The creature that Faye had been fighting had disappeared after showing her that it didn’t care about a steel dagger plunged into its side. The only thought worse than that thing coming back to finish its job of wearing her down was the idea of something worse that had scared it away.

Just like it had scared away those night squirrels.

Watching the gaps in the trees around her for movement, Faye was trying to get a handle on the chemicals coursing through her blood stream. Adrenaline was making her jittery. There was nothing she could do about it but try and control her breathing and heart rate through other techniques that they’d taught in historical martial arts for competitions.

They hadn’t ever really worked too well for her in fights.

She had always been one that adrenaline affected more than her peers. Some people seemed inordinately calm before, during, and after their fights. Faye had always vacillated between two states: deathly calm and shaking with adrenaline.

At least she’d never seemed to show that shaking to her opponents. To her, it was a massive sign that she was too hopped up, too twitchy to perform at her best. To others, her intense focus on the fight and explosive lunges and rapid slashes were a sign of her desire to win.

She’d just gotten really good at pretending that was what she had been thinking.

Here, she didn’t think that the mind games would work as well.

For one, she was in the middle of a snow-covered forest, in the middle of the night. It was a world where creatures called night squirrels would swarm her and scratch, bite, and generally try and claw their way into Faye’s insides… and that was the least of her foes.

Then something that would never have existed on earth appeared, scaring those squirrels away.

That part of the fight had been worse than the first exhausting portion, not because of how tired she’d been, but how, in the end, even with the best attack she could manage — a dagger in its side — the thing still managed to leave her behind.

It was more than a little terrifying. She swallowed down the fear once again. Trying her hardest to ignore the shakes.

The shadows of the trees shifted a little with a small breeze. That shake of limbs and twigs was enough to mask something’s movement.

Faye started running. She chose the direction that creature had gone. It had taken her dagger with it, inadvertently, but she wanted it back when it finally died of blood loss.

As she moved through the forest, she paid attention to the sounds. Despite it being night, there were still enough random noises to tell her that the inhabitants of this patch of wilderness were nocturnal and very much active.

Her jogging made noise, she was aware of that, but she figured that moving quickly would also let her avoid things easier. She consciously made the decision to circle back towards the town. But she had levelled up earlier. The more she levelled, the less they would be able to argue with her methods. People were usually less angry with methods when there were results to show for it.

Of course, that was predicated on her making it back to the town alive.

And stumbling headfirst into a massive boulder of a creature was probably top of the list of things not to do when trying to survive in the Lóthaven forests…

Its yellow eye was bloodshot when it cracked open to stare at her. The veins highlighted the off-centre oval that marked its pupil, and the band of yellow iris practically glowed in the moonlight.

“Nice pig, niiice pig,” she crooned, holding out her hands before her.

She took in its massive bulk. The thing had been half-buried in the ground but that still didn’t explain how she had barely seen it until she’d been on top of it.

The Mysteries of the Hidden Boar would have to be discarded for the moment, however, because it snorted and shook itself free of the forest debris that it had caught around itself.

“Oh, shit… oh shit, oh shit.”

Looking around at the forest, Faye couldn’t see any convenient boulders, cliffs, or easily climbable tree trunks. Everything in this part of the forest had branches that started higher than her jumping height. Their slender trunks were smooth, and Faye got the distinct impression that they would offer very little protection against this monster.

She turned and started running.

Her sword batted against her leg every other step so she had to grab it and try not to trip herself up. The snorts and squeals of the giant boar followed her into the forest.

This is turning into the worst idea I’ve had in a while.

Panting, Faye lowered herself down by a fallen tree trunk. It was covered in moss and the creepy crawlies liked it, so she knew it had been here for a long time, but its size held a more practical purpose for her: something to hide behind.

The boar that was chasing her wasn’t the fastest thing she’d faced that night, but it was more than capable of keeping up with her.

Wild animals aren’t supposed to be this single-minded, she thought, feeling the sweat drip down her neck. What the hell got this thing’s tusks in a knot?

She had outrun the boar enough that she thought she would try and give it the slip. By her reckoning, she was close to the town, now, but she wasn’t sure and didn’t have any way to check.

Not for the first time, she cursed her recklessness, but reminded herself of the goal.

Level ten. It was doable. Maybe not tonight, but she would never get there if she didn’t take risks.

She bit her lip as the boar snorted, much closer than she wanted it to. That thing was huge.

Some risks were worse than others.

Her hand tightened on the grip of her wooden sword. For the first time since she had been given it, she was acutely sorry that it was made from wood. Sure, it had an edge — one that hadn’t disappeared the moment she’d first used it, because “magic” — but there was definitely something to be said for good old-fashioned steel against a creature the size of a boulder.

Its head came up to her standing shoulder, and its rump was much higher. She wouldn’t be able to touch the top of its back if she jumped. The muscle and fat of its body was dense, and each time it moved, she could practically feel its strength rolling off it in waves.

Only part of her thought that it was her imagination in overdrive.

Suddenly, the boar snorted and turned to look directly at Faye, despite the bulk of the fallen trunk and the bushes and leaves in the way.

She didn’t care how it knew where she was, she just scrambled to her feet and started running again.

The smash and crash of splintered wood behind her told her that the boar had made light and quick work of the tree trunk.

She swallowed and carried on running.

Faye soon realised she had another problem.

There were insects flitting around her. Each one of them lit with an internal light. Fireflies. Or whatever this world’s equivalent was called.

At first, Faye had welcomed their fluttering lights. They were clustered around the plants and flowers of the forest floor. It gave Faye a sense of where patches of undergrowth lay so she could easily skirt around it. Of course, the boar was charging straight through anything in its way — so taking too winding a path would have been suicide.

But over time, the number of the fireflies grew. Eventually, the forest floor was carpeted with them. It became inevitable that she would accidentally stomp on them as she charged away from the boar’s snorting fury.

The first one that had died had sent a ripple throughout the lights of the bugs that she hadn’t missed, but a sudden burst of speed on the part of the boar had sent her tumbling to the side, bugs forgotten.

She drew her sword and readied herself. There was no way that she’d go down without some kind of a fight.

The boar slowly turned, its huge bulk working against it. But even when she tried to get out of its line of sight and stay there until it wandered off the boar would know exactly where she was hiding.

It was mildly infuriating and more than a little terrifying.

“Come on then, you overgrown ham. Come get some.”

The thing snorted and tossed its head, then squealed in such a loud pitch that Faye cried out involuntarily, clutching her hands to her head.

That moment was all the boar needed.

It was upon her before she knew it. It headbutted her, straight in the chest. All the air in her lungs whooshed out in a single breath, and she flew backwards into some bushes of some kind, tumbling head over heels, again and again.

Squealing again in fury, the boar trotted away from Faye.

Letting out a groan, Faye blinked and tried to move but found it hard. Blurry, dizzy details came to her.

How am I alive?

Taking the time to gather her wits, as much as she could anyway, Faye pressed a hand against her head.

She wasn’t lying in a bush, as she’d first thought. It took a few moments more for what she was feeling to filter through the mush of her traumatised brain.

It was some kind of strange papery material. Everything around her was lit with a yellow red light that glowed and flickered.

Each movement she made sent spasms of pain down her spine, so she tried not to move at all.

That’s when the burning started.

Her arm felt the burst of heat and twitched away automatically, causing another spasm of pain in her back. But when another two bursts of heat attacked her backside and shoulder, Faye realised that it hadn’t been her imagination.

The lights around her resolved into crawling masses of the fireflies.

As she watched, one crawled over to her arm and pressed its glowing abdomen against her skin before it popped into a flash of light and heat.

“Ow, damn it,” she exclaimed. “Stupid bugs.”

The boar’s angry snorts came closer again.

As she shifted to try and get a look at the boar, the fireflies erupted into motion.

They began attacking her with reckless abandon. Dozens of them would pop at once. The resulting flashes of heat were intense. The only relief was that it was short lived.

But the more the fireflies crawled toward her, the more she realised she had to move. Her back, arms, and legs were in immense pain, too. But she couldn’t just lie down and die.

She pushed herself to her knees, trying to move slowly enough to avoid the pain of the concussion she suspected she’d sustained whilst moving quickly enough to escape the advances of the buggy horde.

The buggy horde that was exploding on contact with Faye. Not the nicest things to move through. She moved as fast as she could through the remains of what must have been a nest or hive. The boar was close. She could hear its aggravated snuffles as it looked for her.

She supposed she had to be thankful that she’d fallen in with the fireflies, because the boar was a little reluctant to get too close to them.

Of course, the moment she stepped away from them she would need to get away from the boar.

As she paused to think about her next movements, she realised that the fireflies were getting braver again and were starting to fly towards her rather than crawl. A few set their kamikaze attacks off earlier than the others, but it was enough to shock her out of her contemplation.

She pulled through the nest’s remains, hacking with her sword where she could — she was amazed she had kept hold of it — tearing with her hand when she couldn’t. Each movement brought more angry fireflies out of hiding.

Her breath hitched as a small swarm of the bugs detonated against her leg. She looked down and saw that they had burned through her trouser leg and the skin was very tender to the touch.

Sounds of the boar had quietened, but in truth Faye wasn’t paying too much attention. Her thoughts were occupied completely by fireflies that were beginning to fly around her, they weren’t yet swarming to land on her but she had the impression it was only a matter of time before they did.

She realised what had happened when the boar had collided with her. She had flown backwards and off a small rise in the forest floor, into this series of nests of the bugs. She was working her way out of the paper-like material that the nests were made from. The trees were thin, here, their trunks smaller than what she’d come to expect.

Her foot sunk into the soft ground of the nest just as she was about to escape it fully.

“Damn it,” she muttered. She impaled the sword in the ground outside the nest, then grabbed a nearby tree with both hands to give herself leverage to escape the natural made trap.

The bugs were angrily swarming over her leg, the occasional pop of a bug accompanying the intense burn and pain. Soon, though not soon enough by her reckoning, Faye managed to escape the nest material fully. She took the sword and bent over to take a breath.

She was shaking. The pain was growing, rather than abating. Now that she wasn’t focused on escape it was coming to the fore. She gritted her teeth against it and stood.

Already her skin felt like it was scabbing over and cracking. She let out a small cry of pain.

“Ow, God, why do the bugs here have to be literal fire—”

The boar squealed, lowered its head, and began its headlong charge toward her once more. She barely had time to fling herself to the side, but she threw herself down and tried to roll. She failed, banging her chin off the ground and scraping her elbow and knee.

The squeal of rage from the boar turned into a horrific screech of pain.

Faye rolled to her feet in panic, bringing up her sword and staring wide eyed at the scene before her.

The boar was stuck.

It hadn’t been able to stop its furious charge quickly enough and it was now wedged quite effectively in the firefly nest.

Tears of relief pricked at the corners of her eyes.

The buzzing sounds of dozens of bugs flying to defend their nest were almost drowned out by the loud popping of kamikaze bugs, and the accompanying squeal of rage and pain.

She barely thought about what she was doing next.

Striding forward, trying her best to ignore the pain she felt with each movement, Faye took a stance at the edge of the nests and thrust her sword into the relatively softer hide at the backside of the boar’s belly.

Her blade didn’t penetrate far, but she was definitely bleeding it.

Gritting her teeth, against pain and the horror of stabbing a defenceless creature to death, Faye carried on methodically stabbing the boar.

Stab, withdraw, stab, withdraw.

Sometime later, the boar was dead.

Parts of its fur burned, wisps of smoke rising lazily from the corpse. The scent of crispy pork made her belly riotously rumble, but even the thought of eating the boar made her retch a little.

She had heard the chime of the notification when the beast had died, but she hadn’t read the words yet. She had to slowly stumble away from the firefly nest first.

She slumped to her knees when she was far enough not to smell the burning mountain of flesh.

She mentally accepted the notification.

Congratulations! You have slain a level six [Giant Forest Boar]. Experience points earned.

You have gained enough experience points to level up. You are now level 5.

Upon reaching level five, you are awarded a class which best represents your character, defined by the life you have led to this point.

Congratulations! You are now a [Swordfighter].

Attribute growth update: Tou+2, Str+2, Agi+1 per level.

Congratulations! Class skill granted: [Swordfighting — Basic].

Due to already knowing [Swordfighting — Basic] and showing a greater than average competency with the skill, your class skill has been upgraded.

Congratulations! Class skill granted: [Swordfighting — Intermediate].

Pushing through adversity to strengthen yourself is commendable. Additional class skill granted.

Congratulations! Class skill granted: [Swordfighter’s Sense].

You have [1] free class skill point.

The number of notifications that swarmed through Faye’s mind and inner ear were far more numerous than any she had received before.

She took a moment to absorb their words, crouched over herself, hands on her knees and sword resting against the grass before her.

Faye felt her body shake.

Then something erupted from her throat.

Once the first burst of laughter escaped, she was utterly unable to prevent the rest from following. She was knelt in the muted darkness of the forest by herself but at that moment the giddy success she felt was almost overwhelming.

She couldn’t wait to tell the others.