CH 55

Sita fished out the two Utah Raptor skulls, wiping them with snow before solemnly handing them to Eim.

How heavy–

While struggling to carry the skull that was emanating a suspicious ginger scent, Eim had a look of questioning on his face.

“This is a rule in our tribe. Whenever someone kills a large beast, the skull is returned to the hunter after all the meat is eaten. You can display it in your nest as a proof of your bravery.” Sita explained.

Damn! Who came up with this rule?!

The densely packed teeth were facing Eim, as if they were there for the sole purpose of scaring him. He shivered and turned the skull to face a different direction.

“That… Erm, Sita, I want to gift it to you…” Not wanting to have such a terrifying decorative item at home, Eim looked at Sita with pitiful eyes. The idea of finding Sita whenever he was in trouble had been long ingrained in his head.

She was shocked by his words, and her face gradually turned red.

One had to know that in the world of beastmen, a male would only give their spoils of a hunt to a female when he liked her. And Eim’s actions had scared her to some extent.

You’re too short, I prefer guys as tall and strong as Fendi. 

She wanted to refuse him directly, but it seemed too hurtful to say so, thus she changed her approach: “You… You… You have to do your best and grow taller…”

￣▽￣ “I’ll try my best to eat more and grow taller, thank you for accepting this!”

I don’t need to worry about seeing this in the middle of the night and getting a nightmare anymore~ (≥▽≤/) Eim happily went off.

What to do, would he misunderstand my acceptance of his gift as accepting him? 

Sita felt that the two skulls in her hands were getting heavier and heavier (ω｀).

However, as a female, receiving a gift from a male was something to be happy about. Especially for Sita, since this was the first gift she has ever received. Hence, Sita displayed them at an extremely conspicuous location in her nest that very day.

Although many of the people who ate the Utah Raptor meat got a slight constipation, the idea that “so it seems that this type of monster isn’t difficult to hunt” brought peace to everyone’s minds. The next morning, under Salle’s leadership, the hunting team that ate and drank their fill set off full of energy.

This was Eim’s first time following the hunting team, and he felt a little emotional. His main job was to arrange the traps.

Just the thought of the chief assigning this task to him injected Eim with chicken blood [1]. Together with Dad, Brother, Little Cousin and Third Aunt, he went to the hunting ground and dug many pits.

And then–

Many people fell for his traps.

That day, the number of beastmen who fell into the traps along with their prey were especially many.

As a veteran hole digging expert, each hole he dug was deeper than the other. When it was time for him to pull the people out of the hole, he realised something tragic: he, he simply wasn’t strong enough–

Thus Eim could only go back to the tribe and ask for someone to pull out the unlucky beastmen from the traps.

But to the other beastmen, today was undoubtedly their lucky day: Today’s catch was more than twice of the usual amount!

Previously, the tribe mainly had 2 hunting methods, the first was to hunt as one wished. For example, if a beastman happened to run into a small herbivorous animal like a snow rabbit, they would go ahead and catch it. Of course, everyone’s desire to hunt for rabbits have decreased since they now knew: behind a silly looking snow rabbit that looked easy to catch was n different ways of burying them alive.

They were starting to feel grateful for Salle’s wise decision of allowing the snow rabbits to settle down in their tribe. Letting such ruthless rabbits roam in the wild would sooner or later lead them to having the same fate as the Utah Raptors and getting eaten!

The other method was a team hunt. Salle was the one who thought of this method. Initially, many beastmen weren’t used to this method of hunting, such as the tiger beastman Fendi, since some of them were natural lone wolves.

But this method of hunting was more efficient and had good effects, so it became a tradition that was continued.

Using this method, the tribesmen would decide on a target beforehand and take turns to chase it, until the prey has been killed. 

There was still prey aside from those they’ve set their eyes on who managed to escape, but thanks to Eim’s traps, many of those fleeing animals were caught. This was a huge surprise! Additionally, thanks to the traps, the beastmen who were initially only allowed to pick plants were now able to hunt!

After a while, the tribe started voting on who was the most popular bait.

The winner of the voting was Mor, from the reindeer species. Mor was a reindeer who recently came of age. Her fur was lustrous[2], her body was full of tender meat. They only needed to let her go up, and 9 out of 10 would follow after her in a daze until they fell into the traps.

In no time, she became extremely welcome among the people in the hunting group.

The second most popular was A’Dai. Similarly from the reindeer species, the best part about her was her tall physique, which was good at attracting larger carnivores. As such, although she couldn’t attract as many animals, they were heavy! And could be eaten for a longer time!

The third most popular was Brother Rabbit. As a veteran at baiting, he walked coquettishly and stood at tempting locations. It was just a pity that he was too small, and the prey he could attract… Were simply cubs.

To only be able to get third place on the popularity ranking, Rabbit Brother felt extremely hurt.

Then, the tribe also voted the 3 least popular bait 囧

Third was Sita, a female mammoth.

Her body seemed too domineering, her tusks looked too fierce, so creatures that dared to attempt catching her had yet to appear. For such lonely bait[3], the hunting team expressed that it was better if such bait didn’t come with them; (Sita: = = 、、I caught the eyes of the Utah Raptors previously, it’s not my fault that our current prey are so weak~)

The second place rankers were the flowers (?) of the tribe, Black and White, male snow rabbits(?).

The two brothers who were unable to transform to their original forms seemed to be unable to attract prey to the point that just smelling their scent would cause the prey to run away. Hence the hunting team was forced to reluctantly remove them from the list of hunters. 

Next, it’s time to announce the surprising first place!

The TOP 1 on the least popular bait ranking turned out to be the newcomer beauty, Andy’s boyfriend– Xuehua.

Whenever he appeared, herbivorous creatures would be nowhere in sight, while carnivorous creatures would have no reaction when seeing him, acting as if he didn’t exist! They would do whatever they were doing, as if Xuehua wasn’t in front of them.

Everyone did not believe that this was possible, so they brought him out twice to hunt. And then? There was no “and then”–

“I feel like I’ve suffered a blow…” Upon knowing about this secretly circulated ranking, Xuehua felt a little down. After being crazily chased by the entire universe for centuries, it was a little hard for him to accept that he was first place on the least popular list.

Meng Jiuzhao, who once witnessed his popularity firsthand,was now more and more curious about his male god’s species. He noticed that the herbivorous beastmen of the tribe were also not very willing to get close to him, and the carnivorous ones didn’t notice his existence. 

Under such circumstances, for Andy to take notice of him and love him, it had to be true love! However, he also vaguely understood why his male god had gone hundreds of years without a single scandal…

It was unknown if it was because the animals in this area had never witnessed such a high-level hunting method, but their hunt went very successfully multiple times in a row. 

Occasionally, they didn’t even need to bait that prey into the traps. They just needed to place the trap and the next day they would find something fallen inside.

Making traps thus became a compulsory lesson for every tribesman. For a time, traps appeared everywhere on the snowfield around the Vash Tribe.

The weather during the past few days wasn’t very good. It started with a few days of strong wind, followed by snowfall. Snow fell for 3 days straight, covering pretty much every nest in the tribe.

Since they were able to hunt a large amount of prey over the past few days, the tribesmen did not give much thought to the bad weather. 

In fact, it was hard for them to have the chance to spend so long shut in their homes and lazing about, so everyone happily relaxed.

On the other hand, Sita never stopped worrying. When she realised that the snow piled on top of her roof was getting too heavy, she hurriedly climbed out of her nest to remind everyone to sweep the snow off their roofs. When everyone was done with this and ready to eat, they realised that there was no one in the kitchen. Carat had disappeared.

In the end, it was still Sita who managed to find him, on top of the kitchen roof.

“He’s hibernating again…” Sighing, she carried him back to the kitchen.

“Our chef can’t cook today, so let’s do it on our own!” After explaining the situation to everyone, Sita walked off without stopping. 

While cleaning the snow from her roof, she had already been thinking, the snow was too heavy, and the ground was covered in thick snow. Would the deep pits dug around the tribe previously be filled by the snow? 

Salle thought of the same problem. When Sita went over to him, he was commanding Fendi and the others to check on their traps nearby. Since she was already there, she simply followed them to make sure.

Who would have thought the unexpected surprise they got.

“There’s a snow fox here!” Fendi found a frozen solid fox in one of the traps.

“It’s fur is very soft, let’s give it to the cubs. Baby from Black’s family came to our tribe last, and shouldn’t have enough fur hides. Let’s give it to him then!” Sita immediately found an owner for the fox’s skin.

“There’s also a prey in the trap here.” Andy was squatting in front of a deep hole. Using his hands to dig away the topmost layer of snow, he spotted the snow white fur of an animal “Seems to be a bear.”

“Wow! Such a big one! Bear meat is very tasty~” Fendi threw the fox to someone else the moment he heard Andy’s words, running over to help Andy drag the bear out.

Sita also came over. They removed a layer of snow to see that what was trapped was indeed a winter bear. The snow white fur was nearly perfectly camouflaged in the snow.

“This bear is really big!” Pulling on one of the bear’s paws, Sita asked Andy, “Do you want this skin for Xuehua? He looks very skinny, so he’s probably afraid of the cold.”

“Hm–” Although Xuehua was skinny, he really wasn’t afraid of the cold. Instead, it was him who had been feeling cold easily recently. Andy thought in his heart, but didn’t reject Sita’s goodwill.

Sita was a nice maiden. If she was male, there would definitely be many girls who fall for her.（←Why does this sentence sound weird?) [4]

“Something’s wrong… This bear is so heavy!” Pulling it halfway, Sita suddenly furrowed her brows.

Almost as soon as she started pulling, she felt that this bear was very heavy. But considering that it might be due to it being frozen with the icy stratum, she didn’t care too much about it.

But now, with the sound of breaking ice, it was evident that the bear had already been separated from the ice, so why did it still feel so heavy?

“There’s a prey! Heavens! There’s another prey under the bear!” Finally, someone noticed the reason.

Hearing this, people started running over. Supporting each other and pulling on the bear[5], the bear and the human were finally dragged out.

With a heavy thud, what was originally in the trap was now displayed for everyone to see.

The situation was completely different from what they had guessed. What was hanging off the unlucky bear was not another beast, but a person.

They saw a person who was biting on the bear’s butt with his dear life, even at the cost of him freezing into a popsicle, together with the bear.

Everyone was stunned.

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