The forest thinned as they walked, old-growth giants giving way to younger trees and scattered clearings. Lyra set a brutal pace for someone who'd been running for her life an hour ago.
Ren kept up easily, but he noticed the way she favored her left leg every dozen steps. Old injury or new?
"You're limping," he said.
"I'm walking."
"You're limping while walking."
Lyra shot him a look that could've stripped paint. "I twisted my ankle jumping a ravine while three riftspawn were chasing me. It's fine."
"It'll get worse."
"Then I'll limp faster."
Ren caught her arm as she stumbled over a root. She jerked away from his grip, but not before he felt her wince.
"We need to stop," he said.
"We need to keep moving. Uncle Garrett—"
"Won't matter if you collapse from a broken ankle two miles from your barony." Ren pointed at a fallen log. "Sit. Five minutes."
Lyra looked like she wanted to argue, then her jaw tightened and she sat with the stiff dignity of someone admitting defeat without saying the words.
Ren knelt and examined her ankle without asking permission. Swollen, definitely. Not broken, probably just a bad sprain. He pulled a healing potion from his spatial ring.
Lyra's eyes widened. "That's a mid-grade restoration potion. Those cost twenty gold marks in Hollow's End."
"I have six of them."
"Then you're either very rich or very stupid to waste one on a sprained ankle."
Ren uncorked it. "Or I need you mobile. Drink half."
She hesitated, then took the vial and drank. The effect was immediate—color returned to her face, her breathing evened out. She rotated her ankle experimentally.
"Better," she admitted. She tried to hand back the vial.
Ren waved it off. "Keep it. If we run into trouble, I'd rather you have it than watch you bleed out while I'm busy."
Lyra tucked the potion into her dress pocket with careful reverence. "You're not like most sellswords."
"What are most sellswords like?"
"Drunk, desperate, or dishonest. Usually all three." She studied him. "You're none of those things. Which makes me wonder what you're really doing in the middle of my forest killing riftspawn."
Ren sat on the log beside her. Careful truth—the kind that didn't mention Earth or reincarnation or planetary essence harvesting.
"I'm new to this region," he said. "Looking to establish myself. Monster hunting seemed like a good place to start."
"Why here specifically?"
"I wasn't specific. I just started walking and found you."
Lyra laughed, sharp and sudden. "Worst navigation I've ever heard. Lucky for both of us you walk in useful directions."
"Lucky," Ren agreed.
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. Birds sang overhead. The mana-rich air made everything feel slightly more alive than it should.
"Can I ask you something?" Lyra said.
"You just did."
She ignored that. "When you killed those riftspawn... you didn't hesitate. Didn't think. Just moved. That's not normal."
Ren considered his answer. Original Ren's training, yes, but also something else. Takumi's memories of corporate survival—reading situations, acting decisively, not freezing when things went wrong.
"Hesitation gets you killed," he said finally. "I learned that early."
"How early?"
"Early enough."
Lyra nodded slowly, like that explained something. "My father used to say the same thing. Then he hesitated when the riftspawn came, and they tore him apart while he was still deciding whether to run or fight."
Her voice was flat, clinical. Reciting facts.
Ren glanced at her. "You didn't like him."
"I didn't know him. He didn't like me." She picked at the bark on the log. "Mother died when I was six. Father blamed me. Said I was too weak, too soft, that I'd never hold the barony. Then he drank himself stupid every night and let the steward run everything."
"And now you're Baron."
"Baroness," she corrected. "And yes. Which means I have about forty-eight hours to prove I'm not too weak or too soft, or Uncle Garrett will have me married off to some cousin in the eastern provinces and take the title for himself."
Ren raised an eyebrow. "Married off? That's still legal here?"
"Legal and common for underage heirs without strong backing." Lyra's smile was bitter. "Women can hold titles, but only if they can defend them. Otherwise the family finds a nice convenient husband to manage things."
"That's barbaric."
"That's politics." She stood, testing her ankle. "Better. Thank you for the potion."
"Thank you for not stabbing me when I grabbed your arm earlier."
Lyra's lips twitched. "I considered it."
They started walking again, this time at a more sustainable pace. The sun was past its zenith, shadows lengthening through the trees.
"Tell me about the rifts," Ren said. "You mentioned they've been increasing."
Lyra nodded. "Started about six months ago. Before that, we'd see maybe one rift every few weeks—small tears, couple of spawn, easy enough for the guards to handle. Then suddenly they're appearing daily. Bigger. More spawn. Stronger ones."
"Any pattern to where they appear?"
"North of the barony, mostly. There's old ruins up there—pre-Sundering architecture, completely overgrown. Nobody goes near them."
"Pre-Sundering?"
Lyra gave him an odd look. "You really aren't from around here. The Sundering happened three hundred years ago. Cataclysm that shattered half the world and released raw mana into the atmosphere. Everything before that is called pre-Sundering."
Ren filed that away. Major historical event, three centuries past, created the high-mana environment. Useful context.
"And these ruins?"
"Dead city. Maybe older. The Scholars' Guild tried to explore it fifty years ago and lost an entire expedition. It's been forbidden territory ever since."
"But the rifts are opening near it."
"Around it, yeah. Like something's..." She trailed off, frowning. "Like something's waking up."
Before Ren could respond, his combat awareness triggered—that sixth sense original Ren had drilled into muscle memory through ten thousand hours of practice.
He grabbed Lyra's shoulder and yanked her down.
The arrow passed through the space where her head had been and buried itself in a tree trunk with a solid *thunk*.
Lyra didn't scream. She rolled, came up with the knife he'd given her, eyes scanning the forest.
Smart girl.
Ren drew his sword and pivoted, tracking the arrow's trajectory. Northeast, elevated position, roughly thirty meters.
A figure stepped out from behind a tree. Then another. Then three more.
Five men, armed with bows and blades, wearing mismatched leather armor. Not guards. Not soldiers.
Bandits.
The lead one—older, scarred face, missing teeth—grinned at them.
"Well, well. Little Lyra Graeme, all alone in the woods. Heard about your father's unfortunate accident." His grin widened. "Your uncle sends his regards."
Lyra's face went pale, then flushed with rage. "Garrett hired you."
"Garrett's a smart man. Knows an opportunity when he sees one." The bandit leader gestured with his sword. "Hand over any valuables, and maybe we let you walk. Maybe."
Ren did the math. Five opponents, four with bows, all with backup blades. Lyra injured and inexperienced. Him with one sword and half-depleted mana reserves.
Not ideal odds.
But not impossible.
"Lyra," he said quietly. "When I move, run west. Don't stop."
"I'm not leaving—"
"You're the objective. I'm the hired sword. Let me work."
The bandit leader laughed. "Oh, this one's got spirit. Shame. Would've been easier if you just—"
Ren moved.
The Ashveil style wasn't just about killing single targets. It was about overwhelming force applied to critical points. Against multiple enemies, that meant creating chaos—force them to react instead of coordinate.
He crossed ten meters before the bandits could process movement, blade already in motion. First Form—Heaven's Blade Descends. Vertical slash, mana-reinforced, aimed at the leader's sword arm.
The bandit got his blade up in time. Barely.
Steel rang against steel. The bandit's sword shattered.
Ren flowed into Second Form—Moonlight Cuts the River, horizontal slash that caught the man across the chest. Leather armor split. Blood sprayed.
The leader went down screaming.
Arrows whistled.
Ren twisted, deflected one with his blade, felt another graze his shoulder. Pain, but superficial.
Three bowmen now backing up, reaching for blades. The fifth—a big bastard with an axe—was already charging.
Ren met the charge head-on.
Axes were powerful but slow. The Ashveil style specialized in exploiting exactly that kind of opening.
The big bandit swung. Ren slipped inside his guard and drove his sword up through the man's armpit—unarmored, major blood vessels, instant incapacitation.
The bandit dropped his axe and fell, choking.
Two down. Three left.
The remaining bandits had drawn swords now, spreading out to flank him. Smarter than he'd hoped.
Ren's mana reserves were at maybe sixty percent. He could maintain combat circulation for another few minutes, but he'd need to be efficient.
The leftmost bandit lunged.
Ren parried, riposted, caught him in the throat. Three down.
The other two attacked simultaneously from opposite sides.
This was the problem with the Ashveil style—it excelled at overwhelming single opponents, struggled with coordinated groups.
Ren blocked the right-side attack, took a shallow cut on his left arm from the other blade. He channeled mana into a burst and shoved the right-side bandit back, then pivoted to engage the left.
Fourth Form—
Something slammed into the left-side bandit from behind.
Lyra, tackling him at the knees with a rock in her hand that she immediately smashed into the side of his head. The bandit went down hard.
The last bandit hesitated, looking at his dead companions, at Ren's bloody sword, at Lyra standing over an unconscious body with murder in her eyes.
"Your uncle doesn't pay me enough for this," the bandit said, and ran.
Ren let him go. Killing a fleeing enemy was tactically sound but wasteful when you had bigger problems.
He turned to Lyra. She was breathing hard, still holding the rock, dress now completely ruined with mud and blood.
"I told you to run," Ren said.
"You also told me you were the hired sword." She dropped the rock. "That means I'm the employer. I don't abandon my investments."
Despite himself, Ren smiled. "Fair point."
Lyra looked at the bodies, then at Ren. "You're bleeding."
"Flesh wound."
"That's what people say before they pass out from blood loss."
She was right. His shoulder and arm were bleeding more than he'd thought. Adrenaline wearing off, pain starting to register.
Lyra pulled out the healing potion he'd given her and handed it back. "Your turn."
Ren drank the remaining half. Warmth spread through his wounds, flesh knitting closed. Not perfect, but good enough.
"We need to move," Lyra said. "That one who ran will report back to my uncle. We've got maybe four hours before he sends more."
Ren nodded and started checking bodies. The bandits had coin—not much—and decent weapons. He took a bow and quiver from one of the archers. Might be useful.
"Ren," Lyra said quietly.
He looked up.
She was staring at the corpses with an expression he couldn't quite read. Not horror. Not regret. Something colder.
"Thank you," she said. "For not asking if I was okay with you killing them."
"Are you?"
"My uncle hired them to murder me so he could steal my inheritance." Her voice was flat. "I'm not losing sleep over it."
Ren stood. "Good. We've got a long walk ahead."
They left the bodies where they fell and headed west as the sun dipped toward the horizon.
Four hours until Uncle Garrett knew his hired killers had failed.
Two days until Lyra needed to claim her title.
And somewhere ahead, a barony with increasing rift problems and a power vacuum Ren was very interested in filling.
The System pulsed in the back of his mind.
Essence harvested: 75 points (5 human opponents, non-sentient world natives - reduced yield)
Current total: 225
Influence gained: Minor (saved noble heir, eliminated hostile forces)
He was on the board now.
But the game was just getting started.
---
Behind them, in the gathering dark, something watched from the trees.
Purple light flickered in eyes that weren't quite animal and weren't quite human.
The rifts were opening faster now.
And something on the other side was paying attention.