Chapter 123: Hunt

The second Warlord was a coward, which turned out to be worse than a fortress.

Threnn Hollowmire held a swamp island and did not hold any part of it in person. It moved constantly, hid inside the faction, and swapped places with a lieutenant every time something got close.

They spent a long stretch killing lieutenants and getting nowhere.

Then Nyriel worked out that the swap left a thread behind, and Logan stopped chasing bodies and started following the thread instead.

He found the real one four hundred meters from where it was supposed to be, buried under mud with two hundred units standing on top of it.

```

[ Warlord Threnn Hollowmire has been slain. ]

[ Warlord Badge acquired. ]

```

"Two," Alice said.

---

The third one fought properly and lost properly, and Logan liked it better for that.

Kaldrex Emberwrath met them at the shoreline with its whole faction behind it and did not run once. It killed two of the nine Mythic-plus units before Solveig put it down.

Xairon rebuilt both of them from salvage before the island stopped burning.

"They are not the same units," Logan said, watching the reassembly.

"They are close enough that they will not know the difference." Xairon’s shapes slid over each other. "Would you prefer I told them?"

"No."

"Then we are agreed."

The match announcement came while Vulkarn was still stripping the faction armory.

```

[ Thirty Warlords eliminated. The remaining seventy Warlords are 30% stronger, and their badges reward 60% extra Tier Points. ]

```

"Thirty," Alice said. "We have killed three of those."

"Somebody else killed the other twenty-seven." Logan closed the panel. "And I would bet a badge on who did most of it."

---

The fourth one they killed almost casually, and that was when Logan noticed the change.

Vaskaan Dreadhowl had a pack of two hundred beasts and a talent that made every one of them faster the longer the fight ran. When they first landed in this match it would have been a genuine problem.

It took eleven minutes.

’Thirty percent stronger than it started, and it barely slowed us.’ Logan watched the last of the pack scatter. ’That is not the Warlord getting weaker.’

Alice felt it on her side of the fight too.

She had spent the whole engagement shooting without thinking about it, and somewhere in the middle she had stopped consciously choosing where the arrows went at all.

```

[ Insight gained. ]

[ Arrow Intent: 21% → 26%. ]

```

"I did not do anything for that," she said afterward, staring at the panel.

"You did it four hundred times." Logan cleaned his blade. "That is how it works. Rishin told me the same thing and I did not believe him either."

Logan’s panel had come up two Warlords earlier and he had not mentioned it.

```

[ Sword Intent: 33% → 37%. ]

```

---

The levels came in the same stretch.

```

[ Class Level 40 reached. Maximum class level for this Floor. ]

[ Choose one final skill. ]

> Grimlord’s Verdict (Active) - Mark a target. Damage dealt to it by you and your units is increased for thirty seconds.

> Voidstep Rebound (Active) - Instantly return to the position you occupied three seconds ago, restoring HP lost in that window.

> Grimbound Threshold (Active) - For twenty seconds, physical strain caused by your own Speed is redirected into MP consumption instead of your body. Consumption scales with stacks held. Long cooldown.

```

Logan read the third one twice and then stopped reading anything else.

’Strain caused by my own Speed.’

He had been carrying that sentence around since a mountainside with Rishin standing over him. He had carried it out of the Hive with a cracked shoulder.

He had carried it through fifty waves of Dark Fall Conquest, holding a number at two thousand because two thousand was where his body stopped agreeing with him.

Two thousand had never been Reaper’s Stride’s limit. It had always been his.

"It does not make me faster," he said slowly.

"No," Alice agreed, reading over his shoulder. "It makes the fast not kill you."

"For twenty seconds."

"For twenty seconds, at a cost that scales with how far you push it." She tapped the last line.

"And you have Grim Siphoning Edge, which refills MP off anything you cut that carries magic. Logan, you are the only person in this match who can actually pay that bill."

He thought about Cinderveil Aegis sitting in his set bonus, already cutting self-inflicted strain by thirty percent.

’Thirty percent off the damage, and twenty seconds where the rest of it goes somewhere that is not my spine.’

"That one."

```

[ Grimbound Threshold selected. ]

```

Alice’s came a wave later.

```

[ Class Level 30 reached. Choose one new skill. ]

> Meteor Shroud (Passive) - Orbiting fragments intercept incoming projectiles.

> Piercing Comet (Active) - A heavy charged shot that detonates on impact.

> Astral Displacement (Active) - Instantly exchange positions with any arrow you currently have in flight.

```

She stared at the third one for a long moment.

"Logan."

"I see it."

"I always have arrows in flight." Her voice had gone very quiet. "I have six of them in the air at any given second when Cadence is up."

"So you are never actually standing anywhere."

"I am standing everywhere." She took it without another word. "Nobody has to body-check me out of the way again."

```

[ Astral Displacement selected. ]

```

---

The fifth Warlord already had company.

Nyriel picked it up from eight kilometers out, and the reading was wrong in a way that took a second to parse.

```

[ Warlord signature: engaged. ]

[ Player signatures: 2 ]

[ Faction strength: falling. ]

```

"Somebody beat us here," Alice said.

"Somebody is halfway through the job." Logan watched the numbers drop. "Nyriel, badges."

The constellation could not read badges, but it could read what a person was carrying in raw energy terms, and both signatures were carrying a great deal.

’They have been doing exactly what we have been doing.’ He looked at the two readings. ’And they are about to be very tired.’

"We wait," he said.

Alice looked at him.

"We are not helping them?"

"They did not come here to be helped. They came here for the badge, same as us." Logan sat down on the rail. "Let them spend everything on the Warlord. Then we take the Warlord, and then we take what they are carrying."

"That is cold."

"That is the match." He glanced over. "If you want to walk away and find a different island, say so and we will."

Alice thought about it for exactly as long as it deserved.

"No," she said. "They would do it to us."

---

They did not have to wait long.

Orlen Skarr and Vessa Quill put the Warlord down with everything they had, and they were good at it, and it cost them nearly all of it.

They were still standing over the corpse when Logan and Alice came out of the treeline with nine Mythic-plus units behind them.

```

[ Orlen Skarr ]

[ Class: Ruinfang Blade Marshal (Legendary) ]

[ Talent: Sundering Grip (Legendary) ]

```

```

[ Vessa Quill ]

[ Class: Hexbind Chain Adept (Legendary) ]

[ Talent: Bound Fate (Epic) ]

```

Orlen Skarr took one look at the units and did the arithmetic that everybody did.

"You waited," he said.

"I did."

"That is filthy."

"It is." Logan drew Grimlord’s Blade. "Say the word and keep your badges. That is a real offer and it goes away in about four seconds."

Vessa Quill said it immediately.

```

[ Vessa Quill has surrendered. Player removed from the match. ]

[ Leon Flanke: +1 Elimination ]

```

Orlen Skarr did not.

He came at Logan with a chain-bladed weapon and Sundering Grip behind it, and for about nine seconds he was genuinely dangerous.

Then Alice put an arrow through his knee, Astral Displacement put her twelve meters to his left before he finished turning, and the second arrow went through the back of his shoulder from a direction that had not existed a moment earlier.

Orlen Skarr dropped under thirteen percent.

He never got a chance to reconsider.

```

[ Orlen Skarr has been killed. ]

[ Ruby Starviel: +1 Elimination ]

[ Killed players drop carried Warlord Badges. ]

[ Warlord Badges recovered: 6 ]

```

---

Alice stood over him for a moment with her bow still up.

"He had six," she said. "He killed six Warlords and I took all of them off him with two arrows."

"Because he would not say one word."

"I know." She lowered the bow slowly. "I am not upset about it. I am noticing it."

Logan let her notice it.

’She is right to.’ He looked at the Warlord corpse that neither of them had touched and the badges now sitting in his inventory. ’We did not kill that Warlord. We killed the people who did, and the system paid us for both.’

It was efficient. It was also exactly the thing Sikra Thall had described when she said Vaerith and Ilyra were not hunting players.

They did not have to hunt players. Players came to Warlords, and Warlords were where you waited.

```

[ Ledger ]

[ Leon Flanke: 69 Eliminations ]

[ Ruby Starviel: 71 Eliminations ]

[ Warlord Badges held: 14 ]

[ Tower Points: 96,400 ]

```

Alice read the badge number twice.

"Fourteen," she said. "Four stolen off Rakhan. Four we earned ourselves. Six off a man who would not say one word."

"Fourteen badges at sixty percent conversion." Logan closed the panel. "That is a serious number at the end of this match."

"If we get to the end of this match."

"Yes."

He looked north, where Nyriel’s map still had a signature burning that neither of them had approached yet.

It had been burning since the constellation first swept that far. Nobody had touched it.

’Everybody else looked at that one and picked something smaller too.’

"Alice."

"Mm."

"How do you feel about the biggest reading on the board?"

Alice slung the Skyrend Sinew Bowstring across her back and started walking toward the water.

"I feel like somebody is going to take it," she said. "And I would rather it was us."