The palisade gate stood open like a question. Ethan answered it with a heel of his hand to the guardrail and a steady pace into the tall, bright grass.
The grass closed around his shins with a silk hiss. The path wasn't a road so much as a habit the town had, a pressed line where boots had taught plants to be polite. He let the Dragon-Slaying Blade hang low and ordinary, a worker's tool, not a sermon.
Wind combed one way. Something small combed the other.
He didn't square up. He didn't perform footwork for an audience that wasn't there. He just let weight settle over the ball of his front foot and listened until the sound under the grass separated from the sound of the grass itself.
There you are.
The first shape broke the green like a bubble surfacing. He didn't give it a name. He gave it an outcome - a short, boring cut, hip through hand, edge already where it would be useful.
[Talent: Tenfold Crit - Active][Critical Hit.]
The creature went from intent to inventory with no middle. Copper clicked. The blade rode his grip like it had been waiting for this idea of him.
Another stir, left - closer. He stepped into it so the cut could arrive at the same time the target did. Hip. Hand. Line.
[Critical Hit.]
No celebration. Just quiet arriving on time. He adjusted the angle a hair, testing how much the growth weapon wanted to help. It wanted exactly as much as he could carry without getting loud about it.
A heavier rustle pressed the path three paces ahead - low, blunt, arriving with more confidence than plan. He shifted half a shoe-width so momentum would put soft parts where his edge already lived.
[Critical Hit.]
He checked nothing. Numbers would make themselves known when they mattered. For now the metric was whether his shoulders stayed quiet and the grass forgot him between motions.
Light pricked the right side of his vision, patient as a clerk.
[Wilderness Notice][A hidden quest is available nearby.][Accept? Y/N]
Ethan angled the blade down so it looked like a thought, not a threat. Public displays attract attention. The path behind him was empty; the grass didn't care.
"Accept," he said.
The notice pinched small and slid to the top of his vision.
[Hidden Quest: Active][Condition: Take no damage.]
The grass ahead firmed into a V where something shouldered through it. First hint: heat, breath on a meat-smell. Second: sound - not skitter, not slither - impact packaged for delivery.
He set the tip a finger's width forward so the edge would be where legs became mistake. He did not raise his guard. He lowered his expectations of the creature's plan.
A boar - bigger than town dogs, tusks dishonest with shine - pushed into light. A glyph flickered above its skull.
[Named: Blackhide Boarman | Level: 3]
Above his level. Good.
It pawed once. It committed. He gave it a straight line, then stepped off it at the last possible moment and placed the edge where force had to pass. Hip. Hand. Line.
[Critical Hit.]
Tendon forgot sprint. Front kept going; back learned kneel. He had already put the second cut where correction would be.
The boar went to its side. Dust came up like applause no one meant. The third cut arrived at the neck without admiration, and the system admired it for him.
[Critical Hit.][No damage taken.]
The dot at the top of his vision became a tone that said: done.
[Hidden Quest Complete.][Reward: Bonus EXP.][Tip: Public completion effects may draw attention.]
He suppressed every habit games teach - the whoop, the pose. He went small. Wiped the blade on grass. Listened.
From town, voices - multiple - spilled through the gate, laughter with that high pitch that means people want to be seen having a good time.
"Did you see my roll? SS talent, man -""- starter bow is a scam -"
He moved where the slope dipped and the grass grew a head taller. He took the copper without making it a story and left the body as a lesson.
The weapon hummed a suggestion into his palm. Not words - an appetite. "Later," he told the steel.
Footsteps came off the path and tried on the grass like a new coat. He slid sideways through a seam, shoulders narrow, blade narrower.
Two players broke the line where he'd first cut earlier. One wore a new-spawn glow; the other had found a leather jerkin and a confidence that didn't fit yet.
"Dude - look at this!" the jerkin said, pointing. "Named."
"Was," the glow said.
Ethan stealthed by doing nothing that looked like it. When the wind went wrong he stood behind the boar stink. He got past their cone of habit and let the grass re-sew behind him.
A small chime, discreet enough to exist in polite company, touched his ear.
[Skill Proficiency: Blade Mastery Lv1 -> progressing.]
He rolled his wrist, letting the blade's weight inform bone. The field thinned. Beyond a low brush line, a runnel where water had taught itself a path. The air smelled cooler, a little metallic with stone. Something heavier than the boar had walked that edge recently; the grass remembered.
He set his feet at the lip and listened. Frogs said small religions. A fly did ecstatic arithmetic. Under that, a drag - regular interval, grudging weight. The sound of a thing with a name considering whether to have an opinion.
He kept the blade low and his eyes lower. If you look like a threat, you get a threat's answer.
The drag became a step; the step became a rhythm; the rhythm broke its patience. It came out of the ditch too fast, convinced of itself. Taller than the boar, meat over bone, hide furred and dirty with the kind of red that pretends to be dry. The glyph above its head had more points.
[Named: Blackhide Boarman | Level: 4]
He marked angles: tusks forward, shoulders thick, ankles a suggestion. Ground: damp near the ditch, stability lying to you.
It charged. He let it have the line, then opened a door only a person could fit. First cut - left ankle, brief as a memo. It tried to correct; the second cut already waited where the right shoulder insisted on being.
He heard the next problem before he saw it: a second rustle, smaller but with ambition. Audience.
"Of course you do," he said, stepping so the big body blocked the small one's line.
The blade did what it had done all morning and applied certainty. He built a three-cut sentence: stop; turn; silence.
The small thing, robbed of its cue, hopped into his arc and got half the opinion it wanted. Enough to learn economy.
He checked skin - no sting, no red. Shoulders down, not up. Air allowed to be air again.
Voices again, closer and too cheerful for the work in front of them.
"North farm's this way, right?""I told you, slimes first, then boars -"
He wiped the blade and picked the coins that wanted picking. Nothing that would take time to justify carrying. He measured the space between the two groups of voices and chose the option that preserves future choices.
He went deeper along the water line, where brush stitched the world into narrower halls and conversation died because sound didn't like fighting reeds.
The weapon warmed a degree against his palm. Or maybe the morning learned a new sun.
A faint notice perched at the top of his vision, as discreet as a librarian.
[Tip][You are leaving the starter hunting ground.][Hostile density increases.]
"Good," he said. Quiet.
He moved until the ditch bent, hiding him from the gate and the plaza's noise. Reeds stood taller here, packed with the secrets of small things. A smell like iron and wet bark sat low to the ground. The grass held still as if trying not to be involved.
Something heavier stirred beyond the bend. Not steps. A shift, deliberate as a door closing in a house you thought was empty.
His hand found the blade's balance without needing eyes. He set his feet so he could borrow the ground's patience.
"Let's see," he told the quiet. "What thinks it lives here."
He leaned into the bend.