He leaned into the bend.
The ditch narrowed where reeds learned to whisper to each other. Water moved in a thin braid over dark stone, not loud enough to be music, loud enough to report mistakes. The bank sloped slick, clay glazed with morning. The air tasted like iron.
Something big had shifted here a minute ago without a hiker's politeness. Grass remembered weight. Reeds kept secrets the way a good lock does - by not caring what you want.
He let his left foot find purchase where a root knuckled the bank and kept his right heel free to pivot without asking clay for permission. The Dragon-Slaying Blade sat low, blade forward, as boring as an invoice.
He waited. Not long. Quiet had been a stagehand - it pulled the curtain.
The thing came out of the ditch with the confidence of anything that has more shoulder than plan. Bristle, tusk-shine that lied, eyes that thought straight lines made good arguments. The glyph over its skull hung with extra strokes.
[Named: Blackhide Boarman | Level: 4]
Wind tried to move sideways across the ditch. Ethan slid half a foot left - turn a charge into a mistake. He didn't flare shoulders or announce a guard. The blade had learned his hand; his hand had learned to keep quiet.
It committed. Water sheeted off its legs. It chose a line a smarter creature would have suspected already belonged to someone else.
He let the line have him for the length of a lie, then stepped out of its jurisdiction and set his edge against the one part of a sprint that never expects criticism: the ankle that writes checks the ground refuses to cash.
Hip. Hand. Line.
[Critical Hit.]
The leg forgot the rest of the animal. It folded. Shoulders tried to overrule. He had already placed the second cut to inform them that the meeting was canceled.
[Critical Hit.]
It went down messy beside the ditch. Mud took its side and kept him out of the splash. He rolled a degree of weight into his back foot and delivered the third point the way a good memo ends.
[Critical Hit.]
No-damage stayed honest. Coins chimed tidy.
[Copper +]
Something smaller flinched in the reeds behind the Named - an add planning to draft on victory. Deprived of its cue, it stuttered into his periphery - longer muzzle, less weight, teeth not yet earned.
He corrected ambition. Half-cut, knee-level - a memo about footing. It learned economy.
He listened. The ditch breathed. Reeds corrected grammar. A discreet ping set itself at the top of his sight-line.
[Skill Proficiency: Blade Mastery Lv1 -> progressing.]
Drag against stone again - heavier, slower, more sure. The kind of weight that arrives because it owns the question, not because it has an answer.
Two steps along the bank where roots keep promises. The ditch bent to a shallower run and offered a line of flat rocks a child could hop. Gouge-marks scored the limestone lip - fresh, ragged, confident.
Heat pooled. The second presence came shoulder first, then head with bad decisions. Heavier, hide thick with old fights and new mud.
[Named: Blackhide Boarman | Level: 5]
It chose confidence over speed. The ditch turned that belief into theater. Front legs found traction; back legs found the kind of mud that keeps secrets.
He did not backpedal. He moved lateral, let mud eat half its argument, then put the edge where the rest of the argument had to pass.
[Critical Hit.]
The cut removed an option. It threw its head - what you do when legs betray you. He occupied the space the head wanted and wasn't there when it arrived.
Second cut at the crease where neck considers being shoulder.
[Critical Hit.]
Water argued. Clay complained. He listened for what mattered - skin. No sting. Good.
It tried a flank shove. He let it borrow half his space and taxed it for the privilege. Third cut fit between ribs like a word that had been waiting to be said.
[Critical Hit.]
Meat stopped. Silence returned like a clerk.
[Copper +]
He wiped the edge on grass, kept posture boring, and crossed the rock line not as a target sneaking but as a man going somewhere he belonged. Reeds closed behind him like a door that accepted compliments well.
Scrub rose. Pale flowers made mistakes about sun. Ants ran a supply chain better than half of Starter Town. Voices - wrong direction - argued themselves away. He went deeper until the corridor tightened and smell turned from wet iron to fur and a musk that said a body slept here and resented sharing.
A pallet of crushed grass and shed hair - bone ends old and gnawed - coins ignored at the rim. Fresh gouges in a fan. He knelt to be shorter than the horizon. A single-file line led through a slit in the brush, widened recently. A low rumble like a door drawing breath.
Ethan set his feet where cuts could stand and not slide, blade low, off-hand touching scrub in case scrub wanted to argue.
The slit peeled. Presence filled it before the body did. He stepped first, cut where decision becomes movement, and took the rest of the space as if it was already his.