The large truck rumbled across the open plains, a cloud of dust lingered in its wake. Strange creatures watched from a distance, their bodies obscured by the tall grass.

Inside this vehicle, known as an Armored Carrier, were Hitori and his team. Normally they would have traveled by foot, especially since they didn’t have anything in the way of cargo.

Of course, normally every member of his team would know a Longstrider Tech. In fact, every member of his team would actually know how to do techs at all. Hitori glared at Elvira. She was too busy clinging to the handrails and slamming into the walls of the cabin to notice.

The truck was Gordon’s idea, after Elvira revealed that she didn’t even know what they meant by techs, let alone how to use one. They were lucky the school had one today, normally ground vehicles stayed at Firestorm’s auxiliary base.

Hitori cursed Ms. Athens. He had no idea why she decided to dump the total novice on his team. The girl wasn’t practiced enough to stay steady during the trip, so he couldn’t even spend the time telling her what to expect when they arrived.

At last, they finally got within view of their target. Gordon lumbered the Carrier into a patch of short grass well away from the tree line. Elvira tumbled out of the back as soon as the ramp went down. The rest of the team filed out, sharing furtive glances between them.

Hitori stopped at Elvira’s feet. She had taken a seat against one of the massive tires. Her body had a few slowly fading bruises. After repeated minor injuries Vital Net’s would usually stop healing things immediately. This conserved energy, and also brought back a persons pain signals to full strength to discourage them from doing whatever that was hurting them.

Elvira had her teeth clenched, her eyes locked onto a non point a short distance away. Hitori sighed.

“It helps if you walk it off,” Hitori said, offering her his hand. Elvira took it, and pulled herself to her feet. She winced.

Still holding his hand, she looked up into his eyes. “Sorry.”

For being useless?

Hitori furrowed his brow and shook his head. As team captain it was his job to bring out her best. There was no point whining about it. “What on Esper do you have to be sorry for?” he said.

“I didn’t know I was so far behind, and now all of you have to deal with me. I should quit.”

“Hey, none of that. I’m still excited about your potential. It’s just going to take a bit more work than I hoped.” Hitori grinned. “And none of that either. Here, walk with me a bit and I’ll get you up to speed.”

Elvira followed. She took a sharp breath with every step, but otherwise didn’t complain.

“We might as well start with Wychwood,” Hitori said. “Its history is a good case study on metafauna. That could be useful on the written exams, so I hope you don’t mind if I go into detail.

“The first thing you need to understand about Wychwood is that it is one of the most dangerous places on Esper. There are only about six or seven other double S ranked locations, depending on how you map them out, and the ocean is the only place that can definitely be said to be more dangerous.”

“The oceans?” Elvira said. “Those are dangerous because of Leviathans right?”

“Yeah, and a few other terrible beasties. That’s why they move cargo with airships instead of boats.”

“Okay, I get the oceans are bad because the animals were already huge, but how’d this forest get so dangerous?”

“In short, because Tag hunting.”

“Tag?”

“Oh, I guess that’s more of a mercenary thing. Do you at least know about Organically Deposited Artes?”

“ODAs? Yeah, those are naturally occurring artes you find inside metas. Technically arteware?”

“Yes, but you’ll most commonly find them in metaflora.”

“You mean plants?”

“Specifically ones with active vital nets. It’s pretty rare, but occasionally you even get some that pass their active net to seedlings. Three strains happened to form in the Wychwood, and they’re pretty useful as well. That’s how the forest got the way it is.

“This bounty of rare tags was discovered about a hundred fifty years ago, and Hunters swarmed the place. One thing lead to another, and they triggered something future metazoologists would later call a ’Steady State Augmentation’.

“I’ll explain that in detail later, but the short of it is kill the weak, train the strong. You do that enough and the whole ecosystem gets more dangerous.”

“This is a lot to take in,” Elvira said. Hitori gave her a minute to think. “So tags are a mercenary term for ODAs?”

“Sort of. Technically they are body parts used as proof of a kill. When it turned out metafauna contained valuable resources the term migrated.”

“Is that what we’re doing here then? Killing spiders and stealing their legs or something?”

Hitori laughed. “No, no, Nova mercenaries generally won’t do tag hunting, not unless there is some particularly powerful and troublesome creature. In fact we led the push for an addition to the code specifically to prevent another Wychwood.”

“Oh,” Elvira shifted her eyes down.

“You don’t actually know the Mercenary Code, do you?”

“I know there is a code," Elvira said helpfully. Hitori was unimpressed. "It’s on my list."

“I’ll give you the abridged version: If you can kill them, you shouldn’t, and if you should kill them, you can’t. You can apply that to metafauna too and it’ll keep you out of too much trouble."

"That sounds a lot… nicer, than I expected, to be honest."

“It’s good for business to have friendly relationships with your competitors slash customers.” Hitori shrugged. “That’s easier to do if they aren’t dead.”

“Isn’t that kind of tricky? Like, that hit you gave me at school, how’d you know that wouldn’t kill me?”

“Oh man, I really hope Ms. Athens has been teaching you that, at least.”

“We’ve covered it quite a bit,” Elvira said. “But hearing about something and seeing it in action…”

“That’s fair,” Hitori said. He looked off and hummed, reeling his hand. “Alright, I’ll walk you through the evaluation I used on you, then explain our training plan.”