The sharp crack of a breaking branch still lingered in the air.
Lina's hand had just reached her sword hilt, her head not yet fully turned. The guards' mouths were only halfway open, their shouts of alarm stuck in their throats.
But at the edge of the firelight, the bowstring was already still.
Thrum.
That wasn't the sound of a bow being drawn—it was the fading echo of recoil.
In the split second it took for everyone else to realize there had been a sound, Kael had already completed the entire sequence. Turn. Drop. Draw. Release.
The system did not outline the enemy in a red targeting frame. Reality was not a shooting game. It provided only the most basic warning text on his retina:
[ Warning: Hostile biological response detected ] [ Distance: Extremely close ]
The rest was up to Kael himself. But with [ Dynamic Vision ] active, that was enough.
The first arrow flew.
A dull, wet impact echoed in the darkness.
Above them, among the treetops, a camouflaged "thick dead branch" failed to fully spring to life before it was violently nailed back into place by sheer kinetic force.
The impact shattered its disguise. The grey, rough bark split open like dry skin, exposing not wood, but raw, pulsating red muscle fibers beneath. Yellow-brown resin mixed with blood dripped down like rain.
By the time it died, the echo of that initial "branch snapping" sound had only just faded.
"Enemy attack!!!"
The delayed shout finally exploded through the camp.
The camouflage failed. All around them, dead trees shed their false skins. From every direction, the scraping of carapace against bark surged like a tide.
Lina drew her sword. A Timber-Mimic lunged at her from the side, moving like a flash of gray lightning.
It was a nightmare of forced symbiosis. Its forelimbs were hardened wooden spikes, but the joints were wrapped in parasitic moss and structured like human finger bones. It whipped through the air with the foul stench of rotting pine and rusty iron.
Lina instinctively raised her sword to block. Too fast—
Her thought didn't even finish forming.
Whoosh.
A cold gust brushed past her shoulder guard.
Without any system lock-on, Kael relied purely on instinct, catching a fleeting glint of reflected light in the darkness—the monster's "face," a vertical slit in the bark that had just split open to reveal rows of quivering barbs.
The arrowhead drilled precisely into that gap, two fingers wide beneath the creature's ribs, shredding its heart.
The monster froze mid-motion, its body collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. Carried by its own momentum, it slid along Lina's blade and slammed heavily into the ground.
Lina spun around in shock. But the third arrow was already gone.
A guard was desperately waving a torch, trying to drive back a Timber-Mimic crouched on the ground. The creature looked like a giant, skinned stick insect. Its multi-jointed limbs were folded tight against its body like a compressed spring, the carapace clicking like dry firewood.
It tensed, then leapt.
Pff.
It was as if it had willingly rammed its mouth into the arrowhead. The arrow shot straight through its open throat, stopping it mid-air and pinning it hard to the ground.
Fourth arrow. A blind shot.
Catching a shadow's movement in his periphery, Kael turned and released. A scream rang out from the darkness—sharp and shrill, like a crying infant—followed by the sound of something heavy rolling across the ground.
Fifth arrow.
The last monster sensed danger and turned, sprinting toward the pitch-black forest. Its body folded into a disk-like shape, bouncing rapidly between tree roots as it tried to open distance.
Kael took a breath. He didn't check the durability. He simply pulled.
His muscles tightened in a single, brutal surge of force, pushing the weapon far beyond the limits it was designed to endure. The ordinary hunting bow let out a strained groan. Its limbs bent to the brink of snapping, the wood fibers screaming under the pressure, the bowstring stretched tight like a nerve about to rupture.
BANG.
This release was far more violent than the last. The arrow vanished into the night.
The creature, already dozens of meters away, stopped as if it had hit an invisible wall. The massive kinetic force punched straight through its core, hurling its body into the air. It tumbled more than ten times before smashing into a tree and exploding into a mist of flesh and blood.
…
Silence returned to the camp.
The guard who had shouted "enemy attack" was still standing there, mouth open, the rest of his sentence unspoken—because there were no targets left.
Lina remained in her blocking stance, chest heaving. She stared at the slime-covered corpse at her feet, then looked at the man not far away who was slowly lowering his longbow. Her mind was blank.
How long had it been? Two seconds? Three?
In those few heartbeats, she had felt like she was struggling inside a storm— while Tom… Tom had been moving through the gaps between the raindrops.
When Lina finally let out the breath she'd been holding, the pale-blue data stream in Kael's vision finished its final line of analysis. The fight had ended so quickly that the system's calculations had actually lagged behind.
Only now did the delayed evaluation appear:
[ Analysis Complete ] [ Target: Timber-Mimic ] [ Threat Level: Extremely Low ]
Extremely low. That was the system's final verdict on this "slaughter."
Kael didn't look at Lina, nor at the terrified guards. He walked straight to the nearest corpse, stepped on the creature's head, grabbed the arrow shaft, and yanked.
Crack.
Only half a broken arrow came out. The arrowhead was badly deformed, and the shaft had completely shattered under the immense impact.
Kael frowned, casually tossed the ruined arrow aside, and moved on to the next body. The same. Every arrow was destroyed.
This was the cost. Strength 2.8 granted terrifying penetration and initial velocity, but these ordinary materials simply couldn't withstand his output. At his current level, such low-quality arrows were disposable consumables.
[ TARGET ELIMINATED: Timber-Mimic x5 ]
[ Aether points: +10 ]
Kael looked at the number that had finally crossed into double digits, his tightly wound nerves relaxing just a little. The ammunition was gone, but the resource return had been worth it.
"Clean up," he said flatly, brushing wood splinters from his hands. "Their blood smells awful."
Only then did Lina feel the soreness spreading through her arms. She glanced down at her sword—no chips in the blade—and finally let out a breath of relief.
"They're… weaker than I expected," she murmured, genuinely surprised. "With that speed, I thought my wrist would shatter blocking it."
Kael heard her, but didn't respond. He crouched down and used a small knife to peel back the creature's muscle fibers, exposing the hollow skeletal structure beneath.
Staring at the reed-like, honeycomb bones, realization flashed through his mind.
In Zenith Online, creatures like this were known as "newbie killers." Mindless berserkers that attacked day or night, launching suicidal assaults the moment a player entered the forest, with absurd stats and overwhelming strength.
But in reality?
Along the way, signs of Timber-Mimics weren't as ubiquitous as in the game—but with careful observation, claw marks and shed carapace could still be found. Their numbers were not small. Yet throughout the entire day, the caravan hadn't been attacked once.
Why?
Kael looked at the creature's bones—structures that sacrificed density entirely for speed—and curled his lips into a faint, mocking smile.
Because they didn't dare.
Game data didn't need logic. Real organisms needed to survive. This "glass cannon" body structure meant they couldn't afford to fight a fully armed human caravan head-on in broad daylight. If their opening strike failed, their fragile bodies wouldn't survive the counterattack.
So they were forced to change. From brainless berserkers in a game… to cautious night assassins in reality.
Only under cover of darkness, only when their prey was at its most relaxed, did they dare bare their fangs.
Reality corrected them.
And yet, it was precisely this adaptation—this cowardly caution born of survival—that made them more dangerous. If not for Kael's ability to perceive through darkness and his inhuman reaction speed, at least half the caravan would have died in that ambush.
"Cut off the valuable parts," Kael said as he stood, pointing at the creature's claws and its special mimic-skin, his tone cold once more. "Burn the rest. Don't attract real predators."
Real predators wouldn't be like these opportunistic hunters—sneaking around only at night. They were beings this caravan absolutely could not afford to provoke.