The sound came first—the rhythmic, earth-chewing thrum of many hooves, faster and lighter than the mechanical steeds'. Then they emerged from the shimmering heat haze: over twenty riders astride Palm-Striders, the fastest mounts the plains had to offer. Lean, long-legged creatures with hides the color of dust, they lacked the armored bulk and combat protocols of the mechanical horses, but for pure speed, they were unmatched. The bandits' eyes, sharp and greedy, swept the scene. The downed men. The scattered, now-docile mechanical mounts standing like statues of forgotten war. Their expressions shifted from predatory focus to confusion.
"The hell?"
"Target's gone."
"Weird. Check it out!"
Nineteen of them dismounted, firearms held at the ready, moving with the cautious grace of scavengers toward the slumped forms of Adar and his men.
Beneath the murky, algae-streaked water of the creek pool, Yao floated, a pale ghost in the green gloom. Her left hand pressed against her right palm, where the faint, bloody outline of the six-pointed star still pulsed with a dying heat. With a focused thought, she twistedthe invisible connection.
Kill them. Now.
The bandit leaning over Adar jerked back in shock as the "corpse" beneath him suddenly lunged upward. Adar's eyes were open, but glassy, unseeing. His movements were jerky, puppet-like, yet driven by a terrifying, mindless ferocity. A guttural chant, stripped of all conscious control but not power, ripped from his throat. A wild, poorly aimed Arcane Missile sizzled from his fingertips, grazing the bandit's shoulder and tearing a chunk of flesh away.
"Son of a bitch! It's a trap!"
"The bastard's double-crossing us!"
The bandits roared in betrayal-fueled fury. The promised rich, helpless noble brat was nowhere to be seen. Instead, they were facing a squad of supposedly drugged guards who had suddenly sprung to life, attacking with a berserker's abandon. The other guards, similarly animated by Yao's psychic strings, stumbled to their feet, grabbing weapons, or simply throwing themselves at the nearest bandit. The mechanical horses, receiving a last, chaotic command from Yao's overrides, whirred and stamped, adding to the confusion.
Gunfire erupted, sharp and deafening in the open plain. Spells, wild and uncontrolled, crackled through the air. It was a brutal, close-quarters melee, born of confusion and sudden, violent death.
From her watery vantage, Yao watched as bodies fell. One tumbled into the creek not three meters from her hiding place, the water blooming a deep, clouding crimson around it. The man's face, frozen in a rictus of surprise, sank slowly past her, his dead eyes staring into the murk. A wave of visceral nausea, cold and sharp, tightened her gut. This world… it's really like this.The thought was detached, clinical. The earlier act of ordering limbs broken had been one thing—a remove, an execution of brutal justice. This… this was raw, red slaughter. Mom, Dad… you taught me to be kind.A hysterical bubble of laughter threatened to escape her clamped lips. They really did force my hand.
She forced herself to breathe slowly, regulating her heart rate. The enhanced Constitution and Agility granted by the S1 were a lifeline now. Her lungs burned less than she expected; she could hold her breath for what felt like an impossibly long time. The world above became a distorted ballet of falling shadows and muted explosions.
Finally, a last, echoing gunshot. Then silence, broken only by the harsh panting of the wounded and the nervous whinnies of the Palm-Striders.
Through the fading psychic tethers, Yao felt only two life-signs remaining from the bandits. Their pulses were weak, thready, but their emotional signatures… triumphant. They'd won. Against all odds, they'd survived the ambush-turned-massacre. The loot—the weapons, the gear, the priceless mechanical horses—was all theirs.
She heard their ragged voices, thick with pain and greed, moving among the corpses. The clink of metal being gathered.
Now.
She burst from the water like a vengeful spirit, the move all instinct and adrenaline. Soaked, bloody from the battle runoff, she was a terrifying apparition. The two surviving bandits, one clutching a gut wound, the other with a broken arm dangling, had just lowered their guards. Their weapons were slung, their hands full of pilfered valuables.
Agility. Strength. Thrust.
There was no finesse, no technique. Just the raw, desperate need to survive. Her stolen short sword, gripped in both hands, plunged into the back of the nearer bandit. The feel of it punching through leather, muscle, and grating against bone was a shock that traveled up her arms. He screamed, a wet, gurgling sound, and collapsed.
The second bandit fumbled for his holstered pistol. Yao was faster. She tore the weapon from his weakened grip, her fingers clumsy on the unfamiliar shape. She squeezed the trigger.
BANG! BANG! BANG-BANG!
The recoil was brutal, shocking. Her aim was wild. One shot whined off a rock, another kicked up dirt near the bandit's foot. But the fourth, fired as she stumbled backward, caught him in the side of the throat. He clutched at the spraying wound, eyes wide with disbelief, then toppled.
Silence, absolute and heavy, descended once more.
[Bandit 'Zhang San' eliminated. Experience +4.]
[Bandit 'Li Si' eliminated. Experience +6.]
The messages flickered in her mind's eye, cold and impersonal. Yao stood amidst the carnage, her breath coming in ragged, tearing gasps. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped beast. The metallic smell of blood, the coppery taste of it in the air, the warmth of it cooling on her skin—it was overwhelming. This was different. So utterly, viscerally different from giving an order. She had doneit. Her hands had ended lives.
She bent over, hands on her knees, fighting the urge to vomit. Get it together. You're a merchant. Assess the inventory.
The thought, mercenary and familiar, was an anchor. She began looting with a mechanical efficiency, her movements sharp, driven by a deep-seated survival instinct. Coins, communicators, sidearms. She avoided looking at the faces.
When her hands brushed over Adar's cooling body, another prompt appeared.
[Guard Captain Adar eliminated. Loot dropped: 'Tome: Level 1 Wind Arcane Missile.']
[Guard Captain Adar eliminated. Loot dropped: 'Lesser Spirit Potion (x1).']
A small, cerulean vial, identical to the ones from the game, rolled from his pouch. The skill book was a thin, leather-bound manual, pages glowing faintly with inscribed energy. Of course he'd have a spare potion. But a skill book on his person?Most practitioners carried the knowledge in their minds once learned. This… this was a physical drop, a manifestation of his arcane knowledge made tangible upon death. A rare, brutal form of inheritance.
She snatched them up, her earlier revulsion pushed aside by a fierce, growing hunger. I need this.
Her backpack swelled quickly. Copper notes, odd devices, personal trinkets. She was stuffing the last of it into the storage compartment of the nearest mechanical horse when a new unease prickled at her neck.
The Palm-Striders. They were agitated, stamping their feet, tossing their heads, their nostrils flaring as they stared fixedly to the north. A low, collective whinny of fear rippled through them.
Then, as one, they bolted. Twenty-odd thousand coppers worth of prime mounts, disappearing in a cloud of dust towards the south.
Yao stared after them, first in sheer, avaricious dismay (My money!), then in dawning, cold comprehension. Predators. They sense something worse.
She scrambled for Adar's wrist-unit, fumbling with the controls. The topographic map glowed. No red dots. No immediate threats shown within its sensor range.
But the animals knew. Their instincts screamed of danger.
"Could… could there be more bandits? Or something else?" Her voice was a whisper, swallowed by the vast emptiness of the plain. Without another thought, she vaulted onto the nearest mechanical horse, slamming her palm onto the control panel. "Go! Maximum speed, evasive pattern Delta!"
The steed whirred to life. She sent the other mechanical mounts galloping off in divergent, confusing directions, churning the ground into a maze of tracks, before having them circle back to follow her main path from different angles. It was a poor man's attempt at misdirection, but it was all she had.
She rode hard, the wind whipping tears from her eyes. Ten minutes of frantic flight later, a solitary peak, a weathered granite fist thrust up from the plains, appeared on the horizon. Shelter. In the game, mountains always have caves.It was a desperate gamble, but she took it.
The cave she found was dank and smelled of damp earth and old animal droppings. Uninviting, but defensible. She maneuvered her primary mechanical horse to block the entrance, its metallic bulk a reassuring barrier. In the dim light filtering past its legs, she finally allowed herself to slump against the cold stone wall.
Shivering, more from adrenaline crash than cold, she hauled the bulky pack from the steed's abdominal cavity and began an inventory by the glow of her helmet lamp.
"Copper notes… about six hundred thousand. Adar's skill book, obviously. Their gear—scanners, comms units—maybe another two hundred thousand if I find the right fence… The real prize is the mechanical horses. Four of them… nearly a million coppers right there." A slow, fierce grin spread across her face. Combined with her existing funds, she was nearing the coveted ten-million-copper mark. Enough for another S1 Key to unlock the second branch of her Gene Tree. The power leap would be immense.
"And the first branch gave me three skill slots. The Missile tome takes one. I need to buy two more compatible skills… something that synergizes with my high Spirit and complements the Missile…" Her mind, the strategist's mind, was already drafting builds, calculating synergies, browsing a mental catalog of the game's early-level skill market. The fear was receding, replaced by the cold thrill of optimization.
First, she needed to gear up. The guards' armor, stripped from their bodies, lay in a pile. It was functional, standard-issue combat plating. It also stank of sweat, blood, and worse.
"Chest plate… vambraces… whose boots are these? Ugh, the foot rot!" She gagged, holding a particularly offensive pair at arm's length. But the small, embedded enhancement runes glimmered promisingly: +1 Strength, +2 Constitution, +3 Agility. Gritting her teeth, she suited up. The armor was ill-fitting on Oaks's frame, but the clunky, smelly ensemble was a lifeline. A quick mental check of her updated status made the discomfort worth it.
[Level: 1 (10/100)]
[Primary Attributes]
[Spirit: 188]
[Strength: 62]
[Constitution: 80]
[Agility: 110]
I could take Adar at his peak now,she thought with a surge of fierce pride. My Spirit alone…
"A shame they were killed by the bandits. If I'd gotten the experience for all of them, I might have hit Level 2 already. More skill points…"
Eager to test her new power, she focused on the Missile skill book. It dissolved into motes of light that flowed into her. Knowledge—the precise somatic gestures, the arcane syllables, the mental patterns for shaping wind energy—burned itself into her memory. She held out her hand, chanting the words. The air in the cave grew taut, then stirred. A small, swirling vortex of pale blue energy began to form above her palm. It was slow, ungainly. She released it.
FWUMP!
The missile shot out, wobbling erratically, and slammed into the cave wall three meters to the left of her intended target—a stalagmite. Rock chips flew. The spell had worked, but it was a far cry from Adar's swift, deadly precision. Reality has a learning curve,she acknowledged wryly. She wouldn't practice more; the single Lesser Spirit Potion in her pack was too precious to waste on target practice.
Exhaustion, delayed but potent, finally hit her. The adrenaline had burned off, leaving her cold, shaky, and ravenous. She hadn't eaten much at the doomed lunch. She fumbled in her pack, pulling out a tough, salted beef strip. She was about to take a bite when—
CLANG! SCRREEEECH!
From the cave entrance came a sound of rending metal and a savage, snarling roar. The mechanical horse blocking the way shuddered violently. The control unit on her wrist blared a red alert.
Yao was on her feet in an instant, heart leaping back into her throat. She snatched up the wrist-unit. The sensor display, which had been clear minutes before, now showed a terrifying sight. From the north—the direction she and Adar had come from—a swarm of over a hundred blue dots was converging on her location with alarming speed.
"Iron-spine Wasteland Wolves."
The realization was a bucket of ice water down her spine. That explained the unnatural silence on the plains, the absence of all other life. The local fauna had sensed the approaching pack and fled. Adar had boasted his squad could handle twenty, thirty wolves. A hundred? They'd be bones in minutes.
But why?Her mind raced. The wolves are greedy, they'll eat anything, even metal… their claws are metallic from that diet. Were they after the mechanical horses? But the hulls are carbon-coated, non-reactive…
A more terrifying thought struck her. Was this part of Adar's plan? A backup to ensure no witnesses?But that made no sense—the wolves wouldn't discriminate. If not Adar… who? Do I have another enemy?
There was no time to theorize. The wolves were here. The mechanical horse at the entrance wouldn't hold for long against creatures that considered metal a snack.
Desperately, she used the wrist-unit's scanner to map the cave's air currents. A faint, cool draft came from deep within, behind her. Another exit.
She grabbed her pack, abandoning the half-eaten ration. The helmet lamp cast jerking, frantic shadows as she sprinted into the blackness of the tunnel. The air grew damper, the sound of dripping water louder. Up ahead, a pinprick of daylight appeared. Hope surged.
It died in the next instant.
From behind a massive, water-smoothed boulder to her side, a shadow darker than the cave's gloom exploded outward. A full-grown Iron-spine Wolf, over a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, sinew, and metallic claws, hit her like a freight train.
The impact drove the air from her lungs. She crashed onto the wet stone, her new armor screeching in protest. The weight was immense, crushing. Hot, rancid breath, thick with the scent of old blood and raw meat, blasted over her face. Saliva, thick and viscous, dripped onto her visor. In the stark, bouncing light of her fallen helmet lamp, she saw the beast's jaws, lined with finger-length steel-like teeth, open wide. They descended towards her exposed throat with terrifying, final speed.