Chapter 180: Nothing Urgent

Arthur woke the next morning with one arm hanging off the side of the bed and his shoulder aching like shit. He tried lifting it, immediately regretted that decision, and dropped it back onto the mattress.

"Fuck."

He forced himself up a few seconds later. Whisperwind sat in its usual corner, yesterday’s uniform was still draped over a chair, and his phone showed a couple of unread academy notifications.

Elena’s request for a fresh Hati sample came back to him while he gathered clean clothes. Arthur had no idea how the hell he was supposed to convince a giant wolf in Rauk Hollow to spit into a vial, and he wasn’t solving that problem before breakfast.

He showered, dressed, grabbed his bag, and headed for the dining hall.

The usual group was already at the table. Emily was working her way through a plate of eggs. Felix had an unreasonable amount of breakfast stacked in front of him. Cedric looked like he had woken up halfway through walking across campus, and Elara was holding a mug of tea while scrolling through something on her phone.

Chloe was sitting next to Elara, eating quickly before her infirmary shift. She leaned over and gave Arthur a quick kiss when he dropped his bag into the empty chair, then went straight back to her conversation with Elara.

Emily looked at him for about two seconds. "You look tired."

"Good morning to you too," Arthur said, reaching for his fork.

Emily stole one of his sausages before he even picked the fork up. Arthur reached for it, but she just ate it.

Leon came in later and set his tray down near Felix. Alicia followed him to the table and took the seat beside him.

Leon was explaining something to Felix about armor maintenance, holding a piece of toast in his left hand. Alicia reached over and took the toast right out of his fingers.

Leon stopped talking halfway through a sentence. He looked at his empty hand, then looked at his plate, then looked at her.

Alicia kept eating the toast.

Leon sighed and picked up his conversation with Felix right where he had left off.

Arthur saw the whole thing. He just kept chewing.

Elara’s phone buzzed against the table. She read the message on the screen and stopped eating.

Arthur was sitting right across from her. "Home?"

Elara nodded, her eyes still on the screen. There were more patrols around the outer groves again. Merchant wagons were getting held longer at the checkpoints, and several hunting parties had been turned away from one stretch of woodland.

"Any reason?" Arthur asked.

Elara shook her head. "Not one they’ve told me. Nothing has actually attacked, and nobody is evacuating. They’re just moving people around."

"Your mother want you back?"

Elara looked down at the message again. "No." She paused. "Not yet."

Arthur didn’t ask what she meant by not yet.

Felix reached for the fruit Emily had pushed toward Elara.

Emily smacked his knuckles with the back of her spoon before he got any.

"Get your own."

Felix pulled his hand back, swearing at her, and breakfast carried on around them.

Arthur’s first class was Advanced Ranged Combat with Selene Ashford.

The western range looked different today. Someone had dragged a dozen tall wooden screens onto the field and mounted painted target boards behind them. Several carried the usual red enemy marks. Others had blue circles painted across the chest.

Selene waited until everyone had weapons ready before pointing toward the blue ones.

"Hit one of those and you fail the lane."

A student near the back raised a hand. "Even if we hit the actual target first?"

"Especially then."

That killed some of the enthusiasm.

Arthur and Elara took neighboring lanes. When Selene blew the whistle, the screens started sliding along the tracks, blocking one target and exposing another every few seconds.

Arthur put his first arrow through a red target almost immediately.

The second looked just as easy until one of the blue boards slid across it halfway through his draw.

Arthur held the shot.

Two lanes over, a bowstring snapped forward and a blunt arrow cracked straight into blue-painted wood.

Selene’s voice carried across the range.

"Dead teammate. Keep moving."

Someone swore.

Arthur waited another second. The red target appeared again, but only for a moment. He shifted two steps to his right, found enough of the chest, and fired just before the blue board crossed back over it. The arrow hit cleanly.

The next few were uglier. One disappeared before Arthur committed. Another forced him to lower the bow entirely and move farther down the lane. By the end, he had fired fewer arrows than he expected and passed on several shots he normally would have tried to force.

Selene checked his target sheet when the lane stopped.

"You left two."

Arthur looked toward the targets he hadn’t fired at. "Never had a clean shot."

"Good."

She moved on.

Elara finished her own lane shortly afterward and came over while Arthur collected his arrows.

"You hesitated on the fourth one."

"There was a student-shaped piece of wood in front of it."

"I noticed."

Arthur looked at her target board. "How many did you leave?"

"One."

"I liked you better before you answered."

Elara started pulling her arrows free. "No, you didn’t."

Arthur left the ranges with Elara and Cedric. Cedric was complaining about nearly losing an eyebrow to a stray training bolt because someone in his group hadn’t figured out how to cast a spell while moving laterally.

Felix caught up with them at the courtyard junction. Elara turned toward the library, while Cedric headed for food with Felix following him.

Arthur pulled his phone out. He had a message from Sylvia.

Sylvia:If you’re free after classes, stop by the warehouse. Sophia found something weird in the clearing contracts. Nothing urgent.

Arthur:I’ll come by this afternoon.

Arthur caught lunch with Felix, Cedric, Leon, and Alicia before heading into the city. Cedric spent most of it complaining about tomorrow’s schedule. Felix mentioned hearing rumors that their next rotation might be another field assignment, but nobody had any actual details, so the conversation shifted to food and an instructor who had slipped in the mud that morning.

While Cedric was talking, Alicia pulled a small leatherworking kit out of her bag. She took Leon’s gauntlet right off the table, inspected a damaged fastening strap near the wrist, and started repairing it while she ate.

Leon just let her do it.

Arthur noticed. Leon noticed Arthur noticing. Arthur went back to his food.

Warehouse 9 was busy when Arthur walked in late that afternoon. A work crew was arguing over crate weights near the loading doors, and somebody had cracked open a container of scavenger parts in the wrong corner of the floor. It smelled terrible.

Sophia was sitting behind the main desk, buried behind stacks of ordinary guild paperwork.

Sylvia was out on the floor talking to one of the hauling crews, so Arthur waited near the desk. He spotted a half-open box of pastries sitting on a side table and took one.

Sylvia walked over a minute later. "You ate yet?"

Arthur held up the pastry.

Sylvia looked at it. "That wasn’t yours."

Arthur kept eating. "Sophia found something?"

Sophia pushed a small stack of clearing contracts across the desk. She had been correcting habitat classifications on them all afternoon because incorrect filings screwed up the guild’s payment categories and disposal requirements.

Most of the contracts were normal. Four stood out.

Sophia tapped the first sheet. "Burrow rats farther uphill than they usually go. Cave crawlers in an old drainage system well outside their normal tunnels. Forest scavengers almost on top of the main freight road. This one crossed the river into territory it normally avoids."

Arthur looked over the pages. "And?"

"I’ve fixed four jobs like this already this week. Normally I barely see them."

Arthur checked the names, recovery notes, and whatever proof had been attached to each job. Most of it was useless. The first hunter had probably guessed the species to get paid. The cave crawlers were harder to dismiss; somebody had actually hauled the bodies out of the drainage system.

Rauk Hollow came to mind. So did the larger hound pack in Bracken, and that had turned out to be nothing more complicated than a nest with more animals than expected.

Arthur put the first contract aside. A few monsters wandering somewhere strange didn’t make them Abyss creatures.

"Think it’s connected?" Sylvia asked.

"I think monsters move," Arthur said, flipping to the last page.

Sophia looked at him over the top of the contract for a second, then went back to reading.

"The weird part is the spread," she said.

Arthur wasn’t sure whether that mattered or whether they were looking at a handful of unrelated jobs.

"Start a separate log," Arthur told her. "Just a basic sheet. Species, exact location, date, who confirmed the kill, and whether there was a body. Note any weird core changes if they log them."

Sylvia nodded.

"Don’t send any of our people out to investigate random sightings yet," Arthur added. "I don’t want us wasting time chasing squirrels because three monsters walked the wrong direction."

"Fine," Sylvia said. "Sophia?"

Sophia had already pulled out a fresh ledger and started ruling lines across the first page.

While they were talking about transport routes, Arthur remembered Elena’s sample request.

"Do we have anything heading toward Rauk Hollow?" Arthur asked.

Sylvia thought about it. "Not directly. But one of our suppliers runs a regular route to a trade stop near that region. A courier can take a sealed package onward from there."

Arthur asked Sophia for a sheet of paper and addressed the note to Mara at the clinic in Rauk Hollow.

He explained that Elena was studying the contaminated material they had found. He asked if they could get a fresh sample from Hati if the wolf came near the settlement again. Blood would be useful, saliva would do, and nobody was supposed to risk getting mauled for either.

Rhea would probably have the best chance of getting near him, but Arthur made it very clear that nobody was supposed to chase the giant bastard into the forest or get bitten over it. He promised to send Elena’s findings back once she had something concrete.

Arthur sealed the note and handed it over. Sylvia dropped it into the outgoing courier pile with the rest.

Arthur tried to leave, but Sylvia handed him a clipboard. Someone had ordered the wrong storage jars, and half the monster-gland samples were currently sitting in mismatched containers. A rookie had also filed a field extraction job under extermination.

Arthur initialed the correction forms while Sylvia explained which jars needed replacing, then grabbed another pastry on his way out.

"Buy your own," Sylvia called after him.

Arthur was out the door before she could take it back.

By the time Arthur got back to campus, the dinner rush had already started.

Emily, Felix, and Cedric were already at their usual table.

Chloe arrived from the infirmary looking exhausted and dropped into the seat beside Arthur. She reached for his water the moment she sat down and drank until the glass was nearly empty.

Arthur looked at what was left, then at Emily’s hand already stealing fries from his plate.

He dragged the plate closer.

Emily took one more fry before it escaped.

Elara joined them later with a stack of library books and dropped into the remaining seat.

By then Cedric had started complaining about his combat mage instructor, and the argument somehow turned into Felix defending a man he’d never even met.

Arthur got back to his room later that night and dropped Whisperwind beside the desk.

His shoulder complained when he pulled his shirt over his head, so he gave up on doing anything useful and dropped face-first onto the bed.

Arthur pulled his phone from his pocket and checked tomorrow’s schedule.

Nothing on it needed preparing tonight.

He tossed the phone onto the pillow, rolled onto his good shoulder, and let himself sleep.