It was difficult to pinpoint a direction as they ran through the trees. The forest echoed around them as explosion after explosion sounded out somewhere ahead, the noise bouncing through the trees and coming at them seemingly from everywhere all at once.

  Somewhere to the side of where they ran, birds screamed and scattered.

  Alex thought he could feel the vibration of the blasts in his chest. He must be imagining it, but it felt like a low tremor rolling through the forest and he could feel it come at him in waves as the sounds echoed around them and he held one hand to his stomach. He looked around at his team running around him, but no one else seemed to be reacting in a way that showed they could feel it too.

  Another boom followed, closer now and loud enough that Alex caught the direction from the original blast. Jay instantly changed his direction towards the noise and Alex and the rest of the team followed with a new burst of speed. Nobody was breathing heavily and Alex marvelled at how far they had all come in just a couple of short weeks.

  Branches snapped under boots and saplings and smaller trees that looked a little like a Fir dotted the forest floor, blocking their approach, but they all just drove through the thin cover.

  Jay took point automatically, his longer strides eating ground, axe bouncing against his back. Rae and Danny ran just behind him. Danny’s eyes flicking constantly between HUD overlays and the forest around him.

  Alex ran in the middle of the formation, ribs still aching from his fight the night before. He tried to ignore it but he felt each step. Missteps on the uneven forest floor caused pain to flare hot, but fortunately it dulled again quickly. Sweat soaked his collar. He tried to focus on his breathing and the explosions ahead of them and push the pain away. The forest narrowed into a tunnel of green and shadow sparkling with floating mana.

  Another boom. Alex saw the mana react this time. A soft ripple he could see wash through the forest. Then he felt it in his stomach as it reached him. Interesting.

  Danny skidded briefly to a halt, one hand braced against a tree. He turned his head back and forth, triangulating.

  Mel swore under her breath as she tried to vault a fallen log and her hand pushed through the rotten wood. Sarah slowed to help but she recovered quickly and caught up again.

  Alex’s HUD pulsed insistently and he pulled the overlay up.

  The minimap expanded automatically, the forest around him resolving into a series of serpentine elevation lines. Alex could see his team represented by a series of blue dots. On the top right of the minimap there were a number of green dots that he knew must be B Class. On the left side of the minimap, near the top, a flag symbol flared into existence.

  “There,” Alex said, breathless but steady. He pointed without slowing. “The flag’s close, somewhere over there. And B Class is that way,” he said pointing in the opposite direction, “they haven’t reached the flag yet.”

  Jay continued to move straight forward, splitting the difference between the flag and the other class. He ghosted around the massive tree trunks with an agility that defied his size and disappeared ahead.

  After a handful of breaths the forest started to thin and they slowed to a stop as the clearing ahead came into view through a curtain of ferns and saplings fighting for light around the edges of the open area. The tree trunks here bore fresh scars with bark and splintered wood scattered beneath them.

  The ground was different too. Even under the trees where they stopped, the forest floor had been churned into clumps of soil and broken vegetation. Deep gouges were carved through the ground like some farmer had decided this was a good place to start a new field to plough.

  Then Alex saw the boars. They were so packed together that he hadn’t even noticed at first. He didn’t know how he had missed the sound but once it made its way in he felt the urge to cover his ears against the grunting and squealing.

  There were dozens of them. At least 100 animals, most of which were packed into a tight ball near the back of the clearing in the direction of the flag on his HUD. And they were massive. Almost chest-high at their shoulders with low-slung backs, fuzzy ears and bristling hides caked with dark mud. They all had broad curved tusks protruding from their mouths, but the males were much longer, and shaped like scimitars, chipped and stained with age.

  Several of the boars were bleeding.

  Alex’s chest tightened when he saw B Class, surrounded near the center of the clearing. Smoke, thick and gray curled away from them and drifted over the bunched up animals at the back of the clearing, causing more squealing.

  Emily stood tall, blasting away with her energy bolts, whatever they were exactly Alex didn’t know. She was down on one knee, sword half-raised in one hand as the other spit out short bursts of white fire. Blood streaked her sleeve but Alex couldn’t tell if it was hers or not.

  They all saw what was coming next. A boar—scarred, thick-necked, heavy with muscle— stamped the ground and snorted, then, lowering its head it thundered forward towards Emily, hooves tearing up the loose ground as it moved.

  Mel called out, but they were too far away to do much. Alex raised his staff and wondered if his missiles had the range to hit the boar from where he was, but before he made his decision he saw Connor charge forward with his shield.

  He came in fast and low, reckless in a way that didn’t look planned out. Using his shoulder, his weight, and all the momentum he had built up, Connor drove his shield down onto the animal's shoulder and neck. The impact twisted the animal mid-charge, redirecting its momentum just enough that it missed Emily by inches.

  Connor grunted as the force spun him around. He hit the ground hard and didn’t move.

  Emily yelped at the noise behind her and scrambled back, nearly falling before she caught herself, eyes wide. To her credit though, she recovered quickly and jumped up to help Connor back to his feet.

  Alex could see Connor and Emily yelling commands, but couldn’t hear over the animal noises. The pair started backing away as Ethan and Brandon rained explosives down on the area between them and the sounder of boars, creating enough distraction for everyone to retreat from the clearing. Connor looked like he was barely stumbling forward and Emily had one hand under his arm, guiding him.

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  Within moments B Class disappeared into the trees on the far side of the clearing. A few of the closer boars followed, but soon came back out of the trees, choosing not to pursue. They all postured though, snorting and stamping, circling around the edge of the clearing.

  Alex exhaled slowly.

  “Well,” Mel murmured beside him, eyes tracking Connor as he was half-dragged out of the clearing by Emily, “I guess he’s not a complete asshole.”

  Jay snorted softly, though his eyes never left the action in the clearing.

  They stayed still as B Class vanished back into the forest and watched the boars move about the clearing.

  “They came in straight upwind. Dumb,” Danny said quietly, shaking his head.

  Jay nodded once. “That’ll do it. I would have made the same mistake though. Or, not thought of it I mean.”

  Danny glanced back at the team. “We need to circle the clearing or we’re going to be next. We’re off to the side, but they’ll still smell us once they settle down.” He pointed down the edge of the clearing, away from B Class and towards the flag.

  Alex nodded and no one raised an argument.

  They backed into the trees and moved as quietly as they could, looping through the denser forest, keeping as much brush and low cover between themselves and the clearing as possible.

  Jay took the lead again, but this time his pace was measured, thoughtful.

  Danny walked to his right, bow low but ready. He hadn’t shown any nervousness towards the boars and Alex realized that Danny was truly in his element out here. He remembered Danny telling him that he had grown up with a bow in his hand.

  Alex lagged towards the back of the group, eyes looking towards the clearing he couldn’t see anymore. He had caught a glimpse of the flag before they moved. It stood near the back of the clearing on a short pole driven into a stump. The flag was unnecessarily bright and obvious, fabric marked with the Challenge sigil. He glanced at his minimap again and watched as they closed in on the back of the clearing.

  They slowed down as they got into position and slowly walked forward to a point where they could see the glade, the flag and the boars clearly once more.

  Alex took a deep breath and relaxed his focus. It was becoming much easier to look at what he was starting to think of as his mana overlay. Just another layer of his HUD that only he seemed to have access to.

  He could see the mana float through the clearing like a layer of thick, glowing pollen riding unseen currents. It swirled around the sounder of boar and he could see it pooling around their chests. He expected that, if he had been looking, he would have seen them drive the mana into their legs and maybe even their tusks as they charged. There seemed to be a consistency with how the wildlife used their inherent mana. Each animal was a dense, circulating system that reinforced hide, sharpened reflexes, and fed their bursts of aggression.

  They weren’t just animals. They were mana engines.

  As Alex considered this Mel spoke. “That's a lot of bacon.”

  Jay laughed but Rae just rolled her eyes.

  “Rae,” Alex murmured, not paying attention to the banter and not taking his eyes off the clearing. “Earlier. With those bugs. You said you thought they couldn’t see you.”

  Rae shifted beside him, fingers brushing the charm at her throat. “Not see, exactly. The charm I got from the Wylde Bunch is supposed to hide my ‘energy’ from things, whatever that means exactly. The Millipedes didn’t really have eyes did they? I didn’t see any, anyway. But they moved right past me like I wasn’t there.

  Alex nodded slowly. “I think I understand. Everything seems to have a signature…” He turned and looked at Rae. He hadn’t noticed before because when he looked at Rae, he could see her just fine. What he couldn’t see though, was the faint aura that everyone seemed to have.

  “It’s blocking your energy. I can’t see anything around you.”

  Mel looked confused. “You can see our energy?”

  Alex nodded. “Yes. Like an aura I suppose.”

  Mel clapped her hands quietly, smiling. “OMG! What colour is my aura? I’ve taken tests, but they’re always different.”

  Rae rolled her eyes again and started to talk, “Mel, auras aren’t…” she stopped suddenly as the conversation really sunk in though.

  Alex smiled at Mel but turned back to Rae, “Your charm probably won’t fool eyesight though since we can all see you just fine. But between that, and your cloak, and maybe some help from us, can you sneak in there and grab the flag?”

  He looked down at the staff in his hands.

  Tools.

  They all had tools now. And, for the first time, he started to think about how he could stack them.

  Alex pulled up the staff’s interface, looking for the illusion module, a nanofog deployment system. Microdrones. He tried to remember how Suresh had explained it to him. He was going to need an image in his memory to feed into the system.

  He looked out at the clearing through his HUD overlay and, finding the biggest boar, snapped a picture. The illusion system outlined the boar and cropped the rest. A 3D wireframe snapped into place over the image.

  Alex smiled even as his pulse hammered in his chest. This would either work or was going to go very wrong.

  “Mel, you can play us a song to help right?” She nodded in response.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Then let’s try this. Jay, Sarah and Danny, once Mel starts, I want you to circle around and create a distraction for anything that still looks like trouble.” The trio nodded, serious looks on their faces.

  Alex stepped forward and planted the staff, bracing it against the ground, and activated the module.

  The air shimmered and wavered around the staff as a thin gray mist poured out, spreading low and fast across the clearing like a strange oil spill. Within moments, the microdrones rearranged themselves with mechanical precision on the far side of the clearing, near where B class had exited.

  A new boar emerged. Massive. Fully formed and complete with bristles and the large scar that cut across the original boar's side. The image didn’t move. Alex wondered if he could animate them but that would be a question for later. It was enough just to have it standing there.

  The sounder reacted instantly.

  Heads snapped around. Bristly hackles rising. Low, thunderous grunts rolled through the clearing as the boars began to circle towards the new intruder.

  One of the boars finally charged. Alex marvelled at their aggression. He couldn’t imagine feral pigs reacting like this back home, but these animals had zero hesitation about protecting what was theirs.

  The boar's charge tore straight through the illusion in a spray of fog, but instead of dispersing, the image snapped back into shape a heartbeat later.

  The boars went crazy, squealing and stomping around the image.

  Danny stared in awe, mouth open. “Wow, so cool.”

  Jay let out a low, impressed whistle.

  Mel grinned as she stepped up beside Alex. “Okay. My turn.”

  ***

  The core design constraint for all HEX equipment is environmental and class compatibility.

  The TV show is the whole reason for what we do here and our job is to further perpetrate that illusion while still providing our adventurers with cutting edge weaponry and defensive equipment that reinforce their class choices.

  And so, current-gen HEX systems encapsulate all active components within monolithic structures that present no technically functional cues. From an engineering perspective, the device is still a layered system: power source, modulation lattice, control logic, etc. But from an external perspective, you get role playing chic with magical influence.

  This approach also simplifies human factors. Operators are not required to interact with settings or different modes while under stress. Control inputs are mapped to physical behaviors already reinforced by local culture—grip, posture, breath control, rhythmic motion. Any necessary overrides or controls are then linked to menus in the ANIP, controllable through the HUD.

  Instruments such as Mercer’s staff, Jay’s axe or Mel’s lute are wonderful examples of how far we’ve come over the past few years.

  HEX does not design “magical” devices. We design powerful modern weapons and defence tools that LOOK like magical devices.

  Personal Lab Notes

  Dr. Aarav Suresh, Head of HEX Division

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