"I freakin' hate boats."
"Stop your whining Kungen, we should be close now, it's been a day or two," Felix said with a tone of aggravation.
"You don't even know how long it's been!"
"Well I kinda do…"
"KINDA!?"
"Shut up you stupid congas," Nel said.
Kungen mumbled a few profanities under his breath and laid on his back in the boat that was built for about 10 people, but with all the supplies they had brought, it was cramped.
"I see land!" Nikki yelled excitedly, which was somewhat unlike her.
Everyone shot up and rocked the boat a bit to stare out at what had appeared on the horizon.
"Those are some freakin' tall trees."
The island slowly got closer, and when they finally landed at a beach, they secured the boat on the inland so that it would be safe from heavy rain, currents, and hopefully monsters.
"This will be our base," Kungen said with authority. "The supplies we can carry we'll take, when we run out we return here," he stopped for a breath, "Our job is to explore the entire island looking for new monster species and treasure."
"Treasure wasn't part of the job"
"It is now, I'd like to go back and make a bit more than we're paid to do this, which may be a lot, but you never know what we could find out here."
Nel's mind immediately wandered back to the three-headed Kut Ku.
"It's still light out so let's go."
-------------------------------------
They walked through bushes, trees, and strange bugs which Nikki was recording the existence of on a small notepad. They eventually found a clearing where they stopped to rest for a minute.
"Can we eat now? I'm hungry," Nel whined.
"Yeah sure it looks safe enough." Kungen began to set up a small meal.
"Let's eat!"
The gobbled down all the food, not even thinking of rationing a thing. And then a large shadow appeared on the trunk of a tree.
"Kungen, there's something behind you…"
"A bug?"
"No, a bird."
"What's the problem with a bird?"
"It's a really, really, REALLY big bird."
"So?"
A loud screech pierced the group's ears, as a brightly colored bird that's body shape was similar to Kut Ku, but looked nothing like one besides that. The bird opened it's mouth and breathed a blue gas behind Kungen, the wind blew it towards him, and he fell asleep.
"Shit, was that poison?" Nikki said.
"No poison works that fast, don't engage it, I have an idea, take notes of it's movement, we'll need to kill it," said Felix as he stood up and grabbed a stone. "Here goes." Felix threw the stone at Kungen with all his might, and hit him square in the side.
"YEOW!" Kungen said, as he slowly got up. He then turned around and saw the bird, and asked, "How long has this been here?"
"It was the BIG bird I told you about, it put you to sleep with it's breath."
"Weird."
The bird jumped at them with it's razor sharp talons bared, and tried to strike, but the attack had poor accuracy the way it was carried out, and all the hunters avoided the attack.
"Watch it's movements, don't get hit, we need to know it's openings."
They ran circles around the bird and as they watched, almost all it did was bare it's talons, and jump forward wings flapping like an angry goose.
"Alright got an idea, pretty easy, have one of us on every side of it, when it jumps at you avoid it, then everyone who is behind it attack, hit to kill.," Kungen yelled to the rest of them.
All four hunters followed this plan immediately and began the formation. The brightly colored bird jumped at Felix, who rolled out of the way easily, The other three then attacked, Nikki aimed for the legs of the beast, impaling its left leg, and placing a large gash in the right, severely reducing it's mobility. Nel then followed up by shooting it straight in the eye, but before it could turn to her Kungen swung his Juggernaut straight at the body of the beast with all his strength, crushing several bones and knocking it down.
"Nikki-"
"On it"
Nikki then jumped to the bird and drove both blades deep into it's small head, the bird stopped flailing, and fell quiet.
"Ok I gotta say," Kungen began, "for a new species that thing was pretty damn weak, I barely even broke a sweat."
"Yeah that's true, but at least we get to say we were the first to see it and live," Felix replied.
"When you say it like that it sounds like it was formidable though," Nel said with a smile.
Nikki began recording the species in her notepad, including a sketch, and info about it's tactics. When she was finished Kungen stood behind her and took a look.
"Hypnocatrice?"
"It reminded me of Cockatrices from old lore stories my mother told me, and it put you to sleep with it's breath, like hypnosis, Hypno-Catrice."
"Ah I see, makes sense, so that's one new species, I wonder what else lives here."
The group of four started walking on, and in the distance they saw something that interested them.
"That tree…way in the distance there," Nikki Pointed, "is enormous, let's go take a look, something about it is a little funky."
"Looks pretty far off."
"Yeah but at least it'd give us a goal."
"True, let's see what we find on the way, and when we get there we can loop back around and head home on the boat."
They started their long walk to the great tree in the distance, anxious to see what awaited them there.
