Free Web NovelChapter 17: Blood in the forest
Cole had barely covered a few hundred meters when he felt it — the faint, consistent pressure of someone tracking his movement from behind. His eyes narrowed without him deciding to narrow them.
Saint AI, scan the heavily hooded figure at my three o’clock.
[Processing request. Accessing vitals.]
[Scan complete.]
[Unknown male — physical path practitioner, specializing in melee combat.]
[Danger level: 10%]
The tension in Cole’s shoulders eased. As long as whoever this was couldn’t kill him in a single move, he had room to work with.
He glanced upward. The sun hung quietly in the midday sky, unhurried.
"I’ve got time," he murmured to himself. "Might as well head out and test my real ability against some monsters."
And deal with this rat while I’m at it.
He picked up his pace and moved toward the city’s outer edge. During the walk he gradually became aware that the number of people following him had grown to over a dozen — shadows keeping careful distance, trading off at intervals. But as he approached the boundary where the city’s streets gave way to open ground, they peeled away one by one, until only the original figure remained.
"Stubborn," Cole said under his breath.
He pushed his speed up slightly — not dramatically, just enough — and slipped cleanly out of the man’s line of sight.
Behind him, the heavily cloaked figure stumbled to a stop and stared at the empty path ahead.
How is he that fast? The thought arrived with genuine alarm. According to the intelligence, Cole is an ordinary mortal who hasn’t even begun body refinement—
The realization that his target was disappearing into the treeline hit him a moment later. He cursed through clenched teeth and broke into a run.
This is a perfect opportunity. I can’t let it slip away.
Cole crossed into the forest without slowing.
Ancient trees rose around him like pillars holding up the sky — trunks thick as elephant waists, bark deeply grooved with age, their canopy so dense that sunlight only reached the ground in thin, scattered shafts. The undergrowth was quiet in the particular way that wasn’t actually quiet — the rustling of things moving just beyond sight, the soft crack of weight on dead leaves somewhere in the green dark.
He kept the sword in his right hand and moved carefully, eyes tracking every shadow. One wrong step and he would be someone’s meal.
Earth had its own predators — creatures that hid in plain sight, patient and deliberate. But those animals had no mana. Here, the things that hunted were something else entirely. Creatures thousands of times more dangerous than anything that had ever walked Earth’s forests roamed freely between these trees, and the mana beasts were worse still.
Cole kept his senses sharp and had Saint AI running continuous perimeter scans. His own eyes might miss something. The AI likely would too, given its current limitations — but two layers of awareness were better than one.
His thoughts drifted to the sword as he walked.
Humans in this world had no internal mana channels, no beast core — nothing like what magical creatures carried to store and process energy naturally. The only way to power the formation engraved on the blade was through external means. Mana stones.
He wasn’t critically low, at least not yet.
His hand moved quickly, slotting a glowing ruby-red mana stone into the channel carved directly where the formation was engraved. The stone’s deep red light dimmed almost immediately as the formation woke up, pulling the mana inward, drinking it in layer by layer.
Until I have something better, this will have to do.
Cole watched the process and exhaled slowly. On Earth, humanity had sat at the top of everything — apex predators, masters of their environment, children of a world built around their survival. Here, it felt like the opposite. Like the entire world had been designed specifically to erase them, and the species had only managed to survive through sheer refusal to accept that outcome. Ingenuity and iron will, applied stubbornly across generations.
He shook the thought loose and focused.
The sword had gone light in his hand — nearly weightless, the formation running clean, the blade responding to the smallest movement of his wrist without resistance. He ran a few test swings and felt the balance settle naturally.
Good enough.
He moved toward his first target zone — and stopped.
A cluster of dark stains on the ground caught his eye. He crouched and looked closer.
[Clue found. Scanning blood sample.]
[Error — insufficient biological data. Sample too degraded for species identification. Identity could not be confirmed.]
Cole ignored the message. The AI’s database was still too thin to be useful for this kind of field work. He trusted his instincts instead.
Saint AI, scan the perimeter and calculate the most likely direction the creature fled.
A pure white arrow materialized in his vision, hovering in the air, pointing steadily northeast into the darker part of the forest.
Cole followed it, tightening his grip on the sword.
First real fight since arriving in this world.
The thought landed with quiet weight.
Then sound reached him through the trees — the sharp, metallic ring of iron striking something dense and unyielding, followed by a second impact, and a third.
Clang. Clang.
He moved toward it.
The scene came into view between two massive trunks. A young man — fourteen, maybe fifteen years old — was locked in combat with a creature that looked like something between a rhinoceros and an elephant, crossed with something that had no business existing. Its entire body was sheathed in thick natural hide, each of its two legs driving into the earth hard enough to send small tremors through the ground. When it opened its mouth, a breath of toxic vapor rolled out in a pale, heavy cloud.
The young man was losing. Not quickly — he was skilled enough to hold the line — but the tide had turned against him, and both of them knew it. He was being pushed back step by step, his footing giving ground each time the creature pressed forward.
Cole watched from the shadows.
What caught his attention wasn’t the fight itself — it was the young man’s expression. The skill was there, but the focus kept breaking. Every few seconds his gaze flicked over his shoulder toward the tree line, searching for something that wasn’t coming.
Where is Karlos? The thought was visible on his face even from a distance. He said he’d come back with reinforcements. It’s been half an hour.
The young man had come into the forest with his brother. When the monster attacked, the brother had fled — promising to return with backup. Thirty minutes had passed. The trees behind the young man were empty.
Cole watched the understanding settle across the boy’s face — the slow, awful realization that he had been left. Not abandoned by accident. Left deliberately, by someone who had used the situation as an excuse to disappear.
The young man’s expression darkened to something bleak and furious.
Then his ears caught something. Footsteps in the undergrowth, coming from the east.
His face changed immediately.
"Hey — you there!" His voice came out sharp, carrying the practiced authority of someone who had grown up giving orders. Even bleeding, even cornered, the tone was pointed and expectant. "Come help me quickly! I am the young master of the Blue Pegasus family — save my life today and you will be handsomely rewarded!"
Even with death breathing toxic vapor six feet away, the mention of his family’s name straightened his spine.
Cole had been watching the fight for a while, and honestly, the monster had been his primary reason for staying back. The creature was significantly above his current comfortable range. It wasn’t a fight he wanted.
But then the boy had said Blue Pegasus family.
Cole’s expression flattened.
The city was divided between four ancient families locked in a constant, careful contest for dominance. The Blue Pegasus family was one of them — and their relationship with the Saint family, the name Cole currently carried like a target on his back, was anything but warm. Strained was the polite word for it.
His willingness to step in dropped another notch.
The young master seemed to pick up on the silence from the treeline. The arrogance in his voice cracked slightly at the edges.
"Please—" He called out again, and this time the word carried something different. Smaller. "Please, just help me."
