"Chief." A middle-aged man stepped closer, gesturing toward Aris. "That boy... he seems to be—"
The chief raised a weathered hand, cutting him off. "It doesn't matter. If he hasn't learned his place, I'll have him tossed out to rot with the goblins if he acts up."
The men around him nodded, their casual cruelty punctuated by the wet thwack of boots through goblin remains.
"Chief." The man's voice dropped as he turned toward the treeline. "What do the orcs want?"
The chief's gaze drifted toward the two silhouettes still motionless at the forest's edge. "I think," he whispered, "they might be angry. And this..." He nodded toward the scattered goblin dead. "...is a warning."
Before the man could ask why, Aris began to move.
The men stilled. Hands tightened on spear-shafts. They expected a scream, a desperate lunge, something they could intercept and parade before the chief. But Aris approached with a terrifying, measured calm. His strides were steady. His face, a smooth ceramic mask. Watching him, the men could only lament the missed opportunity.
Aris's eyes swept across the men's faces, cross-referencing each one against the fresh trauma etched into Rill's memories. That one had held Rill's arms. That one had kicked his ribs. With every familiar face, the wounds beneath his vest flared with phantom heat. But Aris didn't flinch. He was no longer Rill. He was a man who could hold a grudge for twenty years, and deliver the reckoning when the time came.
He stopped two meters from the chief, his gaze sweeping over the men who flanked him. They were broader, stronger, their bodies built by relentless labor in the fields behind the village, sturdy, but unrefined. No grace for killing.
He stepped closer, just enough to enter the chief's personal orbit, enough for the biochip's scan to lock on.
[Name: Village Chief | Strength: 3.1 | Agility: 2.7 | Vitality: 2.4]
"Hm. You're awake," the chief said, his voice calm as an anchor. To the men around him, he looked like a pillar of unshakable leadership—a man who had kept peace in the village for fifty years. But the biochip caught what human eyes missed: the microscopic tightening of his jaw, the infinitesimal shift of weight toward his heels. He was a predator bracing for a lunge, in case Aris was foolish enough to try.
With a slow, deliberate motion that cost him every ounce of willpower, Aris lowered his head and bowed.
A ripple of confused murmurs broke the silence among the gathered men. Even the chief's eyes narrowed to suspicious slits, searching for the trick in the boy's submission.
"Village Chief," Aris said, his voice hollow, as though echoing up from a deep well. "I ask for your forgiveness. My selfishness... my defiance... nearly brought ruin to us all. I see my faults clearly now."
Inside, his mind recoiled from the lie, but he crushed the impulse. His rage hadn't vanished—it had simply changed states. His eyes stayed fixed on the glowing numbers hovering in his vision. 3.1. 2.7. 2.4. How did a man this old get such physical metrics? It was an insult to every younger man standing around him.
He realized then that his earlier rage had been useless like a wooden stick swung at a steel blade. He would bury it for now. Play the role of the broken man. He would not strike until he understood the source of the chief's strength. Know your enemy, the ancient logic whispered, and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
The chief's scrutiny lingered. His brows knitted together in a flicker of genuine confusion. For a man whose wife had chosen suicide over dishonor, whose sister had been fed to the orcs, this sudden, placid acceptance felt like a glitch in the natural order.
Either the boy has finally snapped, the chief mused, or he is a master of deception.
He dismissed the latter. An inexperienced youth couldn't maintain such a seamless charade under this much pressure. If he'd possessed that kind of willpower from the start, he would have shown it during the first beating.
"Hm. It's good that you finally understand," the chief said, his hand rising to stroke his graying beard.
Aris let his shoulders slump in a calculated release of tension, as though invisible chains had finally been cut. A small, weary smile touched his lips: not wide enough to seem suspicious, not eager enough to feel like groveling. Just the smile of a man who had given up.
Inside, however, the biochip was screaming with activity.
[Micro-expression Scan | Target: "Chief"]
[Brow Tension: +12% | Eye Focus: Narrowed (0.3s processing delay) | Jaw Micro-clench: Suppressed]
[Inference: Suspicion: 61% | Uncertainty: 24% | Guarded Approval: 15%]
[Risk Assessment: Immediate Threat: Low | Long-term Threat: High]
Aris absorbed the scrolling data with cold detachment. Sixty-one percent suspicion. Even playing the broken victim isn't enough to blind this old wolf. The chief was too seasoned, his instincts honed by decades of trading lives for peace.
He filed the analysis into a high-priority folder and shifted slightly to his left—moving with the sluggishness of exhaustion, but the repositioning was precise. It brought more of the surrounding men into the biochip's scanning zone.
He held still as the panel flickered over the men around him.
[Target: Unknown | Strength: 1.9 | Agility: 1.8 | Vitality: 1.4]
[Target: Unknown | Strength: 1.7 | Agility: 1.6 | Vitality: 1.5]
Stronger than me. Every single one. He swept his gaze across their faces, reading the room with a clarity that needed no biochip. Confusion on the simple ones. A jagged, haunted empathy on those who had suffered like Rill. Curling disgust on the rest. He met their eyes with a hollowed-out stare. I don't need respect from corpses.
The thought had barely formed when the air in the square seemed to thicken. Outside the gate, the men hauling slick yellow goblin carcasses froze. Their heads turned in unison toward the treeline. Aris and everyone else followed their gaze.
The two orcs were no longer spectating.
They were approaching the village. The same men who had been laughing while they gutted goblins moments ago were now trembling, seized by a primal, bone-deep terror. The biochip confirmed it—their expressions flagged one after another: Terrified.
The chief's eyes narrowed to hard, calculating flints. "Chief... they're coming." The middle-aged man beside him spoke in a cracked whisper. "What do we do?"
"I'll handle it." The chief's tone was devoid of warmth, but the men around him relaxed the tiniest fraction. "Let's see what this theater is about."
Aris watched the chief and the other man start toward the gate, their backs retreating as they moved to intercept the two orcs. His gaze locked on the silhouettes beyond, growing larger, more defined, more terrifying with every stride. Even at a distance, the height disparity was obscene. The orcs loomed a full head and shoulders above the tallest humans he had ever seen, their frames broad enough to blot out the sun.
This is it. The only chance for a scan, if I can stand before them.
He took a half-step forward, the foolish impulse seizing him before logic could intervene. Then he stopped cold.
How stupid of me. What if they're erratic? What if they strike before the scan even begins? Is the data worth a death sentence? He forced his feet to root themselves. Thankfully, I held myself. But I need to plan how to acquire their stats. Soon.
With that, he eased his foot back to the ground and resumed his mask of the broken boy.
From his vantage point, he watched the chief and the middle-aged man stand before the two orcs. Their conversation was lost to the wind and distance. Then the chief turned and pointed toward the gate. A ripple of unease passed through the men, and Aris felt a creeping sensation coil in his gut. Surely not...
The middle-aged man walked back toward the gate, his face still sheened with the sweat of dread from standing before the orcs, but now there was something else in his expression. Calculation. As he reached the gate, the men followed his gaze. Their eyes settled on Aris with a mixture of suspicion and relief, the look of men who had found a lightning rod to divert the coming storm.
"Come." His voice was thin with lingering panic. "The chief needs you. Now."
The words struck Aris like a physical blow, stalling the air in his lungs. A cold wave of dread washed through him. He didn't need the biochip to tell him that flight was a statistical impossibility. The gazes of the surrounding men pinned him to the spot like iron spears through the chest—thick, calloused men waiting for him to bolt, hungry for an excuse to break him again and earn favor with the chief.
I should have stayed in my house. The thought flickered through his mind, desperate and fleeting. He corrected it just as quickly. No. Even there, they would have found me. Walls are no protection against a consensus of cowards.
He forced his fists to unclench, smoothing the tremors from his fingers through sheer willpower. Panic surged, but he smothered it beneath layers of cold calculation, his mind churning for a way out even as his feet moved—one leaden step, then another. With every stride, the noose around his chest cinched tighter. The air in his lungs thinned as the giants loomed closer.