[SPAN // GLOBAL THREAD — CHALLENGE TWO: “ZELFSTRYT CLEAR”]
Visibility: Universal. Thread Heat: 3.9M comments
RedDustMiner [Mars // Ares Basin Sector 7] +412c
Four minutes? Yeah right. Bet a hundred credits he’s an Earther phreak.
IronGhost42 [Earth // Rotterdam Arc] ?62c
Keep talking, red-lungs. Try running Challenge Two without ware. Earth’s evolved past red meat.
KiraN7 [Luna // Vallis Crater Dome] +223c
Union records are sealed. Unless he hacked their kernel, it’s legit. No high-ware makes it through the arch—it gets scrubbed. Phreaks risking it deserve to go full potato.
ArcRelic [Europa // Dome Three] +84c
Always the same—Earth brains stuffed with so much ware they forget what it means to be human. Out here we train the body, not patch it.
Shiroyobi [Xirelis Hardpoint // Outer Relay] +601c
Null-zeros all of you. Z’s just throwing passes at the problem. Pass one harvest. Pass two, turn them in. That’s not cheating, that’s engineering. Get on his level.
LowOrbitSnek [Mars // Cydonia Sprawl] +97c
Rich. Get richer. No matter what. Depressed.
MinkTail [Luna // Peripheral Hab-09] +68c
IronGhost42—You call us “ferals,” but you’re the ones frying neurons to shave seconds.
IronGhost42 [Earth // Rotterdam Arc] ?173c
Jealousy’s a bad look. You want speed, get ware. Or stay slow and keep farming lilies for pocket XP.
Anonymous [Origin Hidden] +3.1Kc
It’s Zelfstryt. Not Z. Not Zelf. Respect the position! Zelfstryt is not a phreak—pure perfection.
(Thread flagged for regional hostility // archived to Record Layer 7 for behavioral review.)
The line pressed toward the Arch, fading light flaring through smoke and steam. Vendors shouted over the murmur of students, frying batter, clattering pans. Union officers stood stiff at the edge of the square. The crowd shifted in waves—shoulders knocking, blades brushing, children darting with water skins. Beneath it all, the hum of the vortex, a low chord against the ribs.
Rem froze when he saw the back of the line. Eva. Mara. And the rest of them. A third of the way to level four by now. The press shoved him forward, dumplings hot in his grip. He slid into place behind them, throat dry.
“Three names dropped from the rolls this morning.” Finn turned, sleeves trailing across carved wood, both hands clamped on his staff. He looked steady. Seasoned.
“You want one?” Rem muttered, holding out the tray.
Noah grinned, shield strap creaking as he leaned over the breastplate. He snatched a dumpling, grease slicking his fingers. “You’re a life saver. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He glanced at Finn, mouth full. “That’s like what, six this week?”
Eva drove her pale staff into the cobbles. The glyphs flickered; the crack vanished into the Arch’s hum. She stared at Rem, steady, unblinking, the way she always did when she wanted to put him in his place.
“They are purging the failures. No point in wasting essence on people that refuse to keep up.”
Always the knife. Always making him feel a step behind.
“Harsh. Not everyone can come in first place in every trial, Eva.” Noah shifted; his sword clattered at his hip.
“Congratulations on beating challenge two Rem. And solo, Noah tells me. It’s impressive. But don’t think three is like the first two. Take my advice and find a team.” Mara adjusted her bow, knives catching brazier light as she moved.
They all looked right in their gear now. Robes, plate, weapons. Not costumes anymore. They fit. He didn’t. Same level, worlds apart.
“Soloing three is a death wish. You’re going to kill yourself.” Eva flared. Her voice was hard, clipped, certain.
He flinched but kept his jaw tight. A death wish? No. He had tried. He had wanted Noah with him. They had taken him first. Now they stood together, armored and aligned, calling him reckless. What else was he supposed to do—trust strangers with his secrets?
Noah pulled at his strap, head down, shield creaking against leather. The silence pressed heavier than the crowd.
“Don’t worry about me,” Rem said. “I can handle myself.”
He bit into a dumpling, grease burning his tongue. Smoke stung his eyes. The Arch flared brighter. Union officers scanned the thinning line. Festival or funeral—what difference? Let them whisper “death wish.” He would walk through alone.
When the light ebbed, Rem found himself standing among white linen sheets. Clotheslines stretched taut along the far side of a waist-high glyph stone. The breeze worried the cloth, tugging it back, and through the momentary gap a sweep of bright green meadow flashed. The sun hung merciless in a blue, pitiless sky. Heat pressed down. The linen smelled faintly sweet, something floral, unfamiliar. He pushed the sheet aside and walked past.
A crunch drew his eye. A wooden whistle, split under his heel. He glanced around for the child missing their toy, but only flies spun in the heat.
Around him, rough-cut timber dwellings crouched in orderly rows. Behind them rose palisades of raw logs, ringed by hewn timber walkways. Three-story towers lashed together by rope oversaw the corners of the fort. Boots thudded above, steady as war-drums. It was a fort meant for wilderness — it would grow up to become a village if it survived. He turned, letting the whole place unfold: three walls braced in timber, a heavy gate bound with iron, the fourth side spilling open to a sluggish brown river. A dock jutted out where small boats clung. Heat shimmered. His shirt clung; sweat traced his back. For a breath it was all just summer, heavy, slow, almost kind.
CHALLENGE THREE
Skills, traits, and class abilities unlocked.
Objective: Help defend the people of Madarox Outpost.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Reward: Variable.
Rem’s chest tightened. He pushed through the yard. The air tasted of iron and sweat. Draft horses stamped in their corral, flanks slick with heat. A woman with long red hair combed one, humming, dragging the teeth through its tawny coat. Sparks leapt from a smith’s hammer, and clung in the hot air hesitant to fade. A boy went past with salted fish, the stench cutting sharp. Near a canvas tent a woman in blood-stained white wrung linen in red water. Her hands worked fast. Bandages twisted, slapped into a bucket. She looked up at him, eyes weary but clear.
“Good day,” she said, low.
Rem nodded. Remembering the tray in his hands, he backed away. She pressed the cloth into the water, dipped again.
Beyond, near the camp’s center, an old stone wall circled a well. Rem dropped the tray and hauled the rope that descended into darkness. The rope bit and stung his palms. The bucket broke the surface and slapped the lip of stone, spilling over in bright scatter. The first contact stole his breath: ice under his skin, a clean shock that opened his chest. He drank in greedy gulps, the water sharp with mineral. Cold climbed his arms, cleared the fog from his head. Thoughts snapped into hard pieces: the east ladder missing a rung, the north post bowed low, ropes at the dock fraying white in the sun. One minute to map the place, to anchor himself by the geography of its failings.
Then the horn tore the silence. Ragged, raw, bellowing from the tower. Through the gate two riders burst, foam flecking their mounts. Behind them, beams crashed down. One rider tossed a bloody bundle into a wagon without slowing: a wolf’s head, jaws slack, fur dripping dark. A man barked a laugh too big for the heat.
Noise swelled beyond the walls. Snarls. Yips. The thunder of a stampede. The gate flexed under unseen weight. Rem glimpsed shadows and teeth through cracks in the timber. He found a ladder and climbed, every muscle burning as if the heat itself tried to pin him.
From the walkway he saw them: wolves, shoulder-high, pressing in a writhing mass against the gate that had seemed invincible. Timber bent, moaned. Arrows hissed down, shafts thudding into fur.
“Hold the line!” roared a coarse voice.
A grizzled man with one arm bound in a sling leaned out, waving his good hand. “Spears forward! Brace it!”
Spearmen met the first rush with teeth and timber. Where wolves found gaps, spearheads found jaws. Archers on the towers struck true, shafts raining down on exposed backs. The gate screamed and shuddered, came within a hair of buckling, but held. For a wild, hot beat the outpost was all arms and order and noise: cheers, a rough whoop, a boy pounding a palm on a barrel to drum the victory into being.
SURGE ONE: Repelled.
Exit now to receive a reward (common).
Warning: Failure later will forfeit all rewards.
“One minute,” the one-armed leader barked. Laughter and whoops filled the air. Men clapped shoulders and thumped barrels; the smith struck his hammer in furious rhythm. For sixty brief seconds the outpost came to, life remembered, more than survival. Then the leader’s voice cut off the celebration.
“Replace your fallen. Rotate the tired. Whoever’s spent — down the ladders, now!” Gaunt, sweating men slid down as fresh faces shoved forward, spears raised. The wall snapped back into order — slow, human, stubborn.
The growls came again, louder. More feet, closer. Rem watched the towers. Arrows still flew, but the rhythm stuttered; bowstrings thudded less frequently, quivers thinning. Faces below worked small, tight, efficient motions of exhaustion. The leader’s eyes were a blade. He read the slackened arrows, the long blinks.
“We’re spent,” he said, flat. “To the docks. Everyone who can row, row. Boats first for women and children. Men on the gate — hold. Hold damn you. The rest cover the retreat.”
The outpost moved: bundles to strong arms, old men shoved toward lines, a woman clutching her child as she was ushered along to waiting vessels. Men on the walls pulled back rung by rung, spears angled to catch an opportune flank. At the river they shoved hulls off with gloved hands; oars rose briskly. The outpost narrowed to a single function: get them out.
The palisade shuddered. A weak post cracked. The great timber crossbar splintered. For a beat no one spoke: wood screamed, iron shrieked, then the gate gave. Wolves poured through slips as if the world itself had split. Men at the gate were crushed, spears broken, bodies flung aside. The riverside plan unspooled into frantic pushing and dragging. Boats shoved, overturned. Screams and the brutal, wet business of tearing snapped the air into pieces.
The gate was gone.
Rem climbed higher into the foretower. Archers loosed their last shafts, and then the sky went quiet. “No more!” one cried. “Gods damn us, no more!” Men abandoned their posts, running the walkways toward the docks.
“Get to the docks boy,” a greying archer implored, hesitated, then followed his own advice, scrambling down the ladder.
Rem found himself alone in the tower.
The clang of steel against teeth. The crunch of timber. The wet sound of men going down. Horses screamed, kicking wild. The smell of iron thickened. “Ladder—wolves on the ladder!” a voice shrieked from the next tower, then went silent. The wall trembled as though the fort itself drew breath in panic.
Wolves pressed in again, heavier now, stockier, gleaming shapes of dark muscle. At the docks survivors scrambled for boats. Wolves shoved into the water, teeth on oars, dragging men under with wet, pulling sounds. A plank snapped; a boat overturned, spilling the passengers tossed into the water.
Rem scrambled up the tower post and dragged himself onto the roof. Planks groaned; splinters bit his palms. His notebook tumbled away. He pressed flat, belly to wood, the world narrowed to sky above and ruin below.
From this height the yard looked unreal — a child’s board game overturned and left to rot. Wolves moved with terrible precision, folding men into red clots that shimmered and stilled. He could have climbed down. He could have thrown himself into the press, planted his feet and tried to be useful. The truth pushed him to the hot roof: he had no weapon. His shovel and bucket, the only tools he was practiced with, now felt pathetic. None of his skills or powers had an answer for this.
So he lay there, pretending to be part of the roof. Breath low, slow, mechanical. Shadows crossed beneath him, prowling. A fly landed on his wrist; he let it stay. Sounds came in shards: the wet snap when a man went down, the staccato of a horn swallowed by distance, snarls, then the obscene silence of mouths on meat. Orders collapsed into noise. Sometimes he thought he heard voices he knew. Once, the high hum of a prayer cut short.
He tried to map the wolves’ hunger, counting the beats between bites, looking for a rhythm to act upon. But the pauses were not openings. They were only chewing at the hinges of possibility. He pressed his face into the wood, tasted iron, old as rust and regret. Sweat glued his hands to the board. Guilt settled in, more suffocating than the sun.
When the wolves ate their fill the noise narrowed into the methodical, remorseless sound of tearing and sucking. Shame slid through, a worm eating him from the inside.
CHALLENGE FAILED.
Madarox Outpost has fallen.
The words did not sting as much as the sight of a child’s shoe floating in a bloody puddle, ankle-length, absurdly small.
Rem waited until the sounds dulled. He slid from the roof, arms weak, the ladder groaning under his weight. Each rung accused him. The yard was a smear of red and cloth. He picked his way across slick planks, boots sliding over coagulated blood and broken rope. A hand twitched near his foot; he stepped around it as one avoided a sleeping animal.
He paused, glancing back to his trampled journal. It was too far. Spoiled. He pressed on. He passed the well, moved toward the glyph stone. The sheets, so pristine not long ago, blending into the muddy ground, almost unnoticed.
Yellow eyes caught him. The wolf lifted its head from the carcass of the healer and looked at him with eerie calm, then lowered its muzzle again. Its hunger was finished. Rem forced himself, stumbling forward.
Cold stone met his fingers at the glyph stone. He grabbed it as he might a lifeline in the ocean. Light folded, and the din of the market rose — traders calling, a cart wheel turning, voices that did not know they had been spared because they had not been where he had.
He came out empty-handed. The iron taste in his mouth would not leave. Medical teams assisted those with injuries. A pale woman with cool eyes appraised him leaving him when she found his wounds superficial.
Noah stood waiting.
Rem marked recognition in his eyes. His friend said nothing, only set an arm around Rem’s shoulders and walked him from the square. It was a long, slow walk home.
[STAR CORPS — FIELD BROADCAST: RECOGNITION REPORT]
Source: Endless Frontier Registry — Authorized for Public Relay
Seventeen new volunteers have joined the Star Corps, their ratings propelling Trash-Tier OP?! to new heights across the Rising Constellation.
The fleet grows brighter with every voice that joins the chorus.
By order of the Registry Command, the Field Medal of the First Order is hereby awarded to
1011010, Marwolaeth117, galactiqdonut, Sir Caspian, and Zerocares
for distinguished service in record-keeping and morale operations.
Their reviews strengthen the archive, their words guide future explorers.
The fleet is listening. The horizon widens.
Onward, Star Corps.
