Chapter 16: Wild Boars

Night had already settled over the forest when they left the cave. The moon hung thin and pale between the branches, casting just enough light to turn the ground into shifting patches of silver and black. Rael wanted Lila to take most of the kills. He sat at Level 9, close enough to the threshold that the exit gate might open for him at any moment. If he stepped through alone she would be left behind with almost no chance of surviving the rest of the First Realm. So he hung back whenever he could, letting her claim the finishing shots.

They moved in silence for hours. The woods felt wrong. No night birds called. No insects stirred. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath between the trunks. Both of them noticed the quiet, but nothing attacked and nothing revealed itself, so they kept walking. By the time the moon stood high the trees thinned a little and the ground grew softer underfoot.

That was when they found the boars.

Five of them rooted among the undergrowth, heavy bodies the color of wet earth. Levels eight and nine. One female stood slightly apart, larger than the others, her flanks thick with muscle. The four males formed a loose ring around her, heads low, tusks yellow and curved in the moonlight.

Rael decided this was a chance to test his body instead of his spells. The goblin blade in his hand was already scarred and edged with rust; it had never been meant for this much work. He slipped out of the brush and drove the blade upward into the female’s belly before she could turn. The impact jarred his arm to the shoulder. The boar screamed and twisted, the force of her thrashing ripping the blade free of his grip and flinging him sideways through the leaves. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up on his feet, lungs burning.

All five animals fixed on him at once. The males lowered their heads. The female staggered but stayed upright, blood pouring black in the moonlight.

"Lila, now!"

The arrow left the string with a soft hiss. A thin white line of light trailed behind it, bright against the dark trees, as if the shaft had cut a path through the night itself. It took the female clean through the eye. She dropped without another sound. The four surviving boars stared at the body for a single stunned second, then rage flooded their eyes. They charged.

Rael leapt for the nearest low branch, caught it, and used his legs to push off the trunk, launching himself farther than the jump alone would have carried him. One boar slammed into the tree where he had been a heartbeat earlier, wood cracking under the impact. Rael hit the ground in a roll that brought him right beside the dead female. He yanked the blade free of her body just as the remaining three closed in again.

He shouted "Ignite!" and threw himself sideways. Fire erupted under the lead boar’s hooves, orange and violent against the dark. Flames climbed its legs and belly. While it screamed and tried to put itself out, Lila’s next arrow punched through its neck, another white trail cutting the night. The animal collapsed, still burning.

Three left.

They came at him in a tight wedge, tusks lowered, eyes black with fury. Rael did not meet them head-on. He sidestepped the first rush, letting the middle boar’s momentum carry it past, then dropped low and swung the blade in a short, vicious arc across the rear legs of the animal on his right. The edge bit deep into tendon. The boar’s hindquarters collapsed sideways and it crashed to the ground with a wet, furious squeal. Before it could scramble up, Rael was already moving. He drove the tip of the blade straight into the soft socket of its nearest eye. The creature convulsed once and went still.

Two remaining.

The last pair wheeled faster than he expected. One clipped his thigh with a tusk as it passed; cloth tore and blood welled, warm against the cool night air. He staggered, recovered, and forced his breathing steady. Lila’s bowstring sang again. The arrow streaked forward, leaving that same thin white line behind it, and buried itself in the shoulder of the closer boar, knocking it off stride. That was all the opening Rael needed. He closed the distance in three long strides, dropped under the animal’s snap of tusks, and slashed both front legs at the joint. The boar’s weight betrayed it. It pitched forward onto its chest. Rael stepped onto its back, drove the blade down through the base of the skull, and twisted. Bone cracked. The body went limp.

One left.

The final boar did not charge. It circled, foam dripping from its mouth, eyes never leaving Rael’s face. Lila moved through the trees, silent, but this time she did not stay at range. She slipped closer, step by careful step, until she was almost within the animal’s reach. The boar feinted left, then lunged right, trying to catch Rael between its tusks and a thick oak. He rolled under the attack, came up on one knee, and stabbed upward into the soft flesh beneath the jaw. The blade sank deep but did not find the brain. The boar reared, ripping the weapon from his hands and hurling him backward into the roots of the oak.

Pain flared along his ribs. He tasted blood. The boar spun, ready to finish him.

Lila stepped out of the shadows at its flank. She was close enough that the animal’s heat washed over her. Instead of loosing from afar she drew the string to her cheek, waited for the exact moment the boar’s head swung toward Rael, and released. The arrow left a bright white trail through the dark and drove straight into the soft tissue behind the ear. The animal staggered, bellowed once, and collapsed three steps from Rael’s outstretched hand.

Silence returned to the clearing, heavier than before.

Rael lay still for several breaths, staring at the canopy of black leaves. Every muscle burned. The cut on his thigh pulsed. He pushed himself upright anyway, retrieved the goblin blade, and wiped it clean on the nearest carcass. Lila stepped fully into the moonlight, bow still in hand, eyes scanning the surrounding woods.

"You took too many risks," she said.

"Had to feel the weight of them," he answered. His voice came out rough. He glanced down at his hands, still trembling slightly from the effort. "Looks like my body’s still not recovered enough. That’s why I’m struggling in hand-to-hand combat with these same-level beasts."

They worked quickly after that, stripping what meat they could use and storing the rest in Lila’s ring. The forest remained quiet. No other beasts came to investigate the blood. That silence pressed on both of them like a hand on the back of the neck.

By the time they started back toward the cave the moon had begun to sink. Rael walked with a slight limp, the blade hanging loose at his side. Lila stayed a few paces behind, arrows ready. Neither spoke of the empty woods or the way every sound seemed to stop the moment they entered a new stretch of trees. They simply kept moving, step after careful step, while the night held its breath around them.

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