New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

With a silent incantation, Kujaku waved her hand in an arc, a mist of pink and purple swirling over everyone present.

Moments later, their shapes morphed into white wolf-like animals, with horns sticking out of their foreheads. Streaks of blue lightning zigzagged their fur in distinct patterns, from head to tail, making them recognizable from each other, even though they no longer looked human.

Alex looked down on his new shape from above, his perspective not changed from his usual bipedal height, and frowned.

"How is this supposed to help us?" he asked with furrowed brows.

Growls and whimpers doubled the words coming out of his mouth, as if a canine had been trying to talk over him, and his confusion only grew.

But Kujaku still understood and replied to him.

"This is a spell called animal shape, and, as the name betrays, it casts us into the shapes of any animal I can imagine. It also covers our speech with that animal’s sound, if I’ve ever heard them, making us unrecognizable to others unaffected by my spell.

"With this, anyone seeing us will think we are nothing else than magical beasts, which means we are less likely to be attacked," she grinned.

"Only less likely?" David interceded. "A group of awakened people might still take their chances for our ’Materials’ though," he added.

Kujaku shrugged at his comment.

"We’ll just have to make a convincing argument for them to retreat, then, won’t we," she retorted.

At that moment, Kary’s eyes narrowed.

Her mana senses had been spread out as far as she could ever since the possibility of an attack became imminent, and they had just pinged from the south.

"We have people coming in from the south. Four for now, but at the speed they are moving, I doubt they are alone," she said, her head snapping in that direction.

Already, she felt another group of four appear in her detection range, a little further to the east of the first group, quickly followed by an additional group to the west of the first one.

’At least, they are coming from the same direction. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try to surround us,’ she mused.

"We are switching to text comms as much as possible," Kujaku ordered.

Everyone nodded, joining the group chat that Kujaku immediately created, adding all their numbers to it.

Kary started sharing the location of the incoming enemies through the chat, making sure everyone knew where to look as they got closer.

As she had suspected, the three groups started fanning out even further as they got closer to their glade, quickly wrapping around them and forming a three-point encirclement.

Sharing this to the group chat, Alex commented about the hole in their formation.

’There is no way they left us an exit by accident. This has to be a trap. Do you feel anyone in that direction?’ he asked Kary.

But she shook her head, nothing appearing in her senses to the north.

’It only means the threat in that direction either knows how to conceal better than your senses can detect, or is outside your range,’ Kujaku said.

It was obvious it was a trap, given that the other three groups had been thorough in their encirclement. But the lack of information still made everyone nervous.

Alex looked over their group, the placement of everyone still sporadic in the clearing, and he shook his head.

’Start forming smaller packs. Get all the smaller people behind some of our taller people. We need to look like a pack of wild, magical beasts. We would protect our cubs if we were,’ he ordered, trying to reorganize them all to make the illusion more effective.

Although some of Kujaku’s agents weren’t sure it would make a difference and were waiting for orders from their boss, a quick nod from Kujaku and they obeyed.

In the meantime, Yeoja had been looking directly north, trying to use the newly acquired vision skill from the sunset bow and find their northern threat. Sadly, there were too many trees in her way for her to spot anything amiss from her current position.

"Do you see anything?" Rì-Chū whispered to her from her right side.

She shook her head no, cancelling the skill for now. She liked to have this new option, but whether she wanted to admit it or not, it hurt her eyes and brain to use it, so extended use was a big no for now.

She heard the bow’s voice inside her head chuckle.

’Heh. You are still too weak to use me at my full potential, runt. But fret not. It’s nothing that much practice and training can’t fix. For now, your archery skills alone should already put my power to good use.’

Yeoja wasn’t sure if the bow was trying to sound considerate or arrogant, but he was nonetheless speaking the truth.

She was confident that using all those new skills many times would grow her tolerance to them and make her much stronger.

It wasn’t long before Kary warned them that the three groups surrounding them had stopped nearby the edges of the glade, and everyone became highly alert.

They could all tell they were being observed, and the eyes on them made them feel like ants were crawling all over their skin.

But they could also tell the illusion was currently working, as well, given the lack of attacks coming at them.

Alex spun his head toward one of the people surrounding them, recognizing the mana presence.

’It’s the syndicate, of that I am sure,’ he said in the group chat.

Kujaku mentally clicked her tongue.

’Of course it is, dumbass,’ she thought.

She made sure not to have her texting app pick that up, of course, but her thoughts on the matter were still obvious on her face to anyone looking her way.

They could see the ’Are you stupid?’ look on her face as she glared at Alexander.

’We need to make sure they knew we know they are there. Can someone do something wolf-like to make them hesitate?’ she asked in the group chat.

Alex grinned at the question.

’Glad you asked.’

His hair started turning white and his features beastly across the illusion, and from the pit of his stomach, a bestial howl blew out of his mouth.

*AAWWWOOOOOOO!*

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