Numbers started spinning in each of the four boxes. Richard stared in awe as they stopped in each box.

  77 47 54 52

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Marcus said.

  Evan pulled out his two swords. “Everyone behind me.”

  Savannah started backing away. “We don’t chance it. We run.”

  Marcus took Richard’s arm as he backed away. “Considering how high-level that thing is, I agree.”

  Their words sounded like they came from underwater. Richard dug his palm into his ear, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from the mist as it rose to fit the four boxes in his vision. Instead of numbers spinning, it was now parts cycling through. The 77 box stopped on enormous skeletal legs so much taller than the survivors. Each leg ended in four bone-sharpened talons. The 54 box held a torso, and Richard watched in alarm as a hairy, horizontal mouth appeared there with thick, sharp teeth. The 47 box must be for arms, as on either side of the torso got a cluster of snakes, the poison dropping from their fangs. In the last box was an enormous head covered with human mouths that all started screaming.

  Marcus pulled on Richard, who stood frozen at the spot. “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Richard stared, wasting a precious second to realize his ears were still ringing, almost painfully so. Despite knowing Marcus was shouting this, Richard barely heard it. The screaming and ringing gave him such a headache.

  All at once, the noises stopped, and Richard was walking next to Marcus. He stumbled because he hadn’t expected to be walking. Marcus and Dennison caught his arms to keep him from falling. His head swam as Elias and Savannah argued about something.

  “Richard?” Dennison asked.

  “Sorry. Fine. I’m… fine. I… um.”

  How far back in time had he gone? They were in the forest. Did the vines already attack him?

  He pulled up his skill tree and saw his healing wounds ability had been activated and currently had a cooldown of 2 hrs 54 min. Elias and Savannah were having a quiet argument about the Callro hand gesture. It had to be something with the chaos beast that caused this. That, or Richard’s heightened fear. But they hadn’t run across it yet. They had—

  Marcus and Dennison froze. Ahead of them, everyone else froze, too. Richard glanced around, his stomach lurching as he saw mist rising from the ground. They had just stumbled upon the chaos beast again.

  Richard stared, seeing the strange lines appear in his vision once again. Chaos beast. He remembered the screaming head and felt sick to his stomach, finding himself backing away. Marcus grabbed his elbow.

  “We wait until we see the numbers. We’ll decide after the creature forms.”

  Richard swallowed, then nodded. He didn’t dare say that he had already seen what this creature would become, because then they’d have questions he didn’t want to answer.

  His head cocked to one side as he realized there weren’t four boxes like before, but two. He then thought harder about the name Chaos beast. Every single time would be different, including time jumps. Did he trigger the time jump through self-defense? It made little sense, though. Once he considered Chaos being the one over the time anomaly, he felt in his soul it was true. If there truly was a pure, chaotic being, that person would be the one who randomly played with time.

  Unfortunatly, Richard didn’t have time to think about it too much. The mist formed in the two boxes as numbers spun on top.

  15 53

  “We could do this.” Marcus started pointing toward people. “Evan, Elias, and I will focus on the fifty-three box. Savannah, can you lead the others with the fifteen box?”

  Savannah unsheathed her dagger. “Got it, boss.” Richard did the same, trying to organize his thoughts. The mist solidified as body parts randomly generated through the boxes.

  The 15 box turned into a bloated, humanoid torso. Richard gripped the dagger hilt with his sweaty palm as he moved nearer to Savannah. She turned toward the remaining members of the group. “Fifteen is nice and low. Anyone who wants to earn more experience points is more than welcome to follow me. If you feel too squeamish, sit this one out. We have enough people that we’ll kill it.”

  Dennison and Rochel exchanged glances, then slowly backed away. Savannah nodded, then turned toward Richard, who remained by her side. He kept a good hold of his dagger as box 53 turned into a worm. He didn’t dare trust that the worm was harmless. The two boxes disappeared, and the creature solidified on the ground.

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  Richard crept forward with Savannah, not daring to do anything she didn’t do. With an ungodly shriek, the worm head lifted out of the dirt. The top of the head was flat with multiple rows of jagged teeth. The head was enormous; no doubt it could bite Richard’s entire head off with those rows upon rows of jagged teeth.

  Evan slammed his two swords right into the mouth, and it gave another shriek, gurgling black ichor.

  Savannah motioned toward Richard. “Come on.”

  Richard nodded, doing his best to focus on what they needed to do. Mostly, it was stabbing an already bloated, dead torso with a worm head.

  Richard stayed by Savannah’s side as they lifted their dagger and stabbed into the bloated body. Black oil sprayed out. Richard closed his eyes and moved to the side. It burned as it sprayed across his body. He didn’t stop, though. He kept stabbing over and over until Savannah grabbed his wrist.

  “It’s dead.”

  Richard cracked open an eye to stare at the body. “How can you tell?”

  Savannah pointed at the air above the body, and Richard frowned. Savannah blinked, then tapped her forehead with her palm. “Right. Sorry, you don’t have that ability yet.”

  “What ability?”

  “Well,” Savannah started to say as Ethan tried to pull his two swords out of the worm’s face. It seemed like the worm was trying to absorb them into its body. “I don’t know if you know this, but not every ability is given to every scavenger or guard.” Elias ran forward with his dagger, and the worm head slammed into him. Elias flew through the air, crashing into a tree trunk. “Order will go into more details about this when you meet her, but the basic, advanced, and master level skills are up to her.” Marcus ran forward, stabbing the creature’s neck as it shrieked again. “She always gives according to what she believes will help us most. But most scavengers and guards gain the basic ability to see a health bar above a creature, as well as the level.”

  Richard watched the absurdity of it all behind Savannah, but what she said made him pause.

  “Oh, I saw the levels, though. On this creature.” Richard gestured at the bloated torso.

  “Everyone can. The chaos beast follows no patterns.”

  A spray of teeth shot out of the worm’s mouth, hitting Evan and Marcus. Both of them stumbled back, half a dozen teeth sticking out of their bodies. Richard shot to his feet, concerned.

  “Richard, wait—” Savannah said.

  He didn’t know why he did it, other than these people had helped him, and he felt the need to return the favor. He ran forward, putting his arm around the creature’s neck and slamming his dagger into the top of its head. The creature shrieking in pain had to mean it was working. Evan took the distraction to pull out the two swords with a squelching noise.

  “Richard! Drop!” Evan said.

  He didn’t hesitate. He let go of the neck and fell to the ground. The creature spun toward Richard, ready to blast him with teeth when Evan shouted, decapitating the creature. Richard screamed in surprise as the head dropped on him. He pushed it off him before backing away.

  Marcus panted, pulling teeth out of his shoulder. Richard watched him do that with wide eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Perfectly fine.” Marcus dropped tooth after tooth to the ground. Evan started doing the same thing. “Glad that wasn’t a stronger creature.”

  Richard stared at the sky as he tried to decide if this was what he wanted to do instead of remaining inside the relative safety of the walls and farm.

  “Does anyone see a loot icon?” Marcus asked.

  Elias shook his head, brushing himself off. Marcus and Evan kept picking teeth out of their skin.

  Savannah squinted. “I see one.”

  “Great. Go ahead,” Marcus said.

  Richard glanced at the body remains, a frown tugging at his lips. “Wait… I see one too.”

  Marcus nodded. “That happens often with Chaos beasts. There is no rhyme or reason to the looting.”

  Savannah touched the invisible box in the air. A blur appeared next to her. It did the same spinning motion as the rest of the chaos beast, running through a bunch of different options before settling on a mound of dead insects.

  Everyone gasped, and Richard was left confused.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Evan asked.

  Savannah grabbed them, placing them into her inventory. Her eyes brightened as she stared at Marcus.

  “Thirty dead insect bodies!”

  Rochel laughed with delight. “Thank Order!”

  “She must have influenced the Chaos drop,” Dennison said.

  “Well, that just cut this journey in half.” Marcus’s shoulders slumped in relief. “We can head back now and pick what we can on the return trip.”

  Dmitri once said insects were among the deadliest creatures in the forest, but their loot cut the fertilizer recipes in half.

  Silence came back as everyone looked at Richard expectantly. He glanced back, wondering why he had to do this in front of everyone. He touched the loot button. Like Savannah’s, his was running through all the different options before coming to rest.

  He stared, frowning. It was a whip hanging in midair. Richard reached forward, and once he touched it, it fell heavy in his hand. He turned it around, but it looked like a regular whip. After grabbing the handle, the single braid dropped to the ground. He would guess it was ten feet long.

  “A weapon?” Rochel asked. “For a newbie?”

  Dennison’s brows furrowed. “That’s… unheard of.”

  “That’s chaotic,” Savannah whispered, glancing at Marcus.

  Richard studied Marcus too. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was with weapons. As far as he knew, the only weapon he expected to get was a dagger.

  Elias snorted. “That’s not a weapon. It’s a tool for people with a fetish.”

  Marcus shot Elias an annoyed look before he held his hand out to Richard. Richard surrendered the weapon, and Marcus studied it closely.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” Richard said.

  Dennison folded his arms. “You got a weapon before you chose a class. That never happens.”

  Richard tried not to look uncomfortable, but he didn’t like the tone Dennison had.

  “We also don’t bring newbies out on missions into the dark forest,” Marcus said as he continued to study the braid.

  “Maybe it’s not for me,” Richard said.

  “Impossible. The loot came to you,” Marcus said.

  “But I… still don’t know…”

  Marcus finally lifted his eyes from the whip to look at Richard. It wasn’t long before Richard dropped his gaze. He didn’t want to take this as a sign. He didn’t know if he wanted the scavenger class.

  “What does this mean, Marcus?” Dennison asked.

  Marcus handed the whip back. “It means I’ll report this to Dmitri. Then, Dmitri and Timick will study this whip for as long as they deem necessary. I will leave the decision up to them.”

  Dennison grumbled, and Richard felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He didn’t know what else to do but coil the whip again and slip it into his inventory. Dennison watched him the entire time, the distrust never leaving his face.