The air around his teeth tasted like metal.He did not move. He watched the breath before the world decides which of two stories it wants to tell.
The shadow took one step forward. The brush tightened, leaves turning the wrong way. Evan kept his eyes on the gap and spoke without turning his head.
"Set. Two paces back from the break."
The Mech Goblin obeyed, feet punching small, loyal dents into the soil. Aurora hovered to his right shoulder, lightning braided into a neat whisper.
The thing in the hedge did not charge. It did what makes big animals dangerous: it waited until the waiting made him worse.
Inspect offered itself again like a hand that didn't know it had already been refused.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: TARGET LEVEL EXCEEDS CURRENT THRESHOLD][SUGGESTION: Create opening or retreat.]
"Opening it is." Evan eased his weight to his back foot and thought in posts and furrows instead of fear. He had a corpse at his knees, a broken half-post across that corpse's back, a gap shaped like an insult, and a fence line that wanted to be geometry.
"Aurora, small arcs only. I want its eyes, not the beans. Mech, when it commits, shave left and give me tusk-to-wood."
The silhouette leaned, testing the hole. It stepped forward, slow, letting stalks comb across its flanks as if it enjoyed the sound.
Evan lifted the staff but didn't charge it yet. "On my touch."
The first clear glance revealed an eye—old amber, patient the way a tree is patient. The head tracked him, then the Goblin, then settled back on him like a judge returning to the name that mattered.
"Hello," he said to the air, which was also to the thing.
He dragged the dead brute's hide a foot so the corpse canted, making the gap uglier. The shape favored its right. Not a limp; a habit learned from a fight no one else was invited to.
"Right leg," Evan murmured. "Wait for the commit."
Aurora's lightning gathered into a tight coin of blue. The Goblin raised the wrench, angle set to pry, not block.
Decision shivered through the hedge, and then it came—fast for the first three strides, then heavier, as if it liked to add weight mid-charge. The ground made a sound he didn't want in his bones again.
"Now."
The Goblin stepped in and slid the wrench, metal coaxing tusk into the broken post. The ivory lodged with a hateful crunch.
[HIT DEFLECTED][STATUS: MOMENTUM PARTIALLY ARRESTED]
Aurora's bolt snapped against the eye ridge. Not blind—just jitter in the brain's instructions.
Evan bled a sting from the staff into the inside foreleg. The creature tried to put weight where weight had become unreliable. Its front end dipped; the lodged tusk made the dip a bind.
"Drive the head."
The Goblin jammed the wrench against the skull ridge and leaned. Wood splintered. The tusk popped free, but the head came with it, low now—the line Evan wanted.
He stepped into the lane and put a second sting under the jaw. Aurora threaded a seam of blue into the same place.
The beast shook like it was trying to remember which set of legs were its favorite. The corpse shifted, offering an uneven plane.
"Left pivot."
The Goblin slid; the monster tried to follow; its hoof hit slick hide, losing a quarter-stride. Evan went high with the staff to bait a gore and then dropped; a tusk grazed his sleeve and left it smelling like copper and old rain.
"You're ugly in interesting ways," he told it, which is a compliment for tactics.
The beast bellowed—a furnace admitting it had opinions.
"Again. Same hinge."
Aurora bit the rear tendon; the Goblin hammered the shoulder with the solvency of a debt collector. Gravity took sides.
[STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—MEDIUM] — [SUCCESS]
He bought position with the opening. "Mech, post-to-post. Make me a gate."
The Goblin set itself opposite the intact stake so the gap became a funnel. The beast swayed and corrected, confused by sudden geometry.
Evan backed into the lane lightly, never turning. "Come on," he said, almost friendly. "Try the door."
It did. Big minds like big openings. The creature pushed into the funnel; its flank shaved the post; the wrench met the skull at a new angle, and every god in the countryside agreed that levers matter. The head tipped. The body followed. The ground collected interest.
"Finish," he said, quiet.
The Goblin's blow wasn't cinematic; it was practical. Evan threaded a final sting where spine argument becomes heart argument. Aurora tapped the tendon once more to keep afterthoughts from turning into an aftercharge.
The body lunged without a brain and then remembered it had been dismissed.
[ENEMY DOWN: HEDGE-BREAKER (LV?)] [CHECK: proper name/level][LOOT GENERATED]
He held still for two seconds. The treeline did not answer. The field became a field again one noise at a time.
A flag blinked at the rim of his sight, gold thinking about being more gold.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: MATERIAL QUALITY / REPUTATION] [CHECK]
"Show it."
[YOU OBTAIN: HEDGE-BREAKER HIDE (PRIME) ×1][YOU OBTAIN: HEDGE-BREAKER TUSK ×2][COINS: +?][REPUTATION: +? (Novice Village)] [CHECK]
He worked quickly, staff tucked to his elbow. The hide fought him with rubbery stubbornness; he returned economy and patience. The Goblin stood over the head like a mournful gargoyle. Aurora kept to his shoulder, lightning pinned and polite.
"You smell like you never lost," Evan told the corpse. "That's information."
Inventory took the hide with a richer thunk than before, as if quality had mass. He checked the Mech Goblin's cracked lens and pressed two fingers to the dented plate near its ribs.
[ALLY STATUS: MECH GOBLIN — INTEGRITY 68%] [CHECK][ALLY STATUS: THUNDER SPRITE — STABLE]
"Good work. No repairs now. We hold."
A breeze moved along the broken hedge, bringing musk and turned earth. No fresh shapes claimed the gap. The permission in the place retracted, the way water flattens after a thrown stone runs out of story.
For a half-minute, he let the quiet be practice. He did not loot fast. He looted correctly.
[QUEST PROGRESS: HIDES (4/??)]
Boots sounded from the lane. Two players crept into view—fresh gear, the comfortable clatter of people who hadn't yet learned to respect angles. One lifted a hand and lowered it when he read the scene: three carcasses, posts arranged like an idea, a Summoner standing as if the math were personal.
"Friendly," the taller one said, as if declaring a mood establishes it.
"Edges only," Evan said. "Gate's live."
They hovered near the safe dirt. "We've got Field Raiders," the other offered, as if quests were rare. "You too?"
"Mm." He kept his eyes on the hedge. "Boars like lines. Don't give them ones they can draw without you."
The taller peered. "Drops?"
"Hides."
"Right." That word a man uses when he understands nothing and wants to pretend he might.
The shorter drifted a step toward the gap. Evan lifted his staff half an inch. "Don't."
"Easy," the shorter said, hands up. "We're just—"
The hedgerow twitched. A leaf fell wrong.
"Back," Evan said, already sliding into the furrow. "Posts again. Goblin, left brace."
They obeyed with the eager compliance of beginners who want to be told they are in a story. Evan set the line with his body; the Goblin made itself gravity; Aurora's lightning narrowed to a scalpel.
Inspect tried and failed with bureaucratic manners.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: TARGET LEVEL EXCEEDS CURRENT THRESHOLD]
"Treat it as heavier than last time," he said. To the taller: "Got a slow?"
"Glue bomb."
"Late, not early. Aim at the dirt inside the gap. Don't get attached to success."
The hedge bowed twice. The air tasted like coins again.
The taller held too long and then threw when the world would forgive him for being late. Glue burst into a slick, contemptuous puddle across the soil.
A shape came like a decision someone else made for you. It hit the glue with the confidence of a king stepping onto a carpet. Confidence is a resource. He spent it.
"Now."
The wrench met skull at the angle where physics buys poetry for an evening. The body wrenched sideways; the glue kissed a hoof and turned the correction into a second mistake. Evan put the staff's sting under the jaw. Aurora threaded electricity into the tendon. The shorter made a small involuntary sound—fear or delight—then kept his feet like a decent human.
The beast hesitated with commitment, a rarer state than panic.
"Again." Wrench, bolt, sting. The head dipped and stayed.
"Finish."
The Goblin delivered the practical blow. The field re-collected its noises.
[ENEMY DOWN: HEDGE-BREAKER VARIANT (LV?)] [CHECK][LOOT GENERATED]
Flags blinked with the bored modesty of a god pretending not to count.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: REPUTATION / COINS] [CHECK]
The taller exhaled like a prisoner. "You're… good."
"I've been in a field before," Evan said. He did not add and after.
"Party up?" the shorter asked. "We can pull left. We'll do lines."
"Not today. Take the edge. Tie a rope between two posts; make straight charges argue with it first. Don't chase."
They nodded too fast, collected themselves, and edged away, relief turning them into talkers. When their noise faded, the field shrank to the size of three bodies and one hole in a hedge.
A bell rang from the village—three fast, two slow, three fast. Not the well. An alarm, but not the big one. The pattern reached into memory like a hook finding its old scar.
Aurora drifted closer, lightning tasting the air. The Goblin flexed its fingers around the wrench as if the tool needed comfort.
The hedgerow breathed in.
"Lines," Evan said, feeling the numbers align and fail to reassure him. "We hold."
Something moved beyond the gap with the mass of a small decision and the confidence of a large one. The leaves gave a sound that didn't belong to wind.
He set his feet where the soil had already learned his weight and waited for the world to flip the next card.