When they were ready, Eldric knocked an arrow.

The moment Eldric’s fingers released the string, time seemed to slow for them.

The arrow cut through the air with a sharp whistle, wind mana wrapped tightly around its shaft.

It struck true.

Straight into the boar’s left eye.

A wet, cracking sound followed by an eruption of furious noise. The beast reeled, its roar tearing through the clearing like thunder splitting stone. Dark blood spilled down its plated snout as it thrashed, tusks gouging the churned earth.

Bursting from the treeline the instant the arrow landed, Teclos and Gillard charged at it.

The stone boar’s remaining eye locked onto them with blazing fury. It lowered its head—and the ground itself seemed to tremble.

The stone plates on its back and sides shifted, grew spikes, and became jagged.

Layer upon layer of armor surged forward from its shoulders and neck, sliding over one another until its entire front and flanks were encased in thick, interlocking slabs. The creature became a living battering ram.

Then it charged.

The earth cracked beneath its hooves. Each impact sent tremors through the clearing. Uprooted trunks were shattered as it barreled forward, a wall of armored mass and rage.

"Now!" Teclos barked.

Gillard dodged without hesitation.

Flame exploded from beneath his boots. A concussive burst of fire launched him sideways in a blazing arc. He covered nearly twenty meters in a blink—

But he misjudged the landing.

He slammed shoulder-first into a tree trunk with a sickening thud, bark splintering on impact. The air left his lungs in a violent gasp as he dropped hard into the dirt.

Teclos also dodged the second he barked out the order.

Shadow tendrils erupted from the ground beneath him, coiling around his waist and pulling him sideways like a slingshot. He cleared the charge path just as the boar thundered past, the wind of its passing whipping by him violently.

He was slower than Gillard.

But at least he didn’t shoulder-check a tree.

The boar plowed forward another ten meters before skidding, hooves carving trenches into the earth as it forced itself to turn.

"Samara!" Teclos shouted.

She was already on its flank.

Circling wide just as instructed, she slashed her blade in a sweeping arc. A crescent of compressed water tore through the air and struck the beast’s head.

Then another.

And another.

The jets hammered into its face, splashing violently against stone plating and exposed flesh. One blast struck near the ruined eye, sending the boar into another furious squeal.

But she was on the wrong side.

Her attacks struck the already blinded eye. They caused pain—intense pain—but they did not rob it of sight again. The remaining eye stayed clear, burning with lethal awareness.

"Damn it—" she muttered.

Eldric loosed arrow after arrow, breath sharp and hurried.

He aimed for the good eye.

And missed.

The boar jerked its head violently mid-stride, and the arrow skimmed off its stone plating.

Another shot missed the boar entirely—aimed way too wide.

Then another miss—deflected off the stone plating again.

He was tracking and shooting at the moving eye, too fixated on it. Instead of targeting joints or attempting to pin a leg like they discussed, he wasted arrows and put the team in danger through his panic.

The boar turned fully now.

Its gaze fixed on Samara—the source of the stinging agony at its ruined eye.

It began to lower its head again.

But shadows surged upward before it could commit.

From every direction around the boar, black tendrils erupted from the ground, coiling around its legs, its torso, even its tusks. Teclos clenched his jaw, pouring all of his mana into the bind.

The boar roared and struggled.

For a heartbeat—It seemed to hold.

"Now!" Teclos shouted, a vein popping on his forehead.

But the next second the ground answered the boar’s fury.

Stone rippled beneath its hooves. The earth bulged upward violently, lifting the entire beast several meters into the air atop a rising platform of compacted soil and rock. The sudden elevation stretched the shadow bindings thin—

Then snapped them.

The tendrils shattered into black smoke.

"Shit—!"

Gillard, on Teclos’s signal, already charged in.

Flames burst beneath his feet as he lunged toward the elevated target, blade blazing red-hot.

Gillard, airborne and committed, smashed directly into the hardened stone barrier. The impact cracked the surface but stopped him cold.

The next second—

An earth spike erupted outward from the wall, aimed straight at his chest.

But Teclos yanked him backward mid-air with a shadow tendril, just in time.

The spike tore through the space he had occupied an instant earlier.

Teclos skidded across the ground as he caught Gillard mid-air, his breath hissing. "Holy shit, you’re heavy."

Somewhere behind them, Ulmak audibly facepalmed.

"Focus, goddammit!" Teclos roared.

The boar’s attention flicked toward him as he deliberately triggered small bursts of concentrated darkness at its behind, drawing its aggression.

"Samara! Eldric!" he continued, dodging as a spike shot up where he was standing a split-second ago. "Blind side! Push it down from that platform!"

A spike erupted beneath his left foot—he twisted mid-step, barely dodging it.

"Gillard!" he snapped. "Get your head out of the gutter and assess before you charge again! Now help me distract this asshole!"

Yelling while dodging was not ideal.

But at least they moved now.

Samara and Eldric repositioned themselves quickly, sprinting toward the boar’s blind flank. They planted their feet in unison.

"Ready?" Eldric asked, already drawing the air in.

"On three."

They began chanting—short, runic-like phrases to amplify their output.

Wind spiraled around Eldric’s arms, compressing into a tight vortex.

Water coiled around Samara’s blade, pressure building visibly until droplets vibrated in the air.

Gillard, recovered from the dizziness, launched controlled fireballs instead of recklessly lunging at it. They struck the boar’s armored plates and burst in flashes of orange flame. The heat blackened the stone but did little more.

Still—

It worked.

The beast’s attention fractured between multiple threats.

Teclos drew his bow mid-sprint.

He loosed arrows while moving, never fully stopping his feet. Each shot struck armor and deflected, splintering uselessly—but the intent was just disruption.

The boar bellowed in rage, stomping, summoning jagged spikes in chaotic bursts targeting Gillard and Teclos.

On its blind side—

Wind and water swelled to their peak.

"Now!" Samara said.

The compressed vortex roared across the clearing, spiraling violently as it surged toward the boar’s exposed flank. Sensing the surge of mana, the beast twisted at the last possible second. Stone plates shifted, thickening along the side facing the impact.

The blast struck armor instead of flesh.

But that had never been the true goal.

By turning sideways to defend, the boar sacrificed its balance atop the earthen platform it had raised.

With the vortex hitting it flush.

Wind amplified the force, water added weight and momentum. The combined attack shoved the massive creature off-center.

The platform crumbled beneath it, and the boar toppled.

A fortunate break followed—its hind leg came crashing down onto one of its own previously erected spikes. A sharp, cracking snap echoed through the clearing as stone met bone.

The beast shrieked.

When it tried to rise, one rear leg buckled unnaturally.

Teclos saw their opportunity.

"It’s hurt!" he yelled. "I’ll bind it again! Samara, Eldric—push and pin it down with your mana! Gillard—this time finish it!"

Following his orders, they moved without hesitation.

Dark tendrils erupted again, darker and denser than before. They wrapped around the boar’s legs and torso, constricting it as Teclos gritted his teeth and forced more mana through his heart circle, barely keeping up with his mind.

The beast struggled—but the injured leg limited its leverage.

Wind and water crashed down into it again, driving its body into the churned earth. Mud and shattered stone sprayed outward as the massive body slammed down.

It worked.

It was bound and pinned.

Seeing that, Gillard charged again.

Flames detonated beneath his boots as he lunged for the neck, blade blazing bright orange.

And once again—

A wall of earth erupted directly in front of his face.

He crashed into it full-force.

The impact rattled the clearing. Dust exploded outward as Gillard slid down the freshly raised barrier, dazed and furious.

Rolling his eyes, Ulmak almost began laughing. "Well, at least he’s sturdy, I guess."

The next moment the ground beneath Teclos rippled.

It rose in a violent wave—stone and soil surging toward him like a collapsing cliff.

The boar seemed to target him now specifically.

Teclos barely had time to inhale.

A shadow line shot from his hand, anchoring to a distant tree. He yanked at it—

The line snapped tight and slung him upward just as the earthen wave tore through where he had just stood.

The tree he’d used as leverage splintered instantly.

And the trees behind it—

For nearly a hundred meters—

Were crushed flat as the wave rolled forward, reducing trunks to shattered debris.

Teclos felt cold sweat pour down his spine as he soared upward.

"Holy shit, that was close..."

Mid-air, darkness bled from his back and spread wide, forming a crude, tattered canopy above him. A makeshift parachute of darkness slowed his descent.

But it also made him a target.

A sitting duck.

Below, the boar shifted, stone grinding against stone as it prepared to retaliate.

Before it could—

Samara burst into view on its right side.

This time, the correct side.

She dashed in low and slashed upward, a concentrated blade of water screaming toward the remaining eye.

At the last second, the boar squeezed its eyelids shut. The water blade struck, slicing across stone plating and flesh but failing to penetrate the sealed eye.

It avoided permanent blindness.

But now—

With both eyes closed—

It had to rely on the ground to see.

Vibrations pulsed outward through the soil. Through its connection to the earth, it could sense any movement around it.

Something was wrong.

It couldn’t feel the reckless one who kept smashing into its walls.

A brave and honorable human, the boar might have thought in another life.

Nor the leading human.

So it had to burst earth spikes outward, forcing Samara to retreat as the beast opened its eyes again.

It saw the water girl disengaging.

Then it saw a large tendril of darkness retracting into mist.

Lastly—

As it looked up, it saw the leader and the brave human.

One was slowly gliding down, but the other—

Was flying at it like an arrow.

Another shadow tendril snapped tight in midair.

Teclos redirected Gillard’s descent, channeling the last of his leverage through a single precise pull.

Gillard picked up his speed even more then,

Flames exploded beneath his feet again, propelling himself downward at breakneck speeds.

Teclos’s shadow line adjusted his trajectory mid-flight, angling him like a spear.

Gillard descended in a blazing arc, sword raised above his head.

Momentum, gravity, and flames.

He came down at an angle across, just behind the armored neck of the boar.

The blade met its stone hide and cut through it cleanly.

Like a single stroke of a brush.

The red-hot edge sliced through plated armor and flesh alike.

For half a second the world seemed to still.

Then the head separated from its body.

The massive body convulsed once before collapsing heavily onto the torn earth.

Gillard managed to stop his fall this time, still just barely as he skidded several meters before rolling onto his side, his chest heaving.

Teclos touched down lightly moments later, shadows dissolving around him.

It looked like a proper battlefield.

Broken trees.

Shattered ground.

Steam rising from a corpse with a severed head.

Samara fell flat, landing on her rear with a graceless thud. Eldric simply collapsed where he stood, rolling onto his side and staring blankly at the sky, sweat rolling off him.

Gillard just continued to lie where he landed.

Teclos remained upright for half a breath longer.

Then his legs gave out as well.

All tension left their bodies at the same time as the hunt was over.

Gillard let out a breathless laugh. "We... actually did it."

"It was messy," Samara muttered, staring at the sky. "But we did."

Eldric didn’t speak. He was still clutching his bow, fingers trembling from mana overuse and adrenaline.

A slow clap echoed from the edge of the clearing.

Ulmak stepped into view.

He looked untouched by the chaos. Not a speck of dirt on him. In one hand he held a small leather-bound notebook.

He walked toward the corpse calmly, glancing at the fallen trees, the cracked earth, the spike fields, the scorch marks.

He scribbled something down.

Paused.

Looked at Gillard.

Scribbled something again.

Glanced at Teclos.

Added another note.

Closed the notebook with a soft snap and tucked it back into his satchel.

Only then did he speak.

"Well," he began evenly, "first of all, I want to congratulate you on performing your first hunt."

The four of them straightened slightly, happy despite their exhaustion.

"But," Ulmak continued without pause, "I also don’t want to lie to you."

His gaze swept across the ruined clearing.

"This was one hell of a messy hunt."

They all grimaced.

Ulmak folded his arms.

"You lost formation multiple times. You overcommitted on direct assaults. You wasted mana on low-efficiency attacks." His eyes flicked briefly toward Eldric. "And you wasted arrows, with no control or grasp of the situation, endangering your teammates."

Awkward silence followed that critique.

Then—

He nodded once toward the corpse.

"Gut the boar properly. Extract what’s usable. Tusks, core stone, usable hide sections."

He turned slightly toward the direction of town.

"Then transport it back."

He looked at them one final time.

"Once we are back, I’ll tell you whether you’ve made it as hunters."

Teclos pushed himself up first, legs still shaky but functional.

"Alright," he said quietly. "Let’s move."

The tension from the hunt may be gone.

But the test wasn’t over, and more work still awaited them.