"Freeze!"

The meatheads stopped mid-run.

“You bros," Henry continued, "you wouldn’t want to blunt your precious weapons? Right? Here...”

He summoned and distributed seven hatchets, ordering the meatheads to find trees he could craft oars from.

The meatheads who'd missed out stared at him with puppy-dog eyes.

“Eh, Big Bro," asked one, "you got any more of those...axes?”

What an asinine question, thought Henry. It was already strange he was carrying seven of them.

He shrugged helplessly. "Sadly, not. But don’t worry; there’s plenty to do if we’re going to save everyone! If the one, two, three, four, five, six of you go collect deadfall for starting fires, that would be beautiful! The rest, please, come with me!”

While the others scattered, Henry led a train of the remaining meatheads to the river.

Apart from a bare patch where he'd already collected some reeds, the whole bank was smothered with the plants. From a random one, Henry snapped a blade, before picking up a fistful of moist earth.

As he squished these together in his palm, tiny glowing axes shot out from his pores and flew to any nearby plants, which the axes soon merged with.

The reeds, as though being shaken by invisible hands, began to tremble. Then, in sync, thousands of the plants were wrenched from the soil and lifted up, dirt raining down from their exposed roots.

The meatheads were astonished.

“Holy moly, are you doing that, Big Bro?”

Henry chuckled jovially. “It’s nothing, bro. It may look special, but this is a basic harvesting skill for the Landworker class."

“What’s a Landworker?”

"Hahaha.” Henry directed the reeds to gather into bundles, which he asked the meatheads to carry to the site where he'd built his first boat.

In actuality, he could have made the reeds fly there himself, but he knew the meatheads would be quieter if they felt they were contributing.

When the meatheads gathering deadfall returned, he set up a row of bonfires.

After igniting them and attaching the bundles, he crouched in front of a fire and took a moment to get his head straight for the coming struggle. One eye watched the crackling wood, the other he closed to plot in his Mental Library.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Instructor Apari, appearing beside him.

The man, seeing his students plunging into action, had been drawn from his daze by a glimmer of hope for his friends.

Henry continued staring into the flames. "For the moment, you can help the others make spears. At my signal, though, you need to hide over there," he pointed at a boulder protruding from the river. "It's a bunker masked by an illusion spell. The less I have to monitor you, the more of your friends I can save."

"Very well," Instructor Apari replied after a brief hesitation.

Up until now, viewing the trainee as a member of the Carcinogen gang, the instructor had only been pretending to cooperate while trying to devise a way to escape.

Earlier in the boar fields, when the trapped wolves had turned Sentient, the arrows that'd triggered the switch had been fired by himself, Instructor Apari hoping this teen would get eaten. This expedition into the forest, he'd also signed the class up for, not knowing that it was doomed and hoping to lose the trainee in the trees. Now, however, seeing the trainee organising a relief effort and, more than that, his awkward struggle to mask the gravity of the situation from the others by acting optimistic, few Offworlders caring this much about their lives - this had convinced Instructor Apari that the trainee might not be entirely evil.

Still, it was hard to reconcile these hints of benevolence with someone who was, obviously, a seasoned murderer.

"Can I ask...," said Instructor Apari, "why are you helping us?"

Henry shrugged. "Been asking myself the same question. Because of ‘fate’? Because it’s the moral choice? Because, at some level, I still cling to the childish fantasy that people can, through enough effort, occasionally defy the fetters of their nature and transcend their destiny?” He paused a moment, his mind’s eye bringing up the image of the Imbahalaala staring at him through the portal. “Our backstories, our motives, these concepts might be irrelevant in the end. Perhaps, all that matters is what we do from now on.”

The Instructor, misinterpreting his answer to be much more philosophical than it truly was, nodded in agreement and left.

Henry, alone—well, alone with the meatheads—got to work.

Within a couple of minutes, reed boats of an identical build began to pop up along the banks of the river, one after another.

He managed to churn out about thirty of the budget vessels before a chat group he’d set up with the Cutthroats started to flood with activity, signalling the beginning of the wolf's ambush.

-32Darkzealot32: They've come.

-Icetornadodeath: How can there be so

-Silverwolfiloveyou39: LOL! He got swallowed whole!

-Syphiliticbuttercup: HAHAHAHA.

-Icetornadodeath (Dead): *Raises his middle finger*

-Liam The Insomniac: Nabbed a pup. On the way.

-Syphiliticbuttercup: Caught one. Returning.

-Liam The Insomniac: Sweet Jesus, the big dog’s coming my way. I’m about to

-Bob From San Francisco: It's targeting you guys specifically. Focus on survival for now.

The Wolf Emperor had joined the attack. Peculiarly, it seemed to be targetting his Cutthroats first and, even more peculiarly, it'd just one shot them despite their much higher level.

Things were getting stranger.

Henry, mapping routes for them to follow, simultaneously got to work, moving around the fort.

He notified some meatheads of the coming attack and ordered them to prepare. The Instructor, he gave the signal to hide in the bunker, along with storing the boats he'd made in his inventory. Since Henry hadn’t completed enough for everyone, he warned the man to keep them a secret lest the Villagers try to steal them.

While the meatheads he’d told ran to pass the information to the others, Henry sprinted to where the edge of the clearing around the fort met the trees. Using a light-stone to illuminate the ground, he absorbed dirt, random twigs, and leaves into his Spatial Bracelet. He then went to the base of the tallest visible tree and comboed with to launch himself to the top.

Landing on the highest branch, he could see the treetops of the forest bright-green in the moonlight, a swarm of glowing souls floating in the distance.

The scene would have been picturesque if not for an eerie howl and a faint click that made his brain pulse, as it had when talking with the giant boar.

"Hail to The Tyrant! Hast thou heard the howl of destiny?

'An evening stalked by lofty lords,

Too many for this land to bare.

In a game of death, they must compete,

For one alone will sunrise greet.'

"Step forth from whence thou hidest, Wielder of Worldpiercer! Wisguh of the Wolf Wave challenges thee!"

The provocation came from The Wolf Emperor itself.

Henry didn't respond. He refused to confirm his presence, and, besides, idle banter had no place in a fight, which belonged to a part of man much more ancient and tragic than the juvenile comedy of language.

Into his hands, channelled from his Spatial Bracelet, condensed the foragings picked up from the ground. The next instant, tens of thousands of glowing axes shot out from his body and entered every tree within a hundred metres of the fort’s perimeter.

All at once, the forest, like the reeds before, answered his call, rustling and creaking.