[3rd POV]
Grim was correct.
The herd was completely scattered across the open plain.
Their formation was unlike any other herd I had encountered. Instead of a herd, they looked more like a loose gathering of animals staying in one place. Their number was not closely stitched together; instead, they spread wide for a greater range of grazing in the dry land.
"Shouldn't be an issue," I said before disappearing among the woods.
I noticed the biggest among them, the one Grim had mentioned, so I began moving around the herd to get close to my target. The herd was scattered, so it took quite a long time to reach my preferred position.
Especially if I wanted to hide from their prying eyes, it would take quite a bit of effort. That was a time I could not afford to waste, so at some point, I just stopped stalking and walked into the open plain.
Immediately, eyes were on me, but the eland herd did not run.
I walked in open view, seemingly having no interest in them. They stopped grazing and stood tall to look at me. Their eyes were fixed on me, but I think that was because I was much larger than a lion should be.
One trait all these giants share is that they are stupidly not that afraid of predators. After all, what kind of predator would target an antelope the size of a buffalo?
After their eyes wandered away from me, they looked around as if searching for my pride. They were not afraid of a single predator, but they were still smart enough to realise that a full pride could take them down.
But seeing none, they did nothing. They did not run. The most they did was move slowly away from me as they grazed.
What fools.
As I made a beeline, I was able to reach the biggest eland among them with less effort and time. When my eyes caught sight of that beast, it was like love at first sight.
He stood apart from the others, a massive slate-grey giant that seemed superior even to the Black Death. His skin shimmered faintly in the sun, a mix of dust and silver, with faint white stripes running like scars across his sides.
His neck caught my eye next. It was thick and heavy, carrying a dewlap that swayed with every breath. His horns curled skyward in perfect spirals, worn smooth at the tips from what I assumed were years of battle for dominance. They were very long, nearly three feet, if not a little less. That's three long rulers combined. Ridiculous.
Even from a distance, I could feel his weight through the ground beneath my paws. He was calm, like nothing on this continent could hurt him. He stood like a behemoth made flesh, one of the greatest creations of nature.
And I would agree. Seeing an antelope-shaped creature that large was far more striking than seeing a giraffe or an elephant, which you already expect to be big.
I grinned when he saw me, and we locked eyes.
My direction changed to a more obvious angle as I began moving toward him. He noticed that and raised a challenging eye, as if thinking what this cat, less than half his size, could possibly do to him.
A few minutes passed, and then I entered his range. I was already onto him, although not yet close. I was beginning to invade what he considered his domain.
A movement greeted me. His posture shifted ever so subtly, legs bending and locking for power, shoulders tensing, neck lowering for leverage. He turned his whole giant frame toward me, like he was becoming a wall of flesh I had no hope of scaling.
There was a pause. A heavy, pregnant pause.
And then action was born.
It was rapid, instant, sudden, and full of force. I lunged forward, my four limbs exploding in a blur of fury. The eland charged too, raising his front legs and pushing off with his hind legs. He was going to crash his head down on me and smash me into the ground.
But I was faster than he thought. I reached him before his head could come down. My jaws snapped at his loose neck, my teeth ripping through the flabby skin with all the strength I could muster.
There was a bellow, anger mixed with pain, and then he finally crashed. I pinched my whole body and twisted; my flexibility let me dodge the crash. His head did hit my side, but my hardened muscles made it slip away, and he hit the earth instead.
But from that fraction of contact alone, I felt a sting of force.
Then instincts screamed. I had fought enough horned beasts to know what came next. I abandoned all form of attacks and twisted my body to the side.
Right then, the eland brought his head up with a snap like a rocket launching off the ground. His long horns flicked up dirt as they stabbed skyward. Had that found my underbelly, it would have impaled me like a spear.
The tip of the horn missed me, but the head still shoved me upward, causing my hind legs to lift off the ground. I used that to fix my posture so that I was no longer face-to-face with him but on his flank.
I pushed the eland from the side with my shoulder. He was planted firmly on the ground by his weight. He was so massive that it felt like gravity was in love with him and refused to let go.
He stumbled sideways with my force. Unfortunately, that was about it.
The eland was not unstable like a giraffe, nor was it perfectly balanced like a buffalo either. He was in between, a level of build I had not yet encountered.
The eland moved again. He rotated, but it was not his head that came toward me, but his hindquarters instead. Before I could react fully, I had to duck under his hind legs that lashed out in a whip. It was a double back kick, powerful enough to crack my skull if it landed clean.
Hunting such a beast required you to be very comfortable with death indeed. Every moment, I was dodging attacks that were lethal enough to end me.
But after that dodge and after his hooves planted back on the ground, I explode out. My jaw found the back of his leg with a brutal crush. I felt hard bones on my teeth and I tried to break it.
His bones were too tough to simply bite through with only a fraction of a moment. So I did the next best thing and twisted my neck to break the bone. I didn't hear the crack I was hoping for but I knew I did damage.
I released my jaw and moved away just in time to dodge another kick that whipped past my face.
And then the eland ran.
I growled a predatory sound. His running posture finally tickled my hunting instincts, filling my body with a wave of power.
Clearly an eland was not as aggressive as a bull in the end. It was still an antelope who preferred to run when it finally encountered a proper predator.
I exploded out after him, reaching his back at a speed he never encountered. But I did not lunged at his back just yet, instead I ran until I reached beside him and jumped him from the side.
By jumping on him sideways, I was putting pressure on the leg I just damaged. Although the bone was not broken, that still made him buckle easier under my slam.
A loud bellow, followed by a half roar.
And then there was a crash.
The sound of a giant falling filled the open plain, exciting the vultures in the sky as they began circling like chaotic clouds. A cloud of dust rose as we rolled around a few times. His heavy weight even crushed me a few times but it was only brief contact.
When the dust settled, I was on top of the eland, my jaw tightly clamping the back of his neck. It was an attempt to control his deadly horns instead of trying to finish him if I was being completely honest.
But it was on the ground where the real fight started.
A fight between two creatures who wanted to live. I need to hunt him down, he needed to escape. In that moment of panic, the eland tried to escape more than he tried to hurt me so he was easier to manage.
But a 1000 or so kilogram of muscled flesh thrashing around wildly was hard to control. Yet I was manage to do so with a clear mind and a little knowledge about wrestling.
The prey was already big enough to have trouble getting up but with my weight on top, it was almost impossible. I also swiped his hooves whenever they found the ground so that he would remain where I wanted him to be.
A creature with hooves instead of hands or paws was easier to maul on the ground. There was a lot of thrashing as my claws began raking his body. It might not seem like much at first but I was cutting into his skin.
Lines of red started forming, at first it was a couple of them, and then that turned into ten, then twenty, then fifty, a hundred. At one point blood started to bleed out in huge amounts, wetting the dryland with dark red blood.
I bled him out to the point we were fighting on red mud. Losing blood only caused him to tire out faster and when he did, my jaw found its mark at the very top of his muscled neck.
I crushed the life out of him, slowly, painfully. I was not strong enough to show him mercy, that was the only way I could kill him.
At that point in the struggle, the eland herd had already dispersed completely. But the males on the other hand decided to stick around, bellowing loudly while trying to save their member.
It was of no use.
My prey suffered many injuries and in the end, he succumbed to the exhaustion.
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[IMAGE]
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