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Chapter 7: Encounter

"You\'re not making any sense, something like that is not possible!" One of the students, short in stature and with a geeky look to him, said out loud.

"Oh, but it is! Not only they mess with our electronics, we can\'t even capture their picture on camera. Cameras don\'t work, well..." She paused for a brief second. "They do work, but they simply don\'t appear in the photographs. The same happens with thermal screening, movement detectors, drones, laser sight, only mechanical traps work on them."

"What about weapons?"

"Regular guns don\'t do much damage, even those that can harm them are sort of useless because some cryptids can regenerate. This is a safe-ish area and it\'s all under control, just let us do the fighting and whenever we defeat one of them one of you will be asked to come near, all you have to do is be close enough to the dying beast and you\'ll get a trait. Understood?"

The students nodded before gulping down their saliva, their throats now dry in worry. They knew little about the creatures, even their appearance was a mystery, the only way for them to know what they looked like was through hand drawn pictures, but none of them knew exactly what to expect.

"All we have to do for the time being is to wait until the others arrive to their positions. Once everything is set we\'ll circle the area and find as many cryptids as we can, but as you all know this isn\'t a one day trip, it will last for three full days."

"Uh, miss, if those creatures are so dangerous, why did we come in small groups?." A girl with a meek appearance that had gone completely unnoticed by Uriel up to that moment spoke in a shy voice.

"The reason why we all came separated is because big crowds attract the attention of bigger creatures, we can still handle them but it will be easier to do so once you get your traits. Also, smaller creatures are difficult to find and we can cover a lot more ground if we\'re separated."

When she finished speaking a flare was shot in the distance drawing an arc in the sky, it was soon followed by another, then another and the lieutenant nodded at one of the armed soldiers who quickly took out a flaregun and shot upwards.

About fifty flares covered the sky making an almost perfect circle of immense proportions. "The hunt has begun." The lieutenant started walking towards the center with a smile and everyone followed her. Every unit knew exactly what they were doing, but Uriel himself didn\'t know what was going on because he got distracted in the middle of the colonel\'s speech.

The landscape behind them was dense in vegetation with only a few dirt roads, but in front of them plants became scarcer and scarcer until soon it became a barren land.

"Do you think we\'ll be fine?" The cowardly student asked to no one in particular.

"Of course we\'ll be ok! They do this every year and no one ever dies." said a feminine voice behind Uriel.

The group advanced for a while, the lieutenant in front of the group peeked at a strange device from time to time and adjusted the course as she walked. Everyone was excited, acquiring a trait had become something like a rite of passing, marking the moment in which a boy became a man, or a girl a woman. Excitement soon became boredom once they noticed that nothing happened. There was nothing in sight, no movement at all.

"I must say, this is nothing like I pictured it." Said the geeky student as he adjusted his glasses.

"Still, I\'m really grateful of the physical training course, if it wasn\'t for all the exercise we\'ve been doing I bet we\'d be like that guy." The coward student pointed towards Uriel who was sweating and panting already.

"Wait, isn\'t that the Urinal guy!?" one of the students commented.

"He is! This is going to be epic!" The cowardly student said as he snapped a picture of Uriel struggling to keep up the pace.

Cursing his luck, Uriel didn\'t reply and limited himself to grit his teeth as he usually did whenever he faced situations like that. He couldn\'t afford to spend what little breath he could muster into something as trivial as fighting back.

Laughter and mockery accompanied the group for a while and it helped them blow off some of their worries, until they were able to hear gun shots in the distance.

"Halt!" The lieutenant commanded as she lifted an arm while looking worriedly at her device. "It\'s nothing, keep on walking." She then said as she resumed the walk.

"Uh, excuse me, is someone in danger? shouldn\'t we head over there to help?" The same female student that previously comforted the coward guy asked the lieutenant. She was a sight to behold, at least from behind, she wore tight denim pants more suited for a night out than to walk out in the open.

"Don\'t worry kids, it\'s nothing." The lieutenant replied.

"But they might be in trouble, why else would you look at your communicator then?"

"This is not a communicator, this device allows me to measure how close we are to a strong enemy. For a minute I thought we had lost our way because we shouldn\'t have been able to hear anyone so early today, but it seems like they took a detour. It only means they were lucky enough to find some cryptids to kill on the first day."

"This is bullshit!" The huge student that looked a lot older than the rest complained. "We\'ve been walking for hours and none of us has a trait yet."

"It\'s just the way it is." The lieutenant shrugged.

"This only goes to show your incompetence."

"Fall back now or you\'ll regret it." The soldier woman said with a chill inducing voice, yet the student did not stop.

"If you were any more capable we would have killed a few of those things already." He scoffed.

"Listen, I\'m not in the mood to do this right now so I\'ll be clear and don\'t make me repeat myself. This is not your school, it\'s an army operation and I am allowed to use deathly force against you if I deem you as a threat to the group. Like it or not we\'ll be stuck in here for three whole days, now shut your mouth, I don\'t want to hear any of it."

The bickering caused a commotion in the group. Everyone got so distracted they didn\'t notice a small figure coming directly towards the group. It was a small creature, much like a rabbit, but it was bigger and leaner.

"Here here here!" Said Uriel as he beckoned to the creature, it was his first time seeing a wild animal and he was curious.

"I wouldn\'t do that if I were you." The droopy eyed girl said as she placed her hand on top of Uriel\'s shoulder.

"Why? isn\'t it just a hare?" Uriel replied, a bit startled by her words.

"Can\'t you see the horns on top of its forehead? that\'s a cryptid."

"A cryptid!?" Uriel shouted, calling for the attention to everyone in the group.

The armed soldiers were the first ones to react as they moved right in front of Uriel and started shooting at the creature. The sounds coming from their rifles was deafening leaving him no choice but to shut his eyes and cover his ears. When he finally opened them, he saw the creature lying limp in the ground already.

"Horned rabbit down." One of the corporals said as he finished it with a shot to the head. "Kill confirmed." He said after the sound died in the vastness of the barren land.

"Nice job everyone! The one who called it should be the one getting the trait. Hurry up and walk over there." The female lieutenant said looking towards the general direction of the fallen cryptid not knowing who exactly was the one responsible for finding it, but before Uriel was able to take the first step a heavy hand was placed on his shoulder and he was pushed back a whole meter and a hulking figure walked past him.

"This one is mine!" The huge student said as he picked the rabbit. "What now? should I eat it or something?"

The lieutenant facepalmed at him, but she didn\'t reply. There was no need to do so because as soon as he finished speaking the corpse of the rabbit started to disappear and a shimmering light surrounded the student.

He spread his arms letting the strange light into his body with a smirk and his eyes closed. Once it finished, the earth shook beneath his feet. Uriel who was still tired after the heavy walk had much trouble to remain standing. He separated his legs instinctively and crouched, in a desperate attempt to not fall to the ground.

"This is amazing! I can feel the power flowing in my veins! Now the world will finally acknowledge the strength of Jackson!" He broke in a wicked laughter.

"Why are you speaking in a third person now you moron?" The female student with piercings and denim pants said scornfully.

"This is the beginning of my rise to power!" Jackson replied, but was quickly interrupted with a mocking laughter. The one laughing was no other than the lieutenant in charge of the unit.

"Your rise to power? You got a lame skill, perfectly fit for a brutish thug like yourself. From now onward you\'ll be called Shaker, because that\'s all you can do, shake the ground."

The rest of the students accompanied her words with a laughter of their own, even Uriel was tempted to laugh. He didn\'t want to make fun of Jackson, though, because he experienced on first hand the power of his trait and he was overwhelmed by its extent.

He deeply regretted not being able to get his trait first, he thought of all the great uses that such a trait could have and, despite the lieutenant saying it was a weak trait, Uriel felt he could achieve great things with it.