The map came from a passing merchant three towns back, sold cheap and folded soft from years of handling, a shortcut route toward Dall that cut hard through unfamiliar territory rather than following the long, safe curve of the established road.
Hoju studied it carefully before committing to it, tracing the marked path with one finger while Fresha leaned over his shoulder.
“Coug Forest,” she read aloud, frowning at the small, cramped notation beside the shaded region.
“That’s not a name I like the sound of.”
“Merchant said it cuts two weeks off the journey,” Hoju said.
“Said it’s dangerous, but that dangerous and empty aren’t the same thing.
Mostly just strong monsters and old dungeons nobody’s bothered clearing.”
“Mostly,” Fresha repeated, unconvinced.
“We’re stronger than we were when we left Teria,” Hoju said, folding the map back up.
“I’d rather test that properly than keep taking the safe road forever.”
She didn’t argue further.
The road had taught her to trust his judgment on exactly this kind of decision, even when her own instincts still occasionally flinched at the risk.
The forest lived up to its reputation within the first day.
They fought their way through a graduated string of encounters that grew steadily more dangerous the deeper the trail carried them, a pack of level eighty razor lynxes that Hoju cleared with Horizontal Slash and Air Blade in a fast, efficient exchange that barely slowed their pace.
**Experience converted to Input Points: 120,000 each.
Total: 480,000.**
A level one hundred and ten stone troll guarding a narrow ravine crossing took considerably more effort, absorbing two full strikes of Hurricane Slash before Instant Move finally put Hoju behind its guard for the finishing blow.
**Experience converted to Input Points: 165,000.**
By the third day, the forest’s deeper stretches had thinned the easier prey out almost entirely, leaving only the kind of monster that had earned Coug Forest its reputation in the first place, and it was on the edge of a wide, sunlit clearing that they finally encountered the thing that would change the shape of Hoju’s growth more than anything since Jerry.
It stood roughly Hoju’s own height, featureless at first glance, a pale, faintly translucent humanoid shape that seemed built from something closer to wax than flesh.
Mind’s Eye flagged its level the instant it noticed them.
**Level 150.
Void Doll.**
“Stay back,” Hoju said, already moving between it and Fresha.
The Doll tilted its head at him, an unsettling, mimicking motion, and then, without warning, its featureless form rippled and reshaped itself into an exact, perfect copy of Hoju standing directly across from him, down to the sword in its hand and the faint scar along his forearm from Renn’s ice lance months earlier.
“That’s not possible,” Fresha breathed.
The Doll opened with Hurricane Slash, the exact motion, the exact trailing gust of compressed air, a mirror so precise that Hoju barely got his own blade up in time to meet it.
He answered with Air Blade, and the Doll matched it a heartbeat later, the two ranged strikes meeting in the space between them and canceling out in a shower of dispersed force.
“It copies whatever it sees,” Hoju said, mostly to himself, understanding settling in even as he circled to keep the Doll’s attention fully on him rather than Fresha.
“Whatever I show it, it can throw right back.”
He tested the theory, feinting with Horizontal Slash and pulling the strike short at the last instant.
The Doll mirrored the feint exactly, committing to the same false opening, and Hoju used the half second that bought him to close the gap with Instant Move instead, a skill the Doll had never yet seen him use.
The blink caught it fully off guard, its copied reflexes built entirely around techniques it had already witnessed, and Hoju’s blade opened a deep line across its chest before it managed to react at all.
The Doll staggered, its perfect mimicry of his own face twisting into something closer to genuine pain, and lashed out with a desperate, copied Hurricane Slash of its own.
Hoju met it with Heavenly Parry, redirecting the force back along the same line it had come from, and the Doll’s own strike tore through its remaining defenses on the rebound.
It collapsed, its form losing cohesion entirely, dissolving back into the pale, featureless wax it had started as.
**Experience converted to Input Points: 220,000.**
**Condition met.
Skill created: Puppet.**
Hoju sat down heavily on a fallen log at the clearing’s edge, staring at the new panel that had unfolded in front of him, reading its description with growing fascination.
**Puppet (Active).
Creates a shadow duplicate of the user, capable of independent action and dealing real damage.
Duration and combat capability scale with proficiency.**
“What does it do,” Fresha asked, settling beside him.
“I think,” Hoju said slowly, “I just learned how to fight in two places at once.
Properly, this time.
Not just blinking between them.”
He tested it cautiously that evening, willing a shadow duplicate of himself into existence at the clearing’s edge, and watched, half amazed and half unsettled, as a second version of himself stepped free of his own shadow, identical down to the sword at its hip, moving with a stiff, uncertain gait at first that smoothed out the longer it held its form.
He poured Input Points into it over the following days as they continued through the forest, watching its proficiency climb, its movements growing sharper and more independent with every level, the duplicate eventually handling entire weaker encounters on its own while Hoju kept pace beside it, both of them cutting a path through Coug Forest’s remaining dangers twice as fast as either could have managed alone.
**Puppet Proficiency 9 → 10.
Cost: 50,000 IP.
**Evolution condition met.
Skill evolved: Duplicate.**
The new description settled the change into place immediately.
**Duplicate (Active).
Creates up to ten shadow copies of the user.
Duplicates cannot deal damage, but any damage the user would otherwise take is instead absorbed by destroying one duplicate.
The user’s true body remains untouched so long as duplicates remain active.**
Hoju read it twice, understanding the shift in its purpose immediately.
Puppet had been a second blade.
Duplicate was something else entirely, a second life, ten separate buffers standing between his real body and anything trying to end it.
“That’s terrifying,” Fresha said, watching him summon the full ten at once for the first time, a ring of identical Hojus surrounding them both in the clearing’s fading light.
“In a good way.
Mostly.”
“Mostly,” Hoju agreed, and let them dissolve back into shadow, satisfied.
They reached the edge of Coug Forest and the outer walls of Dall itself six days later, the city’s scale swallowing the horizon well before they’d covered the final stretch of ground toward its gates, towers and rooftops sprawling further than either of them had ever seen a single settlement reach.
The guards at the gate stopped them before they’d covered half the distance to the entrance proper, two spearmen falling into step alongside a third, older soldier whose eyes narrowed with open suspicion the moment he took in the direction they’d emerged from.
“You came out of Coug Forest,” the older guard said, more statement than question.
“That trail.
Not the merchant road.”
“We did,” Hoju said evenly.
The guard’s eyes flicked over him, cataloguing, Hoju suspected, exactly how little threat a plain traveling cloak and an unremarkable sword suggested against a stretch of wilderness known to swallow trained rankers whole.
“Coug Forest’s a hunting ground for level one hundred and above,” the guard said slowly.
“Dungeons scattered through half of it that nobody’s bothered clearing because nobody’s strong enough to bother.
And you’re telling me you walked out of it.”
“We did,” Hoju repeated.
The guard exchanged a look with his companions, something unreadable passing between them, and then turned and signaled toward the gatehouse behind him.
“Send for Major Tadrick,” he said.
“We’ve got someone here he’s going to want to see for himself.”