Giant Wild Boar King

The male wild boar was foraging in a mountain hollow. The slopes on either side were steep and difficult to climb, so the Avatar decided to concentrate everyone's fire on a single point and shoot the boar from the high ground of the trees.

After examining the boar's tracks, the Avatar found that its den was probably at the foot of the mountain and that it had only come up to forage.

The Avatar then organized everyone to circle around behind the boar and ambush it from trees on a steep slope a dozen or so meters high.

At noon, everyone finally caught sight of the boar. This time, all the members of the exploration team were in nearby trees. Even if they couldn't kill the boar, they could avoid its attacks.

Considering the boar's size, the exploration team had chosen large trees several dozen centimeters thick.

As the boar swayed along beneath them, the Avatar fired the first arrow, aiming for its head. It missed the brain, however, and struck the neck instead. The pain made the boar try to pull the arrowhead out with its mouth.

After the Avatar loosed the first arrow, the other four fired one after another. They weren't as accurate as the Avatar and aimed for the boar's body instead. Two arrows struck its back but didn't penetrate very deeply. Another struck its thigh, leaving a relatively shallow wound, while the last landed at the boar's feet and missed.

When the boar realized that other people were attacking him, he turned his head and yanked the arrow out of his neck with a mighty pull, tearing out blood and flesh with it.

He immediately fixed his sights on the exploration team and charged at them with a howl.

By then, the Avatar's second arrow had followed, striking the spine in the boar's neck directly. It seemed to jolt its nerves, severely impairing its movement. The boar staggered as it walked, its speed slowing.

Ten meters away, after several rounds of attacks, the boar had seven or eight arrows sticking out of its body. Just as it was about to reach the trees where the exploration team waited, it slowly collapsed.

Chen Yanshan and Liu Tingquan had stayed in the trees without ranged weapons, their bodies taut the whole time. Only when they saw the boar finally fall did they breathe a sigh of relief.

The Avatar told everyone to wait a few minutes and only led them down from the trees once they were sure the boar was dead.

As they walked up to the boar, the four instructors marveled at it, hardly able to believe they had done this. Then they exchanged glances. "Haha..." A burst of deeply satisfied laughter rang out.

Finally, everyone posed for a photo with the enormous boar. It was a moment well worth commemorating. It meant that those among them who had spent decades practicing archery had finally found a use for their skills.

After retrieving the arrows and burying the carcass, the Avatar led everyone to the mountaintop on the right to rest and cook.

Not long after the exploration team left, a nearly grown boar arrived at the place where the other boar had been shot. It sniffed around, gave a few low grunts, and dug a male boar's carcass out of a patch of freshly turned earth. It seemed to confirm something. With a low grunt in the exploration team's direction, it raced off toward Four Corners Flat.

That afternoon, everyone prepared to descend the mountain, enter Four Corners Flat, cross straight through it, and climb the second mountain range from the valley to the north.

This crossing did not go smoothly, however. After finding two used Class Change Stones, the Avatar sensed that something was amiss and warned everyone to stay close to the large trees as they traveled.

Only when the Avatar's keen ears picked up a series of heavy sounds and some boar droppings appeared nearby did the Avatar confirm that the exploration team was being followed by a herd of wild boars.

The Avatar immediately told everyone to climb the nearest large trees. After seeing them get up, he scrambled up a ring-cupped oak twenty or thirty centimeters thick in a few quick movements. The area was mostly a stand of ring-cupped oaks, whose nutlike fruits were also food for omnivores such as wild boars.

Amid a series of tremors, the herd of boars charged about like a raiding force on a battlefield, trampling and pushing over the low shrubs nearby. Gradually, the whole herd came into view.

At the sight of the dozens of boars, the exploration team members' hearts leaped into their throats. They hardly dared to breathe.

One boar in the herd was especially enormous, even larger than a fully grown water buffalo. It was a true wild boar king. It weighed at least one or two tons and walked like a heavily armored tank, leaving deep hoofprints in the ground wherever it went.

There were also five or six adult boars weighing five or six hundred jin each. The rest were nearly grown boars weighing several hundred jin apiece.

When the others got a clear look at the size and appearance of the boar king leading the herd, their faces gradually turned pale. The confidence they had gained from hunting and killing the male boar earlier vanished without a trace.

After observing the herd's numbers and the boar king's size and strength, the Avatar felt that their firepower gave them a fighting chance and quickly formed a plan.

Normally, a herd of wild boars was led by an old sow, with several adult females and other juvenile boars gathered around her. Although sows were not known for their tusks, this old boar king had mutated after using a Class Change Stone. Her upturned tusks were already thirty or forty centimeters long, and at their thickest they were nearly as stout as an adult man's arm.

So the way to drive back the herd was to catch the king before catching the thieves: concentrate their fire and kill the boar king first. Without the boar king to lead them, the herd would be easier to defeat.

The Avatar first ordered everyone to attack the boar king. They had to get their attacks out; if they waited any longer, these people might throw themselves into disarray out of fear.

"Four instructors, you still have compound bows. When the boars come close, attack the boar king first."

"Chen Yanshan, Liu Tingquan, don't worry about anything else. Make keeping yourselves alive your first priority."

Just as the Avatar finished speaking, the herd led by the boar king came within seven or eight meters of the trees where the exploration team was hiding.

The boar king fixed her enormous eyes on the people in the trees and gave several low grunts.

Two adult boars immediately led more than a dozen juveniles to surround the trees.

Seeing that the boar king actually knew how to command the herd, the Avatar knew they couldn't wait for her to get any closer.

"Loose!"

The Avatar took out a compound bow, nocked an arrow, and sent the first shot at the boar king.

Of the four instructors, Mo Yumei performed the best, adapting very quickly to shooting from a tree. The other three had to secure their positions in the trees while freeing their hands to draw and shoot, so their accuracy suffered considerably. Their arrows flew toward the other boars beside the boar king.

Unexpectedly, however, the boar king knocked the Avatar's arrow aside with her tusks as it flew toward her.

Mo Yumei's arrow did strike the boar king, but she shook her body twice, and the arrow fell out. She snapped it underfoot. It had only pierced shallowly into her hide and had not gone in very far.