“Sign here one last time and you’re good to go.” A staff member in the dispatch facility informed him. “Good luck on your mission.”
“Thank you.” Rui nodded as he collected the assigned standard gear. In addition to the mission recording-device he was expected to use to update the Martial Academy, he was also issued an eco-survey device by apparently the commission department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment meant to be the tool with which he could procure the information and intelligence required by the ministry.
He left behind his mask this time, he was dealing with a beast, not a human that could track him down via his identity. There was no risk associated with not concealing his appearance. He was grateful, as well-made and comfy as the masks were, they were still a pain in the ass.
The Shaia Plains were a good three hours outside Hajin, by carriage. He, however, simply needed to jog and he would reach the place in an hour. Leaving Hajin would require around an hour as well, since it was both big and a dense and populated.
Once he left Hajin, he heaved a sigh of relief.
This was the second time he had stepped out of Hajin for a mission, he had to admit that the less developed uncolonized areas were truly scenic and picturesque natural environments. Last time, he had been too tense to appreciate it well, especially since they were guaranteed to be ambushed by a bandit force led by Martial Apprentices.
This time, however, he was much more relaxed and calmer. He was far stronger than he was before and this mission wasn’t nearly as dangerous as his last one.
The endlessly extending greenery across the smooth topography, coupled with the cool breeze of fresh air pierced by the gentle warmth of the rising sun.
Truly a peaceful sensation that did the concept of paradise justice. Especially to someone from Earth. Humans had ruined Earth’s atmosphere with smoke and greenhouse gases. Rui was quite grateful that the Panama continent had yet to follow suit. He didn’t anticipate they ever would, given that fossil fuels were worthless garbage in front of the miraculous esoteric and exotic resources of the planet of Gaea.
His pleasant surroundings had made the mission seem less of a chore and more of a vacation, and he quickly reached the Shaia Plains, looking down upon the vast plains from atop of a cliff.
It was an endless flat expanse of endless varieties of grass with dense distribution of wide-branched trees that spanned across the plains. In the distance he could see a lot of fauna, herds of six-legged deers, birds and other smaller mammals. The plains were vast enough to expand past the horizon, making for a potentially huge area over which the target of his mission could be located over. Furthermore, the intelligence provided by the Martial Academy and the Ministry indicated that the beast or beasts in question were quite elusive in nature.
There were guidelines for surveillance missions that were created by the Martial Union and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment such as this, to help Martial Artists complete their missions with greater ease. There was even a corresponding protocol system that helped Martial Artists decide what courses of action where most apt for certain situations. Furthermore, in a lot of the missions they provided more direct guidelines so that Martial Artists didn’t have to make decision regarding a field they had no expertise in
One of the recommended surveillance methods was static surveillance for this particular mission was; permanent employment of large-scale sensory techniques during the period of highest activity. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment had stated in the mission bill that the evidence they had gathered suggested that the organism in question was primarily nocturnal.
By evaluating past known locations of hunting prey, the Ministry could correspond those locations with the known habitat cycle of the herbivorous species of the Shaia Plains, the Ministry could roughly estimate the time of these hunting incidents. Then after further corroborating the evidence with timings from eyewitnesses, they could generally infer that the beast was most active during the middle of the night.
This was good news for Rui because animals weren’t nocturnal and would be at rest at night, it was much easier for his Seismic Mapping technique to allow him to detect movement across much greater distances. This meant that if the target of his mission was extremely active during the night, then its seismic signature would be much more ever-changing than the seismic signature of animal resting stationarily. This meant that the target would be much more identifiable.
Grid searching was another common way of covering land to find the primary habitat of animals. During the day, when the probability of the beast of beasts resting and sleeping was the highest, Rui would scale the Shaia Plains, grid by grid until his sensory technique detected the presence of the wanted beast.
Grid searching was a common method by which forest surveying teams would map and scale forests back on Earth, it was an efficient way of mapping and scaling any piece of area and reduced the margin of error significantly. By focusing thoroughly on one grid at a time, it prevented haphazardous and unstructured surveillance.
These two surveillance methods covered Rui for the day and night. Thankfully, he had brought many rejuvenation potions along with him allowing him to persist over longer expanses of time to increase the speed at which he completed this mission.
The grid search would only be useful during the day when the target of the mission was stationary and resting. If it was active like all the other animals, then grid searching would be utterly useless because the target of the mission would likely not only not be present at its primary hunting spot but also be travelling across the entirety of the Shaia Plains, hunting or doing whatever apex predators did when they weren’t hunting.
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