He left the bowl the way he had found it: useful to itself.
Scrub held onto him like a housekeeper with standards. He kept shoulders narrow and blade narrower. The world called him uninteresting. Good.
The bell came again - far, clean, not church. System. The sound that says something public has changed and your private plan just got new neighbors.
Light touched his vision, polite as a hand raised at the back.
[Notice][Public board updated.]
He didn't open it. He filed it under later and kept to now.
Downslope, the runnel hushed. He crossed where stones hid under silt and let mud take his old smell. A rib of rock lifted - spine of the low hills. He climbed on feet that liked edges.
Voices - the quiet pair.
"...that bell was a board push," a woman said, breath kept small."What'd they post?" a man asked, weight in the hips."Field chains or a reset. Hard to read when you're running.""Don't run," he said. "We hunt."
He eased into a fold where scrub wrote him out of their grammar and let them pass lower on the slope. Then he followed the spine where it pinched into a corridor - single-file apology. Big shoulders would hate it.
Heat pooled in a bend. Breath like weight exhaling. Shadow thickened. Glyph-shadow with more teeth.
[Named: Blackhide Boarman | Level: 8]
Rock liked feet that listened. The Named shouldered in and found geometry had opinions. He gave up a palm of space and took two inches of time. The head committed; he wasn't there. First cut at the inside ankle - not dramatic, decisive.
[Critical Hit.]
Front argued; rear remembered. Weight stuttered. Second line at shoulder, low - where turning becomes a story you regret.
[Critical Hit.]
No sparks. Rock took skid marks like ledger lines. It tried to back out. He let it discover there were only worse ideas.
Third cut across breath - not a throat slash, a memo: inhalation is rented space.
[Critical Hit.]
A side-swipe came - a move that works on people who dislike ribs. He stood where ribs aren't and let the fourth cut live under the gesture.
[Critical Hit.]
Corridor narrowed a hair more. He chose precision. Fifth cut for punctuation.
[Critical Hit.]
Silence returned like a clerk. Coins tidy.
[Copper +]
The steel warmed a degree - calm approval. A librarian-quiet ping sat at the top of his sight.
[Skill Proficiency: Blade Mastery Lv1 -> progressing.]
Another, smaller approval that didn't need a panel. He wiped the blade on rock, scraped boot soles clean on a shelf seam, and let wind shift.
"What the bell buys," he said. He could go read the board and trade the next ten hours for information that would be late by the time he returned. Or he could grow into the kind of person who treats late information as entertainment.
Snowball now. Shop later.
The spine sank into brush and made him choose between tall and quiet. He went quiet, into reeds that held the world like a secret. Swale replaced ditch - water that wanted an identity. He washed the last argument off his knuckles.
The reed hall bent until orientation became an opinion. Ahead, something large adjusted its idea of itself and lost leaves for it. A heavier shadow pooled, then lifted like it was practicing being a body.
The bell didn't ring. The grass didn't gossip. The UI touched him with two words and a breath.
[Field Tip][Unknown presence ahead.]
He placed four steps on seams where reed mats could argue with each other instead of with him. The hall opened into a pocket where water had tried to be a pond and failed. A hump of ground held scrub, fresh parallel gouges high, scat glossy and proud, feathers not all done being birds.
He circled left on roots that knit mud into a promise. Blade low, attention wide. The shadow inclined like it was listening to him decide. Reeds at that point made space the way living things do before introductions.
Voices behind chose a wrong turn with enthusiasm. The pair either found a different question or took theirs elsewhere. The room was his.
Light flickered again - behavior more than sentence.
[Notice][... ]
He didn't open it. He felt the presence instead - not just weight, age. The way ground relaxes around a thing that claims it often.
Feet settled into a patient triangle. Blade found the exact angle where its weight offered to do half his job. Off-hand touched a reed to feel how rude the air was. He decided how many cuts he could afford if it had learned from the others.
"Okay," he told the quiet. "Let's buy what the bell paid for."
He stepped first.