[A Few Miles Outside of Coleman, Texas]
When the group finally arrived at the location of their targets, they quickly realized why all five of them had been sent out here.
'Damn…' Maria thought to herself as she gazed out at the nonsense before her. 'Sending all of us out here was definitely the right call.'
What was supposed to be a small group of megahogs actually ended up being an entire herd of them. One that was at least forty-five cryptids strong. And to make matters even more annoying, nearly all of them were the size of fully grown horses at the minimum.
"They must've been hiding underground until recently." Sam surmised as he looked at his scanner. "That's the only way they would've been able to avoid the radars."
That explanation made the most sense in Maria's opinion. Based on what little she knew about the creatures, megahogs, also known as hogzillas, typically kept themselves underground during the day to avoid the heat and to conserve energy. Similar to how most normal animals that live in desert climates do to avoid getting dehydrated. But even so, to see this many cryptids in one area was a rarity.
"That still doesn't explain the number, though." Alex then said from atop her pegasus. "It takes weeks for megahogs to reproduce and grow this big. There's no way they could've avoided detection for this long."
"Does it really matter?" Diego interjected. "We're gonna have to kill all of them either way. Let Aunt Miranda and Uncle Alex worry about investigating this later. We need to handle this before they start migrating to the nearest town."
The rest of the group looked at each other and quickly agreed with the young man's thoughts. Clearly, there was something wrong here. But they couldn't worry about that at the moment when faced with this many rogue cryptids just lumbering about. Whatever the deal was, they would have to worry about that later.
"Alright, here's the plan…" Sam then said to the others. "We're going to use the terrain to our advantage and funnel these damn things over to the nearby hills. Once we have them all in one place, we blast them with everything that we have and take out the stragglers before they can burrow underground and get away."
"Sounds easy enough." Dora folded her arms across her chest.
"Maria, that dragon of yours can use 'wind magic', right?"
"He can." The raven-haired woman nodded.
"Then we'll use him to attack the megahogs once we have them all corralled. You and Dora head over to that hill over there and wait for us to come to you. Me, Alex, and Diego are going to do our best to lead them over there."
"Sounds like a plan!" Diego smiled.
"Any questions?"
Everyone appeared to be in agreement with Sam's strategy. It made the most amount of sense given the circumstances, and neither of them could come up with anything better aside from just blasting all of the megahogs and sending them into disarray. So, with no reason to delay the inevitable, the group quickly summoned their companions and got ready to get started.
Diego was the first to summon his companion. Maria watched as the young man brought out his sabertooth jaguar. A massive, feline cryptid the size of a truck with jet-black fur, long tusks at the front of its mouth, and a bright orange mane that covered the length of its spine. It was certainly an impressive creature based on appearance, and the fact that it could use 'dark magic' was going to be a major help.
Sam immediately summoned Blitz out of his body right after. The red-nosed reindeer looked as impressive as ever with its shiny black fur and elegant-looking antlers.
Dora elected to hold off on bringing out her companion until they were at the top of the hill. Apparently, they were all lacking in terms of speed. And she didn't want to waste time waiting for them to take her where they needed to go.
Finally, Maria let out a slight breath before allowing Attuma to come out of her body. The dragon-type cryptid was absolutely ecstatic to finally be able to come out and fight against other cryptids. And judging by the way that it was flapping its wings, it was ready to go at any moment.
With everyone now ready to go, Sam, Alex, and Diego hopped on top of their mounts and made their way down to where the herd of megahogs was currently located. While they were doing that, Maria and Dora climbed on top of Attuma's back and allowed the creature to fly them over to the top of the hill.
"This is awesome!" Dora shouted as she relished in the feeling of the wind flowing through her hair.
"It is, isn't it?" Maria replied in her usual cool tone of voice. Even if she didn't show it on her face, the young woman agreed that being able to ride through the air atop her dragon was certainly a fun experience. Not as much fun as flying through the air herself, but definitely a close second.
In no time, the two ladies had made it to the top of the hill. Once they were there, Dora quickly hopped off of Attuma's back and brought her companion out.
Maria watched as a ten-foot-tall ape cryptid with silver fur, a red face, yellow eyes, and a long tail materialized into existence. The creature looked rather intimidating thanks to how big and muscular it was. And she could instantly tell that the thing was easily an A-rank level cryptid.
"Is that an Ozaru?" The raven-haired woman couldn't help but ask.
"Sure is!" Dora smiled while patting the cryptid on the back. "This is Buckey! I got him last year for my birthday after my grandfather finally let me go to our family's cryptid pit. He's still growing, but he's already super strong. And his mana output is nothing to sneeze at."
"Wow." Was all that Maria could say in response to that.
To say that the young woman was shocked to see something like this would be putting it mildly. Ozarus, a special type of ape-cryptid only found in Asia, were not only incredibly rare but also wildly expensive. They were also incredibly strong once they reached maturity, based on what she had heard. And, from what Maria had been told by Robin, the only other person that she knew of who had actually managed to tame one was Wang Jiayi.
'Of course, the Conleys would have something like that at their disposal. These spoiled brats from the Nine Families really do get whatever they want, huh?' The raven-haired woman thought to herself before quickly shoving it to the back of her mind.
Now wasn't the time for that kind of thing. Envy was an ugly emotion. And Maria had recently promised herself that she would stop letting that jealous part of her come out whenever she encountered someone who had it better than she did growing up. She had made that mistake a few times before with Elizabeth and Evan, and she didn't want to fall back into that habit.
Just before Maria could think about it any further, her phone suddenly rang. The young woman quickly pulled the device out of her pocket and pressed the green button on the screen before holding it up to her ear.
"Hello?"
"You guys ready?" Sam said on the other end of the line.
"Good to go." Maria replied.
"Cool. We're starting now."
The moment the words came out of the man's mouth, a massive burst of green light suddenly illuminated the area where the megahogs were gathered. And just like they had predicted, the entire herd immediately began to flee in the direction of the hill as Maria and Dora watched as the other three sorcerers fired off blasts of mana bursts in a way that kept the cryptids in line while also managing to kill a few in the process.
All it took was a couple of minutes before the herd was finally at the shallow valley that sat in between their hill and one directly across from it. And once she was satisfied with their positioning, Maria decided that now was the time to make her move.
The raven-haired woman used all of the knowledge she had learned over the past couple of weeks to mentally link herself with her dragon and used that connection to command the creature to unleash its attack. Although the bond with Attuma still wasn't nearly good enough for her to completely merge her consciousness with the creature, like how Robin could do with her companions, it was enough that she didn't even need to say a word to let the creature know her intentions.
In response to the mental command from its master, Attuma let out a loud hissing roar before firing an absolutely devastating gust of 'wind magic' from its mouth that was large enough to cover the entire area in one go.
"Damn." Dora couldn't help but say as she witnessed the display of strength with her own eyes. "That was sick!"
The brunette woman then turned to her own companion before Buckey fired off his own series of well-placed mana bursts to pick off the straggling megahogs that somehow survived the first attack.
What followed next was a rather impressive display of coordination from the group of young agents as they spent the next five minutes killing off the rest of the herd with brutal efficiency. Although a few of the megahogs tried to escape the slaughter by burrowing into the ground, Sam, Diego, and Alex were quick to take them out before they could get away. And before they knew it, the entire herd had been wiped out. Leaving every last megahog to crumble into dust before the winds took their remains away.
"Good job, team!" Sam said with a wide smile on his face as the two groups met up at the top of the hill.
"Remind me to never get on your bad side." Diego said to Maria with a smirk of his own.
"I'll say!" Alex quickly added. "That first attack from your companion almost blew me and Chrysler out of the sky."
Maria couldn't help but nervously shift on her feet for a moment before responding. "Sorry. He went a bit overboard."
Attuma simply let out a low hiss after hearing that. But everyone present could swear that the dragon had a smile on his scaled face.
"Can we go now?!" Dora then said in a rather frustrated tone. "Our job here is done. And I want to try and make it back home before we have to deal with traffic."
Alex shrugged. "Sounds good to me."
"Agreed. Let's get the hell out of here." Sam added. "Plus, we still need to tell Aunt Miranda about this. Something about how many cryptids were out here still seems a bit off to me."
"Worry about it later, man." Diego placed his hand on his cousin's shoulder. "I swear, Gabriella was right about you. You're way too damn serious sometimes."
"Well, someone has to be the responsible one in the group."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, bro!"
Maria couldn't help the slight smile that appeared on her face as she watched the Conley cousins bicker amongst one another. Since she was an only child with no relatives in the country, she never got to experience what it was like to be constantly surrounded by family. And given her loner and standoffish personality, she never really had a lot of friends growing up to replicate the feeling.
'Must be nice.' The raven-haired woman thought to herself as they all began making the journey back to their vehicle.
And just like that, Maria's first-ever true cryptid hunt had come to an end. Well…her first one, not counting the whole ghoul situation that happened last year. Sure, the young woman may have preferred the usual excitement that came from tracking down sorcerers instead of cryptids. But this proved to be a rather fun experience, all things considered. One that she was certainly going to remember for a long time coming.
-(o)-
[Somewhere Nearby]
"Well…shit!" A masked man said he watched the group of young DPA agents leave the area through his high-tech binoculars.
"See, I told you this was going to happen." Another man, one who was a bit younger than the first, replied.
"You know what…yes…yes, you did." The first man conceded. "I was hoping that we would've been able to round up all those damn pigs before the DPA showed up. But I guess that Lady Luck just wasn't on our side today. This sucks, though. I was certain that I did a good job at hiding those damn things."
"Look on the bright side." The second man patted the first on the back. "It's not like we actually needed any of them. We still have all of the ones that we caught last week ready to be shipped off."
"True, but the Boss would've loved it if we managed to secure that many cryptids for her before her little operation in Portland finally kicks off."
"It is what it is. No point in crying about it now."
"Yeah, you're right." The first man then turned around and began walking away. "Anyways, let's hurry up and get out of here. Since we couldn't get the megahogs, we might as well get the others ready for transport. Duncan's going to be here soon since he's got some business in Dallas to take care of. And you know how he gets when people don't move as fast as he likes."
All the second man did was shrug and give the first a smile under his mask. "Fine by me. The sooner we get away from this backwater town and all these mongrel country rats, the better."
"I couldn't agree more."