The forest was very quiet.
Slavic looked at the trees as though they had recently acquired new significance.
"Which means... we could encounter the Red King."
"Yes."
Darius had moved up beside them. The words arrived before Rush had registered his approach. "But the Red King doesn't hunt directly. Its Orcs hunt for it. The Red King controls the territory from the center of the settlement."
Rush looked at Jennifer.
She was already looking at him.
"We need to know how close the settlement is," Rush said. "Before we decide anything."
Slavic looked between them.
"Can't we just move away from the territory?"
"We assess first. Then decide," Jennifer said, her voice steady and low.
Slavic accepted that.
Rush was already studying the direction the dead Orc had come from — the specific pattern of crushed undergrowth, the angle of approach, the distance between broken stems.
"I'll go," he said. "You rest properly."
Jennifer's eyes came to him directly. "Alone?"
"I move faster alone. And quieter."
"Twenty minutes," she said.
Rush moved into the forest.
He followed the dead Orc's trail — using it as a guide without becoming predictable to anything reading from the opposite direction.
The forest changed as he moved deeper.
The undergrowth thinned slightly. The trees grew wider. The space between them held a quality of deliberate emptiness — cleared by something that had been maintaining the area for a long time.
He found the second Orc four minutes in.
Sentry position — at the junction of two game trails, watching the directions things usually came from.
Rush had already committed to his approach angle when the Orc turned.
Not toward him. Thirty degrees off. Something in the canopy had caught its attention — a bird, perhaps, or the shifting of a branch. But the turn brought its peripheral vision across Rush's position.
He went completely still.
The Orc's nostrils flared. It was reading the air — not with intelligence exactly, but with the accumulated instinct of a territorial creature that had survived long enough to develop genuine wariness.
Rush didn't breathe. His lungs burned for it.
Two minutes passed.
His left forearm — the bruised one — began to ache from the held position. He ignored it.
The Orc turned back.
Rush waited another thirty seconds. Then he moved — adjusting his angle, coming in from the Orc's blind side rather than the approach he'd planned.
One motion. No sound.
He stood over it for a moment.
His timing had been slightly off on the initial approach. He noted it without judgment and kept moving.
If I'd come in at the original angle, it would have seen me, he thought. Father would have something to say about that.
The settlement announced itself through mana before it became visible.
A wall of concentrated presence.
Rush stopped and went completely still, letting thirty seconds pass as forest settled around him — insects, wind at canopy level, the distant movement of something large to the west. Let his awareness settle into the environment until he was part of its texture rather than an intrusion into it.
Then he looked.
The settlement was larger than he had expected — a ruined temple.
Fallen walls.
Stone structures overgrown with moss.
And Orcs guarding it.
He counted methodically.
Twelve Orcs visible. Moving between structures, stationed at perimeter positions, resting with the particular alert stillness of creatures that never fully disengaged their predatory awareness even in rest.
Two that were larger — moving with a different quality. A weight of authority in their posture and the space they occupied that separated them from the others the way a commander separated from a soldier. Not just size. Not just power.
Orc Generals.
And at the settlement's center — behind the largest structure, obscured from his current position — something he couldn't see directly.
He could feel it.
The mana presence hit him not the way the Snow Lycan's had in the cave but dense, cultivated, old. Not aggressive at this distance. Just present in the way that things which have existed long enough and grown powerful enough become present — with the particular gravity of something that has earned its place in the world through sustained accumulation rather than sudden arrival.
He didn't need to see it.
He committed the layout to memory — entry points, sentry rotation patterns, the Generals' movement, the central structure's dimensions and position relative to the settlement's perimeter — and began moving back.
On the return, a ridge gave him a brief elevated view through a gap in the canopy.
Two hundred meters northeast — a squad moving carefully through the undergrowth, their mana suppressed but not invisible to someone actively reading the environment. Ethan's stillness was identifiable at distance. Patricia's movement economy was distinctive. Further east, partially obscured by a dense stand of old growth — another group. The faint warmth of contained fire mana at the signature's edges.
Richard's squad.
Both heading the same general direction.
Rush noted their positions, committed their locations relative to the settlement, and kept moving.
He came through the undergrowth from an angle that placed him directly behind Slavic — between two root clusters, visible from Jennifer's position and from Darius's, completely invisible to Slavic's.
He stood there for three seconds.
Darius registered him first — a fractional stillness in his expression before it resumed its normal quality. Jennifer half a second later. A slight shift in her posture, her eyes found him without appearing to search.
Slavic had no idea.
"Slavic," Rush said.
The sound Slavic made came from somewhere beyond voluntary control. He came off the root he had been sitting on and redistributed approximately four nearby birds from their resting positions.
"That's — you were — how do you —"
"Sit down," Rush said.
Slavic sat down.
Rush laid it out without ceremony.
Settlement position. Distance. Orc count. The central presence in the largest structure — felt rather than confirmed visually.
"Probably the Red King," he said. "Couldn't see it directly."
Jennifer absorbed it.
Her eyes moved to the northeast — through the trees, through the distance.
"Twelve Orcs. Two Generals. The Red King. Three people aren't enough."
"No," Rush said.
Her eyes came back to him. The receiving look — taking in more than the words.
"But you think we can."
"Yes. But with more than three people."
He glanced at Darius. Then back at Jennifer.
"On the return I saw two squads moving northeast. Same direction as the settlement. Patricia's squad. And Richard's."
Jennifer was quiet.
Working through it — Rush could see the calculation moving behind her eyes, the systematic assessment, the same pattern her brother used but expressed through a different temperament.
Slavic got there a second later.
"We combine squads." Then immediately: "Are we even allowed to?"
Something moved at the corner of Jennifer's mouth — brief, controlled. "Professor Spellworth said we can't face it alone. Shouldn't face it alone. He never said we couldn't join squads."
She looked at Darius.
Darius looked back at her. A small grin over his face. After a moment he nodded.
"Then we find them," Jennifer said.
She stood. Her hand found her hilt briefly — not drawing, just confirming — and released it.
Rush stood.
Slavic tucked his pouch in his belt. Looked at the forest around him.
"Right."
And he followed.
They moved northeast.
He tracked the ruin temple without comment.
Jennifer walked beside him. Her exhales had developed the particular controlled quality of someone managing a large amount of awareness in a small amount of space.
Slavic stayed close.
Darius followed.
The forest floor was softer here — darker earth, more moisture, the undergrowth sparser. Things had been moving through this area regularly for a long time. The signs were everywhere if you knew what to read.
Rush read them.
He said nothing.
They heard Ethan's squad before they saw them.
Not sound — the absence of it. The specific quality of suppressed mana and controlled breathing that three trained students produced when discussing something serious in a place that required quiet. A pocket of deliberate stillness in a forest full of ambient movement.
Rush found them at the edge of a dense stand of trees overlooking a shallow ridge. Ethan, Patricia, Nia — standing in a loose triangle, voices low. The smell of earth and crushed leaves around them. Alexis stood slightly apart, back to his squad, his attention directed at the forest beyond the ridge.
Every line of his body was alert.
He knew exactly where they were.
Rush walked through the undergrowth toward them without adjusting his pace.
Jennifer followed.
Slavic followed Jennifer.
"Hello, Nia," Jennifer said.
Ethan's katana cleared its sheath. The sound was clean and immediate — steel on lacquered wood, precise, a single fluid motion that ended with the blade between him and the approaching figures.
Patricia's hand went to her hilt. She didn't draw. But the air around her blade thickened — mana gathering against the metal in a dense controlled shimmer that raised the ambient temperature of the immediate area by a perceptible degree.
Nia blinked.
"Oh." The tension left her body in a single exhale. "Jennifer."
She looked at the others. "You startled me."
Jennifer's expression softened slightly.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
Rush had already moved to Ethan's side during the exchange — a step and a half, quiet enough that Ethan registered the arrival only after it had already happened.
"Lower your weapon."
Ethan looked at him. The katana's edge was two feet from Rush's jaw. A beat passed — the specific beat of someone recalibrating, reading the situation with the information currently available, reaching a conclusion.
He sheathed the blade.
Patricia let her mana ease — gradual, controlled, the way someone releases a bowstring rather than drops it. Her eyes moved across the three arrivals — Rush, Jennifer, Slavic — with the observing look of someone reading a situation before committing to a response.
"What are you doing here, Princess?"
The word landed flat. Not hostile. Just accurate.
Jennifer stepped closer. The space between them contracted by a deliberate foot.
"I'm not a Princess here. Call me Jennifer."
Patricia's expression didn't change.
"If that's what you want."
Her eyes moved across all three of them again — slower this time, more thorough.
"Now. What is this about."
"The Red King."
Jennifer's words landed in the group like a stone in still water.
Patricia said nothing. Her eyes stayed on Jennifer.
"Rush has scouted the settlement." Jennifer's voice was even. Direct. "Twelve Orcs, two Generals, the Red King at the center.
We think it's possible to take it down."
"With three people."
Patricia's tone carried no mockery. Just arithmetic being checked.
"With more than three," Jennifer said.
She looked at Rush.
Every eye in the group moved to him.
Rush nodded once.
Silence settled over them — broken only by the forest's ambient sounds.
"What does this have to do with us," Patricia said.
"We want your squad to work with ours."
"Is that allowed," Nia said. Her voice was quiet, measuring the weight of a question before releasing it.
Patricia thought for a second. The calculation was visible — brief, thorough, reaching its conclusion without announcement.
"It is."
She looked at Ethan. Then at Nia.
"Opinions."
Ethan answered without hesitation.
"It's the only chance we get."
His eyes moved briefly to the northeast — toward the settlement's presence, faintly detectable even at this distance.
"We can't take the Red King on our own."
Nia looked at the ridge. Then back at the group. The mana-heavy air moved around them, pressing against exposed skin like something with awareness.
"We'd need more people."
"There's one more squad that made it this far," Slavic said. "But it's Richard's."
A short silence fell.
Patricia's eyes moved to Slavic.
"He's stubborn. He won't join."
"He can't do it alone either," Rush said. "And he must already know that."
Jennifer looked at Patricia directly.
"We need to convince him. He's our only option at the moment."
Something passed between them — not warmth yet, but the beginning of a mutual assessment that had decided, at least provisionally, that the other person was worth proceeding with.
"Then let's go convince him," Patricia said.
They found Richard's squad two hundred meters east.
Richard saw them coming.
He didn't move. Arms crossed. Amber and Cristofer flanking him — Amber's posture alert, Cristofer's hands loose at his sides in the specific way of someone whose first response to threat was always stillness before motion. Richard watched the approaching group with the particular stillness of someone who had already decided that whatever was about to happen would require patience rather than immediate response.
The amber fire mana at the edges of his presence was contained.
More controlled than it had been on the first training day.
Rosetta stood slightly apart, stopwatch in hand, her expression professionally composed.
Her eyes found Rush.
Held a fraction longer than the situation required.
Then moved on.
Jennifer and Patricia moved to the front of the group. Rush stepped back. His hand found the hilt of his dagger briefly — not drawing, just settling — and released it.
This was their conversation to have.
It took ten minutes.
Richard listened. Said nothing for the first four — his eyes moving between Jennifer and Patricia, occasionally to the northeast where the settlement was. Then he asked two precise questions about the Orc count and the Generals' positioning.
He directed them at Rush.
Not at Jennifer. Not at Patricia.
Rush answered both.
The forest moved around them — leaves, the creak of old wood somewhere in the canopy, the distant sound of something that might have been wind and might have been something else.
Another silence.
Richard uncrossed his arms.
"Fine," he said.
Not agreement exactly. The specific fine of someone who had completed a calculation and reached a conclusion they had already known they were going to reach and were not going to announce.
The atmospheric shift in the group was immediate — not audible, just the particular easing of held tension in the mana-heavy shadow of Hunter's Willow with a C-Rank settlement two hundred meters northeast.
Then Richard looked across the assembled students.
Eight first-years. Three upperclassmen. The combined weight of three squads, standing in the forest's amber-filtered afternoon light.
He asked the question that stopped everyone.
"How do we actually do this."
A pause.
"Which squad gets the credit."