2024-11-05 20:01:55
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Chapter 720
The pitchfork caught Alex square in the ribs and didn't so much as wrinkle his shirt.Dorian's face went through confusion before it reached fear. He wrenched the tines back and drove them in again, harder, both hands behind it this time — and again, nothing. No give. No blood. Not even the small satisfaction of a man staggering back a step.“Trying to scratch me?” Alex asked. “Funny. I’ve been feeling itchy. Stab a little harder on my back.”“What—”Bram’s iron pipe smashed into Alex’s shoulder and rang out like it had struck a bell instead of flesh.“Decent massage,” Alex said. “But nowhere near enough. Put some real strength into it.”All three of them stared as if they had just faced a monster. Then they attacked with everything they could—hitting, stabbing, and striking harder than before.Alex didn't bother stepping out of range. His whole body ran thick with inner force, layered so deep under the skin that a blunt weapon might as well have been swung at a mountain. Kass, scramb
Chapter 719
Dorian double cabin truck dropped the three of them at White Field a little after eight, the terraces already visible from the road, brown-edged and sunken where something had been eating the roots out from under them for weeks.Dorian had brought two people. He introduced them without much ceremony — Kass, wiry and quiet, with a badger-shaped digger pacing low at his heel; Bram, heavier through the shoulders, his beast a hooded, dust-colored viper coiled loose around one arm like a bracelet that had decided to wake up."Citizen quota," Dorian said, by way of explanation. "They're behind on theirs too. Figured we'd knock it all out together. Sicen is team quota the more ithe merrier.""Efficient," Alex said, and didn't ask anything else.Kass's eyes moved once over Grim, cataloguing, then moved away too fast to be casual about it. Bram didn't look at Grim at all, which was its own kind of tell.A farmer met them at the gate with the tired relief of a man who'd stopped expecting anyone
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
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very very interesting .