Free Web NovelChapter 13: Strange Girl
Several hours of running later,
Ethan emerged from inside a hollow root system, moving slowly, his body low until he cleared the opening. He straightened up and let his eyes sweep the surrounding trees before doing anything else.
Nothing moved.
The forest had gone quiet in the way it did when a disturbance had passed through and the things that lived there were waiting to be certain it was over. No footsteps. No voices carrying between the trees. No crack of branches under weight that didn’t belong.
He exhaled.
"Phew."
He had lost them. Eventually. It had taken three activations of White Transit to fully break the trail, pushing the spell further than he had planned when the High Regent placed it in the ring. Each activation burned through a significant draw of mana, and by the third he had felt the edges of his reserves pulling thin. He had ducked into the hollow root and stayed there, motionless, until the sound of pursuit faded completely and didn’t return.
He thought about that for a moment.
Without the spell he would have come out of that clearing missing more than pride. Jacob’s group had numbers and they had summons, and whatever damage the explosions had done to their formation they still had enough bodies to run someone down through open forest if the chase went long enough. White Transit had been the difference between walking away and not walking away.
The High Regent had handed that ring over like it cost her nothing.
"Plus."
His expression shifted. Something quieter than a smile but in that direction.
He looked at the count sitting in his mind.
[10/15 impaled Tier 9, 50/50 impaled ordinary]
Ten.
He turned the number over slowly, thinking through how it had accumulated. The bear. The wolf. And then Jacob’s group, which had given him six tier 9 kills in a window of minutes without him having to track a single one of them through difficult terrain.
He hadn’t considered that possibility when he first read the evolution requirements. His thinking had been straightforward, find beasts, hunt beasts, work through the count one creature at a time over however many days it took. The requirements said tier 9 beings. He had read that as beasts because beasts were what the forest held.
But summoned creatures were tier 9 beings.
It made sense when he thought about who Vlad was. Not just what the system had generated, but the actual history behind the name, the figure from his past life’s world, the stories that had survived centuries. Vlad the Impaler had not built his reputation on hunting animals in the wilderness. The impaling requirement wasn’t designed around beasts. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
It never had been.
"That’s much better."
The remaining five suddenly looked very different from how they had looked this morning.
Low level summoners operating in the forest around the stronghold were not in short supply. The awakening ritual had produced dozens of young talents, and most of them were out here right now, pushing themselves before the hunter games began, working with summons that were new and untested and exactly tier 9.
The math was straightforward.
The downside was equally straightforward. Once he started moving against summoners from the clan, even ones with no real standing, he would be finished in the stronghold. There would be no neutral ground to return to. Victoria, the brothel, whatever thin roof that life had offered over his head, all of it would become hostile the moment the first report reached the wrong ears.
He stood there and weighed it.
"It’s fine."
He said it without convincing himself, because he didn’t need convincing. The supplies in his ring were substantial. The gold from the beast market was already stored. He had spell books he hadn’t fully worked through yet and armor on his summon that outclassed anything available at the local market. And once he reached tier 8 he would have no reason to stay in a stronghold built at the edge of the wilderness, staffed by a clan that had never considered him worth the attention.
He would move inland. Further from the wall. Further from everything this body’s original life had been.
Victoria had raised a dead boy in a room too small for anyone to thrive in. He didn’t carry resentment for her. But sentiment wasn’t a plan.
He reached down to collect his bag and felt the shift in his peripheral vision before he consciously processed it.
A figure. Still. Watching from between the trees with the patience of someone who had been there for a while and wasn’t concerned about being seen now.
Ethan stopped.
He looked at her directly.
"You finally came out."
She stepped forward without hurry.
She was young, close to his age or just under it. Black fitted top, short skirt, straight white hair that caught the light between the canopy in flat silver lines. A short dagger held loosely in one hand, not raised, just present. Her face carried the same cold composure her mother’s had, but there was something underneath it that her mother’s hadn’t held. A focused interest that she wasn’t bothering to conceal. Her eyes moved over him the way a person’s did when they had already decided they were going to keep watching something for a while.
"You’re the second daughter. Hela."
It wasn’t a question.
The High Regent had not said it directly. But she had said enough. The first daughter had come to the brothel, timid and resolving something she’d worked herself up to. The second daughter was different. That one had never needed to work herself up to anything. Obsessive of her sister. Direct in ways that didn’t leave much room for misreading.
And whatever had happened with Ella, this one had come to find him personally.
"I’m not here for you yet." Hela said it the way someone said something that was simply true. Her gaze moved past him.
To Vlad.
Vlad stood several paces back, partially materialized, the spear in his hand and his eyes carrying the flat quality they always held when he was at rest. He looked back at her without expression.
"Human summons are impossible." Hela said it quietly, more to herself than to Ethan. "Are you aware of that?"
She wasn’t wrong and she wasn’t entirely right. Humanoid beasts existed. They were rare, but documented. What stood behind Ethan wasn’t humanoid. It wasn’t a beast that had evolved toward a human shape. It was simply human. No beast origin. No elemental signature. Just a man pulled from somewhere else and bound to a summoning circle.
The implications of that, what it meant about where Vlad had come from, what it meant about where human souls went, Ethan pushed that away from himself deliberately. He didn’t have enough information to reason through it and he had more immediate concerns.
"That’s not your concern." His voice came out flat.
Hela looked at him for a moment. Then back at Vlad.
"Maybe not." She shifted her weight slightly. "I’ll be watching you though. Make sure you don’t die before entering tier 8."
She turned without waiting for a response.
She was already almost gone between the trees when it hit him.
Not a sound. Not a gesture. Just a trace of something released into the air around her as she walked, a pressure that arrived without warning and pressed against him from every direction at once, carrying the specific weight of a level of power that sat entirely above where he currently stood.
Tier 7.
Ethan stood very still until it faded.
Then he exhaled, slow and careful, and didn’t move for another few seconds after that.
It was no wonder her mother was so worried about him.
