The complete and utter silence of the forest was broken by the sound of heavy boots pounding against the ground. Octavius ran like the wind, his tall and muscular frame moving nimbly between trees and bushes. His breathing was slow and steady as the distance between him and the bear decreased by the second.

He followed the trail of blood left by the bear around a massive oak and caught sight of it once more. His jaw was set, and a determined light was in his eyes as he watched it lumber unsteadily onwards.

It seemed that his previous battle had not been kind to the bear. Even with it ignoring the pain of its injuries, it was slowing. The brown fur of its hindleg was matted and black with blood. He observed that the bear didn’t move like it was injured. Instead, it moved with the slow movements that one would expect from a drugged beast. Clearly, the blood loss was getting to it.

His lip quirked upwards in a grim smile; that was good news for him. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The air shimmered around him for a split second as he reactivated his illusion ring. Once he was all but invisible, he began to move.

Instead of charging the beast from behind as he had done before, this time he moved around it in a large semicircle so that he was in front of it. Taking care to avoid making a sound, he was able to reach a point that was a few minutes ahead of the bear on its straight-line course to the Sanctuary.

Once he had reached the area where the bear would soon arrive, he scanned the forest around him. To put his plan into motion, he needed to accurately predict where the bear would be when it passed through the area. He looked down the shaded understory and noticed a stretch that was naturally clear of trees and underbrush. That’s it, he thought, I bet it’ll pass through right here.

Casting his eyes down the path that he predicted the bear would take, he saw exactly what he was looking for. Walking over to the tree, he moved his spear to his left hand. He bent his knees before pushing into the ground explosively. His jump propelled him into the air, where his right arm caught a branch the size of his thigh.

The muscles in his arm barely strained as he pulled himself onto the branch. Once he was on the branch, he moved carefully along it until he was directly above the bear’s predicted path. Looking up, the bear was nowhere to be seen.

While he waited, he wiped his bloody hands on his camo pants. Grimacing, he inspected his attire. Those stains aren’t going to come out any time soon, he grumbled to himself, but at least the armor is repairing itself quickly. That was true; the armor had already sealed the four long cuts from the bear’s claws. In their place were only a few gouges that were closing at a pace visible to the naked eye.

A lazy wind blew through his hair as his eyes focused unblinkingly on the spot he predicted the bear would appear. Not thirty seconds later, the bear came lumbering around a large bush. Octavius remained perfectly still as it came closer and closer.

As it approached, he was able to get a good look at its front. His spear strike to its neck didn’t seem to be hindering it much despite the massive amount of blood that was soaked into its fur. Where most of the animal’s fur was naturally a pastel brown, the fur of its chest and forelegs was almost black from the blood that had begun to dry on it.

He breathed slowly, in through his nose, pause, then out through his mouth. The process repeated as his pulse slowed and his mind focused with an incredible intensity. He spun around in a slow, graceful movement so that he was facing in the same direction as the bear.

The bear was far from quiet as it approached, oblivious to Octavius above it. His eyes peered down as the bear trudged forward. Wait. Wait. One more second. Now!

He leapt silently from the branch, his spear aimed at the bear's back as it walked. The first moment it realized that something was wrong was when the razor-sharp point of the spear pierced its back.

Octavius activated instant thrust as he fell the eight feet to the bear below, putting his entire body weight behind his spear. The moment his spear made contact with the thick hide of the beast’s back, it sliced through it like nothing. A powerful force ran up the spear shaft and into Octavius’s arms.

For a single horrible moment, the momentum of his upper body slowed, and his legs pivoted around the spear. The spear scraped against the bone it had hit, likely a rib, before slipping off it and piercing deeply into the animal's body.

The breath was forced from Octavius’s lungs in a grunt as he slammed into the bear’s back. Releasing the spear, he rolled off the bear’s back as it roared ferociously. He didn’t stop rolling when he hit the ground and continued until he was a good few feet from the wounded animal. As he scrambled to his feet, he couldn’t help but realize that this roar was noticeably weaker than its previous few.

The bear collapsed to the ground with a loud thump, the now visible silver spear protruding from its back. Octavius quickly drew his knife from his belt and charged the downed beast. While he doubted that it could survive being skewered to the ground by a spear, he wouldn’t bet his life on it.

The bear forced a paw under itself and began to heave itself up just as Octavius leapt back onto it. Stradling the ferocious beast like a horse, he scrambled up towards its head as its front paws gave out slightly. As the bear attempted to return to its feet again, its whole body seemed to shake with its menacing growl.

The slight distortion in the air that marked his dagger's position plunged into the side of the bear’s neck. Pulling the dwarvish blade towards himself, he twisted it violently before removing it and stabbing it into the corded muscles of its neck again and again. On the fourth stab, the great beast finally went still.

You have killed Rare Grizzly Bear (Lvl 21) and gained 7875 EXP (1/4)(21)(3)(4)(1.25)(100)

You gained a level!

You are now Lvl 12, 1342/70000 EXP to Lvl 13

+5 Free Stat Points

He panted softly as he threw his leg over the beast and stood. The quick breathes were more from the adrenaline than exhaustion. A smirk grew on his lips, and he looked at the fallen bear. Stepping forward, his boot kicked sharply into the dead bear’s side for no reason other than catharsis. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. A second later, he seemed to snap into existence as the effect of the illusion stopped. Chuckling, he stood atop the bear and heaved his spear from it.

The effort it took to remove the spear from the powerful muscles of the beast was minimal, and soon the bloodied spear was in his grasp once more. Looking down at the dead bear, his countenance fell slightly. If this was a level 21 bear, I really don’t want to fight a higher-level one. He thought, but soon his attention turned to the largest threat on the horizon, I wonder what the Lord of Beasts is. Christ, I hope it’s not a bear.

Turning away from the bear, he faced the direction of the Sanctuary. If more beasts like this one show up, they’re in for a world of trouble.

After wiping the blood on his spear off with the beast’s fur, he set off towards the Sanctuary at a run. He’d already leveled up that day, and his time would be well spent warning Ava that high-level rare beasts were in the area. The more they knew to prepare for, the better their chances of survival.

Octavius ran in a wide arc so that he would come to the Sanctuary on its eastern edge. Perhaps by coincidence, Ava had been assigned to guard an area right next to her secret entrance to the Sanctuary. She had told him the day before that she was part of a group of four that stood guard of their section of the barrier on eight-hour shifts.

His growing hair caught in the wind and fluttered behind him as he ran. The sun of the early afternoon was hot, and the wind felt good on his face. He grinned as he leapt over a fallen log and sidestepped a tree, his speed barely dropping from the maneuver.

The occasional distant crack of gunfire punctuated the unnatural silence of the forest. The constant gunfire reminded him of a time before the Sanctuary. He could almost feel the hot, arid air all around him and smell the pungent stench of burning rubber. Violently, he shook his head, banishing the memories that had been brought to the forefront of his mind by his near-death experience earlier.

His grin fell as he realized that too many memories had been stirred up. He hadn’t dreamt about that night for many months, but he knew that he would as soon as he fell asleep, and likely for a few nights to come.

He dropped his head and ran harder, wishing that his stats were like they were when he was level 1 so that the burning of his muscles would distract him. As it was now, his legs carried him with the same ease as a light stroll, not the all-out sprint he had accelerated to.

At that speed, it took barely a half hour to reach the main path that led to the Sanctuary. As he began to walk parallel to the path, just hidden by the trees that lined it, he slowed to a light jog. Even in the heat, he’d barely built up a sweat. In fact, he still had a little over half of his stamina left.

Barely five minutes later, the barrier that marked the Sanctuary came into view. Octavius had held off on using his illusion ring for as long as he could but knew that if he wanted to proceed unnoticed, he would have to activate it. As the Sanctuary began to run low on ammunition, they had pulled all of their gunners back into the boundaries of the Sanctuary. That meant that Octavius could get much closer without being spotted, but that didn’t mean he could waltz right in while fully visible.

He closed his eyes to activate his illusion ring, but his concentration was almost immediately broken by the sound of leaves rustling. Eyes snapping open, he whirled, expecting to find a beast of some sort. While the sound was quiet, in the deafening silence of the forest it might as well have been a gunshot.

His eyes scanned over the forest, from tree to tree and bush to bush, but found nothing. There wasn’t even a squirrel in his line of sight. He stayed perfectly still for a long moment, waiting to see if there were any other disturbances, but there were none.

Shaking his head, he closed his eyes once more and all but vanished from where he stood. Slipping past the guards was relatively easy, and soon he beheld what the Sanctuary had become over the past two days.

The tents in this part of the Sanctuary were all packed up and taken inwards, farther from the borders. A smart choice, Octavius noted as his eyes fell on a large fire that was cooking some sort of soup or stew. His mouth watered from the luxurious aroma, but he turned from it and left to find Ava.

Their conversation lasted for barely five minutes. Ava was not on guard duty but was staying near the border to respond to any large threats. It was obvious that she was exhausted. Bags hung below her eyes, and her blond hair was matted with sweat and blood. Whether the blood was from a human or animal, Octavius did not know, but she looked to be in good health.

She took the news that he had encountered a rare ranked beast well, but it was possible she was just too tired to care. Octavius had lots of experience operating on the most minimal amounts of sleep, but Ava, along with most of the hunters in the Sanctuary, did not. After a brief conversation, Octavius left her to rest. Reactivating his illusion ring, he slipped out of the Sanctuary.

Octavius sat on a branch larger across than him, secured with loops of paracord. The moon and stars cast his troubled expression in an ethereal light. His brows were pinched, and his lips pressed hard enough together that they turned a pale color from the lack of blood flow. He knew he needed sleep, but he was afraid of his dreams. Alas, exhaustion soon overtook him, and his eyes drifted shut.

Suddenly, instead of the dimly lit trees of the tutorial’s forest, his eyes watched as uniform sand dunes raced away below him. The ‘whomp whomp whomp’ of the MH-60’s rotor blades was loud only a few feet above him. His desert tan combat fatigues snapped in the wind as his legs hung out of the side door, the weight of the M4a1 rifle familiar in his hands. His gloved hand rested around the handle, finger extended on the outside of the trigger guard.

He turned his head slightly to face the soldier next to him. The older man wore nearly identical gear to his own. A helmet with mounted NODs with four separate lenses that provided near one hundred degrees of night vision sat on the man's head. The plate carrier held multiple thirty round magazines, along with a long combat knife. The desert camo of the man’s fatigues was barely visible by the dim light provided by the stars.

The man grinned and spoke into a microphone connected to his helmet. “What you thinkin’ about LT?”

Octavius heard him loud and clear through the headset that covered his ears. He grinned back and responded, “I’m thinkin’ that I’m not sure how much I trust the intel guys right now. The last four ops have all been dry holes; they’re really off their game.”

The man next to him barked a laugh, and a younger voice cut into the channel, “Aw, don’t be mean to them, LT! I bet they’re really stressed out earning their hazard pay. Earning their purple hearts from eye strain can’t be easy.”

More voices began to laugh along, but Octavius shut them down after giving them a moment to laugh, “Alright, cut the chatter.”

His eyes focused on some movement on the sand dunes below. There, the shape of a battered pickup truck drove parallel to the helicopter, almost as if chasing it. Octavius keyed his mic over to a new frequency before speaking calmly, “Starburst-One, this is Stalker-Actual.”

The always calm voice of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment pilot crackled over the headset, “Stalker-Actual, go for Starburst-One.”

Octavius looked at the truck that was racing over the sand dunes, “Heads up, we’ve got -” his voice cut off as a flash of orange light lit up the pickup trunk, silhouetting a standing figure on its back for a moment before it streaking upwards towards the Blackhawk. He shouted into the mic, “- INCOMING ROCKET FROM YOUR SIX.”

His left hand gripped the cold metal of the Blackhawk as it jerked violently to the side; the pilot’s voice responded with the same calm tone, “Roger, brace yourselves back there.

He keyed his radio to his team's frequency before speaking into it, “We’ve got incoming fire, everyone brace!”

The helicopter banked hard to the right as Octavius watched the trail of smoke follow it close behind before exploding in a flash of light. After that, there was chaos. The helicopter spun wildly as US Army Rangers inside held on for dear life. Warning siren echoed above the rushing wind, and suddenly Octavius was airborne.

He was only in the air for enough time to realize that he must’ve slipped below the cargo strap and was sucked into the open air before he hit the ground. His body slammed violently into the sand dunes, skipping across them. Ribs cracked, and his left arm snapped like a twig as he lost consciousness.

A few minutes later, he blinked blearily awake and moved to sit up. Pain exploded across his entire body, and he collapsed back onto the fine sand. He stared up into the stars. The sky was cloudless save for a small pillar of smoke that rose from nearby. Blinking, his concussed mind worked to figure out why something inside him was screaming that the smoke was important.

A moment later, it clicked. The smoke was from the downed helicopter, the downed helicopter that was filled with his men. At that, adrenaline flooded his system as he practically leapt to his feet, barely feeling the pain that stabbed into every nerve in his left arm. Stumbling, he climbed the dune towards the rising smoke; his left arm clutched tightly against his chest. Using his right arm, he swung his NODs down and turned them on. Suddenly, the dim sand dunes were illuminated a bright green to his eyes.

Barely five minutes later, he heard the sound of speaking. A voice shouted something in Arabic before someone replied in English. Octavius’s eyes widened; he recognized that voice. It was PFC Jones, or Castle as they all called him. Practically running, he stumbled to the crest of a dune and peered down.

There, in the dip between two dunes, was a pickup truck. Around the pickup truck were three young men, illuminated by the bright headlights of the trunk. Octavius tipped his NODs back so that he could see clearly in the suddenly bright environment. There, he saw that the young men were actually just boys. They had a tanned skin tone and all wore bright smiles on their youthful faces. Octavius guessed that they couldn’t be older than twenty.

We were shot down by a bunch of kids! He raged internally. They were a group of highly trained soldiers flown by well-trained pilots in a forty-million dollar aircraft, and they were shot down by some kids who would go back to their terrorist camp and brag about it. They’d say that it was their god's will, that it was easy for them to destroy an American helicopter, but they’d gotten greedy. They wanted prisoners too, and they were woefully unprepared to face even a beat-up group of US Army Rangers.

Octavius examined the three youths. All held Kalashnikov rifles, but none of them looked ready to fire. They waved them around like toys at Castle, who was on his knees in front of them. He’d lost his rifle somewhere, just like Octavius had. Unlike Octavius, though, he didn’t have a sidearm. Octavius scanned the area around the group and saw what he guessed was the trail in the sand Castle made when he also fell from the Blackhawk.

Octavius drew the Beretta from its holster and brought it up. His hand shook slightly, and he breathed deeply to calm himself. He had faith that even without a gun, a US Army Ranger like Castle could take out at least one of the tangos if offered an opportunity. The longer these extremists had a prisoner, the more dangerous the situation became. He needed to get Castle out of there as soon as he could.

Sighting in on the leader’s center mass, Octavius pulled the trigger in a smooth motion. The pistol barked as all three terrorists spun around, looking for where the shot came from. Even though he missed, Castle took their moment of distraction to tackle one of them. Octavius centered his pistol's iron sights on the terrorist that was turning to assist their buddy and pulled the trigger multiple times.

The sharp cracks echoed across the dunes as the youth fell. Moving to target the next, Octavius dropped him as well with a handful of well-placed shots. Standing unsteadily, Octavius made his way towards Castle as fast as he could. Just as he stepped into the light of the headlights, the young soldier managed to wrestle the Kalashnikov from the terrorist and fired three shots. The terrorist fell limp, and Castle spun to face Octavius, rifle rising to meet him before letting the barrel fall, “Hey LT! Thanks for the assist. That was some nice sh-”

The youngest ranger in the team, a kid of only nineteen, dropped like a sack of bricks as the crack of a rifle rang out. Octavius spun to find the first terrorist he shot, aiming the rifle unsteadily from the ground. Raising his pistol, he fired two shots into the terrorist before spinning to face Castle.

Dropping to his knees, he reached for the wound on the side of the younger man. His hand found blood pouring from a bullet hole a foot below Castle’s armpit. “Don’t worry; just keep breathing. You’ll be fine,” he whispered the words like a mantra as he scrambled for the trauma kit on his belt.

A weak hand gripped him, and he looked up to meet Castle’s eyes. The young man shook his head slightly and grinned, his teeth red with stained blood. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, he went limp.

Octavius scrambled desperately for the trauma kit, “No, no, no, no! Don’t die, dammit! Come on, kid!”

Tears began to fall from his eyes as his movements slowed before finally coming to a stop. He looked at the grinning face of his soldier and shuddered. Reaching forward, he almost reverently closed the young man’s lifeless eyes that he now saw had burned with hate. Hate for him because he failed to do his job; he hadn’t kept his men safe. Hate for him because he didn’t kill the first terrorist with his first few shots and allowed the young man he was responsible for to die.

The world of the dream seemed to fade until all that was left was the bloody smile of his team's rookie.

Octavius awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for air. No matter how many times he relived those few minutes, it never became any easier.