Perberos didn't need to be told twice. The mont the decision was made, his entire deanour shifted from analytical observer to active predator.
He engaged his Umbral Step. His physical form instantly blurred at the edges, the ambient shadows cast by the setting sun rushing up to seamlessly embrace him. He seemingly glided over the uneven, rocky terrain. He hit the steep, muddy embanknt of the riverbed without leaving a single footprint, moving into the dense, dark tree line with the silent, terrifying grace of an apex predator.
The other three followed, though their progress was markedly, almost comically, less elegant.
The dense, fiercely overgrown, and ancient pine forest was not designed to accommodate a bulky human encased in full, heavy plate armour. The open, airy gorge was replaced by a claustrophobic, dark environnt filled with the heavy scent of pine needles, damp earth, and rotting wood.
Josh clanked and crashed his way through the dense underbrush. He snapped thick, dead branches with every step, cursing softly, but continuously, under his breath as thorny, creeping vines caught aggressively on his wide pauldrons and the edges of his tower shield.
Bhel fared slightly better due to his lower centre of gravity and natural affinity for earth and stone, but the dwarf still grumbled continuously. He complained loudly about the thick, sticky mud clinging stubbornly to his heavy boots, the infuriating abundance of roots trying to trip him, and the general, unforgivable lack of proper, expertly stone-carved subterranean paths.
Brett simply trailed in the rear, looking profoundly irritated by the entire, dirty excursion. He kept a tiny, highly controlled flicker of blue fire dancing on his fingertips, using it to aggressively burn away any thick cobwebs, annoying insects, or low-hanging, damp branches that dared to enter his personal space.
Perberos, however, moved about forty paces ahead of them, existing in a completely different, silent world.
For a Ranger of his calibre, the tracking was almost insultingly easy. The Kobolds had fled the gorge in a state of blind, absolute panic. They hadn't made even a token attempt to mask their heavy, musky scent, hide their deep tracks, or move with any semblance of stealth. They had simply run for their miserable lives.
Perberos followed a glaringly obvious trail of freshly snapped saplings, deep, frantic gouges in the damp, ancient moss, and the lingering, foul, unmistakable scent of unwashed reptilian scales and fear sweat.
"You know," Brett called out softly from the rear, his voice laced with heavy, theatrical sarcasm as he carefully stepped over a massive, rotting log covered in unidentifiable fungi. "I'm starting to feel entirely decorative on this little woodland nature walk. I'm not, nor have I ever been, a hiking enthusiast."
"Aye," Bhel agreed, aggressively swatting a branch out of his face as he trudged through a patch of thick, waist-high ferns. "My axes are getting genuinely cold. What's the point of having a heavily armoured vanguard and a devastating battle-mage if we're just playing a muddy ga of follow-the-leader through the bloody brambles?"
"Patience," Josh scolded mildly over his shoulder, though even the stoic warrior sounded slightly winded from continuously pushing his heavy fra through the thick, resistant foliage. "Let him do his job. He’ll find whatever's left, and maybe he’ll find another big horde. Plus, I think he’s having fun."
Perberos ignored their complaints. He was entirely focused, locked into the rhythm of the hunt. The dense forest was his true elent, a complex, three-dinsional chessboard where he effortlessly held all the pieces and controlled all the sightlines.
Suddenly, he raised a black-gloved hand, forming a sharp, silent, undeniable gesture to halt.
Instantly, the noisy procession behind him froze. Josh stopped moving mid-step, locking his heavy armour in place to prevent the plates from grinding. Bhel halted, his thick hand dropping instantly to the familiar grip of his axe. Brett extinguished his fiery weed-whacker, plunging them deeper into the forest's natural gloom.
Perberos crouched incredibly low, lding seamlessly behind the thick trunk of a massive, moss-covered oak. Fifty feet ahead, in a small, damp clearing heavily shadowed by the thick canopy above, the first chaotic trail ended.
Three Kobold scavengers were huddled pathetically around the exposed roots at the base of a dead tree. They were trembling violently, their dull olive scales caked in thick mud and heavily scraped from their blind flight through the thorns.
One of them was nervously clutching a broken, stone-tipped wooden spear, its yellow, slit-pupil eyes darting frantically around the dark clearing, searching for ghosts. The other two were aggressively, loudly arguing in their hissing, guttural tongue over the agre prize of a half-eaten, distinctly rotten squirrel they had likely found. They were terrified, deeply exhausted, and entirely unaware of the silent reaper standing in the shadows just yards away.
Perberos didn't bother to call for his team. There was absolutely no need to bring the heavy, noisy hamr down on a fragile thumbtack.
He drew his bow in a single, smooth, fluid motion, nocking two heavy, steel-tipped arrows simultaneously onto the string. He didn't even activate his shadow magic or imbue the arrows with mana; it was an entirely unnecessary expenditure of resources for such weak prey. He drew the heavy string back to his cheek, exhaled a slow, controlled breath to steady his heart rate, and released.
Thwip.
The taut string humd softly, a deadly vibration in the quiet air. The two arrows flew in perfect, parallel trajectories through the dense, intervening foliage, threading the impossibly narrow needle between hanging branches and thick leaves with terrifying, casual precision.
The loud, hissing argunt over the rotten squirrel ended abruptly. The two arguing Kobolds collapsed simultaneously, each taking an arrow perfectly through the base of the skull, severing the brain stem instantly. They hit the damp forest floor without a single cry, their bodies already beginning to shimr and break down into light before the dust even settled.
The third Kobold, the one with the broken spear, let out a startled, high-pitched hiss, its yellow eyes widening in sheer terror as its companions dropped dead out of nowhere. It spun around, frantically searching the deep shadows, raising its crude, useless weapon with shaking hands.
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It never even saw the third arrow.
Before the creature could even draw breath to scream a warning, Perberos had fired again, his reload speed blindingly fast. The arrow punched cleanly through the Kobold’s scaly throat, the kinetic force pinning it violently backward against the trunk of the dead tree it had been hiding beneath. It twitched once, its clawed hands weakly grasping at the wooden shaft protruding from its neck, and then went entirely, permanently still.
Perberos stood up smoothly, stepping out from the concealing shadows of the oak tree. "Clear," he called out softly, his calm voice carrying back to his waiting team.
The heavy, tallic crunch of Josh’s boots broke the silence of the forest as the rest of the party finally caught up. Brett walked into the small clearing, looking down at the three rapidly dissipating bodies, and let out a long, highly theatrical sigh of disappointnt.
"See?" Brett complained loudly, throwing his hands in the air in a gesture of utter defeat. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. I didn't even get to warm anyone up! You're just hoarding all the fun, Perberos. You could have left one for to practice my targeting on."
"It's about pure efficiency, Brett," Perberos replied without turning around, his pale eyes already scanning the muddy ground at the edge of the clearing for the next set of fleeing tracks. "Why waste your spells on three pathetic, level-ten runts? Save your mana reserves for sothing that actually matters. We might still run into sothing with teeth."
"He's right, lad," Bhel chuckled, patting Brett heavily on the shoulder, the dwarf's imnse strength nearly knocking the slender mage off balance. "Let the quiet one do the sweeping. He's built for it. If we run into anything with scales thicker than wet parchnt, I'll happily step aside and let you lt its ugly face off. Promise."
For the next two hours, the hunt beca a pattern that repeated itself with monotonous, deadly, and highly efficient regularity.
Perberos would track a fleeing, disorganised group through the dense woods, signal the noisy party behind him to halt, and execute the targets with terrifying precision before the creatures even realised they were being hunted. The ancient forest effectively beca his personal, heavily shadowed shooting gallery.
He dropped a pair of nervous lookouts who had perched precariously on a high branch, shooting upward through the canopy and sending them tumbling silently into the thick, unforgiving undergrowth below.
He ambushed a slightly larger, more organised patrol of four brutes trying to carefully ford a shallow, muddy creek. For that specific encounter, feeling montarily generous, he allowed Josh to step in. As Perberos silently pinned two of the Kobolds to the muddy riverbank with perfectly placed arrows, Josh simply stepped out from the concealing bushes.
The sheer sight of the massive, heavily armoured human was enough to freeze the remaining two Kobolds in terror. Josh raised his heavy shield, lowered his shoulder, and brutally shield-bashed the creatures. The sickening crunch of breaking bones echoed over the babbling water as he sent their broken bodies floating downstream, dissipating into light before they even sank. Bhel didn't even bother drawing his axes from his back, and Brett spent the brief, entirely one-sided encounter practicing small, intricate fire-tricks between his fingers, looking profoundly, intensely bored.
However, about an hour later, the monotony broke slightly.
Perberos raised his hand, the gesture sharper, more urgent this ti. He gestured for Josh and Bhel to fan out slightly, pointing toward a thick cluster of heavy boulders overgrown with dense moss.
Behind the rocks, the scent of blood was heavy, mixed with the acrid, stinging sll of cheap, poorly controlled mana.
A slightly larger group of stragglers had gathered here. Three heavily wounded brute Kobolds were forming a pathetic defensive ring around a larger Shaman. The Shaman, wearing a tattered, bone-adorned headdress, was frantically chanting, trying to channel a crude healing spell into a deep, jagged laceration on one of the brutes' arms.
"The Shaman is level eighteen," Perberos whispered softly, falling back slightly to huddle with the group. "If he finishes that cast, or if he senses us and screams, he could alert any other stragglers we haven't found yet. Or worse, he might manage to get off a curse. We need to take them all down simultaneously."
Brett’s eyes finally lit up, a feral, eager grin spreading across his face. "Finally. Give the Shaman. I'll turn him into a very small, very contained pile of ash."
"Done," Josh agreed, drawing his broadsword. The steel sang softly as it cleared the scabbard. "Bhel, take the brute on the left. I've got the centre. Perberos, pin the one on the right. On my mark."
They moved into position, surrounding the boulders. The Kobolds, entirely focused on the Shaman's desperate healing magic, remained oblivious to the doom closing in around them.
"Mark," Josh commanded softly.
The forest erupted.
Brett snapped his fingers. He didn't use a massive or explosive spell, but rather a hyper-concentrated, piercing lance of pure thermal energy. The blue beam shot from his finger, instantly vaporising the Shaman's head and the upper half of its torso before it could even utter a syllable of warning. The healing spell fizzled out in a shower of useless sparks.
Simultaneously, Bhel charged from the brush like a very angry boulder. He didn't even swing his axe. He simply slamd his heavily armoured shoulder into the brute on the left, lifting the creature off its feet and crushing it against the rock face with bone-shattering force, before quickly ending the fight with one definitive axe chop.
Josh stepped out, his broadsword flashing in a tight, brutally efficient arc that neatly decapitated the centre brute before it could even raise its weapon.
And Perberos, true to his word, put an arrow precisely through the eye of the final brute on the right.
The entire skirmish lasted less than three seconds. The silence that rushed back in to fill the void was deafening.
"Well," Brett said, blowing a wisp of non-existent smoke from his fingertip, looking highly satisfied. "That was mildly refreshing."
They continued their thodical sweep, circling the entire periter of the gorge, pushing two miles deep into the surrounding, dense woodland. The sun began to dip significantly lower in the sky, casting incredibly long, eerie, stretching shadows through the dense canopy, painting the damp forest floor in sharp stripes of fiery orange and deep, suffocating black.
By the ti Perberos finally stopped moving, standing at the very edge of a steep, rocky incline that broke through the tree line and overlooked the distant, rolling, golden plains leading back toward civilisation, his quiver was significantly lighter, and his obsidian daggers, which he had been forced to use in close quarters on a particularly stubborn straggler, were slick with dark, cooling blood.
He calmly wiped the dark blades clean on a patch of thick moss, sheathed them with a soft click, and turned back to face his weary companions.
"That's the last of them," Perberos announced, his voice steady and completely devoid of any physical exertion. "I can't find another trail, a stray scent, or a single broken twig for a mile in any direction. The area is entirely, undeniably secure. There are absolutely no stragglers left."
Josh walked up heavily beside him, leaning his weight on the poml of his sheathed broadsword and looking out over the vast, open plains. The oppressive heat of the day was finally breaking, the air cooling down rapidly as a gentle, incredibly refreshing evening breeze swept up from the lowlands, rustling through the pines behind them.
"Excellent work," Josh said, a deep note of genuine finality and imnse relief in his voice. "We've done exactly what we ca out here to do. The gorge is clear, most of them are dead. The town is safe."
Bhel grunted loudly, stretching his thick arms over his head until his heavily muscled joints popped audibly. "Right then. Can we finally head back? My stomach is starting to think that Kobold doesn’t sll too bad. I want a massive, hot al, a deeply cold ale, and a soft, actual bed that doesn't sll like rotting reptile and ash."
Brett perked up imdiately at the re ntion of food and rest, his previous boredom forgotten. "I absolutely second that motion. I'm exhausted, even if I didn't get to blow nearly as much up as I wanted to today."
Perberos nodded slowly, a faint, rare ghost of a smile touching the corners of his lips. The hunt had been deeply satisfying, a perfect exercise of his specific skills, but even he felt the long, hard miles settling into his legs.
"Let's head back to town," Perberos agreed, turning away from the beautiful sunset and looking back toward the dense, now-cleared woods they had just traversed. "Let's go see exactly what kind of fortune the quartermaster has waiting for us."
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