Hunter set his bowl down.
The pig sat heavy in his stomach, or maybe that was something else.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
Tao leaned in, and his green eyes had lit up like a man offered a promotion.
“Forty, fifty people, Master, farmers mostly, in about twenty houses with a stone wall and one gate.
There’s a granary and some livestock, and maybe a few silver hidden under the floors.”
“The old master meant to hit it before you came,” Lex said quietly.
“He said it would be easy pickings.”
“Easy pickings,” Hunter repeated.
“Have you done this before?
With him?”
“Twice, Master,” Lex said, to the ground.
“Three times,” said Tao, and didn’t look at the ground at all.
Xuan said nothing.
Through the new sense he could feel all three of them waiting.
Lex’s pulse was quick and nervous.
Xuan’s gave nothing away.
Tao’s ran fast and hot.
His hands had curled into fists on his knees.
Hunter understood, with a slow cold drop in his gut, that Tao had done this before and hadn’t hated it.
A chime rang in his skull, bright as a doorbell.
[SYSTEM] RAID OPPORTUNITIES DETECTED!
A: CLEARWATER VILLAGE (10 MI EAST) — ~50 CIVILIANS / 0 CULTIVATORS
B: TIMBER CAMP (NORTH RIDGE) — ~30 ARMED LOGGERS / 1 CULTIVATOR
He very nearly said hold on out loud.
Three men were watching him, so he stared into the fire instead and let them think he was deciding.
What he was actually thinking, very hard, was that he did not want either.
He read it again the way he’d read a pair of quotes at work: coverage, exposure, likely loss.
Thirty armed men and a cultivator.
He had been a cultivator for about half a day.
He had one rusty sword, one stolen knife, and three followers who had spent the whole march more frightened of the trees than of anything else.
If there was one person in that timber camp like the man he’d killed yesterday, or stronger, someone on his side would die.
Probably all of them.
Starting with him.
Fifty farmers, and nobody who could fight back.
That was the whole calculation, and he hated how fast he did it.
For years he’d been the man who looked at a file and found the cheapest outcome.
He’d never once had to look at the people inside it.
“Clearwater,” he said, very quietly.
[SYSTEM] SMART!
SOFT TARGETS ARE THE BEST TARGETS ♥
The little heart sat there, glowing, and Hunter’s stomach turned over.
He’d said it because farmers couldn’t kill him, and the System had heard that and liked it.
[SYSTEM] MISSION ISSUED: M-0043 “FIRST_RAID”
OBJECTIVE: CLEARWATER VILLAGE.
ACQUIRE RESOURCES.
ELIMINATE RESISTANCE.
REWARD: SHADOW STEP (BASICS); FOLLOWERS → BODY REFINING 1 (x3)
PENALTY (REFUSAL/FAILURE): DEATH
He read it once, and then again, and then a third time, as though it might change on him.
It didn’t.
Eliminate resistance.
Somebody’s grandfather with a pitchfork.
A woman standing in a doorway with a kitchen knife because her children were behind her.
A boy who threw a rock.
The System had a word for all of them, and it was the same word it would use for a mosquito.
And under that, PENALTY: DEATH, exactly like the first time.
He knew what that one meant.
The integration hadn’t finished with him.
Whatever it was building in his head was still soft enough to kill him if he said no.
He had nearly bet his life on that yesterday, running for the trees, and a kid’s throat had turned him around.
There wasn’t a kid to turn him around this time.
There was just the fire, and three men watching him, and a window that wouldn’t close.
[SYSTEM] ACCEPT?
(Y/N)