The carriage rolled into a quiet, lantern-lit village just as the sun began to peek over the horizon. After renting a modest room at the local inn and carefully laying the unconscious Flinn on the bed—with Anthierin staying behind to keep a close eye on the thief—Lexel quickly found himself painfully bored.
Sitting around playing nurse wasn't in his nature. Lexel stepped out of the inn and wandered down the waking dirt streets until he spotted a weathered wooden signboard hanging above a sturdy stone building: Talon Guild.
Lexel pushed the heavy doors open, stepping into the rustic, quiet hall. He walked straight up to the front counter, where a stern-looking old lady was sorting through thick stacks of parchment.
"Got any quests or something to kill around here?" Lexel asked lazily, leaning his broad shoulders against the wooden counter.
The old lady paused her sorting and gave him a dry, unimpressed look over her spectacles. "The quest board is over there on the wall. Read them yourself."
Lexel shrugged and strolled over to the large corkboard covered in pinned parchment. His eyes lazily scanned the papers until they landed on a large poster pinned dead center. It featured a crude but terrifying ink drawing of a massive, menacing monster. Lexel didn't bother reading the fine print, the warnings, or the location details. He simply reached out and ripped the poster right off the board.
He turned around, fully intending to walk right out the front door.
"Hold on a minute, youngster," the old lady called out from the counter, her voice sharp with sudden warning. "Are you absolutely sure you want to take that quest?"
Lexel paused, glancing back at her. "Why not?"
"Because that is a subjugation request for a highly dangerous beast," the old lady said, narrowing her eyes at the paper in his hand. "It requires a high-class Job to even attempt surviving it. And frankly, looking at your casual clothes and lack of proper armor... you seem to be nothing more than a beginner. You're going to get yourself killed."
Lexel looked down at his own clothes, then back at the wrinkled monster poster in his hand. A confident, unapologetically arrogant smirk spread across his face.
"It'll be fine," Lexel said, casually folding the poster and slipping it into his pocket. "I alone am enough."
—
Without waiting for the old receptionist to argue further or lecture him about funeral expenses, Lexel turned and strolled out the heavy wooden doors of the Talon Guild, already looking forward to stretching his legs.
Meanwhile, back at the quiet inn, the morning light was just beginning to filter through the small, dusty window of their rented room.
Anthierin stood perfectly still beside the narrow wooden bed, her arms tightly crossed over her chest. The room was silent save for the muffled sounds of the village waking up outside.
She was staring down at the unconscious thief.
Flinn's face was pale but peaceful, the low-grade red potion having successfully pulled him back from the brink. But Anthierin wasn't looking at Flinn's face. Her sharp eyes were fixed entirely on the rhythmic, shallow rise and fall of Flinn's chest under the heavy, blood-stained tunic.
Her brow furrowed in deep curiosity.
Her mind drifted back to the dark carriage, to the moment her hands had pressed against that wound. She remembered the rigid, unnaturally tight bands of linen she had felt wrapped beneath the fabric. Now, seeing Flinn lying flat on the bed without the bulky, oversized cloak, the thief's frame looked incredibly slender. The jawline, which she had quickly wiped free of dirt and grime with a wet rag, was surprisingly soft and delicate for a hardened criminal from the slums of Bevil.
Anthierin tilted her head, her eyes narrowing slightly as she watched Flinn's chest heave up and down.
The pieces of the puzzle were all sitting right in front of her, practically screaming the answer. The heavily guarded chest. The oversized clothes. The light weight.
Just who exactly are you? Anthierin thought, chewing her lower lip.
She let out a quiet sigh, unfolding her arms and pulling up a wooden chair to sit beside the bed. Whatever the thief's secret was, it wasn't her place to pry it out of an unconscious body. She leaned back, keeping her vigil over the sleeping 'famous thief,' waiting to see what Flinn would do when they finally woke up.
—
The dirt path gave way to a wide, rocky clearing situated just outside the gaping maw of a massive, dark cavern. Lexel strolled up to the perimeter, his hands casually shoved in his pockets.
He spotted a lone, heavily armored adventurer standing near the edge of the clearing, his knees physically knocking together in fear.
Lexel walked up and casually tapped the trembling man on the shoulder. "Hey. Have you seen a bear around here?"
Before the adventurer could even open his mouth to answer, absolute chaos erupted from the depths of the cavern.
A cacophony of terrified, blood-curdling screams echoed out from the darkness. A second later, a dozen battered and bruised adventurers came sprinting out of the cave entrance, tripping over rocks and shoving each other out of the way in a frantic, desperate stampede.
"Run!" one of the fleeing swordsmen screamed, dropping his shield into the dirt. "It's the Crimson Gore-Bear! It's awake! Get out of here!"
"Don't look back!" a mage shrieked, her robes torn and covered in dirt.
Right on the heels of their panicked warnings, a deafening, earth-shattering growl blasted from the cavern. The sheer, concussive force of the roar shook the loose pebbles on the ground and sent a violent tremor through the surrounding trees.
The armored adventurer Lexel had just spoken to let out a pathetic squeak, turned on his heel, and sprinted away into the woods as fast as his heavy iron boots could carry him.
Lexel stood completely alone in the clearing, the wind from the monster's roar blowing his hair back. He looked at the fleeing crowd, then back at the pitch-black entrance of the cave where a pair of massive, glowing red eyes had just appeared in the dark.
A wide, genuinely thrilled smirk spread across his face.
Lexel cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing sharply in the clearing. "Looks like I found it."
The stragglers of the fleeing party slowed for a fraction of a second, looking back over their shoulders at the lone man standing directly in the monster's path.
"Hey! Are you crazy?!" a bruised swordsman screamed, desperately waving his arms. "Run away with us! Get out of there!"
Lexel didn't flinch. He simply crossed his muscular arms over his chest and tilted his head, amused by their panic. "Running away?" he asked, his voice calm but easily cutting through the chaos. "Can you?"
Before the swordsman could even process the question, a massive, blood-matted claw stepped out of the darkness and slammed into the sunlit dirt.
The fleeing party jerked to a violent halt. They were completely stricken, their boots rooted to the ground as death itself manifested before their eyes. The beast lumbered out of the cavern, standing a towering, monstrous four meters high. Its heavily muscled frame cast a suffocating shadow over the clearing, and its jagged, sword-like claws extended from paws the size of an adult human's torso.
The swordsman's weapon slipped from his trembling grip, clattering against the stones. "...We die..." he muttered, his voice hollow as all hope drained from his eyes.
The Crimson Gore-Bear lowered its massive, scarred head. But as its glowing red eyes swept over the paralyzed adventurers, they suddenly snapped to a halt, locking entirely onto Lexel.
It didn't look at him the way a predator looks at prey. A keen hunter would have recognized the shift instantly. This wasn't hunger; it was pure, violently triggered territorial instinct. The beast's primal senses were screaming at it, recognizing a supreme, unnatural threat invading its domain. It looked at Lexel as if this lone, casually dressed man was the absolute bane of its existence.
The bear leaned forward, opening its massive, slavering jaws just inches from Lexel's face, and unleashed an apocalyptic roar.
The raw, concussive shockwave visibly warped the air. It instantly deafened the frozen party behind them, forcing the adventurers to drop to their knees and desperately clutch their bleeding ears.
But Lexel just stood there. His arms remained casually crossed, his dark hair fluttering wildly in the foul, hurricane-force wind of the monster's breath, without a single drop of fear in his molten eyes