They had been tracking the faint hoofprints through the frost of the Jagged Tooth pass for two hours. Tiny was practically vibrating with impatience, using a heavy iron wrench as a walking stick and muttering violently about the caloric inefficiency of walking.
"If we don't find something with meat on its bones in the next ten minutes, I'm eating your boots, kid," Tiny hissed, his goggles fogging up in the cold air.
"Quiet," Wanhan breathed, dropping to a knee.
Through a break in the gray, frost-choked ash trees, a massive red buck was tearing at a patch of exposed lichen. It was a beautiful, thick-muscled beast. To Wanhan, it looked like thirty pounds of salvation.
Tiny immediately unslung the massive, tri-barreled scatter-crossbow from his back. The weapon was nearly as big as he was, loaded with jagged iron bolts.
"I'll blow its lungs out," Tiny whispered, his thumb resting on a terrifyingly complex firing mechanism.
"No," Wanhan said, grabbing the dwarf's leather shoulder strap. "That cannon of yours will wake up everything in a three-mile radius. Or you'll miss and turn the meat to paste. Let me."
Tiny scowled but slowly lowered the crossbow. "Fine. But if it runs, the debt goes up to eleven gold."
Wanhan didn't argue. He slowly stood up, letting his eyes lock onto the buck. His hand dropped to his left hip, his fingers wrapping around the thick, leather-wrapped grip of Fenrir.
For five years, his body had been compensating for a missing limb, throwing his balance to the left, making him clumsy in the woods. But as he gripped the heavy iron pommel of his new blade, something clicked. The weight anchored him. It felt less like a sword and more like an extension of his own missing gravity.
He breathed in the freezing air, and stepped forward.
[Skill Activated: Diner Dash - Level 20]
His footwork changed instantly. The heavy, desperate trudging of a starving boy vanished. He was back in the Boar's Trough on a Friday night, weaving through a sea of drunken mercenaries with a tray full of ale. He didn't lift his boots; he glided, shifting his weight perfectly to the balls of his feet. His empty right sleeve acted as a rudder, keeping his torso dead still while his legs ate up the distance.
Thirty paces. Twenty.
The buck didn't even twitch its ears. It had no idea death was gliding over the dry twigs behind it.
Wanhan drew Fenrir an inch from its scabbard. The steel whispered against the oiled leather. He prepared to unleash a fraction of the Tree Cutter—just enough to cleanly sever the beast's neck. He coiled his muscles, his heart hammering against his ribs.
THWIP.
The sound was so soft it was almost a trick of the wind.
Before Wanhan could even clear his blade, the buck’s head snapped backward with a sickening crunch. A black-fletched arrow was buried to the feathers directly through the animal's right eye. The massive beast crumpled into the snow without a single cry, dead before its knees hit the dirt.
Wanhan froze, his thumb locked on Fenrir’s crossguard.
A shadow detached itself from the high branches of the ash tree directly above the carcass. The figure landed with a soft, feline grace, her boots making absolutely no sound against the frost.
She was tall, painfully slender, and her pointed ears instantly marked her as an Elf. She wore a cloak of mottled green and brown, blending perfectly into the winter rot. But it was her face that made Wanhan tighten his grip on his sword.
A strip of dark, heavily blood-stained canvas was wrapped tightly around her eyes, covering them completely. She held a massive recurve bow made of pale, bone-white wood. Another arrow was already nocked, the string pulled taut against her cheek.
She wasn't pointing it at the dead deer. She was pointing it dead at Wanhan's chest.
"You step heavy on the left, human," the elf said. Her voice was sharp and cold, like crushed glass underfoot. "And you smell like stale ale and tavern grease. Take one more step toward my kill, and I will pin your heart to that oak behind you."
"Your kill?" Tiny roared, bursting out of the underbrush, completely abandoning stealth. He leveled his scatter-crossbow directly at the elf's kneecaps. "We tracked that beast for two miles, you blind, tree-hugging thief! I'll turn your shins into sawdust!"
The elf didn't flinch at the dwarf's booming voice. Her bowstring remained perfectly steady, aimed at Wanhan's heart, though she couldn't possibly see him.
"I smell iron, coal dust, and a distinct lack of height," she said, her tone dripping with disgust. "A dwarven smith. Far from your mountains, dirt-grubber. Leave. The forest belongs to the Mother, and I suffer no poachers."
Wanhan looked down at the dead buck. His stomach let out another violent, painfully loud growl that echoed in the quiet clearing.
The elf's head tilted slightly at the pathetic sound.
"Look," Wanhan said, slowly taking his hand off Fenrir and raising his empty left palm in a gesture of surrender. "We are starving. You can't possibly eat that whole thing before it rots, and it's freezing out here."
"I am Mata," she said coldly, slowly lowering the bow, though she kept the black-fletched arrow nocked. "And I do not share with the race that butchers the Mother's woods."
An hour later, the lethal standoff had devolved into an absolute culinary tragedy.
Hunger, as it turned out, was a far stronger motivator than pride. Mata had agreed to share the kill, but only on the condition that she prepared it.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Wanhan sat on a frozen log, shivering, watching the blind elf work. She had butchered the buck with terrifying, fluid precision, her hunting knife sliding through joints and tendons as if she had eyes in her fingertips. But the moment she tried to cook it, her survival skills vanished.
She had built a choking, sputtering fire out of green wood. It blasted thick, gray smoke directly into her own face. She sat cross-legged, holding a massive, unseasoned chunk of flank steak over the flames on a sharpened stick.
The meat was charring to black ash on the outside, while thick drops of cold red blood constantly dripped from the raw center, hissing violently against the wet wood.
Sitting on a stump ten feet away, Tiny was twitching. The dwarf’s hands gripped his knees so tightly his knuckles were white. His artisan soul could not handle the sheer incompetence on display.
"I can't take it anymore," Tiny groaned, his voice a strained wheeze. "She's murdering that deer a second time. Look at the heat distribution! It's a catastrophe!"
Tiny marched over, completely ignoring the bone-white bow resting near Mata’s boots. He kicked the sputtering green wood out of the fire, threw on a handful of dry pine needles from his own massive pack, and pulled out a heavy iron skillet.
"Give me that, you culinary disaster," Tiny barked, snatching the stick straight out of the elf's hand.
Mata bristled instantly. Her hand dropped to her hunting knife, her jaw tightening. "Touch my blade, dirt-grubber, and I will take your fingers."
"I'm saving your stomach, you pointy-eared savage," Tiny shot back, already slicing the ruined chunk of meat into manageable strips. "You're searing it without a rendering layer of fat. It's a tragedy! Have you ever even heard of wild garlic?"
Mata’s grip on her knife didn't loosen, but the sudden, violent sizzle of animal fat hitting hot iron made her pause. Tiny tossed a handful of crushed herbs into the skillet. The incredible, heavy scent of searing venison and wild garlic exploded into the freezing air.
Wanhan's mouth watered so hard it physically ached. He leaned closer to the fire, holding his lone hand out to the growing warmth.
Within minutes, Tiny tossed a steaming piece of perfectly cooked meat onto a flat piece of bark and shoved it toward Mata. She hesitated, her nose twitching, before taking a bite. Her shoulders instantly relaxed.
The three of them sat around the crackling fire, tearing into the hot venison in silence. The food broke the ice, thawing the bitter hostility of the winter woods.
"Why is a dwarven smith sleeping in a shallow cave?" Mata asked, chewing a piece of meat. "Your people prefer the deep mountains. The stone halls."
"The guild threw me out," Tiny grunted, wiping a smear of grease from his beard. "Said I was too short to reach the standard anvils. Called me half-a-dwarf. I told them their engineering was stagnant, and they told me to walk. So, I'm going to prove them wrong. I’m going to be the most renowned blacksmith in this miserable world, even if I have to scam every backwater bumpkin I find to fund my forge."
Wanhan paused mid-chew, glaring at the dwarf. "Wait. Did you scam me?"
Tiny ignored him, pointing a greasy finger at Mata. "What about you? What's a blind elf doing shooting deer in the outer woods? Shouldn't you be hugging a tree somewhere?"
Mata’s expression turned to stone. She touched the blood-stained canvas wrapped around her eyes.
"Men with iron axes came to the Mother Tree. Yggdrasil," her voice dropped to a lethal whisper, cold enough to freeze the fat in the pan. "They cut a sacred branch from its trunk. My father tried to stop them."
She went dead silent for a long moment.
"They left him in pieces in the snow," she continued. "I am hunting the illegal lumberers who did it. I will track every man who carries the scent of that wood, and I will leave their bones in the dirt."
Wanhan felt a sudden, icy fist close around his heart.
The venison turned to ash in his mouth. His father had been a lumberer. His father had died in the snow, surrounded by his crew, their axes slick with blood. Had they been cutting normal pine? Or had they taken a contract that brought down the wrath of the woods?
Wanhan swallowed hard, forcing his face to remain completely neutral. He kept his mouth shut, staring deep into the flames. If this blind archer found out his father swung an axe for a living, she might put one of those black-fletched arrows through his neck while he slept.
"Well," Wanhan finally said, his voice a little tight. He patted the heavy iron hilt of Fenrir at his side. "I'm going to be a Knight. If we don't kill each other first, maybe we can travel the rest of the way to the capital together."
Tiny snorted. Mata didn't answer, turning her blindfolded face back toward the dark forest. But as the fire cracked and popped, the three outcasts remained seated together, bound by a shared meal, heavy debts, and bloody secrets.
The fire had long burned out by the time the sun bled over the horizon, painting the frost-choked pines in pale, freezing light.
Wanhan woke with a stiff neck, the frozen ground having leeched every ounce of heat from his bones overnight. His right shoulder throbbed—a phantom ache that always flared up when the cold settled in. He sat up, his breath pluming in the icy air, and looked at his strange new companions.
Tiny was dead asleep, snoring like a defective bellows while tangled in a heavy wool blanket. Mata was already awake. In fact, Wanhan wasn't sure she had slept at all. The blind elf was perched perfectly still on a high branch of a dead oak, her bone-white bow resting across her knees, her face turned toward the wind.
"Wake the dirt-grubber," Mata said, not moving her head. "A storm is pushing in from the north. We need to clear the pass before the snow blinds the trail."
Wanhan kicked Tiny’s boots. The dwarf woke up swearing violently in three different languages, complaining about the terrible thermal insulation of cheap wool.
Within the hour, the three of them were marching.
It was a miserable, grinding trek. But as they walked, Wanhan realized the true value of the ten-gold debt strapped to his hip. He didn't just walk; he practiced. With every step through the deep snow, he kept his hand wrapped loosely around Fenrir’s hilt.
He tested the draw. He analyzed the shift in his center of gravity. When he pulled the heavy blade free, the massive iron pommel acted exactly as Tiny had promised—a brutal counterweight. Wanhan would slide his left foot forward, dropping his hips into the Diner Dash stance, and let the sheer momentum of the heavy blade carry his swing. He didn't have to fight the sword; he just had to guide its fall.
He slashed at low-hanging branches as they walked.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
"Stop hacking at the foliage, boy, you're ruining the edge," Tiny grumbled from behind, his short legs working double-time just to keep up. "That's high-carbon steel, not a weed-whacker."
"Let him practice," Mata said from the front of the line, effortlessly gliding over snowdrifts that Wanhan and Tiny were sinking into. "He steps like a wounded deer. If he does not learn the weight of his iron, the men in the arena will butcher him."
Wanhan ignored them both and swung again. The memory of the silverback bear, the blood on the snow, and Mata's chilling vow about hunting lumberers all swirled in his head. If she ever found out his father swung an axe in the deep woods...
He gripped Fenrir tighter. He needed to get strong. Fast.
By midday, the endless sea of pine and ash finally broke. They crested a steep, rocky ridge, and the icy wind hit them full in the face.
Wanhan stopped dead, the breath catching in his throat.
Spread out in the massive valley below was the Capital. It was a sprawling behemoth of black stone, iron, and smoking chimneys. A massive, fortified wall ringed the city, thick enough to run three wagons across. Even from a mile away, Wanhan could hear the low, thrumming roar of thousands of people, the clanging of anvils, and the tolling of heavy bronze bells.
In the center of the city stood the colossal structure of the Arena. Massive red and gold banners snapped in the wind, depicting twin crossed swords.
"Look at that," Tiny breathed, pulling his goggles down over his eyes to cut the glare of the snow. "A hundred thousand people. All of them carrying coin purses. It's beautiful."
Mata’s nose crinkled in absolute disgust. "It smells of rot, piss, and burning coal. A monument to human greed."
Wanhan didn't care about the coin or the smoke. He looked at the Arena, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Five years of carrying trays. Five years of swinging a bloody stick in a dark alley. Five years of being a joke.
He took a deep breath of the freezing air and stepped forward down the ridge.
[System Notification: Area Discovered - The Iron Capital]
[Quest Updated: The Knight's Tourney]
[Objective: Survive the Registration.]
"Come on," Wanhan said, a hard, reckless smile touching his lips. "Let's go enter a tournament."
Writing Update: I’ll be dropping chapters every hour today until we hit Chapter 10 (maybe even 20!), so stay tuned for the next update in 60 minutes. If you’re enjoying the gritty technical combat and the 'One-Hand' struggle, please consider leaving a rating or a comment. It helps the algorithm more than you know!