They looked at the body, then at the blood on Hunter’s sleeves, then at Hunter, and he watched their faces go from exhaustion to terror.
It wasn’t anger, and it wasn’t grief.
Whatever the dead man had been to them, it hadn’t been loved.
It was the look of men who had just found out the food chain had a new top.
The short, bald one with the scarred face dropped to his knees first.
“Honored Immortal, spare us!
I have four goats, and they’re all yours!”
The kid with the ponytail, the one who’d nearly had his throat cut a minute ago, went down beside him hard enough to bounce.
Unlike the others, he wasn’t looking at the body.
He was looking at Hunter, as if he couldn’t work out what he’d just seen.
“My daughter’s hand in marriage, Immortal!
She’s beautiful, and she cooks!”
The third, a broad young man with hair like a struck match, fumbled at his belt pouch and held up something gray in both cupped palms, as reverently as an offering.
“My lucky rock, Immortal.
It’s never failed me.”
Hunter stared at them.
His stomach was still trying to climb out through his throat.
The thing at his feet was still warm.
His brain did what it had done for years whenever the world stopped making sense.
It opened a file.
Claimant one: four goats.
No documentation, no proof of ownership, livestock located off-site.
Claimant two: one daughter, hand of.
His beard was six hairs.
Asset almost certainly does not exist, and also, no.
Claimant three: one rock.
He looked at it.
It looked back, in the way a rock does.
Sentimental value only, and given recent performance, the luck is disputed.
In his professional opinion, it was the worst settlement offer he had ever received.
And he had once handled a man who tried to claim his own divorce as storm damage.
The laugh that tried to come up was the wrong kind, and he swallowed it along with the bile.
They thought he was strong.
They thought he’d put their boss down on purpose, easily, and had more of that to spare.
In a few hours he’d have to lie down somewhere and close his eyes.
There were three of them.
The ponytailed kid had a knife lying in the leaves a yard from his hand.
“I should kill you,” Hunter said, and was amazed at how steady it came out.
“Maybe I’ll only kill two.
And keep the rock.”
“Mercy!” All three foreheads hit the dirt.
“Have mercy, Immortal, we’ll swear a slave oath, we’ll do anything!”
[SYSTEM] CONTRACT OPTION: SLAVE_MASTER_PACT
CONFIRM: SIGN WITH 3 SUBJECTS?
(Y/N)
The word slave sat there in capitals, and Hunter didn’t pretend not to know what it meant: people owning people.
Every history lesson he’d ever sat through had been about why this was the thing you didn’t do.
He also knew what three frightened men who had watched him kill would do the first night he slept.
He looked at the knife in the leaves, and then at the kid’s thin neck, and made the choice with his eyes open.
“Do it,” he told the window.
Hard white light speared out of nowhere and through all three skulls at once.
When his eyes cleared, something new was in his head: three threads, taut and faintly warm, running from him to them.
He knew without being told what the threads could do.
If they betrayed him, or tried to, the pact would tear their souls apart, and there would be nothing left of them to go anywhere afterward.
He had just done that, on purpose.
“Do you understand what this means?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” they said together.
[SYSTEM] PACT: SEALED (S-2001)
RECRUITS: +3 ACTIVATED
REALM: FOUNDATION — PENDING
SPIRIT_ROOT: GRADE_B — PENDING
STATUS: WELCOME TO BANDITRY, HOST
[SYSTEM] DISPENSE: FOUNDATION REWARD?
(Y/N)
SUGGESTION: FIND SAFE LOCATION.
PROCESS_DURATION=8_HOURS
Eight hours of something, in a forest where things howled.
Not here, next to a body.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Is there a camp, somewhere with walls?”
The bald one lifted his head a careful inch.
“The hideout is four miles north, Master, across the river where the old ruins are.” He hesitated, then offered it like another rock.
“My name is Lex, Master.”
“Lex.” Hunter looked at the prompt still hanging in the corner of his vision, patient as a waiting room clock.
Somewhere four miles north was a place he had never seen, full of whatever a dead bandit had thought worth keeping.
He was going to go there and let a machine rebuild him in it.
He picked the knife up out of the leaves and pushed it through his belt, and kept the rusty sword in his hand.
“Lead the way, Lex.”