"An Inverted Demonic Boar."
The na landed differently on different people.
Dominic and Hana both felt it in their bodies first, a particular kind of cold that had nothing to do with temperature. They had both studied this creature. They knew exactly what the textbooks said about it, and one sentence in particular had apparently lodged itself in both their mories with equal permanence.
Never approach an Inverted Demonic Boar. Those who do don’t co back.
Dominic’s first instinct was imdiate and unambiguous: go sowhere else. He noticed his own hands had started to shake slightly, and there was sweat at his temples. He looked at his team. Alana and Hana were in roughly the sa state, pale, perspiring, the particular stillness of people trying very hard not to show how frightened they were. Sarliya’s expression was unreadable beneath her veil, but her own unease was equally clear from the way she had gone very still.
And then there was Necrotize. Standing at the back of the group, completely relaxed, face carrying no expression whatsoever beyond a kind of cool, detached attention.
Dominic felt two things pulling at him simultaneously. One told him to walk away from this imdiately. The other reminded him that he was supposed to be impressing the person standing at the back of the group, and walking away was probably not the way to do that.
He let out a breath.
"What does everyone think? What should we do?"
They all considered it in silence. Scenarios played out in their minds, most of them ending badly. None of them could honestly convince themselves they could win this. None of them were ready to say it either.
Then Sarliya spoke, her voice asured.
"If we defeat it, just this one monster, we’ll almost certainly land in the top ten rankings. The dedicated points for an Inverted Demonic Boar are significantly higher than anything else here. If we take it early and then hunt normal monsters afterward, first place becos achievable."
The atmosphere shifted.
Nobody had been thinking about first place thirty seconds ago. Now they were.
Alana looked at Dominic. "It’s your call. You’re the team leader. We’ll follow whatever you decide."
The weight of that landed on Dominic properly for the first ti. He had been so pleased to be given this responsibility. Now it was sitting on him like sothing with physical mass. If he made the wrong choice and soone got hurt, that was on him. If he made the right choice and they succeeded, that was on him too. But right now all he could see was the first possibility.
He took a long breath.
"We won’t go after it. I know the points would be significant. But no ranking is worth gambling our lives on. That’s my decision."
Most of the team accepted this visibly, shoulders dropping with sothing like relief.
Then a voice ca from the back.
"But should we just give up?"
Dominic turned.
Necrotize.
"I’m not sure I follow, my lord."
"What I’m asking is, should we give up without even trying?"
Dominic held the question, turning it over.
Before he could answer, Necrotize continued.
"Giving up before trying. Not giving your best at sothing you haven’t even faced yet." He paused. "Does that feel right to you? Does it truly satisfy you, to abandon sothing before finding out what you’re actually capable of?"
Dominic didn’t respond imdiately. Sothing was shifting in how he was seeing the decision he’d just made.
Then Necrotize said one more thing.
"Giving your best, truly committing everything you have to sothing, that is one of the finest experiences available to a person. Even if it ends in defeat." A pause. "Even if it ends in death. A death earned by giving everything is a death worth dying."
Sothing opened in Dominic’s chest that he didn’t have a na for yet.
Around him, the fear in his teammates hadn’t disappeared, but it had begun to change texture. Sothing underneath it was warming. The shaking hadn’t stopped, but it ant sothing different now.
Sarliya alone made no visible effort to contain what the words had done to her. Tears were running quietly down her face. Her hands had co together in prayer.
Dominic straightened.
"Change of plan. We’re going after it. Whatever it takes."
The decision settled over the group. The fear hadn’t gone, it was still there, sitting in everyone’s chest. But sothing had grown up alongside it, sothing that felt sturdier. They moved into a tighter cluster and Dominic opened the next question.
"What do we actually know about it?"
Hana straightened slightly, this was her ground. She had spent more ti in libraries than most people her age, and she had clearly read widely.
"From what I found in the general library, an Inverted Demonic Boar is an extrely aggressive monster. Six legs, and where you’d expect hooves, it has claws. Long ones. Very sharp. Its tail is lined with barbs along the underside." She paused. "Its entire body is covered in long black fur, and it stands around seven feet tall. But none of that is what makes it what it is." Another pause, briefer. "Its face is inverted. Where the mouth should be, there are eyes, six of them, all blood red. And where the eyes should be, there’s the mouth. The teeth that should point downward go upward instead, like a lion’s fangs in reverse. Everything about its structure is built for killing. It’s essentially a living weapon."
Alana and Dominic both swallowed at the sa mont.
Sarliya remained composed, hands folded, though sothing around her eyes had tightened.
Necrotize, standing at the back, was watching all of it with quiet enjoynt. He wasn’t inserting himself into the discussion, he was letting them work. And as he watched them, he felt sothing he had co to the academy specifically looking for, arriving in small, steady incrents. This was what he had wanted. The planning, the fear, the decision to push through it anyway. The way a group of young people who didn’t fully know their own capabilities began to find them under pressure.
He was glad he had co.
Hana finished. "It’s classified as a Rank Three monster, but its actual combat performance frequently compares to Rank Four. It sits at the top of its category."
Dominic absorbed this, then clapped once, sharp, deliberate.
"Alright, Team Thirty-Four. We know what we’re dealing with. Now we go et it." He looked at each of them in turn. "And we make sure this is the last eting it ever has."
He raised one fist toward the sky.
"To Team Thirty-Four."
One by one, the others raised their hands, Necrotize included.
"To Team Thirty-Four."
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