The two men in the grove, now without the leashes, were already drawing their own weapons and taking cover behind trees. Distance: twelve meters. Partial cover.

Nathan twisted his body and fired two pulses in quick succession in slightly different arcs. The first passed through the thin trunk of a young sapling and hit the left-side handler in the shoulder. It wasn’t a clean hit, but Soul Pulse didn’t need to be clean when the contact was direct to the soul. The man collapsed.

The second hit the second handler in the thigh as he tried to move to another tree.

Three down.

And meanwhile, the remaining three hounds were three meters from Nathan, and the leader with the sword was two.

*Shit. I don’t have the time.*

The first hound leaped.

Nathan threw himself sideways to the ground, rolling left, just enough for the animal to sail over him and land awkwardly on the other side. The leader’s sword cut through the air where his neck had been half a second earlier.

Nathan, from the ground, fired upward.

The pulse hit the leader in the abdomen.

The man didn’t fall immediately. But his Draken Class was no longer channeling mana. Soul Sense confirmed the disconnection—like a candle that had just been snuffed out. Without his Class, he was just a middle-aged man with a sword and a wound he couldn’t see but that was devouring his soul from the inside.

Nathan rose from the ground in one motion. He fired two more times in rapid succession. One hound to the left. Another to the right.

Three down.

One hound remained.

And the leader—who was already dropping to his knees but still had the sword in his hand and was still a meter from Nathan.

The last hound lunged.

Nathan released the seventh pulse at point-blank range.

The animal exploded mid-leap.

The leader, already on his knees, looked up at Nathan with an expression that wasn’t fear or rage. It was confusion. The specific confusion of someone who had planned this encounter for weeks and was discovering, in his last seconds of consciousness, that none of his planning had accounted for what had just happened.

"What—" he started.

Nathan fired the eighth pulse.

The leader fell.

Silence.

---

Nathan stood in the middle of the road for a full second.

Soul Sense remained active. It confirmed that the six hostile human presences were extinguished. Four dogs down. No living signatures in the immediate radius except himself, the person inside the box, and a few distant presences in the direction of Greywall that clearly hadn’t heard any of what had just occurred.

He lowered his hands.

He looked at them.

They were trembling slightly.

*Alright. Alright. That was... that was everything. That was the whole fight. I’m alive.*

```

COMBAT RESOLVED

Eliminated:

Hostile bearer [Draken] x2 [Level 18, 16]

Armed handler x2 [Level 12, 11]

Archer [Level 14]

Encirclement leader [Level 22]

Combat hound x4 [Level 8]

EXP gained: +4,820

Total EXP: 5,280 / 1,500

LEVEL UP!

Level 3 → Level 4

LEVEL UP!

Level 4 → Level 5

!!MAIN SKILLS UNLOCKED!!

STAT IMPROVEMENTS:

HP: 1,020 → 1,420

Mana: 1,480 → 2,100

Attack: 62 → 88

Defense: 42 → 61

Speed: 82 → 112

Perception: 108 → 142

NEW SKILLS AVAILABLE:

✅ Soul Reap — Unlocked.

✅ Death’s Domain — Unlocked.

✅ Pale Rider — Unlocked.

✅ Harvest of Souls — Unlocked.

✅ The Last Bell — Unlocked.

Total active skills: 7

```

Nathan stared at the cascade of notifications floating in front of him.

*All five. All five skills. At once.*

*At once.*

He dismissed the notifications with a mental gesture.

And looked around.

Six bodies. Four hounds. Blood on the road and in the grove. The box still leaning against the tree exactly where he’d left it, upright, without a scratch.

And Nathan standing in the middle of it all—alive, hands trembling slightly, heart beating at a rhythm that hadn’t come down yet.

*I just killed six people.*

*Living. Human.*

*I just killed them.*

He waited for the emotional reaction. He waited with the specific calm of someone who knows there’s a reaction they’re supposed to feel and is waiting for it.

The reaction didn’t come.

It wasn’t trauma. It was more like recording. His brain had processed the combat, processed the results, and filed the information under the category of *things that happened and that I’m going to have to examine later when I have time.*

*The Class is doing something.*

*The Class is handling this for me.*

*I don’t know if that reassures me or worries me more.*

He walked over to the leader’s body. Crouched down. Searched the pockets with the methodical efficiency he’d developed over four years working in warehouses.

A pouch with coins. Silver, mostly. Some gold. It felt heavy in his hand. Probably about thirty silver and ten gold—more money than Nathan had ever seen together in his entire life.

A folded note in the inner pocket of the cloak. He pulled it out. Read it.

> *Merchandise: adult female. Originally from the Northern Kingdom. Property disputed with House Brenwick. Retrieve before entry to Greywall. Deliver to agreed meeting point. Payment upon confirmation.*

And below it, sealed with a symbol Nathan half-recognized.

A circle divided by a diagonal line.

*Wait.*

*Wait.*

*That’s the same symbol Brenwick said his assistant Larian would be carrying.*

Nathan stared at the note for a full moment.

*Brenwick and this guild are connected. They’re not real competitors. This is a coordinated operation. Either Brenwick betrayed them, or this was a test, or I’m in the middle of something much bigger than a simple transport.*

He looked back at the box.

The box, true to its nature as a box, didn’t comment.

"This just got complicated," Nathan said to it, folding the note and tucking it into his inner pocket. "This got significantly complicated. I want you to know, person who probably can’t hear me, that I’m processing this information in real time and I also don’t know exactly what it means."

He walked to the woman’s body by the low wall. Searched her pockets too. Another coin pouch. Another small seal with the same symbol, this time carved in metal.

*The same symbol.*

*Coordination confirmed.*

Nathan sat on a stone at the roadside. Closed his eyes for a moment. Soul Sense remained active, registering the silence of the surroundings. Nothing alive in the immediate radius except him and the person in the box.

*Let’s think.*

*Brenwick hires an F-Rank Hunter to carry the package. Brenwick knows the Hunter is going to be intercepted by people with his own symbol. The package was going to get "lost" on the road, and Brenwick was going to collect insurance or use the incident as legal justification for something. The disposable Hunter was me.*

*But Brenwick didn’t know what Class I actually had. And this guild didn’t know either.*

*Which means neither party accounted for this.*

He opened his eyes.

Stood up.

Walked to the box.

Hoisted it onto his shoulder.

"Change of plan," he said to the box. "We’re going to the Temple. Directly. Without passing through Five Anvils Street. If Brenwick’s address is part of the trap, I don’t want to see what’s waiting there."

The box, with dignity, didn’t offer an opinion.

"Agreed," Nathan said, adjusting the weight on his shoulder. "Your silence implies consent."

He started walking toward Greywall.

And at the back of his perception, in the direction of the Gray Forest, far away, that same large presence he’d sensed at Hollen’s farm the day before shifted slightly.

As if it had noticed something.

As if it had noticed Nathan.

*Shit,* Nathan thought, without breaking stride. *Something felt me.*

*Something just felt me from the other side of the forest.*

He picked up the pace slightly toward the city.