Chloe's P.O.V.

  Chloe had stopped pretending to listen to John five minutes ago.

  The mage, still pale, still bandaged, still annoyingly pleased with himself, was rambling again about how “mages scale quadratically” compared to fighters, or something equally self-satisfied and meaningless. She didn’t understand half the terms he used, and honestly, she didn’t care. All she cared about was how utterly wrong her class choice had been.

  Professional Archivist.

  What a joke. What an absolutely cosmic joke. Yesterday, stubborn, furious at the universe, furious at the system, and furious at everyone who told her to pick something “useful”, she had doubled down and stood by what she knew. The profession she’d worked in since high school. The one that had allowed her to scrape a living doing quiet, precise desk work while accepting… occasional incentives from people who didn’t want to follow protocol.

  And here?

  Here it was worthless.

  No... worse than worthless. It chained her in place while everyone else grew stronger.

  She glanced at Marcus, the old crafter besides her, stoic as always, barely speaking unless absolutely necessary. Even he could swing a hammer harder than she could swing a spear.

  And the fighters…

  God. The fighters were terrifying already.

  But none of them impressed her powerlessness into her quite like Elias.

  She had seen everything yesterday; he’d been half-burned, battered, and screaming with pain, and still he fought that gorg mage like it was a bar fight. He had punched the thing’s face off. Literally.

  He was strong. Strong in a way she didn’t have words for. Strong in a way she could hide behind.

  And he was tall. And handsome. And those stormy eyes...

  “Is that Elias?” John’s voice cracked through her lascivious thoughts.

  Chloe snapped her head up, feeling heat rush to her face as she silently cursed herself. Great. Fantasising about the one man who’d probably never even look her way.

  She followed Jhon’s pointing hand.

  Elias was running towards the camp, weaving through the trees, tattered cloak billowing in the wind, the teenager with too many knives... Quinn? Right behind him, shouting something angrily while Elias laughed. For half a second, relief washed through her.

  Then her blood turned to ice.

  Five, no, seven gorgs lumbered into sight behind them.

  “Alarm!” Marcus bellowed, his voice surprisingly strong for his age.

  The camp reacted instantly. Fighters surged forward. Shields in hand. Spears levelled. Tom appeared moments later, limping far less than yesterday, barking orders until the scrambling formation tightened.

  Chloe’s heart hammered against her ribs. Her hands shook uselessly at her sides. There was nothing she could do, not with her pathetic class, not with her non-existent combat ability.

  Then Elias’s voice thundered from the treeline:

  “Don’t kill them! We need them alive for the ritual!”

  Kill them?

  She couldn’t even imagine killing one, let alone capturing a group of seven alive. Why was he so calm?

  Elias said something to the kid while dropping his backpack to the side. Quinn nodded once and then vanished into the foliage, slipping sideways through the trees.

  The gorgs caught up.

  The first swung its heavy club just as Elias flicked his hand; a blue projectile shot forward and blasted into the monster’s knee. The joint buckled instantly. The gorg crashed down into the dirt.

  Before the second monster even reached him, Elias slammed his mace into his own shield. Why?. But a moment later the brute shrieked and clutched at its ears, staggering. Elias stepped in and smashed its knee with sickening precision. Chloe flinched as the limb folded sideways, the sound echoing in her mind.

  A third gorg tried to cleave him from behind with a massive sword, but Elias blasted a wave of blue force into its chest. The monster stumbled backwards, barely keeping its footing. Elias fired two more bullets into its thigh, dropping it to his back.

  Three monsters downed in less than a breath.

  Her mind struggled to keep up.

  Quinn burst from the treeline then, low and swift, slicing the Achilles tendons of two different monsters before rolling away from their desperate swipes. Tendons parted. The gorgs fell, roaring, clawing at the ground as their legs failed them.

  Elias moved between the remaining two like water, barriers flaring, blue impacts shoving monsters aside, his mace cracking into bone, his shield staggering every time it was struck. Weapons dropped from hands for no reason. Monsters staggered in pain and confusion. Every movement from him was precise, intentional, and practised, as if he’d been doing this for years rather than a single day.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  By the time the camp fighters reached him, no more than a minute had passed; every one of the seven gorgs lay on the ground. Writhing. Broken. Still trying to crawl towards Elias and Quinn, furious and desperate but utterly unable to rise.

  Tom barked a quick order. The fighters moved in, smashing limbs, disabling the creatures further. The forest filled with roars and thuds and the crunch of breaking joints. It took effort, even for armed adults, but the monsters were firmly subdued.

  Chloe stared at the scene, throat dry, heart pounding so hard it hurt.

  How?

  How was this possible?

  How could two people, one man and one teenager, do what an entire group failed to do without casualties the night before?

  She didn’t know.

  She didn’t understand.

  But she knew one thing with bone-deep certainty:

  Humanity might actually survive this.

  As long as Elias was leading them.

  She looked at him, standing tall between seven crippled monsters, chest heaving, expression steady and unreadable, and something inside her anchored itself.

  She wasn’t strong. She wasn’t useful for now. She wasn’t brave.

  But she knew who she would follow if she wanted to live.

  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

  Elias's P.O.V.

  I hadn’t realised how bone-deep the fatigue had sunk in until the shouting died down and the last of the gorg was trussed up like an oversized hog. My mana felt like the thin dregs at the bottom of a glass, stubbornly sloshing but barely enough for a proper spell. Still—two more levels. Every skill levelled at least twice. And Arcane Bullet evolved into Arcane Piercing Bullet. A small push, but noticeable. Practical. A clean puncture rather than a simple impact.

  The achievement really was paying dividends already.

  Tom kept staring at me like I’d grown a second head. Some of the others too, fighters who, yesterday, looked at gorgs like death wearing fur and teeth. Now they were looking at Quinn and me like we were the ones to be wary of.

  I’d take the respect. It cemented my place, at least.

  We still had to drag the damn monsters to the clearing, though. Seven of them, big, heavy bastards. At least I didn’t have to haul them down the mountain by myself. I’d have exhausted myself despite my stats. Adrenaline was fading fast, leaving behind that strange hollow buzz of tiredness after the fighting.

  Tom jogged up besides me, wiping sweat from his brow as we looped rope around a gorg’s ankles.

  “Elias, man,” he said, voice pitched somewhere between disbelief and accusation, “what in the hell happened out there? Quinn said you found their nest?”

  I chuckled under my breath. “Nest” is one word for it. More like a midden pit someone carved into a cave. Bones everywhere. Paint on the walls. Smelled something fierce too...”

  One of the fighters whistled low. “And you two just walked in?”

  “I walked in, Quinn sneaked in, killed a few, got noticed, killed a few more… then decided dragging them one by one back here would be too much of a hassle.” I tightened the rope around a particularly stout gorg. “We made them chase us instead. Much easier to lead the idiots downhill than haul them.”

  “Gods,” Tom muttered. “You two did all that alone?”

  “Quinn did half the work,” I said, because it was true. “Kid’s fast. Stabbed more of them than I did. Levelled up for it.”

  That made a ripple of murmurs pass through the group: approval, envy, and awe.

  Good. Let them talk. Let them think.

  They dragged the unconscious gorgs across the clearing, leaving deep grooves in the dirt. Rhea was already moving around like a woman possessed, directing men with curt, precise gestures. Lines of chalk formed spirals, intersecting runes, and branching sigils. Someone had lit bundles of herbs that filled the air with thick, acrid smoke. Salt glittered in trenches carved into the earth, connecting the entire design like veins.

  She didn’t even look up when we approached, just snapped, “There... lay that one there. And keep its head facing the centre, thank you very much.”

  I sat for a moment first, letting my legs rest. I downed half a waterskin, scarfed a ration bar, and immediately felt the curse tug at me, an internal tightening, like a leash trying to drag me forward.

  Fine. Fine. I got up.

  Rhea was bent over the central ring when I approached, muttering to herself while sprinkling finely crushed bone dust. I set the soaked, dripping bag of hearts besides her. Blood leaked in thin red trails down the leather.

  She froze mid-motion. Slowly, she turned and checked the bag.

  “…You brought nine hearts.” Her voice trembled, not with fear but with something like reverent awe. “And seven alive. All seven are in good health too. I-I thought maybe two or three, but this... this is…” She clapped both hands over her mouth and practically vibrated. “Oh, this is marvellous.”

  I was starting to get while she got the ritualist class offered as a starting class.

  “Messy, but marvellous,” I agreed dryly. “Will nine help?”

  “I only need seven,” she breathed, gently lifting the bag as if it were some holy artefact. “Seven sacrifices for seven lines. But with this many living subjects… the ritual will stabilise beautifully. The flow will be so much cleaner. We may even be able to reinforce the outer ring—oh spirits, I can actually attempt it...”

  Spirits?

  She spun away, muttering delightedly, already sketching new sigils into the dirt.

  I had no idea what any of this meant. Honestly, it looked like someone had dropped a dictionary of symbols onto the ground and let the wind sort it out. But Rhea seemed confident. And she hadn’t got anyone killed yet. That counted for something.

  “Good work,” I told her. “Finish your preparations. I’ll go check the wounded.”

  She waved distractedly, eyes wild with zeal.

  I found Mary asleep, slumped against a tree, exhaustion creasing her features. Good, she needed the rest.

  Alya was awake when I knelt besides her, though barely. Her half-lidded eyes tracked me sluggishly. A soft grunt escaped her every few breaths, pain, constant and grinding. Yet underneath it, a spark of defiance still glowed stubbornly.

  “Hold on just a bit longer,” I murmured, wiping sweat from her brow with a cloth. “Rhea’s almost done. You’ll be cured soon.”

  Why did I care? Why was I this invested? Was it something about her? Some skill she had? Was it the curse pushing me? Or something else entirely, some flicker in me that hadn’t been smothered yet?

  I couldn’t tell. But I’d gained too much from this quest to complain.

  Quinn’s evolution had confirmed a suspicion I’d already been considering: level 10 was a threshold. A really important one. Already one of my achievements hinted that there was stuff to accomplish before hitting it. Crossing it at the wrong time meant missing out on achievements… or something more.

  He’d hit level 10 in the cave, cutting through more gorg than me. And his class evolved for it.

  That was good for him, but it also meant I needed to be careful. I was level 8, maybe brushing level 9 after everything. I didn’t want to hit 10 yet. And there was a particular reason for that. Quinn scouted the cave and told me of a big bastard of a gorg, bigger and stronger than the others, their leader probably, a boss monster as he called it. That one… I felt it in my bones. Killing it before I crossed that threshold would give me something big.

  Something important.

  I stood, rolling my shoulders as the curse crept back in. The clearing pulsed with ritual energy now.

  I moved to help her, stepping between lines of chalk and salt as she pointed out spots to adjust, hearts to position and herbs to light on fire.

  This was going to be... interesting.

  And then, afterwards, after the ritual cured Alya and the other wounded, I would return to that cave.

  And kill the boss.

  I already had a plan for that.