They moved forward carefully.
The forest had gone wrong in stages — first the quiet, then the crushed goblin, now the damage. Trees split apart, not fallen but torn, their trunks shredded from the outside rather than broken by wind or age. Deep gouges in the earth running parallel to the path. A smell in the air that hadn't been there before — something acrid underneath the usual forest damp, like heated stone.
Bran kept his shield raised. Lyra had an arrow nocked without being told. Taro's ears were flat against his head.
Then voices.
Running footsteps came from the left, crashing through the undergrowth with no attempt at quiet — the sound of people moving fast because fast was the only option left. Three students broke through the tree line. One held her arm against her side. Another was limping badly. The third was breathing in the ragged way people breathed when they'd been running on fear for longer than their body wanted to.
Taro caught the nearest one before she stumbled. "Hey — what happened?"
"Monster." She shook her head. "I don't know what it was. It came through the trees and hit our whole group at once."
"Where's your supervisor?" Lyra asked.
"Still back there." A pause. "Still fighting."
That was bad. Second-year supervisors were strong enough to handle everything the mission brief said this forest contained. If one of them was still fighting something — still, not finished — the something was outside what the brief had accounted for.
The ground trembled.
Not footsteps exactly. More like something very heavy moving without particular care for what it was walking over.
Lysander looked toward the sound.
The system appeared.
ABYSSAL SYSTEM — WARNING
Large monster detected.
Rank: D
Threat level: High.
He closed it. D rank. In a forest rated for F and E rank students with a C rank supervisor.
A D rank monster had no business being here. This forest didn't have the right conditions for one — which meant it had come from somewhere else, or something had changed in the territory that the guild's assessment hadn't caught. Either way the mission brief was useless now.
Something had gone seriously wrong before they arrived.
"We move forward," he said.
The supervisor looked at him. "The protocol is to regroup at—"
"The protocol is for a normal mission." Lysander looked at him steadily. "This isn't normal."
A beat. Then the supervisor nodded. "Stay behind me."
They moved.
The damage got worse the deeper they went. More torn trees. A section of ground that had been compressed flat by something that had stood on it. The injured students they'd found were the ones who had run — which meant wherever the fight was, there were more students who hadn't.
They entered a large clearing.
The supervisor from the other team was still standing — barely. His armor was cracked along the left side and blood ran freely down his arm. His sword was raised but his breathing was wrong, too shallow, the specific rhythm of someone who had been fighting for too long against something that wouldn't stay down.
That was the problem with the Ironhide Troll. Not its raw strength — a C rank hunter could match a D rank monster in a straight exchange. The problem was the regeneration. Every strike the supervisor landed closed within minutes. He'd been fighting the same fight over and over, burning through his reserves while the troll recovered between exchanges. Strong didn't matter if the thing you were fighting couldn't be finished.
In front of him, moving between the trees at the clearing's edge, was something enormous.
It stepped fully into the light.
Twenty feet tall. Green-grey skin that looked like stone had decided to become a living thing. Muscles the size of boulders. Each step cracked the earth under its weight. It wasn't fast — but it didn't need to be fast. It was the kind of thing that moved through the world and let the world get out of its way.
An arm swept out and a tree came apart.
The injured supervisor jumped back. Barely.
Taro made a sound under his breath that wasn't quite a word.
Bran had gone very still beside Lysander, shield raised, his eyes doing the calculation that his expression wasn't ready to show yet.
Lyra whispered. "What is that?"
The system answered the question Lysander had already answered himself.
ABYSSAL SYSTEM — ENEMY DETECTED
Ironhide Troll
Rank: D
Armor density: Extreme.
Regeneration: Active.
The troll turned its head slowly and looked at the group that had just entered the clearing.
Its expression, if you could call it that, didn't change.
It started walking toward them.
Lysander's hand moved to Kagekiri's hilt.
This was going to be significantly harder than wolves.