Chapter 60: Close Call

The steel trench dagger sank to the crossguard into the soft throat patch directly beneath the monster’s lower jaw.

The beast thrashed wildly, its heavy tail whipping against the side of the SUV and denting the door panel, before its legs went slack. Kael wrenched the blade free and shoved the carcass off him, letting it thud lifelessly onto the tarmac.

Breathing hard through his teeth, Kael immediately dropped to one knee beside the security officer.

"Can you put weight on that leg?" Kael asked quickly.

The guard stared up at him, wide-eyed, then looked at the two dead beasts bleeding on the pavement before giving a jerky nod. "S-sprained knee, I think. Nothing broken."

"Stay tucked behind the engine block," Kael ordered, tapping the transmit button on his shoulder comm with his bloodied left hand. "Squad 7 Lead, this is Ashford at the Depot 12 loading intersection! Two scavengers down, one site security officer injured with limited mobility! Requesting immediate medical evac and combat support!"

For half a second, there was only static on the line, followed by Robert Hale’s stunned, gravelly bark.

"Wait—did you say two down?! Ashford, confirm your status!"

"Bleeding from the left forearm, bruised ribs, still mobile," Kael reported tersely, rising from behind the axle and scanning the smoke-filled street. "Civilians are moving toward the southern barrier, sir."

"Did you engage those things alone?!"

"They were on top of the civilians and a downed guard, sir. Didn’t have a choice."

"Damn it, rookie—hold your ground right behind that truck! I’m ninety seconds out! Do NOT pursue the third contact!"

"Copy that, I’m—"

The words died in Kael’s throat.

Forty yards down the avenue, near the concrete loading ramp where the civilians had fled, the third scavenger hadn’t retreated into the alleys. Drawn by the sound of running footsteps, it had circled wide around a stack of shipping pallets and was now charging straight toward the rear of the evacuation group.

Lucas stood at the tail end of the ramp, ushering the last warehouse worker behind a concrete bollard. Hearing the scrape of claws on asphalt, the young F-rank spun around, raising his iron baton in trembling hands—only for his heel to catch on a chunk of broken curb.

Lucas went down hard on his back, his baton skittering across the concrete out of reach.

The scavenger was fifteen yards away and closing fast.

Kael didn’t think about his torn forearm, his aching ribs, or the ninety seconds it would take Robert Hale to clear the corner. In ninety seconds, Lucas would be dead, and the four civilians behind that ramp would be next.

Kael tore down the center of the street at a dead sprint.

Every stride sent a fresh bolt of fire through his side, and warm blood dripped from the fingertips of his left hand, leaving a trail of dark droplets across the lit pavement. He knew his left arm was too sluggish to parry another direct charge, and his legs were already heavy with lactic acid.

Thirty feet.

"Lucas! Roll left!" Kael roared at the top of his lungs, pulling the spare flare tube from his belt with his bleeding hand and hurling it like a stone straight at the beast’s snout.

The metal cylinder bounced off the scavenger’s brow plate just as Lucas scrambled desperately to his left behind the bollard.

Enraged, the beast skidded slightly on the loose gravel, snapping its head around to find Kael hurtling straight into its path ten feet away.

With a guttural snarl, it abandoned the boy on the ground and lunged at Kael.

Kael dropped his center of gravity at the very last instant, throwing himself into a low, sliding sidestep as the beast sailed over his ducked shoulder. Two razor-sharp hind claws ripped clean through the back of his canvas jacket—slicing the fabric open without quite reaching his spine—as Kael lashed out horizontally with his dagger.

The steel edge bit deep into the exposed tendon at the back of the monster’s right hind leg.

The scavenger hit the tarmac with a howl as its hamstrung leg buckled underneath it, sending it skidding across the lane into a stack of wooden crates.

Kael didn’t rush in blindly to finish it. Keeping his boots wide, he backed off two paces to create breathing room, shifting the blood-slick hilt of his dagger tightly in his right palm as his chest heaved for air.

Splinters flew as the wounded beast hauled itself out of the smashed crates, dragging its ruined back leg. Its yellow eyes were bloodshot with fury, foam dripping from its blackened gums.

Kael’s arms were trembling visibly now, the muscles in his shoulders burning like hot wire.

Come on, Kael thought, his Resonance-sharpened gaze locked onto the creature’s intact left hind leg as it coiled to spring one last time. One clean line. That’s all I need.

With a shriek, the scavenger launched itself forward in a low, desperate bound.

Kael pivoted right to clear its jaws, lifting his injured left arm instinctively to keep his balance—only for the torn muscle in his forearm to spasm half a beat too slow.

The heavy bone plate on the beast’s shoulder caught Kael square in the left collarbone.

The impact lifted him off his boots and slammed his back violently against the corner of the concrete loading ramp. Breath exploded from Kael’s mouth in a red mist, black spots dancing across the edges of his vision as he slid down the concrete to one knee.

Five feet away, the crippled scavenger whipped around, dragging its hind leg as it opened its jaws to tear his face off.

For one cold, suffocating fraction of a second, as Kael struggled to force air back into his bruised lungs, a dark thought flickered through his skull: Did I push too far?

"KAEL!" Lucas’s terrified shout echoed from behind the bollard.

The beast lunged downward for his neck.

Kael didn’t try to stand. Bracing his spine flat against the concrete ramp behind him, he planted his right boot into the asphalt, twisted his torso six inches to the side as the snapping jaws slammed into the concrete right beside his ear, and used the monster’s own downward momentum against it.

With a guttural roar from deep in his chest, Kael drove the trench dagger straight up to the hilt into the soft, pulsing gap beneath the creature’s overlapping shoulder plates—and twisted the blade with everything he had left.

Hot, dark blood gushed over his knuckles.

The scavenger went rigid, gave one violent convulsion that scraped its claws across the concrete, and collapsed sideways onto the pavement, dead before its head hit the tar.

For three long seconds, the only sound on the road was the harsh, ragged rasp of Kael’s breathing and the distant chop of helicopter blades overhead.

Slowly, painfully, Kael let his head lean back against the cold concrete of the ramp, staring down at the three carcasses littering the fifty-yard stretch of asphalt.

His left sleeve was soaked crimson from elbow to wrist. His collarbone throbbed like a struck bell, and every breath felt like inhaling broken glass. He had taken hits a properly trained C-rank would have dodged without breaking a sweat—hard, ugly reminders that raw strength and fatherly resolve weren’t a substitute for actual martial technique.

Still, when he forced himself up onto his feet, bracing a hand against the concrete wall, he was the one standing.

He looked over the bollard at Lucas. "You in one piece?"

Lucas was staring at him as if he’d just grown a second head, his chest heaving. "I—yeah. Not a scratch. You just... you saved my life, man."

Kael looked down at his shredded jacket and bleeding arm, letting out a dry, breathless wheeze that almost sounded like a laugh. "Wouldn’t call it a textbook rescue. Mostly I was just trying not to end up as dog food."

Lucas let out a shaky, hysterical laugh, scrubbing a hand over his pale face. "Still counts in my book."

Before Kael could sheath his bloodied dagger, the heavy crunch of armored boots echoed from the eastern corner. Four veteran hunters in full combat gear rounded the intersection at a dead run, weapons drawn and mana flaring around their blades—only to skid to a halt as they took in the scene.

At the head of the group, Robert Hale stopped dead in his tracks.

The scarred C-rank veteran stared first at the dead scavenger by the overturned SUV, then at the second carcass beside the axle where the injured guard was waving them over, and finally at the third beast lying in a pool of blood at Kael’s boots.

Slowly, Robert lowered his massive cleaver sword and stalked over to Kael, his face dark with a mixture of fury and sheer disbelief.

"Have you completely lost your goddamn mind, rookie?!" Robert roared.

Kael blinked through the sweat stinging his eyes and straightened his posture as best he could. "Sir?"

"Your orders were outer evacuation support, not soloing a three-pack of armored scavengers with an eight-inch pig-sticker!" Robert barked, gesturing sharply at the dead beasts. "What part of ’wait for the heavy strike team’ sounded optional to you?!"

"The first two had a security guard pinned with a blown knee and four civilians in the open lane, sir," Kael answered calmly, keeping his voice steady despite the tremor in his aching arm. "And the third one had Lucas on his back before you cleared the block."

Robert snapped his mouth shut. He glared down at Kael, then shifted his gaze to the security guard being helped up by two D-ranks, and finally to Lucas, who was nodding furiously behind the bollard with wide, grateful eyes.

The veteran C-rank let out a long, rough breath through his nose, some of the volcanic anger draining out of his scarred face, replaced by a grim, begrudging weight.

"Look at those carcasses," Robert muttered, stepping closer and dropping his voice so only Kael could hear. "Clean kill shots through the neck gap and the shoulder seam—with a basic steel trench knife. I know five-year D-ranks who would have panicked and lost an arm against three of these at once. Still, you ate at least three heavy hits doing it. One inch to the left on that shoulder impact and we’d be zipping you into a bag right now."

Kael looked down at his bloodied sleeve. "I know, sir."

"Do you?" Robert fixed him with a hard stare. "Because Marcus told me to keep you in one piece, and right now you look like you went three rounds with a meat grinder."

He didn’t wait for Kael to reply, turning instead to wave down an approaching armored ambulance at the southern barrier.

"Get your ass into that medical transport right now, Ashford," Robert ordered gruffly. "The strike teams have the sector locked down from here. You’re done for the night."

Kael didn’t argue. As two field medics hurried over with a trauma kit and guided him toward the rear of the ambulance, Kael looked back down the avenue one last time.

The four warehouse workers and Arthur the machinist were climbing safely aboard the evacuation bus behind the police line. The injured security officer was up on a stretcher, and Lucas was alive.

Only when the heavy doors of the medical transport swung shut behind him did Kael finally let his shoulders drop.

An hour later, the forward triage tent at the Association’s staging compound was packed to capacity.

The sharp scent of antiseptic and iodine hung thick in the air as medics in surgical gloves moved briskly between cots, stitching lacerations, setting dislocated shoulders, and monitoring hunters suffering from mana exhaustion.

Kael sat shirtless on the edge of a cot near the rear canvas wall, his teeth clenched slightly as a no-nonsense field medic finished putting six neat stitches into the gash on his left forearm before wrapping it tightly in sterile white gauze.

"Count yourself lucky, kid," the woman said, pressing a cold regeneration pack against the dark purple contusion blooming across his left collarbone and ribs. "Claws missed the radial artery and the tendons by half a centimeter, and your ribs are only bruised, not cracked. Whatever hit you had enough mass to snap a normal F-rank’s collarbone in two."

Kael winced as the cooling gel bit into his bruised skin. "I’ve definitely had quieter evenings."

"Yeah, well, try not to make my tent a regular stop on your schedule," she said dryly, jotting a note on his chart. "Stay on that cot for another thirty minutes so I can make sure you don’t have a delayed concussion. After that, you’re cleared to go home."

"Thank you, ma’am."

Once she moved on to the next curtain, Kael sat quietly on the edge of the mattress, staring down at the clean white bandages wrapped around his forearm.

Now that the combat dump was completely over, his right hand—the one that had held the dagger—was trembling with a fine, persistent tremor.

He closed his fingers into a slow fist, watching the knuckles whiten.

Out on that street, when the third beast had slammed him into the concrete ramp, he had come within a hair’s breadth of never seeing his wife and son again. Not because he lacked strength or speed—his raw stats had been the only thing that kept his bones from snapping—but because his footwork was amateurish, his guard had dropped when he was tired, and he hadn’t known how to manage multiple angles of attack without trading flesh for position.

As he sat there taking stock of his mistakes, a familiar translucent blue panel shimmered into view just in front of his eyes.

[Family Man System]

[Emergency Family Quest Initiated & Updated: Return to the Family Waiting for You.]

[Task Description: Your family is counting on you to walk back through that door. In the midst of crisis, protect those in immediate peril without succumbing to reckless vanity, adhere to operational discipline, and ensure your own survival.]

[Objectives:][1. Assist in the safe evacuation of civilians. (Completed)][2. Neutralize immediate lethal threats to your sector without abandoning your charges. (Completed)][3. Cooperate with command personnel and submit to medical triage. (In Progress)][4. Return home alive to your family. (Pending)]

[Primary Reward: $15,000][Additional Reward: Family Bond Resonance — Proficiency Increased]