Part Fifty-Six — Rank and File

　The job that finally pushed us out of Iron rank came almost by accident — a Silver-tier contract nobody else at the guild wanted to touch, posted for weeks without a single taker before Marta, half out of curiosity, half out of genuine desperation to see it cleared, mentioned it to us directly.

　"Nest of corrupted wolves, out past the eastern farms," she said, sliding the contract across the counter. "Corrupted, not ordinary — something's twisted their mana signature into something aggressive and unstable. Killed two experienced Iron-rank teams already trying to clear it. I wouldn't normally offer this to a group your rank, but—"

　"But you've seen what we can actually do," I finished.

　"Something like that," she admitted. "You're still technically under-ranked for it. I can't officially assign it to you without a waiver. But if you wanted to look into it unofficially, and happened to succeed, the guild would be considerably more generous about the paperwork afterward."

Convenient. Also, mildly concerning, that guild administration is this willing to bend rules when it's useful to them.

　"We'll take a look," I said.

　The nest, when we found it, was worse than the posting had suggested — a dozen wolves, corrupted mana bleeding visibly off their forms in ugly, unstable pulses, aggression written into every line of their bodies in a way that had nothing natural left in it.

Someone did this to them. Deliberately, probably. Corruption this uniform doesn't happen by accident.

　<"Confirmed," Anti-Subconsciousness said, unprompted, before I'd even asked. "The corruption pattern matches artificially induced mana instability — likely the result of a failed or intentionally malicious experimental working. I would recommend caution regarding the possibility of a responsible party still nearby.">

Good catch. Appreciate you flagging that before I walked in blind.

　"Eyes open for anyone who might have caused this," I told the others. "Not just the wolves. Something did this to them."

　The fight itself tested all four of us properly for the first time — Lyra's precision picking off the pack's edges from range, Eris holding the center with a controlled aggression that had grown considerably more disciplined since her early, leaking-aura days, Ace tearing through the corrupted numbers with an efficiency that made even his usual dry commentary go quiet with focus.

　I held back, mostly, letting them handle what they could — stepping in only when the corrupted alpha, easily twice the size of the rest, broke free of the main fight and came directly for Eris.

Not happening.

　I closed the distance in an instant, blade meeting the creature's charge with a precision that ended things cleanly, without the drama of my earlier fights — controlled, exactly as much force as the situation actually required, nothing wasted.

　"You've gotten more careful," Eris observed afterward, catching her breath, watching me clean the blade with the same efficient care Ace usually reserved for judging meat quality.

　"Trying to," I said. "Figure the more of you I've got around, the more reasons I've got not to just cut loose the second something looks dangerous."

Truer than I probably meant it to sound, honestly.

　We found the responsible party's remains not far from the nest — a solitary mage, long dead, whatever experiment he'd been running having apparently gone catastrophically wrong for him personally before it ever reached the wolves he'd been using as test subjects.

　"Poetic, in a grim way," Lyra observed, examining the scene with clinical detachment. "Whatever he intended for them, it seems he suffered a worse version of it himself."

　"Doesn't undo what he did to them," Eris said, quiet, glancing back at the fallen wolves with genuine sympathy despite the danger they'd posed. "They didn't choose any of this."

She's right. None of them chose this, same as none of us chose whatever's been done to us, one way or another.

　"We'll report the full context back to the guild," I said. "At least make sure nobody blames the wolves for something done to them against their will."

　The job earned us a genuine rank advancement — Iron to Silver, official this time, waiver and all, once Marta reviewed our full report.

　"Told you Iron felt small," she said, processing the paperwork with visible satisfaction. "Silver suits you four considerably better."

　"We'll take it," I said. "Slowly, though. Still not in a hurry to be impressive."

　"You keep saying that," Marta said, "and you keep being impressive anyway. Might want to reconsider the strategy."

Fair point, honestly. Though I don't think 'stop accidentally being impressive' is really a strategy I know how to execute.

　That evening, back at the inn, Lyra brought up something that had clearly been sitting with her since the corrupted wolf nest.

　"That mage," she said. "Experimenting on wolves, twisting their mana into something unstable and aggressive. Do either of you think that's connected to what the Church is doing? The anomaly hunting?"

Huh. Hadn't considered that angle.

　"Could be," I said slowly. "Could also just be an unrelated, unpleasant person doing unpleasant experiments for his own reasons. Not everything dangerous in this world traces back to one organization, however tempting that would be to believe."

　"True," Lyra conceded. "Still. Worth keeping in mind. If the Church is interested in beings that don't fit normal categories, artificially inducing that kind of instability in test subjects wouldn't be an unreasonable method for them to explore, if they wanted more anomalies to study rather than just hunt."

That's a genuinely unsettling thought. Filing it away, same as everything else.

　"Good instinct," I told her. "We'll keep that possibility in mind, going forward."

　<"Her reasoning has merit," Anti-Subconsciousness added, quiet, only to me. "I would recommend treating any future encounters with artificially corrupted creatures as potentially Church-adjacent until proven otherwise.">

Noted. Thanks for the assist.

　<"You are welcome. I find myself, increasingly, inclined to offer assistance proactively rather than waiting to be asked. I am uncertain what to attribute this shift to.">

Maybe you're just getting more comfortable. Same as the rest of us have been, lately.

　<"...Perhaps," it said, and something in the pause after felt, for the first time, almost genuinely thoughtful rather than merely procedural.>

Careful. Keep talking like that, and I might start thinking you actually like us.

　<"The observation is not incorrect.">

　I sat with that small, quietly startling admission a long while after the conversation moved on to other things, turning it over the way I turned over most things that mattered lately — slowly, carefully, with the growing, cautious hope that maybe, this time, the good things I was building might actually be allowed to last.