The Lifer cell operated out of an abandoned mining station on the edge of a rocky plateau, an old Tribunal infrastructure from before Prison World was repurposed, Korvan’s intel had said. Stone walls, partial roof, two functional levels. They’d been raiding solo hunters along the eastern hunting grounds for at least two seasons.

Owen, Yalira, Tessa, and Jorik watched the station from a ridge half a kilometer away.

"Count," Owen said.

"Eleven," Yalira murmured. Her amber eyes were sharper at distance than any of them. "Seven on the lower level, four on the upper. Rotating. They’ve got a watch system."

"Tiers?"

"Mostly Tier 5. Two of them feel stronger—maybe Tier 4 one-star, two-star at the outside. Their leader’s the bigger one. The one with the scar across his chest."

"Names?"

"Don’t know names. I’ve heard one of them called Brask. The leader."

Owen filed it. Brask. The big one. Tier 4.

"Plan?" Tessa asked.

Owen thought about it. "Standard hunting party of solo prisoners isn’t going to walk up to a fortified position with eleven Lifers. That’s the kind of thing that gets you killed."

"Right."

"So we don’t fight them on their ground. We make them come to us."

"How?"

"Bait."

Jorik snorted. "You volunteering?"

"Yeah."

"You’re rank nineteen. They’ll know your face."

"That’s the point. They see a leaderboard hunter looking wounded and isolated, they’re going to send a strike team. They want my credits more than they want anyone else’s."

Yalira frowned. "How wounded?"

"Convincing wounded. Suppressed CE. Limp. Visible bandages. I walk through the eastern approach at dusk like I’m trying to slip past them quietly. They’ll send four, maybe five of their best to take me."

"And we ambush the strike team," Tessa finished.

"Right."

"And then?"

"Then we hit the station while they’re down. The remaining six or seven will be confused about why their team hasn’t come back. We move fast. Take them in pieces."

Jorik scratched at his arm. "It’s a decent plan." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"Decent’s all we need."

---

They set it up over the next twenty hours.

Yalira mapped the eastern approach in detail, identifying three natural choke points where a strike team would most likely engage. Tessa picked the middle one—a stretch of broken ground between two boulder fields, where a wounded prey would have nowhere to run and the attackers would feel safe pressing in.

Jorik took position on the western boulder field. Tessa on the eastern. Yalira high on a ledge above, with throwing daggers and a clear sight line over the kill zone.

Owen made himself convincing.

He stripped to a torn under-tunic, smeared dust and a little of his own blood across his side, wrapped a bandage around his thigh to suggest he’d been in a fight already. He pulled his suppression down to Tier 5 two-star—a hundred and fifty CE on the surface, the rest folded down beneath. Looked unimpressive. Looked beatable.

He limped into the eastern approach as the second sun began to set.

It took about four minutes for the alarm to go up at the station.

It took another twelve for the strike team to reach him.

Five of them. Brask was leading—the Tier 4 with the chest scar, broad-shouldered, carrying a heavy stone-cleaver weapon. Two Tier 5 four-stars flanking. Two Tier 5 three-stars behind.

"Dragon King," Brask said. His voice was a low rumble. "Saw your name on the board. Number nineteen. Heard you were hunting alone these days."

Owen leaned heavily against a rock, breathing hard. Made his voice rough. "Didn’t come looking for trouble."

"That’s the thing about Prison World. Trouble looks for you." Brask gestured. His team spread out, cutting off retreat. "Hand over what you’ve got. Maybe I let you walk."

"What I’ve got?"

"Anything worth credits. Cores. Trinkets. Whatever you’ve been hoarding."

Owen straightened slowly. Let a small smile touch his face.

"I’ve got nothing," he said. "I left it all back at camp."

Brask’s eyes narrowed. "Then I guess we just—"

Yalira’s first dagger took the right-flank Tier 5 four-star in the throat.

He went down with a wet sound, hands clawing at the steel. Brask spun, weapon coming up. The second dagger hit his shoulder—a deep wound but not fatal.

Owen dropped the limp.

His CE roared up from suppression to full Tier 5 five-star—five thousand units in the space of a heartbeat. The rear two Tier 5 three-stars actually staggered backward from the pressure wave.

Tessa hit them from behind.

She moved fast for a Tier 5 four-star, faster than she had any right to, blades catching one of them across the back of the knees. He went down. The other turned to face her—

Jorik came in from the west side, broken arm be damned, and slammed a stone fist into the side of his head. Bone cracked. He dropped.

Brask roared and charged Owen.

Owen met him head-on.

The Tier 4 was strong. Stronger than Owen had given him credit for. The cleaver came down in a heavy arc, and Owen had to step inside the swing instead of blocking it—catching Brask’s wrist, redirecting the weapon’s momentum, using the bigger man’s mass against him. The cleaver hit the rock instead of Owen, sending sparks.

Owen brought his knee up into Brask’s stomach.

Brask grunted, doubled, recovered fast. He head-butted Owen in the chest. Owen stumbled back, breath knocked out, and Brask came at him with bare fists this time, the cleaver abandoned.

Tier 4 hands closed around Owen’s throat.

He felt his airway crush.

[Cosmic Impact Fist]

Point-blank into Brask’s stomach.

The Tier 4 flew back. Hit a rock. Slid down. Tried to stand up. Couldn’t—the impact had done something to his spine.

Owen walked over, breathing hard, one hand at his throat. Brask looked up at him, eyes still defiant.

"Dragon King," Brask wheezed. "You’re going to wish—"

Owen ended it.

---

The strike team was down in less than three minutes total.

Yalira dropped from her ledge, retrieving her daggers with quick efficient movements. Tessa was wiping blood off her blade. Jorik was rolling his shoulder, the broken arm aching from the combat but functional.

"Five down," Yalira said. "Six to go at the station."

"They’ll have heard nothing," Tessa said. "We were too quiet."

"They’ll start to wonder when the strike team doesn’t come back," Owen said. He glanced at the bodies. "Strip them. Anything useful. Then we move."

They worked quickly.

The strike team had been carrying decent gear—two functional CE-blade weapons, a small bag of dried food, a single Grade 2 beast core (worth maybe forty thousand credits), and—Tessa held up a thin metallic strip with a faint blue glow—a Tribunal signal beacon.

"That’s not standard prisoner gear," Tessa said.

"No," Yalira agreed.

"How did Lifers get a Tribunal beacon?"

"Don’t know. But it’s worth a lot. Probably stolen from a previous hunt."

"Bring it. We’ll figure out what to do with it later."

They moved on the station within twenty minutes.

---

The station fight was uglier than the ambush. Closer quarters. Fewer angles. The remaining six Lifers fought with the desperation of men who’d just realized their leadership was gone and they were trapped in their own fortification.

Yalira went up first—slipped onto the upper level through a collapsed section of roof, took two of them quietly before the others realized she was inside.

Owen and Jorik hit the lower level entrance directly. Tessa came in through a side passage Yalira had spotted earlier.

The fight took maybe seven minutes.

Two of the Lifers tried to surrender. Tessa, who’d spent the past three weeks recovering from burns left by a Nullborn who’d raided this faction’s territory, was not in a forgiving mood. She killed both of them cleanly.

Owen didn’t argue.

Last man standing was a Tier 5 four-star with one eye, who fought hard and went down ugly. Owen took the kill himself, partly because the man had nearly opened Jorik’s throat with a blade, and partly because something in the man’s snarling defiance reminded Owen of the worst parts of the Lifer culture—the casual cruelty, the predator economics, the assumption that other prisoners were just resources.

When the smoke cleared, the four of them stood in the wreckage of the station.

[CELL ELIMINATED: BRASK’S CREW]

[CREDITS AWARDED: 312,000]

[LEADERSHIP BOUNTY (BRASK): +85,000]

[TOTAL: 397,000]

Owen exhaled.

"Decent night’s work," Jorik said.

"Decent."

---

They camped at the station that night.

It was a strange feeling—occupying a space that an hour earlier had been the territory of people they’d just killed. But it was defensible, and there was actual cover, and after the past week of moving constantly, it was good to have stone walls.

They split the credits four ways after expenses. Owen kept fifty percent—two hundred thousand—and the other two hundred thousand split among Yalira, Tessa, and Jorik. Yalira took her share with a small nod. Tessa and Jorik both looked surprised at the size, even though they’d agreed to the deal.

"You weren’t kidding about fifty-fifty," Jorik said.

"I don’t kid about money," Owen said. "I’m tracking a billion. Couple hundred thousand here or there doesn’t change the math."

"Generous, though."

"Worth it."

Tessa studied him over the small fire they’d made in a corner of the upper level. "You’re going to keep doing this. Cell raids. Group hunts."

"For the next three weeks, yeah. We need credits, and Lifer cells are concentrated value. Plus if I’m going to fight an Ordained hunter in three weeks, I want to be sharp. Stay in fighting shape. Stay coordinated as a team."

"Smart."

"I have my moments."

---

Over the next three days, they hit two more targets.

The first was a smaller cell—five Lifers, mid-tier, hunkered down in a cave network east of the mining station. Yalira caught their patrol pattern in less than an hour. They took them in a single coordinated strike. No casualties on Owen’s side. Credits earned: 178,000.

The second was a single high-value target—a Tier 4 two-star Lifer named Vexis who’d been on the leaderboard at rank twenty-three before going off-grid two months ago. Korvan’s old intel had pinpointed his probable hide. Yalira confirmed.

Vexis had become a paranoid recluse, alone in a defensible cave with traps set across the approaches. Owen had to take the fight to him directly, since the team couldn’t navigate the trap field. He lost three thousand CE in the engagement and took a stab wound across the forearm that needed stitching afterward. But Vexis went down. Tier 4 cores were valuable.

Credits earned from Vexis: 240,000 (kill bounty) + 180,000 (rank position bounty) = 420,000.

By Day 46, Owen’s total credits stood at 4,222,000.

Rank had moved from #19 to #14.

---

Day 46. Late evening. They were back at the mining station, which Yalira had started calling "home base" half-ironically, half-because it had become exactly that.

Owen sat on the upper level, watching the moons rise over Prison World. Yalira joined him at some point—she did that more often now, finding him during the quiet hours.

"Fourteen days till the next hunter lands," she said.

"I know."

"Ordained. Those Green skinned, red tribal markings beings. Different fighting style than the Nullborn, they’re basically battle-mages. CE-channelers. Distance fighters."

"Heard about them at Veridian Crossing."

"They’ll be smart. Probably faster to deploy than Raxka was. Maybe smarter about reading the terrain."

"Smart?"

"Ordained are scholars before they’re warriors. Their hunters do reconnaissance. They learn the prey before they engage." Yalira’s eyes flicked to him. "Which means they’re going to learn you."

"Good. Then I’ll learn them too."

"How?"

Owen smiled grimly.

"By making sure," he said, "that there’s not much left for them to learn."