So now that I’m level freaking 18 and I’ve cleared out the forest, what do I do next?

  Doing everything I have so far, I think I’m in pretty good shape. I’ve got a whole bunch of stats under my belt, and at level 18 I should be able to take on any more animals that show up. Even if I’m just whacking them again with my water bottle. I reached down and touched the bottle leaning against my ankle just to make sure it was still there. Still had my trusty dented sidekick.

  Thinking about it…with whatever disaster noise I made last time around the pond, I definitely cleared out the forest. Pretty sure nothing is left alive in there after that mess. So now? I think what I’ll have to do is try to go up the path, the obvious exit out of the glade. The one I had spotted a deer crossing earlier.

  Yeah… that deer is probably dead now. Floating in the corpse lake.

  Okay, yeah. That’s the plan. Clean myself up in the stream a little more, gather some courage, and then go through the gross corpse-soup lake area. Probably just skirt the edges, keep my head down, and then go up the path to see if I can find any sign of civilization.

  I started to push myself up off the rock to start walking when I heard it.

  A voice.

  It was faint, but it came from the lake.

  From where I was sitting on a rock up on the little hill above the stream, I had a decent view of most of the lake. I squinted down at it, and that’s when I saw them.

  People.

  Actual freaking people.

  For a second, my brain went blank. Were they here to rescue me? Could I actually walk down and yell out for help? Maybe this nightmare was finally over.

  I stood up, heart racing, and leaned forward, ready to call out—then something popped up in my vision.

  It wasn’t like the usual blue boxes. This was more like one of those VR chat rooms, with little class names and levels floating above heads.

  I froze.

  I was maybe five hundred yards away, the figures tiny, but the text above them was crystal clear once I focused.

  Warrior {Level 6}

  Warrior {Level 7}

  Mage {Level 7}

  Raider {Level 8}

  And then the biggest guy, the one the rest seemed to be following:

  Raider {Level 13}

  My stomach sank.

  From here, I could make out enough. Four men, one woman. The female was the level 7 warrior. Their clothes were all variations of brown leather, mismatched and practical, not fantasy cosplay robes or kilts like I weirdly expected in a world like this. No colors, no frills. Just rough, efficient, and boring. The warriors carried spears, the raider with the sword looked twitchy, and the bald leader had an axe that looked like it had split more than just wood. The mage? No staff, no wand. Just empty hands. That somehow made him creepier.

  The bald one caught my attention. Sunlight glinted off his scalp as he trudged up to the lake of corpses. The others followed behind, yelling about something I couldn’t catch.

  And here’s the thing—my eyesight felt sharper than it had any right to be. I shouldn’t have been able to see this clearly from so far, but I could. Stats, maybe? Did dexterity or wisdom mess with vision somehow?

  Either way, my first thought of yelling out and hoping for rescue suddenly felt like a suicide attempt. A group with two raiders, one of them level 13? Yeah, not exactly giving me the warm fuzzies.

  So I crouched lower and decided to watch.

  The group spread out along the lakeshore, scanning the mess of floating bodies. They seemed to be moving in a basic search pattern, though their body language was somehow aggressive and defensive at the same time.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were looking for something. Or someone.

  Me.

  My gut clenched. The vibes off these guys weren’t just bad—they were radioactive. I didn’t want to be judgmental, but every instinct screamed “bad guys.”

  Raiders, Mad Max cosplay, the whole nine yards. The general bad mojo.

  After a few minutes, the bald leader reached the spot where my rock had split during my disastrous music experimentation earlier. He crouched down, examining it, and the female warrior came up beside him. They started talking.

  I focused on them, and that’s when I felt it.

  Something clicked.

  Must be my sound magic B.S. It seemed like I could now hear at long distances.

  Well, not hearing exactly. Not magic eavesdropping. It was more like my Musical Resonant Frequency was tugging at me, like there was a string between their voices and my head. I couldn’t make out words, but the sound had weight to it, a rhythm I could almost grasp if I leaned into it.

  I froze, recorder clutched in my hand, realizing this was the first time my skill had reacted to people.

  And whatever they seemed to be saying? The tone wasn’t good.

  I think I remember hearing somewhere that sound travels way further than we think. Like in those spy movies where the guy in the car across the street somehow picks up every word with some weird listening device.

  So I sat there and focused. Really tried to tune everything else out. The wind through the trees faded. The stream faded. It was like I was slipping into a tunnel, the world narrowing, until there it was—an echo, faint but there.

  And then the female warrior reached over and grabbed the bald raider’s junk.

  Uh. Okay.

  She yanked his head down, and they went full make-out mode right there next to corpse lake.

  Tongues, hands, the whole mess.

  So I guess that’s happening.

  I kept focusing, because, you know, magic spy-ear skill, and I wasn't super confident if I turned it I could get it working again. Really though, the heavy make-out session didn’t exactly help my concentration. The more I zeroed in, the more details I got that I didn’t want. Her hand slipped down into his pants, and suddenly all the wet kissing noises somehow got heavier.

  You know, when you strip down kissing down to pure audio, it just doesn’t sound great. It sounds like cows chewing cud aggressively. If I wasn’t already a non-fan, this would’ve converted me away on the spot. The only reassurance I had my weird voice-enhancer magic was working was because I could hear the fabric moving as her hand shifted in his pants.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  Then he snapped.

  The raider grabbed her wrist, yanked her hand out, and fisted a grip in her hair. His voice boomed out clear as day—“Enough!”

  He threw her back by her hair. She stumbled about ten feet before catching herself.

  “Sorry,” she blurted, still breathless and her voice rough. “I just got so excited! You know what this means, right?!”

  The bald leader grunted. His voice was steady, calm. “I suspect it could be a re-roller, but I’m not jumping to conclusions. And if it is… we have to be careful.”

  The female warrior spat on the ground, gesturing around at the bloated carpet of animal corpses. “Careful? Look at this! Whoever did this is strong, yeah, but they’re sloppy. Best case, they’re what, level fifteen? Twenty? That’s weak! This is our shot! And if they’re a re-roller—”

  “Stop,” he cut her off hard. His tone left no room. “We can’t jump at shadows. We have to be smart. Somebody here is at least five levels higher than most of us, and that’s opportunity enough. But as the leader, I’m calling the right of determination — they are mine! The kill alone is more than enough to launch me to the next threshold.”

  She started to argue, but he steamrolled right over her.

  “If it’s a re-roller, we run. Rule of thumb—you only hunt them when they’re level one and helpless. Anything above that, and it’s suicide. I’m hoping this is just some noob idiot who pulled a massive horde of low spawns and managed to kill them all. The fact that we haven’t found their body yet? That’s either insane luck… or terrifying intelligence.”

  By now, the three others had drifted back from their search and were standing there, listening.

  The bald leader turned to the lower-level raider. “Did you see any sign? Tracks?”

  The guy shrugged. “Didn’t see anything obvious. Found a campsite that looked trampled. Couple footprints in the mud, but no trail leading out. And no corpse floating in the lake. Whoever did this knew how to cover their tracks. My guess? [Mage] class, sound specialization.”

  The bald raider cursed. “Shit. That seals it. Whoever did this isn’t worth the risk. Too many signs they know what they’re doing. We call it. Head back to town. We’ll sell the intel—someone in the Empire’s gonna pay good gold for word of a power popping up out here. Let the headhunters chase this ghost down.”

  “Okay,” the bald raider said, turning toward the trail. “Let’s head out.” He started walking like nothing was wrong. As they walked, I shifted my sound focus to follow them in case anything else was said.

  I sat there frozen. What the hell was I supposed to make of that? Slavers? Bounty hunters? People who kill for sport? None of it sounded good. I was suddenly very glad I’d crawled out along the stream instead of straight across the glade. That probably covered most of my tracks. Probably. Then again, I hadn’t exactly been careful. I’d been too focused on not puking in corpse lake and too busy trying not to die of panic. I definitely left some prints in the mud by the waterline. If they looked hard enough, they’d find them.

  And wait. Hold on. I understood them.

  What the fuck?

  They sounded like they were speaking English, but not. Like my brain was translating it automatically. Every word had this weird accent that wasn’t really an accent, just slightly… off. Like when you listen to a dubbed movie and can tell something is out of sync.

  File that under “questions for later,” preferably when I wasn’t hiding from people who might want to stab me.

  Still… even with all the alarms in my head going off, I couldn’t shake it. I wanted to talk to them. This was the first time in days I’d seen another person. After squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and the world’s worst meat soup, my brain was ready to latch onto any human contact. Even if they were sketchy.

  Maybe I could negotiate. Maybe they could lead me to this Empire they kept mentioning. At the very least, I wouldn’t be stumbling around alone. And hey, I was level eighteen. They weren’t. That had to count for something.

  Then another thought smacked me. If they went straight back to town and sold what they’d seen, I’d be on some bounty hunter’s shopping list before long. They’d either find me by accident on the road, or worse, come hunting me on purpose. And if these guys dragged their feet heading back, they might stumble across me going along the path before I even had the chance to figure out a plan.

  I was so wrapped up in all those spiraling possibilities that I almost missed it. One moment, the group was walking. The next—

  A fireball.

  A giant ball of flame shot out from the [Mage] and slammed into the bald raider’s back.

  The impact was brutal. He hit the dirt face-first, smoke rising from his body. Half his clothes were gone in a flash, his back scorched and bubbling with raw, burned skin. Somehow, he was still alive and trying to push himself up.

  And then the level 7 warrior was there, screaming as he drove his spear straight down, pinning the bald raider through the shoulder and into the ground.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered. My sound focus locked on them like a camera lens zooming in.

  The bald raider roared, voice ragged and furious. “What the fuck, man!”

  The warrior on top of him twisted the spear deeper, shouting over and over, words cracking into rage. “FUCK YU! FUCK YU! FUCK YU!” The scream was a chant and was almost animal, like he had snapped completely.

  The bald raider planted his fists against the ground, legs splayed wide. And then—he wasn’t pinned anymore.

  He had himself launched upward.

  One second he was face down in the mud, the next he was in the air, the screaming warrior clinging to his back like a rag doll. They shot fifty feet up before gravity kicked back in. At the peak, the raider twisted hard somehow, and the warrior flew off, spinning toward the lake. I actually lost sight of him as he landed in a thick brown splash.

  Then I noticed the spear. Still stuck in the dirt where the raider had been pinned, dripping blood. He’d yanked his body through it in the jump.

  He came down hard, landing twenty feet from where he started, slamming into the ground on both feet. He looked like death warmed over as half burned and bleeding as he was, but still somehow standing. He had landed outside of my sound focus and couldn’t hear him, but I could see him screaming.

  He barely had time to straighten before the level 8 raider rushed him, sword aimed for his chest. The blade sank into his shoulder with a wet crunch.

  The bald raider didn’t flinch. He just backhanded the guy so hard that he flew sideways. With his free hand, the bald raider ripped the sword out by the blade of his own flesh, blood spraying, and swung it around in time to catch a spear thrust aimed at his throat.

  The spear was in the hands of the female warrior. The same one who had been making out with him minutes ago.

  My tunnel hearing clicked back in just in time to catch his voice, low and ragged but still clear.

  “Why?”

  The female warrior’s answer ripped out of her throat. “Why? I’ll tell you why! Because we’re done playing it safe! We want MORE!”

  She jumped back, eyes wild, and that was the signal.

  The mage lifted both hands and started hurling little bolts of fire. Not big fireballs like before. Just quick little bursts, like someone lighting matches and chucking them. They weren’t huge, but they came fast, maybe one every half second between them. The first two hit the bald raider square in the chest, searing into burned flesh. On the third, though, he roared, lifted the stolen sword still held by the blade, and started batting them aside like flaming baseballs. Sparks and ash scattered with every swing as he charged the mage.

  Even at this distance, I could see the mage panic. Body language is universal, I guess. Shoulders stiff, head snapping back, and then... he turned tail. Fire bolts cut off instantly as he broke into a sprint, running like the coward he was.

  The bald raider almost had him, but that’s when the level eight raider—the one who’d been backhanded—appeared out of nowhere. He spun with a roundhouse kick that cracked into the bald man’s jaw with enough force I swear I felt it from my hiding spot. The big guy stumbled sideways, the sword flying out of his grip and leaving a trail of blood from his hand.

  The lower-level raider snatched the sword out of the air. Smooth. Like he’d practiced it a thousand times. He landed light on his feet, sword gleaming red with blood in the sun.

  The bald raider tumbled hard, rolling to his side. He shoved a hand out to block the strike, but it wasn’t enough. The younger raider’s blade came down in a vicious arc. It sliced clean through his arm at the elbow sending his detached hand flying, and buried itself halfway into his neck.

  Blood fountained once, high and bright, and then stopped.

  The bald raider collapsed, twitching once before going still. The glowing “Raider {Level 13}” above his head blinked out.

  I sat there stunned. My stomach knotted. Then I noticed something.

  The smaller raider who had just taken him down, his level blinked above his head. Where it had read “Raider {Level 8}” a minute ago, now it glowed “Raider {Level 11}.”

  That sinking feeling in my gut got worse.

  Before I could even wrap my brain around that, the other warrior came stumbling back into view — the one who had been flung like a rag doll into corpse lake. He was caked in mud and blood, but he didn’t slow down. He threw himself at the dead body, fists and boots hammering down in a frenzy.

  And he didn’t stop screaming. The same word over and over, each one broken and raw. “FUCK YU! FUCK YU! FUCK YU! FUCK YU!” Over and over, spit flying, I could hear his throat shredding from screaming.

  I think he hadn’t stopped yelling that since the fight began.

  The other three froze for just a heartbeat, then as if on cue they joined him. All of them. Kicking, stomping, shrieking. The mage, the warrior, the remaining raider—everyone piling on the corpse, beating it long after it was dead. Screams, laughter, rage.

  It was madness.

  That was it for me.

  Nope. Hard pass.

  Those people were insane. Dangerous in ways I didn’t even have the words for. I didn’t want to be anywhere near them.

  So, that path to a town? Not an option.

  The stream was my only option. It would hide my tracks, at least somewhat. It gave me a line to follow so I didn’t wander in circles and starve in some ditch. Hiking without landmarks is a death sentence, and all the mountain ranges around me looked the same. I’d been on enough trails to know free-hiking was an easy way to get lost and never come back.

  Decision made, I started moving. Slowly. Carefully. Back toward the stream.

  I dropped my weird sound-tunnel trick, but even from this distance I could still hear them.

  Screaming. Stomping. Tearing their leader apart with bare hands.

  Freaking maniacs. And I wanted nothing to do with them.