Calcore did not leave in the night.
He left at dawn.
The pirate camp was alive with noise—men laughing, sharpening blades, arguing over drink—but it fell quiet when he stepped forward. His friend stood near the fire, already knowing. Warriors always knew when paths split.
"I won't sail with you anymore," Calcore said simply. No speeches. No excuses. "Your war is on water. Mine is everywhere else."
The pirate studied him for a long moment, then smiled—a hard, proud smile. He reached out and clasped Calcore's forearm.
"Then go," he said. "And leave corpses behind you so the world remembers."
That was blessing enough.
Calcore walked away without looking back.
He moved from tavern to tavern, town to town, like a bad omen that drank, listened, and vanished. He slept where he pleased, fought when challenged, and learned names whispered only in basements—places where fear fermented thicker than ale.
One name surfaced again and again.
A raider commander.
Fifteen beasts under his banner.
A tribe that wore human flesh as trophies and leather.
Calcore smiled when he heard that.
He followed the trail without hurry.
The tribe lived in a crude encampment carved into stone and timber, fires burning openly, arrogance thick in the air. Fifteen warriors lounged, sharpened blades, boasted. They laughed when Calcore walked straight into their circle alone.
He stopped in front of them.
Slowly, deliberately, he let the pelts he had taken from previous kills drape across his shoulders.
"Your pelts," he said calmly, voice carrying across the camp, "will be mine."
Laughter exploded.
Then Calcore moved.
The first beastman died before sound caught up to motion—throat crushed, spine snapped, body dropped like a sack. The second lost his jaw. The third never finished standing. Steel flashed. Bone cracked. Blood painted the dirt.
Calcore did not rush.
He harvested.
One by one, they fell—some screaming, some silent, none escaping. Panic replaced arrogance. Fighters tripped over bodies, over fire pits, over their own fear. Calcore walked through them like judgment given flesh.
When the fourteenth fell, the ground shook.
The leader emerged.
He was massive—towering, plated in scavenged armor, muscles swollen, scars layered over scars. A brute who had survived by size alone. He roared and charged, swinging a weapon too heavy for finesse.
Calcore dropped his sword.
The camp froze.
The leader laughed and lunged.
Calcore stepped inside the swing.
Hands seized flesh and metal. Fingers dug beneath armor seams, into exposed skin. He wrenched, twisted, pulled. The leader screamed as Calcore tore him down, forearm crushing windpipe, knees driving into ribs until something gave way with a wet sound.
Calcore strangled him slowly.
Not out of cruelty—out of certainty.
When it was over, he stood, breathing steady, hands soaked. He stripped pelts from the dead, draped them over himself, adding layers of brutal proof without ceremony.
Practical. Functional. Earned.
He looked at the dead tribe, at the firelight flickering over bodies, and felt nothing missing.
Only forward.
Calcore turned his back on the camp and walked toward the next horizon—pelts heavier, armor tighter, legend growing with every step.