Samantha quietly maneuvered through the branches before finding a sturdy enough one to sit on, placing the hare in her lap. She might wait anywhere from 1-3 hours before the boars fell asleep, so she figured she should at least be somewhat comfortable. Comfortable did not mean idle, however. She was still missing a few points of qi from experimenting with her new abilities and wanted to be in the best shape possible before taking on this challenge. If she were actively meditating, the regeneration of her qi would effectively be doubled from the 0.5 points/hour that were replenished naturally. So, she had her bond keep an eye on the movements of the beasts up ahead as she cultivated.

In a blink, Samantha’s qi pool was full and true night had fallen. The boars settled into their sleeping formation at around the 2-hour mark, but she took an extra hour to make sure she had max qi and was in the best condition possible to pull this gambit off. They were in a standard protective triangle from what she could tell, the three females making up the edges of the triangle with the young in the center of them. The male was patrolling the area for predators and would return every couple of minutes to check on how the group was doing. He never went far though, so any unusual sound too loud could call him back in moments. Samantha was fairly sure that she could get 3 clean kills in a row, but she had no illusions that she would manage it quietly enough to avoid the alpha’s attention. At a minimum, the piglets would squeal and flee once she struck at the mothers. In other words, Samantha would have to strike, hide, and return to battle the male when she regained her qi.

Samantha watched him turn on his latest patrol loop and began advancing from her hiding spot. She was astounded again by how effective and useful her Prey’s Perception was. In all the months since she’d unlocked the ability, she still hadn’t fully gotten used to the huge differences it made. Where her mortal eyes would have been just as blind as the boars in this scenario, she could now see almost as clearly as if it were day. The colors of everything were muted to near grayscale, but her vision was not impeded at all by the surrounding blackness.

“You’re welcome,” her bond said smugly in response to her thoughts.

“It’s the least you could do,” Samantha retorted playfully, “since you’re probably no good in an actual fight.”

“Can fight!” he said defiantly. “You’ll see.”

Samantha smiled at the small banter, now close enough to the sleeping prey to fully appreciate the size of them and the glade they slept in. Even laying down, they nearly reached Samantha’s shoulders. She looked around and double checked for other dangers, and sent her bond in the direction of the alpha to keep watch after finding none. As he hopped silently away, she noticed the unusual amount of fallen trees in the area. Narrowing her eyes, she realized that the glade was completely artificial. The boars had cut through or pushed over every tree in the immediate area, and seeing the tusk marks in the broken wood made her look a bit more nervously at the two-feet-long teeth.

Iron Boars got their namesake from their impressive tusks. They loved to eat metals and other minerals, and those consumed materials were reflected in the makeup of their teeth. She knew that they were prized as an alternative to metal, as they could be forged like any other metal and were less prone to breaking, but she didn’t know that they were so effective even before processing. Some of the felled trees were several feet thick, and even a woodsman would need to take considerable time cutting them down with a proper axe!

Shaking her head, she pushed the doubts and fears from her mind. Time was short, and she had to act now or retreat until the next patrol loop began. She moved quietly to the center near the piglets and marked her targets mentally. The 6-foot spear wasn’t long enough to strike a killing blow on the boars without movement from her starting point, so she needed maximum efficiency in her attack paths to take advantage of every second of her active skill time. Deciding which to slay first was tough, since she didn’t dare risk using Inspect and possibly notifying one of them of her presence on failure, so she had to guess at which was the most dangerous to her. Deciding to strike purely based on size, she lined herself up, invested 3 qi/second into Swift to get +4 Agility for 3 seconds, and aimed for the heart of the first sow.

Her spear shot forward like a bolt of lightning, piercing through the hide and puncturing the beast’s heart effortlessly. Before the boar could even release a death rattle, she used the extra traction on her feet to leap towards the second spirit beast. It stirred at the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, but barely had time to even open an eye before her spear found its mark a second time. Samantha turned again, ignoring the frantic pounding of her heart as she leapt towards the final boar. Not even two full seconds had passed yet, she was going to make it! The third boar seemed to rise from the ground in slow motion, its eye widening as she closed the distance between them. The spear thrust forward a final time, but it seemed her luck had faltered. The beast shifted ever so slightly, turning her instantly fatal blow into one that would still kill, but over several seconds or minutes. It shrieked in panic and agony, the horrible sound echoing as loud as thunder through the near silence of the forest. The piglets awoke and scattered without any clear direction, simply following their instincts to run and try and survive. Samantha heard a responding roar from the direction of the alpha and felt the ground rumble under her feet with her enhanced perception.

“Run fast. He’s very angry.” Her bond warned.

He didn’t have to tell her twice. With the last half second of her Swift ability still in play, she withdrew her weapon and booked it to the nearest tree. All she needed to do was get far enough away and then stay absolutely quiet to avoid the senses of the male. At least, she hoped that was the case. Samantha practically flew into the branches, the female boar attempting to pursue but ultimately too wounded to move quickly enough to catch her. She leapt to the next tree, and the next, again and again until she was nearly 100 yards away and well disguised among the foliage. Even without turning back, there was no mistaking when the alpha returned to the glade. A deafening squeal of rage emanated from the animal, and with her Prey’s Perception allowing her to see behind her, she could clearly make out the beast attempting to track her.

He was able to follow her trail to the first tree she fled up but seemed to be unable to discern more than that. The boar, wailing in frustration and without a clear target for its fury, rammed into the offending tree repeatedly. The wood shattered and bent beneath each blow until it was knocked unceremoniously to the ground like the others in the area. He knocked a couple other trees down as well, an unfortunate frog-like creature falling to the ground and promptly being smashed to a pulp with a single merciless hoof stomp. Seemingly satisfied with his perceived vengeance, the alpha moved back to the fallen females, the third in the process of taking its final breath. In true survival-of-the-fittest fashion, tending to the dying boar was completely ignored in favor of feasting on the corpses of the other two.

Samantha watched in mild horror as the alpha ate its brethren. She wished that she could say that the horror stemmed from facing the unadulterated cruelty of nature, but that would’ve been a lie. No, in truth, it was because the alpha was claiming and consuming the beast cores that she was planning on taking for herself! She groaned inwardly, wondering if the effort had all been for nothing. She guessed she should have expected this, but the possibility of the alpha taking the cores himself had never even occurred to her. Normally, a successful spirit beast hunt results in all beasts dead and harvested, not hit-and-run tactics like she was currently employing. Other spirit beasts wouldn’t have a chance to take the cores for themselves in those situations.

Glumly, she tried to comfort herself by remembering that she planned to take the entire group down anyway. As she was thinking about how taking down one Alpha Boar would not be too much harder than 3 regular Iron Boars, another worst possible scenario made itself a reality. Just as the alpha ate the third and final spirit pearl, it ranked up.

A subtle glow infused its entire body, and its mass increased by half, making it nearly as large as a Mountain Bison. The already vicious looking tusks elongated and sharpened to deadly points, and a third set of sword straight teeth erupted from the front of its jaws. It pawed the ground and shook itself, releasing a deep, rumbling growl with every movement.

Samantha didn’t need to Inspect the Spirit Beast to know that it was very suddenly outside of her league. The spiritual pressure that it gave off was truly menacing, not even comparable to the Rank 2 Matron Rock Beetle that she had faced before. If she had to guess, it had become a Rank 3 being, which only an elite team of High or Peak Coppers would be sent out to handle back in Yivesh. At Low Copper she would be dead meat, no question. Her best bet would be to hide out until it moved on, and then leave the area. Even though the loss of the cores stung, it wasn’t worth her life to try and handle something like this.

A shiver ran down her spine suddenly and a cold sweat broke out across her skin. Foreign, wild qi gushed out from the Iron Boar in a sphere, brushing over her position and flowing around her form before constricting. She felt her breath hitch at the feeling of strain, and the boar slowly turned its head in her direction.

*Ding* Alpha Iron Boar has used “Sovereign Territory”! You’ve failed to conceal yourself from the “Gaze of the King”.

“No, no, no…” was all that she could think as the alpha tensed its body to begin a charge, “this can’t be happening. Iron Boars aren’t supposed to have abilities!”

“RUN!” her bond screamed in her mind, and she obliged.

As soon as she leapt from the boughs of her tree into the safety of its neighbor, it was smashed down to the ground behind her. Without thinking she leapt to the next tree, and that one fell as well. She kept jumping, and the monster kept felling, and he showed no signs of fatigue at all. By the 13th tree, she knew that the chances of her escaping were near zero. Every time she managed to get far enough away to get some breathing room, she felt that ability activate again, and she would be set upon immediately.

Her mind raced for a strategy, any strategy that could keep her alive for a few minutes longer. She considered trying to evade until her qi recharged—hoping to outlast the beast in endurance and then use Swift to run away—but she didn’t know how far she’d have to make it to escape the range of his ability. She considered leading him to another spirit beast and having them fight it out, but most others would avoid Rank 3’s like the plague unless they were near Rank 3 themselves. It was possible that she'd run into another Rank 3 in the night, but did she really feel like potentially facing two impossible ememies was preferable to the one she already had to deal with? She wracked her brain for answers but was coming up completely blank. Was this it, then? Was this where she became part of the majority that didn’t return home from their cultivation quest?

Despair and dread threatened to overtake her as she fled. Doom rang so loudly in her ears that she almost missed the small voice that somberly offered, “I fight. You run. You live.”

She felt the spirit string become taut as the hare dashed out from its hiding spot and rushed towards the raging boar pursuing her. Her hopelessness morphed to sheer panic as the small bundle of qi, bright as the Father Star above in her mind’s eye, sprinted headlong into the blazing inferno of energy that was the Rank 3 monstrosity. She focused her sight on her furry companion, half see-through and practically a speck compared to the mountain of incensed muscle that the boar had become. She tracked him as he leapt towards the boar’s face, feet first, and extended both legs for a kick, time seeming to slow down to a crawl as she watched. The boar, so focused on killing her, did not register the translucent fluff as a threat and continued his charge towards her current perch. Then the kick connected.

The sound it made was quiet compared to the roars of the beast but remained distinct among the shattering wood and falling debris. The best way to describe it was that it sounded like a slap… if the slap was performed at supersonic speeds. The hare flew off into the distance with the force of its kick, and she felt him twist and land gracefully on all fours, running back towards the fight without hesitation. The boar’s momentum continued to carry it into the tree after being struck, but all enmity was temporarily forgotten as it reared in agony. Her bond had cleverly struck at a weak point: its eye. The eye had burst from the rapid compression and decompression that the kick inflicted, and viscous fluid and blood flowed down freely from the gory socket.

“Hurry!” the Lunar Hare pleaded as he ran towards the boar again. “Won’t last long.”

As if hearing the words himself, the boar whipped its head to the side, trying to spear the hare on a tusk as it approached. Her bond had to abort the attack to avoid death, but he didn’t let the setback deter him. Deciding to lead the boar on a merry chase instead, much like the one that he led Samantha on the night that they finalized their spirit bond, he darted between its four legs fearlessly. He avoided deadly stomps and gore attempts like he had been born to do it, but this was a stalemate that all parties knew would not last forever. A hare could never defeat a boar.

Samantha leapt from the safety of her tree towards certain death. It was the stupidest, most irrational thing she could have done in the moment, and yet it felt impossibly right. She had only been partnered to the Lunar Hare for a couple months, but he already felt simultaneously like the little brother she never had and an irreplaceable part of herself. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she let things play out this way, and there was no guarantee she could escape even with his sacrifice. No, they were going to rise or fall as one.

She plunged the spear into the boar's back with her full weight behind it as she fell. To her dismay, the hide had also thickened with its evolution and the spear slid off the fur harmlessly. She did, however, get its attention. Facing its rear towards her, it kicked out with a hindleg to try and bludgeon her, but she dodged the blow by a hair’s breadth. It looked back at her with its good eye, pure hatred seething from its glare as it rotated to try and kick her again. The hare responded by thumping it in the leg, not doing much damage but irritating it further and causing its attention to split.

“Fight together?” Samantha sent simply.

“…Together.” the Hare agreed.

And fight together they did. The hare harried and the woman struck at weak points. They focused on the blinded side and tried to hinder limbs however possible. For some pristine moments there was perfect unity in their actions and desires, and luck was on their side as they defied death at every turn. But all good things must end, and one glancing blow was all it took to end the lucky streak.

Samantha was tossed into a fallen tree trunk after being batted aside by the head of the Boar. With Samantha gone from the mix, it wasn’t long until a bucking hoof clipped the hare and sent it flying into the underbrush. Samantha could tell through her bond that that the hit, though mostly avoided, was still catastrophically damaging to her partner. He was out of the fight and would probably die without intervention.

The boar, not missing a beat, moved to take out the last remaining enemy and charged her. Samantha was out of options, so, she did what she was always taught to do when you had to make a final stand with a charging enemy and planted her spear. Digging the butt of her weapon into the earth and wedging it somewhat under the trunk, she faced down the goring attack with one of her own. She was not, however, able to execute the suicide attack as resolutely as she was meant to, her survival instincts kicking in at the last second and causing her to roll out of the way. The boar still impaled itself on the spear as intended, the force of its mass giving the weapon enough power to punch through its thick hide, but without her steadying and reinforcing the shaft, the weapon shattered on impact.

The Alpha's tusks had punctured deep into the wood of the trunk, having gone all out to try and rid itself of the creature that smelt of its mates' blood once and for all. It pierced with such strength that, for a split second, it became lodged in the tree and unable to free itself. It tried to lift its head, but the trunk was too heavy for it to escape that way. It tried to pull back, but the curvature of its tusks pulled the tree backwards with the movement. Seeing this unfold, Samantha had a moment of insight. The idea she had was so mad that she would never had considered it if it were not life and death, but it might just let her actually win the fight.

She didn’t think it through nor contemplate the consequences, she simply grabbed the broken mortal grade spearhead from her pack in a reverse grip like a knife and ran forward. When she rolled earlier, she instinctually moved towards the boar’s blinded side, a fact which served her current purposes perfectly. She aimed her makeshift blade towards the ruined eye socket that could not warn the boar of her impending attack nor tell it to flinch away to avoid further damage, and stabbed with all her might. The boar jerked and howled at the pain but her aim held true, and as she felt the spear tip press against the bone of its skull, she flooded the mundane metal with her one remaining qi point to detonate it.