The Martial Unity

Catching up with the hippogriff proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated. The creature was faster in the air than he was. He would probably lose track of it if he tried chasing it in the air with Sky Walking.

THUD

He landed on the mountain hard before sprinting off in the direction that the hippogriff had taken off. The atmosphere recoiled as he shot forward at tremendous speeds. He kept his eyes on the hippogriff at all times, using Seismic Mapping to make sure he was keeping track of his immediate surroundings. Seismic Mapping couldn't keep track of things that were in contact with the ground.

Rui had already predicted that Seismic Mapping would become increasingly inadequate in the Squire Realm. Aerial maneuvering and combat were much more common in the battles of the Squire Realm. It became much more important to develop sensory skills that were equipped for the atmosphere.

There was an issue to be handled later. For now, he needed to drug this hippogriff.

Rui continued chasing through the snowy environment keeping track of the creature in the air, minimizing his presence to the absolute most that he could with the help of Mind Mask. Suddenly the hippogriff dove towards a mountainside.

('It's hunting another creature.') Rui realized as he sensed a mountain ram scaling the mountain where the hippogriff had dived.

"BAAAA!" The creature shrieked as the hippogriff clasped it with its talons and dragged it away into the air. Rui maintained a safe distance chasing after it while carefully observing it. Its prey struggled to break free from its talons, but it was already far too late, its fate was sealed.

After a few seconds, the hippogriff slowed down as it appeared to have finally landed on the ground. Rui slowed down quietly and simply observed it. The hippogriff quickly killed its prey with a simple attack with its beak.

It dragged the corpse into a cave out of his vision. He quickly closed his eyes as he focused on Seismic Mapping to continue his surveillance of it. In his seismic vision, he saw that there were more figures inside the cave, but much smaller.

('Cubs?') He opened his eyes, surprised. ('It has cubs?')

They were, without a doubt, smaller hippogriffs.

('Is that the reason that the hippogriff has been terrorizing other animals?') Rui wondered.

The mission bill mentioned that this species of hippogriffs tended to become exceedingly aggressive when in emotional distress. He hadn't bothered considering the cause for the emotional distress of the target of his mission, but now that he knew that the hippogriff was a mother, there was a pretty high chance that they were related to the cause of the emotional distress that caused the hippogriff to go berserk and destabilize the ecosystem of the Mount Cravitz.

('Hm.') Rui scratched his chin. ('I should inform the Ministry of Environment and Ecology.')

He sent a message to the commissioner that was assigned to handling his mission, informing them of the offspring of the hippogriff.

It wasn't long before he received an answer.

[We have duly noted and evaluated the information you have provided us. Please proceed with the mission normally. Do not attempt to apprehend or capture the cubs, a qualified team will be dispatched to safely acquire both the target of the mission and the cubs.]

Rui nodded. Thankfully, his discovery didn't complicate his mission. He was happy to know that the hippogriffs would be handled safely. He wouldn't be able to sleep right if the cubs were going to end up being hunted or killed.

Which made him feel odd about his meta-ethics. He normally didn't care to think about his core ethics, it was a waste of time, and he usually just stuck to what felt right. But he found himself more unwilling to kill baby hippogriffs than the many humans he had already killed.

Of course, this wasn't exactly a fair comparison. Most of the people he had killed were either people involved in crime or enemies who were trying to kill him. There was a limit to the amount of empathy he could feel for people belonging to either group, especially in the heat of battle. It was an entirely different thing to kill innocent, harmless, and probably adorable hippogriffs cubs.

He shook his head, putting aside such superfluous thoughts before quietly sky walking toward the entrance of the cave. He had already minimized his presence to the absolute limit, as he sneaked in the air.

The hippogriffs were close to the entrance of the cave, feasting away on the corpse of the mountain ram when suddenly the mother hippogriff froze as its pupils dilated.

WHOOSH

It immediately adopted a defensive position with its cubs behind it as it glared at Rui, who looked like a thief who had been caught from afar. He sighed before dashing in with the syringe in his hand. Now was the time to use the tranquilizer drug. He was quite confident it wouldn't take to the air to fight him, not when it had to protect its cubs. He was using the fact that it wanted to protect its cubs to restrain its maneuvering. Without a maneuvering advantage, the hippogriff couldn't really batter him around the way it did in their previous fight.

[GET AWAY!] It chirped aggressively and menacingly, spreading its wings, appearing as big and threatening as it could.

Rui simply ignored it before lashing forward at it, yet just before he was actually about to clash with the creature, he swerved, aiming for the cubs. The hippogriff lashed out at him with its beak preventing him from doing that.

('Gotcha.')

CLASP

He wrapped himself around the beast's neck, just under its beak where neither the beak nor the talons could reach him. The hippogriff screamed in pain as he drove the syringe deep into the side of its neck, injecting the tranquilizer into the creature.

THUD

The hippogriff quickly collapsed to the ground heavily, unconscious.