Chapter 90: Familiar Foe
Tyler stood staring at the panel hovering in front of him, his eyes wide, a slow disbelief settling in behind them that he couldn't quite blink away. He turned, and behind him the Gloomfang Alpha lay sprawled across the torn-up ground exactly where it had fallen, its massive frame gone still and heavy in the particular way that only death left behind, dark blood pooling beneath its throat and soaking slowly into the churned dirt around it.
It was strange, he'd expected this to be harder, expected it to cost him something closer to what the Crimson Alpha had taken out of him back then, and yet here he stood without so much as a scratch marking his skin.
He squeezed his fist slowly, watching the muscle along his forearm rise and tighten beneath his sleeve, staring down at his own biceps as though seeing them for the first time. He hadn't realized how truly strong he'd grown until this very moment, standing here in the wreckage of what he'd just done.
He was glad he'd survived, glad he'd won, and yet some part of him still didn't quite know how to feel about any of it, standing there in the quiet with his heart only now beginning to slow.
*The system is really getting what it wants,* he thought. "Extract," he muttered. Every wolf scattered across the clearing shimmered with the same faint blue light at once, a thin ripple of it sweeping low over the ground and catching against every still body in turn, their hides dissolving into fine motes of light that streamed inward and vanished into his inventory in one continuous pulse.
The Alpha's jaw disappeared right along with them a moment later, the same shimmer passing briefly over its slack, open mouth before it, too, was gone.
He turned and walked on, glancing down at the flat of the Tearra Dagger where it rested in his hand, his own face reflected faintly back at him in the deep crimson of its surface. The stat panel rose into view again, floating just above the blade.
*Forty-four agility, huh. Had no idea it would affect me that much,* he thought, the events of the fight replaying themselves behind his eyes, how fast he'd moved against the Alpha, how easily he'd torn through the whole pack surrounding it, his own body moving faster than he'd ever felt it move before.
*Now that I think about it, that pack looked slightly weaker than the Crimson Wolf pack. It didn't have many C-ranks in it. Maybe that's one of the reasons it was easier.*
The thought carried him sideways into another memory entirely, how he'd taken down Gary, a C-rank himself, one level shy of B-rank. *Gary was stronger than that wolf, yet I took him down,* he thought.
The thought sent a fresh wave of nervousness rolling low through his chest. After all, he'd just broken the shoulder of an infamous guild member.
He sighed at the memory, a little regret settling heavy in his chest at the thought of it. *I didn't have to go that far,* he thought.
But the anger that had surged through him in that moment had been unlike anything he'd ever felt before, something hot and total that had swallowed every other thought whole.
Back in his world, Mike had always told him he had a lot of patience, maybe even too much. But Tyler had understood what his friend really meant by that, even back then: that he was too soft, always letting his coworkers push him around while he endured it until it was over.
But that time, he couldn't. Not after what Gary had said about James, someone he admired, someone he'd genuinely looked up to.
He shook the thought away as he walked, unwilling to dwell on it any further, after all, he should feel great. He'd just completed the system quest and was finally free of the system's penalty.
*I should probably distribute these points,* he thought, right before another system panel appeared:
[CONGRATULATIONS, THE USER UNLOCKED AN ACHIEVEMENT: WOLF HUNTER. THE USER KILLED MORE THAN 30 WOLVES IN A SINGLE MONTH ALONE: +5 EXTRA POINTS]
*More than 30? I didn't even realize,* he thought. His mind drifted back through the fight with the Gloomfang , then through the battle with the Crimson Wolfs he barely walked away from, and he nodded slowly to himself. *That would make sense, I suppose that's an achievement earned without me even noticing.* The panel disappeared, and another quickly appeared in front of him, reading:
[Congratulations on completing System Quest. The user has been provided with three options to choose a reward from]
[+100 Extra Stat]
[Random skill upgrade]
[Rare recipe]
Tyler read through all three slowly, letting his eyes settle on each one in turn. Each option tempted him in its own way, but his gaze kept drifting back to the rare recipe, and he found himself reading it a third time before he could make himself look away. As far as he'd always known, crafting tiers ran basic, common, elite, unique but this was the first time the system had ever used the word rare at all.
He knew that once he found the right ingredients, he'd be able to craft it regardless of his skill's own level. The hundred stat points were tempting too, sitting there plain and simple, but with how quickly he'd been growing lately and how many stats he already carried, it felt like enough for now, there would be more quests to complete and more hunting to do in the future regardless of what he picked here.
Right now, what he really needed was either the random skill upgrade or the rare recipe. He put his hand to his chin, thinking, *I might get a very powerful weapon or armor. It might even be alchemy.*
He put both hands on his waist, staring at the panel a moment longer, before scratching hard at the back of his head in frustration. *Should I really just get one more recipe? I have so many I haven't done yet.*
He paused a moment longer before finally speaking. "I choose option three." The panel vanished, and another quickly rose in its place, reading:
[congratulations, the user has earned a rare accessory recipe.]
TRAVELER'S COIN
1 SMALL GOLD INGOT + 2 GOLD COIN + WHITE WALKER BLOOD (100ML)
He frowned down at the ingredients listed beneath it. "Two gold coins?" he said, the frown deepening across his face. "And what the hell is a White Walker?" His pace slowed further as he walked, the name turning over strangely in his head. He remembered hearing something close to it once before, tucked somewhere among the ingredients of a recipe he hadn't gotten around to crafting yet.
"Right," he muttered, slapping his fist into his open palm. "The Shadow Walker. It was in one of the ingredients. But what are these monsters?" He remembered facing the Shadow Claw before, monstrous, terrifying rabbits that had clawed at him and torn through his skin in the dead of night, back when he'd first arrived in this world with no idea what he was walking into.
*They must be related somehow,* he thought. He remembered James telling him once, "I can only hunt those things at night." *That means I'm gonna have to come at night if I want to find them,* he thought.
Still, something about the name itself didn't sit quite right with him, an odd snag at the back of his thoughts that he couldn't quite place, though he let it go without dwelling on it any further, filing it away somewhere in the back of his mind instead.
The panel faded, and only then did he finally stop, the realization hitting him all at once. All this time he'd assumed he was heading back toward the base, but somewhere along the way his own feet had carried him off course without him ever noticing it happening, straight down the same path the wolf that had gotten away from him had fled only moments before.
*What the hell am I doing?* he thought to himself, slapping his forehead hard enough to sting. But then, somewhere off in the distance, he caught the faint sound of grunting, low, strained, the particular sound of a man pushing hard against something, someone caught in the middle of a real struggle.
***
A While Earlier
"God damn it," Bernardo bit out, both hands wrapped tight around the hilt as he threw his full weight backward against the sword still buried deep in the packed earth, the blade barely shifting beneath the strain. His position, awkward as it was from this angle, was what made it so difficult to work free, no lack of strength to blame for any of it.
He gave up on it entirely in the end, grabbing the hood at his shoulders and yanking it back hard before shrugging out of the whole cloak and letting it drop in a heap on the ground behind him.
He caught up almost immediately after that, and the sound he'd heard rustling through the bushes went still all at once. Then something broke free of the brush in a single violent motion. His eyes went wide, his teeth clenched hard, his heart hammering fast against his ribs in pure terror, a Gloomfang, bursting out low and fast, only to tear right past him instead without so much as slowing, its tail tucked hard between its legs, a string of thin, cowardly howls trailing out behind it as it fled.
"Huh?" he muttered, blinking hard, his brow creasing as he watched it vanish. He caught sight of the Gloomfang disappearing into the bushes far off to his left, and he let out a slow breath. *I thought I was screwed,* he thought to himself. He knew his skill would have protected him regardless of what came at him, but it could only do so much in a single day, every skill came with its own rules, its own limits, and his was no exception.
He crouched back down and pulled the sword free at last, the blade sliding loose from the packed earth with a low give beneath his hands. *Those fucking bastards,* he thought. "I'm going to find them. I'm going to kill them," he muttered, his hands trembling hard enough around the hilt that he could barely feel his own grip on it anymore.
He turned and took off running in the same direction the twins had gone, the ground blurring fast beneath his boots.
But after only a few steps, another sound reached him out of the bushes, and he slowed hard. It was the sound of footsteps, though the rhythm of them was all wrong, far too fast, too light, to make any real sense.
Immediately, something vaulted clean over the bushes ahead and landed hard in front of him, the impact of it kicking up a spray of dirt, something familiar. A hunter, a young man clearly mid-run toward somewhere of his own. But Bernardo's heart nearly stopped cold the instant he realized exactly who it was standing there.
It was Tyler. His head turned toward Bernardo, and his eyes went wide, something like surprise flickering there for the span of a single breath, before it gave way to something else entirely, something wild and unsettled simmering right behind the surface of his gaze, the look of it enough to root Bernardo in place.
Bernardo took a step back, his grip tightening hard around the hilt he still held. "Shit," he muttered.