King of magistos

The morning mist hung low over the forest floor, casting the grove in a sleepy veil of grey. Most of the traps had been set, the kill zones marked and secured. There was nothing more to prepare—at least, not until blood was spilled.

Fang left just after dawn, slipping into the woods with Smoke and the two new rabbits flanking him like shadows. They moved low to the ground, silent, each step precise. The morning was cool, damp, and peaceful.

He preferred it that way.

The hunt wasn't rushed. Fang tracked the boars carefully, as he noticed all the trampled underbrush and shallow furrows in the dirt, which indicated to him there was more than one nearby.

The rabbits helped, darting ahead and freezing like statues when they caught a trail.

The first boar they found was alone, grazing lazily by a collapsed log. Fang crouched low behind a bush and gave a sharp, silent gesture. The three rabbits responded immediately.

Smoke darted around the left flank, nearly invisible in the shade. The others mirrored it, fanning out.

When the attack came, it was quick and surgical.

Shadow tendrils lashed out from Smoke, wrapping around the boar's snout and front legs, tripping it as the others lunged at its back. The creature squealed once before a blade of darkness was sent by Smoke, only to slash its throat clean open.

Fang stepped out of hiding as the corpse collapsed. "Good," he said simply.

He let the rabbits feed.

They didn't eat meat, but they absorbed the death mana, the lingering soul essence bleeding from the corpse like steam. The mana stone that was left behind in the corpse was a bit murky, but it sure delighted Fang when he got his hands on a new creature to try and raise.

"How is my mana? I should check it every once in a while, just to see recharging the bunny squad isn't draining me too much."

Fang closed his eyes for a second. A flicker of cold calculation passed through him. 630 out of 1500. More than enough to keep the rabbits charged, but not sustainable. He'd need to pace himself if he wanted to keep expanding the pack.

'Damn, my reserve grew a lot after that ambush. I can't believe a daily recharge for smoke and his friends cost so much, this is the cost to just keep them running for a whole day.

Well, I guess more hunting equals more progress and more mana to use afterward, so let's keep going.'

He repeated this twice more, each hunt a little more complex, each order more harmonized. The rabbits were learning. They flanked instinctively, split their attention properly, and even baited one of the boars toward a gully where Fang was waiting with a spear.

The final kill was messier. One of the rabbits got tossed by a tusk, vanishing into the brush before reappearing moments later with a slightly lower amount of mana and a lot less depth in his shadowy color.

By midday, Fang had three boar corpses dressed and skinned. He tied the hides to a sturdy branch he slung over one shoulder, and packed the meat tightly in some leaves he'd carried from the cave.

His pouch now a tad heavier, as he got a boar mana stone from this hunt.

When they returned to the grove, the traps were untouched. The air felt quiet. Suspiciously so—but Fang liked the silence.

Gaia was nowhere in sight—likely deepening pits or meditating underground. Isgram was by the forge, humming something off-key and hammering thin sheets of salvaged steel. He paused when he saw the haul.

"Busy morning?" he called.

Fang nodded and dropped the hides onto a flat stone slab. "Three boars. Rabbits are getting better."

Isgram wiped sweat from his brow. "You're training them?"

"They're learning." Fang knelt beside the injured one and ran his fingers over his head. A ripple of mana passed from his hand to the creature, and the rabbit enjoyed a more healthy color of purple.

"Better than dogs," Fang muttered.

Isgram smirked. "Creepier too."

"Efficient."

Isgram gestured toward the forge. "You planning to tan those hides? Or just let them rot in the sun?"

Fang nodded. "I'll handle it. Want a cut of the meat?"

"Yeah, but leave one leg for Gaia. She likes it bloody."

Fang raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He started skinning and stretching the hides, setting them in place to dry in the sun. The rabbits curled up nearby, dozing like lazy cats in the shade of the trees.

It was the kind of afternoon he hadn't felt in weeks—quiet, routine, normal.

He looked at the forest's edge, then at the half-built traps, and finally at the shadow bunnies curled up like sleeping children.

It wouldn't last.

But for now?

It was enough.

-------------------

The sun dipped lower, casting orange light through the treetops and turning the grove a shade of gold. Fang was washing dried blood from his elven dagger when a distant thoom echoed through the forest—deep, rhythmic, almost like the footsteps of a giant. He straightened slowly.

Isgram looked up from the forge, one brow raised. "You hear that?"

Before Fang could answer, the trees at the far edge of the clearing shuddered—and then snapped apart as something massive pushed through. A landslide of motion. Soil and bark flying.

Gaia emerged from the treeline, her dress dirty, her horns dusted with iron filings, her skin slick with sweat and soot. Her hands glowed with a faint brown energy radiating through the dirt, clinging to her arms and elbows.

Floating behind her, dragged by a wide platform of shifting stone she controlled with barely a gesture, were mounds of raw iron ore.

Isgram took a step forward, his mouth falling open. "What in the hells—"

Gaia walked forward slowly, like she had just returned from a short stroll, not carved half a mountain open. She flicked her fingers, and the stone platform slid forward, gliding silently over the roots and gravel before settling with a deep, resonant thud beside the forge.

"I found a vein," she said plainly, as if she'd just picked a few berries.

Isgram walked up to the pile, jaw clenched. "This is… this is real. The fuck were you doing out there?"

"I shaped a tunnel system under the nearby hill to the east to funnel more out later. With a day's work, I can bring four times this."

"You dug a mine with your hands?"

"I grew a mine," she corrected. "And I'll grow more of it with enough mana. Mining is easy, but growing metals out of mana alone is tougher. I do It when I'm bored and I feel like growing my mana reserves." Said the horned demoness with a playful smile on her face.

Isgram blinked, speechless.

Fang chuckled from where he sat. "Still think we're the bad guys?"

Isgram didn't answer. He cast a look at Gaia, and she tore for him a 40-kilo chunk of pure iron and put it on the working table next to the forge.

He cut several lumps out of the chunk with a fire saber and was already dragging one of the iron lumps toward the forge, muttering something worshipful about alloys and smelting temperatures.

Gaia sat down across from Fang, taking the meat leg he handed her and tearing into it with the calm hunger of someone who had just moved the earth and carried back its pride.

"Good day?" Fang asked.

She looked up, eyes glowing faintly under her hood. "Productive."

She bit into the leg again and grinned, her fangs showing just a little. "We're going to build an empire out of bones and iron."

Fang watched her for a moment. "That was a lot of ore you brought back," he said. "Isgram almost dropped his hammer."

She gave a faint shrug, not looking up. "The veins weren't deep. Just heavy."

"You moved them like they weren't," Fang replied. He sat down nearby, placing one of the stretched hides onto a flat stone to finish drying. "Were you always that strong?"

Gaia chewed slowly and swallowed. "I guess."

He leaned back on his elbows, eyes flicking up through the canopy. "Ever think about life before all this? Back home?"

The question floated in the air between them, quiet, almost rhetorical. He wasn't really expecting an answer.

Gaia's chewing slowed. Her eyes didn't leave the fire.

"I… don't know," she said eventually, her tone soft, almost distracted. "I don't remember it."

Fang turned his gaze to her now, just briefly.

She didn't notice it.

"Maybe that's for the best," she added, tone flat. "Memories are just weights. And I already carry enough."

Fang didn't say anything.

Smoke stirred in the shadows nearby, and the fire popped. Gaia kept eating, more from routine than hunger. Neither of them broke the silence for a long while.

But something in the air had shifted.

Fang didn't press her again.