He set his feet where the soil had already learned his weight and waited for the world to flip the next card.
The bell kept its pattern—three fast, two slow, three fast—bleeding into the beans like a reminder that the village still existed on the far side of this geometry. Evan rolled his shoulders, marked the staff on his palms again, and spoke without turning his head.
"Gate drill. You two—rope between those intact posts. Not high. Waist."
The taller newbie blinked. "Rope? We didn't—oh." He had one on his pack. He fumbled it free. The shorter ran to the other post, fingers clumsy with adrenaline.
"Keep slack," Evan said. "I'll call tension."
The Mech Goblin already understood the posture—feet planted, wrench angled for pry over block. Aurora hovered at Evan's shoulder, lightning combed into a neat, mean braid.
The hedge breathed. Something inside decided nothing quickly.
Inspect lifted like a reflex and bounced like a bad key at a locked door.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: TARGET LEVEL EXCEEDS CURRENT THRESHOLD][SUGGESTION: Avoid direct engagement or create mechanical advantage.]
"Mechanical advantage it is," Evan said. He shifted the brute carcass with a boot, rolling it so the broken post leaned into the gap. It made the doorway uglier. Bodies aren't walls, but they teach mass bad habits.
Leaves shook with the particular lack of wind that means muscle.
"Positions," he said. "Mech: left cheek. Aurora: eye line. Rope—loose, loose—good."
The shape inside the brush stepped far enough that its bristles wrote themselves against the light. Bigger than the last. Shoulder like a boulder that had opinions. It did not hurry. Big animals don't, when they think they're teaching.
Evan exhaled. "On my mark."
The head lowered. The body decided. Dirt twitched before hooves touched it—mass announcing itself early.
"Now."
The boar hit the gap at a diagonal, smart enough to try to take the post out with its tusk on the way through. The Goblin met the skull ridge with the wrench face, not to stop but to slide. Tusk kissed wood. Wood screamed and did not die.
The rope went taut too early.
"Slack," Evan snapped, and the taller yelped and gave. The boar shoved forward into a space he'd been permitted to believe was wide enough; the carve of the corpse and the leaning post conspired against that belief.
Aurora's first bolt cracked the eye ridge. The boar flinched exactly one instruction. Evan bled the staff's sting across the inside foreleg, not strong, just inconvenient.
[HIT][STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—LOW] — [FAIL]
The boar powered through. Neck turned; tusk climbed for Evan's ribs.
He didn't evade; he misled. He lifted the staff like a shield a heartbeat too early, then dropped a knee so the tusk took air where he'd been living and found the rope instead. The line snapped tight and sang.
"Hold," he said, and the two at the posts leaned with their lives. The boar's head checked to the side; the Goblin stepped into that error and torqued the wrench under the jaw, ugly and useful.
The rope creaked like an old world choosing to keep up.
"Glue," Evan said.
The taller threw late and honest. The bomb burst inside the doorway, puddling the dirt with contempt. The boar's front right hoof stamped into it, then tried to reset and found the ground had opinions.
Aurora threaded a second bolt under the jaw line. The boar stuttered one beat. Evan gave it sting under the tendon. Stutter became stagger.
[STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—MEDIUM] — [SUCCESS]
"Left pivot." The Goblin slid; tusk scraped wood; rope whined; the boar gave up balance for commitment and had neither.
The near-gore caught him anyway. Not the tusk—the foreleg—hammering past his thigh with the intimacy of a thrown door. Pain chewed, shallow but sincere. He breathed through it and didn't let the leg invent a new plan.
"Again," he said. "Same hinge."
Aurora's lightning worked the seam. The Goblin bullied the skull ridge down into the corpse's slope. The boar used its strength the way a man uses a wrong tool with pride.
It tried to climb the post. The post disagreed, loudly. The rope lost a hand's width; the taller hissed; the shorter swore; Evan shifted the staff head and stung the back knee. The leg accepted a story about being weaker for one second. One second is a room if you know where the walls are.
"Drive," he said, quiet.
The Goblin brought the wrench down into the hinge where spine meets skull. It didn't break the world; it convinced it. Evan poured a long sting along the same seam, a crackle that sounded like anger taught manners.
The body surged and then went heavy, the kind of heavy that only happens at the end of an argument.
[ENEMY DOWN: HEDGE-BREAKER (ELITE) (LV?)] [CHECK: formal name/level][LOOT GENERATED]
He waited for the hedge to disagree. It didn't—yet. Flags blinked at the edge of his sight with the polite hunger of a system pretending not to preen.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: REPUTATION / COINS] [CHECK]
"Show."
[YOU OBTAIN: ELITE BRISTLE HIDE (PRIME) ×1] [CHECK: item naming][YOU OBTAIN: ELITE TUSK ×2][COINS: +?][REPUTATION: +? (Novice Village)]
"Slack the rope," he said. The two at the posts let the line breathe. Evan shifted the carcass with a boot, rolled it to widen the wedge. The Mech Goblin stood over the head, that cracked lens webbed but hot. He touched the dented plate near its ribs.
[ALLY STATUS: MECH GOBLIN — INTEGRITY 62%] [CHECK][ALLY STATUS: THUNDER SPRITE — STABLE]
"Drink," he told the newbies, eyes on the hedge. "Short. Don't talk into the gap."
They drank. The shorter risked it anyway. "That was—do we—are we, like, done?"
Evan rolled the hide, inventory swallowing it with the sound of wealth pretending to be modest. "We're never done when the bell's still talking."
As if on cue, the pattern changed—two fast, a drag, then four like a hand drumming fear into wood.
"New call," he said. "Not the big one, but not small."
"Guards?" the taller asked, hope trying to hitch a ride.
"Maybe hands," Evan said. "Or a runner tripped the wrong bell. None of it matters here."
Boots hit dirt on the lane—three, maybe four pairs—villagers by the cadence, not soldiers. They hit the edge of the fields and stopped when they saw the gate, the bodies, the Summoner who looked like he'd rather not have to be polite.
"Stay there," Evan called, not loud, but in that tone that makes a crowd remember rules it never learned. "This is geometry. Don't break it with feet."
The Village Chief pushed through their front, breath measured, eyes counting. "Adventurer." He took in the gate, the rope, the dented construct, the lightning held like a leashed dog. "You have our thanks."
"We'll price it later," Evan said, and earned a blink. "Right now the hedge is deciding whether to be a mouth."
The Chief nodded once. "We sent the bell. The hands that can stand will hold the lanes."
"Good." Evan flicked a glance at the two newbies. "You hear that? You're now 'hands that can stand.' Edge duty only. Keep the rope alive."
They stood a little taller in a way that made him want them to live more.
The hedge rustled with more than one body now—multiple small heavies, or a few mediums who planned like siblings. The leaves didn't just shake; they coordinated.
Inspect offered itself again and was denied.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED]
"Aurora," he said, "we go surgical. Only tap to purchase seconds. Mech, brace on my hip. If they flood, we reverse through the rows—two at a time—never turn."
The sprite's hum tightened to a keen line. The Goblin stepped in close enough that Evan felt the heat off its dented plate like a sun trapped in a locker.
"Glue," he told the taller without looking. "You hold to last. If I say 'carpet,' you paint the dirt and we treat it as water. Do not get sentimental about crops."
The taller swallowed. "Yes."
The hedge made a sound he didn't love. He set the staff head low, resting it on his palm like a promise. "Here they come."
They did—three, in a stagger, trying to outsmart a doorway by pretending to be one after another instead of together. The first committed; the second hesitated; the third tried to blindside his own allies. People teach animals bad habits and then get upset when animals keep them.
"First head," Evan said. The Goblin met it, slid tusk to wood, levered. Aurora snapped the eye ridge. Evan stung the inside foreleg. The rope sang and did not break.
"Second head." He stepped a foot right, changed the angle, made the second want the lane the first was abandoning. It took it. That was a plan too small for the hole it bought.
"Third—glue."
The taller threw like a man made of choices. The puddle blossomed across the dirt. The third hit it with kingly confidence and lost a half-step of crown.
"Turn it into a path," Evan said. The rope slackened and tightened like a lung. He rode the field with his feet and let the furrows tell him where he lived.
They didn't fall so much as stop being the kind of problems you solve with time. The Goblin's wrench spoke its grammar. Aurora wrote small electric insults in strategic cursive. Evan kept the staff sting on a strict budget, spending only when it bought an instruction and not just a number.
Bodies made the wedge better. That's not poetry; that's a fact ugly enough to be useful.
[ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
Flags at the rim of his vision blinked again. He didn't open them. Not now. Coins could be counted. Lives couldn't be unspent.
"Back two rows," he said, calm. "On me."
They shuffled in order, posts to bodies to furrows. He didn't turn. The Goblin backed like a professional; Aurora drifted; the rope sagged and then found new purchase as the newbies hustled to re-tie on new posts.
Villagers at the lane pressed hands to mouths and said the small prayers humans say when other people are doing work they're glad not to do. The Chief stood still and counted.
"Your hands," Evan said without looking, "keep them in the lane, not in the beans. If this opens, we don't want a stampede in a letter our feet can't read."
The Chief took the instruction like a man picking up a tool. "You heard him," he said to his people. "Line the lane. Poles only. No heroes."
The hedge quieted the wrong way—too sudden, as if an argument had cut to verdict. The silence carried weight. The bell pattern faltered and found a new rhythm—one long, then two fast, then a slow roll that sounded like a barrel deciding to be a drum.
"What does that mean?" the shorter whispered.
"That somebody in the village thinks they've seen a reason to change their mind," Evan said. "Which is either good or late."
He moved the last carcass with a heel and turned the new gap into a mouth that would prefer to eat the next mistake. He stood where the field already loved him and felt his thigh complain and decided it could file a formal grievance later.
The brush breathed in. Out. Then in longer.
Inspect failed so decisively that it felt like a different system altogether.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
"On my voice," he said. "If I say 'fall,' you go two rows back and rebuild the gate without asking why."
"Yes," the taller said. The shorter said nothing, which can be the bravest form of agreement.
The leaves separated. Not one shape. Not three. A line of pressure bulged along the hedge as if the hedge had decided it was tired of pretending to be many little things and wanted to try being one big one.
"Not good," Evan said, and felt a small, honest smile try to live and die on his mouth. "But interesting."
He checked the Goblin's stance. He lifted the staff a finger-width. He gave Aurora a nod he'd learned meant if we need to cut power, cut it clean.
"On me," he said, and meant it for all of them—construct, sprite, kids, villagers, the field itself.
The hedge tore open along a span longer than a man is tall. Dark poured out of it that was not shadow but the absence of permission. The ground shook like a neighbor slamming a door badly.
"Fall," Evan said, voice still calm, because panic wastes mechanics. "Back two rows. Build it again."
They moved. The Goblin back-stepped with the balance of a dancer made of iron. The newbies ran rope like they'd always known what rope is for. Aurora took his left shoulder and burned a line of air to keep the next moment honest.
The brush spat something heavy and multiple. Evan did not turn. He watched the space they had chosen to live in and measured whether it would still be there in three seconds.