_*]:min-w-0 !gap-3.5" style="border:0px solid">The forest thinned as Alexander's team approached the wolf territory, transitioning from dense undergrowth to scattered trees with rocky outcroppings. They moved in practiced formation, Alexander and Valeria in lead positions with Elijah and Riva following at optimal range for their bow weapons.

  "Movement ahead," Valeria whispered, gesturing toward a clearing between the rocks. "Three... no, four signatures."

  Alexander signaled for the team to drop into their pnned positions. He secured his spear, feeling the weight of the stone tip—perfectly banced thanks to Riva's careful crafting. The weapon felt substantial in his hands, deadly in its purpose.

  "Confirm visual," Alexander said quietly through their communication channel.

  Riva, who had climbed to a higher vantage point, responded, "Confirmed. Four Timber Wolves circling what appears to be a recent kill. The interface cssifies them as standard predators."

  Alexander nodded, reviewing their pn one final time. "Maintain positions. Ranged attack on my signal, then Valeria and I move in for close engagement."

  He studied the wolves through the underbrush. They moved with dangerous grace, their moss-patterned fur blending with the forest shadows. The creatures were coordinating their movements with obvious intelligence, maintaining formation around their prey. The Game's design was impressively realistic, from the steam of their breath in the cool air to the calcuting gleam in their eyes.

  "All units ready?" Alexander asked.

  Three confirmations came through the communication channel.

  Alexander took a deep breath, feeling a strange tightness in his chest that hadn't been present during simutions. "Execute on my mark. Three... two... one... mark."

  Two arrows whistled through the air. Elijah's struck true, embedding itself in the fnk of the rgest wolf. Riva's shot went slightly wide, grazing a second wolf's shoulder. The pack immediately responded, abandoning their kill and scanning for the threat with predatory focus.

  "Moving in," Alexander announced, unching himself from cover.

  His training took over as he charged toward the wounded alpha. Every movement was calcuted, every step pced with precision. The wolf snarled, blood matting its fur where Elijah's arrow protruded, and leapt toward him with bared teeth.

  Alexander sidestepped with practiced fluidity, driving his spear upward into the creature's exposed chest. He felt the moment of resistance as the stone tip penetrated hide, then the sickening give as it pushed through into vital organs.

  Hot blood spilled over his hands as the wolf's momentum carried it forward. Its yellow eyes locked with his, filled with primal fury and confusion. Then something unexpected happened—Alexander felt a jolt of connection, a moment of recognition that this was a living entity experiencing its final moments.

  The wolf struggled briefly before colpsing, its breath coming in ragged gasps. Alexander maintained his grip on the spear, keeping the creature pinned as it weakened. Protocol dictated ensuring complete termination rather than allowing a wounded predator to escape.

  As the light faded from the wolf's eyes, Alexander's interface chimed softly, confirming the elimination and updating his quota progress. One down, nine to go.

  Meanwhile, the battle continued around him. Valeria had engaged another wolf with brutal efficiency, her spear finding its mark in the creature's throat. Elijah and Riva continued providing covering fire, forcing the remaining wolves to take defensive positions.

  Alexander pulled his spear free, blood dripping from its stone tip, and turned to assist Valeria. Together, they cornered the third wolf against a rock face. The fourth had already retreated into the forest, wounded but alive.

  "Surrounding," Alexander called out, signaling Elijah and Riva to maintain ranged positions covering potential escape routes.

  The cornered wolf snarled, its hackles raised as it faced the two armed humans. Unlike the first kill's sudden, chaotic movement, this one felt deliberate, almost ceremonial. Alexander met the creature's eyes as he approached, spear ready.

  "Together," he said to Valeria.

  They struck simultaneously, their spears piercing the wolf from different angles. The creature made a sound—not quite a howl, not quite a whimper—before slumping to the ground. Alexander's interface registered another elimination, bringing their count to two.

  "Status report," Alexander commanded, his voice steady despite the blood covering his hands and forearms.

  "One confirmed elimination," Valeria reported.

  "Two wounded escaping northeast," Riva added from her vantage point. "One appears seriously injured."

  "We should pursue," Valeria suggested. "They're weakened. Easy targets."

  Alexander hesitated, looking down at the two dead wolves. Something felt different from the simutions, from the countless tactical exercises he'd performed throughout his training. The weight of the spear in his hands, the smell of blood—it was more visceral, more real than he had anticipated.

  "Negative," he decided. "We've eliminated three predators counting Valeria's. That's sufficient for our first operation. We'll locate the wounded ones only if they pose a threat to our territory."

  If Valeria disagreed with his decision, she didn't show it. She merely nodded and began cleaning her spear on a patch of grass.

  "Elijah, Riva—rejoin us at the clearing," Alexander ordered. "Standard perimeter check before we process these eliminations."

  As the team regrouped, Alexander found himself mechanically going through the proper procedures—checking the surrounding area for other predators, documenting the kills in their shared database, salvaging useful materials from the carcasses. Yet behind his composed exterior, unexpected emotions churned.

  The wolves had been beautiful in their way, perfectly adapted to their environment. They had shown coordination, intelligence, even what appeared to be loyalty to their pack members. Eliminating them had been necessary for quota fulfillment, but it felt hollow—a waste rather than an achievement.

  "Are you alright?" Elijah asked quietly, approaching as Alexander knelt beside the alpha wolf.

  "Fine," Alexander replied automatically. "Just documenting physical characteristics for future reference."

  Elijah didn't push, but his expression suggested he understood more than Alexander was saying.

  The interface counted down in Alexander's peripheral vision: 160:47:22... 160:47:21...

  Three eliminations toward their collective quota of ten. Progress, but only the beginning.

  Many kilometers away, in a different section of the Whispering Woods, Lyra crouched beside a narrow game trail, putting the finishing touches on a cleverly designed trap. Her slender fingers worked with practiced precision, adjusting tension in a complex arrangement of vines and flexible branches.

  "You're sure this will work?" asked a skeptical young man with a dirty face and worn clothing.

  "It's basic physics," Lyra expined, not looking up from her work. "When a creature of sufficient weight steps here, the tension will release, and the snare will capture it. Suspended traps have a higher success rate than ground-based ones because the prey can't leverage their strength against solid ground."

  Two other pyers watched with varying degrees of interest—an older woman with sharp eyes and a teenage boy who seemed perpetually nervous. This makeshift team of Unaligned pyers had formed out of necessity after their Game entry, banding together despite their differences.

  "Seems like a lot of work," the young man—Darren—commented. "Wouldn't it be easier to just hunt other pyers? They count for more."

  Lyra finally looked up, her amber eyes intense. "Easier isn't always better. Besides, would you want to be hunted just because you're worth more points?"

  Darren fell silent at that.

  "Set four more of these along the eastern perimeter," Lyra instructed, standing and brushing dirt from her hands. "I've marked the most active game trails on your maps. Eden, can you check the pit trap we set yesterday?"

  The older woman nodded and moved off into the forest with practiced stealth. The nervous boy, Tomas, hovered uncertainly.

  "What about me?" he asked.

  "Come with me," Lyra said. "I'll show you how to set the snares. You need to learn this if you're going to survive."

  As they walked through the forest, Lyra pointed out subtle signs that most would miss—disturbed soil indicating burrowing creatures, bark scraped at specific heights showing territorial markings, particur pnts favored by certain herbivores.

  "It's not just about setting traps," she expined to Tomas. "It's about understanding patterns. Every creature in this forest follows predictable behaviors if you know what to look for."

  "Even pyers?" Tomas asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Lyra paused, considering his question. "Especially pyers," she finally answered. "They're actually more predictable in some ways. They follow paths of least resistance, gather near water sources, camp in defensible positions. If you understand human behavior, you can predict movement patterns with surprising accuracy."

  "Is that how you've survived so long on your own?"

  "Partly," Lyra acknowledged, kneeling beside another game trail to demonstrate the proper way to set a snare. "But mostly it's about staying aware and understanding systems. The Game has rules, patterns. Once you see them, you can work within them—or around them when necessary."

  They spent the next hour setting traps, with Lyra patiently correcting Tomas's technique until he could create a functional snare on his own. The boy's confidence grew visibly with each successful construction.

  When they returned to their meeting point, Eden was waiting with news.

  "The pit trap worked," she reported. "Two forest creatures. The interface cssified them as 'Stalking Thickets'—some kind of pnt-animal hybrid. They count as standard predators, so that's two credits total."

  Lyra nodded, making calcutions in her head. "Combined with yesterday's catches, that puts us at five credits total. We need five more to meet our collective quota."

  "The snares should help with that," Darren said, returning from his own trap-setting mission. "I've got all four positioned as you suggested."

  Lyra checked her interface, noting the countdown timer: 159:33:45. "We have time," she assured the group. "The traps will work while we sleep, which is more efficient than active hunting."

  As darkness began to fall, they made their way back to the small cave they'd cimed as a temporary shelter. It wasn't much—just a shallow depression in a hillside reinforced with branches and camoufged with local vegetation—but it provided protection and remained hidden from passing pyers.

  While the others prepared a simple meal from gathered resources, Lyra sat at the cave entrance, working on a small device constructed from salvaged materials. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency, connecting fibers and setting small triggers.

  "What's that?" Tomas asked, watching with curiosity.

  "An arm system," Lyra expined. "If anything rger than a small animal approaches within twenty meters, these vibration sensors will alert us."

  "You made that from forest materials?" Darren asked, impressed despite himself.

  Lyra shrugged. "I understand how things work together. It's just a matter of finding the right combinations."

  As night settled fully over the forest, Lyra took the first watch while the others slept. She sat just inside the cave entrance, her back against the cool stone, watching the stars through gaps in the canopy.

  Her thoughts turned to the quota system and what it revealed about the Game's true purpose. It wasn't just a challenge or a competition—it was a culling mechanism, designed to reduce numbers through forced conflict. The efficiency values assigned to different targets made that abundantly clear.

  Yet even within this brutal system, there were choices to be made. Her traps and indirect hunting methods might take more effort than direct combat, but they allowed her to fulfill requirements without becoming the predator the Game wanted her to be.

  In the quiet darkness, Lyra's mind worked on multiple problems simultaneously—how to improve their trap designs, how to better camoufge their shelter, how to teach her temporary allies skills that might keep them alive. She had no illusions about the temporary nature of their arrangement; sooner or ter, they would part ways or circumstances would separate them.

  But for now, they were surviving together, finding a way through the Game's demands without sacrificing their humanity. It wasn't much, but in the Whispering Woods, it was something to hold onto.

  Back at Alexander's camp, the team processed their day's hunt in silence. Three eliminations had been confirmed, with two wounded creatures that might or might not survive. Their interfaces showed a collective progress of three out of the required ten, with the timer steadily counting down.

  They had made a solid start, but the quota's weight remained. Tomorrow would bring more hunting, more kills, more eliminations tallied as progress.

  As darkness fell and the team prepared for night, Alexander took a moment to step away from camp, ostensibly to check their perimeter. Once alone, he finally allowed himself to examine his blood-stained hands in the dim moonlight.

  He had killed before—countless times in simutions, training exercises, virtual scenarios designed to prepare him for the Game. He had studied the techniques, perfected the movements, internalized the protocols. The technical aspects had gone exactly as pnned.

  What hadn't been in the simutions was that moment of connection, that fsh of recognition as the wolf's life ended by his hand. It wasn't quite guilt—Alexander understood the necessity of their actions. But it was something unexpected, a weight he hadn't been prepared to carry.

  He found a small stream and knelt beside it, methodically washing the dried blood from his hands and forearms. The cold water numbed his skin as he scrubbed, watching as crimson swirled away into darkness.

  "The first one is always the hardest."

  Alexander didn't need to look up to know Elijah had approached. His twin had always had a knack for finding him in moments of doubt.

  "It went according to pn," Alexander said, keeping his voice neutral.

  "The operation did," Elijah acknowledged. "But that's not what I meant."

  Alexander finished washing his hands before standing to face his brother. "It's a necessary function of the Game. Analyzing emotional responses to standard procedures is inefficient."

  Elijah studied him for a long moment. "You don't have to maintain the commander persona when it's just us, Alex. I saw your face when you made that first kill."

  For a moment, Alexander considered continuing the pretense, insisting that he was merely focused on operational efficiency. But this was Elijah—the one person who had always seen through his carefully constructed facades.

  "It was... different than the simutions," he finally admitted, his voice barely audible above the gentle gurgle of the stream. "More real. And I keep thinking about the quota system itself—how it's clearly designed to force conflict and elimination. There's something fundamentally wrong about it."

  Elijah nodded. "Just because we have to participate doesn't mean we have to embrace its logic."

  "Father would say that's sentimentality interfering with strategic thinking."

  "Father isn't here," Elijah reminded him gently. "And maybe questioning the system is exactly what we need to do."

  Alexander took a deep breath, feeling some of the tension ease from his shoulders. "We should get back to camp. Tomorrow will require another hunting operation to maintain our quota progress."

  As they walked back together, Alexander felt grateful for his brother's presence. Elijah had always been his counterbance—the empathy to his strategy, the heart to his mind. Together, they might find a way through the Game's demands without losing themselves in the process.

  The quota timer continued its inexorable countdown, a constant reminder of the system they couldn't escape. But within that system, they still had choices about how to proceed—choices that would define who they were becoming in this new reality.