Chapter 1403 Prey by Design
Tracking an immense cat-like creature in a hunting zone required a bit of effort. The experienced hunting consultants riding on the legged transports constantly scanned their surroundings.
Enormous creatures ordinarily left a lot of traces of their passage behind. Ves understood little of what they saw, but one day after they set out, the Felixia Catstrikers found a trail!
\"The tracks are over two weeks old. Not bad.\" One of the fellows stated at the observation compartment of one of the transports.
Ves, Lucky and Nitaa happened to be present as well. The rest of the cramped transport's interior looked absolutely drab. The vehicle's entire design revolved around function. Hardly any thought had been spent on comfort, which Ves personally thought was a bad design choice!
The hunters and other personnel aboard the transports didn't share his complaints. To them, a hunt was serious business. This was no time to sink into a comfortable couch and enjoy a nice glass of wine!
Certainly, a longer hunt on an untamed planet might merit some priority on comfort, but the Felixia Catstrikers estimated that their current hunt would not last longer than a week.
During this period, every mech pilot and every staffer had to be as alert and focused on the job as possible!
Even Ves still carried some responsibilities. He had to keep track of the conditions of the mechs of the hunting team throughout the course of the hunt. He also had to pitch in with performing acute repairs in the field after they concluded a round of fighting with the Crown Cat.
He knew he'd become very busy soon, which was why he prized this quiet period at the beginning. If only he had a comfy couch instead of a drab alloy bench to rest upon! His seat didn't even come with a backrest!
As the hours passed by, Ves idly distracted himself by studying the surrounding terrain.
The hunting zone that kept Zeigra contained within its area was situated in the very depths of a very huge tropical rainforest environment. Different from regular forests, House Laterna seeded the lands with supersized tropical trees.
It took an extremely long time for these trees to grow to their current height and size, but once they did they absolutely towered over every mech!
Ves studied the basic parameters of the trees beforehand and found out that even mechs and huge cats had difficulty cutting them down!
While they weren't invincible or even highly resilient, their sheer size and mass made trying to cut them down a waste of time. A mech or a huge cat would have to expend way too much energy to go through all of that wood, and that only took care of one among billions of trees!
Aside from the massive trees and huge shrubs and bushes, plenty of wildlife also livened up the vibrant rainforest. Various creatures the size of dogs comprised the smallest animals in the forest.
Larger animals the size of bears or hippos preyed upon these bottom-tier animals, but even these mighty genetically-strengthened predators fell prey to the various cats roaming the hunting zone!
Yes, cats!
Zeigra was far from the only huge cat to occupy the hunting zone. House Laterna wanted to provide hunters with a realistic and challenging hunting experience, and facing multiple predators fell within the range of possibilities that could overcome a hunting team.
For this reason, Lady Miralix and the other hunters slowed their pace and progressed carefully into the rainforest. Even as they tracked Zeigra's old tracks, they kept their eyes peeled out for the tracks of smaller but still threatening huge cats.
Still, even the most vigilant hunters fell prey to surprises.
Just as Ves was shifting his seating posture, alarms suddenly rang throughout the compartment!
\"Alert! Massive heat signature detected to the west!\"
The observation chamber immediately locked down by sliding down the armored shutters over the transparent windows!
\"What's going on?!\" Ves asked with concern.
\"A huge cat is lying in ambush along our path!\"
Ves activated a projector and inputted his temporary credentials. Due to his sweeping responsibilities, he gained extensive access to the systems of the hunting team.
Right now, he used his access to call up the live footage of the fight about to take place outside.
As soon as someone sounded the alarm, the mechs and vehicles of the hunting team all moved into position. The legged transports all huddled together, forming the center of a loose formation of ranged mechs that all pointed their weapons outward.
Circling around them, the melee mechs brandished their weapons as they adopted postures that would help them deflect or withstand any pounce from a huge cat!
In this circumstance, the mechs couldn't afford to evade or dodge an attack! Neither the ranged mechs or the legged transports were built to withstand the raw fury of even a regular huge cat for more than a couple of seconds!
\"It's coming!\"
The bushes to the west parted as a huge cat pounced at the nearest machine, which happened to be a knight mech immediately placed upon the spot!
The cat did not utter any roar at all, perhaps thinking that its attack hadn't been noticed at all!
In truth, the hunting team already locked on the creature's noise, heat signature and other indicators a while ago!
Even if the huge cats were genetically modified to make them harder to detect, that only worked in distances ranging to kilometers. This close, their huge bulk made it untenable for them to remain undetected!
As the huge cat which looked like a green-and-orange panther pounced, the knight mech which stood in the way began to bend its stance and angle its kite shield.
CLANG!
The colorful panther's claws raked across the surface of the shield and deflected to the side! The rest of the huge cat's body partially slammed against the shield as well, but due to the clever angling, started to bounce aside as if it was a stone skipping across water!
\"Yes! The cat fell for it! He's dead meat now!\"
The hunting consultant's words proved accurate. The panther who looked like an abomination of a kid's doodling had been thrown so off-guard by the failed pounce that it failed to react in time to the threats approaching its flanks!
Two spearman mechs flanking the knight mech charged forward and rammed their weapons through the thick hide of the huge cat!
\"AOOOOOWW!\"
The huge roar emanating from the injured creature was so forceful that Ves had the illusion that it rattled his bones!
He picked up Lucky and hugged his cat close to his chest.
\"Look, Lucky! That's what happens to big, dumb cats! I better hope you don't grow up as large and stupid like this genetic failure!\"
\"Meow!\"
\"Just look at the awful coloring of its coat! The biotech researchers who cooked up its genes have no artistic sense at all! Anyone who takes a look at it will immediately develop the impression that it's a clown! Considering its idiotic decision to ambush a hunting team, I'm not surprised it's lacking in the intelligence department!\"
Once the cat suffered two deep puncture wounds, the hunting team adopted a conservative and vigilant posture.
Only the knight mech and the two spearman mechs sparred with the bleeding panther. The other mechs including the Kinslayer vigilantly faced every other direction in case any other hidden cats lay in wait to pounce!
Just because some huge cats were stupid didn't mean every specimen charged at their deaths!
Most cats, especially the more mature and older ones, developed sentient or near-sentient intelligence. This made them especially dangerous as their planning and cooperation exceeded the norm of regular exobeasts.
Perhaps the most fearsome disaster that could befell a hunting team was being ambushed by a pride of multiple huge cats!
When each of these massive creatures consciously and proactively hunted together, then the battle power they could exert increased exponentially!
Fortunately, it appeared that the colorful panther brought no friends and backup. The knight mech easily fended off the weakening panther's instinctive attacks while the spearman mechs continued to poke more holes into its flanks and rear.
After eight minutes of steady dancing, the panther finally developed second thoughts. Though it attempted to escape multiple times, the hunting mechs did not allow it to escape with its life intact.
The green-and-orange panther might develop a grudge against the Felixia Catstrikers or other hunting teams! To prevent the resentful cat from taking revenge in the future, the Catstrikers had to nip the attacker in the bud!
\"It can't run!\"
Stabbed by spears from both flanks, the huge cat had bled out so much from its puncture wounds that it could no longer summon up the strength to stop the knight mech from stabbing through one of its eyes with a sword!
\"It's dead!\"
Despite this small accomplishment, none of the hunters expressed any excitement.
In fact, the hunting team outright ignored the carcass of the panther and quickly started to get back on the move!
\"Why are we leaving the carcass behind?\" Ves frowned.
\"The huge cat is only an adolescent of its species.\" The hunting consultant shook his head. \"Lady Miralix won't earn any prestige for hunting such a weak prey. Zeigra is our only target. We are to avoid any lesser huge cat as hunting them down provides no benefit to our hunting team!\"
The cat that pounced on them just a moment ago turned out to be young, inexperienced and weak!
The fury and combat prowess of a Crown Cat definitely surpassed that of this trivial panther!
What they encountered was just a taste of what was about to come!
\"Is it unusual to face a lot of ambushes by other huge cats?\"
\"It's as normal as any other hunting environment.\" The hunter smiled. \"Many times, hunting teams that set out to hunt down a specific cat will return with the carcass of another cat on their transports. Every cat in every hunting zone is our enemy. Some are clever and know better than to confront a team of mechs, but other cats like the panther just then are compelled to attack anything big that moves!\"
\"Even if they face a bunch of mechs that they can't eat?\" Ves scratched his head.
The hunter's smile turned into a grin. \"There's us humans inside those mechs, you know? The transports like the ones we are on right now carries a lot more humans. Some cats are really hungry for human flesh. Others deliberately target us because they're smart enough to realize that they're nothing but prey that exists solely for our amusement!\"
Now that he thought about it, the fate of most huge cats on the Asco Continent was kind of tragic. A lot of huge cats emerged from test tubes instead of born from actual mother cats.
Knowing no love, they grew rapidly as their genes compelled them to eat and eat until they grew to an immense size. This hastened and industrial-like upbringing did the mental states of the cats no favor.
\"The smarter the cats, the more they comprehend the nihility of their existence! Their entire lives came into being for the sole purpose of giving us humans some feisty prey to hunt!\"
The way the hunter gleefully talked down on the huge cats made it clear to Ves that some hunters were in it to satisfy their need to take down something bigger and stronger than them. Humans were so small compared to the size of the huge cats that it gave the former a power rush whenever they took down something so enormous!
\"Don't you think that some of these cats deserve better?\" Ves cautiously asked.
The hunting consultant threw an ugly look at him. \"Prey is prey. No matter how deadly they are and how smart they grow, the cats are always destined to turn into our fur coats and hunting trophies mounted on our walls. In the parlance of mech designers like you, they are prey by design!\"
House Laterna designed the vast majority of the huge cats on the Asco Continent to serve as hunting fodder!
In no instance did the biotech researchers and the hunters ever think that the huge cats deserved any chance of escaping this fate!
For some reason, Ves felt inordinately sad for the huge cats.
\"Meow!\"
Of course, Lucky didn't see it that way. To him, the huge cats were merely mutations that deviated enormously from the ideal cat!