Knight and Wand

Chapter 253 Man and Nature
Seeing that the rangers accepted the commission and outsourced this difficult problem to professionals, Heinkel felt instantly relieved.

Especially when looking at Leon who had dealt a heavy blow to the Wolf family's army and captured their own young master, they couldn't help but feel a little more favorable to him.

Leon and others accepted the commission and did not delay any further in Redingburg. They immediately asked the old knight of the Wolf family to take them to the place where the Dinocampus was last seen.

Everyone mounted their mounts and followed Heinkel's troops out of the city without stopping. It only took a few hours for them to arrive at a mountain village in the southeast.

According to Henkel, someone fled to Reddingburg a few days ago to report an attack, and the small village in front of him was the area where the bear monster appeared most recently.

No one has lived here for a long time. The villagers were either killed by the bear monster or fled far away and never dared to come back.

As soon as the rangers arrived at the place, they jumped off their saddles and spread out, relying on their own experience and skills to search for any remaining traces of the Dinocampus.

Derek found some bear hair that seemed to have fallen off from the ruins of the collapsed village house and let the dire wolf under him smell it.

The wolf with an exceptionally developed sense of smell smelled the pungent and dangerous odor, and couldn't help but groan with its teeth bared. Then it began to sniff around, tracking it skillfully.

This was not the first time it had hunted for unusually dangerous biological signals. Although there was still some fear in the genetic instinct, the dire wolf had long been desensitized to it because its master had hunted for an equally terrifying wasteland dragon beast before.

Larian, Greenthorne and others analyzed the footprints left by the giant bear. Olivia stood by, listening with obedient and curious eyes, learning the valuable experience of these monster hunters.

The rangers took a quick tour of the nearby woods and quickly confirmed that the Dinocampus was heading deep into the forest in the northeast.

"Do you need me to send some soldiers to help you?" Heinkel suggested.

Greenthorne glanced at the fearful Wolf soldiers and shook his head at Knight Heinkel, "No need, sir. Your soldiers have lost their will to fight. If I let them follow me, I will have to focus on protecting them. Besides, if there are too many people, we might alert them if we try to track them down."

Leon looked at the direction the rangers had identified, and said to Heinkel, "You just stay here and help keep an eye on our horses."

Although the forest in front of them was not dense, the terrain became increasingly rugged as they went deeper into the forest. War horses were useless, and only Derek's dire wolf could move freely along.

After checking the weapons and tool bags, everyone immediately stepped into the woods without further ado.

The group of eleven people were divided into three groups. Leon, Olivia, and Knight Morven, who felt they were outsiders, followed Larian.

The remaining seven Orland Rangers, one group led by Greenthorne and the other led by the wolf hunter Derek.

The three teams, led by Derek who had a dire wolf as their companion, followed the trail left by the dire bear while keeping their distance.

After about an hour, Leon saw Knight Derek and his dire wolf on the right stop.

Seeing that there seemed to be some discovery, everyone came over to find out what was going on.

Derek held a small tuft of short hairs he had found on the tree trunk between his fingers and showed it to everyone.

".This length and texture cannot be the hair of an adult Dinocampus dinosimum," Larian analyzed.

"Could it be left there by some other animal?" a ranger speculated.

Derek shook his head, "But Dak can smell our target from up there."

Dake was the name of his dire wolf companion.

"You mean, that ursinus albicans has its cubs?" Leon was a little surprised.

"It's still hard to say for sure, so let's keep moving forward." Derek threw down the animal hair.

The knights set out again.

After walking for a few more hours, the sky gradually darkened and Derek made a new discovery.

The dire wolf Dak sniffed at a patch of land that was slightly different in color from the rest of the land. Derek immediately took a shovel from the pack on the dire wolf's back and dug up the ground.

Insects and ants were turning over the ground. When they went over, they saw a substance in the dug soil that was almost dry and looked like animal feces.

A few rangers picked up some branches, walked over expressionlessly and started to "stir up the shit".

Although Leon has the memories of the Son of Hunter, his ability to recognize monster feces is still far inferior to those experienced rangers.

However, according to their analysis, judging from the color and texture, although this is the feces of a Dinosha bear, it obviously does not belong to an adult Dinosha bear.

Adult giant bears do not hide their feces. Adult beasts have almost no natural enemies. Instead, they like to leave obvious traces everywhere, both to mark their territory and to attract mates.

You know, there are not many Deinonychus bears in the world today, probably even fewer than the flying dragons in the mountains of the northern wilderness. Without these pungent pheromones to connect with the opposite sex, these ancient giant bears would have become extinct long ago.

But the cubs of the Deinonychus dactylus are different. Without the ability to protect themselves, they will still instinctively bury their feces to avoid attracting other predators before they grow up.

"Why didn't we see any traces of the bear cubs along the way?" Leon asked the rangers in confusion.

He was very interested in the contents about chimera beasts, dragon beasts and other magical beasts in the magic book in the tower, but he had not made the effort to learn them. He had no idea about the chapters about tigers, leopards, wolves and bears that were similar to creatures from his previous life, and he did not know much about the Dinoshan bear.

"Because the cubs of the Dinocampus dactylus spend most of their time lying on the back of the mother bear, except when they stay in the den, especially when they are just born, because compared to adults, the cubs are only half the size of an adult when they are born." Larian explained.

Leon nodded, feeling that he had learned something new.

Seeing that night was approaching, everyone found a suitable open space to set up camp, make a fire and rest.

After dinner, he couldn't help but ask the rangers about the habits of the Dinocampus dactylus.

After a deeper understanding, Leon stared at the flickering campfire, recalling his discoveries during the day and Heinkel's words. He could not help but ponder silently.
Logically speaking, the Dinocampus had lived in the mountains on the edge of the Nightmare Forest in the west of Mammore County for so long, and had lived in peace with the human villages outside. So what was the reason that caused the Dinocampus to suddenly break into human territory and kill so many people?
Could it be that the wild beasts are fleeing and migrating because of the roaming corpses?

But those zombies obviously could not threaten the powerful giant bear of Mount Dread. The bear monster could flatten a bunch of zombies with one slap.

wrong!

Leon suddenly realized that the corpse ghost could indeed threaten the Dinocampus.

It is not a threat to the giant bear itself, but a threat to the food and territorial ecology it needs.

The corpses attacked the animal communities that originally lived on the outskirts of the forest on a large scale, causing the number of prey that provided survival for the Oreyama Bear to suddenly drop rapidly.

This is probably the reason why it abandons its long-standing territory and suddenly migrates with its prey.

This Dinocratia bear may have just given birth to a cub and is in urgent need of food, and also needs to provide for the cub.
If we calculate the time, when we first encountered it, the mountain bear chased the three of us who were trying to escape. It was probably because it was pregnant that it behaved so violently.

More than that.

Leon thought about it and realized that it was already mid-October, which seemed to be the time when the Oreaxa spheniscus was preparing to eat a lot and get ready for hibernation.

At this point, food is in short supply due to the changes in the Nightmare Forest.
No wonder the Dinocampus dactylorhiza, which had not interfered with each other for so many years, would suddenly leave the mountains and forests and enter the human kingdom to look for food.

There is no such thing as evil beasts or not. Ultimately, it is a fight for natural living space.

Leon patted his forehead. He didn't expect that what happened here was still closely related to the impact of the disappearance of the spirit-like field caused by the triggering of the Neti card magic.

This mess that was caused unintentionally should be cleaned up by myself.

(End of this chapter)