The Horny Boar Fields, over a thousand wolves dead, the rest retreated, the players celebrating their victory.

Back at the shabby donkey, Henry broke the invisibility spell after checking for observers, his disguise swapped back for his nooby monkey mask.

“Good work, Donkey Brother." He gave the beast a pat on its rump.

The donkey bared its yellow teeth in an ugly gesture, expecting more praise than that for its performance.

But Henry had no more to offer. His face as flat as ever, he was unable to find much to celebrate in completing what should, from the beginning, have been an effortless tutorial quest.

His role in this other quest, with the giant monsters, was over now. Having slain his fifteen pups, he now just needed to hunt down the bald trainer and the two of them could progress to the next stage while The Empire farted around for a couple hours before cleaning up the sentient wolves.

Whistling a tune, he dragged the donkey alongside him. The pair walked back, retracting their path through the wolf-strewn field while Henry absorbed the souls from the ones he'd shot. Some, he was able to skip, spells destroying their bodies and transferring their souls to him automatically.

Each noob they passed—lying sweaty and exhausted with the fur of their slain quarry as pillows, watching medics repair their bleeding wounds, sharing booze stolen from the party—greeted the pair warmly. Even those who were sober had the openness of friendly drunks, their first major fight uniting all with an instantaneous camaraderie, an almost spiritual feeling, stronger than many would have ever experienced in the real-world.

The dead wolves came to an abrupt end where the pack had first been trapped, a trail of carcasses leading from the forest to a pile of hundreds, before giving way to the cleared fields maintained by the boars and, beyond that, the savannah. Henry, joining several other noobs picking through the pile, searched for the wolf with the exploded head and the other one he'd killed at the beginning with the same arrow.

"Big Bro! Is it safe to move yet?"

Nearby, Dan and the rest of the team were standing in the open field. The group, never having budged, had been joined by three shirtless meatheads who'd survived, the rest of Dan's rugby team wiped out at the start.

Henry groaned at the kid's naivety. "Obviously. The wolves are already...gone."

He stopped.

Where his wolves should have been were globs of their entrails, fur, and even the shaft of his arrow sticking from the ground. The bodies, however, were missing.

The tremor of Dan's approaching footsteps caused a puddle of nearby blood to stir, exposing the top of an object.

Henry, suspicious, used the tip of his sword to flick it out.

The item was a sharpened boar horn with long grass wrapped around the end for a handle. Its craftmanship had a consciously crude quality, like an imitation of the weapons prisoners used to make before universal surveillance.

“...a prison...shiv?” Henry picked it up to inspect it.

Improvised Boar-Horn Prison Shiv

Level Restriction: 2 (0-1)

Quality: 4%

Material: Horny Boar Horn

Weight: 767 g

'For stickin bitch-ass fools. An El_Lazca_38 production. Ridin high, Sureños til we die! GANG GANG!'

-2 wolves. Back to 13 out of 15.

“What’s that, Big Bro?” Dan leapt over a wolf to his side.

Henry turned and stared blankly into the meathead's handsome face. “Did those gangster roleplayers show up and lootjack the wolf bodies?”

“Whoa. How’d you guess?”

“And none of you stopped them because...”

Dan wore an innocent expression, radiant, pure, and obedient as the Holy Virgin's.

Henry shook his head.“...because I told you not to move under any circumstances.”

"Haha!" Dan laughed. "My teammates wanted to chase them down, but, don't worry, Big Bro, I made sure they stuck with your orders. Good thing, too, because shortly after those Swedish guys stole the wolves, they got blasted by lightning bolts. PYAA!” He mimed an explosion with his arms. "Doing nothing, that was the smartest decision. Wu-wei, it's indeed a very wise philosophy."

Once again, in another puzzling series of coincidences, Henry's measures had backfired against himself.

No, he was far from finished with these wolves. To earn what possibly awaited him in the distant light at the end of this tutorial's Herculean tunnel, he would have to strive much, much harder than this. That was a truth of life, he'd learned. The very greatest things could only be obtained in exchange for thousands of litres of sweat and blood.

Henry, tired already, not hoping for much, sent a message to the username written in the shiv’s custom description, offering to buy the wolves back.

A reply came soon after.

-El_Lazca_38: Ten million hard cash? Eh, why donchu try throwin in a diamond-encrusted lowrider while you at it, ese? Sureños ain’t fallin for no po-Lice set up. Don’t talk to me or my homies again, pig.

You have been blocked by El_Lazca_38.

Henry sighed.

“Big Bro?" asked Dan.

"Yeah?"

"Are you alright? That sigh was a bit..."

"I'm cool as a cactus."

Henry meant that reply to be sarcastic and bitter. However, listening to the sound of his own voice, he caught a bit of honesty sneaking in - too much honesty.

Against that feeling as much as the odd events ahead, he pushed back again.

He wouldn't concede to 'fate' quite yet. A few aces remained up his sleeve.