You defeat a [Tarikan (High Copper Rank—Plateau Beast)].

  You gain extra runes of Divine, Mist, Blood, Serpent and Omen experience for slaying a Plateau Beast.

  You gain extra Battle Points for slaying a Plateau Beast.

  (1) [Blitz Pearl] has been stored in your inventory.

  (1) [Wind Ember] has been stored in your inventory.

  (1) [Tarikan Pelt] has been stored in your inventory.

  (1) [Tarikan Claw] has been stored in your inventory.

  (1) [Greaves of the Lion] have been stored in your inventory.

  (1) [Kindling Branch of Celestial (Red)] has been stored in your inventory.

  (1) [Hunt Token] has been stored in your inventory.

  Blessing Advancement!

  [Blessing of the Hunt]

  (Blessing, Uncommon)

  Spirits of ancient beasts predate the Realmtree’s birth. These creatures are unknowable, but ultimately interwoven into the very fabric of the multiverse. They may not possess Anchor Runes, but the power they wield is something that even the Kindred struggle to comprehend.

  The phenomenon of their existence lies outside the guidance of the gods, both Inner and Outer. As such, these primordial creatures are capable of rarely bestowing blessings upon individuals they feel a connection to. How and why these creatures choose their champions is a mystery to all but the primordial spirit.

  Your spirit has taken on a portion of the primordial’s power, bringing your soul in line with those great and mysterious creatures both vile and sublime.

  Imprint(Common): You can sense exceptionally powerful creatures near you. Whenever you engage in battle with a creature of great power whose strength eclipses your own, you ignore a portion of the rank disparity. The more hunts you partake in, the greater power this blessing will bestow upon you.

  Imprint(Uncommon): Your ability to sense powerful creatures is further enhanced. The amount of rank disparity you ignore is further enhanced. You can now extend your blessing up to 8 other people.

  Mel could already see Thomas sprinting for Gwen. Instead of crowding the woman, she tossed Thomas a health potion and ran the other way. Toward Heath’s slumped body.

  Gwen groaned on the ground, blood pooling around her.

  Thomas caught the potion and dropped to Gwen’s side. He rolled her over gently and put the uncorked potion bottle to her lips without a word. While the potion wouldn’t recover her health, it would close up her wounds. In the end, the difference was minimal when you were hanging onto life by a thread.

  Heath was in rough shape, but it looked like he would survive. His eyes were open, though they were glazed and disoriented. Mel didn’t have time to wait for him to respond to her. She took out a health potion and poured it directly into his mouth.

  The bleeding gashes across his chest closed up as if by magic, because it was. The skin knit together until all that remained were angry red welts beneath his tattered armor.

  “You idiot!” Mel said, shaking him once she had made sure he wasn’t going to die.

  “H-hi Mel. It’s me, Heath.”

  Mel stared at him, gripping his armor in her fists. “Yes…I know who you are.”

  “Oh. I kinda figured you might forget me.”

  Mel dropped him to the ground. “Unfortunately, not. You know, just because I thought you might be dead didn’t mean you had any right to go and make that true.”

  Heath laughed weakly, then clutched his side in pain. It was obvious the potion hadn’t removed all his wounds. Thankfully, the most threatening seemed to be dealt with. He struggled to a sitting position. “Did you save me? I saw some notification that you extended a blessing to me.”

  Mel raised a brow at that. “So that’s why you didn’t get swatted like a fly…” The upgrade to her blessing did explicitly mention she could spread it to more people.

  Would’ve been nice if you mentioned that I could do that earlier .

  Heath cleared his throat. “Did we win?”

  Mel shook her head and sat down hard beside him. “Yeah. We did. Honestly, thanks in part to you.”

  “I helped?”

  “More like you were bait.”

  “...yeah, that sounds about right.”

  “Did you get any loot?” Mel asked after an awkward silence.

  Heath looked like somebody had just thrown cold water in his face. “Holy smokes! You killed a plateau beast!”

  “You know what that is?”

  “Not even a little!” Heath admitted. “It does sound cool, and I got some nice loot. I just figured you expected me to have a reaction. I mean, I’ve never heard of a plateau beast before. It sounds impressive.”

  “It is,” Thomas said, helping Gwen over to the pair. “We’ve been stalking it for days now, trying to set up the perfect time to take it down. Who knew all we needed was somebody running headlong into danger?”

  “Boy, how have you survived this long?” Gwen asked Heath, exhausted.

  Heath gave her a dopey smile and shrugged. “I’d like to think that my ancestors, who have all died horrible, horrible deaths, are always around making sure I don’t succumb to the same death as them. Fun fact, Nana Wimpley believed that all Wimpley’s could only die one death, on account of the gypsy’s curse. So if some Wimpley in the past died by stubbing his toe, no other Wimpley could. It’s how we’ve managed to stay alive. Y’know, despite the gypsy’s curse .”

  She half-lidded her eyes. “There it is. You’re likable.”

  “I’m…what?”

  “You’re likable. Magi like the ever so magnanimous Mel here would take you in, gypsy curse and all.”

  Heath nodded. “The Beta Defense. Beta so hard you get an Alpha to take care of you. It’s a very Wimpley strategy.”

  Everyone groaned at that but Heath.

  “Your last name is Wimpley?” Mel asked, unable to help herself.

  “My full name is Heather Olivia Wimpley,” Heath said with a nod. “My dad really wanted a girl, you see, and he was just settled on Heather. All my friends call me Heath.”

  Gwen chuckled darkly.

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  Thomas stared at him like he was some freak of nature. “Your…initials spell out ‘how’.”

  Heath pointed at him. “They do! Thank you for noticing! Wow, you’re all really nice. Most people are trying to kill me or something by now.”

  “That’s not exactly what’s going on here, honey,” Gwen said.

  “Mel healed me. You’re all checking up on me. Nobody is stabbing me, kicking me, or chasing me off with a pitchfork and torch. I’d say I’m sittin’ pretty.” He ticked off every point on his fingers.

  “Did you get a kindling branch?” Mel asked.

  Heath shook his head. “You can have what loot I did get though. I would be dead without you, so it’s the least I can do. I can’t give you the runes though. Sorry.”

  That was the thing about Heath. He wore his heart on his sleeve. The guy was honest and weird, but he wasn’t harmful or hateful. It really was a wonder how he managed to survive this long.

  Gwen sighed. “Guess we really are taking care of you.”

  “Hell yeah,” Heath said, “I’m surrounded by a bunch of Alphas!”

  “Please don’t say that. I take particular issue with that term.”

  Heath looked at Gwen, then Mel, then back at Gwen. “Wait, why?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mel said. “Come on, Wimpley. Help me set up camp.”

  With the plateau beast dead, there was no reason to return to their camp for any other purpose than to grab some essentials. Nobody quite felt up to the task at the moment, so they made camp at the mouth of the tarikan’s lair.

  “What’s he doing?” Heath asked, watching Thomas tiredly etching sigils and runes into the ground around the camp.

  “Defenses,” Mel said. “This way, nobody has to stay up to keep watch. You can rest easy knowing that we’ll be woken up the moment any threat is upon us.”

  “Heath and Thomas should still sleep further inside,” Gwen pointed out, kneeling by the cold campfire and setting up a stew.

  “Camilla had something like that,” Heath said, nodding along. “I thought it looked familiar.”

  Thomas stopped what he was doing, his head whipping around. “You met Camilla?”

  Heath looked a little unsettled at the intensity of Thomas’ gaze. “Yeah. She was part of a group that saved me from some cannibals. Her, Jacob, Shrubley, his talking sword, and a little weasley dude named Fenris.”

  “That’s an oppa,” Mel said.

  “Right! That’s the word. I forgot.”

  “Did you just call an oppa a weasel?” Gwen whispered, looming above him. “Scratch that, the Fire Oppa.”

  “He looked like a ferret,” Heath admitted. “That’s a weasel. I know because that’s the Wimpley’s spirit predator. Wimpley’s have very rodent-like faces, and the natural prey of the weasel is a rodent. My dad told me rodent men were very trendy for a while.”

  Gwen was at a loss for words.

  “Heath has that effect on people,” Mel said, putting a comforting hand on Gwen’s arm. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I want to crush him, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “That’s because of the Beta particles all Wimpley’s put out!”

  “I swear –”

  “I think he’s screwing with you.” Mel shook her head, laughing.

  “I hope you’re right. It’s sort of adorable, if that wasn’t so sacrilegious.”

  Heath turned to Mel as Gwen stalked off to help Thomas set up camp. Despite taking the second-most injuries, she was quick on the mend. “She’s nice. I think she wants to eat me. Not sure I’d mind.”

  Mel shook her head. “Best to keep that to yourself, champ.”

  “Is she taken?” He actually looked hopeful.

  “I don’t know what her deal is,” Mel answered truthfully.

  “Maybe your deal?” Heath asked, as if that made any sense.

  “Nah, there’s only one of me.” Mel couldn’t help but hear Askara’s voice in her head. She pushed away the memory.

  “Well, of course! Not what I meant, but it’s not my place to talk about that.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mel said. “Shut up, Heath. I really didn’t expect you to still be coming. How far away were you?”

  “Oh, just a week or so away.”

  “That seems far.”

  “It’s only far if you walk. I ran most of the way. Fell some of it. Glided when I could. Usually ran though. Lots of running. It’s okay though, it was mostly downhill.”

  “You seem a little…different,” Mel said politely, taking out some materials for a campfire.

  “I hit my head a lot .”

  “There it is.”

  “I’m glad you reached out to me,” Heath admitted. “I thought you were dead. Everybody I met wanted to kill me or steal from me. Except Jacob’s group. They were nice. We hunted cultists, though I really wish I had been chased by more cannibals. I saw things , Mel. Things. ”

  Mel knelt and bundled up some kindling for Thomas to ignite at the center of the campfire. “Cosmic horrors?” she asked.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Just a wild guess. Cultists gonna cult.” Mel looked at Gwen and Thomas as they finished up securing the perimeter.

  I can’t believe I used to this on my own.

  Thomas hardly took more than a few seconds to sketch a series of runes trailing away from the cold campfire. He touched his wand to the last rune, and they ignited like a long wick. The runes flashed one after the other in a series until they set the kindling ablaze. Before long, Mel’s lingering mist evaporated and a hearty meal was cooking over the flames.

  Heath looked like he had just died and gone to heaven. “Wow, you really have your shit together.”

  Mel pointed at Gwen and Thomas. “Thank them. This is almost entirely their doing.”

  Thomas looked at the bubbling pot of stew as Gwen diced up a hunk of heavily marbled ruby red meat.

  She looked up with a wolfish grin at them. “Don’t be so humble, Mel. It doesn’t suit you. We’re about to find out what a plateau beast tastes like.”

  Heath looked at each of them, laughing. When he saw nobody else was laughing, he stopped abruptly. “She’s not joking.”

  Mel shook her head.

  Thomas sat down on the other side of the fire, shutting his eyes. “Should be enough time to meditate.”

  “Already?” Mel asked.

  He opened one eye. “You do not feel it? The runes the plateau beast gave were not normal. We didn’t even have a brew at the time.” He looked accusingly at Heath. “Regardless, you must feel it too.”

  Mel had been so surprised by everything, she hadn’t the time to focus on herself. Once she slowed down, she realized Thomas was right.

  “It feels like we’d been grinding on lionals for a full day with the aid of a brew.”

  “Exactly.”

  Heath turned to Mel. “What is everybody talking about?”

  “Shut your eyes, Heath.”

  It startled Mel how promptly he obeyed. “Now what?”

  “Just follow the sound of my voice,” Mel instructed. “I’ll walk you through the meditation process.”

  “Oh, my dad’s third wife was a yogi. Well, she was an understudy for a yogi. Well , she was actually the hairdresser for the understudy to a yogi, but it was the same difference. She was–”

  “Heath. Stop talking.”

  “Right, sorry.”

  “Breathe in, hold it, and breathe out.”

  “Fun fact, all Wimpley’s consciously breathe, if we forget we pass out.”

  “I swear to all the gods,” Mel warned.

  “Shutting up now!”