Leon leaned back on the moss-covered stone, finishing the last adjustments to his stat panel. Numbers flickered across his vision before fading away, leaving him with that familiar sense of growth humming in his body. He exhaled, satisfied, but then his head snapped toward the cave entrance.
"Intruders?"
He sharpened his senses, stretching them past the faint barrier he had set over the cave mouth. "His eyes widened a fraction. Humans?"
The next moment, his figure blurred and vanished.
---
Outside the cave, James and his squad crouched low in a thick shrub, their eyes fixed on the yawning darkness of the Tyrant's den. The forest around them was unnervingly still, the faint hum of insects muffled as though the cave itself swallowed sound.
Crystal, the squad's lithe scout, returned from her sweep, her movements as quiet as a shadow slipping through leaves. She crouched next to James, her face grim.
