บท 564: Chapter 234: You've got to be kidding Me

The group found themselves enjoying all of the fruit that was laid out before them as they took a break sitting in the shade of the bush trees. There wasn't a cloud in the sky at the moment so the pleasantly cool atmosphere was mostly caused by the nice breeze across the prairie. Joshua set back against one of the long roots of the bush tree that they were all resting underneath and took a bite out of a large slice from the very first fruit that he had cut off from one of the trees. It took him a moment to pinpoint the taste, but he realized that it was similar to the flavor from a honey dew and the white with greenish tint color on the inside matched with the fruit as well. The main difference that Joshua noticed outside of the size was the fact that this fruit was a bit sweeter and had more of a crunch to it that reminded him of an apple.

Joshua tried several of the different fruit that they had gathered and realized that all of the fruit reminded him of things he had tried in the past. If he ran across a fruit that he didn't know much about then someone else in the group had an idea of what the fruit was such as the dragon fruit that was the size of a basketball. All of the fruit resembled a fruit that was well known except with slight changes that were most likely a result of the evolution process. Either way it was all delicious and judging from the miles on end of bush trees within sight there was a good chance that several beast in the prairie used this as a place to collect food to eat.

The idea of beast enjoying the food was already proven with the bison far off in the distance munching on the fruit from the trees. The bison were much closer than the other beast that Joshua had sensed at the edge of his aura pulse and they had moved in their direction a bit while settling in between two large hills. The size of the beast was still shocking to see and although they were too far away for Joshua to observe them to check out their levels the amount of aura they had was far greater than anything else he had seen in the prairie outside of the guardians. The largest bison that was likely the leader had about twice as much aura as any of the other ones in the herd.

While watching the bison and eating his food Joshua was a bit curious on how the large aura filled fruit would affect the beast while they ate them. Most of the bison were just chilling in the shade, but there were a couple of young ones that were trying to reach the fruit up in the bush trees. There were only a few small bison in the herd that were most likely recently born and the group were incredibly protective of them. Even now Joshua could see six or seven much larger bison laying down around them while the lead bison kept an eye out for danger for the entire herd.

One of the bison laying down got up and walked over to the tree that the other bison were trying to get to and stood right under it. It reared its front legs up making Joshua think that it was going to reach up with its mouth and pull a few fruit down for the smaller bison to eat. With its size it could fit several of the fruit in its large mouth, but instead of going that route the bison slammed its legs down on the ground right next to the tree. The force of the blow was so strong that Joshua could feel the shaking from where he sat several hills away. The stomp caused several fruit to fall from that tree and a couple to fall from other nearby trees to the group of bison. The larger figure went back and laid down at its previous spot while the little bison went around munching on the fruits that had been knocked down.

It was interesting watching the herd of bison, but it was clear that they weren't an actual threat. Celia's sense of danger wasn't alerting her about them as long as they didn't approach while the bison seemed more focused on looking out for other beast instead of humans. That might change in the future when people try to hunt down the bison or tame them, but for now other beast were their biggest threat. Watching the bison was relaxing, but it wasn't the only reason Joshua was looking towards the bison. He coated his own eyes with aura once more and watched as one of the smaller bison started eating some of the fruit that the older one had knocked down for it.

The aura within the small bison's body was fairly strong, but still miniscule in comparison to the much older bison that were around the area. When the small bison started eating the fruit Joshua noticed that as the fruit was being digested the aura from the fruit would start to spread around the bison's body. The amount of aura in the bison would grow slightly with every fruit it ate. It wasn't enough to make a big difference, but over years of eating such fruit the young bison would have a shot as becoming as powerful as the leader of the heard if they were able to stick around long enough.

After eating a few of the fruit the small group of little bison left the rest of the fruit alone and started eating some grass before going to sleep next to their mothers. It became apparent to Joshua that eating too much of the fruit would gather more aura in the young bison's bodies than they could handle. It was why they eventually stopped and went to rest. Joshua realized the same thing while he was eating the fruit. For him it helped strengthen his aura a tiny bit, but other than that, since he wasn't low on aura in the first place, he didn't get much else out of the fruit. For the rest of the group however their bodies couldn't handle too much aura at once. Amy was able to handle the most outside of Joshua, but it wasn't much more than the rest of the group.

The fruit would be good to bring back and grow on their own considering aura was fundamental to the strength of the explorers. The fact that there was a stat that based itself around aura in will meant that in the long run all combat jobs will have to use aura or mana in some way and these fruits seemed to very slightly strengthen aura and mana to a degree. They all put the fruit that they couldn't finish away into their inventories while Joshua made sure to keep some of the seeds for the garden he didn't worry too much about it since there were a lot more fruit around for him to take back for samples.

While they were all resting Lily and Thomas both let out their beast companions in shifts so they could eat some fruit as well. Lily made sure not to bring out Tank, Titus, or Cinder in their full size so that they wouldn't come across as threatening to the bison a few hills over. They ate their fill of fruit before the group was ready to head out to continue exploring the prairie. The current area that they were in seemed to be a paradise for the herd like herbivores of the prairie. It was a place with plenty of food to eat along with open space that made it extremely difficult for predators to hide from sight, but Joshua knew that it was impossible for there to not be any sort of threat on this portion of the prairie.

There were two main reason why Joshua knew that there had to be some form of danger on the prairie. The first was the fact that it was an entirely new area of the prairie and there had to be a guardian beast of some kind in it. Up to this point all of the guardian beast had been strong and dangerous so Joshua doubted that wasn't the case this time around. The other reason was that the bison were still on guard even though they were in this area. That would only be the case if there was some kind of threat that could be found lurking around and had to be something that was powerful enough to be dangerous to the large bison or at least strong and smart enough to steal away some of their young without being killed in the process.

Joshua had a good feeling that whatever the predator of this area was it was something that came out at night time since that was the only way Joshua could see anything having a chance against the bison. To be a threat to the group of bison the predator would either have to be something that swarmed its target since the bobcats and hyenas weren't nearly strong or numerous enough to take on a herd of bison, or the predator would have to be just as big as the bison were. Either way such a predator would be a major danger to Joshua's group and would have to be something to look out for.

With full bellies and restocked energy the expedition group got on the move once more mounting Momo as she carefully made her way through the hills and bush trees. The group of bison didn't even bother to look and see where they were going and kept to their little area as the distance between them grew. While making their way further into the prairie Joshua noticed that after about twenty minutes they were starting to approach the area where Joshua had sensed the other group of beast with his aura pulse that was even larger than the bison and were familiar in some way, but Joshua just couldn't quite remember what they were.

Joshua quickly spread out his aura sense to see if he could still find the beast that he was looking for and that's when he spotted them a few hills away. At the moment they were blocked from view by a group of large bush trees along with some hills that were in the way. Joshua had Lily redirect the direction of Momo so they could head towards the top of the hill where they could look down on the beast from above. It didn't take long before they arrived at the last hill and they were all able to look down at the beast that Joshua was looking for.

The only thing Joshua could think to say when he saw them was. "You've got to be kidding Me."