Day 20, Hope Forest.
Fweeeeet!
The sharp trill of Recruit 1's whistle cut through the dense brush, instantly shattering the quiet of the stream.
The three of them exploded from their hiding spots. Trapped in the center of their triangle was a massive, dark-brown wild boar. It snorted in panic, its heavy hooves tearing up the mud as it spun to find an exit.
"Send it this way!" Henry roared, stepping forward to close the gap.
Recruit 7 didn't hesitate. He stepped into the boar's path, taking a wide, sweeping horizontal swing with his sword. The blade didn't connect, but it did exactly what it was meant to do: cut off the beast's escape route, forcing the boar to pivot hard to its left.
It nearly ran straight into Recruit 1's descending blade. She swung with lethal precision, forcing the boar back into the center. Moving as a perfectly synchronized unit, the three of them collapsed the perimeter, cutting off every possible angle of escape.
Cornered, the boar turned its aggression entirely on Henry. It lowered its tusks and charged. Henry stood his ground, gripping his hilt with both hands. As the beast lunged, Henry sidestepped the heavy tusks and drove his blade deep into the side of its thick, muscular neck. The boar let out a deafening, high-pitched squeal before collapsing into the mud, its heavy body sliding to a halt at Henry's boots.
No one cheered. Nobody said a word. Twenty days in the Hope Forest had stripped away their rookie hesitation, replacing it with a cold, practiced efficiency.
Working in absolute silence, they dropped to the riverbank. They drank until their stomachs physically ached, refilled every waterskin and container to the brim, hoisted the heavy boar between them, and began the rushed hike back to camp.
It wasn't until they broke through the treeline and secured the locking logs of the lodge that the tension finally bled out of them.
"Nice," Recruit 7 exhaled, dropping his side of the carcass with a heavy thud. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, a massive grin spreading across his face. He had become surprisingly comfortable with Henry and Recruit 1 over the last three weeks, less combative, though he had never quite lost that arrogant, competitive edge. "We haven't had a haul this big since the deer. We're having bacon, baby!"
"Let's see if we can each eat twenty-five pounds this time," Henry challenged, rolling his shoulders to work out the ache. "Maybe we won't have to watch as much of it go to waste as we did with the deer."
Recruit 1 knelt beside the boar and pulled out her knife. "Just because you two have a bizarre need to turn survival into an eating contest doesn't mean you can include me. I'm significantly smaller than both of you. I'm eating right up to the threshold of feeling like I'm going to explode, and not a bite more."
"Oh, come on, 1," Recruit 7 coaxed, leaning against the wooden wall. "We've been surviving on stringy squirrels and weasels if anything at all for the last two weeks. Go all out with us."
"Yeah, 1," Henry chimed in, crouching down to help her prep the meat. "You aren't going to leave us hanging, are you?"
She stopped cutting. She looked up, fixing Henry with a long, unreadable stare. Finally, she let out a quiet sigh. "Fine. But if I make myself so sick to my stomach that I can't walk, you're carrying me to the finish line. Because I absolutely refuse to fail this exam on the final stretch."
Henry smiled. "Deal. But I expect the exact same from you if I drop."
"Careful there, guys," Recruit 7 chimed in, his tone dripping with theatrical teasing. "If you keep flirting that hard, 12 might get jealous."
Henry's smile vanished. "Shut up, 7. We aren't flirting."
Recruit 1 didn't say a word, but she slowly turned her head and leveled an icy, murderous glare at Recruit 7. The absolute deadliness in her eyes was enough to genuinely unsettle him.
Recruit 7 immediately threw his hands up in surrender. "Hey, I'm kidding! Of course I'm kidding. Why do you look like you're actually going to murder me in my sleep?"
"I might," she stated flatly.
Henry couldn't help but laugh, shaking his head as he stood up to start arranging the stones for the fire pit. Recruit 1 went back to butchering the thick boar hide, and Recruit 7, eager to escape the tension, quickly slipped outside to gather extra firewood.
For a few minutes, the only sound in the lodge was the wet slice of the knife and the clatter of rocks.
Then, without looking up from the meat, Recruit 1 spoke. "Did it really look like we were flirting?"
Henry paused, a heavy stone halfway to the ground. Surprised by the question, he turned to look at her. Her face was locked in its usual, impenetrable mask of stoicism, but in the dim light of the lodge, he noticed the tips of her ears were burning bright red.
He decided it was best not to point that out.
"No, I don't think so," Henry replied, setting the stone into place. "But... you do treat me differently than you treat 7."
"That's because he's an idiot," she replied instantly. "And you're... less of an idiot."
Henry laughed quietly. "Well, thanks. I'll take that as a compliment coming from you."
"It is," she said softly. She kept her eyes locked on her work, her knife moving a little slower now. "And... about 12. Are you two..."
Before she could finish the sentence, heavy boots crunched outside the entryway.
Recruit 7 walked back inside, his arms loaded with dry timber. He stopped dead in his tracks, immediately sensing the heavy, quiet atmosphere in the room. He looked back and forth between them. "...Am I interrupting something?"
"No," Henry snapped, pointing at the fireplace. "Now stop talking and give me the firewood."
The conversation was dead, but the lingering tension hung in the air long after the meat hit the fire.
Once the fire pit was crackling and the thick cuts of boar meat were hissing over the open flames, Henry wiped the grease from his hands and walked over to Recruit 1.
"Do you mind if I take a look at the mana cores we've gathered so far?" he asked.
She didn't look up from her gear maintenance, but she reached into a secure pouch on her belt and tossed him a small, heavy leather drawstring bag. "Go ahead. Just don't lose any of them. Gathering them is a big part of the final exam grading."
"I know," Henry said, catching the pouch.
He sat down near the edge of the firelight and untied the leather string, carefully pouring the cores out onto the ground in front of him.
There were nine cores in total. Three of them were significantly larger, about the size of a large plum, pulsing with a faint, inner light. The largest was the crimson colored core they had gotten from the Fire-Mana Lynx on their very first day.
Next to it sat a brown core they had just extracted from the boar, which Henry guessed contained some kind of rock or earth-based mana.
The last of the large cores was a smooth, deep green core taken from the deer.
Beneath the three large crystals were six much smaller ones. They were all a dull, murky brown taken from the stringy squirrels and weasels they had been surviving on for the past two weeks, and they all fit easily together in the center of his palm.
Henry stared down at the glowing stones, his brow furrowing in the firelight.
'I wonder if this is enough to pass the prerequisite,' Henry thought to himself, staring into the flames. 'I guess we'll just have to keep hunting and hope it is.'
For the rest of the day and well into the next, they forced themselves to gorge on the tough boar meat. Despite their best, agonizing efforts, they still ended up tossing twenty pounds of spoiled pork to the edge of the clearing.
With the last of their feast gone, the familiar reality of their muddy routine at the river began again on Day 22.