The rhythmic, blood-slicked momentum of my western ridge hunt came to a sudden halt as the crisp mountain air carried a familiar, deep vibration up through the basalt bedrock. A kilometre below my current position, past the jagged obsidian outcrops, the natural acoustics of the volcanic valley were funnelling a chaotic roar of frantic shouts and heavy, low-angle metallic impacts straight up into the crags.
My perfect combat memory instantly pulled up the structural layout of the entire wilderness perimeter.
Directly below me lay the western bottleneck—a narrow, treacherous pass where two towering rock walls leaned together, creating a natural defensive chokepoint barely wide enough for three men to march abreast. In the old timeline, the arrogant heirs of House Aethelgard had casually laughed by the campfire about how they deliberately drove the unconditioned commoner candidates into this exact dead end, allowing the mature D-Rank tribal packs to harvest their registration tokens for the lower grunt draftee quotas.
Lysander had parted ways with the main commoner mob at the valley entrance, following the precise high-ground route I had quietly instructed him to take. But he didn't possess my historical knowledge. He was marching straight into a pre-arranged noble ambush vector, entirely blind to the fact that his path was about to collide with a coordinated hunting pack.
I didn't waste a single breath. Moving with optimal kinetic efficiency, I stepped off the high ledge, my flat twenty-five agility attribute locking my frame into a state of fluid, weightless velocity. My boots cut clean, silent shapes through the grey rim-frost as I descended the steep basalt chimney, dropping three hundred metres through the dead pine canopy in a matter of minutes to intercept the coordinates of the chokepoint before the noble trap could snap shut.
When I slid into the shadow of the rear rock face, the narrow pass was already a blood-slicked arena.
Lysander stood dead centre in the middle of the narrow pass, his heavy, iron-rimmed vanguard shield locked onto his left forearm. The freezing northern wind funnelled through the tight gap with a violent, whistling screech, whipping loose gravel across his boots.
"They're coming back," Lysander muttered, his breath pluming into a thick white cloud that was instantly torn away by the gale. He adjusted his stance, his boots driving into the slick frost to anchor his core base against the incline. His knuckles were raw, the metal surface of his newly claimed shield already covered in deep, jagged gouges from the initial impact of the pack. His physical durability talent worked silently beneath his canvas tunic, his muscle fibres tightening and thickening to absorb the heavy kinetic vibration running up his arm.
Further down the slope, the heavy, chaotic crunch of frantic footsteps echoed off the stone.
Five provincial candidates came scrambling through the mist, their unpolished iron weapons held at loose, sloppy angles as they fled the dark tree line below. They had abandoned the central ravine after their formation collapsed, fleeing blindly toward the high ground only to trap themselves inside the vertical terrain. Their rough woollen cloaks were torn, their faces white with raw, unvarnished panic as they saw the massive, armoured gate behind us was sealed.
"Hold the line and form a base, fools!" Lysander barked, his voice dropping into a deep, authoritative baritone that cut through their panicked shouts. He slammed the bottom edge of his iron shield into the frozen gravel, the heavy impact letting out a dull, ringing thud that echoed across the crags. "Stop running and get behind my left flank!"
The candidates didn't listen. They scrambled past his shield like frantic cattle, desperate to crawl further up the basalt ledge, entirely blind to the fact that their retreat had dragged the hunters straight to our position.
Emerging from the grey fog of the pine border came a compact, highly organized hunting pack. Six low-slung humanoids surged over the frozen rocks, their corded green muscles glistening with grease and dark mud. They didn't scream or make loud, erratic movements like the main candidate mob; they moved with low-angle, predatory coordination. Three carried long, jagged spears tipped with poisoned flint, while the remaining three held rusted iron shortswords, their needle-like yellow teeth bared in silent anticipation of the slaughter.
Goblin Hunter
Level 5
HP: 340 / 340
Goblin Hunter
Level 5
HP: 340 / 340
Goblin Skirmisher
Level 6
HP: 410 / 410
The raw text lines stacked cleanly across my sight as I stepped out from the deep shadows of the rear basalt wall, my light iron shortsword held loosely at my side.
The Level 6 skirmisher in the rear was directing the line, its long, pointed ears twitching as it signalled the hunters to widen their flanks to encircle Lysander's shield base. In my past life, an eighteen-year-old candidate holding an uncalibrated iron shield against a coordinated Level 6 pack would have faced immediate skeletal fracture. But Lysander's baseline resilience was different. He didn't over-commit his shoulders or break his base. As the first two Goblin hunters lunged forward with their spears, he executed a flawless kinetic block.
He absorbed the heavy thrusts directly through the centre of his iron-rimmed shield, his knees flexing smoothly to distribute the massive shock wave down through his heels and straight into the mountain bedrock. The poisoned flint points scraped harshly against the metal lining with a shower of orange sparks, but the shield didn't waver an inch.
"Astraeus, now!" Lysander roared, his jaw tight as he maintained the crushing block.
I cleared the distance behind his shoulder in a fraction of a second, my movements executing zero civilian hesitation. My light iron shortsword cleared the line of his shield in a crisp, horizontal stroke. The tip of my blade didn't hack blindly at their reinforced leather armour; it slid with surgical precision right through the soft throat tissue of the first hunter, severing the jugular before the creature could even alter its weight.
The monster's yellow eyes rolled back instantly, its frame collapsing flat against the dark gravel.
Because Lysander had absorbed one hundred percent of the creature's forward momentum and locked its spear in place, the system calculated the tactical engagement as a joint execution, splitting the essence according to our relative physical contribution.
[+60 XP]
The notification rolled behind my eyelids, my current total experience scaling cleanly to exactly [+410 XP] as I redirected my momentum. The second hunter tried to wrench its spear back, but my left hand executed a sudden, high-velocity palm strike directly to its elbow joint, fracturing the bone structure and forcing an involuntary neurological release reflex. As the weapon clattered to the stone, my iron shortsword came down in a single, vertical thrust, piercing the thin skin between its cervical vertebrae to drop its health pool to absolute zero.
[+60 XP]
The total metric updated instantly to [+470 XP], the cold furnace behind my ribs tightening as the ambient temperature inside the narrow chokepoint dropped by another noticeable margin. Thin rings of white frost webbed out from my leather boots, the independent feral presence of my companion entity pulsing with a low, sub-vocal hum of raw satisfaction as it tasted the essence of the hunt.
The remaining four Goblins froze, their primitive minds completely shattered by the instant, bloodless execution of their frontline. The Level 6 skirmisher let out a high-pitched, guttural screech, its fingers frantically turning its rusted shortsword over as it tried to re-align its remaining hunters into a defensive wedge.
"Hold the pass, Lysander," I muttered quietly, my voice flat, keeping my expression entirely locked behind an unreadable military wall. "The skirmisher is trying to sacrifice the flanks to secure a retreat. Don't let them clear the gap."
Lysander didn't waste a single gesture. Moving with optimal efficiency, he drove his massive iron-rimmed shield forward like a battering ram, the heavy metal face slamming directly into the chest of the nearest hunter before it could organize its footing. The mechanical leverage threw the monster's centre of gravity completely off balance, pinning its torso flat against the jagged crags while I stepped inside the blind spot to finish the sequence.