We had been walking for three hours.

  Just walking.

  Me in the back. The warrior in front. The bison between us.

  I had been staring at the creature’s rear end for what felt like an unreasonable amount of time. Between its tail and the sheer amount of hair it had, everything there was thankfully hidden. Small mercy, I did not need that image living rent-free in my head.

  The fur on its right upper calf was wrong. That was the problem. Most of it lay flat and matted as you would expect, but there was this one patch where the hair spiraled in an awkward little swirl and stuck straight out at almost a perfect ninety-degree angle. Like someone had brushed it wrong and never fixed it. I noticed it about an hour ago. Since then, it had become my personal enemy.

  I tried not to stare at it.

  I failed.

  Anyway, after the warrior had basically called me a noob, he had pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough that I thought he might crack cartilage. He growled under his breath, stared out into the forest for a few seconds, then let out a heavy sigh like he had just accepted a long-term inconvenience.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  That was it. No explanation. No warning. He waved once without looking back, grabbed the bison’s lead, and started walking again like the conversation was finished and irrelevant.

  Apparently, it was.

  It was strange walking behind him. I was staying about ten feet back the whole time so as to be close enough to keep up, but far enough that I would not get trampled if the bison decided it had opinions about me. In all the time walking, the warrior never looked back. Not once. No checking on me. No assessment. No curiosity.

  I wondered if it was a test.

  Letting someone walk behind you without watching them felt intentional. Maybe he was seeing what I would do. Seeing if I would try something stupid. Seeing if I was dangerous.

  If it were a test, it did not change anything. I was not planning on attacking him. Not like I could hurt him even if I tried. And he still had my dagger.

  I could see it tucked into the back of his clothes, slotted into a loop meant for tools. The handle bobbed slightly with every step. I found myself staring at it more than I wanted to admit. Thinking through possibilities that were immediately useless.

  I could order the dagger to attack him. Probably pointless. It was just a mouth with no leverage and no way to actually position itself.

  I could also order it to lick him. Which would also accomplish absolutely nothing, only more so.

  So I did nothing.

  The path slowly became more defined. Less debris. More exposed dirt. Still downhill, the trees were thinning out and growing shorter. The forest felt different. Less oppressive. Like it was loosening its grip.

  After a while, I started hearing sounds that were not just birds and insects. Scurrying. Chirping. Small movement in the underbrush. Squirrels. Normal forest stuff. The kind of noise you expect in a place where nothing is actively luring everything to its death.

  That did not calm me.

  If anything, it made me more tense. An area this alive meant it had not been cleared out. Which meant something strong enough was keeping it that way. And whatever that was, it was only a matter of time before it noticed us.

  It did not take long.

  A squirrel burst out of the trees and charged straight at the warrior at the head of our little group. It ran flat out, claws tearing up dirt, then scampered up a fallen root and launched itself nearly four feet into the air, chirping like it was personally offended by his existence.

  The warrior almost lazily batted it aside.

  The squirrel sailed through the air a good twenty-five feet, skipped once along the ground, and then lay still.

  Then it happened again.

  And again.

  Four or five more squirrels rushed him from different angles, each one attacking with suicidal confidence. Each one got slapped out of the air like a fly that had made a very bad life choice. A raccoon tried next. It came charging out of the brush, leapt higher than any raccoon had any right to, and caught a fist to the face midair. It did not get back up.

  As impressed as I was watching him handle the smaller creatures I had struggled so badly with earlier, I still tensed up. I knew how this worked. Eventually, something would decide I was the easier target.

  Right on cue, angry chirping erupted to my right. I glanced over just in time to see a squirrel barreling toward me.

  I barely had time to react before the warrior finally glanced back. He made a sharp sound, a short yip.

  The squirrel immediately veered away from me and charged him instead. It died a second later.

  Oh. That was interesting.

  We kept moving like that. The warrior in front. Me behind. The vast majority of wildlife went straight for him. Any time something decided to target the bison or me, he would turn just enough to make that sound again. Whatever was attacking would instantly refocus on him.

  He did it without hesitation. Without thought, like it was muscle memory.

  I started listening for the yip. Really listening. Using my weird sense for sound. But it did not register as anything special. Just a noise, something anyone could make.

  And yet it clearly was not.

  He was doing something. Some kind of skill I think to draw attention and make things attack him instead of something else. The idea clicked in a way that felt annoyingly obvious. I had played enough games back home to recognize a tank when I saw one. Someone built to take hits. Someone designed to keep everything angry at them instead of the softer targets behind them.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  If I had to guess, it was probably layered. A passive pull. Then an active trigger is used when needed.

  Which meant one thing.

  Walking behind him was probably the safest place I had been since arriving in this world.

  I thought about asking him about the sound he made. The way he made everything angry at him instead of me.

  There was never a good opening. It is hard to start a conversation with a man who is casually death slapping hostile wildlife while walking at a steady pace. Any attempt would have felt ridiculous. So I kept quiet and kept walking.

  We went on like that for maybe another half hour. As we moved, the landscape kept opening up. Trees thinned until they were more spaced out, then shorter, then gone entirely. The air felt less cramped. The forest finally stopped pressing in from every direction.

  Eventually, the attacks stopped too.

  No more squirrels. No more raccoons. Just silence and open ground.

  That was when I saw it in the distance.

  A structure. The first real one I had seen in this world.

  It took a moment for my brain to settle on what I was looking at. It was a farm, a big one. It was surrounded by a tall fence made of thick logs strapped together and sunk deep into the ground. The wall had to be at least fifteen feet tall, and it wrapped wide in a rough circle, maybe a quarter mile across, enclosing everything inside it.

  Within the walls, I could make out fields. Neat rows of crops. One looked like vegetables, and another reminded me of corn, though I doubted it actually was. There was a livestock area off to one side, and near the center stood a large house with several barns clustered around it. Everything was unpainted and rough, all raw wood and practicality.

  From the fact that we were heading straight for it, I guessed this was our destination.

  As we got closer, the last of the small creatures vanished entirely. The ground around the farm was completely cleared. No trees. No brush. Just open space stretching a good distance from the walls. That made sense. Clear sight lines. Building material. Fewer places for things to hide.

  A dirt path appeared under our feet. Not well-maintained, but clearly used.

  When we were close enough to really see the fence, I noticed metal wrapped around the top of it, just below the sharpened log points. Thin strands twisted together, something like Razor wire.

  The dead animals tangled in it confirmed that theory.

  We were heading straight for a large gate. One massive wooden door, easily ten feet wide, reinforced and solid.

  About a hundred feet out, I heard shouting from inside.

  The gate flew open, and a man came running toward us, crying openly. He wore only overalls and no shoes. He was bald with a short brown beard, his face red and wet as he shouted something completely incomprehensible through sobs.

  The warrior did not even flinch.

  As the man got closer, text appeared above his head.

  [Farmer] {Level 63}

  He ran right past the warrior without slowing, threw his arms wide, and wrapped them around the bison’s neck. He pressed his face into its fur and sobbed harder, clutching it like he was afraid it might disappear if he let go.

  The warrior looked down at the bison and, for the first time since I had met him, his expression softened into an actual smile, the kind that only shows up when someone is looking at something they genuinely care about. It only lasted a moment though, because when he glanced back in my direction the smile disappeared just as quickly, replaced by that same guarded, closed-off look he’d worn the entire walk.

  Without saying anything, he started forward again, the bison following obediently while the man clinging to it stumbled along, still blubbering into its fur. As we passed through the gate I could finally make out fragments of his words between sobs, how much he had missed the animal, how he had been convinced it was gone for good, and how he never thought he’d see it again.

  I followed them inside the fence because there really wasn’t another option, and stopping to ask questions in the middle of whatever this emotional pileup was didn’t feel smart.

  Up close, the farm looked even rougher than it had from a distance, though not in a bad way. Everything was clearly built by hand using whatever materials could be gathered from the surrounding forest. There were smaller interior fences sectioning off livestock areas, barns patched together with thick timbers, and buildings that favored function over appearance. There was no sign of mass-produced metal or standardized parts anywhere, just wood, rope, and the kind of construction that came from long experience rather than blueprints.

  We had just passed near one of the barns when a sharp shout rang out from the direction of the main house.

  I turned and saw a woman marching toward us with purpose, moving fast and straight, the kind of walk that broadcasted exactly how angry she was without needing words. She was around five and a half feet tall, pale-skinned, with long blonde hair pulled back into a tight braid that didn’t shift at all as she moved. Heat shimmered faintly around her, and I realized with a jolt that there was actual smoke rising off her shoulders.

  Her information appeared above her head as she closed the distance.

  [Mage] {Level 57}

  “Are YOU fucking kidding me?!” she yelled. “Where the hell have you been!?!”

  The warrior let out a slow breath. “I know you’re upset.”

  “Upset?” she snapped. “Are you serious? I come back from town and find Silas in a sobbing mess and you’re gone. Do you know how long it took me to get it out of him that Bibi wandered off?!”

  “Now Math—”

  “Don’t you Math-idle me,” she shouted. “You know our rules. What the hell were you thinking?!”

  “I needed to go,” he said as he raised his hands. “Bibi got drawn in by the nymphs, and I went to get him.”

  “You did what!?!”

  Fire blasted from her hand straight into his face. It only lasted a second. The bison calmly stepped to the side like this had happened regularly, all the while Silas kept hugging him and crying. Smoke rolled off the warrior’s hair and beard but there wasn’t a single burn on him.

  “Yes,” he continued without missing a beat. “I took a chance. You know what Bibi means to Silas. I couldn’t leave him out there to die.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. Then her shoulders slumped, and all the anger drained out of her at once. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him and started crying hard. He rested one large hand on her back and patted slowly.

  They stood like that for a while. The warrior holding the mage. The farmer clinging to the bison.

  I stayed a few steps behind them with my hands at my sides. It felt personal and private and deeply awkward. I had no idea where I was supposed to look or what I was supposed to do next.

  After a moment the woman seemed to pull herself together, straightening up with a sharp inhale, the lingering softness snapping back into something much harder. She turned on her heel and finally looked directly at me, her expression tightening. When she spoke, it was not a shout, but it carried the same weight as a classroom going silent when a teacher decided they had had enough.

  “Who is this,” she asked, “that you brought home?”

  The warrior glanced back at me, then smiled faintly. “This is my new friend,” he said. “Met him in the woods. He helped save me and Bibi from a pack of goblins. Come on,” he added, waving me forward.

  I hesitated, then slowly walked toward them, every step careful and deliberate, until I stopped beside the warrior with the woman standing in front of us. Up close she radiated heat and authority, the kind that made it clear she was used to being listened to.

  “Yeah,” the warrior continued casually. “He came out of nowhere. I think he’s a noob.” He glanced sideways at me as he said it.

  SLAP

  One moment I was standing there, and the next I was on the ground, with no sense of motion in between and no memory of seeing the hit coming at all. My vision spun hard and my ears rang as I realized I was flat on my back staring up at the open sky inside the fence, the world tilted and wrong as my brain tried to catch up. When I turned my head to the side, I saw that my packs had burst open from the impact, their contents scattered across the dirt in a messy spill that felt strangely distant.

  I was still trying to piece together what had just happened when an arm slid across my throat from behind, thick and heavy and impossibly solid, and even before I fully saw it I knew exactly whose arm it was. The grip tightened with controlled pressure, and my breath vanished all at once, my lungs refusing to pull in air no matter how hard I tried.

  “It’s okay,” the warrior said calmly into my ear. “Just relax. Go to sleep.”

  I slapped at his arm on instinct, my movements weak and uncoordinated, until my strength gave out and my hands fell away. Heat rushed to my head, my vision narrowed down to a dim tunnel, and then everything went black.