The warmth of the dragonfly meat’s lingering stamina boost was a fading ghost in her veins. Jess crouched in the twilight gloom, the forest floor cool and damp beneath her palms. The plan was simple, brutal, and necessary: she was no longer a passive element in this equation. Kirael was here, somewhere, a tempest of history and consequence. To find him, to even begin to understand the board she was now playing on, she needed every scrap of advantage.
She looked down at Terry Rex, who was busy trying to swallow a moss-clad pebble. With a sigh, she plucked it from his beak. “Not food, you feathered vacuum.” She scratched the soft down under his chin, eliciting a contented warble. The absurdity of the moment—a genetically engineered supersoldier turned monster-tamer in an alien jungle—wasn’t lost on her. But the soft trust in the hatchling’s dark eyes was a stark, simple counterpoint to the cosmic betrayal and professional treachery that defined the rest of her existence.
“Time for a nap, Terry,” she murmured, cradling the fluffy body against her chest. He cooed, nuzzling into the regenerated black biosuit. For thirty seconds of focused concentration, she felt the connection to the Beast Space, a silent, static pocket of reality. With a soft pop, Terry was gone, safe and suspended.
The forest, in the deep indigo hours before true moonrise, was a different kind of hunter. Jess became part of it. She moved not as a woman, but as a shadow with intent, a green-scaled ghost between the towering trunks. The goal was no longer mere survival or evasion. It was accumulation. Currency in a system that traded in pain, blood, and levels.
She started with the skittering things in the undergrowth. Six-legged rodents, giant centipedes with iridescent shells, a flightless bird with venom-tipped quills. Her methods were efficient: thrown stones, snapped necks, the occasional swift and silent crush of her boot. Her biosuit, now fully regenerated into a sleek, non-reflective black second skin, made no sound. Her Orc eyes parsed the deepening shadows with ease.
The notifications were a constant, quiet pulse in her periphery.
[F-Rank Forest Scuttler slain. Exp +12]
[F-Rank Glowpod Centipede slain. Exp +15]
[F-Rank Quill Runner slain. Exp +18]
She didn't savor the kills. She catalogued them. Each small death was a fractional step toward the strength she would need to face the Citadel's trackers, to navigate the mysteries of this world, to find him.
The initial gains came quickly. A warmth, subtler than the first time but unmistakable, settled into her bones as she crested the threshold.
[Level Up]
The world sharpened. The distant chirps of nocturnal insects resolved into distinct points of sound. The scent of damp earth and pending rain became a layered tapestry. She flexed her hand, watching the muscles roll with a new fluidity. Stronger. Faster. More. It was a super food, and she was its willing gourmet.
She pushed on, a tireless engine of predation. The creatures grew slightly larger, marginally more aware. A canine-like hunter with chameleon skin. A spider the size of a dog, spinning nets of sticky, acidic thread. She adapted. Used terrain, misdirection, and the overwhelming, growing power of her own body. A single, Bash-powered punch reduced the spider’s cephalothorax to pulp.
[Level Up]
This time, the infusion was a wave of heat that washed through her core and out to her extremities. Her skin tingled, the lingering tenderness from the acid burn and wizard’s fire vanishing completely. She felt denser, as if her very cells had packed themselves tighter. She drove her fist into a tree trunk, not to test, but to feel. The bark splintered in a satisfying explosion of splinters, and the impact traveled up her arm as a firm jolt, not a painful shock.
Two years. The number glowed in her mind’s eye, a silent reprieve beneath her Age. *322/333. A bargain paid in monster blood.*
But the system, it seemed, was not without limits. As the moon rose, casting a sickly silver light through the canopy, the returns began to dwindle. The tenth F-Rank hound she dispatched granted a paltry +3 Exp. The fifteenth glowing beetle yielded only +1.
“Miri?” she subvocalized, crouching over the latest kill.
“Inference confirmed. The gain from repetitive elimination of similar low-threat entities has dropped asymptotically. Current yield is approximately 3% of initial values.”
“As expected,” Jess murmured, wiping grey blood from her knife on the moss. “Diminishing returns.” It was a balancing mechanism. She couldn’t farm the forest to godhood. True power would require greater challenges, Unique enemies, risks. The terror bird had been a fluke of circumstance and desperation. She wouldn’t find another like it by stomping on glow-pods.
Her status was a testament to the night’s grim work.
[Level: 4/25]
[Exp: 127/5000]
[Unique Enemies Slain: 22]
Twenty-two small deaths. Four levels of power. Two years of life. A cold calculus, but a profitable one. For tonight, it would have to be enough. The village called.
She reached the tree line overlooking Reiro as the deepest hour of the night took hold. The scene was one of exhausted, fearful industry. The central fire was out, reduced to a mound of embers. The burned house was a stark, skeletal silhouette against the lesser dark. Villagers—men, women, even older children—moved like sleepwalkers, hauling water, piling debris, speaking in hushed, shattered tones. The air carried the smell of wet ash and despair.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Notably absent were the crisp uniforms and scale-marked cloaks of the Citadel scouts. No perimeter patrols. No watchfires. Just the shocked, vulnerable shell of the village.
“No swarming scouts,” Jess whispered, her eyes scanning the shadows between huts. “No bloodhounds. No Rank Two Tracker.”
She couldn’t walk in as she was. The memory of the fear in Litos’s eyes when he’d called her “Orc Remnant” was fresh. Her green skin and tusks were a liability here, a trigger for prejudice and panic. The Shedded Alabaster Carapace was out of the question—lumbering into the village like a walking statue would defeat the purpose of stealth.
But she had another option. The one she’d used before.
She focused inward, on the class that had chosen her, on the identity she’d fabricated in a moment of need. She let the concept settle over her like a mantle: the mysterious hermit, the green elf, the outsider who helped. It was a thin veneer, but for desperate people in the dark, it might be enough.
Taking a final, steadying breath, Jess stepped out of the forest’s embrace and into the wounded clearing of Reiro, moving with a silent, deliberate grace toward the longhouse, where a single, guttering lantern still shone. The cleanup continued around her, the villagers too absorbed in their trauma to immediately notice the shadow that had returned from the very woods that had birthed their terror.
The longhouse door stood ajar, a sliver of lantern light cutting across the trampled earth. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of blood, herbs, and exhaustion. Villagers moved slowly, tending to the wounded. The two gate guards lay bandaged and unconscious. On a central pallet, the massive beastman Vorgas breathed in deep, ragged draws, his fur matted with dark, clotting blood.
Jess paused at the threshold, a silhouette against the lesser dark. A ripple of tension went through the room. The healer—a woman with hands stained with poultice—froze, her eyes wide.
Then, a small shape detached from the shadows near the hearth.
“You came back!”
Litos crashed into her, his thin arms locking around her waist. The impact of his trust was a tangible thing. The villagers’ fear softened into wary confusion.
Jess placed a hand on the boy’s head. “Told you I’d check on you, kid.”
“They said you ran! That you were a monster who’d bring more down on us!”
“They might still be right about the last part,” Jess murmured, her gaze sweeping the room. Her actions had bought a sliver of credibility, but it was fragile. “Will he live?” she asked, nodding to Vorgas.
The healer gave a hesitant nod. “The bleeding is stopped. His constitution… it is strong. He will live, thanks to…” She faltered.
“Jess.”
“Thanks to Jess,” the healer echoed, the name a strange artifact in the smoky air.
Litos pulled her toward the dying fire, his voice dropping to an urgent whisper. “The scouts questioned everyone. They took the metal strangers, bound, and carried their leader away on a litter. They said the Truth-slabs in the Citadel would get real answers.” He glanced at the door, as if the woods themselves might be listening. “A rider came later. From the Citadel. He… apologized to me. For doubting my word. Then they all left. No hunt. No tracker.”
Jess processed this. Lie detectors. So Roxy and Xero’s story would unravel. “Will the Citadel punish them?”
Litos’s expression darkened, a bleak understanding too old for his face. “The Citadel tries. But the Sovereign… she is just, but she is not ruthless enough. The nobles in the first layer do as they please. Those metal people are strong. Strange. They have no Class, but their gear… it looks strange and powerful. A noble house might see them as tools. They might… fit right in.” He spat the last words with surprising venom.
“The first layer,” Jess echoed, latching onto the term. “Where is that?”
“You don’t know?” Litos blinked, then launched into an explanation, drawing vague circles in the ash by the hearth. “We’re in the White. Outside everything. Past the old ruins of the Hyacinth Wall is the third layer—mostly fields now. Then comes the great wall, Ryvena. Inside that is the second layer.” His voice held a note of awe. “That’s where the city Kirael is. It’s… clean. Prosperous. The Starbow Army holds Ryvena Wall and the city, but they don’t come out here anymore. Not since their General left with the Saintess. They just hold the line.”
“And the first layer?” Jess prompted.
“Further in. Past Kirael. That’s where the first city, Ryas, sits. Where the Sovereign holds court in the Citadel. Where the Academy and the Spire are.” His tone flattened. “It’s… old. The strong ones are still there, but the elves are gone to their forests, the dwarves and artificers moved to Kirael. The beastmen drift away. It’s rotting. And the rot bleeds out to us.”
The picture clicked into place. Concentric rings of power and decay. A thriving, protected second city acting as a shield for a fading core. A military that had become a garrison, not a police force. It was a perfect ecosystem for corruption—and for ambitious outsiders like Jake to embed themselves.
A city named after the person she wanted to rescue and so much more powerful than herself. The name, his name or was it hers, fully consumed by his crafter elf and new body?
Maybe I could use some rescue in reverse? she thought with grim irony. It’s the second day, Jess. Give yourself some credit.
“So if I go to Kirael,” Jess said quietly, “looking like this, what happens?”
Litos studied her green skin, her tusks, the sharp lines of her face. “If you are not wanted? Maybe you are just a strange hermit. A green elf from deep woods. The gate guards might ask for coin. People would stare. But if you are wanted…” He swallowed. “Then the criers would shout. Posters would go up. Every bounty hunter, every noble’s thug, every gang looking for favor would hunt the ‘mean Orc.’ You wouldn’t need an army against you. Just a mob led by someone with a strong Class.”
The calculus was cold and immediate. She had beaten Jake through surprise and a raw understanding of this world’s new rules. Next time, he and his team would have Classes. They would have Skills. They would have patrons. And if her face was on a poster, every step would be a battle.
She looked at her hands. Level 4. She had crushed Jake’s cybernetics, but he was baseline, un-Classes. Litos was level 5. An eight-year-old had more of this world’s native power than she did.Numerical at least.
A cold resolve crystallized in her gut.
“I am not going anywhere near a human settlement,” she stated, her voice a low rumble of finality, “at a level lower than an eight-year-old. And certainly not while I look like a wanted poster waiting to happen.”
The village was safe for now. The immediate hunt was called off, replaced by a more deliberate, distant threat. It gave her a window—not to hide, but to forge herself into something that could walk through Kirael’s gates not as a fugitive, but as a force even a corrupt noble would think twice about crossing.
“Litos,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you. This is worth more than you know. I’ll be north of here. If the scouts return, if anything changes, hang a red cloth on the eastern palisade. I’ll see it.”
“You’re leaving again?”
“To get stronger. So the next time someone tries to burn this place down, I can stop them without getting a headache.” She offered a grim, tusked smile. “Keep your knife sharp.”
Before the first grey light of dawn could betray her, Jess melted back into the forest. This time, she didn’t move as a shadow seeking to avoid. She moved as a hunter, her eyes scanning the deep dark for shapes larger than scuttlers, for challenges that would force her Class to evolve. The bundle containing her alabaster carapace was secure on her back.
She would wear it and face the biggest things she could find.
