Something came around the corner.
It had been a coyote once. Will could see the origin in the shape of the skull, the set of the shoulders. But a hundred thousand years of mana exposure had warped it. It stood shoulder-high to his chest. Its pale gold eyes moved with a calculation animal eyes weren't supposed to contain.
It wasn't hunting on instinct.
It was thinking.
That made Will slow down. He'd killed plenty in the tutorial—faster things, bigger things, things that hit harder than anything had a right to. But they'd all moved on instinct. Hunger or territory or fear. This thing was weighing him.
It had heard him talking and come to investigate.
"Don't run," Khan said through the link. "It reads flight as weakness."
"I know." Will already had the folding knife open. A small blade for something this size, but he'd worked with worse. His bow was across his back and empty, which was annoying—at range, this would have been straightforward. Up close, it was more interesting. "It's smarter than the tutorial mobs."
"Yes. Everything out here will be. The tutorial was a nursery." Khan's voice had shifted into something flatter and more precise. "Watch the shoulders. When they drop, it commits. That is your moment."
"You want me to hunt it. In a street. With a folding knife."
"I want you to stop thinking about what you don't have and start using what you do." A pause. "You have fought. I have seen it in your memories. But you fought reactively—waiting for the attack, responding, surviving. That is good. That kept you alive in the tutorial. Out here, it will eventually get you killed."
The creature circled left. Will turned with it, keeping his weight low, giving it nothing easy.
"A hunter does not wait to be attacked," Khan continued. "A hunter decides the animal is already dead and completes the formality. There is a difference in the body when you decide that. The creature will feel the difference."
Will looked at the gold eyes.
Decided.
He moved left as it lunged—not back, left—the knife coming up in a thrust, not a slash. The smell of 100,000-year-old rot and ozone washed over him as the beast's jaws snapped inches from his face. He drove the blade toward the throat, his hand finding the angle without being told. A jarring impact shot up his wrist as the steel scraped violently against hardened cartilage.
Then came the give. The sheer, dead weight of the Level 1 beast slammed into his shoulder, tearing a harsh grunt from his lungs and dragging him down slightly before its own momentum carried it past him. Its legs scrabbled briefly on the moss-covered asphalt before going dead still.
He straightened. Checked himself—no damage. He rolled his shoulder where the massive thing had clipped him going past. Bruised, maybe. Fine.
"The angle was correct," Khan said.
"I've done throats before. Different shape on this one." Will crouched next to it, already thinking about what was usable. The teeth were dense, the claws longer than a normal coyote's, the hide thick. Tutorial instinct taking over—you kill it, you take what it offers, you move. "The intelligence is new, though. It actually thought about me."
"Everything out here has had a hundred thousand years to think. Respect that without fearing it."
"Wasn't afraid. Just noting it."
"Good."
Then the notifications came.
[FIRST KILL ON THE SURFACE]
[Target: Evolved Coyote (Mana-Touched)]
[Threat Level: Common]
[EXP GAINED: +120]
[LEVEL UP: 1 → 2]
[STRENGTH: 11/20 (+1)]
[DEXTERITY: 12/20 (+2)]
[INTELLIGENCE: 15/20]
[LUCK: 30/20 <-- ERROR]
[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED:]
[PREDATOR'S INSTINCT (Passive - Rank F): Heightened threat awareness in combat. Reaction time slightly increased against telegraphed attacks.]
Will stared at the screen for a moment.
"Two points in Dex from one kill. And it didn't give me free points to spend."
"You moved well. The system rewarded the movement," Khan stated matter-of-factly. "It does not hand out potential to be hoarded. It forces your body to adapt to the violence you actually commit."
"The skill is useful. Rank F isn't exactly impressive, but it's a foundation."
"Everything starts at F."
"Even you?"
"Everything," Khan repeated, with finality.
Will worked quickly—teeth, claws, a strip of hide. Tutorial instinct. Khan offered periodic commentary through the network, mostly technical, once a comparison to a hunting trip in 1203 that Will found both vivid and unhelpful.
He stood up with two long teeth wrapped in hide hanging from his belt, feeling slightly more adequate.
They moved toward the hills.
The walking helped. Movement helped. It gave his hands something to do and left only part of his brain free to process the fact that he was home, and home was gone, and his mother was somewhere under a hundred thousand years of healed earth.
Khan clocked the shift in his silence. Khan clocked everything.
"Land does not mourn its rulers," he said, without preamble. "Only its people do. You are looking at this city like it owes you something. It does not. It is land. It became something. It will become something else. That is the nature of territory."
"That's very comforting. Thank you."
"It is not meant to comfort you. It is meant to correct you. There is a difference."
Will filed it.
The hills rose ahead of them, wild and enormous. Halfway up the nearest slope, houses were buried under vine and root, chimneys standing alone where their buildings had surrendered around them.
To the north—smoke. Thin and grey, rising straight in the still morning air. Three, maybe four miles.
Something that made fire.
Will stopped.
"That smoke."
"Yes."
"Something intelligent enough to make a controlled fire."
"Or something magical enough not to need intelligence for it. Either way, it is the most important thing within your current range of observation. Which means—"
"It's where we're going."
"You are learning."
They walked. After a minute, Will asked the question he'd been assembling since he woke up. Quietly, the way you ask things you actually want answered.
"Why me? Seriously. Out of everyone with your blood—why did that thing in the tutorial pick me?"
Khan was quiet for three full steps. Will counted them.
"The Watcher of Enoch," Khan corrected, the ancient title carrying an impossible weight through the mental link. "And I did not choose you, boy. I chose the sacrifice. You simply happened to be attached to it."
Will walked in silence for a moment.
"That's either the most insulting thing anyone's ever said to me or the nicest."
"Yes," said Genghis Khan.
The hills rose ahead. The smoke climbed into the pale blue sky. Will's new skill sat quietly in the back of his awareness, the coyote teeth knocked softly against his hip with every step, and momentum built in his chest.
Then the scream cut through it.
A woman's voice. Distant—half a mile, maybe less, somewhere in the green tangle of the hills ahead. High and sharp, and then cut off in a way that was worse than if it had continued.
Will stopped walking.
Khan said nothing.
Will looked at the hills. Looked at the smoke, further north. Two directions. One choice.
He was already moving toward the scream before he knew it.