"Lady Araria, you are amazing. I can’t believe we took down a tier 9 beast on our own."

The words came from somewhere to her left, bright with genuine feeling.

Deep inside the forest, the group had settled into a loose circle around her, their bodies still carrying the tension of the fight that had just ended. Torn sleeves. Shallow cuts on arms and hands. One boy near the back was pressing a cloth against a gash above his knee. But their eyes were on her.

Admiration had a particular quality when it was real. It didn’t push. It just settled in around a person and waited.

Araria stood at the center of it without leaning into it.

Summoners at their stage were not built for solo hunts. That wasn’t a weakness, it was simply the reality of where they stood. Their summons were young. Their experience was thin. Beasts of the same tier had years of instinct and raw conditioning behind them, things that couldn’t be closed by talent alone. The natural response was to move in groups, and the natural arrangement within those groups was to cluster around whoever held the strongest summon.

Araria’s flame archor was that summon.

She came from one of the more prominent families within the Algar clan, her bloodline far enough from the main house to matter in reputation but not in inheritance. Still, the grade of her summon had been enough. From the moment the awakening ritual ended, the smaller fish had begun moving toward her light.

She didn’t mind it. Not entirely. There was utility in having people around her. And they had genuinely helped today.

"It’s nothing," she said, a small smile settling on her face. "I wouldn’t have been able to do it without your help."

"You’re too humble, young miss."

Someone else offered it immediately, and then another voice followed, and the praise built itself back up around her without any effort on her part.

She walked through the clearing while they talked, her eyes scanning the treeline without fully committing to any one direction. The hunt today had served its purpose. Every summoner at her stage had a ritual attached to their path to tier 8. Hers required the life blood of a specific class of beast, fed directly to her archor. Her family was already working to secure what she needed through other channels, but that didn’t mean she could afford to stay idle. She needed to understand her summon. Its limits, its instincts, the way it moved when pushed. The hunter games were coming, and understanding was the difference between winning and simply participating.

She was still in that thought when the group stopped.

A figure stood in the path ahead of them.

He sat atop the back of a massive bull creature, one hand resting on its neck with the casual ease of someone who had never needed to think about whether he would be obeyed. The bull itself was enormous, its hide a dark grey-brown that caught the light in dull patches, its presence pressing outward like heat from stone.

"I saw you kill that tier 9 beast." The young man’s eyes moved to Araria with a directness that didn’t bother with pretense. "Give me its core."

Greed had its own particular expression. It didn’t hide well. It sat right at the surface of the face and looked out through the eyes without apology.

From the edges of the treeline, shapes began to emerge. One by one. Taking positions without rushing.

"That’s Jacob Algar. The fifth elder’s grandson."

The voice came from somewhere behind her, low and quick, carrying the particular weight of someone who had just recognized something they hadn’t expected to see out here.

Araria’s eyes moved to the bull.

A rage stone bull. C plus rank, built for forward pressure and sustained punishment. Compared to her archor it sat higher on the scale, its raw output a level above what her summon could match in a direct exchange. And Jacob had resources behind him that she didn’t need to guess at.

The Algar clan was not a single thing. It was a collection of families, some tied to the main house by blood, some by name alone, some by the weight of what they controlled. The council of elders sat at the center of it, and around them the branches spread outward in layers of influence and proximity. Jacob’s family was close to that center. Araria’s was further out.

She knew the math.

It didn’t move her.

"Young master Jacob." She kept her eyes level, her voice even. "I’m currently under the tutelage of an elder. Do you think this is appropriate?"

It wasn’t a question she needed answered. It was a marker, placed in the open for anyone watching to register. She had backing. That backing had a name. Jacob could do the math the same way she had.

"A student?" He let the word sit for a second, then broke into a laugh that filled the space between the trees. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Too wide, too sudden, like something coming loose. "Don’t you know blood is thicker than water?"

He reached into the air and a lance appeared in his hand, white light radiating from the tip in steady pulses.

Araria’s jaw tightened.

She summoned the flame archor.

The beast appeared at her side in a burst of heat, its hooves striking the ground, sparks scattering across the soil. It turned its head toward Jacob’s bull and held there, the heat rising off its body in slow visible waves.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Not far away, deeper in the trees, a different sound broke the quiet.

[You have slain a Tier 9 Dark Wolf]

[6/15 impaled Tier 9, 50/50 impaled ordinary]

A wolf hung on the end of a spear, its body suspended above the ground, blood running down the shaft in a slow trail. Beside it, Vlad stood with the weapon held steady, his eyes carrying the flat focused quality they held after a kill.

Ethan looked at the beast for a moment before exhaling.

"Lucky."

He meant it. Wolves moved in packs. He had targeted this one with that in mind, hoping the presence of one tier 9 might lead him to another moving through the same stretch of forest. It had worked out, but the circumstances had been closer to fortunate than planned.

He looked down at his hand. A shallow scratch ran across the back of it, thin but stinging.

"Still harder than I thought."

The smirk that crossed his face carried no real bitterness. Just honesty. Tier 9 beasts in this part of the forest were becoming harder to find, spread further apart than he had expected. Whether it was the activity from the stronghold pushing them deeper or something else shifting the patterns, the gap between kills was longer than he would have liked.

He crouched beside the wolf and started working.

As his hands moved through the familiar process he ran the numbers in his head, quietly, without urgency. Six of fifteen. The count was moving, but slowly. At this rate the timeline stretched further than he wanted.

He didn’t notice that something was already moving in his direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​