Chương 21: A Lethal Anomaly

The butchering took less than twenty minutes. Zander worked with the practiced, ruthless efficiency that the Ironwood forest demanded, stripping the usable meat from the Ash-Wolves while ignoring the ruined, pulverized skull of the level 9 beast. He gathered a pile of dry, petrified debris from the base of the massive trees and used his fire starter to coax a small, nearly smokeless flame into existence.

It wasn't meant for warmth; the heavy canopy trapped the humid, stagnant air well enough, but raw meat was not something he wanted to eat if he had the choice, which he did. Mira hovered at the edge of the firelight, playing the role of the exhausted, shell-shocked survivor to perfection. She favored her "twisted" ankle, leaning against a grey trunk with her arms crossed, watching him work.

She offered to help twice, but Zander waved her off, keeping the Ironfang Dagger in his hand and the physical space between them tightly controlled. Once the meat was skewered on wood and sizzling over the coals, Zander handed her a stick. She took it with a grateful nod, blowing on the charred, greasy meat. Zander didn't wait. He pulled his skewer back, bit into the tough, half-cooked muscle, and swallowed. It tasted like ash and iron, but it was food.

He knew his bloodline reigned supreme in his body, immune to any toxins, parasites, or foreign influences. He could eat rotting bark if he had to. Mira noticed. She paused, the skewer an inch from her mouth, her eyes tracking the ease with which he consumed the questionable meat. It was a microscopic hesitation, but Zander caught it. She was calculating.

She was trying to figure out if he had an iron stomach, a high Endurance stat, or a specific survival skill that allowed him to eat undercooked monster meat without fear of debilitating consequences. She took a small, careful bite, forcing a polite smile.

"God, I haven't eaten anything hot in days. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Zander said, his voice flat.

"Eat. We have a long walk tomorrow." Mira chewed, her dark eyes reflecting the low embers of the fire.

"That was one hell of a throw back there," she said casually, gesturing with her skewer toward the darkness where the level 9 wolf's remains were.

"I've never seen someone crush a skull with a simple rock. You must have dumped every free point you have into Strength." Fishing, Zander thought.

"Something like that," he grunted, taking another bite. She shifted her weight, ignoring her supposedly bad ankle for a fraction of a second too long.

"And that dagger," she continued, her gaze dropping to the bone blade resting on Zander's thigh.

"That doesn't look like a starter weapon the System would hand out. Custom drop? Or did you carve it yourself?"

"Found it," Zander replied. He offered nothing else. He kept his answers as short and unhelpful as possible, letting the silence stretch uncomfortably between them. He noted what she wasn't saying. She hadn't volunteered her own class. She hadn't mentioned that she was a level 11 Rogue, a fact that hovered above her head in translucent red text only his System-assisted skill had revealed to him. If she wanted to typecast him as a simple, brute-force Warrior, a meat-shield who hit hard but thought slow, so be it.

It was time to see how good her poker face really was.

"You mentioned centipedes earlier," Zander said, his tone conversational, as if he were discussing the weather.

"Massive, armored ones." Mira nodded, swallowing a piece of meat.

"Yeah. Two nights ago. It was a nightmare. They just erupted from the ground." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"I ran into a Thorn-Back Centipede a few days ago," Zander continued, his red eyes locking onto hers.

"Level eight. Massive beast with dark chitin and clusters of black, sharp spines protruding from every segment. Nasty piece of work. How did your group try to handle them?" He watched her micro-expressions. The slight tightening of the jaw. The controlled blink.

"Panic, mostly," Mira said, her voice dropping an octave to convey sorrow. She looked down at the fire, a picture of survivor's guilt.

"We weren't ready. Our Warrior, a guy named David, tried to hold the line, but there were too many. The armor on those things... our weapons just bounced off. I only got away because David yelled at us to scatter." It was a smooth, polished answer. It hit all the right emotional beats. It was also, in Zander's opinion, complete bullshit. As far as he was concerned, David and the rest of the group either never existed or if they did, Mira had intentionally used them as bait.

She had hamstrung her own team to secure an escape route. I might be jumping the gun here, but better be safe than sorry.

"Shame," Zander said simply, poking the coals with a stick. Mira nodded, playing the grief perfectly.

"Yeah." The silence returned, but the dynamic had shifted. The campfire felt less like a sanctuary and more like an interrogation room. Mira seemed to sense that her 'helpless survivor' routine wasn't penetrating Zander's armor. She sighed, her shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch as she abandoned the facade, just a little.

"Did you see the notification this morning?" Mira asked.

"The Planetary Integration Status Report?"

"I saw it," Zander said.

"Era Four. Cycle nine thousand something."

"Seventy-five percent survival rate," Mira quoted, looking directly into the fire, the orange light dancing across her features.

"Nearly two billion people, dead. The System called it 'Standard'."

"It's a meat grinder," Zander agreed, feeling the shared, oppressive weight of the numbers.

"And that highest recorded level," Mira continued, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

"Level thirty-eight. Do you have any idea how much experience, how much slaughter, it takes to reach level thirty-eight in ten days?"

"More than I've seen," Zander admitted. For a brief, fleeting moment, the tension between them morphed into something resembling mutual respect. It was the pragmatism of two people recognizing that while they were both above average, they were not the best of the best yet. They were both ruthless; they were both survivors, and neither of them wanted to be just another statistic in Era Four.

"We're a long way from the top of the food chain," Zander said softly.

"Yeah," Mira agreed, meeting his eyes. The mask was entirely gone for a split second, revealing the cold, calculating killer beneath.

"So we better keep climbing." The moment passed. The fire crackled, popping a stray ember into the damp night air.

"We should get some sleep," Mira said, rubbing her face, the fatigue creeping back into her voice; whether real or feigned, Zander couldn't tell anymore.

"We can split the watch. I can take first if you want to rest."

"I'll take first," Zander countered smoothly, leaving no room for argument.

"You're the one looking tired and with the bad ankle. Rest up." Mira smiled, a tight, polite expression.

"Thank you. Wake me in four hours." She moved to the opposite side of the fire, kicking a pile of dry leaves into a makeshift bed. She lay down facing the embers. Within minutes, her breathing slowed, evening out into the deep, steady rhythm of sleep. Zander sat motionless against the rough bark of an Ironwood tree. He didn't build up the fire. He let it die down to a dull, glowing red, plunging their small camp into a heavy gloom. He watched her chest rise and fall. It was a perfect imitation of sleep.

But Zander's enhanced perception, fueled by his absurdly high Will stat, caught the subtle details. Her muscles weren't entirely relaxed. And her right hand, tucked under her cheek as a makeshift pillow, was resting a hair's breadth from the leather-wrapped hilt of one of her steel short swords she had laid beside her. She was as awake as he was. Zander closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wood. He didn't activate any skill, but he was ready.

He was a hair-trigger away from maximum violence, waiting to see who would open hostilities first. He listened to the silence of the sealed forest, the magnetic pull of the Apex Predator quest humming low in his gut. Tomorrow, Zander thought, keeping his breathing steady and his grip loose on his dagger, is going to be a very long day. That is, if she doesn't try something tonight.