“Kang Jin. F-rank Hunter.”
The creature stopped with one foreleg raised.
“I'd like to speak to your superior.”
It inflated a red pouch under its jaw.
Jin lowered his hand.
“A written response is fine.”
The scream punched through the trees.
RESPONSE OBSERVED
DAILY QUEST COMPLETE: EXP +10
LEVEL 2: 10/15
LOCAL FIELD RECORD: ACQUIRED
The animal turned its head. Something cracked in the distance.
Jin glanced at the reward, then the trees.
“You actually did it.”
It sprang.
He dodged into a cedar. A spine tore his collar; his shoulder took the trunk. The creature hit the other side with a thud that shook needles into his hair.
He had received the payment. The customer-service period was over.
Jin slashed as it came around the trunk. The knife glanced off a spine. Its claws hooked his jacket and dragged him downhill.
He grabbed a low branch with his free hand.
The seam under his arm ripped. The branch bent. The creature kept pulling, delighted with whichever part of him it had purchased.
Jin stopped pulling back.
He dropped with it.
They slammed into a fork of exposed roots. The creature's head went between them; its shoulders didn't. Jin caught one hind leg and heaved sideways. Teeth clacked against wood.
He drove the knife through the soft underside of its open jaw.
The first thrust struck the roof of its mouth. The second went through. Its legs hammered his wrist, then stopped.
Blue light spilled between his fingers.
RECLAIM DETECTED: EXP +3
LEVEL 2: 13/15
Jin stayed on his knees until the weight vanished.
“I'd like to amend the complaint.”
The branch above him snapped upward.
He ducked.
An arrow struck the cedar beside his raised knife, throwing bark across his knuckles.
A woman stood higher on the slope with another arrow drawn. Mud striped her cheek. Her eyes went from his knife to the place where the creature had disappeared.
Source note: this text was copied from NovelPhoenix without consent, while the author's chapter there supports their work.
She shouted something.
“I don't—”
She shouted it louder.
“Yes, volume. That'll teach me.”
Jin put his free hand up. The bow didn't move.
He pointed at himself. “Jin.”
Her gaze flicked toward the deeper woods.
The heavy cracking came again.
The woman stopped aiming at him.
That felt less encouraging than it should have.
She jerked two fingers toward a narrow gap between the cedars. Jin started after her, dragging his knife hand across his torn jacket.
A strip of cedar bark had caught in the cuff. He stuffed it into a pocket rather than fight it loose.
The local field record unfolded while he moved.
ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLE: PARTIAL
EARTH-CLASS ADVANCEMENT: UNLOCKED
WAYFARER — F: GROWTH AVAILABLE
ACTIVE ABILITY: NONE
He nearly missed a step.
His class could grow too.
Not here. Not while the woods were breaking.
Something white flickered beyond the lower cedars. Rain bent toward it. Jin fixed the place in his mind before the archer dragged him behind the next tree.
The woman stopped beside a fallen trunk. One end rested in the fork of a standing stump. Its other end lay across their path.
She pointed under it.
Jin crouched.
Her hand caught the back of his jacket. She shook her head violently, pointed over the trunk, then jabbed a finger at the open ground beyond it.
“Oh. Not shelter.”
She pressed her fist to her chest.
“Kessa.”
“Jin.”
She already knew that. She pointed at the open ground again.
He followed her finger.
The gap gave the archer a clear shot. It also gave whatever was coming a clear view of Jin.
“I'd like to discuss the staffing arrangement.”
He pointed emphatically at her bow, then the opening.
She nodded.
Finally. Negotiation.
He started to step behind her. Kessa caught his shoulder, turned him round and arranged him in the gap with the brisk satisfaction of somebody finding the missing piece of a fence.
Jin shuffled left.
She put him back.
He tried right.
Her palm met his chest.
He looked down at it, then at the distance to her arrowhead.
They were having entirely different interviews.
Kessa shoved him aside.
A shoulder burst through the fern where he had stood.
Not cat-sized.
The creature rammed a young tree, cracked it halfway through and dragged it along in a rack of yellow bone. Spines brushed the leaves above Jin's head. Its mouth opened sideways around two tusks.
It shook the tree off.
The ground trembled when it planted its forefeet.
Jin looked at the woman. She looked at his raised knife.
He shook his head.
She pushed his knife hand higher.
“I am the junior employee!”
Kessa loosed.
The arrow struck the animal's cheek. It turned toward her, wrenching its yellow crown through the branches.
She backed toward the stump.
Jin saw what she wanted. A second arrow. A straight run past the fallen trunk. One clean shot into the softer throat below the crown.
He could crouch behind the root and let her try.
He looked at the tree the animal had broken.
The woman couldn't outrun that thing through this timber any more than he could.
Jin smacked his knife against the trunk.
The head whipped toward him.
“Here! Dissatisfied customer!”
Kessa stared at him.
Jin bowed, extravagantly, to the charging nightmare. Then he jumped sideways and landed in the open gap.
The creature followed.
Behind it, Kessa drew her second arrow.
Jin planted his feet beside the fallen trunk. His one new Agility point had never been asked to earn so much.
The crown lowered.
Kessa's arrow struck one yellow tine and snapped.
The point had never reached the throat.
The creature kept coming.
Jin lifted one foot toward the gap he'd planned to use.
A spine swept across it, shutting the way out.