I had donned my clothing once more, the coarse materials sufficiently dry to ensure I wouldn’t get sick. “A test?” I asked, trying my best to keep up with the man as we continued through the woods.

“That’s right. There’s a spike feeder on the lower end of the village-rank that’s been causing some trouble in one of the villages closer to the city. I was going to take it out on the way back, but if you can kill it, than it shows you’re fit to be trained by me.”

I didn’t know if the man’s second tier form provided him with more physical benefits than mine, but he was excessively fast. Maybe it was the results of a regimented exercise routine reserved for those training to fight spike feeders, but it was taking everything I had to ensure I didn’t lose sight of him.

“You think I can kill it? You’ve barely seen me do anything.” I shouted between breaths, my cloak fluttering in the wind behind me.

“If you can keep up with me then you should be in a fine state to kill the spike feeder,” he replied, temporarily running backwards for his response. “Consider this the preliminary test. If you can’t even handle this level of running, you wouldn’t be able to endure one day of the training.”

I dreaded the thought of the man leaving me behind, let alone not training me. I couldn’t fail to keep up. I had to keep pace. I had to be trained by him, so that I could kill the spike feeders, and join the city guard, and be respected for who I was.

After a short period of intense jogging, we came out of the forest, finally free of the twisted trees. It opened into a wide clearing quite the distance away from another village. In many ways it was like the one I had come from, but in so many subtle ways it was different, unable to be mistaken from my own home.

“This is the village that’s been under attack? Can their town guard not handle the spike feeder?”

“Nope,” he said. “They put in a request to the city and that got passed along to me, and as I’ve stated, I’m giving it to you. Don’t you worry though. If it looks like you’re not up to the task, I’ll kill it, and leave you alone. You’re already able to continue to the city. It’s just a few miles over those hills.”

He pointed to the far side of the village, where the road continued out into the distance, filtering through the forest once more. “Look… can I have a name? It’s feeling odd to try and beg for your mastership when I don’t know who you are?”

“You can get my name if you’ve passed the test.”

“Fine, but I’ll tell you my name so that you can actually address me and we can circumvent this awkward state where it’s like we’re talking at each other, as opposed to each other. I’m Perry, alright?”

“Whatever you say, Perry. Your test remains unchanged. Kill the village-rank spike feeder that’s been tormenting this village and become one of my apprentices. Fail and continue on with whatever life you had before.” He shrugged his shoulders, the slightest hint of a grin on his face.

“So I can’t fail then,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“Sure, whatever you say. Any questions about the test”

“I have many questions. Will you answer them?”

He stroked at his goatee, lips pursed, brows furrowed in concentration. “Depends,” he uttered after moments of consideration.

“Shit, work with me. What does the spike feeder look like?”

“The villages aren’t sure! It will likely be somewhere between the size of the one you killed and the one chasing you in the woods, with the same gray skin and spikes, but past that, its appearance is uncertain.”

“… Do we know where it normally roams or lives?”

“Nope!” he said with too much glee. I thought I would appreciate how he was invested in me, but perhaps this was the wrong kind of investment for the moment.

“How are people usually attacked?”

“Evidently it just appears out of nowhere and leaves without any signs of its exit. There’s very few records given the survivors haven’t really be in a state too discuss anything.”

“Are the attacks inside the village or outside?”

“Both! Nowhere is safe, which is why it’s considered a village-ranking spike feeder.”

“How do you think it’s attacking the village?” I asked, hoping he would continue to be receptive to my questions.

“Trade secret. That’s for you to determine,” the man said, winking back at me.

“Shit. Are there any records of what lures the spike feeder or times of day when its more active?”

“The villages did not track the hours when it moves, and as to what causes the attack you’ll get as a freebie. My notes suggest that it’s from periods of heavy movement from the village. I don’t think there’s much else I can answer for you, Perry, lest I get into details that solve the test for you,” he said, shrugging at me.

“That’s where you’re wrong, and this is where I needed your name so that I could have addressed you properly,” I retorted. “Do I have a time limit on killing the spike feeder?”

“You didn’t before, but you do now. Congratulations. You have until the end of the day,” he replied, flicking at invisible specks of dust upon his shoulder with his bored affectation.

Shit. Me and my big mouth. I hoped he’d given me enough information to work with, but I’d have to let my own skills do the rest of the work to ensure that I could kill the spike feeder. The main things to note were that the beast was arriving and leaving the village unnoticed. There were only a few possible explanations for that.

The spike feeder was either like the man and able to disguise itself or getting in through an unwatched or unguarded part of the village. But knowing how it was doing things didn’t help me catch it. I concentrated on my electroreception, staggered for a moment by the flare of activity within the village. Evidently my proficiency increase in the woods had expanded my range, which came with the ostensible downside of making me more sensitive to those signals.

But the noise of the village wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for other behavior. I turned around, sensing something behind me, but I saw nothing there. “Was that you?” I said, craning my head to look for the man.

He reappeared out of thin air. “Sorry yeah. How’d you find me?”

“Trade secret,” I said, idly looking for other movements. Couldn’t be distracted from my test. “Are you going to be watching me like that this whole time?”

“Well yeah. Need to ensure that if you can’t take it down that I kill it when it exposes itself. Are you sure you can afford this time talking to me?”

“I’m certain I can,” I said, turning my nose up at him. “Now if you don’t distract me, I’m going to get back to tracking down the spike feeder.”

I had to study the movements of the creatures that I was sensing. One side wasn’t enough. But if I moved around the village and got different perspectives, I figured that would help me confirm where the signatures were coming from. My legs beat a path through the prairie grass, cycling around the village, mind fixated on the electric signals within the village.

While most were moving, those seemed attributable to normal activity. Nothing was sticking out that seemed like a spike feeder’s infiltration. Shit. Didn’t know if that meant that I was just missing the spike feeder, or that it wasn’t even nearby for the moment. It wasn’t as though the villagers knew where it lived or what made it more likely to attack. They seemed to be living blithely unaware and uncaring of the consequences, barring their call for help.

While I was lost in my thoughts, one signature was moving rapidly— it took me a bit to orient on the proper direction, but once I did…

“The ground,” I shouted, leaping aside as the burrowing spike feeder emerged from the soil. Its claws pierced outwards, the tunnel collapsing behind it. “It’s been tunneling into the village. Shit.” It wasn’t nearly as large as the one in the forest, and yet it was still quite larger than myself.

My head was about at its torso, while its shoulder width doubled mine. The endpoints of its hands were covered in the spikes that blossomed throughout its body, albeit curved ever so slightly. Its mouth was surrounded with a corona of spikes, and as it shrieked its maw of needle teeth shone in the afternoon light.

If its claws even touched me, I was done for. One spike would lead to another piercing my body, gouging out chunks of flesh. No wonder the villages who had survived it couldn’t speak on it. Who knew how much of a functional villager was left after their encounter with this monster.

I kept running, curious as to how it would follow me. Could its hunched-over form run after me? But no, seeing that it couldn’t catch me right there and then, it jumped back into the earth, claws displacing the dirt in large swathes. The unsettled land spilled back into the ground just as quickly as it had been cleaved out, my electroreception indicating that the spike feeder was chasing after me from down below.

If I was going to kill it, I needed to get the jump on it and take it out after it had popped out of the ground. Unfortunately, to be so close would be to invite a counterattack. This was going to be difficult.

Electroreception proficiency: 100%. Sense Grasped.

The duress of battle provided yet another boon— I had become sufficiently competent with my electroreception, no longer floundering in my understanding of the sense. I could feel that the radius had increased further and it seemed like there was more subtle information reflected in the signals I was receiving. If I had the time to study what I was sensing, I would have performed trial after trial to isolate the new information but I had to keep thinking up a plan before the day ended. I didn’t have the time to delve further into my new level of proficiency.

It was time to start with simple testing for my battle plan. I cast my gaze around the area in my frantic running, looking for anything with a good heft to it. The area was mostly covered in just empty plains… but off to the side was a discarded wagon, farming materials still laid upon this. “Sorry,” I muttered, running for the wagon.

The subterranean spikefeeder refused to surface yet, although I could still sense its movements beneath me. I latched onto a hoe and rake, tossing them across the plains. The tools landing in a anticlimactic thud, my feet temporarily coming to a halt. I was inviting disaster, but I needed to confirm my hypothesis.

Sure enough, the beast continued after the last movement, piercing out of the earth and clawing the tools to bits in a heartbeat before tunneling back underneath. Shit. It was too fast. Even if it responded to sound, I had to be constantly moving, and using something as a lure would only work so well.

And yet, I think my plan had come together. I think I understood well enough as to what I needed to do. I said another apology in my mind to the villagers, and picked up some of the remaining tools from the wagon, running once more towards the spike feeder’s signal in the ground.

It noticed my excited movement, tunneling towards me at higher speeds, scaling through the earth faster than I was moving in the open air. Shit. If this didn’t work, I was all but done for, but this was going to be my one shot to get it on my own. If I couldn’t pull this off, the man wouldn’t teach me. I had to do it. I had to win. I had to kill the spike feeder. I couldn’t fail.

I pivoted to a hard stop, tossing out the trowel and shovel I had scavenged not but a foot from my side, taking up my position with my spurs to gouge out the spike feeder’s own flesh.

Deep in the earth it responded to the impact of the tools, but more worryingly, to my own halt as well. In a flash it burst forth from the earth, tearing the tools to bits once more, wood splintering from its claw’s impact. As I lunged towards it, it turned inhumanly fast towards me, spikes outstretched to catch me on impact.

‘Not like this,’ I thought, desperately seeing if I could shift my body in response to the signals it sent. ‘Not like this. Not now. Not so that the man saves me. This is it.’

The signals it sent overwhelmed my electroreception, my sense a distraction in this slowed down world of adrenaline and fear, and I just pushed in my mind to shut it off, to crowd out the noise reverberating within my skull.

Technique Codified: Electromute. Proficiency: 10%

The beast’s body locked up, dull eyes fixated on me with rage. I didn’t know what I did yet, but I lashed out with my spurs and jumped back, hoping that the venom within them would be enough to subdue the beast.

Just as suddenly as it had locked it, it started to move once more, continuing its lunging process at me, outstretched claws seeking purchase to my stomach.

Shit. All for nothing. I braced for impact, trying to pull my arms in to eat the blow when the spike feeder collapsed, falling over to the side.

“Did you do that?” I said, studying the prone form. I didn’t know how potent my venom was going to be on the village-ranked spike feeder. It was stronger than the prior one, even if I did give it a double dose in comparison.

The man appeared from behind the monster, raising his eyebrows as he studied the corpse. “Yes and no. It was mostly collapsing already. I just took out its legs from under it to ensure it didn’t kill my new pupil in its death throes.”

I blinked a few times, shaking my head as though to confirm the words that rattled about in the air. “Your new pupil?”

“That’s right. You managed to just barely pass. I’ll give you credit even though I had to step in there. You had a close call though. Mind sharing a quick understanding of what had happened? Clarifying the uncertainties? Debriefing me on your fight?” He dusted himself off as he approached me, eyes filled with curiosity.

“I pass,” I muttered. “I pass!” I shrieked with equal parts joy and grief, falling forward to the ground, head narrowly missing an errant spike from the corpse. It wasn’t the best place to get down. I felt only slightly stupid that I had nearly killed myself after my success.

After a brief moment to gather myself, I rose to my feet, gingerly avoiding the corpse this time around. “After confirming its movement patterns with my electroreception and discerning what lured it to action, I decided my only shot to get it was a sneak attack while it was attacking my decoy. What I didn’t expect was how fast it was. Didn’t have enough time to study its movements with the time limit you gave me.”

The man shrugged back at me before motioning for me to continue. “When it lunged at me, having torn through the tools in an instant, it felt like the world had slowed down. In that moment of, uh, battle rush, I wrenched down on my electroreception so I could think of how to survive the attack, and that seemed to have codified a technique which halted the beast for a moment just long enough for me to strike it with my spurs.”

He snapped his fingers as soon as I said the word technique, confusion resolving upon his face. “That’s it. That’s what I was hoping for, that you had a technique. Deriving one in the midst of battle is usually a bit tricky, if not dangerous, but sometimes it takes danger to bring out the techniques. Violence is a powerful teaching tool, albeit I prefer to usually have those in a controlled environment. Good job, Perry. Let me go inform the village that the monster has been killed with only minimal harm to their livelihoods, and then we’ll make our way to the city, so that we can rest for the night. You can handle another run, right?”

He didn’t wait for me to respond, already hustling over to the village, leaving me to sit in my confused state. “But what’s your name?” I shouted, desiring to finally know what to call my teacher.

“Call me Javier,” he replied, already entering the hamlet.