Chapter 47: First Blood

The horn had not finished echoing across Grauwald when the five applicants in Deployment Zone Forty-One scattered in different directions.

The thin boy with twin swords disappeared down the nearest animal trail, the spear wielder chose the opposite slope, and the braided girl vanished between the trees without looking back.

Nobody suggested cooperation. They had been strangers ten seconds ago, and with points waiting somewhere beyond the boundary, introductions could apparently wait.

Sigurd remained on the plateau for several breaths.

Running immediately served no purpose if he didn’t know where he was going.

He crouched beside the oversized tracks he had noticed earlier. Four toes, deep impressions, broad pads.

The prints were fresh enough that damp soil still clung to their edges. A Ferocious Beast, most likely, and a heavy one.

The tracks led northeast while the sound of running water came from southeast. Sigurd memorized both directions, then stepped beyond the dead formation line.

His examination began quietly.

For the first half hour, Sigurd didn’t hunt at all. He established the shape of the surrounding terrain instead, moving through the forest at a steady pace while marking landmarks in his memory.

The plateau sat on the western shoulder of a long ridge. A stream cut through the lower valley to the east, providing reliable water, while rocky ground farther north offered several elevated positions from which he could survey the canopy.

He found edible berries, two rabbit trails, claw marks on an old cedar and dung fresh enough to confirm that something large had passed through before dawn.

Osric had spent years beating one lesson into him: surviving wilderness wasn’t difficult because food and water were impossible to find. It was difficult because careless people became so focused on finding them that they stopped noticing what was finding them.

Sigurd filled his container at the stream, drank, and continued north.

The first Ferocious Beast found him before he found it.

A rustle came from the brush behind his right shoulder. Sigurd turned as a creature resembling an oversized black boar exploded through a wall of ferns, its shoulders nearly level with his chest and two curved tusks jutting from its jaw.

A small black examination marker had been fastened through the thick hide beneath its left ear.

The boar charged.

Sigurd drew.

SHNK!

One step carried him outside the tusks. His sword crossed the beast’s throat in the same motion, severing flesh, arteries and windpipe before the boar had time to correct its charge. Momentum carried the animal several meters past him before it collapsed, plowing through leaves and soil.

Sigurd flicked the blood from his blade.

Five years ago, the Armored Bloodfang had forced him to use everything he possessed. He had been smaller, weaker, inexperienced with Vis and barely capable of executing Severing Line.

The creature lying behind him was not nearly as formidable, but the difference still illustrated something he rarely had reason to consider.

He had grown.

Sigurd crouched beside the corpse, removed the black marker and wiped it clean.

One point.

He slipped it into a pouch and continued moving.

The second beast came twenty minutes later.

Three lean, long-legged predators were feeding around the carcass of a horned deer when Sigurd spotted them from an elevated root. Grey hide stretched over powerful frames, and each possessed a narrow skull lined with teeth. Only one carried an examination marker.

Sigurd watched them for several seconds.

Ferocious Beasts possessed no formal ranks. Their strength varied according to species, age, bloodline, environment and how much Vis their bodies had absorbed. These three were stronger than ordinary animals by an absurd margin, but none approached a Demonic Beast.

He dropped from the root. All three heads snapped toward him.

The nearest predator lunged. Sigurd stepped inside its bite and drove his sword through the underside of its jaw into the brain. He pulled the blade free as the second attacked from his left, rotated his hips and cut through its neck. The third tried to circle behind him.

It never made it.

Sigurd pivoted and thrust once. The sword entered through the eye. Three bodies hit the forest floor within seconds.

No wasted movement. No technique worth naming. No reason to spend more Vis than necessary.

Sigurd removed the marker from the second corpse.

Two points. He looked at the other two bodies and frowned.

That was the problem.

Helheim had placed markers on designated Ferocious Beasts, not every Ferocious Beast in Grauwald. Killing creatures without markers earned nothing unless he needed their meat or materials.

He had just killed three and gained a single point.

At twenty points, that inefficiency wouldn’t matter much. Seven days was more than enough time for someone competent to collect twenty marked beasts.

First place was different.

Sigurd continued deeper into the forest, increasing his pace. By midday, he had killed another marked Ferocious Beast resembling a scaled mountain cat after spotting it crouched on a branch above him.

It sprang; Sigurd shifted half a step and cut through its chest before its claws reached his shoulder.

Three points.

The fourth marker came from a hulking ape with red fur around its forearms. The creature tore a young tree from the ground when it saw him and swung the trunk like a club.

Sigurd didn’t bother blocking.

He slipped beneath the first swing, accelerated with Vis through his legs and crossed the remaining distance before the ape could reverse its weapon.

His sword entered beneath its ribs and pierced the heart.

Four points.

By early afternoon, Sigurd had established a comfortable rhythm. Move. Read the terrain. Identify tracks. Determine whether pursuing them was worth the time. Kill quickly. Take the marker. Continue. He avoided unnecessary detours and ignored two Ferocious Beasts after confirming neither carried Helheim’s black marker.

The fifth marked beast lasted even less time than the others.

It resembled a six-legged wolf with a ridge of bone protecting its spine. Sigurd saw it drinking from a shallow pool before it detected him. He picked up a stone, fed a thread of Vis through his fingers and threw.

BANG!

The stone punched through the side of the beast’s skull.

It collapsed without ever seeing him.

Sigurd walked over, removed the marker and stared at the five pieces of black metal now resting in his palm.

Five points.

Several hours of efficient hunting.

A quarter of the minimum requirement.

For passing, excellent.

For the Crown, terrible.

Sigurd leaned against a tree and considered the mathematics. Common Rank Demonic Cores were worth ten points each. One successful Demonic Beast hunt equaled ten marked Ferocious Beasts.

More importantly, applicants capable of killing Common Rank Demonic Beasts would naturally separate themselves from those accumulating markers one at a time.

He could spend the next several days sweeping the safer outer portions of Grauwald and almost certainly pass.

That wasn’t why he was here anymore.

Senior Instructor Dietrich’s explanation of the Crown returned to him. The mansion, garden and lake meant nothing. A private cultivation chamber positioned over a concentrated Vis channel was another matter entirely. So were reinforced training grounds and facilities he could access without waiting on anyone else.

If first place offered resources that useful, settling for twentieth because it was safer would be idiotic.

Sigurd closed his fingers around the markers and placed them back inside his pouch.

He needed Demonic Beasts.

Finding one required changing how he hunted. Ferocious Beasts left tracks everywhere, but a Common Rank Demonic Beast possessed a Demonic Core and had crossed an entirely different threshold of evolution.

Most established territories large enough that weaker creatures learned to avoid them. Unnatural silence, abandoned feeding grounds, territorial markings, damaged trees and concentrations of Vis could all reveal their presence.

And the deeper portions of Grauwald were far more likely to contain them.

Sigurd climbed the nearest ridge.

The forest stretched endlessly ahead, darkening as the land rose toward the interior mountains. From his elevated position, he could see breaks in the canopy where cliffs emerged and a river winding through a distant valley. Somewhere far to the northwest, birds suddenly erupted from the trees in a massive flock.

Seconds later, a roar rolled through the mountains.

It was deep enough that Sigurd felt the vibration through the soles of his boots.

Several smaller cries answered from elsewhere before abruptly falling silent.

Sigurd’s eyes narrowed.

That wasn’t a Ferocious Beast.

A smile slowly appeared on his face.

He adjusted the sword at his waist, checked the direction of the wind and started down the northern side of the ridge.

Behind him, the safer outer forest remained filled with marked Ferocious Beasts and easy points.

Sigurd never looked back.