Jimmy's warning had barely left his mouth when the brush split apart.
The beast stepped out, and for one heartbeat, the thicket seemed to make room for it.
It was larger than any dog had a right to be, shoulder-high to Bobby's chest, with dark gray fur bristling in uneven ridges along its spine. Its mouth was too wide. Its front claws were curved like hooks. A red sheen stained the fur around its muzzle, and its eyes were pale yellow, bright with a vicious kind of focus.
The air changed with it.
Redrats were pests.
This was a predator.
Bobby remained rooted in place.
Jimmy glanced at him.
"Fatty."
"Yeah?"
"When I say move, move."
Bobby nodded too fast.
"Good."
The badwolf lowered its head.
Jimmy remembered this monster perfectly.
Badwolf. Beginner-region rare spawn. Aggressive scent tracker. It punished grouped players. Loved fake retreats. Opened with a shoulder charge if prey stood at medium range, bite flurry if prey froze, claw rake if prey tried to circle left.
Weak points: right foreleg after charge recovery, throat during second howl, inside hip tendon after leap miss.
In the game, a clean solo kill at level one required either perfect dodge chains, terrain abuse, or a weapon better than starter trash.
Jimmy had a dull knife, Basic Slash, and a body that still thought breathing hard was a major negotiation.
Wonderful.
The badwolf charged.
It was fast.
Too fast for Bobby to follow.
Jimmy moved first because the monster had told him everything with the shift of its shoulder.
He stepped right.
Not far enough.
In-game, he would have cleared the line completely.
His current body lagged by half a heartbeat.
The badwolf's shoulder clipped him.
Pain burst through Jimmy's ribs as he flew backward and hit the slope hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.
He rolled before the badwolf landed on him.
Claws tore through the dirt where his chest had been.
He came up coughing.
Annoying.
Very annoying.
"Bro!" Bobby shouted.
"Stay back!" Jimmy warned.
The badwolf snapped at Jimmy's arm.
Jimmy ducked under the bite, slashed at the foreleg, and felt the blade scrape flesh without cutting deep enough.
Too shallow.
He clicked his tongue.
The badwolf twisted faster than expected.
Jimmy caught the claw rake on the used arm guard and felt the impact rattle all the way up to his shoulder.
The force drove him back three steps.
Bobby took one step forward.
Then stopped.
Fear had him by the throat.
Jimmy saw it without looking.
He could not blame him.
That was what badwolves did.
Their presence was not a stat on any panel. It was the natural pressure of something designed to make beginners choose wrong.
The badwolf feinted back.
Jimmy did not chase.
Good players chased.
Dead beginners chased.
The badwolf's jaws split in a grin-like snarl when Jimmy refused the bait.
"Yeah," Jimmy muttered. "I know."
It lunged again.
Jimmy dropped low, let the first bite pass over his shoulder, then drove the knife toward the throat.
Basic Slash
The skill took.
The cut opened a line across the badwolf's neck, but the angle was bad. The monster jerked away at the last instant, turning a killing strike into a bleeding wound.
Still a good strike.
The badwolf howled in rage and slammed into him.
Jimmy blocked badly because there was no good block available.
The impact threw him into a tree.
This time his vision flashed white.
For a moment, his fingers would not close around the knife.
The badwolf stalked forward.
Jimmy forced air back into his lungs.
His body was too slow.
His stamina was dropping.
Basic Slash had a short recovery, but the physical cost was real. Use it carelessly, and his arm would fail before the monster did.
He needed one opening.
Not a normal opening.
A Heaven-Slaying opening.
Jimmy's gaze flicked across the slope.
Redrat corpses.
Crushed scent gland.
Loose soil.
Root line.
Broken stone.
Bobby.
The badwolf.
Everything clicked.
There was an old exploit.
Not famous.
Most players never bothered.
It required a rare spawn, redrat scent, low ground, and suicidal positioning.
But if a badwolf was exposed to enough fresh redrat musk, its scent priority could be polluted. For two seconds after a bloodied target crossed a scent source, the badwolf would overcommit to the strongest trail instead of the closest prey.
In the game, players used that to make it crash into terrain.
In reality, Jimmy was about to bet his ribs on whether instincts worked like code.
Jimmy smiled.
Bobby saw that smile and looked horrified.
"Why are you smiling?" he shouted.
"Because I found the route!"
"What route?"
Jimmy grabbed one of the dead redrats by the tail, dragged it through the crushed scent gland, then kicked the corpse hard across the slope.
The badwolf's head snapped toward it.
Not enough.
Jimmy scraped his sleeve against the redrat's bloody fur, smearing his arm with scent, and ran.
"Jimmy!"
The badwolf pursued instantly.
Jimmy sprinted across the slope toward the thickest root line.
Every part of his body objected.
He ignored it.
The badwolf gained.
Of course it gained.
It was faster.
Stronger.
Built for this.
Jimmy counted steps.
Three.
Two.
One.
He crossed the crushed scent patch and threw himself sideways.
The badwolf should have adjusted.
Instead, its head dipped toward the muddled scent trail.
For two seconds, instinct lied to it.
The badwolf stepped forward.
Its front paw hit the root line.
Its wounded neck pulled tight.
Its right foreleg opened.
"Bobby!" Jimmy shouted. "Now!"
Bobby moved.
Not because fear had left him.
It had not.
His face said so.
His hands said so.
The shake in his legs practically screamed it.
But he moved anyway.
He charged from the side with the wooden blade raised, shouting something that might have been a battle cry or might have been panic trying to escape his body.
The badwolf turned toward him.
Bobby's eyes widened.
For one instant, he almost stopped.
Then his foot landed outside the bite line.
Jimmy saw it.
Bobby saw it too.
The redrat lesson.
The stupid, ugly, terrifying step.
Bobby swung.
The wooden blade smashed into the badwolf's wounded foreleg with everything he had.
The strike did not break bone.
It did not even cut.
But it hit the exact leg Jimmy had damaged earlier.
The badwolf stumbled.
Half a second.
That was all.
For Jimmy, half a second was enough.
He stepped in.
His whole body screamed at him.
He ignored that too.
The badwolf tried to recover, jaws twisting toward Bobby.
Jimmy's hand closed around the knife.
The line appeared in his mind.
Not from the system.
From him.
The path from hip to shoulder, shoulder to wrist, wrist to blade, blade to throat. Weight, breath, angle, momentum, timing. Every tiny piece locking into place.
He activated the skill at the last possible instant.
Basic Slash
The dull knife cut upward through the badwolf's exposed throat.
This time, the monster could not twist away.
The strike opened deep.
The badwolf staggered, snapped once at empty air, and collapsed into the dirt with a heavy final thud.
Silence followed.
Real silence.
Bobby stood frozen with the wooden blade still raised.
Jimmy remained crouched beside the monster, one hand braced on the ground, breathing through the sharp pain in his ribs.
The panel appeared.
Rare Monster Defeated
Badwolf
Bonus Experience Awarded
Then another.
Player Level Increased
Level: 4
Jimmy exhaled.
"Good."
Bobby slowly lowered the blade.
"Good?"
His voice came out high and thin.
"Good? That thing almost ate us!"
"But it didn't."
"That is not the standard!"
Jimmy pushed himself to his feet, then immediately regretted doing it too quickly.
Bobby saw the wince.
The anger drained out of him.
"Bro..."
"I'm fine."
"You got smashed into a tree."
"Trees are common."
"That doesn't make it fine!"
Jimmy looked at the dead badwolf, then at Bobby.
"You moved."
Bobby stopped.
His mouth opened, then closed.
He looked down at the wooden blade in his hands.
It was cracked near the top from the strike.
"I thought I was going to die," he said quietly.
"You still moved."
Bobby swallowed.
His eyes were fixed on the badwolf now.
Not with confidence.
Not exactly.
But he was looking at it.
Really looking.
As something he had faced.
"I hit it," Bobby said.
"You hit it in the right place."
"Because you yelled."
"Because you listened."
Bobby's shoulders shook once.
Then he laughed.
It was breathless and a little unsteady.
"Outside the bite line."
Jimmy smiled.
"See? Education."
"I hate your education."
"You enrolled yourself."
"You kidnapped me."
"Details."
Jimmy glanced again at Bobby's player card.
Bobby Chen
Level: 3
Good. His effort had counted as contribution.
Mako and Dren returned a few minutes later, cautious at first, then slack-jawed when they saw the badwolf corpse.
Mako pointed at it.
Then at Jimmy.
Then at Bobby.
Then back at the corpse.
"Boss..."
"Yes?"
"Is that a badwolf?"
"Yes."
Mako sat down on the ground.
Dren crouched beside the corpse, eyes sharp despite his surprise.
"Claws are worth money. Fang too. Hide if we can move it. Blood maybe, if the buyer's real."
Jimmy smiled.
"Good. Take what we can carry. Leave nothing obvious near the training path."
Bobby slowly turned toward him.
"We are selling this nightmare?"
"Obviously."
"Of course we are."
Mako stood again, face shining with a new and deeply concerning level of loyalty.
"Boss defeated a badwolf at beginner level."
"We defeated it," Jimmy said.
Mako blinked.
Dren looked at Bobby.
Bobby also looked startled.
Jimmy pointed at Bobby's cracked wooden blade.
Bobby stared at him.
For some reason, that seemed to hit harder than the badwolf.
Mako straightened and slammed his fist to his chest.
"Brother Bobby!"
Bobby recoiled.
"Don't call me that."
Dren nodded seriously. "Good work."
Bobby opened his mouth.
No complaint came out.
He looked down, embarrassed.
"Thanks."
They worked quickly.
It was messy, unpleasant work.
Jimmy guided the cuts because he knew what parts mattered. Dren handled the knife with practical efficiency. Mako carried more than he should have while pretending it was easy. Bobby helped once his hands stopped shaking.
By the time they left Greenhide Thicket, all four of them looked like they had been dragged through a violent argument with nature.
Bobby's pants were torn.
Mako had redrat blood on one cheek.
Dren carried two bags of monster parts and the badwolf fang wrapped in cloth.
Jimmy walked a little slower than he had that morning, ribs aching with every breath.
But his eyes were bright.
Level four.
Basic Slash.
Badwolf bonus experience.
Monster parts.
Bobby's first growth.
Not bad for Saturday morning.
Not bad at all.
When they reached the base, Pell and Tilo had somehow transformed the maintenance office from a crime scene into a less embarrassing crime scene.
The floor was mostly clear.
The shelves had been sorted.
The suspicious items had been arranged into three piles with handwritten labels.
Jimmy approved.
Then Dren dropped the badwolf fang onto the desk.
The room went silent.
Pell stared.
Tilo stared.
Mako puffed up like he had personally slain the beast with his forehead.
Bobby stood near the doorway, exhausted, dirty, and still holding the cracked wooden blade.
Tilo whispered, "Is that from a badwolf?"
"Yes," Dren said.
Pell looked at Jimmy with awe.
"Boss killed a badwolf?"
Jimmy walked past them and sat in the least broken chair.
It creaked but held.
"We killed a badwolf," he said, gesturing toward Bobby.
Everyone looked at Bobby.
Bobby froze under the attention.
Then the cracked chair beside him collapsed without anyone touching it.
The timing was so perfect that no one spoke for a full second.
Bobby looked at the chair.
Then at Jimmy.
"I was going to sit there."
"Good instincts," Jimmy said.
Bobby let out a tired laugh and sank down onto an overturned crate instead.
His hands were still shaking.
But his back was a little straighter.
Jimmy picked up the badwolf fang and turned it between his fingers.
Tomorrow, they would need more training.
Before the qualifier, they would need equipment, more levels, and a plan for Jacob and Linda that accounted for wealth, pride, and whatever expensive tricks those two had been taught.
After that, the interschool exchange.
After that, bigger zones.
Bigger monsters.
Bigger answers.
Jimmy smiled.
The first rung of the ladder was under his foot now.
"Rest for ten minutes," he said. "Then we sell everything that isn't nailed down."
Dren glanced at the old shelves.
"What about things that are nailed down?"
Jimmy looked at the shelf.
It leaned sadly away from the wall.
He smiled.
"Depends how good the nails are."
Mako slapped his fist to his chest.
"Yes, boss!"
Bobby covered his face with both hands.
"I can't believe this is my life now."
Jimmy leaned back in the creaking chair, ribs aching, level higher, skill restored, future opening in front of him like a map only he could read.
"Get used to it, fatty."
Bobby groaned.
But he was smiling.
They did not rest for ten minutes.
They made it seven before Jimmy stood up.
Bobby lifted his head.
"That was not ten minutes."
"Boss minutes," Jimmy said.
Dren was already tying the bags shut. "Fresh blood sells worse the longer it sits."
Pell reached for the banner.
Jimmy pointed at him.
"Leave it."
Pell froze with one hand on the rolled cloth.
"But boss, the organization should make its market debut."
"Today we're selling monster parts. You can save creating evidence for tomorrow."
Pell lowered the banner with visible pain.
Five minutes later, they were back in the east market.
Mako, Pell, and Tilo waited near the shuttered tea shop with the extra gear, under strict orders to look normal.
At least they tried to.
Mako stood too straight. Pell clutched the rolled banner like a forbidden weapon. Tilo kept checking the alley behind them every three seconds.
Still, it was better than bringing the whole little army inside.
Dren took the lead with the badwolf fang wrapped in cloth and one bag of parts over his shoulder. Jimmy carried the other bag. Bobby limped beside them in torn pants and a new expression.
It made them look less like a gang and more like two battered students escorted by a local market rat.
Perfect.
It was not confidence.
Not yet.
But it was not only fear either.
That was worth more than the monster parts.
Probably.
Jimmy still needed money.
Dren led them past two stalls and one shop with a polished brass sign that read:
HONEST TAM'S BEAST RECOVERY
Bobby stopped under it.
"I don't trust that."
Inside, the shop smelled like salt, metal, old leather, and dried beast blood.
Honest Tam himself stood behind a counter covered in hooks, scales, bone saws, and little jars of labeled powder. He was an old, thin man with a tidy beard, quick eyes, and the warm smile of someone who had cheated enough people to afford excellent dental work.
He looked at Jimmy's group.
Then at the bags.
Then at Jimmy's dull knife.
Then at Bobby's cracked wooden blade.
"Welcome in!" Tam said, smiling wider. "First independent hunt?"
Jimmy said nothing.
Tam leaned one elbow on the counter.
"Redrat claws?" he asked. "Maybe glands if you were lucky?"
Dren set the first bag on the counter.
Tam opened it, poked through the contents, and sighed.
"Low grade. Fresh, yes, but messy. I can give you a good price."
"Better be good," Jimmy said.
Tam's smile did not move. "I'm sure you'll be pleased, sir."
Dren opened the second bag.
Tam's smile moved then.
Not much.
Just enough.
He saw the badwolf claws first. Then the strip of hide. Then the wrapped fang when Dren placed it on the counter and unfolded the cloth.
For one second, Honest Tam forgot to look honest.
His fingers tapped the counter with a curious rhythm.
"Oh," he let out.
"Where did you get that?"
"Greenhide Thicket," Jimmy said.
Tam recovered quickly.
"Some kind of big feral dog, I see."
"Badwolf."
"Probably a thornhound," Tam said, polite again. "Badwolves are very rare."
"It's a Badwolf."
He looked Jimmy up and down, taking in the dirty jacket, the bad knife, the blood on his sleeve, and the kind of tiredness that did not look impressive from the outside.
"Sir, I'm afraid rare-spawn parts require proof."
Jimmy gave him a slight, confident smile.
"It's a Badwolf," he said. "Right-side ridge bristles. Hooked foreclaws with black crescents at the root. Scent-soured blood. Torn left ear. Old scar down the snout."
Tam's eyes narrowed.
"You saw the head?"
"I killed it."
Tam cautiously scratched his beard.
"You can call it a dog after we leave," Jimmy said. "The price is set while we're here."
Tam's smile came back thinner than before.
"Six hundred," he said. "For everything."
Jimmy smiled.
"Sorry, Mr. Raskulin down the street offered us fifteen hundred."
"Think I can't tell a bluff, kid?"
"Shame it's not a bluff."
Jimmy knew prices. Back in the game, he had sold items on the marketboard at a scale that a run-of-the-mill shady dealer like Mr. Tam could have never dreamed of.
He knew exactly what Tam would pay.
Tam eyed Jimmy cautiously.
"Fourteen hundred."
Jimmy leaned in closer.
"Two thousand, and I'll come back again with something you'll like."
The old coot's eyes gleamed with calculated greed as he did the math.
"Fine."
Once the transaction was done, Jimmy walked out with two thousand in his pocket as they headed back to base.
Bobby dragged himself after him, worn out completely from the day's events.
"Was that stuff really worth two thousand?"
"No."
"Then why did he-"
"That sly fox doesn't know whether we really killed it or not."
"Yeah, and?"
"If we did, it means we're strong enough to need to see him again. And he knows that."
Bobby accepted the answer.
Then he paused.
"If he doesn't know, then why did he assume we'd-"
"He didn't."
"What?"
"He's seen our faces, and he knows people around here. If he wants, he can have us taken out and get the cash straight back into his pocket."
Dren nodded.
Bobby's face went pale for a moment as he stopped walking.
He closed his eyes and shook his head before scurrying forward.
"For the record," he said. "I preferred being weak and uninformed."
"No you didn't."
Bobby was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked down at his torn pants, tightened his grip on the cracked wooden blade, and sighed.
"No," he admitted. "I didn't."