The Divine Revenge Squad had existed for exactly thirty-seven seconds from founding to total annihilation, and Laia was the only witness to its entire, unremarkable history.
She lingered on the ridge long enough to confirm no movement remained in the smoldering crater, then turned and headed straight for the Black Tiger King's core den. With Garrick dead and his heir reduced to ash alongside the rest of his retinue, the entire middle-ring stronghold was unguarded, ripe for the taking.
She stripped the cavern clean by the time the first rays of dawn seeped through the misty gorge ceiling. Every crystal of blood essence, every bundle of rare abyssal herbs, every stack of tanned beast hides and stored relics—all of it went into her spatial bag, down to the polished stone tiles lining the back storage chamber. She even took the hoard of sharpened hunting claws the tiger cubs had been practicing with. Waste was a sin she refused to commit, especially when every last scrap translated directly to merit points.
By mid-morning, she was tramping back through the garrison perimeter gates, her bags slung heavy over her shoulders, her steps steady and unhurried. The receptionist looked up from her paperwork with her usual polite smile, then froze as Laia began unloading her haul onto the counter, piece by piece.
A fifth-tier black tiger king carcass, intact. Three third-tier clan leader corpses. Crates of blood essence. Bundles of high-grade medicinal herbs. Stacks of beast hides.
The receptionist stared for a full ten seconds before fumbling for her merit tally tablet.
The final count took nearly twenty minutes to verify. When the numbers finally settled, the receptionist slid the updated account slip across the counter with a new, faintly awestruck look in her eyes.
"Eleven thousand two hundred and forty-seven merits total, ma'am. That's… the largest single-day haul any hunter has turned in at this outpost in three years."
Laia nodded, tucking the slip into her pocket, and did the math in her head. She was barely a week into her three-month posting, and she was already nearly a quarter of the way to the Box of Avarice. Not bad. Not bad at all.
She didn't stick around to chat. She grabbed a quick lunch from the mess hall—beating Tobias to the braised pork station by a full two minutes, a victory she counted almost as valuable as the merit haul—and headed back to her villa to restock her explosive supplies. The western gorge was wide open now. No overgrown tiger king patrolling the borders, no petty clan leaders trying to ambush her. She could grind merits at double the pace from here on out.
Half a mile deep in the middle ring, a scrawny tunnel fiend poked its head out of the dirt, trembling so hard its whiskers wiggled. It had hidden through the entire fight, too scared to run, too curious to look away. It had seen everything: the smoke grenades, the soda-can landmine that took off the tiger king's paw, the tunnel trick, the massive explosion that turned the overlord to charred meat.
It scurried back to its burrow as fast as its claws could carry it, and cornered its favorite nephew the second it got home.
"Now you listen here," it panted, still breathless. "I saw something today out in the west gorge. You don't tell a single soul, you hear? Not one."
The young fiend pounded its chest. "My lips are sealed. Not a word leaves this burrow."
Three hours later, every clan in the western middle ring had heard the story.
The first version was accurate enough: a fourth-tier human god had tricked the Black Tiger King, blown him up with buried bombs, and taken over his territory.
By the time it reached the fox clan's grove, it had morphed into a tale of a mysterious rogue god wielding a soul-severing rifle, who'd challenged Garrick to single combat and struck him down in one blow, no tricks required.
By nightfall, the story circulating through the outer ring claimed a nameless sixth-tier wandering god had appeared out of the mist to punish the tiger king for hoarding territory, and had vanished back into the void as quickly as he'd come.
No two versions agreed on the details. But every last one carried the same core truth: the Black Tiger King was dead. The western gorge had a new top predator, and no one knew who, or what, they were.
The rumor mill at the garrison was just as busy by the next morning's drill. Groups of recruits clustered in the corners of the parade ground, chattering in hushed tones about the unknown hunter who'd taken down a fifth-tier overlord solo. The veteran sergeants were tight-lipped, but even they kept glancing toward the western gate, wondering if the mysterious hunter would come back through.
Liora Voss stood at the edge of the formation, her brow furrowed. She'd heard the stories. She'd also seen Laia head out to the western gorge two days prior, and come back loaded down with supplies the next morning. It couldn't be. No fourth-tier student could take down a fifth-tier abyssal beast alone. Not even the academy's tournament champion.
A few feet away, Tobias shoveled a breakfast pastry into his mouth and glanced over at Laia, who was standing at the back of the formation staring blankly at the drill instructor, clearly half-asleep. He'd seen her hauling those bulging bags back to her villa the day before. He also knew better than to ask. Some people liked their secrets. He liked his breakfast pastries. He wasn't about to go sticking his nose where it didn't belong.
Commander Rourke's booming voice cut through the chatter, calling the formation to attention, and Laia snapped out of her daze, straightening her posture.
She wasn't paying attention to the rumors. She wasn't thinking about her new, unplanned reputation as the gorge's mysterious boogeyman. All she was thinking about was the number sitting in her merit account, and how many more days of steady hunting it would take to hit fifty thousand.
The Box of Avarice was getting closer every day. Nothing was going to get in the way of that.
Not a tiger king. Not silly rumors. Not anything.