Andy slept for three hours.
Not because it was safe — it wasn't — but because a body running on adrenaline and no food and a shoulder bite from a six-legged mouth-dog needed maintenance whether the world was ending or not. He'd learned
that in Kandahar. You sleep when you can because you don't know when you can't.
Dren took first watch without being asked, which elevated him
significantly in Andy's estimation.
When Andy woke up the shutter cracks were showing grey light again and the behind-the-sternum cold was gone and his shoulder had stiffened overnight into something that would need to be worked loose carefully
or it would be a problem in a fight.
He worked it loose. It was a problem anyway.
HP: 79 / 120
New number. Level 1 had bumped his health ceiling from 100 to 120, which was either the system being generous or a tacit acknowledgment that things were about to get worse and he'd need the buffer.
Probably both.
He stood up, rolled his shoulder twice, picked up the knife from where he'd set it beside him, and looked at Dren.
Dren was sitting against the door with his eyes open and his broken spear across his knees and an expression that suggested he hadn't actually slept at all.
"You should have woken me for second watch," Andy said.
Dren said something. The system translated it with the same flat affect it used for everything.
"I was not going to sleep anyway."
"Because of the notification?"
Dren looked at him steadily. "Because of what comes after the notification."
Andy pulled up his quest log. The God Hunt timer was still there — six days, three hours, forty-something minutes now. The Fractured Lands quest was complete. Nothing new had appeared overnight, which
the system probably thought was reassuring.
"What comes after the notification?" Andy said.
"Collectors," Dren said. The system gave him the word in English and Andy filed it immediately under words that sound worse the more you
think about them. "When the system announces something rare, Collectors come to acquire it."
"Acquire it," Andy said. "Meaning me."
"Meaning you."
"And Collectors are—"
"Hunters. Mercenaries. Some are guild-sanctioned. Some are not."
Dren paused. "The unsanctioned ones are faster."
Andy looked at the door.
"How much of a head start do we have?"
"The notification went out before nightfall. It is now morning."
Dren did the math with his expression. "None."
Andy picked up his rock from the floor — he'd kept it, the sharp
edge had proven useful and he wasn't sentimental about weapons,
just practical — and put it in his jacket pocket.
"Okay," he said. "We move."
They moved.
Dren knew the forest in the way that people knew places they'd
survived in rather than lived in — not comfortable knowledge,
survival knowledge, the kind that was entirely about threats and
exits. He led them southeast, away from the deeper forest, toward
what he said was a trade road.
Andy let him lead and watched their six.
The forest was different in daylight. Still dead, still wrong, but
the quality of the wrongness changed — less oppressive, more
exposed. You could see further between the trees, which meant
you could be seen further. He kept them close to the larger trunks
and off the ash where footprints showed.
Dren noticed. He didn't say anything about it but he adjusted his
own movement to match, and Andy noted that too.
They were twenty minutes out from the shelter when the system
pinged.
Not a screen. A sound — the first sound the system had made, a
single clean tone like a finger on a crystal glass, and then a
small icon appeared at the edge of his vision. Red. Pulsing slowly.
He stopped.
Dren stopped two steps later and looked back at him.
Andy focused on the icon. It expanded into a screen.
THREAT DETECTION
Intelligent entity detected.
Bearing: Northwest, approximately 400 meters.
Classification: COLLECTOR — UNSANCTIONED
Level: 34
Status: Tracking
Level thirty-four.
Andy looked at that number for a moment.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He was Level 1. He had a borrowed knife, a sharp rock, a passive
stealth skill that the system had already compromised, and a
shoulder that was going to complain about anything overhead.
Level thirty-four.
"There's someone northwest of us," Andy said quietly. "Four
hundred meters. Coming this way."
Dren's hand tightened on his broken spear. "Collector?"
"System says unsanctioned."
Dren said something the system translated as an extremely
specific anatomical insult that Andy filed away for later use.
"How far to the trade road?" Andy said.
"Forty minutes at walking pace."
"Running pace?"
"Twenty. But in this forest, running makes noise."
Andy thought about that. Four hundred meters at a tracking pace —
not a sprint, a tracker moved deliberately — was maybe ten minutes
before contact. Twenty minutes of noisy running versus ten minutes
of quiet moving in the wrong direction.
Neither option was good. He needed a third option.
He looked at the trees around them. Then at the ground. Then at
the way the light was coming through the canopy — from the east,
low and grey, casting long shadows west.
"Which direction does the Collector think we're going?" Andy said.
Dren frowned. "Southeast. Toward the road. It is the only logical
exit from this area."
"Right," Andy said. "So that's where he's cutting us off from."
He looked northwest. "He's not behind us. He's ahead of us."
Dren was quiet for a moment. "Yes."
"So if we go northeast—"
"There is nothing northeast. Only the deep forest."
"I know," Andy said. "That's why he's not there."
Dren looked at him with the yellow eyes that had gone complicated
again. "The deep forest has things worse than Collectors."
"The Collector is thirty-three levels above me," Andy said. "The
deep forest things don't know I exist yet." He was already moving
northeast. "Come on."
Dren followed him, which Andy was choosing to interpret as
confidence rather than the absence of better options.
They went northeast.
The system pinged again at the ten-minute mark.
THREAT DETECTION UPDATE
COLLECTOR has changed bearing.
New bearing: Northeast.
Distance: 310 meters.
Status: Pursuit confirmed.
"He adjusted," Andy said.
"Collectors are not stupid," Dren said, slightly out of breath.
"They are very good at what they do."
"What exactly do they do? Besides collect."
"Track. Capture. Deliver." Dren paused. "The unsanctioned ones
skip the middle step."
"Great."
Andy looked at the terrain ahead. The forest was getting denser
the further northeast they went — trees closer together, the
ground softer, the ash giving way to something darker and more
organic. Harder to move through quickly. Harder to track through
too, if you knew what you were doing.
The system pinged a third time.
LEVEL 2 THRESHOLD REACHED
Total XP: 820 / 1000
He was eighty XP short of Level 2 and there was a Level 34
Collector three hundred meters behind him.
He looked at the dense forest ahead.
He looked at the distance readout.
He thought about the choke point from yesterday. About the
Crawl Fiends and the rocks and the riverbank. About the way
the system kept trying to categorize him and kept getting it
wrong.
"Dren," he said. "Can you get to the trade road from here
without me?"
Dren stopped walking. "What?"
"If I'm not with you. Can you get there?"
"Yes, but—"
"Go," Andy said. "I'll find you on the road."
Dren looked at him with an expression that was doing several
things at once. "You are Level 1."
"I'm aware."
"He is Level 34."
"Also aware."
"This is—" Dren searched for the word. The system helped him.
"Insane."
"Probably," Andy said. "Go."
Dren went. Andy watched him move southeast through the trees
until he was out of sight, and then turned northeast and
started making noise.
Not a lot of noise. Enough. A branch here, a heavier footfall
there, the kind of sound a person made when they were moving
fast and scared and not thinking about what they were leaving
behind them.
He moved in a wide arc, northeast and then curving east,
keeping the noise consistent, watching the threat detection
icon in his vision. The distance readout dropped — 280 meters,
260, 240. The Collector was fast. Thirty-four levels of fast.
Andy found what he was looking for at the two-hundred-meter
mark.
A ravine. Deeper than the dry riverbed from yesterday, the
walls steeper, the bottom lost in shadow. A natural bridge
of compacted roots and soil crossing it about ten meters
wide. The only crossing point he could see in either
direction.
He crossed it.
Then he stopped on the far side and looked at the bridge.
He looked at the roots. At the way they were compacted —
dense on the surface, but the ravine walls showed the
underside, and the underside was not dense. The bridge
was surface tension and habit. It held because nothing
heavy had tested it recently.
He looked at his knife.
He looked at the roots.
He got to work.
He had maybe four minutes. He used three and a half of
them on the roots at the edges of the bridge — not cutting
through, cutting into, severing the lateral connections
while leaving the surface intact. The bridge would look
fine. It would hold a careful person moving slowly.
It would not hold a Level 34 Collector moving at pursuit
pace.
He got to the far side of the ravine — the side he'd come
from — and stopped.
Wait.
He was on the wrong side. If the bridge went, he needed
to be on the side with the road, not the side with the
Collector.
"I hate this," Andy said quietly, and crossed back over
the bridge very carefully, testing each step, feeling
the give in the roots that hadn't been there before.
He made it across.
He pressed himself behind the widest tree on the east
side of the ravine and went still.
One hundred and fifty meters. One-twenty. Ninety.
The Collector came through the trees and Andy got his
first look at him.
Tall. Lean in the way that meant fast rather than thin.
Dark armor that absorbed light the same way the dead
trees absorbed color. A mask — full face, featureless
except for two narrow eye slits. Moving through the
forest with the absolute economy of someone who had
done this so many times it had stopped requiring thought.
He was carrying something that wasn't quite a sword and
wasn't quite a spear — longer than a sword, shorter than
a spear, with a blade that curved in a way that suggested
it had been designed for a specific purpose Andy didn't
want to think about too hard.
The Collector reached the bridge and paused.
Andy stopped breathing.
The Collector looked at the bridge. Looked at the ravine.
Looked at the tracks on the near side — Andy had made sure
there were tracks, obvious ones, the kind a scared person
left when they weren't thinking.
He stepped onto the bridge.
Andy watched the roots.
The Collector was four steps out when the near edge gave.
Not catastrophically — not a movie collapse, just a
sudden six-inch drop on the left side that threw the
weight distribution wrong. The Collector was good enough
to react, fast enough to lunge forward rather than back,
and that was the problem because forward was worse.
The center went.
The Collector went with it.
Andy was already moving before the sound of impact reached
him — crossing the ravine on the remaining root structure
at the edges, the parts he hadn't cut, moving fast and
low. He hit the far side and looked down.
The Collector was at the bottom of the ravine. Twenty
feet down. Not dead — already moving, already getting
up, which was either impressive or terrifying and was
probably both.
The system pinged.
COMBAT ASSIST — ENVIRONMENTAL KILL ATTEMPT
Target: COLLECTOR (Level 34)
Result: Partial — Target incapacitated, not eliminated.
XP Awarded: 180 (Partial credit — environmental)
Total XP: 1000 / 1000
LEVEL UP
Level 1 → Level 2
NEW ACTIVE SKILL UNLOCKED
GHOST STEP
Classification: Stealth Movement
Description: For 30 seconds, user leaves no tracks, makes
no sound, and registers no presence on system-based
detection. Cooldown: 10 minutes.
Intended use: Infiltration. Escape. Silent approach.
Andy read the skill description while the Collector at
the bottom of the ravine found his weapon and looked up.
Their eyes met. Or Andy assumed they did — the mask
made it hard to confirm.
The Collector said something. The system translated it.
"You cannot run forever, UNMARKED."
"I'm not running," Andy said. He activated GHOST STEP.
The skill kicked in immediately — he felt it as an
absence, like the world had stopped paying attention
to him. No sound from his footsteps. The threat
detection icon in his vision went dark.
He had thirty seconds.
He did not use them to escape.
He moved along the ravine edge, fast and completely
silent, to the point directly above where the Collector
was standing. The Collector was scanning the tree line
where Andy had been, looking for movement, looking for
tracks, finding neither because GHOST STEP was doing
exactly what it said.
Twenty seconds.
Andy looked at the ravine wall. At the root structure
above the Collector's position. At the large section
of compacted soil and rock that the bridge collapse
had destabilized on the near wall.
He put his boot against it and pushed.
It didn't move.
He pushed harder.
Ten seconds.
He turned around, put his back against a tree, both
feet against the soil section, and shoved with his
legs.
It moved.
It moved a lot.
The Collector looked up at exactly the wrong moment
and then was moving, fast, impressive reflexes for
someone who'd just fallen twenty feet, diving clear
as the soil section came down. He didn't get fully
clear. Andy heard the impact from the edge.
GHOST STEP expired.
The system pinged.
COMBAT ASSIST — ENVIRONMENTAL
Target: COLLECTOR (Level 34)
Result: Incapacitated — Estimated recovery time:
4-6 hours.
Bonus XP: 220
Total XP: 220 / 1500
NOTE: GHOST STEP intended use does not include
collapsing terrain onto targets. Logging as
NON-STANDARD interaction.
"You keep logging that like it's a problem," Andy
said.
He looked down into the ravine. The Collector was
alive — breathing, moving slightly, pinned under
debris but not crushed. Thirty-four levels of constitution keeping him functional through things
that would have ended someone smaller.
He'd be out in four to six hours.
Andy turned southeast toward the trade road.
His shoulder was screaming. His stamina bar was at
forty-three. He had a Level 2 active skill that the
system had designed for sneaking past guards and
he'd used it to drop a hillside on someone.
He found Dren at the road in eleven minutes.
Dren looked at him. Looked behind him. Looked at
the absence of a Level 34 Collector.
"You're alive," Dren said. The system gave it a
flat affect but the yellow eyes were doing something
more than flat.
"Provisionally," Andy said. "He'll be mobile in
a few hours. We need distance."
Dren nodded slowly. Then he said: "How?"
"Ravine," Andy said. "And a skill I used wrong."
Dren was quiet for a moment. "The system gave you
a stealth skill and you used it to—"
"Drop a hill on him. Yes."
Another pause.
"The gods," Dren said carefully, "are going to
find you very annoying."
"Good," Andy said. "Annoying means they're not
taking me seriously." He looked down the trade
road. "Which direction is away from everything
that wants to kill me?"
Dren pointed west.
They went west.
Behind them, somewhere in a ravine in the deep forest, a Level 34 Collector was already planning his report. And somewhere further — in towers and guildhalls and places that received system notifications the way courts received royal
decrees — other things were reading the name GHOST TACTICIAN and making decisions.
The system pinged one more time.
NEW THREAT DETECTED
Classification: GUILD SANCTIONED COLLECTOR
Level: 47
Bearing: West.
Distance: 2.1 kilometers.
Status: Stationary. Waiting.
Andy looked at the notification.
"Of course," he said.
He looked at Dren.
Dren looked at him.
"North?" Andy said.
"North is worse," Dren said.
"How much worse?"
Dren thought about it. "Differently worse."
"I'll take different," Andy said, and turned north.
