, contemplating on what to do next.

"Perhaps, I could." Lina brushed her silver hair back and hesitantly said, "You guys wait, I’ll go and ask."