2024-09-09 05:35:46
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Chapter 718
The Rime Lynx hit the dirt on its side and didn't get back up, one paw twitching against the packed ground, out cold before its own keeper had finished registering what he'd just watched happen.Dorian Vance stood frozen at the rail, mouth open, no sound coming out of it.His vision actually swam for a second — a genuine, physical lurch, like the ground had shifted under a match he'd already spent in his head.Fluke, he told himself, and didn't believe it even as the thought formed.His Rime Lynx had trained under a licensed handler since it was a kit. It had never gone down in one exchange. Not once. Not to anything.How, he thought, and had no second half to the sentence.The breeder-woman at the rail had gone the color of old paper. "That's not—" she started, to no one, and didn't finish that either.Grim didn't gloat. He didn't need to. He simply turned his head toward Dorian and held the look, calm and unhurried.Behind Alex, the row of keepers who'd called this the easiest match
Chapter 717
That night, once the shop had gone quiet, Alex sat with Grim's head against his knee and called up the skill.Skill on record: Bloodrend. Compatible target found. Teach?Grim was awake, ears already up, watching him with the particular stillness of a dog that knew something was about to happen to it and had decided in advance not to flinch."Yes."Cost: 300 mana. Cooldown: 48 hours.The pull came sharper than Windshear had, a cold drag behind his sternum that didn't let go for a full ten seconds. Grim's whole body went rigid, then shuddered, then settled — and when he lifted his head again there was something different sitting behind his eyes, a weight that hadn't been there an hour ago.He tested it without being told to. A short, low swipe at the empty air, twin motions folded into one strike. The old fence post nearest him didn't so much break as disagree with existing."That's yours now," Alex said. "Don't waste it on fence posts."Grim's tail didn't wag. It thumped, once, like a
Chapter 716
Grim's breathing evened out under the needles before noon even arrived. Alex kept his hand on the hound's flank a while longer anyway, feeding the last thread of inner force in slow, so the healing wouldn't jolt him awake into a fight he wasn't ready for yet.Monica hadn't stopped shaking. "Please. You don't know what these people are.""Don’t worry they don’t know me too." Alex stood, wiped his hands on his coat. "Get inside. Bar the door. Don't come out until I say."She looked at him like she wanted to argue, then looked at Grim's bandaged side, and didn't.They came at noon exactly. Twenty of them, spread loose across the torn-up lot like they'd done this walk a hundred times before — mismatched jackets, chains looped over shoulders instead of belts, the kind of confidence that came from never once having lost.Behind them, on ropes and collars, came the beasts: a couple of mangy pit-dogs foaming at the leash, a scarred boar-thing with tusks filed to points, three jackal-shaped th
Chapter 715
A hundred shelters. Fencing that wouldn't hurt anything that leaned on it. A vet station solid enough that even Petrie would have to believe it. And a two-story house — he still hadn't found the sentence that walked that back.Alex studied the map of the Regent branch land. Forest. Governor land, technically unclaimed. His, if he did this right.He waited until the shop went dark. Monica and Yolanda had gone home.He shut the door. Closed his hand around the ring on his finger — plain, forgettable, the kind of thing nobody looked at twice — and reached into the space folded behind it.The drone came first. Palm-sized, matte black, curled shut like a fist that hadn't opened in years. Then the housing unit, wardrobe-sized, hit the floorboards with a thud too heavy for something that had just come out of nowhere. Last, a strip of something thin and skin-soft, weightless, which he pressed to the back of his neck. It settled in like it had never left.Core reconnected. Systems synchronizin
Chapter 714
"Teach," Alex said.It cost him more than the moth had. He felt the mana leave in real time — five for the moth, fifty for this — warmth draining out of his chest and down the lead rope like current through wire. Squall's whole body flinched, not from pain. From being asked a question in a language he half-remembered.The air cracked at the colt's hooves. A blade of wind sheared through the paddock rail and took splinters off it.Squall went still. Stared at his own legs like they belonged to someone else.Alex saw it happen in his face — the flattened ears, the pride gone stiffer than before. Gratitude and humiliation, arriving at the same exact second.He recognized that particular flavor of misery. He'd seen it on Grim the hound, too — an animal that had decided a long time ago that being wanted had to be earned first, because it never had been, not the one time it counted.A runt held back a season past his littermates, passed over again and again for the easy ones. That didn't un
Chapter 713
Alex didn't say it out loud to Yolanda. He turned the question over instead, quiet and careful, the way he turned over everything that mattered now.Could this skill be taught to humans, too?"Monica." He kept his voice low. "Can beast skills be taught to humans?"She looked at him like he'd asked whether water was wet. "Of course. Every skill can be taught. The real question is whether the human's any good at learning it. Some people take five years for something simple. Others take decades. Mostly it comes down to the bond — how close you are to the beast."Alex nodded, but his mind had already moved on. Collect everything. As many skills as he could get his hands on.He found his first target without leaving Willowmere.The town had one licensed healing house — real fees, real credentials, and behind the counter, something rare: a Driftlichen. A floating tuft of moss that trailed spores like smoke and closed wounds in minutes. Champions came here when their own healers weren't enou
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Next time, you will not fool around anyone.