The forest at night was a different creature than the one Luna had walked through during the day.

  Moonlight filtered through the canopy in violet patches, transforming the undergrowth into a patchwork of shadow and pale color. The temperature had dropped, and the sounds had changed—fewer bird calls, more insects, and the occasional distant cry of something that might have been a hunting predator or its prey. Luna's enhanced senses compensated for the darkness without difficulty, but the others moved more carefully, their footsteps louder on the forest floor despite their best efforts. Well, except for Catherine's as silent walking was one of the Rogue's Traits.

  Luna led from the front. Behind her, Craig's team maintained a competent formation—the Knight and Mercenary flanking the group, the Cleric walking beside Craig, Diana and Catherine bracketed between them.

  Luna activated Identify on Craig's companions as they walked. Her brow furrowed slightly. Craig was level 5, the other three level 4. Higher than she'd assumed—Catherine's trio, who'd seemed reasonably competent, had only reached Level 3 through their hunting. Craig's group was even better, which meant they'd been fighting consistently and effectively since arriving. As EXP was split between the members, it was possible that their group had killed more enemies than Luna herself.

  A nagging thought surfaced as they walked: Victor's group had no Safe Zone registration. The wounds on the bodies she'd buried had been precise. As Victor had a Rogue Class, those were the kinds of wounds his knives might leave. Or they could be goblin swords. Though Catherine was also a Rogue, and it seemed she'd found the bodies first. She couldn't be certain, and the uncertainty gnawed at her.

  "So tell me about Sarah," Luna said, breaking the rhythm of crunching leaves. "What's she like?"

  Craig's expression softened—or seemed to. Luna wasn't very good at actually understanding the meaning behind human expressions even if she saw them clearly. "She's ten years older than me, would be forty-two. Always been the reckless one in the family—cliff diving, skydiving, bungee jumping, you name it. I'm the boring little brother who worries too much." He laughed quietly. "When the Integration hit, she actually seemed excited. Like the whole apocalypse was just another extreme sport. I had to practically hold her back during the first Trial so she wouldn't charge into the goblins bare-handed."

  "She sounds brave," Catherine offered from behind them.

  "Brave and stupid aren't always that far apart," Craig said with a smile. "When we got separated into different groups for Trial 3, I spent the first hours just trying to find her. Lucky for me, she'd already made it to Zone 4 with Nathan and Debrah. They'd been looking out for her."

  "Were Nathan and Debrah in her Trial 3 group?" Catherine asked.

  "Yeah. We all completed Trial 2 together—fighting that large Hobgoblin. Nathan was quiet—kept to himself mostly, but dependable in a fight. Debrah was more outgoing, kind of the mom of the group." Craig paused. "Sarah liked them. Said Nathan reminded her of our dad."

  "So you reunited in the Zone, but why did you split?" Luna asked.

  Craig replied, "I wanted to go with her—she wanted to hunt those mushroom things—but she said that it's better to split into the groups of three for the bounties, and her party was already balanced enough."

  Diana, who had been walking in nervous silence near the middle of the formation, spoke up hesitantly. "Your sister's group—you said they left the Safe Zone five hours ago?"

  "Yeah, just before evening really set in. Why?" Craig's response came quickly. "Did you see them?"

  "I'm trying to remember." Diana's footsteps slowed slightly. "I spent most of the day at the Zone entrance. I was desperate to find anyone who'd let me join their hunting party, so I watched everyone coming and going. But I don't recall seeing a group matching your description. Not around that time."

  "The barrier entrance covers a pretty wide area," Craig offered. His tone stayed patient, understanding. "Easy to miss people if you're focused somewhere else, or if they left from a different section."

  "Maybe." Diana didn't sound convinced. "But I was paying close attention to everyone. When you're that desperate, you notice things. A group of three should have registered, especially with a woman Rogue. There aren't many of those around."

  "Memory plays tricks when you're stressed," Craig said. Something in his voice had shifted—not hostile, just firmer. "You were panicking about your own situation, worried about getting thrown out of the Zone. It makes perfect sense that you'd miss something. Maybe your memory is just not that good."

  Diana's mouth opened, then closed. She frowned. "My memory is fine, actually. It's one of the few things I'm confident about. I almost finished a medical degree—you don't get through years of anatomy and pharmacology with a bad memory."

  "Medical degree?" The Mercenary—Karl, Craig had called him earlier—glanced back. "Thought you said you were a graphic designer."

  "I said I am a graphic designer. I was a pre-med student before that. Two years at UCSF before I..." Diana trailed off, her jaw tightening. "I was expelled. Hemophobia. Fear of blood. Turns out you can't be a doctor if you freak out every time someone gets a paper cut."

  "Well, stress does funny things to memory," Craig said easily. "Even good memory. I wouldn't worry about it."

  Diana didn't press further, but Luna caught the slight furrow in her brow.

  "Actually," Diana said after a stretch of silence, "if we're going to examine the bodies, I might be able to help with that. I know it sounds strange, but corpses don't bother me. It's fresh blood—the sight of it flowing, the smell when it's new. Once everything's settled, I can handle it fine. I was decent in the dissection lab, at least." She paused. "It was the surgery rotations that did me in."

  "That could be useful," Luna said. "Whatever killed them, understanding the wounds might tell us what we're dealing with."

  "I mean, I'm no forensic expert or anything. Two years of pre-med doesn't exactly make me qualified to do an autopsy." Diana's brief confidence wavered, replaced by her more characteristic uncertainty. "But I know basic anatomy. I can probably tell you how deep a wound is, roughly what angle it came from, maybe rule out some things. And I remember enough about rigor mortis and decomposition to estimate how long they've been dead. That much I can do."

  "It's more than the rest of us have," Luna said.

  Craig frowned for a moment. "I don't think we should push you too much. Don't force yourself, girl."

  "Don't worry, I won't. I just want to be useful."

  Diana sounded and looked so sincere that no one had anything else to say.

  They reached the burial site roughly forty minutes after leaving the Safe Zone—they moved faster than Catherine's group, and went in a straight line as they knew the destination. Luna recognized the landmarks without difficulty—the split tree, the luminescent moss, the slight depression in the earth where the graves lay hidden beneath their covering of branches and leaves.

  "This is it," Luna said, gesturing to the two low mounds. "The woman's in the grave to the right."

  Craig stared at them for a long moment. His jaw worked silently—something that might have been grief or might have been a man steeling himself. "Okay," he said quietly. "Let's see who's down there."

  The Knight—a stocky woman whose name Luna hadn't caught—stepped forward, pulling her shield from her back. "I'll start clearing the dirt. Shield works well enough as a shovel." She planted herself beside the nearest mound and drove the shield's edge into the soft earth, scraping soil aside in broad strokes.

  Luna stood relaxed, bow strapped to her back, watching the Knight work. The Mercenary moved to a position near the second mound but didn't start digging—instead he drew his long sword and held it loosely, his attention drifting between the treeline and the work in progress. Standing guard, it seemed. The Cleric had drifted to a spot behind Craig, the two of them positioned a few paces back from the graves.

  Diana and Catherine had moved closer to Luna near the treeline, the three of them forming a loose cluster as they waited.

  The Knight worked steadily, her enhanced strength driving the shield deep into the compacted earth with each thrust. The graves hadn't been dug deep to begin with—Thomas's improvised work with his own shield had only managed a few feet at best—but the soil had settled and packed in the two-plus hours since, and clearing it was slower going than simply piling it on had been. Minutes passed as she carved away layers of dirt, occasionally switching to her gauntleted hands to scrape away soil that the shield's broad edge couldn't reach.

  After several minutes of digging, the woman's face emerged, brown hair matted with soil, her upper torso visible where the earth had been scraped away.

  "That's Debrah." Craig closed his eyes briefly. "Not Sarah. Which means—"

  "Which means your sister might still be alive," Catherine finished. "We should search the area. If she was with them when whatever happened—"

  "Wait," Diana said. She'd moved closer to the partially uncovered body, kneeling beside it with a focused expression. Her hands hovered over Debrah's exposed torso without touching, her eyes tracing the visible wounds. "Let me check first. If I can figure out what attacked them, we'll know what to look for—and what to avoid."

  Craig said, "I'm not sure if there's a point. From what Luna said, Slash Shrums probably killed them. Rather than wasting time, we should search for my sister and—"

  "If it's the Shrums," Luna interrupted, "then she has either escaped to safety already, or... was killed in another place. For all we know, she could already be in the Safe Zone, confused by your absence. We can spare a few minutes for some basic examination."

  Craig sighed. "You're right. I'm just both a bit relieved and... worried about her."

  Diana leaned closer, tilting her head to study the cuts from different angles. The clinical focus sat strangely on her—at odds with the woman who'd been too scared to fight monsters, but not entirely surprising given what she'd said about her medical background.

  "Deep cuts," she said after a moment. Her voice was thin but steadier than Luna expected. "Slashes across the torso, between the ribs where they're exposed." She squinted, shifting her position. "The edges look clean, I think? Not ragged or torn. But I'm honestly not qualified to tell you what made them. A sharp blade, a claw, one of those scythe-armed mushrooms—any of those could leave marks like this. They're just... deep cuts from something sharp. Sorry. I wish I could narrow it down more."

  She hesitated, then reached toward Debrah's exposed arm. Her fingers pressed against her wrist, testing the joint's flexibility with careful, deliberate motions. She tried to bend the elbow, checked the shoulder where the dirt had been cleared enough to access it. The corpse barely budged.

  "But this part I do know," she said, and her voice gained a fraction of confidence. "Rigor mortis. It sets in fully within twelve hours in moderate temperatures, making the body completely stiff." She tested Debrah's fingers one more time, failing to bend them at all. "This body is so stiff... and not from the cold. It's deep into Rigor Mortis."

  She sat back on her heels and looked up at Craig. "This woman has been dead for at least twelve hours. Closer to fourteen or fifteen, if I had to guess." She paused, the uncertainty returning. "That's—I'm fairly confident about that part, at least. The rigor timeline was something they drilled into us pretty hard."

  The words fell into the clearing like a stone into still water.

  Luna felt the silence crystallize around her. Craig had told her at the Safe Zone that his people left maybe five hours ago. That conversation had been roughly an hour past. Six hours total since Craig claimed he'd last seen them alive.

  But they'd been dead since before dawn. Luna's hand dropped to the hunting knife at her hip.

  "Now," Craig said.

  The Knight lunged with her shield at Diana, but Luna was already moving. Her knife came up in a rising block, Mana-enhanced steel catching the shield's rim. The impact jarred her arm to the shoulder. The Knight was strong—full Class Form, enhanced Strength—but Luna's higher stats and level held the line.

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  Metal screamed.

  "RUN!" Luna shouted at Diana, but the woman didn't move, watching in shock at the rapidly changing situation.

  Craig's staff blazed. A bolt of fire streaked from its tip toward Catherine, whose Aether Shield had already been weakened by the Mercenary's strikes. The Rogue twisted sideways—fast, but not fast enough. The firebolt caught her across the left side of her face and shoulder.

  Catherine's scream tore through the clearing. Raw, animal, a sound Luna would remember. She staggered backward, her left hand clawing at her face — fingers curling involuntarily as the tendons seized, the skin of her palm and wrist already splitting into angry blisters where the fire had washed over them. The left side of her face was a ruin — eyebrow gone, skin peeling back in wet sheets, her eye swelling shut beneath a ridge of scorched, weeping flesh. Her shoulder smoked where the leather had melted against the skin beneath. She couldn't scream anymore; the sound had become a thin, airless keen, her lungs refusing to cooperate with the shock flooding her nervous system. Then something instinctive took over — her form shimmered, blurred at the edges, and she was gone, vanishing into the dark between the trees before anyone could stop her.

  Alive. She's alive.

  Luna had no more time to think about Catherine. The Mercenary's curved sword slashed at her ribs from the right as he changed his target, and she deflected it with the flat of her knife—redirecting rather than blocking full-on. The Knight came high while the Mercenary went low, staggering their timing just enough that parrying one left a gap for the other.

  Luna twisted between the strikes, her Agility the only thing keeping her intact. This wasn't archery—this was knife work against two armed opponents who knew how to coordinate, and she couldn't retreat because Diana was directly behind her, frozen stiff with terror. Every step Luna gave up brought the Adventurer closer to a sword's edge.

  "Fight or run, you idiot!" Luna screamed at the girl.

  Diana couldn't even stand up. "C-catherine! Her face! Her skin! THE BLISTERS!!! Her face was—"

  A Radiant Orb sailed from the Cleric's position and burst against Luna's left shoulder. The flash seared across her vision, the light left her blinking away afterimages. She barely caught the Knight's follow-up thrust on her bracer, the sword scraping across armored leather with a sound like tearing cloth as the Aether Shield helped it to resist.

  "Don't bother fighting back," Craig called from behind the melee line. He could have been commenting on a card game. A new firebolt was already forming on his staff's tip. "Four against one. Even with that level advantage, you can't win this in close quarters."

  Luna said nothing. She was busy protecting a freaking out woman. Diana was murmuring nonsense under her own nose, now. Perhaps letting her join them had been a mistake. If Luna just sacrificed her, she could've gained some distance away from them and then just finished off the group with her bow.

  The Mercenary feinted left, reversed into a low sweep toward her legs. Luna jumped the blade. The Knight was already there—her sword driving forward at Luna's chest. Luna caught it on her knife's crossguard, but the force drove her back a step, her boots skidding on grave-dirt.

  Then the Knight's boot connected with Luna's right thigh.

  The kick was solid—enhanced by a Class Form's Strength. Luna felt the impact ripple against her armor, her Aether Shield flaring as it cushioned the blow. No real damage. But her leg buckled for just a moment, and in that opening the Mercenary's pommel cracked against her forearm, nearly knocking the knife from her grip.

  "You know," Craig said, "for someone at Level 7, you're quite the fool." The amusement in his voice had sharpened into something colder. "I told you I had a missing sister, and you didn't even hesitate. Just walked right out of the one place in this forest where no one could touch you." He shook his head. "If not for that Adventurer idiot, we could've set up a better trap, but at least I should thank her for distracting you with her useless presence."

  Luna blocked another exchange—knife against sword. The Knight pressed while the Mercenary circled to flank.

  "There is no Sarah," Craig continued. "There never was. Nathan and Debrah were travelers we ran into when we searched for the Safe Zone. Friendly people. Trusting. They teamed up with us, shared food, helped with hunts." He adjusted the firebolt with casual precision. "Then they stopped being useful alive and became more useful dead. Every Gifted you kill drops a cut of their Sanctum Points—random amount, but it adds up. And the experience from humanoids is better than you'd get grinding mushroom monsters, especially when they don't fight back. As for someone at your level, loaded with SP from bounties and bonuses?" He grinned. "You're the biggest payday we've had since landing in this forest."

  Something shifted inside Luna.

  She had killed goblins without remorse. She had killed criminals and felt only the cold math of necessity. She had even considered killing Victor with detached calculation, acknowledging the danger he represented. Those kills had never been because of anger. The goblins were hostile creatures. The criminals had been set against her by the System—kill or be killed, with no room for reluctance. Victor was monstrous, but even he had been thrown into that cage by a force larger than any of them.

  Craig's group hadn't been thrown into anything.

  They weren't cornered. They weren't desperate. They weren't fighting for their lives against impossible odds. They were well-fed, well-rested, operating from a position of safety. They had looked at scared, vulnerable people—people who trusted them, who shared bread with them, who thought they'd found allies in a terrifying place—and decided those lives were worth less than a handful of points and a fraction of a level.

  They had invented a dead sister. They had manufactured grief and used it as a lure. They had weaponized the simple human instinct to help someone in pain—Nathan and Debrah were proof that Luna was only the latest in a line of marks.

  For the first time since the Integration began, Luna felt truly angry.

  Not the blazing, screaming fury that had consumed Derek over Marcus's grave. Something quieter. Something that settled into her bones and steadied her hands and whispered with absolute certainty: these people chose this. They didn't have to. And now they will answer for it.

  The Mercenary roared, pouring Mana into a wide Whirlwind Attack. Luna leaped backward as the blade carved a horizontal arc through the air, the displaced wind tugging at her cloak. The Knight stumbled back a step to avoid catching the edge of her own ally's swing.

  And the Mercenary locked in the rotation for one crucial second—arms extended, center exposed, momentum carrying him through the follow-through before his guard could reset.

  Luna closed the distance before the spin ended.

  Her knife found his neck where no armor sat flush. She dragged the blade across with her full Strength behind it, pushing through the flickering Aether Shield.

  Blood sprayed across the open grave.

  The Mercenary's eyes went wide. His sword clattered from his fingers as both hands flew to his throat, trying to hold closed what Luna had opened. He dropped to his knees, a strangled sound escaping between his clenched fingers. Not dead—but done.

  "KARL!" Craig's voice cracked. The composure shattered like a mask hitting stone. The firebolt on his staff blazed white-hot as he thrust it toward Luna—

  A stream of water hit it at the last moment.

  The collision happened three feet from Luna's face. Fire met water and the world erupted in a violent hiss of steam, the firebolt breaking apart into scattered sparks as Diana's Water Spray smothered it. Hot mist bloomed outward, filling the clearing with a fog that swallowed sight lines and reduced the moonlight to a diffuse purple glow.

  Luna snapped her head around. Diana stood behind her with both hands extended, water still streaming from her palms in an uneven spray. Her face was bone-white, covered with drops of Karl's blood that had reached her, her eyes enormous, her entire body trembling so badly the stream wobbled—but she held it. Every drop of her willpower poured into the one act that mattered.

  Their eyes met for a heartbeat.

  "Thank you," Luna said.

  She turned back to the Mercenary, who knelt in the spreading pool of his own blood, hands clamped uselessly against the wound. Through the thinning mist, he looked up at her. His expression held no rage or defiance. Just surprise—a dawning, almost confused surprise, as if it had genuinely never occurred to him that the prey might fight back this hard.

  Luna's knife ended it.

  [Human Mercenary (Iron) — Level 4 defeated]

  [Random Sanctum Points received: 150]

  She didn't pause. The mist was already thinning. Luna gained ten feet of distance in a single bound, her hand reaching for her bow—that familiar motion, instinct and muscle memory fused into something faster than thought.

  The Knight came through the fog first, sword raised. She'd learned from the Mercenary's death and led with her shield high, presenting the smallest target she could manage. Smart.

  Luna drew and released, anyway.

  The arrow covered the distance in less than a blink. It struck the Knight just above the gorget's upper rim—the narrow strip of neck between armor and jaw. The Aether Shield flared, resisted for a fraction of a moment, and collapsed. The arrowhead punched through the metal neck-guard, through flesh, and didn't stop until only its fletching remained visible.

  The Knight's shield arm dropped. Her sword followed. She took one step forward on momentum alone—her expression caught somewhere between incomprehension and a strange, terrible disappointment, as if her armor had broken a promise—and then she folded to the ground.

  [Human Knight (Iron) — Level 4 defeated]

  [Random Sanctum Points received: 100]

  Three levels and a full Class Rank, Luna noted. That's all the difference it takes for my arrows to treat plate armor like paper.

  Craig stood alone now, the Cleric already backing away behind him with his staff clutched to his chest. The Wizard stared at the Knight's body, then at the Mercenary's. The firebolt forming on his staff guttered as his concentration wavered. He tried to steady it, fear sharpening into desperate focus, the flames flaring bright again—

  A shape burst from the shadows behind him.

  Catherine materialized just before her knife touched Craig's back. Half her face was a ruin — blistered skin peeling away, the left eye swollen shut, raw tissue glistening in the moonlight. Her left hand hung useless at her side, the fingers locked into a claw of scorched skin. Her right gripped the knife with white-knuckled, trembling force — every ounce of will compressed into the one hand that still worked. What remained of her expression held something that went beyond pain or fury.

  The white-hot focus of a wounded thing that had spent the last sixty seconds crouched in absolute darkness, listening to the man who'd burned her laugh and boast, waiting for the single moment when his back was turned.

  Rapid thrusts burst through his Aether Shield easily before the blade went in between his ribs and came out the other side.

  The firebolt dissolved. Sparks scattered across the clearing like dying fireflies. Craig looked down at the steel protruding from his chest with the same bewildered arithmetic as the Knight seconds before—numbers that no longer added up.

  "That's for my face," Catherine whispered, her voice barely recognizable through the damage to her jaw and throat. "And for Nathan and Debrah."

  She pulled the knife free.

  Craig fell forward across the grave he'd had them dig up, and didn't move again.

  The Cleric had made it maybe ten paces. Luna drew on him without hurry—he wasn't getting anywhere far with his pathetic Agility. The arrow caught him in the back of his right calf. He screamed—high and sharp—and pitched forward onto the forest floor, his staff tumbling away.

  "Don't kill me!" He rolled onto his back, both hands raised, blood seeping between the fingers clutching his leg. "Please—I'll do anything—I didn't want any of this—Craig said it was the only way to advance and I—"

  "Quiet." Luna's second arrow was nocked, its tip leveled at his chest. "You're going to heal Catherine. Then you're going to answer every question I ask—how many people you've killed, where, when, and how." She let the bowstring creak against her fingers. "If you lie, if you leave anything out, if I even think you're holding back—I won't aim for your legs next time."

  The Cleric's composure crumbled entirely. He nodded frantically, tears and snot streaming down his face, the terror so complete that Luna almost felt sorry for him.

  Almost.

  She lowered her bow and turned to survey the clearing.

  The Mercenary lay beside the open grave, his blood mixing with the turned earth. The Knight had fallen a few yards away, an arrow still buried in her neck. Craig was draped face-down across the mound of dirt, Catherine's knife wound painting the soil beneath him darker. Gone were their Class Armor and weapons that had threatened Luna and her allies.

  Three dead. One captured.

  Diana stood exactly where she'd been when she'd quenched the firebolt. Her arms hung at her sides, Water Spray long exhausted, but she hadn't moved. Her breath came in shallow, rapid hitches, her eyes glassy with the particular thousand-yard stare of someone who had just watched several people die violently and hadn't fully caught up with the fact that she was still alive.

  "Diana." Luna kept her voice even. "You did well. Sit down before you fall."

  The Adventurer's knees buckled on cue, and she sat down hard on the forest floor. She didn't seem to care.

  Catherine had sunk to her knees near Craig's body, one hand pressed to the ruined half of her face. Even through the damage, Luna could see her jaw set with grim determination—holding herself together through sheer will.

  Luna crossed to her. "Let me see."

  Catherine lowered her hand. The burn covered the entire left side of her face — from hairline to jaw, the skin blistered and weeping, her left eye swollen completely shut beneath a ridge of scorched tissue. The eyebrow was gone. Part of her ear had curled and blackened at the edges. Her left hand was worse — the skin of her palm and fingers had split and tightened, the tendons beneath visible where the deepest blisters had burst, her fingers locked into a rigid half-curl she couldn't straighten. Her shoulder glistened with the raw, wet sheen of a deep burn. It would scar badly without magical healing, and even with it, Luna wasn't sure how much could be restored.

  "Can you see out of your right eye?"

  "Yeah." Catherine's voice came out rough, scraped raw. "Hurts like nothing I've ever felt. But I can see."

  "Good. We'll get that healed." Luna turned toward the Cleric, who flinched as if her gaze carried physical weight. "You. Crawl over here and heal her. Now."

  The older man began dragging himself across the ground, leaving a smear of blood from his wounded leg. Luna watched him with the arrow still loosely nocked. She didn't trust him. She wouldn't trust him if he healed Catherine's face and answered every question perfectly and wept genuine tears of repentance. Trust was for people who hadn't helped murder strangers for pocket change.

  But he was useful. And in this Trial, Luna was learning to keep useful things alive.

  The Cleric reached Catherine and raised a trembling, glowing palm. Golden light washed over the burned flesh, and Catherine hissed through her teeth as the magic began its work.

  Luna stood watch over all of them—the healer, the wounded, the shocked, and the dead—her bow in hand, her silver eyes scanning the forest's darkness, and her mind realizing that perhaps the greatest threat in the forest wasn't monsters or goblins.

  But the fellow Tutorial participants who could suddenly decide that the rewards promised for killing you were worth the risk of becoming a fresh corpse.

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  Dwarf Smith and Elf Huntress are kind of like siblings, though arguably the Elf is the prettier one, considering how long ago I wrote the first book of the Dwarf... you can still check the story out if you're interested in dwarves, Apocalypse litrpg or crafting, but be ready for a much crunchier system and more "anime-like" characters. Some scenes in book 1 are kind of cringe, lol (how about a fae who's sleeping in the dwarf's beard... naked?). The earlier releases had some noticeable grammar issues (English is my second language), but they were fixed... mostly. Can't guarantee you that book 3 is perfect in this aspect, though, as I used a different writing method than for Elf Huntress.

  In any case, for this delay I'll try to hurry up with the next chapter! (no promises, though)