The valley was wider than it had looked from the treeline.
Luc had been walking for twenty minutes and the town was still a destination rather than a place — close enough to see the detail of the walls now, the rough-hewn timber of the gate, the movement of people behind it — but not close enough to feel safe yet.
The road beneath his feet was packed dirt, worn smooth by use, which meant people used it regularly, which should have been reassuring.
The open ground between the jungle and the town did not feel reassuring.
After two hours of dense cover, the exposure sat wrong on him. No canopy. No tight treeline to press against if something came. Just flat grass on either side of the road, knee-high and still, and the long sight-lines of a world that could see him coming from a long way off.
He kept moving. Eyes forward, periphery active.
He heard it before he saw it.
A low sound — not quite a growl, something wetter than that, more deliberate. Coming from the grass to his right, maybe twelve meters out.
He stopped.
The grass moved. Not wind — wind moved everything at once. This was a single point of displacement, low to the ground, circling.
Incoming, the System said, with the energy of someone noting a minor scheduling conflict.
"I can see that—"
It broke from the grass.
The thing was roughly dog-shaped the way that a knife was roughly spoon-shaped — the suggestion of something familiar wrapped around something that very much wasn't. Four legs, low-slung, moving fast. Its hide was the colour of dried mud and its eyes caught the afternoon light in a way that eyes shouldn't. It had too many teeth for the size of its jaw and its jaw was already open.
It came straight at him.
Luc threw himself sideways — not graceful, not composed, but fast, the speed allocation paying a dividend he felt in the cleanness of the dodge, the extra half-second of margin.
The thing's jaws snapped shut where his left leg had been a moment ago. He hit the road, rolled, came up moving.
The creature skidded, turned. Faster than he'd like. It circled.
He circled with it, keeping his eyes on the shoulder — that was where the lunge would start, the weight shift, the tell. He had no weapon. His hands were up in something that was technically a fighting stance if you were generous with the definition.
Observation, the System said. Current loadout: none.
"Yes, thank you—"
It lunged again. He read the shoulder, moved right — but the thing adjusted mid-lunge in a way it shouldn't have been able to, catching him on the correction. One forelimb clipped his arm. He spun, lost his footing on the loose dirt, went down on one knee.
The creature reset instantly. No hesitation. It knew he was down.
Luc tried to move. His leg didn't respond fast enough.
The next moment a spear took it through the neck.
Clean. Fast. The creature dropped mid-stride and didn't move again.
Silence.
Luc stayed on one knee for a moment, breathing. Then he looked up.
The man who'd thrown it was already walking over to retrieve his spear, unhurried, like this was mildly inconvenient rather than a rescue. He was maybe mid-twenties, lean in the way that suggested regular use rather than effort, with close-cropped dark hair and the sun-worn look that came from spending most of your time outdoors. His gear was practical and well-used — leather pauldron on one shoulder, short sword on his hip, boots that had seen real ground.
He pulled the spear free, glanced at the creature, then looked at Luc.
Not warmly. Not coldly. Just — evaluated him. The way you'd look at something unexpected and decide what category it belonged to.
"You're either very brave or very lost," he said. Then, after a beat: "I'm leaning toward lost."
Luc stood up. Brushed the dirt off his knee with what he hoped was a reasonable approximation of composure.
"Working on not dying," he said. "It's a new hobby."
Something shifted in the man's expression — not quite amusement, but the precursor to it. He looked at Luc properly then. The hoodie. The one bare foot. The absence of any weapon, any pack, any gear whatsoever.
"You came out of the Veld," he said. It wasn't a question.
"The jungle. Yes."
"On foot."
"Also yes."
A pause. "With no weapon."
"I'm sensing a theme in your questions."
The man looked at him for another moment, then back at the creature on the ground. "Veld-hound," he said. "They don't usually come this close to the road. Things have been moving strangely lately." He said it like he was thinking out loud. Then he looked back at Luc — and this time there was something different in it.
Not the flat evaluation of before. Something closer to curiosity, quiet and unannounced, like a question he hadn't decided to ask yet. "Nael," he said, and extended a hand.
"Luc."
They shook. Brief and businesslike.
"Where are you headed?"
Luc looked toward the town. "There."
"Archi." Nael retrieved his spear and turned toward the road. "I'll walk with you. Hounds sometimes travel in pairs."
They walked.
Nael didn't fill silence the way some people did — reflexively, nervously, out of discomfort. He let it sit, which Luc appreciated, because it gave him time to observe.
The gate was closer now. Two guards at the post. Beyond the walls, upper floors of buildings, a water tower, the smoke he'd followed still rising from somewhere inside.
"You're not from around here," Nael said, after a while.
"No."
"Accent's strange."
"I get that."
A beat. "Coin?"
"Some."
"Gear?"
"None."
Nael was quiet for a moment — and when he spoke again there was something measured in it, like a man turning an observation over before committing to it. "Guild might take you," he said. "They take most people. Though you'd fail the intake assessment." He glanced at Luc sideways. "Probably badly."
He said it without cruelty. Just flatly, the way you'd tell someone the road was washed out ahead.
What Luc noticed was the slight pause before it. The way Nael had watched him during the fight — not just as someone needing saving, but as something worth watching. The probably badly was honest. But the might take you hadn't been nothing.
Assessment: accurate, the System said.
Luc took it to heart. Not with offense. With the clean, specific storage of something he intended to return to.
"Good to know," he said.
Nael looked at him again. Whatever he found in Luc's expression seemed to settle something, because he nodded once and faced forward. "Lodge inside the east gate," he said. "Cheap. Clean enough. Better to get your bearings before anything else."
"That was the plan."
"Was it?"
"It is now."
The guards watched Luc the way people watched things that didn't fit the expected pattern — not hostile, just the flat cataloguing attention of men whose job was to notice what was out of place. He was, objectively, very out of place. One sock. No pack. Dried blood on his palms. Mud in his hair.
One of them said something to the other. Low, not meant to carry.
It carried anyway.
"Odd-looking one. Veld -walker?"
"Nah, Nael voucher for him."
He didn't react. But he heard it.
Nael hadn't vouched for him out loud — but he was walking beside him, and apparently that was enough. The guards let them through without a word.
The gate closed behind him.
Archi opened up — narrow streets, stone and timber buildings pressed close, the smell of woodsmoke and cooked meat and animal and mud layered into the density of a town that had been inhabited long enough to stop noticing its own smell. People moved through it with the purposeful ordinariness of lives already in progress. A cart rolled past pulled by something that wasn't a horse but occupied the same general role. A woman bargained loudly at a stall. Nobody paid him much attention.
He had some coins he hadn't counted, no weapon, no gear, and one sock.
The Demon King was out there somewhere.
Baseline human. Demon King's world. Step one.
He started walking.