Once was bad luck. Twice was a pattern.
New Dawn had no reason to be here. They were first by a mile. Efficient point farming in the mid-range zones was their winning strategy, and they'd been executing it flawlessly for eighteen days. Abandoning that approach to hunt the same high-level targets as a fifth-place team made zero strategic sense.
Unless the goal wasn't points. Unless the goal was denial.
His father had ordered New Dawn's rookie squad to shadow him, to deny Kaiden every viable high-level kill in the northern range while farming those kills themselves as a bonus.
It was exactly the kind of strategic suffocation Magnus Ashborn had built his career on.
Alice's voice exploded in his head with enough fury to make his vision swim.
