Chapter 107: Sparring at the Grounds, the Bounty Board, and the Hunt for the Leshy

Morning fog drifted low over the cracked granite flagstones of the training grounds behind the manor. The scent of damp pine needles, the crisp bite of the dawn chill, and the aroma of freshly brewed mountain herbs hung in the bracing air. On the covered terrace, leaning their forearms against the dark wooden railing, sat the manor's VIP lounge. Elena set a tray of steaming clay mugs and a platter of Mina’s fresh butter biscuits onto the table. Luthia crossed her legs, leafing through an expense ledger, little Ria rested her chin in her hands with a cheeky smirk, while Kaede in her miniature form munched on a crispy wafer atop Shnee’s shoulder.

"I give Karys three minutes before Dave simply shoulder-checks her into the moss," Ria murmured, taking a slow sip of tea.

"You overestimate her patience," Elena replied calmly, adjusting her cuff. "Karys will move in the first second. She doesn't know how to stand still when holding weapons."

Down on the training yard, Dave stood with his hands resting casually at his sides. He took no pompous combat stance. He wore simple, dark training trousers and a black sleeveless shirt that left his forearms bare. Secured diagonally across his back in a double leather harness rested Raiten-matte black damascus steel housing the dark-sapphire Kaelar Core in its perpendicular crossguard and the carved, geometric Lynx pommel. Facing him ten paces away stood Karys. The wolf-girl crouched low on bent knees, twirling a pair of curved black daggers looted from the hundredth-floor vault. Her supple, whip-like tail cut through the cool air with predatory, coiled impatience.

"No holding back, Dave," she grinned, flashing a white fang in a fierce combat smirk. "We test that new toy of yours until sparks fly!"

"Whenever you're ready, Karys," he replied with an easy, warm smile.

The wolf-girl didn't wait a fraction of a second.

The sole of her boot drove into the damp moss. The granite cracked with a dry, barely audible snap, and her acceleration was instantaneous. Karys dissolved into a streak of shadow, skimming millimeters above the flagstones. Dave didn't even cock his arm. A minimalist hip rotation in the Lynx Footwork let her opening crossed slash glide past his chest. Rebounding spring-like off a vertical pillar behind him, Karys unleashed a lightning barrage of straight thrusts aimed at his throat and plexus.

Dave's thumb soundlessly disengaged the scabbard latch. Raiten slid out with a velvety hiss. Dave didn't swing-he simply positioned the heavy obsidian blade directly onto her attack vector.

CLANG!

The dark daggers struck the black blade at a ninety-degree angle. A shower of silver sparks erupted into the dawn air. Regular steel would have chimed in agony, sending vibrations through the wrists, but Raiten's dense alloy absorbed the kinetic momentum in a fraction of a second without budging a millimeter.

"Decent density..." Dave muttered, rotating the blade thirty degrees to slide Karys's daggers downward.

The wolf-girl hissed, losing her footing, but in that exact split second, the air before Dave fractured in a silvery flash.

Shnee.

Without the slightest wind-up or telegraphing, the slender rapier of Celestial Silver drove forward along a flawless straight line toward his right shoulder. The thrust was clean, surgical, and utterly silent. Dave didn't attempt to parry the rapier with heavy obsidian. He utilized the Lynx Footwork-shifting his weight to his heel and tilting his torso back by a palm's breadth, letting the elf's blade whistle over his shirt.

"Beautiful synchronization," he commended calmly, locking the rapier's return path with Raiten's vertical guard.

Karys seized the opening immediately. Leaping up from below, she carved a sweeping arc from the right while Shnee instantly followed up with a triple thrust along the axis of his chest. The two pillars of the manor moved as a single organism-no words, no hesitation, forcing Dave into constant plane shifts of defense.

Dave narrowed his eye. A micro-spark of sapphire flickered down his right arm. An impulse of will surged through the hilt directly into Raiten's lattice. The Celtic runes along the fuller ignited with electric blue, and the Kaelar Core vibrated with a deep bass hum. Dave struck the flat of Raiten against the tip of Shnee’s rapier-a wave of kinetic repulsion deflected the elf's weapon half a meter sideways. Shnee felt her arm momentarily numb from the micro-discharge, driving her back two rapid paces.

Karys leaped over her shoulder, descending with both daggers aimed at Dave’s exposed head.

Then Dave did something neither of them expected.

He opened his right hand.

Raiten slipped from his grip, falling vertically downward toward the ground. In that exact microsecond, Dave ducked beneath Karys's slash, dropping his center of gravity. A short, zero-distance palm strike in the Quick style caught the wolf-girl in her shoulder plexus. The blow instantly reset the neural impulses in her arm-the daggers slipped from her fingers, and Karys tumbled across the granite, losing her balance.

Raiten was still falling freely through the air, rotating handle-down a meter above the stone.

Shnee, seeing Dave disarmed, closed the distance in a flash, driving a decisive rapier lunge straight toward his left flank.

Dave didn't even glance her way. He simply extended his right hand to the side and spread his fingers.

Pulse on the Astral Anchor Rune.

BOOOOM!

A violent, dry sonic boom tore through the morning silence. The falling sword's downward momentum was torn apart in a fraction of a millisecond. The heavy magnetic obsidian blade halted dead in mid-air, whipped around with a roaring whistle of displaced atmosphere, and blasted straight into Dave's open palm, locking into his grip like a homing missile.

CLASH!

Raiten's blade materialized right between Dave's flank and the point of Shnee's rapier. The silver blade struck the black obsidian a millimeter from his shirt. The pressure wave from the weapon's return was so immense that Shnee's rapier froze in place, and the expanding gust blew away the morning fog within a ten-meter radius.

Silence.

Karys sat on the granite five paces away, massaging her numbed shoulder and staring at Dave with wide pupils. Shnee stood frozen, her rapier pressed against Raiten's blade, her chest heaving with rapid breaths and a single silver lock falling over her brow.

Dave spun the sword in his palm, extinguishing the sapphire runes, and with a fluid motion slid it back into the scabbard on his back. CLICK.

Up on the terrace, Ria slowly set down her tea mug.

"Alright," she muttered with a broad grin. "That sword recall move is just plain illegal."

Elena smiled faintly, closing her ledger.

"Noticeable improvement, girls," Dave evaluated calmly, rolling his neck. "Karys, on the low counter you open your left flank too much during the hip rotation. Shnee, your reaction to the magnetic pulse was good, but you still rely too heavily on the rapier's sheer speed in close quarters. Overall... I'm proud of you two."

Karys pushed herself off the ground, dusting moss from her trousers. She sized him up with predatory eyes, a fierce grin showing off a single white fang:

"Proud, huh? Doesn't take much to make you proud, boss."

"Just not dying during basic exchanges," Dave shot back with a light smile.

Before they could clear the yard, the clatter of hooves echoed from the manor gate. A young messenger in the gray coat bearing Silas's wax seal leaped from the saddle, panting heavily and holding out a sealed parchment from the Sworn Guild.

"Master Dave!" the boy called out. "Master Silas said to deliver this immediately! Contracts from the Bounty Board in Downtown!"

Dave broke the wax seal, scanning the lines of black ink. The girls walked down from the terrace, gathering around him.

"What did Silas dig up?" Elena asked.

"Over the past few weeks, the trade routes around Crossgard have turned into a proper mess," Dave explained, slipping the scroll into his pocket. "Regional wild beasts and forest monsters have begun brazenly paralyzing merchant routes. Convoys are stranded, and the Sworn Guild has posted hefty official bounties. Time to see how Raiten cuts live meat in the field."

Half an hour later, they reached Downtown Crossgard.

Dave walked down the center of the cobbled avenue in his tailored dark trench coat. Raiten rested securely between his shoulder blades in its double harness. In accordance with the passive habit forged over months in the wilderness under Sensei, a subtle optical camouflage engaged across his retinas-deflecting light just enough to mask the dangerous sapphire glow of his irises, giving them the appearance of an ordinary, matte blue. To any urban observer, he looked simply like an overly relaxed mercenary carrying fine steel. Beside him walked Shnee and Karys, with watchful Kaede perched on the elf's left pauldron.

The headquarters of the Sworn Guild was housed in a massive edifice of dressed stone. Inside reigned a cool gloom smelling of old parchment, ale, and melted wax. The great hall was packed with mercenaries and scarred veterans clustered around the central wall-a massive ironwood board topped with the Gold Seal.

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As the trio crossed the threshold, conversations within several meters noticeably hushed. Shnee's silvery rapier and Karys's predatory gait commanded immediate respect, but it was Dave's relaxed demeanor and the absence of any perceptible traditional mana aura that triggered quiet cognitive dissonance among the veterans.

"Look at that pretty boy..." a one-eyed spearman muttered against the wall. "Looks like he stepped straight out of a noble salon, yet carries steel worth a garrison's yearly budget."

Dave ignored the murmurs, walking straight to the board. Pinned right in the center were three official bounties issued by the Merchant Guild and Trade Route Administration.

"Leshy of the Black Ravine," Dave read aloud with amused nonchalance. "Paralyzing timber logging, controlling forest wolf packs. Reward: fifteen silver marks. Right beside it: Wodnik of the Riverbed. Sunk two timber rafts, drowned bargemen. Reward: twenty silver marks. And the icing on the cake: Bies of the Halgard Route. Thirty silver marks for ramming palisades and smashing wagons."

"Classic witcher contracts," Shnee noted, indicating the wax seals. "Natural regional fauna and ancient forest demons. Regular guards refuse to enter those sectors without a full battalion."

"And that's why they'll pay in hard silver without haggling," Dave summarized.

Reaching out, he tore all three parchments off the wall in one smooth motion. A local party captain standing nearby opened his mouth to object, but met Shnee's icy glare and swallowed his words in silence.

At the registration desk, a young clerk in wire-rimmed glasses looked at the torn notices, then up at Dave.

"Mr... Dave?" she asked, checking the registry ledger. Her quill trembled slightly. "The Bies and the Leshy are classified as Rank-A threats. They require a full company with vanguard shieldbearers and alchemical support..."

"We're taking them as a party of three," Dave replied calmly, placing his registration card stamped with Silas's Gray Trails seal onto the counter. "Please stamp the papers and hand over the sector coordinates."

The woman inspected the broker's immaculate papers, swallowed any further objections, and brought the brass stamp down with a heavy, dull thud of red ink.

Exiting into the sunny square, Dave sensed a subtle shift on the upper gallery through his Yomi. In the shadow of a stone column stood an Inquisition agent in a dark gray coat bearing the brass Scales and Sword crest, hurriedly jotting down notes while staring at Raiten's pommel. Dave didn't break his stride-he simply sent upward a cool, hard glance carrying a subtle kinetic pressure, causing the agent to instinctively recoil into the column's shadow and slam his notebook shut.

"Church tail?" Karys asked quietly, adjusting the daggers at her waist.

"Small fry," Dave replied curtly. "Let them take notes as long as they don't get under our feet. We're moving out to the Black Ravine. Time to see how the old forest dweller takes to visitors."

The scent of damp moss, decaying leaves, and pine resin struck their nostrils with an intensity absent within city walls. The Black Ravine, stretching northwest of Crossgard's borders, lived up to its name. Stunted oaks and dense spruce formed a tangled canopy overhead, casting a somber, brooding shadow across the forest floor.

Shnee and Karys led the way. They moved with a fluidity honed during months on the dungeon's deepest floors. The Celestial Silver rapier rested at the elf's hip, her pale eyes sweeping the thickets with fencing precision. Karys prowled beside her, knees slightly bent, hands resting near her daggers, her tail swaying gently to catch air currents.

A dozen paces behind them trailed Dave.

The manor's leader kept his hands shoved deep into his trench coat pockets, whistling softly as he hopped over fallen trunks with the casual air of a weekend stroller.

"Dave, focus," Shnee called over her shoulder, though amusement tugged at the corners of her mouth. "This is an ancient, untamed forest. The scent of wild beasts is everywhere."

"I am focused, princess," he called back cheerfully. "Sonar shows zero humans for a mile, a bunch of squirrels, and... oh."

Dave stopped in his tracks. Two yards off the trail, amidst a thicket of elderberries, massive shaggy silhouettes materialized.

Three huge timber wolves, taller at the shoulder than a full-grown stag, glared at them from the shadows with hungry, feral eyes. Saliva dripped from their jowls, and their bristling gray fur stood on end. Any ordinary mercenary would have drawn steel and locked shields.

Dave, however, spread his feet, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled at the top of his lungs with a radiant, childlike grin:

"Holy crap! Look at those cute forest doggos!"

Shnee froze mid-step, while Karys slowly turned her head, staring at him like he had lost his mind.

"Dave... those are predatory timber wolves-" Karys began, but Dave was already reaching out his hands.

"Come here, puppy! Come on, boy! Come let me scratch you behind the ears!" Dave took two eager strides toward the bushes.

The wolves, instead of lunging for his throat, collided with absolute absurdity. Their feral survival instincts registered the sheer mass radiating from Dave's body-a tonnage so suffocating that the air around him felt dense as liquid lead. Rather than attacking, the three apex predators whimpered, tucked their tails between their legs, and bolted in desperate flight into the dense undergrowth.

"Wait! Hey! Don't be like that! I just wanted to pet you!" Dave shouted, taking off at a brisk jog into the bushes after the fleeing pack, snapping branches with loud crashes.

Shnee let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"He actually ran off to chase wolves..." Karys burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter, resting her hands on her knees. "I can't with this man. Wolves fleeing in terror from a human!"

"Boss has a dog phase again," Kaede's voice crackled from Shnee's shoulder in their Polish operational code. "Operational status: wolves climbing trees, leader acting like a forest idiot."

Little did they know that dozens of yards above, hidden within the crown of an ancient oak, the master of this forest was watching the entire scene.

The Leshy.

A ten-foot monstrosity woven from twisted trunks, tangled roots, and a colossal stag skull with massive antlers stood motionless. The beast possessed no human intellect, but it held raw territorial instinct. When it looked at Dave, its primal senses recoiled in horror-the destructive presence radiating from the man felt like a walking meteor. The Leshy reached a swift verdict: That entity cannot be killed. But those two females beside him... they are made of flesh and blood.

The wooden creature resolved to eliminate the intruders before the anomaly returned from the thicket.

CRACK!

A wall of roots sharp as lances erupted from the earth with a deafening roar, severing the path and isolating Shnee and Karys on a small clearing.

"Ambush!" Shnee stated coldly, drawing her Celestial Silver rapier in a split second.

From the dark canopy stepped the towering silhouette of the Leshy, accompanied by wooden thralls and animated briars sprouting from the soil. The beast let out a deep, vibrating roar and hurled a volley of hardened wooden quills.

"Karys, right flank!" Shnee called out.

The silvery rapier danced through the air. Shnee didn't just parry-she channeled frost magic through the blade. A wave of ice froze the initial briar surge, shattering it into thousands of crystalline needles. Karys spun beside her, her hundredth-floor daggers carving through roots like butter. In a critical moment, the wolf-girl stiffened her tail into a dense, whip-like mace and smashed a charging wooden thrall against an oak trunk with a brutal crack.

The girls fought with fierce dedication and seamless synergy. However, the Leshy was an ancient, multi-ton woodland demon. Seeing that spikes failed, it shattered the ground beneath them with a massive root. The earth gave way, breaking Shnee's rhythm, and a sweeping branch struck with battering-ram force. Karys sprang to block the impact with her daggers, but the crushing mass slammed her into the moss. Shnee lunged with a frost guard, but another splintering trunk caught her ribs, driving her several yards back onto the grass.

The Leshy raised both massive wooden limbs, prepared to crush both warriors beneath tons of timber.

And then Dave strolled out of the bushes.

In his hand, he held a single tuft of gray wolf fur, his face wearing an expression of deep, human disappointment.

"Total lack of manners. One hopped onto a boulder, and two took a dive into the creek... My doggos ran away," he grumbled under his breath.

A step later, he looked up.

He saw Karys pushing herself up from the grass, clutching her bruised side, and Shnee shielding her with her rapier, a thin trail of blood at her chin.

Dave's smile vanished. It simply evaporated.

Above the clearing, the temperature jumped several degrees, and atmospheric pressure plummeted so violently that the oak canopies bent toward the soil. The air around Dave shimmered with crystalline ozone. His right hand reached behind his right shoulder. His fingers closed around Raiten's hilt.

SCHWING!

The black magnetic obsidian blade slid from its sheath with a quiet, predatory hiss. The Celtic runes along the fuller ignited with cold, sapphire light.

"You... wooden sticks," Dave said in a voice so devoid of emotion that the Leshy's minions froze in their tracks. "You ruined my walk."

Dave took a single step in the Lynx Footwork.

BOOM!

The earth beneath his boots exploded. Dave materialized in the dead center of the wooden pack. One fluid, horizontal sweep of Raiten reinforced with Gōtai sent a semicircular shockwave tearing through space. The minions simply ceased to exist, pulverized into fine sawdust before emitting a sound.

The Leshy roared in panic, swinging a trunk thick as a barrel.

Dave didn't even consider parrying.

For the next twenty seconds, pure, ruthless liquidation unfolded in the clearing. Dave cleaved from above, severing branches like firewood and shattering the Leshy's defenses with the sheer weight of the obsidian blade and the crushing tonnage of The Beatdown Style. Every impact of Raiten sounded like field artillery firing.

The Leshy, shorn of its limbs and mad with agony, made one last desperate reflex counter-a broken branch snapped a razor-sharp splinter toward Dave’s face. Dave tilted his head a millimeter, but the jagged wood managed to graze his left cheek, drawing a thin crimson line.

"Is that all?" Dave asked flatly.

Raiten drove straight through the stag skull down to the crossguard. Dave unleashed the Raitai circuit-a Gōtai shell supercharged with pure sapphire plasma. The discharge shredded the beast's molecular structure from within. Trunks, roots, and bone dissolved into smoking ash, leaving behind only the petrified ironwood core and intact antlers on the moss-rare biological crafting materials devoid of any dungeon core.

Dave twirled the sword in his fingers and sheathed it across his back with a smooth motion. The fuller clicked softly, locking the sapphire glow inside the black obsidian.

He walked over to Shnee and Karys, his easy, warm expression instantly returning.

"You two alright?" he asked, extending his hands to help them up from the grass.

"We're alive..." Karys muttered, adjusting her daggers and looking at the ash in mild disbelief. "Man, you turned that woodland giant into sawdust in twenty seconds..."

"You are impossible, Dave," Shnee said, wiping blood from her chin with the back of her hand. "Leave you alone with wolves for a moment, and you return to stage a slaughterhouse. But thank you."

"Told you: as long as I hold the hilt, nothing touches you," he smiled softly.

Rather than reaching for potions, Dave raised his hands. From his palms erupted bright, liquid Sapphire Flame. The fire didn't burn-it washed over Shnee and Karys like warm water, accelerating cellular division, mending the elf's bruised ribs, and erasing Karys's contusions in seconds. Both girls exhaled deeply as the pain vanished without a trace.

"Incredible regeneration," Karys sighed, stretching with a quiet purr of satisfaction. "Not a single bruise left!"

Dave stowed the Leshy's antlers into his pouch and looked down the forest trail leading toward the river valley.

"Alright, girls. Leshy neutralized, doggos escaped. Time to check out what that Vodyanoy is up to down by the river."

An hour later, as they emerged from the Black Ravine, the air turned humid and heavy. The roar of churning water echoed from several hundred yards away. Before them stretched a wide, murky river wetland where an old, half-submerged wooden watermill stood on oak stilts, its wheel shattered. Dead trunks and rotting reeds drifted in the stagnant shallows.

From the black silt rose an overwhelming, foul stench of decay.

Suddenly, the water beneath the mill's rotting stilts began to boil violently. A thick layer of black mud surged to the surface, forming a dark vortex. From the depths, with a raspy, predatory roar, surfaced the slimy, swamp-green mass of the Wodnik. The beast had webbed claws tipped with razor talons, needle fangs, and bulging yellow eyes burning with feral fury.

Shnee and Karys dropped into low stances, resting their hands on their weapons.

Dave, however, stood on the sandy bank with his hands shoved deep into his trench coat pockets. He measured the massive water monster with lazy, arrogant amusement, a broad, insolent grin touching his lips:

"Someone's about to end up as a filet."