There wasn't much noise in the Ancient Forest anymore after the Fifth Fleet's hunter had slain the Old Everwyrm. There were traces of battle scars in the land, but they were slowly fading away and being covered by the native flora and roots. The only sounds to be heard were the various critters such as Vespoids buzzing and an occasional Shepherd Hare peeking out from their bushes scowering the ground for food. Atleast for a while.
In one of the Ancient Forest's many tree covered grooves, loud thumping could be heard for miles, closely followed by screeches of pain and agony. The wailing belonged to a heavily wounded Great Jagras. Froth and foam was drooling out of its mouth, its tongue hanging loosely out one side of its mouth. Its yellow braid was torn or cut away at places and its scales were smashed in, leaving splinters of them in the flesh of its arms and legs, further severing bloodvessels causing liters of blood to cover the forest floor. Its eyes were panicked and bloodshot, clearly in distress and running away for its dear life. It was an understatement to call it scared. It didn't stop to feed on helpless Aptonoth children to regenerate as it would only slow down its escape.
Finally after an hour of fleeing it finally arrived at its den, weakened by its blood loss and having lost all senses in its limbs due to severed nerves. It roared and caught the attention of its lesser inhabitants, the Jagras. They arrived in droves before the apex female of their lair. Some circled around their leader yelping in surprise at her condition, others tried to groom and lick her wounds only to almost have their heads bitten off in return. She barked orders to them to hold back and if possible drive off what was following her before hastily crawling into their tiny cave lair. The Jagras looked at each other in confusion before scattering, laying in ready for an ambush. They had received their orders and were going to follow it to their deaths.
The Great Jagras arrived at her resting spot, hoping to find any scraps of food she might have possibly overseen from her last meals. There were none and she let out a sad croon. She laid down and winced in pain, her shattered scales having cut deep into her limbs. Licking herself and picking out the scale pieces she cursed at her foolishness.
"What even was that thing?" she thought to herself, wincing as she slowly pulled out a broken scale intertwined with some muscle fiber. "If only my good for nothing minions could atleast bring me some decently sized meals I wouldn't have to face such dangers."
Though she thought that, her pack was in fact very capable of bringing her decently sized portions of various meats which could satiate her for a long while, but being the glutton she was she would often swallow the meals whole, leaving nothing for her pack. This had caused her to grow flabby and unfit, often preying on baby aptonoth and the occasional foolish kestodon as they were the only monsters slow enough for her to catch. But today was a special day, she had gone into heat, and her food cravings were larger than ever. Her pack simply couldn't keep up with her voracious appetite and she felt forced to go out and hunt for her own food after several months of laying dormant. Of course, the hunting would also serve the purpose of showing all the other male Great Jagras she was a capable mate. However, she had never expected to run into a Skinstealer.
"I thought they all left overseas!" She growled to herself, occasionally eyeing the only entrance to her resting place and nest for dangers. Reminiscing back to the annual Forest Council meeting governed by the only Silver Rathalos in the Ancient Forest, the council had been informed by a travelling Pukei-Pukei that the Skinstealers had left the Ancient Forest and travelled overseas to some distant place. There had been many celebratory roars that day, but it seems the information given to them was wrong. And how wrong they were. The next upcoming Forest Council meeting was only in a couple days. She had initially thought of the day as an opportunity to seduce some male Great Jagras but now she felt a strong inclination to inform the other apex monsters of the threat they were once again facing. This time, maybe more than ever.
Then, she faintly felt vibrations above her. Loud thudding could be heard and what sounded like dying Jagras screams before everything went silent once again. She immediately stood up, initially feeling faint from blood loss, but the adrenaline rush pushed away all pain and sense of nausea and she immediately began to dig into her secret exit hole.
"Seriously, how did it find me this quick!? Atleast my minions should have wounded it right?" She thought to herself, suddendly feeling very claustrophobic in her isolated nest. She knew better though, there was no way they could stop a monster like that. She had hoped it would have taken it atleast another day or two to track her down like the other Skinstealers but she knew this one was different. After all, she had been thrown around like a ragdoll during the first minutes of their encounter before opting to flee for her life. It was much stronger than she was, her only hope was her pack, and by the sounds she would guess they were no more.
"Shit, I know Garon doesn't like being disturbed when he isn't leading the council meeting but this is too important to leave out for a couple days! Maybe he can help me fend off the fucker!" She thought hopefully, furiously clawing at the dirt and excrement wall she had made to isolate the exit hole. It had been eerily silent for some time now so she was hoping it had gotten lost in the tunnels made by the Jagras but she knew not too leave such matters to luck. That wasn't how she had lived for as long as she had. She was cunning and smart.
Finally she could spot some sunlight poking through the wall. This only invigorated her efforts and she dug even faster. Finally, some seconds later, she had cleared the exit. She rammed her body into the hole and weasled her way through it. She was a genius! If she could, she would have offered up her fattest meal to her past-self for making this emergency exit. But then...
"Huh? I'm stuck?"
Over the years since she was a young female Great Jagras she had put on alot more body mass due to her lax life style. Therefore, she was too fat to fit through the hole.
"No.. No no no... nononononono!" She roared. She had trapped herself. Her previous panicked breath became a heave as she had a panic attack. She thrashed and tried to claw herself further out of the hole, completely forgetting about the threat looming closer.
She was only a couple metres away from sunlight. Just some final pushes and she would be free to run to Garon and gain his favor.
Then, a bright green glow eminated infront of her. They were bugs, green glowing bugs, flying infront of her maw. Then they turned red and her pupils dilated in fear as she felt something tug at her tail.
"NO! PLEASE! ANYONE! I DON'T WANT TO DIE HERE! PLEASE! GARON, I HAV..." She kicked with her hind legs to get rid of what was tugging at her tail, but to no awail.
With an audible pop her body was ripped out of her hole and she was thrown back into her nest, smacking against the wall. Some of her scales were left behind in the hole, having been cleanly ripped of, exposing her bare skin. Her vision went fuzzy and white and her body fell to the ground like a dead Aptonoth.
Her fate was sealed.
The bugs once again floated infront of her, but now slowly changing to orange before dissapearing. In the afterglow of the bugs she could make out the silhouette of a large Skinstealer holding on to a large object, covered in the pelts and skins of many rare and dangerous apex predators, many of which she had never seen, but the smell alone revealed how powerful they had been. The face of the Skinstealer was unconcealed and covered in what appeared to be its own fur. She recognized the Skinstealer immediately, but she didn't have the power to fight back anymore. She felt her underbelly become wet as her body went limp and all she could do was let out a last pained scream as the Skinstealer brought its object down upon her head with terrifying force, caving in her skull and scattering her cunning brain matter in an arc on the wall behind her.
A lantern emitted a dim light upon the blood stained nest of the Great Jagras. Sounds of flesh and skin being seperated by a knife and crackling bones echoed in the damp room. The Hunter had to work fast as the warm enviroment could cause the flesh to accumulate unwanted bacteria, rendering it useless. After having removed one forelimb from the corpse he placed the materials in seperate cooling boxes for storage. His backpack was hung up on an oddly shaped stalakite he had found, acting as a hook in order to drain the blood of the smaller Jagras which had stained the bottom of it. Taking a quick break from the tedious and meticolous work he wiped his forehead and inspected the Great Jagras's body properly. Running his hands down the urine stained underbelly of the monster he found the genital slit and inserted a finger and probed around in order to figure out its gender. If it was male he would feel something prod back at his finger, however since he felt no such thing he deduced the monster was female. Strange considering such a large pack was protecting its den. Usually only male Great Jagrases could hold together such large quantities of Jagras, but perhaps this female was special? Feeling something sticky lubricating his fingers he sniffed them and a strong odor met his nostrils. Grimacing and wiping his fingers on his coat he turned to look at her physique. It was mildly said disapointing. She was flabby and little muscle graced her frame, almost all of it was fat, suggesting a docile lifestyle. Clapping on one of her chubby hindlegs he spoke softly:
"Sorry for having to kill you when you were just trying to get busy with some stud, but I might have spared you from heartbreak."
His voice was dark and booming, quite befitting a man of his size and build. He was easily a head taller than the Admiral himself, with a frame to match. Though he wasn't as bulky as the Admiral he was quite certain he was stronger, though he had never bothered to test. Scratching his beard and long hair he gazed at the monsters face, or what remained of it, and planned. Dissecting the corpse here was less than sub-optimal, but the other hunters didn't exactly enjoy having his hunts dragged into camp as it always left a mess afterwards. Especially now would be bad timing as he was one of the first hunters to go out on a regular hunt in the Ancient Forest for a while now. Most Hunters had settled in Seliana or in The Guiding Lands at this point in time and he had found he was one of the few people still left to man Astera. And the few people left with him, he wasn't exactly on good terms with. Only the Commander, the rising star of the Fifth Fleet and her comrades would sometimes interact with him, but he rarely bothered to engage in long conversations with them. Mostly honorifics and hello's were exchanged, but atleast they didn't mind him. That couldn't be said for the rest of Astera however. They outright detested him and his ways of living.
Atreon belonged to an old clan from the Old World. They had been a group of isolated humans forced to live off of nature for a long time without technology to help them hunt or progress culturally, resulting in stronger, taller and faster humans in accordance to natural selection. It was their clans belief that all that you kill must be utilized to the best of your ability. That meant making weapons from bones and hides, eating the meat of your prey, converting the fat to oils etc. Everything had to be used. However, regular human hunters did not see it that way. They would only carve out the pieces they wanted and left the rest to rot away. It was detestable and disgusting in his eyes and so he continued his ancient practises to this day, which led to him being viewed as a savage and a brute by most others. Still, there was no way he was going to be able to dissect this Great Jagras without it spoiling halfway through. Picking out some dried brain matter from his beard he turned to his axe lodged into the monsters skull.
It was a rough and crude weapon after many years of use, but he found he simply couldn't leave his family heirloom behind in some Item Box. This axe had been passed down his bloodline for centuries, each generation having added and improved upon the weapon with the strongest monster material the current owner could find. Pieces of various Elder Dragons could be located randomly in the weapons decorative properties, revealing its power and enhancing the Dragoncore blade with pulses of different elements from said elder dragons. He himself had yet to add a piece as he had yet to find a challenging monster, but he was actively searching whenever he had the chance and wasn't tasked by the Commander to keep the local eco system in balance. Or cleaning up after rookie hunters and wandering elder dragons.
Pulling on the shaft, a sickening sloshing sound could be heard as the axe head removed itself out from the monsters skull and the dent in the wall it had made. Resting the axe on his shoulder he decided to preserve the corpse with cool drinks and carry it to his villa on top of Astera, which had been earned by hindering monster rampages from leveling Astera and its inhabitants. Positioning himself correctly he swiftly and cleanly chopped off the remains of the head, tail, and limbs of the monster leaving only the main body a limbless sack of meat, intestines, fat and bones. He cracked the limbs of the monster in half with his brute strength and placed them neatly into his cooling boxes and strapping the boxes to his backpack. He took out some cool drinks and poured the contents down the open esophagus of the monster and he felt the main body immediately begin to cool down. Nodding to himself in affirmation, he equipped his backpack and hoisted the main body unto his shoulder where it could rest and counteract the weight of his axe hanging loosely down on his side as he strolled away from the blood stained massacre.
As he cleared the forest edge some hours later and walked on to the grass plains he made his detour towards his Villa on the backside of Astera, the sun now slowly setting. Atreon whistled a lighthearted tune with a giddy bounce in his step at the massive amounts of materials he had just earned himself.