They moved through the forest in formation, the fear still present in each of them but no longer the only thing present. Dominic led from the front, Hana and Alana behind him, Sarliya after them, and Necrotize at the rear. They moved quietly, deliberately, the way people move when they are trying to be brave and are not entirely sure they are succeeding.

After some time, Alana stopped them with a single gesture.

Everyone froze. No movement, no sound. They looked at her.

Her expression had gone completely serious, her attention fixed on something ahead through the trees.

She took a slow breath.

"We’re here."

The group tightened internally, the kind of stillness that comes just before something that can’t be undone. They moved into the undergrowth together, pressing carefully through dense brush, parting it as slowly as they could manage. A sound reached them before they could see anything. Something tearing. Something eating, with the particular savagery of a creature that had no interest in being graceful about it.

They eased the last of the brush aside and looked.

It had its back to them. Seven feet of dense black fur, long as matted rags where it hung from the creature’s body. Six legs, each ending in broad, heavy claws pressed into the earth. A tail that swept low behind it, its underside thick with barbs. They couldn’t see the face from this angle, only the mass of it, and the violence of what it was doing.

A blue deer lay beneath it. Still alive. The boar was eating it that way deliberately, not killing it first, simply tearing into it while it breathed.

Hana’s shaking intensified. Every instinct she had was pointing in the opposite direction, insisting loudly and in detail. She pressed her hand into a fist until her knuckles hurt. She stayed.

Dominic stared at the creature and felt the same pull, the one toward distance, toward somewhere this wasn’t happening. And then, in the quiet of his own mind, he heard Necrotize’s voice from earlier. He thought about what was waiting back home. His family’s situation. Everything that depended on what he became here, in this place, in moments exactly like this one. He couldn’t afford retreat. Not as a habit. Not as a first response.

He turned to the others, keeping his voice barely above a whisper.

"Look at it carefully. We’re going to face this. I know what you’re feeling right now, every part of you wants to be somewhere else. That’s real and it makes sense. But listen." He looked at each of them. "We all came here with something we’re trying to build. A future, a proof, a dream we haven’t reached yet. This is one obstacle between us and that. There will be more after this. There will always be more. If we step back every time something frightens us, we won’t build anything. We won’t prove anything. Not to others and not to ourselves." He paused. "So we hold."

The words settled. Something in them held weight beyond the moment they were spoken in, not because they were perfect, but because they were true, and everyone listening knew it.

The shaking didn’t stop. But they were still there.

"Alright," they said, quietly and together.

Dominic gave a single nod.

"Same plan as before. Hana, get ready."

At Dominic’s signal, Hana drew a long breath.

Her whole body was still shaking. She pressed her fists together until the trembling slowed to something manageable, not gone, but workable.

You have to do this, Hana. Everyone is depending on you.

She reached back into her bag and produced her weapon. It wasn’t a conventional one, it resembled a gun in shape, but wasn’t quite that. She had built it herself, the way every alchemist eventually built something personal to their method. It worked as a thrower. She loaded her prepared potions into it and launched them at range.

The first part of their plan rested entirely on her. She needed to land a paralysis potion on the boar. It wouldn’t stop the creature, but it would slow its movements, and that slight reduction was worth more than it sounded, because the potion would also send the creature into a berserk state. On paper, that sounded like the wrong outcome. In practice, a berserk monster attacked with pure instinct and no calculation, which was significantly easier to manage than a creature this dangerous thinking clearly.

Hana loaded the green-liquid vial into the thrower, raised it, held her breath, checked her angle once.

Shoot.

She pressed the trigger.

The vial arced through the air and struck the boar squarely across its back. The creature erupted into sound, a massive, rattling roar that sent every bird within a hundred metres exploding out of the canopy simultaneously.

Dominic was already moving.

His sword cleared its sheath in a single motion and he drove forward, both hands on the grip, eyes locked on the boar. Behind him, Alana broke right with her two spirits, Macy ascending, Lucy moving low. Hana broke left, reloading as she ran, a fire potion already in hand. Sarliya followed at a measured pace, not sprinting but moving steadily, positioning for support range.

And at the back, Necrotize walked forward with both hands in his pockets, at the pace of someone who had gone out for an evening stroll.

If anyone had looked at him, they would have noticed he was smiling.

Not the tight smile of someone steeling themselves. Something genuinely, openly excited. He was looking forward to this.

Dominic closed to ten feet. The boar still had its back to them, still turned away, still occupied with what had been in front of it a moment ago.

Underestimating us, are you? Let’s see how that works out.

He pushed off hard, launching himself upward, sword raised in both hands for a descending vertical slash aimed at the creature’s rear flank.

The blade was halfway through its arc when it stopped. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

He was still in the air. His sword had connected with something, but not the boar’s body. The tail had moved. In one fluid motion it had curved back and intercepted the strike with its barbed underside, the thorns catching the blade and holding it. Dominic pushed. The weapon didn’t move. There was no cut, no give, the barbs had deflected it completely.

The tail swung.

The force of it took Dominic and sent him sideways through the air. He crossed the gap between two trees and hit the trunk of one hard enough that the impact shook bark loose. He slid down it. Blood came from his mouth.

He was injured. Whatever had happened inside his chest wasn’t minor. His body wasn’t answering the way it should.

But he forced his eyes up anyway.

And for the first time, he saw the Inverted Demonic Boar turn to face them.

Six blood-red eyes where the mouth should have been. The mouth where the eyes should have been, teeth curving upward like inverted fangs, wet and parted. The fur hanging heavy and black across seven feet of muscle and rage.

A new expression crossed Dominic’s face.

Terror.