Class advancement available!

  Choose one:

  Assassin

  Sharpshooter

  Beastmaster

  Ranger

  Arcanist

  Understanding came with them.

  Assassin.

  An image slid into his mind: of him in shadows that clung like cloth, feet making no sound at all. Knives that went through ribs like paper. A sense of doors opening—things he could do with his Dexterity, with the way his body moved now. Killing from behind. From above. One strike, then nothing left but a corpse. Fast, precise, unseen. A class built for alleys and back rooms and quiet fields. It put weight on blades, on slipping through crowds, on turning his body into a knife that happened to look like a boy.

  He didn’t feel too interested in this one.

  Sharpshooter.

  This one drew a tighter circle.

  He saw himself on a wall, on a ridge, on a hilltop—any high place. A long rifle in his hands, longer and truer than any he’d ever touched. Shots that bent a little to find their targets. The air between him and his prey became something he could feel his way through, every gust a hand he could push aside.

  More tricks with guns. More bonuses to that cold and silent stillness that came when he aimed. He’d be able to see farther, hit harder at distance, put bullets where men didn’t know they could be put. He wouldn’t need to be quick on his feet if nothing ever got close.

  He liked guns a lot. And so he liked this one too.

  Ranger.

  This one tasted like dust and pine needles and creek water.

  He saw paths in front of him, faint lines of disturbance in grass and brush. Animal and human tracks. He saw his own boots falling into them the way a key falls into a lock. He saw knives and rifles both, balanced even in his hands. A sense of knowing where water lay, where ambushes lurked, where a man could walk all day without being seen.

  Tracking, scouting, fighting in open ground. It leaned on what he already did—walking, watching, living between towns and nothing. More steady than Assassin, less sharp than Sharpshooter. A man who lived on the edge between wild things and walls, hunting one and warning the other.

  Tempting and interesting. It was a good choice.

  Arcanist.

  This one felt the strangest.

  A weight gathered in his chest, not like muscle, not like hunger. It was the same place that tingled when Lily used [Spark]. A sense of words he’d never learned, shapes he could make with that weight to call fire, ice, wind, water, lightning, and all sorts of elemental forces. Things that didn’t belong to guns or knives or fists.

  Power at range, but not through steel or lead. Fragile to start. The System made no bones about that. Soft meat wrapped around a new sort of engine. If he took that path he’d be leaning on Magic more than anything else, trading bone for tricks. He’d be like Lily, only bigger, and he wasn’t sure he trusted that.

  Still, not needing a gun to strike a distant target seemed incredibly useful.

  Beastmaster.

  This one was different again.

  He saw eyes first. A pair of them, yellow in the dark. Then more—green, gold, black. Wolves. Cats. Things with feathers and scales and too many teeth. He felt the weight of paws hitting the ground around him in a rhythm he could sense the way he sensed his own heartbeat.

  He understood, in the same gut way, that this meant standing in the middle of something bigger than himself. Beasts would answer when he called. Monsters, maybe. Things like the bison?beast at the gate, only on his side.

  Not just calling, either. A sense of lines ran out from his chest in that picture, thin and taut, connecting him to those eyes. He could trade with them. Pass them strength, take their weight. Share his Experience, the numbers the System wrote for him, until they grew with him.

  He also understood the price. Beastmaster didn’t lean as hard into his own body as Assassin or Sharpshooter would. It wouldn’t make his bullets twist, his knives slip farther. It would make it so there were more teeth between him and whatever tried to harm his sister, the one good thing he had in his life.

  The choices sat in his head like laid?out tools, because that was what they were. Just tools, like guns or knives.

  Assassin would make him better at killing things himself. So would Sharpshooter. Ranger would make him better at keeping people alive by never being where death fell. Arcanist would make him into something strangers would point at and call a witch.

  Beastmaster would give him more bodies, gigantic ones, to protect Lily–and Mary too if she kept tagging along with them.

  The choice was simple.

  The world was filling up with monsters. He may as well have a bunch of them on his side–on his leash, following his every command. He may as well lead his own monsters.

  Class chosen: Beastmaster.

  The words fell through him like a stone through water.

  New weapon granted: [Beastmaster’s Spear].

  New feature unlocked: [Bestiary].

  New feature unlocked: [Hunt].

  Something long and solid appeared in his hands.

  It wasn’t there one moment and then it was, heavy enough to sag his arms before his Strength woke and remembered itself. A spear—long as he was tall and more. The shaft was some pale wood he didn’t know the name of, smooth and warm instead of splintered. The head was leaf?shaped iron gone almost black, edges thin enough to shave. Faint marks ran along the metal—curves and hooks that might’ve been letters.

  It balanced perfectly across his palms. When he shifted one hand, the whole thing moved with him like it had been made to that measure.

  He flicked his eyes down out of habit, looking for his Colt, for the knife at his belt.

  Empty leather. No weight at his hip. No familiar worn grip under his fingers. His rifle—gone. The musket he’d been using like a club—gone. The knife he’d just shoved into the greenskin’s jaw—gone, along with the greenskin.

  Panic ticked his heart once. The System answered before it could rise.

  Current trial: Class Advancement – Beastmaster.

  Restrictions: Only [Beastmaster’s Spear] may be used to slay designated beasts.

  Existing equipment temporarily secured.

  He wasn’t in the fort anymore.

  He hadn’t seen it change. There was no blur, no tunnel. One heartbeat he was pressed against the chapel wall, breath hot in his chest, hands slick with blood. The next the air cut at his face like knives.

  Cold.

  The boy sucked in a breath and it felt like he’d pulled lungfuls of snow.

  He stood in a forest of tall, straight trees. Their trunks went up and up until they hurt his neck to follow, branches starting so high they might as well have been clouds. Snow lay thick on the ground, a white blanket broken only by the dark rise of roots and the occasional jag of a fallen limb. More snow rested on the branches above in soft heaps, ready to fall if anyone shook the world too hard.

  His breath smoked. It came out in white bursts, hanging in the air, then shredded in a thin wind. The air tasted clean, so cold his teeth ached just standing there. His coat was still on his shoulders—thank God for that—but even with all his Vitality, the frosty chill bit deep and bit hard.

  He turned in a slow circle.

  No walls. No fort. No greenskins. No Lily. No Mary. No captain. All he saw were trees and snow and a dark grey sky between branches.

  The System spoke.

  Because you are the first sapient being to attain Level 10, a unique opportunity is granted.

  You will undertake a Pioneer Hunt.

  Images came with the words.

  Him in places that weren’t this one—on some high grassy plain, in a cave, on a rocky shore where waves smashed themselves to pieces. Every place had something in it with teeth or horns or claws.

  You will be transported between realms.

  Any beast you defeat with the [Beastmaster’s Spear] will be bound to you.

  Bound. The word felt like a rope being thrown.

  It will appear in your [Bestiary] and may be summoned and unsummoned at your command.

  You will continue until you face a beast you cannot defeat.

  In that case, your body in this trial will die.

  He felt a small clench at that. The System moved on.

  You will then return to your origin point in your own realm. All beasts already bound will remain in your [Bestiary].

  The boy tightened his grip on the spear shaft. The wood didn’t creak. It might as well have been iron.

  First trial: Giant Wolf.

  A sound came then that didn’t belong to the System at all.

  A howl slid through the trees. Long. Low at first, then climbing, then falling away to nothing like something calling its own name across frozen hills.

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled.

  He turned toward it.

  Snow muffled noise. His boots sank in, crunching just enough that he could hear his own steps. The trees crowded close, trunks like columns. He saw nothing moving but his own breath.

  Then he saw the eyes.

  Two yellow points between the trees, too high off the ground for any dog.

  They came closer, drifting like coals in a slow wind. As they did, a shape came with them—a bulk that made the trunks behind it look smaller, shoulders rolling under a coat of black fur that drank what little light there was.

  The wolf stepped into a small clearing.

  Wolf was the right word, but it was like calling the greenskins just “men.” It missed too much.

  It stood as tall at the shoulder as a good horse. Maybe taller. Its head was big as a barrel, jaws hanging open to pant slow clouds into the air. Each tooth was as long as two of the boy’s fingers, white and sharp. Its paws sank in the snow to the wrist with every step, claws leaving furrows.

  It smelled like dog and blood and the iron?cold tang of something that hunted things bigger than it for a living.

  It saw him. Its ears pricked forward. It didn’t snarl or bristle. It just watched, tail hanging low and still.

  The boy’s fingers tightened on the spear.

  Note: Beasts in Pioneer Hunt cannot be consumed by [The Hollow].

  Upon defeat, they will be bound instead.

  He let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Fine. One thing at a time.

  The wolf took a step. Another. It wasn’t in a hurry. There was nowhere for him to go. Just trees and snow. No walls to climb, no ditch to hide behind.

  He’d thrown spears before. Crude ones he’d whittled himself to practice, sharpened sticks chucked at tree trunks from a time before he knew how to build traps and snares.

  This spear was different, but his arm wasn’t. His Strength wasn’t.

  He shifted his grip a little back from the middle, feeling for the balance. The spear tipped down, then settled. The wolf’s head lowered a fraction, wary now.

  It’s just like a long bullet, he thought. He just had to see the path. And he just needed to aim for the right target.

  He drew in a breath.

  The wolf bunched its shoulders to leap.

  He moved first.

  The spear left his hand in a smooth, hard swing that started at his toes and uncoiled all the way up his body. It cut the air with a low hiss.

  The wolf did leap—straight at him, jaws gaping, tongue dark against white teeth.

  The spear went right into that open mouth.

  For a heartbeat the world narrowed to that. Black fur, yellow eyes, white teeth, black iron.

  The point hit the wolf’s palate and drove up. There was a crunch like stepping on thin ice. The spear vanished past its eyes. The force of the throw carried the great head back, slammed it sideways. The whole body followed, momentum broken.

  The wolf hit the snow in a crashing roll that threw up white like surf. It slid, legs twitching. By the time it came to a stop, it was already dead. Its jaws worked twice more, reflex, then went still.

  The boy’s chest heaved. The cold air burned. He stared.

  He’d killed men now. Monsters. Things that shouldn’t exist. Somehow this felt… different. Like killing something out of a story. A black wolf big as a horse in a forest that had never seen summer.

  A gray?green haze rose from the body, habit making his mind reach for it. The System slapped his hand away without speaking. The haze twisted on itself instead, then folded into a small shape—a little black wolf made of smoke and light, no bigger than Ember the doll.

  It streaked toward him and vanished into his chest without a splash.

  New beast bound: [Dire Wolf]

  [Bestiary] updated!

  Something unfolded in his head—another page in the invisible ledger the System kept.

  He saw a list, simple and short.

  Bestiary (1)

  [Dire Wolf] – Rank I – Level 1

  When he looked harder, more words came.

  Traits: Pack Hunter, Keen Nose, Winter Coat.

  Affinity: Level 1

  Status: Resting. Unsummoned.

  He understood, the way he’d understood the classes, that he could call that shape out at will. That it would answer like a dog coming to his whistle. That it would fight and die for him over and over until he did something to break it.

  He also understood he could lean on it with his numbers. Push Experience from his own pool into that little line until the words Level 1 ticked over. Feed it unspent points the way he might feed Lily extra beans. Make it bigger. Meaner.

  He didn’t have time to think too hard about what that meant.

  The snow and trees fell away like somebody had yanked a rug.

  Heat hit him like a slap.

  He staggered, blinking. The world around him had gone green.

  Not pine green, not scrub. A deep, wet green. Trees all around, but not straight and tall—their trunks twisted, bark rough and dark. Vines hung from branches like ropes, looping down and back up again. Big leaves the size of his chest drooped overhead, catching sunlight and making it swim in slats. The air pressed on him like a damp blanket. His shirt stuck to his back in an instant.

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  Something shrieked.

  The sound was high, tearing, not like any bird he’d ever heard. It came from his right, from somewhere between the boles of the trees. He turned, spear point swinging up.

  This time he saw movement first.

  Branches shook. Leaves tore. Something burst from the undergrowth with a crash of broken stems.

  It ran on two legs.

  It was a lizard in the way the wolf had been a dog. The start of a word, not the whole thing. Feathers covered its body in a patchy coat—reds and browns and blacks. Its head was narrow, muzzle full of serrated teeth. A ragged crest of feathers ran from its crown down its spine. Two small arms hugged close to its chest, claws flexing. Its tail, long and stiff, kept it balanced. It was probably a tiny bit bigger than the Giant Wolf.

  Its feet… his eyes snagged there.

  Each foot had three toes. Two big, one smaller, like a chicken. But the inside toe was wrong—a huge curved talon the size of his hand, held off the ground, gleaming.

  The System named it in a flash.

  Second Trial: Reaper Lizard

  The Reaper Lizard saw him and screamed again. Then it came.

  It didn’t charge straight. It zigzagged between the trees, fast and sudden, claws digging into the loam so hard dirt flew. Its tail flicked to keep it from tipping. It went from twenty yards away to ten so quick his first throw would’ve been blind.

  He didn’t throw the spear because he’d have surely missed.

  He darted sideways instead, around the trunk of the nearest tree. Its bark rasped his shoulder. The ground was damp here, leaves slick underfoot. His boots slipped a little and he caught himself with one hand, spear gripped in the other.

  The Reaper hit where he’d been. One sickle claw slashed through empty air and cut a groove into the tree’s bark deep enough to see raw wood.

  He felt the wind of it on his neck.

  It lunged again, around the trunk.

  He ran.

  Not away. Up.

  Roots ridged out from the base of the big tree like ribs. He put his foot on one, pushed, jumped. His Strength made the move easy; his Dexterity kept him from smashing his face into the trunk. His hands found holds in the bark, fingers digging into gaps. He heaved himself up, using rough places and small branches, trying not to think about how there were no branches this thick on mesquite back home.

  The Reaper shrieked and clawed at the tree below, jaws snapping. Its talons threw clods of dirt and strips of bark.

  He climbed until he was a little higher than its head. The trunk swayed under his weight, just a bit. Leaves brushed his cheek. Sap smelled sharp in his nose.

  The spear hampered him on the way up, but he didn’t dare let it go. There was nothing else here for him.

  The Reaper backed up, turning its head from side to side, one gold eye fixed on him. It screamed again, frustration and rage in that sound. Its tail lashed.

  It jumped.

  He’d seen cats do it after birds—straight up, claws reaching. This was bigger, heavier, but the motion was the same. It nearly reached him. Sickle claws scraped bark inches below his feet.

  He didn’t wait for it to land.

  He pushed off.

  For a heartbeat he was just falling. Spear in both hands. Air in his teeth. The Reaper’s head coming up to meet him.

  He hit its back hard enough his teeth clacked. His legs clamped on reflex around the curve of its ribs. The spear point drove down, guided by all the little lessons he’d learned gutting rabbits and fish and men. There, where the neck met the skull, where bone thinned.

  The Beastmaster’s Spear punched through feathers, skin, muscle, bone. It slid into the Reaper’s head like it had been waiting for that exact path since the world was made.

  The creature convulsed. Its scream cut off in a choking gurgle. It staggered forward three huge steps, then crashed into a smaller tree, snapping it in half. Both of them went down in a tangle of branches and kicking limbs.

  The boy rode it, fingers white on the shaft, until it stopped moving. Then he lay there, chest heaving, face pressed to warm feathers that were already cooling.

  Gray?green haze rose.

  Again, [The Hollow] tugged. Again, something else caught the soul first. The haze twisted into a shape in the air—this time a little feathered thing, claws tucked up. It looked at him with bright, cruel eyes once, then darted into his chest.

  New beast bound: [Reaper Lizard]

  [Bestiary] updated!

  He got another line.

  [Reaper Lizard] – Rank II – Level 1

  Traits: Pounce, Sickle Claws, Pack Tactics.

  Affinity: Level 1

  Status: Resting. Unsummoned.

  Rank II. Higher than the wolf. He didn’t know what that would mean yet. Stronger jaws, probably.

  He rolled off the corpse, wincing. His ribs complained where the fall and impact had thudded through them, but his Vitality soaked it. His shoulder ached where bark had torn skin. Nothing serious. Not by his new measure.

  He barely had time to get his feet back under him before the world jumped again.

  Heat stayed. The air changed.

  No trees crowded him now. No leaves brushed his face. The sky opened up, endless and blue, nothing in it but a few thin cloud streaks. The ground under his boots was grass. Real grass, not the scrubby stuff that clung to Texas dirt. Tall, waving, up past his knees, pale green to yellow where the sun beat on it.

  It rolled away in all directions, a sea of blades with no shore he could see.

  Wind moved over it. The grass bent in slow waves.

  The boy turned, spear in hand, and felt very, very small.

  A shadow fell over him.

  He looked up.

  At first he thought it was a hill moving. Something big. Then he made sense of it.

  The bison that had hit the fort gate had been huge. A thing out of nightmare, bigger than any cattle in Mrs. Hanley’s pictures. This made that one look like a yearling.

  It was a bull, that much he knew. Its shoulders rose five times his height and more. Its head was a block of bone and muscle hung with a heavy black beard. Its horns swept out and forward in a curve that went longer than the length of his body, each one thick as a man’s thigh at the base, narrowing to a point a hawk could perch on.

  Its hump was high, covered in shaggy dark hair. The rest of its body was leaner, brown hide stretched over heavy muscle. Its hooves sank deep with every step, leaving holes like small graves.

  It snorted. The sound was like a small cannon. Hot air blasted from its nostrils. The smell of it hit the boy—dirt and sweat and old blood.

  The System named it without flourish.

  Third Trial: Bison latifrons.

  The bison swung its head, horns cutting a slow arc. It saw him, a little two?legged fleck in the grass, and something like annoyance passed over its dark eyes.

  Then it lowered its head.

  “Oh… son of a bitch,” the boy whispered, more to himself than the bull. “Don’t you fuckin’ charge at me–”

  It did it.

  It charged.

  The ground shook. Every hoofbeat drove a thunderous tremor through the soil that came up his legs and rattled his teeth. Grass flattened under its hooves. It came on like a moving wall.

  He could not meet that head?on. Even with all his Strength, even with his new bones, he’d be paste if that skull hit him. He’d be skewered by those horns with a fleeting graze.

  He ran.

  Sideways.

  His legs pumped, grass whipping his thighs, spear clutched in one hand. The bison’s path cut across his like a plow furrow. For one terrible second it seemed to follow him. Then its bulk and speed committed it to its line.

  At the last instant, he veered toward it instead of away.

  Its eyes rolled at him, white showing. Its nostrils flared. Horns gouged the air a yard from his face.

  He dove.

  Not away. At it.

  His fingers caught the edge of its hump. The hide there was thick, hair coarse. His Strength turned a flailing grab into a grip. The impact almost tore his arms from their sockets. The world jerked. For a few heartbeats his boots skidded along the ground, body dragged.

  He hauled himself up.

  It was like climbing a moving hill. The hump rose and fell with every stride. He hooked a knee over its spine, hauled the rest of him up, and ended up belly?down on its back, breath knocked out, fingers clawed into hair.

  It bellowed, head tossing.

  He scrambled forward as much as he dared, spear point cutting a line in the air. Its horns were death on either side. Its head, though, was bone and bone and more bone. He wasn’t sure he could punch through that the way he had the wolf’s palate. He wasn’t sure if a bullet could even hurt it.

  The bison changed direction abruptly, trying to shake him. The centrifugal pull nearly rolled him off. He clung on like a burr.

  He needed to pierce the heart.

  That meant the chest. That meant under.

  Terrible idea, some distant sane part of him noted. He ignored it, despite this being the stupidest idea he’d ever had.

  He edged himself to the side, swinging a leg down until his boot brushed the bison’s flank. Fur slid under his palm. Each breath the animal took made its ribs expand under him like a bellows.

  He waited for the right moment.

  The bull leapt a shallow dip in the ground, body weight lightening for a heartbeat.

  The boy pushed off and slid.

  He came down hard against the animal’s side, one arm flung over the massive curve of its ribs, legs slamming up under its belly. He hung there, upside?down, looking past his own shoulder at the ground flashing by inches from his face.

  His spear hand was free.

  He drove the point up and in just behind the bull’s foreleg, exactly where he’d slid his knife into smaller beasts a hundred times. Only this time he had all his Strength behind it, all the Beastmaster’s Spear’s sharpness, and a heart the size of a barrel for a target.

  The spear went in.

  The bull screamed—an ugly, torn sound—and staggered.

  Blood poured over the boy’s hand, hot and thick. It soaked his sleeve, his chest, his face. It smelled copper?sweet and wrong.

  The bison tried to keep running. Its front legs misstepped. Hooves dug in, then skidded. One gave way entirely. Its weight crashed forward.

  The boy let go.

  He hit the ground and rolled, years of falling off things finally paying their due. He grabbed the spear on the way, wrenching it out of the wound as he went. Something big and solid thundered past where his head had been.

  The bison plowed into the earth with enough force to send dirt flying in a fan. Its horns dug furrows. Its hindquarters flipped, throwing it in a grotesque somersault. It came to rest on its side, legs kicking once, twice, then slowing.

  He lay there a moment, staring up at the blank blue, chest heaving. Every part of him hurt. Not broken, but stomped on by the world.

  Then he pushed himself up on one elbow and looked.

  The bull lay still. Its eye stared at nothing. Blood soaked the grass in a widening pool.

  The haze rose again. Bigger this time. Thicker. It was like smoke off a green log, resisting the pull of anything. For a heartbeat he thought [The Hollow] might muscle in anyway, trial or no. The System’s grip held.

  The haze twisted into a tiny bull with outsized horns, silly and solemn both. It snorted once—no sound—and dove into his chest.

  New beast bound: [Bison latifrons]

  [Bestiary] updated

  He saw the new line slot below the others.

  [Bison latifrons] – Rank II – Level 1

  Traits: Juggernaut, Trample, Iron Horns.

  Affinity: Level 1

  Status: Resting. Unsummoned.

  Juggernaut. He didn’t know the word, but the picture the System gave him—of that thing plowing through anything in front of it—was clear enough.

  He sat there in the flattened grass, spear laid across his knees, blood drying on his face in rusty flakes. His lungs burned; his arms shook. His Vitality fluttered and steadied, knitting bruises into dull aches.

  Three beasts. A wolf, a feathered killer, a bull from some giant’s herd.

  How many more? he wondered.

  The System answered.

  Fourth Trial: Tyrannosaurus Rex.

  The name meant nothing to him. Just a string of sounds. But the System laid a translation over it anyway.

  Tyrant Lizard King.

  The world changed before he could swear.

  Jungle again. Different this time.

  The air was thicker, if that was possible. Humidity crawled under his coat and set up camp. The ground was uneven, root?tangled and damp. Trees rose around him thicker than the first jungle, big boles that split into multiple trunks, each hung with ferns and moss. The smell of rot and blooming things made his nose wrinkle.

  Insects buzzed in a steady whining chorus. Somewhere close something called, a throaty croak. Somewhere farther away a bird cried with a voice like a metal hinge.

  He didn’t see the beast at first.

  He felt it.

  The ground shivered.

  Not the way it had under the bison’s hooves—this was slower. Heavier. Like the world itself was nervous.

  Thump.

  The leaves on a nearby fern shook, dust sifting down.

  Thump.

  A small shower of dirt came from the base of a tree, dislodged from some crack.

  Thump.

  The boy swallowed. His mouth was dry despite the wet air.

  He turned, spear ready, every sense straining.

  The trees ahead of him shifted.

  He saw a head come through them, and for a heartbeat his mind refused to call it that. It was too big. The skull alone was longer than he was tall, all bone and teeth and empty space where the jaw opened. Each tooth… he’d thought the wolf’s had been bad. These were daggers. Curved, thick at the base, serrated.

  Two small yellow eyes sat above the blunt snout, watching. They were almost dainty in that huge face.

  The rest of it followed.

  The beast’s body was massive, barrel?chested, covered in dark, pebbled hide. Two arms as absurdly small as the stories had said—though he had never heard the stories, the System’s pictures had—hugged close to its chest. Its legs were the real danger, each muscled column ending in feet with three big toes and claws like knives. Its tail stretched out behind like a giant’s whip, thick at the base, tapering off into the green gloom.

  It opened its mouth.

  The roar rolled over him like artillery.

  He’d heard cannons now. Howitzers firing case and grape. Those were sharp, contained things. This was… wider. The sound filled the jungle, stuffed it, shook leaves loose. He felt it in his bones.

  The Tyrant Lizard King saw him.

  It didn’t hurry. Predators that big didn’t need to.

  It stepped forward, each footfall a slow, earth?shivering thump. Its head swung from side to side, tasting the air, nostrils flaring. Saliva hung in strings from its teeth.

  The boy’s grip tightened on the spear.

  He knew in the same bone?deep way he’d known what classes were that this thing was above the others. Rank higher. Level higher. Stronger than anything he’d fought.

  He also knew the trial didn’t have to go on forever. It only had to go on until it found something he couldn’t beat.

  Looks like that’s now, he thought.

  He ran anyway.

  There was nowhere else to go. Standing still would only mean dying tired and stupid.

  He darted between two trees, roots snatching at his boots. The jungle pressed in. Vines brushed his face. He ducked under one, jumped over a fallen log, heard it splinter as the thing behind him simply walked through it.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  He could feel breath on his back now, hot and moist, smelling of meat.

  He spun, planted his feet, and threw.

  The spear left his hand in a blur, all his Strength behind it. It flew straight, true, a dark streak aimed at one of those small yellow eyes.

  The Tyrant Lizard turned its head at the last instant.

  The spear hit just behind the eye, punching into the thick skull. It sank in half its length. Blood welled around the wound, dark against dark hide.

  The beast roared.

  Not in pain alone—anger, startled fury. It shook its head hard, as if flinging flies. The spear wobbled, then jumped off, spinning away to clatter against a tree.

  For a heartbeat the boy felt a flicker of hope. He’d hurt it. He had to have.

  Then the System whispered in his bones, too calm for what was about to happen.

  Note: Beasts in Pioneer Hunt are scaled above your current level. The Tyrannosaurus Rex exceeds safe parameters.

  “Safe,” he spat, though there was no one to hear. “You call this—”

  The beast lunged.

  He tried to dive aside. He was fast now, faster than any normal man, faster than any boy had a right to be. It wasn’t enough.

  The Tyrant’s muzzle caught him a glancing blow. Not the full bite—if it had closed its jaws he would’ve been gone in that instant. Just the side of the skull, a shove the way a man might swat aside a curtain.

  It hit him like a cart.

  He flew.

  The world turned into green and brown and pain. Something cracked inside him. His ribs, probably. Maybe more. He hit a tree hard enough to make the bark jump, then slid down it, leaving a smear.

  He couldn’t breathe. His lungs refused. His mouth opened and closed like a fish.

  The Tyrant came on.

  It lowered its head, opened its mouth, and for a heartbeat he saw every tooth in it individually. Each one was a promise.

  He had time to think Lily, Mary, and that was all.

  The head came down.

  The world went black.

  For a moment there was nothing. No pain. No sound. No light. Just a sense of falling without ever hitting anything.

  Then the System’s words wrote themselves across the dark.

  Pioneer Hunt concluded.

  Trial death recorded.

  Beasts bound: 3

  [Dire Wolf] – [Reaper Lizard] – [Bison latifrons]

  You will be returned to your origin point.

  All beasts in your [Bestiary] remain.

  With advancement to Beastmaster at Level 10, the following features are now available:

  [Hunt] – Once per day, you may enter a designated hunting ground to challenge a beast.

  If you defeat it with the [Beastmaster’s Spear], it will be added to your [Bestiary].

  The boy floated in the black and read.

  Available Hunt targets will be displayed via [Hunting List].

  He saw a new list unfurl in his mind, beneath the Bestiary. Names. Shapes. Most of them were gray and faint, locked. A few glowed a thin, tempting white.

  Tier I Hunts: Small beasts. Dire wolves, Cave Lions, Giant Boars, etc.

  Tier II Hunts: Medium beasts. Reaper Lizards, Gorgonopsids, Entelodonts, etc.

  Higher tiers were just question marks.

  Hunts are limited by your Beastmaster level.

  Summoning.

  He felt another line of knowledge sink in.

  Any beast in your [Bestiary] may be summoned.

  He saw it in his mind’s eye—a thought, a word, and the Dire Wolf stepping out of thin air beside him, hackles high. The Reaper Lizard dropping from nowhere onto some unsuspecting greenskin. The Bison latifrons, full?sized now, thundering through a line of enemies.

  Summoned beasts are utterly loyal and will obey all commands to the best of their ability.

  If they die while summoned, their forms will collapse. They will return to the [Bestiary] and cannot be summoned again for one day.

  No real death for them unless he died too. They were tied to him that tightly.

  Experience Sharing.

  As a Beastmaster, you may allocate a portion of your earned Experience to your beasts.

  He saw numbers like the ones next to his own Level splitting, little arrows pointing from his pool to each beast’s line. He could starve himself of growth to feed them instead. Or feed them only when he had extra.

  They will grow stronger with you.

  You may also assign unallocated attribute points to beasts.

  His four unspent points flickered in his mind, little circles of light. For the first time he saw that they could drift, not just slot into Strength or Vitality in his own sheet. He could shove one into the Dire Wolf, watch its Strength tick up. He could make the Bison’s Vitality even more stupid than it already was.

  He didn’t move them. Not yet. There were too many choices already.

  Congratulations!

  The word sat there, absurd and dry.

  As the first sapient to reach Level 10 and to attain a Class, you have altered the world.

  He thought of the earlier notice: monsters tripled. New race. Two days of breathing room.

  He wondered, distantly, if that was supposed to be a thank?you.

  Use your tools wisely, Beastmaster.

  Time resumed.

  Sound hit him like a fist.

  The roar of the howitzer, the screams of men and greenskins both, the crack of rifles, the meaty thud of bodies hitting packed dirt, the hoarse bark of Captain Hargrove’s voice somewhere to his right—

  “Hold the line! You give one inch, they’ll take your throat with it!”

  The boy was back in his body.

  He was pressed against the chapel wall, knife buried under the big greenskin’s jaw, its hot black blood slicking his hand. The Beastmaster’s Spear was nowhere in sight, but he could feel it now like he felt [Inventory]—a weight waiting on the other side of a thought.

  Above, the night sky hadn’t changed. Smoke still boiled off the wall. The chapel bell swung on its last arc and finally let that half?held clang go. It crashed into the air, loud as a hammer on steel.

  The greenskin he’d killed finished falling.

  He sucked in a breath full of gun smoke and blood and Texas dirt, and for all the cold places he’d just been, it tasted like home.