Arthur stood on the ground, watching the little girl having her fun up there with her pet. He had to admit, seeing her pure laughter made his day, and he also felt some of the envy everyone was feeling.

Back in his world, it wasn’t rare to have more than one pet, but it was related to the strength of the master. He didn’t think it would differ much here, so if he and the others wanted to have ground and flying pets, they needed, at least, to couple themselves with one monster.

Three only had already coupled themselves with monsters, and thus he wanted to know how strong they were right now. He experienced the strength of Ouly, and knew, approximately, what absorbing vital organs had as effect on the mage.

What remained now was to assess the effects of coupling with monsters. If it had no more effect than absorbing, then he would prefer to keep absorbing monsters, or making them pets.

“We need to prepare ourselves to leave,” he suddenly said, attracting everyone’s attention once more away from Lily and her Birdy.

“Are we going home already?” Madly dejectedly said, expressing her upset.

“No,” he shook his head, “we need to continue hunting for monsters, and also find suitable ones for you.”

“As pets?” Ron hurried to say, “flying pets perhaps?” he added with anticipation that made Arthur laugh.

“We will see,” he just replied vaguely like this.

Their preparation to move out wasn’t as easy as everyone thought. They had many things to carry, many provisions for them, so Arthur instructed them to make a cart, something they could move easily, and he used his pet, Don, just to act as a pulling behemoth for the cart.

They took hours until they managed to make a cart that could move, and then they moved everything over it. Arthur made sure to fill more cups with the blood from the pool left over by monsters. He knew they might face any suitable monster at any time, so he must be prepared.

Once finished, he called upon Lily, asking her to keep track of them, watching for any incoming danger. She gladly agreed, as being up there was a total new experience for her.

She had only to come down once, taking some meat for her and her Birdy, from her own share, then she returned under the watching eyes of everyone to the sky, enjoying her privilege alone.

The journey into the forest kept going smoothly for the next few hours, where they crossed great distance without meeting a single monster. they started to get bored, but Arthur was anticipating such a result.

With the fact of the intelligent monsters, it wasn’t easy to provoke any without proper cause. Just as they crossed a water stream with their cart, Arthur felt some danger eyeing him and the others.

He couldn’t detect the place where this danger came from, but as he was vigilant, Lily came down, hastily, on the back of Birdy, before she yelled:

“A group of pythons are surrounding us, we need to be careful.”

Arthur’s heart sank to the ground, as the only animal he hated and feared his entire life was snakes. He had once a terrible experience when he was a kid back in the cultivation world, and since then he developed his fear of snakes.

“How many are there? And where are they located?”

Despite being afraid, he controlled the fear and asked what mattered to him right now.

“They are over a hundred, and I think they are in grade four at least. They are surrounded by a single python, white in color, that seems to have two horns over its head.”

She pointed to a place not far from them. Just as Arthur tried to sense the area there, he felt a sudden painful backlash, like there was a higher form of power, much stronger than him.

‘Intelligent based monster, that’s a good start!’

He muttered to himself, as he put his hand over his head, enduring the throbbing pain. The changes that happened abruptly to him were noticed by everyone, who looked in worry towards him.

“I’m fine, but this battle might be tough!” he said, while taking out his bow, putting down arrows on the ground while adding: “To hunt snakes, we need baits, delicious ones, and our meat can do the trick.”

“Are we supposed to sacrifice the meat?” Ouly asked, in doubt, as his share was already lacking compared to others.

Arthur totally ignored him, as he said:

“We need spears, lots and lots of spears. This battle will be hard, fast, and if we managed to turn it into a long distance battle, then we might have a greater chance in winning.”

They listened to his words, and nodded, after all he was their leader, with the most mysterious experience among them. Arthur then retreated, instructing them to gather as many long, thick, hard branches as possible. He didn’t follow them on gathering the branches, as he started to gather other important things.

Snakes were creatures blessed with poison, but strangely their bodies couldn’t handle any other poison different than their own. One of the common ways back in his world to hunt pythons with the least possible effort was to use other poisons to counter the snakes, and render them immobile and weak.

So, he started looking for poisonous herbs, anything that was quite familiar with his previous world’s poisonous herbs.

On the search trip, he managed to find some herbs and leaves, even fruits not yet to be full and grown, to be used as poisons. When he returned back, he was surprised by what his team gathered, a small hill of branches were waiting for him.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one here fearing snakes, so all of them worked double hard to collect what might save their lives.

He just smiled helplessly, as he sat down, picked branch after branch and made it having a sharp end, suitable to be called a wooden spear. He then asked Madly and the others to squeeze what he collected into one pot, then used a small branch with smooth leaves to paint the pointy ends of these spears with this toxic liquid, hoping this might work.

They were all working, except for Lily, whose job was to watch over for these pythons. Once they finished after one hour, they were ready to march out.

“Take what you can handle of spears, and put the rest on the cart. Be careful while handling them, as they are all poisoned.”

Arthur gave his final warning before he explained the battle strategy:

“Tarry will be in the front, and Lily will be helping him from the sky. I will help them with arrows as well, and your job is to attack the monsters that Tarry can’t handle with spears. Tarry, beware, these monsters are sneaky, rapid in movement, and might use distant poison spitting on you, so use the shield all the time to defend, and never delay in retreat if you sense danger.”

Tarry nodded, as he was thankful for Arthur’s concerns. As for the rest, they felt more tense, especially when they realized that apart from Tarry, none of them could handle monsters alone.

“Let’s go,” Arthur finally gave the call, as they crossed the river stream again. This time, once they crossed the river, they heard a massive hissing coming from the location Lily pointed to. They didn’t need Lily’s shout as they knew the monsters were coming.

“Don, stay behind me,” Arthur said, as he knew his bear would be helpless and just a burden in this confrontation. As for him, he went ahead, grabbed as much meat as he could, and then soaked them with what remained of the toxic juice, then spread them on distances near the team.

Everyone’s eyes will regret these pieces of meat, which were enough to form a one large piece of the meat they cooked before. Arthur, on the other hand, didn’t feel any remorse at all, as he knew if they managed to pull this attack successfully, then their meat storage would be enough to cover their needs for weeks, even months.

So, he distributed the meat in a haste, before he returned back towards the back lines, waiting patiently for the coming of the first waves.

The wait didn’t last long, as the trees in front of them shook strongly, before the first wave of the pythons appeared. They were each ten meters long at least, two meters thick, with a tail biforked on the end of it, forming a fan like tail of fish not a snake.

Each python head was half the size of an adult man, with four long canines, like small spears, plus one horn on the centre of its head, and thick long lustrous scales with green to dark contrast colors, giving a more dreadful appearance to them.

“They had good defense, very rapid agility, rapid reflexes, and their main weapon of attack is their venom in their teeth, and their hidden attack will be from that tail.. Watch out for the horns, never let anyone glow completely, or else we would be finished.”