Chapter 2: Wyvern Hunters

Chapter 2:
Wyvern Hunters

IN MY WARM BLANKET, alone in my new bed, I dreamed.

I was walking through the shopping district in front of the train station, dressed in my usual kind of outfit—a long-sleeve shirt with a t-shirt underneath, the Official Workpants my employer made me wear, and my trusty backpack. Faintly I could make out my favorite bar before me, and that’s when I realized that this was probably it. The last moments of my old life.

I’d been thirsting for a drink after work, so of course I picked my favorite cheapo dive. I didn’t hate drinking at home, but using my meager part-time wages for a cheap “After Work Special,” chatting up a pretty waitress, just unwinding…perfection.

So there I was, about to step inside the bar, and that was it. That was all I remembered. Did I die or something? Get hit by a car? The bar stood before me. The narrow roads of the shopping district blurred with heavy traffic. No one veered off to hit me. And the bar…I didn’t go in.

I turned around, as a matter of fact. And that’s when my dream ended.

My name is Yoshida Shuta. I’m thirty-two. Also, I’m stuck in another world learning to hunt.

After trading “good mornings” with my wife, I grabbed my gardening hoe and headed out the door. She asked me to tend to the vegetable patch out front, and I was happy to oblige. There’d been no one to help take care of it when she was living alone, and so the whole thing was in bad shape.

Cassandra said it was near the end of April. The good weather rolled in at February’s end, when the mountain snow began to melt. It was supposedly too late to start plowing now, but it wasn’t like Cassandra could’ve done anything about that on her own. Back when she was alone, she planted potatoes—they were easy to get a hold of, cold-resistant, and didn’t need too much water.

I swung my hoe into the earth, working to till nearly barren soil. Cassandra had four plots of land for farming out front. Since one of them already had potatoes in it, I decided to tend to the one in front of the potato patch. If I was going to make Cassandra’s life easier, I wanted to do it as soon as possible. That meant working at this every day. That’s what it means to be a man, after all.

As I tended to the dry soil, I heard a familiar voice call out, “What do you think you’re doing so early in the morning?” It was Wak’wakgoro, of course, bow strapped to his back and ready to go.

“Morning. That time already?”

“Lynxes are nocturnal, so the trap could’ve snagged one by now.”

“Yeah, it’d be nice if we could deal with one that already got itself caught.”

And with that, I had to leave the field half-tended so I could check on the snare traps.

“Hey, I’m heading out again!” I called out to my wife. “Stay here until I get back, okay?”

“Shouldn’t I tend to the fields?”

“I’ll take care of that when I get back. You just sit tight and try not to burn the house down. It’s not like I expect you to be hammering away at an anvil while I’m gone or anything.”

“Hmm. Blacksmithing? I’ve never done that before.”

Wait, was she taking my joke seriously? Or was this some kind of comeback, like saying that she already handles the laundry and cooking just fine, and I shouldn’t underestimate her? Maybe this was her way of telling me that? Like a, “I may not be the greatest, but I do my best!” kind of thing. Which is cute, I’ll admit. Good weapon of choice.

“I’ll come help out when I’m back,” I said.

“Thank you. Be careful out there.”

I said my goodbyes to Cassandra, and Wak’wakgoro and I headed into the forest together.

“So you think you can forget about me and just start flirting? You dog, you!” Wak’wakgoro ribbed me as we walked.

“You call that flirting? We haven’t even held hands yet. Everything’s still so…awkward.”

“Hold up, you two still haven’t gotten it on? You swing the other way or something?”

“Nah, I’m straight as an arrow. But man, every time I try and look at her, she seems freaked out or something.”

“You’re naked, my guy.”

“Hey, don’t downplay the vest.”

“You’re almost naked.”

Ehh. Fair. I scratched at my crotch and continued down the path.

Wak’wakgoro told me that he didn’t use hunting dogs, since trying to train them and keep them fed was time he didn’t have. All of the village’s hunting dogs were managed by a goblin named Saki’cho, the leader of the hunters.

“Goblins aren’t usually held in the highest esteem,” said Wak’wakgoro. “No matter which village you’re in, we’re usually only allowed to be farmers, woodcutters, or hunters.”

“Damn. Sounds like you guys have it rough.”

“The really talented goblins all leave town and go off to become mercenaries or adventurers, livin’ it up and relying on nobody else.”

“And you didn’t?”

“’Course not. What the hell kind of person abandons their family?” He snorted indignantly. “Say I leave town. What happens to the rest of my brethren? Their families and mine? Hunters already have it bad enough as is. If we don’t bring in any game, then the villagers see us as a bunch of freeloaders. And it gets really rough in winter.”

According to him, the heavy winter snow blocked off the deeper parts of the forest. That meant hunters settled for hunting deer where the snowdrifts were less dense…and these deer were hell to catch. They gathered in a vast, wide-open area, where there weren’t many spots for the hunters to lie in wait.

“Then how do you survive when you can’t hunt?”

“Side gigs. Make boots, or sharpen spears, fashion arrows, whatever. Winter is the time for blacksmithing, I tell ya.”

“Wow, you even smith stuff?”

“The old dwarf smith in the village keeps pretty busy, so hunters like us try to stay self-reliant. Here, take a look at this.” Wak’wakgoro took an arrow from his quiver and showed it to me. “You can make your own arrowheads out of stone.”

From what I’ve heard, stone arrowheads are way better for taking out animals than ones made of metal—these things really dig into animal hide. Iron arrowheads may have become the standard once they were easy to mass-produce, but those weren’t for animals. They were for people.

That aside, it surprised me to learn how insecure the life of a hunter was. Coming upon our first snare in the Apegut Forest drove it home.

“It managed to grab the bait without setting off the trap,” Wak’wakgoro said with a sigh. He crouched to search where the snare was placed, but only made a face once he found tracks in the dirt.

“No good,” he muttered. And our first lynx hunt yesterday went so well. These tracks showed that the lynx dragged the kobold body away from the trap, probably back to its nest.

The second trap had gone off without catching anything, either.

“Well, shit,” Wak’wakgoro muttered.

“Yeah. Bad luck.”

“It happens when you go hunting every day. You can live off a big haul for a while, but luck turns as it wants. We got lucky last time. We aren’t lucky today.”

Being a hunter was pretty similar to a part-time job in that way. There was something comforting about that familiarity, whether it was good or bad. The only significant difference was being buck naked all the time in this world, which I generally avoided back home.

“Is there any way to lure out the lynx and wait to get the jump on them?” I asked.

“Once they’re done raising their kittens, sure. Right now they’re too cautious.”

“Gotcha.”

Smart. My uncle said something similar about never messing with a mother bear when she had her cubs around. Bears were dangerous even for the most experienced of hunters, so I didn’t even want to think about a massive pissed-off mama lynx.

On our way back home, though, we ended up bagging ourselves a fox. We were almost back to the village when I spotted it.

“Let’s get ’em, Shooter!” Wak’wakgoro roared.

He whipped the shortbow from his back, nocked an arrow into his string in one fluid motion, and I hurried to follow along with my own bow. Our target was close, probably just thirty feet away. Two arrows sped toward the petrified fox. My arrow missed its mark, but Wak’wakgoro’s struck home.

“What, do they call you Shooter ironically? C’mon, man!”

It was my first time using a bow. Sue me.

“Um. It’s hard to cook when you look at me like that.”

I always thought that the best part of married life would be eating your wife’s delicious home cooking. Up until now, I lived alone in a cheap apartment on a shoestring budget, either cooking my own meals or grabbing discount side dishes from the supermarket. Just having someone else cooking for my sake was heaven.

“Err, sorry about that, I didn’t mean to stare. Are we having baked potatoes again?”

“Potatoes don’t have much flavor on their own, so I was thinking of cooking some beans as well. I don’t know. Does that sound good to you?” Cassandra pulled a pot up onto the counter and let out a long, heavy sigh.

The village chief had ordered us to be husband and wife, but there was no way Cassandra could just accept that without a second thought. I couldn’t blame her, but I also couldn’t help but be happy about it.

“Nope, totally fine by me. Is there something I can help with?”

“A hunter’s wife,” she lectured, “is supposed to cook for him while she’s home. A man does the cooking for himself when he’s out in the field.”

Huh, I didn’t know that was even a rule. I put on my best smile—I really didn’t want to give Cassandra creeper vibes—and backed away to give her some space. That’s easier said than done when you live in a tiny shoebox of a house. The best I could do was sit on my bed, watching my wife as she worked.

Cassandra finished getting the stockpot ready, placing the bones inside and slowly bringing it to a boil to make broth. She tossed in some chickpeas along the way, a couple carrots from the fields, and a few onions we’d gotten from the neighbors. She gently ladled the soup as it bubbled and simmered.

“Since I’m making the broth from fox bones,” she said, “I can’t guarantee it will taste that good.”

“Yeah, I guess foxes aren’t all that delicious, are they?”

“O-oh! Ack, I didn’t mean—I know you went through all that trouble to catch it for us, so I wasn’t saying—I didn’t mean that—um!”

She didn’t look upset at me at all. She looked flustered, in fact, as she tripped over her words to explain herself.

“It’s all right,” I said gently, “I didn’t take it that way at all. I’ll make sure to bring home some tastier meat next time. Besides, I’d love to eat anything you made.”

“Well, um, erm! Thank you! Thanks for saying that.” She blushed, gazed at the floor, and I thought that newlywed life might not be so bad after all.

***

Shuta here, dealing with a terrible case of updog! What’s that? What’s updog? Not much, dude, how ’bout you? Well, not much is up besides my wiener—and I’m not talking about the dog.

I went out hunting again with Wak’wakgoro, but when I got back home, Cassandra was nowhere to be found. There were no pens or paper in this world, so she couldn’t leave me a note or anything.

The laundry hung drying near the front door, and boiled beans and eggs sat hot and ready on top of our well-worn table. It seemed like a lot of food for just one person, so I assumed some of it was for me. I also told her I was just going to check on the snares before I left, and she knew I hadn’t brought a meal for the road.

Cassandra didn’t seem to be coming back no matter how long I waited, so I gave up and ate the food she left in glum silence before going to sleep. I was feeling lonelier than usual, so I laid myself in my wife’s bed and went to sleep smelling her scent—hence the updog.

“Um, Shooter?”

When I finally woke up, I saw Cassandra, confused and frightened at why my flag was at full mast. Standing next to her was an older man, covered in a dense, thick layer of hair. Who the hell…?

The man stroked his beard. “How ’bout you put on some clothes?” He tossed me a loincloth.

“Ha. Uh. Good morning, everyone. Cassandra, who would this be?” I launched out of bed and nearly leaped into my skimpy loincloth. I couldn’t just leave my flexin’ little guy exposed.

“This,” said Cassandra, “is my father—”

“Your father?”

“My father’s nephew.”

Good to know that my dead father-in-law hadn’t climbed out of his grave, at least. This guy was about my height, but a little wider around the waist. His chest hair nearly burst from the gap in his V-neck tunic, a tangled mess that ran down to his thick arms. He looked like a bear who’d figured out facial hair.

“I’m Cassandra’s cousin, Ossandra,” he said bluntly. Aw, cool, their family had a name thing going!

I offered him a handshake with one hand while covering my crotch with the other, but wouldn’t you know it, all he did was stare back at me! Rude people, I swear.

“I came because I heard Cassandra got herself a husband. That’s you, then?”

“Yup. The name’s Shooter, pleasure to meet you. I’m following in the footsteps of Cassandra’s father, working as an apprentice hunter,” I said with a quick, sharp bow of my head.

“You used to be a warrior, too,” he said, “or that’s what they’re saying. Well, you seem pretty well put-together. Here, I’ve got a wedding gift for you. Food too.”

“You didn’t have to do all that for us,” said Cassandra.

“Thank you so much for this,” I said, bowing still more deeply.

Ossandra’s wedding gift to us was a new weapon—a shortsword. Useful, and I could pawn it off if things got tight, but I still would’ve appreciated some pants.

Except it wasn’t for me. “This is a present for you, Cassandra. You toil day in and day out. You deserve a reward for that.”

“Ossandra…”

The two of them turned and stared deep into each other’s eyes. Very, very deeply into one another’s eyes. Make-a-husband-the-third-wheel deeply.

“So!” I said tightly. “What brings you here today?”

“Ossandra is a blacksmith,” Cassandra replied.

“Huh! Great! And?”

“You mentioned the other day that I should learn how to smith, right? I thought it would be faster to just introduce you to Ossandra. I can only do simple things like putting arrowheads on arrows, after all.”

“Huh?”

A blacksmith? She—oh. The joke I made yesterday. She’d taken it completely seriously.

“Hunters need to make sure their equipment is all taken care of,” said Ossandra, “and that includes things like their spears and arrowheads. You’re thinking ahead. I admire that.”

“Th-thanks?”

“But if you don’t put on some clothes, you’re going to burn yourself in the forge.”

“Yeah, maybe. I get that a lot.” Not like I could do anything about that without clothes.

“What, you like being naked?”

“No, I just don’t have anything to wear except vests. I’m good on vests. I’ve got vests for days,” I said. Cassandra handed me one of them and I slipped it on.

“If you help out at the forge, I’ll pay you. You can use the cash to buy yourself some clothes.”

“Hey, that sounds great! I’d be happy to!”

That was how I ended up going along with my wife’s cousin to work at the blacksmith’s forge. When I asked if she was coming with us, she turned me down.

“No, I’ve got chores. I’ll try not to ‘burn down the house,’ as you said.”

Yeesh. All right, so maybe we still weren’t on the same wavelength.

There I was, standing out behind a blacksmith’s forge with nothing but a hand axe, chopping wood in the buff. Déjà vu.

It was hot, which was why I’d forgone wearing clothes again. My vest would reek to high heaven if I got sweat soaked into it, and Shuta Jr. kept bouncing out of my tiny loincloth whenever I really got into the axe-swing of things. At least being naked made it way easier to move around.

Ossandra would carry the wood away with a look of thinly veiled shock on his face as he watched me work in my skimpy outfit.

“How’s the hunting coming along, anyway?” he asked me at one point.

“I managed to get myself a lynx the other day, but that was it. We didn’t catch a single one after that, even after setting up a bunch of traps.”

“Not surprised. Those guys are pretty hard to take down.”

“I’ve been going out hunting with a veteran hunter named Wak’wakgoro.”

“Huh, that so.”

“We didn’t get a lynx, but we at least managed to nab a fox on the way back home yesterday.”

“Good. A fox pelt would make that loincloth look half-decent.”

I didn’t know about that, but if people thought it looked better then maybe it was worth a try. I’d ask Wak’wakgoro if I could have the fur once he was done skinning it.

From what I heard, a forge needed a ton of wood to function. Blacksmiths got their own wood, then chopped it up to turn into charcoal. I made a deal to help out with that for a bit, and in exchange Ossandra would teach me how to sharpen my spear and even eventually to make arrowheads. Now I had a place to work when prey died down.

As an aside, it turned out that despite his looks, Ossandra was only a little over twenty years old. Damn, how is he younger than me?

“Is it really okay that we’re not doing any smithing today?” I asked.

“There’s five of us here at the forge. They said it was all right to train you for the day.”

“Seems like you must keep pretty busy, then.”

“You said your name was Shooter, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna stay in this village forever?”

My axe split another log. I stopped to turn and look at him. Ossandra stared back at me, wearing a stone-serious expression on his bearded face.

“Hm. I mean, I’m married here, after all…”

I hadn’t really given any serious thought to what came next. Here I was, a Japanese guy from another world—and this had to be another world instead of the past or future, what with all the goblins and wyverns. Who knew if I would be able to find a way to make it back to the world I came from?

I thought of the dream from that morning. Maybe it was me reliving everything up until I wound up here, or maybe it was the last moments before my death. If I had died, then that would mean I was reborn in this world. If I hadn’t, then surely something transported me here.

Reborn, though? Really? I still looked the same as I had back in my old world, and all of my memories were intact. If I somehow bit the big one before coming here, then I’d been reborn as a middle-aged man. And reborn…without clothes? Wow, what a blessing. If I’d been reborn, I didn’t even get to be a baby. Just a naked thirty-two-year-old. Thanks, God! Love it, so good!

“If you’re staying,” said Ossandra, “then you better get ready for what’s coming. Hunters get a lot of flak in this village, so it ain’t easy being one here. Life was nothing but one hardship after another for my uncle.”

“They’re shunned, then.” I considered what the reason could be as I swung away at the wood. I was used to the work, so I could let my mind wander a little.

The first reason hunters might get shunned: inconsistent work. If they didn’t bring anything home from the hunt, then it was like Wak’wakgoro said—they were perceived as nothing more than freeloaders living off what the village provided for them, providing nothing in kind.

That feast-famine setup was the reason why hunter-gatherers eventually learned how to farm. Agriculture allowed people to live much more stable lives. Sure, they probably had their share of bad harvests, but stockpiling food solved that problem.

Also, if life was already tough for a given family, it must’ve been that much harder to find someone to marry their children to. I didn’t know if marrying for love happened in this world, but I’d bet it was probably taboo at best, maybe reserved for actual developed towns. In villages like this one, village chiefs or parents probably played matchmaker—just like what happened with Cassandra and me.

I could see, then, why no parent would want to marry their daughter off to a hunter. On the other hand, there also might not be anyone willing to marry the daughter of a hunter, like Cassandra. Which probably got hunters treated even more like parasites to be shunned.

On top of that, there was the tendency for goblins to take jobs as hunters. Not many parents would want their daughters marrying goblins, from what Wak’wakgoro said. Goblin discrimination. They must’ve been the lowest position on the village totem pole. It just seemed to be a thing in fantasy worlds. Even hobgoblins got more respect, if only a sliver.

“I’ll help if you want to leave,” Ossandra said as he gathered up some of the wood.

“Leave the village, you mean?”

“Right. I doubt anyone here would be happy to see an outsider like you sticking around, and I’m sure they wouldn’t care if you up and left.”

“What about Cassandra? If I left her here, things would just get worse for her.”

“True. This isn’t something to consider lightly. If you ever decide to run away, I can at least get some money ready for you. If you’re staying, you best be ready to work if you want to earn everyone’s trust. Warrior, stranger…this is your path to choose.”

Leaving me with those words, Ossandra disappeared into the forge.

I gave a lot of thought to Ossandra’s words. Sure, I was born in the sticks, but I was never ostracized, especially since my grandparents had been such social people. My grandma was so well known where we lived that they made her the vice president of the local fishing co-op. Back home life was easy.

Not that people weren’t shunned at all. There was at least one family who everyone avoided. Maybe they were shunned. Never thought about it till now. They had a girl who was about the same age as me, but we never played together much. She was usually with her younger sister, so my sisters and I never really talked with them. Maybe now I knew how it felt to be in a family like that, marrying somebody above my station, even if only a little.

It was going to be rough if I kept living here—I’d need a strong will. I’d have to build up my status in the village, to really show the villagers that I was worth keeping around.

Once, in my old world, I had this part-time job at a marketing firm. They mainly proposed new ideas to clients or found ways to improve projects in progress. Consulting, basically.

It was a small company, so my days there consisted of trying to drum up business alongside this young guy, the representative director of the firm. He told me there were a few tested ways to get a client to agree with our ideas.

First, you hook them on the idea, and then you show them that it’s achievable. I’d make a slideshow doing just that (with this awful program that I hate using; you’re probably familiar with it), and then the director would clean up my rough draft. Clients always went for the ideas that grabbed their attention.

The next step would be to earn the client’s trust by getting to know their top brass. Department heads, managers, whoever—get those guys on your side and you could get even the most outrageous ideas approved, easy peasy.

Now, who was the top brass in the village? Bingo—the village chief. First things first, I had to get her to accept me. With a governor on my side—and a knight at that, with all the power and privilege that entailed—no one would even try to ostracize me. Even if people had a bone to pick with me, they wouldn’t dare say it out loud if I had enough prestige. And hell, if I got the village chief on my side, then she wouldn’t tolerate it either.

If I was going to make that happen, I needed actual results. A consulting firm’s goal was to bring in sales, whether for the client’s business as a whole or for individual projects. If I was going to apply the same logic here, I’d either have to somehow broadly improve the lifestyle of the village, or I’d have to bring in something big as a hunter. That would mean really busting my ass to get better, maybe even good enough to take down a lynx or two without breaking a sweat.

I wiped the sweat from my brow. A whole lot of options, and none of them perfect. Still, it was a beautiful, cloudless day. A refreshing breeze blew in as I worked.

Suddenly, I spotted a strange black cloud in what should have been a cloudless blue sky. It sped through the air too quickly—it couldn’t be a cloud at all, not moving that fast—and it plummeted to the earth at breakneck speed.

Someone screamed out: “W-w-wyvern!”

My name’s not Vern, chief, I thought—you know, like an idiot. The villagers poured from their homes, panicked and crowding.

“It’s a wyvern!”

Sure was. And it was going after the livestock.

***

In my old world, wyverns were nothing more than the product of someone’s imagination. Here the wyvern was living, breathing, and big. About the size of a small bus, matter of fact. Its maw gaped wide, revealing rows and rows of needle-sharp teeth, and hard scales lined its body from head to long, long tail—so long that the beast was half-tail. King of the lizards, I thought deliriously.

The lizard king intended to pick off cows from a spot near the center of the village. The poor things were just chewing their cud, safe and out to pasture, when the wyvern started tossing them screaming to the ground, sinking its razor-talons into their bloated bodies.

The wyvern was strong. Some villagers shouted and pointed at it, while others peeked out from behind shelter to watch. No one even tried making a move on the beast.

Not that I could blame them. Most of the villagers were farmers and their families—not the type liable to charge at the scaly lizard-bus of the skies. Only a veteran hunter like Cassandra’s father could’ve stood a chance against it.

“What’s all the ruckus out here, Shooter?” Ossandra cried, running out with an armful of charcoal.

“It’s a wyvern, Ossandra! Look!”

The charcoal spilled from his arms. He stared for a moment in mute horror.

“A wyvern,” he said finally. “But why?”

“I don’t know, it just came flying in all of a sudden.”

“How can this be happening?”

We all just stood there staring as the wyvern devoured its prey. That’s when I saw them, a brave group of challengers, racing to fight the king of the skies. It was the hunters, and Wak’wakgoro led the charge. They were decked out in hunting gear, almost as if returning from a hunt—and they weren’t the only ones charging.

The village chief, her son Gimul, and a bunch of others—all armed to the teeth—marched to battle the beast. Even N’aniwa the woodcutter was among them in the back lines.

The two groups darted between houses for cover, zig-zagging and weaving their way to the wyvern. Wak’wakgoro and the hunters split into two smaller groups. The first group carried countless bows and quivers, and the second bore spears. Made sense. One would rush in to attack directly, and the rest would lay down covering fire.

The wyvern seemed to ignore them completely, ripping and tearing at its beefy feast, slurping down entrails, all that nasty stuff. I heard that larger mammalian carnivores only ate their prey after tearing out their throats to finish them off, but I could still hear the cow under its claws crying out as the wyvern ate. It was a vicious old lizard, through and through.

The village chief’s group met up with the bow-carrying hunters, and they began debating furiously over their next move. The village chief wore a simple breastplate over her usual flowing dress, probably because that was all she had time to don before checking out the commotion outside. A longsword dangled from her waist, the typical weapon of your traditional female knight.

I had only been able to stare on until now, dumbfounded, but watching her clicked my brain right back on. I couldn’t let this continue. I wouldn’t let this continue—no way would that wyvern capture the village chief like the female knights from my porn mags. That’d be bad enough, but the wyvern might not even let her say the same lines they did before eating her! If I wanted to make a name for myself in this village, then now was the time to put my spear skills to good use.

Not that I really needed a reason to protect a pretty lady.

“Spear…” I muttered to myself and turned to Ossandra. “Do you have any weapons in the forge? Preferably something with reach.”

“We do, but what are you going to—”

“Just let me borrow it for a bit—a polearm, even, anything like that.”

“If you want something long, we should have spears, halberds, perhaps some two-handed maces,” he replied, bewildered.

“Sure, sure, just go get one for me!” I said, pushing him along.

“Are you actually thinking of taking that thing?! That wyvern’s a full-grown male!”

“The village chief is going to get ravish—devoured by that wyvern, and I’m not just going to stand by!”

I burst into the forge, almost knocking over the dwarf blacksmith, and scanned the room.

“Ossandra, who the hell is this?” the dwarf shouted.

“He’s my cousin’s husband, boss. He said he wanted to borrow some weapons.”

No weapons in this room. I turned back to Ossandra.

“Weapons. Where are they?”

“The longer ones are in that room. The good spears are in the back, the decent maces are up front.”

Ignoring the dwarf, I ran into that room. I grabbed the spear farthest to the back—no time to take a close look—and ran back outside.

Ossandra came after me. “Don’t do anything stupid, you’ll break Cassandra’s heart if you get yourself killed!”

“Hah! Sure I will. We haven’t even hugged.”

“Her father was killed by a wyvern, too, you must know that! Do you really want her to go through this again?”

Okay. You know what? Enough was enough.

“Listen, man,” I snapped. “I may have stared directly at her while she took a big ol’ dump back at the house, but we’re nowhere close to being a husband and wife yet. If I die, how about you marry her? You think I haven’t noticed the way you look at her?”

“I haven’t, uh! I—no, but, well, I mean—”

With him babbling nonsense, I unsheathed my borrowed spear and got myself ready to make a break for it. The wyvern raised its head high over the shreds of cow and unleashed an earthshaking roar. The very air trembled. Dread carried on sound waves.

The roar was the last straw for Wak’wakgoro and the other hunters. The group providing cover fire pulled their bowstrings back in unison.

“Damn, I better get going if I wanna show off my spear work! I’m not just going to let myself get shunned by the village forever, after all,” I said, flashing a wild grin at Ossandra.

I took off after the wyvern, and I was goddamn terrified. Can you blame me? The only things I’d ever faced in a fight were a couple of drunks at a restaurant, a guy who got to second place in nationals for karate, some indie pro-wrestlers, and Gimul. Try to imagine that version of me getting asked to fight a tiger with chopsticks or something wild like that.

But at that moment, something in my brain chased my fear into the recesses of my mind—adrenaline. Just like when it kickstarted my body in karate matches, adrenaline writhed to life and all of my fear, all of my doubt melted away.

The battle was already underway as I ran toward the wyvern. Wak’wakgoro and the other hunters were almost perfectly synchronized, sending their first volley of arrows flying toward the beast and, in no time flat, the hunters providing covering fire loosed their next volley.

They weren’t aiming at any particular spot, since the wyvern was so large that you could hit it as long as you aimed in its general direction. The second group of hunters took up their weapons and charged toward the monster.

The wyvern let out another bellowing roar that resounded across the village. My legs turned to jelly; I collapsed on the spot. There went the adrenaline—that golden, invincible feeling disappeared completely. I fell about fifty yards away from the wyvern. The king of the skies towered over me. Funny. It looked even bigger closer up.

I was scared stiff.

***

You know, everything in this world was a bit (read: very) ridiculous.

A brave goblin who had gone to attack the wyvern went flying with a single swipe of the monster’s tail. Everyday people with everyday lives just don’t see people going full on ragdoll physics through the air. Now I had, and not because I used to work as a stuntman. No, there was a goblin hunter whose name I didn’t even know tracing a perfect arc in the sky before my very eyes until—well, I didn’t look to see that part.

The next man took advantage of the goblin’s sacrifice and charged with his spear. The wyvern flapped its wings as it backstepped. The gust sent the man flying backward. The wyvern (clever guy) took the chance to rip into the man with its powerful maw. His dying scream froze my blood.

God, it was merciless.

The rest of the hunters faltered, spreading out to surround the wyvern at a distance. The archers stopped providing covering fire, not wanting to hit their fellow hunters. Not that it mattered. The arrows hadn’t pierced a single scale.

Swords drawn, the village chief’s group joined the hunters surrounding the wyvern. I managed to get myself back on my feet and caught up with them. I talked so big back at the forge, but I just ended up freaking out, falling on my butt, and making myself look pathetic. I’d be laughed at for weeks if we made it out alive, I was sure.

“You have to retreat, please!” Gimul begged the village chief.

“I’m in charge of this village. I will not back down. I will not allow myself to back down.”

“Then I beg of you, at least stay on the backline!”

As they bickered, the hunters loosed another wave of arrows. The wyvern never dropped its guard, not even for a second. It spun, deftly snapping its tail at its attackers.

One brave soul had the will to slay the monster, a single goblin who seemed a step above the other hunters. He wore leather armor over his fur pelts and wielded a mace in each hand.

The village chief barked her order, “We have only one goal—strike the blow that drives out the beast!”

The goblin charged forward. He had to be Saki’cho, the leader of the hunters Wak’wakgoro told me about. I’d seen him when I fought with Gimul, too. As the leader of the hunters closed in on the wyvern, the other hunters took up their weapons, and I joined them.

“Oho, you’re here too, Shooter?” the village chief teased. I ignored it for now.

Saki’cho whaled on the wyvern’s stomach, pounding furiously with his maces before rolling out of the way. No dice. The wyvern snapped at the goblin, its razor-sharp fangs gleaming, as a hail of arrows came down on its vast wings.

The wyvern let out a high-pitched screech. The wings, I thought as it began to beat its massive wings. Those had to be its weak point.

Airborne now, the wyvern raised its deadly claws and set its sights on the village chief.

I’m no action star, all right? I mean, I’ve been a stuntman. That’s not nothing. It also has nothing to do with a gigantic wyvern. I’ve been beat up by people charging at me on horseback for a shoot, but I reiterate that these people were not, as far as I knew, gigantic wyverns. But—ah, hell—if I wanted the village to owe me a favor, this was the moment.

The wyvern was big, but I only had to wait until the last second to dodge, just like I had with those horseback riders. Well, not exactly like that. In a way, this job was going to be way easier.

I threw my spear aside and sprinted with everything I had, making a beeline for the village chief, leaping into the air and—wham!—tackling her out of the way. The wyvern let out another roar, turning its claws toward me. The village chief fell flat on her butt from my tackle, and only looked on in a daze. I drew the shortsword Ossandra had given us as a wedding present. Maybe it was pointless, but I wasn’t about to go without a fight.

Huh. That was really a possibility. Dying at worst, maimed forever at best. No wonder smart hunters stuck to ambushes.

Right when I’d given up hope, the goblin hunter clad in fur pelts swung his mace right into the wyvern’s ugly, scaly face. With a sickening crunch, the weapon connected with the monster’s snout, and it reeled back in agony.

Oh, thank god—I was saved.

“Get the village chief out of here, now!” the goblin hunter yelled. I nodded, grabbed the village chief’s arm, and yanked her to her feet. Surprisingly enough, the village chief just followed along with me, all the color drained from her face. No way in hell was I letting that wyvern get its claws on her.

“I’m leaving the village chief in your hands!” the hunter shouted before turning back to face the wyvern. What a guy. He reminded me of my old karate teacher from Okinawa who took me in way back when. Not that I got to know my savior that well…because those were the last words he ever spoke. He wasn’t careless, he wasn’t stupid. He was just one man up against a creature with the strength to dominate the skies.

The next moment, the wyvern unleashed a thunderous roar. Raw and powerful, it emanated pure rage. There was a magic to it, I was sure. Something to make your head freeze up. When I turned back to look at the goblin, he was completely frozen in place, arms still raised as if mid-assault.

But it was over. The wyvern sank its dreadful claws into the goblin hunter, spread its enormous wings wide, and took off into the sky.

The magic from the roar seemed to wear off for Wak’wakgoro, who readied his bow as he shouted an order to the rest of the hunters: “Don’t let it get away! Fire!”

All too late. The loosed arrows traced an arc through empty sky before falling to the ravaged ground.

The wyvern climbed higher into the air, circling the village just once before disappearing toward the mountains far away beyond the Apegut Forest.

For the first time, I was invited into the village chief’s manor.

As for the village chief herself, she was so shocked by the wyvern attack that she couldn’t even walk by herself. Gimul had tried to lend her a hand, but she refused him. In a hushed voice she insisted that I do it.

Probably because she lost control of her bladder out of fear. As she crumpled to her knees, watching the wyvern carry off the goblin hunter, a yellow puddle formed around her. I imagine she hadn’t wanted her son to touch her after that. I didn’t think it mattered—Gimul had already seen it, after all—but asking for my help instead of his was probably her last-ditch effort to keep some shred of pride.

But if it was a matter of pride, why was she okay with me touching her? Maybe because she didn’t even consider me human, what with me sitting at the very bottom of the social ladder.

“Three dead, one gravely injured, and one missing. There was also one cow killed,” the village chief said, falling back into her role and pretending that she definitely did not piss, and, in fact maybe you were the one who pissed. Anyway, our missing villager was the goblin who had been carried off by the wyvern, the leader of the hunters: Saki’cho.

The gathering included Wak’wakgoro and the hunters, the top brass of the village, and those who worked in the chief’s manor. The only reason I was included was because I carried the village chief home.

I leaned against a wall in the corner of the room, fiddling with the shortsword Ossandra had given me as my marriage present.

“We need to decide on a course of action,” said the village chief. “Wak’wakgoro, is it possible to rescue Saki’cho?”

“If you’re asking if we can get him back alive,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “then no, that’s impossible.”

“Can we recover his remains?”

“It depends on if we can reach the wyvern’s nest.”

The thing was, the wyvern hadn’t attacked us at first. It just wanted to much on some cow. It only got hostile when we interrupted it, which was probably why it carried off Saki’cho—to get a sort of revenge. The other villagers weren’t thinking about its motives, and just wanted to get him back. I got where they were coming from, though, and I felt for that.

“Once a wyvern acquires a taste for people, it means they are sure to attack again. Isn’t that right, Wak’wakgoro?”

“Right.” He forced his words through gritted teeth. “We can’t let it get away with this.”

“It’s an animal. Anyone could become a target, including the children of our village. We must prevent that from happening at all costs.”

“Even if we gather all the people we can from the village and surrounding settlements, I’m afraid it won’t be enough. I’ve never seen such a massive male.”

Cassandra’s father lost his life trying to use traps to take down a desperate wyvern, one who was just encroaching on human territory because it didn’t have enough prey for the winter. If a hunter was up against that kind of weakened creature, or a female, or perhaps a younger wyvern, then maybe they’d have a chance to win with traps and clever tactics.

But it was a completely different story when it came to a male who’d already lived for a century, maybe more. A human-made trap could only do so much against a beast like that, and when a hundred years of hungry scales and teeth came flying at you? What could anybody do against that?

The village chief sat back in her armchair. “Gimul,” she said.

“At your service.”

“Take a horse to town as soon as possible. Request adventurers. We need reinforcements.”

“Understood.”

It wasn’t a problem that a single village could handle, and she knew it.

With a nod, Gimul made to leave the room. On his way out, he stopped and whispered to me in a low voice—just when I was mid-scratch on Little Shuta. “I have no right to ask you this, but make sure the chief…make sure my mother doesn’t do anything reckless.”

“Aye, aye, sir. She’ll be good and protected.”

“Tch. Don’t get too full of yourself.”

I didn’t know if he was trying to ask me a favor or pick a fight, but I wished he’d make up his damn mind. At least he left the room, probably for the stables.

“As we wait for the adventurers to arrive,” said the village chief, “we will remain alert. Post a lookout on top of the village tower to keep an eye on our surroundings. The minutiae are yours, Wak’wakgoro.”

“Understood, chief.”

“We will also hold funerals for those who perished in the attack. Melia, go tell the other villagers that we shall make arrangements as soon as possible.”

“Of course, Miss Alexandricia,” said a servant. She bowed and headed for the exit, but not before giving me a silent look just like Gimul had all those ages ago. I happened to be scratching my ass, I’ll admit, but that hardly seemed necessary.

More importantly, I knew that the village chief’s name was Alexandricia. It was…an impressive number of syllables.

“And as for you, Shooter—”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“You seem to be fine despite the fact that you’re covered in blood. How are your wounds?”

“Huh?” Covered in what?

“Hm?”

So hey, I was covered in blood. I guess I hadn’t noticed it because of all that adrenaline, but at some point I went from not having a huge bloody gash in me to having a very big, extremely bloody gash across my chest. Somehow. The wyvern hadn’t even touched me! Also, Oh my god oww holy shit it hurts!

“I can only apologize,” she said sheepishly. “That was my fault.”

I was rushed to the only church in the village to see to my wounds. How had I gotten them? Simple.

When I pushed the village chief away from the wyvern, her sword ended up slashing me across the chest. So lame. I hadn’t done a thing in the wyvern fight, and in the process I slashed myself open.

Hey, at least there was no prolonged hospital visit. This being a fantasy world, a pastor and a deacon at the church could apparently use holy magic to patch me up. The deacon in particular was supposed to be an expert at the stuff, curing lacerations and flesh wounds whenever the villagers needed his help.

I was rolled in with the other wounded hunters from the wyvern fight, and I found myself spread out on a bed in the church.

“I thought you looked fine before despite all the blood,” said the village chief, “and it seems it really was only the one gash on you. I shouldn’t have been worried after all.”

Despite her words, I could see Alexandricia tearing up a little. This was a woman with enough mental fortitude to completely ignore the fact that she wet herself in front of me, but here she was shedding a tear over me getting hurt. There really were some cute parts to her, deep down.

“Well,” I said, “the deacon’s already patched me up, thanks to you.”

“Yes. We’re going to need warriors like you, so I’m glad to see your wounds weren’t serious.”

Very sweet. Then she was done, walking to the bedridden hunter right next to me, and using the same concerned tone on him. Just when I thought she was really worried for me, too. It was all lip service, another pitch-perfect performance from the chief of the village. Blegh.

“Seems like your wounds have all healed up,” said the deacon. “You’re free to leave now.”

“Thanks for taking care of me.”

“You may feel like a bit lightheaded from loss of blood, so make sure to eat plenty of meat to get your strength back. Also, it pains me to inform you that, well…”

“Yes?”

“Your vest was positively soaked with blood. Far too unsanitary to keep around or for you to even wear. We took the liberty of disposing of it.”

Slashed open and once again in the buff, I started on my way home.

As I left the clinic that was connected with the church, I found Cassandra and Wak’wakgoro waiting just outside.

Wak’wakgoro jumped to attention. “Hey, they let you out already?”

“It wasn’t a very deep cut. Closing it with healing magic pretty much did the trick.”

“Gotcha. You’re one of the lucky ones, then.”

As Wak’wakgoro and I talked, Cassandra stared at me with an expression of concern.

“Why is she here too?”

“I told her to come. Well, kinda. When I told her that they took you to the church to get healed up after the wyvern, she got all panicked. Rushed right out to come see you.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, turning to her. “I didn’t mean to trouble you.”

“No, it was no trouble,” she said, casting her eyes downward. Wow. She was actually worried for me this time!

I gave Wak’wakgoro a nod. “I’m sure she couldn’t just sit around when thinking about what happened with her dad.”

“Um, well,” she started.

“Don’t worry, Cassandra. Some wyvern won’t do me in so easily. In fact, I wish all those other amateurs could’ve just stayed out of the way. Flailing all over the place, making it so much harder for the real professionals,” I joked.

Cassandra wasn’t laughing. “I see.”

Annihilated by my wife. Wifenihilated. “Uh. Yup.”

“Is Ossandra all right?” she asked. “He was with you for the fight, wasn’t he? I heard some people were injured. Killed, even.”

Of course she wasn’t worried about me. I wasn’t happy about it, but I tried my best to explain things as nicely as I could manage. “Yeah, he’s totally fine. He was holed up in the forge the whole time. He did get hurt when he fell over after I grabbed a spear to, you know, risk my life to fight the deadly murderous wyvern, though.”

“He’s fine? Oh, thank goodness!”

Totally head over heels. I didn’t complain. It was great that he was fine! I was only just a little terribly depressed! As for Wak’wakgoro, he took a different tone.

“Hey,” he said, taking me aside, “you just going to let your wife worry for another guy like that? C’mon, man up!”

“I mean, they are cousins. They’ve known each other pretty much their whole life, so they’re basically childhood friends, right?”

Back in my world, childhood friends falling in love with each other was a classic bullshit fantasy thing. All very well, except I was actually living in a bullshit fantasy thing, so who was I to get in the way? Even if something about it rubbed me the wrong way, I was certain that they harbored feelings for one another.

I put on my fake smile and tried to be Considerate for My Wife. Like an adult.

“I bet Ossandra’s still at the forge right now,” I said to her. “Want to go see him?”

“No, that’s all right. More importantly, what happened to your clothes?”

“Oh, you mean the vest? The deacon said it was unsanitary and tossed it. I’m sorry,” I said with an apologetic bow.

“It’s just a vest,” she whispered softly. “I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

How sweet.

Wait.

Hold up, was she being nice to me?

***

The funerals for the three dead villagers proceeded at the village’s communal graveyard. We offered silent prayers to the fallen as the pastor recited his holy scriptures. But there were only a dozen or so people at the gathering. The dead had fought to protect us all, so you’d think more people would care, but it was only the village chief, the families of the victims, and fellow hunters. We hunters really were hated.

I guess there was another reason: the village chief had ordered all livestock to be returned to their barns, as well as for the villagers to not travel too far from their homes. But they could’ve at least showed up for the funeral. Even an outsider like myself and my wife came to pray for the departed. Absolutely heartless.

Also, Shuta Jr. was chafing all weird, so I had to shift his position a bit to focus on the grieving.

It was customary to wear crimson red scarves at funerals in this world. It was a sign of mourning, and people wore them until the departed were reborn into their next life. As I listened to the pastor read on, I listened for more talk of being born into new worlds. Maybe I’d ask him more about their fantasy mythos when I had the time. It could wait. For now I wanted blood. Wyvern blood, specifically, for the three hunters in caskets and the one carried off.

When the funeral services ended, I started heading home with Cassandra when the village chief called out to me.

“You—you look unsatisfied. Is it the other villagers? I bet you’re upset that they didn’t show up for the funeral rites.”

“No, not exactly,” I said. “It’s more complicated than that. I’m sure they’ve got their reasons.”

“Everyone has reasons. Today it’s an old tale, one that says a wyvern pursues its prey with ferocious tenacity, even after death.”

“They’re worried the wyvern may come back for the corpses of the hunters.”

“Mere rumor, but they fear it all the same.”

Disaster spreads its tendrils through the atmosphere. And I guess proximity to damage is like being close to the disaster itself. Like pollution. Not to mention that the dead were hunters, and who cared about hunters? Maybe the villagers were happy to be rid of a nuisance.

“Why,” I started, and realized it was too late to go back on my question, “does everyone hate hunters so much, anyway?”

“It was the efforts of myself and my husband, the previous village chief, that paved the way for the development for this village,” said the village chief. “Hunters and woodcutters lived on these lands before we arrived.”

“Is that right?” I asked, turning to Cassandra.

“Yes. My father hunted in the Apegut Forest even before this village was built.”

“Eudora was an exceptional hunter,” said Alexandricia. “The same thing can be said for Saki’cho and the other hunters who lost their lives yesterday.” I supposed Eudora was Cassandra’s father, then. “As far as the villagers who colonized this place are concerned, the hunters are strangers. Foreigners. I’m sure they’ll blame the hunters for not finishing off the wyvern too.”

The thought made me furious. “That’s awful! What are we supposed to do against a monster like that?”

Silly question. That was the point. We were scapegoats.

“All I know is that things won’t calm down until the wyvern is taken care of. In fact—” The village chief gave a short cough before tucking her hair behind her ear—an ear that happened to be unusually pointed. Oh god. She was an elf, right? A hot elven knight who was also the ultra-capable village chief—kill me now, Alexandricia!

“The other night,” she continued, “the owner of the dead cow—Gintanen—filed a complaint with me. She stormed in and asked me who would compensate her, and what she was supposed to do about feeding the rest of the cows when she wasn’t even allowed to let them outside.”

It seemed that the village normally let the cows and sheep roam free to graze and eat whatever they could find. Now that the livestock were stuck in their barns, the expense of hay fell to their owners.

Even though the wyvern was the cause, the blame was spreading to the hunters too. Strangers or outsiders, the villagers hated them both. Hunters were both, to them. Old Gintanen was a great example of that type.

“As chief of this village, I have a duty to eliminate that wyvern.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“If I don’t, then my command over the village will falter, and the people will rise against me.”

“Sure, that could happen.” I didn’t know exactly how to respond, so I just said whatever came to mind as I looked at her.

At times like this, when she wanted something, the village chief tried to hide behind my back a little. It would have been cute if she was doing it because she trusted me, but nope. She was definitely trying to get out of my sight. Still, I thought, it’d be a liiiittle cute if she grabbed my sleeve while trying to hide, right? Except, wait, no sleeves. Or pants. Oh god, I was still naked. Oof. Maybe she could grab my scarf? Or even…Shuta Jr.?

That thought made Shuta Jr. act right up, so I covered him with both hands and tried to play it off with a smile. “I’ll be sure to make myself useful in any way possible.”

“Good. I’m expecting great things from you, warrior from another land. Now, have you seen Wak’wakgoro?”

“Yeah, he should be keeping watch on top of the tower. I think there’s another guy up there with him, too.”

The three of us turned to look up at the old stone tower, the highest building in the village. Weird to think that they’d thrown me in a jail cell there, and that it had been where I met my wife. Nostalgic, even, to remember how I watched her take a dump. Or, uh, watched her take a dump for the first time, I guess.

Wak’wakgoro and the surviving hunters took turns looking out from the platform at the top of the tower. In the event of another wyvern attack, they would ring a bell to alert everyone. Wyverns were usually active during the day, so lookout duty began at the break of dawn and ended at sunset.

After tallying the dead and wounded, we found only eight hunters were still in good health, myself included. Five of them had shown up for the funeral. All looked coldly furious, ready to take vengeance upon the beast who caused this tragedy.

“I believe the adventurers from town will arrive later tonight or early morning tomorrow,” said the village chief. “Could you pass that message on to Wak’wakgoro for me?”

“Has Gimul come back, then?”

“No, he sent a messenger pigeon before he left the town. He’s coming back to the village as quickly as he can.”

“Understood. I’ll tell Wak’wakgoro.” Cassandra and I bowed our heads as we saw the village chief off, but I couldn’t resist asking one last question.

“Excuse me, but—you wouldn’t happen to be an elf, would you?”

“Oh! Is it the ears? Sorry to disappoint you, but no—I’m half-goblin. Just a hybrid with human and goblin parents.”

Well. That was unexpected. “Um, a-a hybrid?”

“He he. My apologies for not being an elf.”

“No, no, it’s all fine!” Or maybe it wasn’t so unexpected at all. She was unfailingly kind to the woodcutters and us hunters, after all. So, Alexandricia had goblin blood in her veins.

The adventurers arrived in town before the break of dawn. I expected a regular pack of tabletop-gaming heroes, but nah. Fully decked out in chainmail, they looked more like a squad of Vikings than adventurers to me.

They carried a whole assortment of weapons. I’m talking spears and halberds, strange polearms with what looked like crossbows attached to the ends, and even giant nets and bear traps. So much for permission from the governor; the king and adventurer’s guild clearly gave these guys special dispensation to use as many bear traps as they wanted. Broadswords hung from their waists, weapons focused on durability over short-term deadliness.

They could almost be mistaken for a band of mercenaries by their appearance, and that probably wasn’t far off. Mercenaries occasionally got involved in disputes between territories, after all. But just like hunters, adventurers made their real living slaying monsters like wyverns. The big difference was in strategy. Hunters took time to set traps, using their knowledge of the land to pursue their prey. Adventurers, on the other hand, relied on pure, brute strength. Also, while hunters took advantage of bows and arrows to snipe from a distance, adventurers were all about getting get up close and personal. How promising.

“You want to use the bodies as wyvern bait?” Wak’wakgoro roared.

The sun hadn’t even truly risen as the leader of the adventurers finished explaining their secret plan to all of us. We gathered in front of the village chief’s place as Wak’wakgoro continued, snarling with rage. “Are you trying to desecrate the dead?!”

His casual friendliness was gone. I could hardly blame him. The adventurers wanted to dig up our fallen comrades and leave them rotting in an empty part of the village.

“That’s right,” said a tall, middle-aged adventurer. “A hunter like yourself should already know how wyverns fixate on the prey they’ve killed. It’ll come back for them. They always do.”

“Sure, everyone says that, but how do we know it’s true?” Wak’wakgoro snapped.

“Oh, it’s true. We’ve got plenty of firsthand experience with this particular wyvern, so believe me. Believe us.”

“But…but those are our fallen brethren you’re talking about! We can’t just hand them over to you like it’s nothing! Village chief, tell them!”

Wak’wakgoro turned to Alexandricia, but she said nothing. She shut her eyes tightly, as if deep in thought.

“Is it because they’re goblins? Is that it? And how are we supposed to explain this to their families? You come in and boss everyone around, but this cost falls on us—on the people who live here!”

The adventurer sighed. “I know we’re asking for a lot. But this is the only way to guarantee we take down the wyvern. Just think, are we supposed to tromp into the wyvern’s own territory and kill it? Do you know how many days we’d need to prepare for that? How long and drawn out the battle would be?”

“I know that. It’s just…it’s all so inhumane.”

“The longer we wait, the more victims that monster claims. If our client—if your village chief—rejects this plan, we’ll follow her orders and think of another, but…”

The village didn’t have time for another plan. Not when we lived in constant fear of that ruler of the skies. It had been a few days since it last raided the village, and no one knew when hunger would bring it back for another meal.

“It’s fine, ain’t it?” A voice broke into the conversation as Wak’wakgoro and the adventurers glared at each other. It was a girl wearing a cloak with a longbow strapped to her back. “I’m sure the guys who bit it would understand. I’d be more than happy to give up my own dead body for something like this. I mean, it’s not like a bunch of corpses are gonna complain. They’re dead. Who cares?” She broke into raucous laughter.

Wak’wakgoro and the other hunters scowled at her. “Who the hell invited this drunken bum?”

“I thought we might be a bit short on help,” said the village chief. “And she does have the skills to help us, here.”

The goblin hunters whispered to one another about the girl. I had a lot of questions myself—who was this Cloak-a-hontas? Was she famous or something?

“Well, there you have it, village chief,” said the middle-aged adventurer. “That girl agrees, so do you think you can convince the others? We don’t want to do this either, but we need to take this wyvern down as fast as possible. I guarantee you it’s the best plan we’ve got.”

The adventurers turned toward the village chief. The best plan they’ve got. Hearing that from a group of fully armed adventurers meant something. Their years of battle were practically etched into their faces, and any exposed bit of their skin was covered in scars. They were right. Everyone could see it.

The village chief’s words cut through the silence.

“Very well. I approve your proposition. I will find a way to convince the families of our fallen.”

Wak’wakgoro balked. “But chief, are you sure about this?”

“Wak’wakgoro, we will not wait for the wyvern to steal our buried comrades. We should be the ones to unearth them. If anything should go wrong with this plan, I will take responsibility for the consequences of my actions. I’m willing to bet everything on this, whether it be my titles—” a bitter look crossed her face “—or my head.” And with a wave of her hand, she dismissed us. The meeting was over.

It wasn’t just the adventurers who joined us. Hunters from all the other settlements within the village chief’s jurisdiction trickled in to join the assault against the wyvern. The village boasted a population of over six hundred people, but the other settlements were much smaller, each having no more than five to seven families.

Around ten hunters total came from the other settlements, none of which were very far away. Add that to the other hunters from the village, the adventurers, and me, and our wyvern extermination squad barely broke thirty people.

The just-buried bodies of our hunters were dug up once more and placed in the open field where the wyvern had gone after that cow. The village chief had gone to each family of the bereaved and explained the plan, told them why we needed their bodies—as bait. Surprisingly enough, they agreed without a word.

“Why do you think the families said yes so easily?”

I couldn’t understand it, so I asked Cassandra as we stood together on lookout duty atop the stone tower. We stood with our backs to each other, staring out in opposite directions. I couldn’t see the expression on her face, but I could hear the sadness in her voice as the breeze carried her answer to me.

“They’re afraid,” she said faintly. “If they refuse, you see, then they might not be able to live in this village anymore.”

“Oh. Is…is that the reason you decided to be my wife?”

Cassandra didn’t answer. I don’t think she had to.

“I came in out of nowhere and just…wrecked everything for you, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. I’m fine with this.”

“Don’t worry. Once we’re finished with all this wyvern stuff and things start going back to normal, I’ll make a better living for us. Put in some real work this time.”

“Um. Please, just don’t overdo it, all right?”

I turned to look at her, but even looking at her still seemed to make her so unhappy. Of course it did. I wasn’t her childhood friend Ossandra. I didn’t fit the trope at all.

Then, all at once, Cassandra clung to my arm.

“Whoa there. It’s still the middle of the day, you know? If the village chief finds us flirting on the job, then—”

“No, it’s not that! Look, over there—that black cloud of seeds in the air!”

A black cloud of what? But I looked to where she was pointing. Had to strain my eyes a bit, but eventually I saw it. Some black, grainy blip far off in the distance. A stealth bomber?

“I can see it clearer now—” and she wasn’t quiet or reserved anymore, but pulling on my arm, shouting “—it’s the wyvern!” What a pair of eyes. She really was the daughter of a hunter.

“Ah crap, seriously? It’s started!”

I rushed to the alarm bell on the tower and swung the rope like mad, again and again, sending deafening clangs across the village. The wyvern extermination squad hurried to their positions near our trap.

In my heart, I made a promise to Cassandra: This thing was going down. Right here, right now.

***

Breath caught in my throat as I watched the wyvern soar closer and closer to the village. I snuck a peek at my wife beside me, whose face was filled with horror—the monster was gigantic. She latched onto my arm and wouldn’t let go. It wasn’t so bad a feeling, having someone rely on you. Kinda made you feel like you were reliable.

All right. It was time to figure out how to do everything I could in the battle without dying horribly. This was my chance to put them all in my debt…somehow.

“I’m pretty sure it’s safe up here,” I told Cassandra, “so stay and keep a lookout. If the wyvern tries to fly off, tell us where it’s going.”

“A-all right. What are you going to do, Shooter?”

“I’m going down with the rest. I’ll show them what I can do with this here spear, yeah?”

“Um, all right, but don’t do anything too reckless.”

“What, are you worried about me?”

“I, uh…”

“Okay, I can’t even deal with how cute that is, it’s amazing, but how about we do this after we kill the ruler of the skies?” I flashed her a smile.

And there it was again, that familiar look of utter distaste. Just when I thought she was really worried for me. She was all about Ossandra. How did I keep forgetting that? We barely knew each other, after all.

“Right. Okay, uh. Bye.” With that, I ran down the spiral staircase of the tower, hoping that somewhere in the long run I’d forget how shitty I’d made myself feel.

When I emerged from the stone tower, there it was. It touched down in a vacant part of the village, stretching its neck from side to side, glowering at its surroundings. No trace of fear in its eyes, in its movements, anywhere. The village was part of its own territory now, I suppose. Before long, it noticed the hunters’ bodies. They were placed right where our last battle had occurred.

The hunters and adventurers of the wyvern-extermination squad hid in the houses and haystacks surrounding the bodies. I’d seen them running to their positions from up on the tower, and while I technically should have still been at my post as a lookout, Cassandra was in charge of that now. I dashed to my hiding spot, the place I was assigned to hide if the wyvern hit us when I wasn’t on lookout duty.

Deathly silence. The hunters and adventurers bided their time, waiting for their chance to jump out and begin the ambush. I could see a few hunters hiding behind houses, peering out from time to time to watch the wyvern.

I crept along with my back to the wyvern, slowly making my way toward my assigned haystack hiding spot. Inside of it was my hunting spear and shortbow, as well as the second spear I “borrowed” from the forge during the last attack. I kind of, technically, definitely forced Ossandra to let me keep using it, and I knew the dwarf running the forge was pissed about it.

Well, tough. If I was going to show off my spear work, I couldn’t do that without an actual spear. My hunter’s spear was all right, but it wasn’t built for wyverns. It was short and easy to handle, but I needed reach. Longer weapons were my specialty, and a long spear was the easiest one to handle.

I crawled into the haystack and pulled my spear toward me, keeping an eye on the wyvern all the while. My heart pounded like crazy. Everything felt so much tenser than when I first saw that monster, but, I mean, of course it did. I completely underestimated it before. Just because my father-in-law had taken one down by himself, I thought I’d be able to do the same.

Now it was different. My whole body trembled, and it wasn’t because I was naked in the cold. This was fear.

No matter how fast the wyvern was in the air, it moved more sluggishly while stomping to the hunters’ rotting bodies.

I swallowed. Hard. It just tore into them. What a fine meal for the bastard. The once quiet air filled with sickening crunches, cracks, slurps. I grit my teeth—when were they going to set off the damn trap? The bodies of the deceased hunters sat on a wooden platform, and beneath it lay a huge pit. That platform worried me. I was afraid it would snap under its weight like a bunch of twigs, but it held. Despite its size, the wyvern was apparently much lighter than it looked. Made sense. You need to be light to fly. Hollow bones and such, like birds. That would explain why a simple reinforced wooden door was enough to hold it.

If the three corpses were taken off the platform, however, the wooden trap door would collapse and drop the wyvern into the pit below. Then the adventurers lying in wait nearby would throw spiked chains over it, ensnaring the monster.

And now it was time.

The wyvern hadn’t shown the slightest concern for its surroundings while tearing into the corpses. When it lifted them from the platform, on the other hand…the trap sprung, and the wood collapsed beneath the beast, as if the devouring mouth of hell were opening beneath it.

With a dull roar, the wyvern plummeted into the hole. The adventurers’ countless bear traps awaited it in the depths, all of which were lashed to spiked chains that coiled around the wyvern. It was the perfect plan.

The moment it fell, the squad sprang into action.

“Fire!” When the leader of the adventurers gave the command, the archers lying in wait at a distance rained arrows. At the same time, several adventurers wielding spiked chains threw their weapons high, arcing in the air and coming right down on the beast.

“Close in!” the leader barked.

At that, adventurers wielding those strange crossbow-fitted spears charged. The king of the skies was trapped in a pit while spiked chains dug into its body, and countless bear traps snapped shut on its legs. It let out an earthshaking scream.

The crossbow-spear users were in range now, firing bolts into its face as its head thrashed in agony. Strings dangled from the end of the fired spears—the bolts loosed when you pulled them. Interesting.

I dodged the wyvern’s flailing tail and moved in closer. Now, when I say I’ve got some experience as a stuntman, I know that sounds impressive. The truth is, though, that people like me are invaluable when there aren’t enough real stuntmen to go around only because we can take a nasty beating. I’ve been flipped around in cars, kicked by horses, fallen off castle walls, and been sent tumbling down a flight of stairs, so I was pretty confident in my ability to tumble out of harm’s way if I had to. I don’t know how effective I could be with stabbing proper, but getting a hit in before bolting? That I could do, if I had the guts to go for it. There were no rehearsals here, after all.

I let out a long, ragged shout to pump myself up as I ran. Maybe it sounded stupid, maybe not, but it was for me. A big badass barbarian scream to keep me going. I tightened my grip on my spear and thrust it forward with everything I had.

Face, neck, tail, whatever—I wasn’t aiming for anywhere specific. I’m no veteran hunter, not some experienced adventurer. I’m a serial part-timer from another world. I only had one mission here: to get a hit on this thing anywhere I could.

My spear pierced straight into its belly. Hardly stuck around to see what happened then—just pulled out and ran away, as fast as I could. Other people nearby used the same strategy, getting a hit on the wyvern with their spears before beating a hasty retreat.

In a fit of pain and rage, the wyvern started thrashing at everything and everyone. It managed to get half its body up out of the pit and flap its enormous wings, sending several hunters toppling off their feet. I barely rolled out of reach and readied my spear at once. That was something I picked up from my time working on samurai films, where you had to break your fall while still holding your weapon. (Here’s to the stunt industry, folks.)

I took a moment. Assessed the situation. Could I get another hit in? I took aim at the membrane on its wing and thrust up.

“The wyvern’s coming out from the trap! Everyone, fall back!”

As I heard those words, I finished my second hit and once more rolled away from the wyvern. I beat a retreat with everyone else. The hunter next to me had fallen over, so I stopped for just a second to get them back on their feet. Right then, the wyvern crawled up out of the hole, bleeding and screaming with rage.

The roar it let out was unlike anything I had heard before—or, maybe I heard it once before, right before the monster seized Saki’cho. Just like then, everyone in earshot froze on the spot. The archers’ last volley of arrows, fired seconds before the roar, rained down on the wyvern like hail.

It was the final straw. Unwilling to take any more abuse, the wyvern shook its body free of the gore-covered spears, arrows, chains, and other weapons. It struggled and stumbled, trying to get airborne, each pained flap of its wings sending pummeling gusts of wind everywhere. It limped along, readied itself, took a running start, and rose into the air…retreating into the distance.

It left behind only the mangled, rotting corpses of our hunters and countless pools of its own blood.

Alexandricia and Gimul were on standby inside the village chief’s manor. When they finally came back outside, the adventurers were examining the trap hole, assessing the situation.

“It managed to pull all those wired bear traps off itself, but it definitely took some damage to its legs,” the leader of the adventurers reported.

“Take a look at this,” said the village chief. “Looks like it lost a talon.”

“That thing’s huge. I knew it was one of the biggest males I’ve ever seen, but I never thought it could be that big. My eyes weren’t playing tricks after all.”

The village chief nodded. “I saw one of the arrows strike it in the eye, too. It can’t have gotten far.”

“Did you see what direction it went?” the adventurers asked us hunters once they climbed out of the hole.

I hadn’t, but my wife had.

“Um! It went to the left side of Apegut Forest. It didn’t go back toward its nest.” Everyone turned to stare as Cassandra explained. She was squeezing my arm as she talked, and—look, I know she wasn’t finally warming up to me and that I was pretty much the only person she could lean on for support, but by God I was going to take what I could get.

“Then we’ll put together a search party,” said the village chief. “It can’t have flown far after a beating like that.”

“Yeah.” An adventurer frowned thoughtfully. “Also, someone had the guts to land a blow on its left wing. Who was that?”

That would be me.

“Yes, a good move on their part,” the village chief mused. “It was an agile, absolutely naked hunter, if I recall.”

Yup, that’s me. Right here. The only naked hunter in the bunch, and everyone was finally looking at him. Naturally.

“Oh,” cried the village chief, “so that was you, Shooter! Certainly fitting for a warrior such as yourself.” She just lavished me with praise. When the other adventurers heard her, their confusion over how I was (or more accurately, wasn’t) dressed turned into wry, appreciative smiles.

“Hey, so that was you?”

“Quick thinking, man.”

The pride on the village chief’s face was clear as she continued. “He’s one of our village’s hunters, and was a warrior before he joined us.”

“But he didn’t finish it off,” someone pointed out. “Wounded wyverns are way worse. It’s gonna be pretty much impossible getting to it now.”

And just like that, the villagers once more turned their scornful stares on me, as if they wanted to know why I hadn’t just killed the damn thing. Cool, love to not be ostracized for literally twenty seconds.

“Er.” The village chief cleared her throat. “Right. Then let’s hurry to send a squad to find it.”

“How should we search for it, then? Split into small teams?”

“Yes, small teams of three. One adventurer, one hunter from the village, and one hunter from the surrounding settlements.”

The village chief could tell what the other villagers were thinking. It was time to bring the meeting to an end, and quickly.

***

“Hey, you. Come with me.”

As we were deciding how the search parties would be split, one of the hunters from the other settlements singled me out. It turned out they lived on their own, and usually ended up going solo on their hunting missions.

Their name was Nishka. They wore their violet hair short, which is very fantasy universe and usually gives you an active, sprightly vibe. Also, they had an eye patch, maybe from a hunt?

They had a badass look for somebody who had to be in their late teens. They wore an old yellowish blouse with a leather vest over it, and something that looked like…medieval fantasy hot pants? Medieval fantasy leather hot pants? And the way they wore their gloves and leggings made it seem like they were wearing a garter.

God, fine, they looked stupid hot. She looked super hot, because, if it wasn’t obvious already, Nishka was a girl. Though the village chief’s ears may have ended in a slight point, Nishka’s were even longer.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“You see anyone else around? You’re the one who ripped right through that thing’s wing, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re kind of a weird one, huh,” she said as she placed her hands on her hips. At that moment, her vest pushed her chest up with a jiggle that no mortal could ignore. This girl was just packed with, uh. Attitude. Huge, rockin’ attitudes.

Nishka slid in close and wrapped her arm around me.

“So, here’s the plan,” she whispered, “we’re gonna go out and take care of this ourselves.”

Here was how she described it to me: After the search party groups were decided, they’d fan out into the Apegut Forest. Four or five of the village hunters were supposed to take point to act as guides, since they were most familiar with the lay of the land. They’d have new weapons now, something called a “spike.” Spikes were spears that had a spiral notch fashioned into their tips, and they were used to hunt only the biggest game. The spirals were laced with poison, and their tips would dig in the more the target resisted and tried to pull them out. Ugh, sure would’ve been nice to have those things earlier.

Not that we could’ve used them. Spirals apparently weighed a ton, so they couldn’t be used with a quick, uninjured target. In the first battle they were secondary weapons, never even picked up. Still, unwieldly as they were, they were perfect for striking a final blow.

“Those things are too heavy to drag around,” said Nishka “They’re basically useless. Anyway…Shooter, was it?”

“Yup, that’s me.”

“Can you handle any weapon you get your hands on?”

“For the most part, yeah. Spears and halberds for sure, and probably swords, too.”

I’d only used swords for kendo and staged fights, though. I took first place in a local sword-fighting competition once, but that was less a contest of deadly steel and more flailing around with inflatable toys.

“How about bows?” she asked.

“Bows? I can shoot a few arrows, if you really need me to.” And miss the broad side of a barn.

“That’s fine. I’ll be the one finishing it off, anyway.”

“Huh?”

“You look like you’ve got some muscles on ya, so I want you to take my bow. You blast it with arrows from a distance. I’ll follow up and make sure they hit.”

“But why would I be using your bow? Wouldn’t it be easier for you to use that instead of me?”

“That’s ’cause I’m gonna be focused on guiding the arrow to the target, dummy. Trying to make sure those arrows hit one after another after I’ve already shot ’em is friggin’ hard. That’s why you’re gonna be the one firing the arrows for me.”

“Uh…hmm.” I had no idea what she was talking about.

With that, Nishka and I broke off from the rest of the group and headed into the forest ourselves. Just as Nishka said, the other hunters acting as scouts headed to the left of the forest, where Cassandra had seen the wyvern flee. There was apparently a lake somewhere in that direction, off to the west of the village.

The other hunters and adventurers didn’t seem to be in any hurry. The monster would have lost a lot of blood from its wounds, and wyverns were diurnal. We had all night to find it. By morning, the search party’s net would have closed around the beast.

“But they’ve got to lug around those huge-ass spears, so I bet that’s just gonna make it harder for them to catch up to the thing,” said Nishka casually.

“Why do you think that?”

“You serious? It’s me, here. You know, Nishka? The Nishka! Somebody around here had to mention me, right?”

“I’m not from around these parts, so…”

“Tch, so that’s how it is. Saki’cho didn’t tell you anything about me?”

“I never got a chance to talk to Saki’cho.”

Following Nishka’s directions, we headed into the forest. We passed by the spot I’d set traps for the lynxes with Wak’wakgoro and moved on, trekking deeper and deeper into the trees. By the time the village chief noticed we went ahead, it would already be too late.

I was pretty confident in the work I turned in for that last battle, but I was also sure that the other hunters and adventurers were looking for their big break too. They might not be so keen on letting an outsider like me strike the final blow against the wounded wyvern.

Still, the long-eared hunter girl led the way, pressing on through the dense undergrowth.

“It’s almost like you know where the wyvern went.”

“’Course I know. This forest might as well be a garden to me.”

“Really?”

“Of friggin’ course! The hell do you think I am, anyway?”

“Rude? Foul-mouthed?”

“No, ya moron! What the hell are you on about?”

“A girl who somehow ended up a hunter, but you’ve got some good parts to you, too? And you’re built like a brick house?”

“Goddamn I have no idea what crap you’re spewing, ya—wait, are you covering your crotch?”

Hey, I was getting some good reactions out of her, so I couldn’t help teasing her a bit. And even if she was a little annoyed, my karate instincts told me that she was still all wary hunter. This long-eared hunter chick knew her stuff. I could sense it.

“How ’bout I tell you what my other name is?”

Oh, other name? Like Shadowolf? Or Bloodgun? Very edgy, and oh, look at that eye patch. I couldn’t wait to hear her DeviantArt-ass OC name.

Not that I said any of that out loud. “What is it?”

“They call me Scalesplitter. Nishka the Scalesplitter.”

“Scalesplitter, huh. That’s a pretty, uh, impactful name you got there.” Presumably not for scaling fish, so I held off on making a joke.

“I’ve hunted as many wyverns as I’ve seen winters since becoming a hunter. Those adventurers have some experience, but I’ve done this song and dance solo. I know everything there is to know about wyverns.”

“Which explains why you didn’t hesitate to go into the forest.”

“Yeah. It’s my home turf. No one is better at handling the wyverns here than me,” she said, flashing me a perfect pearly-white grin. It must’ve been different for her, then, to try hunting that thing in the village.

“So where do you think this wyvern headed off to?”

“Toward the lake. Your wife already told us, remember?”

“M-my wife?! Were you watching us back there?”

“Kinda hard not to. People tend to stick out when they stand arm-in-arm in public. Next time, try to keep it in your pan—er, I mean, cut down on the flirting, man.”

I hadn’t tried to flirt back there—Cassandra was the one who latched on to me when everyone looked at her. But, well, what was the point in protesting?

More importantly, this was (apparently) Nishka the Scalesplitter. The bow strapped to her back was about the size of your traditional Japanese longbow. Well-endowed as she was, I wondered if her chest got in the way when she was trying to shoot.

“That’s no shortbow, am I right?”

“Heh! As if! A shortbow wouldn’t do squat to a wyvern.”

“Looks like this one could even pierce its scales.”

“Bingo. We’re gonna take it down with one shot while it’s sleeping, and a shortbow isn’t enough for that.”

“Hold up, while it’s asleep?”

Nishka flashed me another wide grin. “Exactly. Did you know that wyverns can use magic?”

“They can? Even though they’re animals?”

“Doesn’t matter. Human, animal, whatever. If it’s alive, it has the potential to use magic. Basic laws of nature here, my man.”

“Oh! Is it like how if a wyvern lives long enough, it’ll turn into an elder dragon or something? Talk to adventurers, give quests, cast fireballs and such?”

“The hell are you talking about? You some innovative new kinda dumbass?” Nishka stabbed her spear into the ground and glared, exasperated. “Whatever. Look, that thing’s enormous, and it needs to eat a ton of food to keep itself going. If it needs to fly, then it has that much more weight it needs to drag around.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I mused, nodding.

“That’s why it goes after things like wooly mammoths or giant apemen. But those things are friggin’ huge too, so it can end up getting hurt if they fight back. That’s when the wyvern goes off and casts some kind of healing magic on itself. Don’t know how exactly, but we don’t know even half the stuff these things can do.”

Do a certain amount of damage and the monster runs off to cast a healing spell. Sounded pretty standard fantasy-RPG to me, even if I was wrong about my wyvern-dragon theory.

She continued. “There’s a cave near the lake big enough for a wyvern to crawl into and hide. That’s where this one goes to sleep and rest up.”

“It almost sounds like you already knew about it before all this happened.”

“’Cause I did. I know everything there is to know about this forest.”

“That right?”

“When we started building villages and stuff around here, we started gunning for the same prey as the wyverns and all the other guys in here. They got short on food, so they started leaving the forest. Going after more. You get me?”

Leaving the forest, going after more food, running into my wife’s dad. Killing him. Yeah, I got it. Nishka picked up her spear and started off again, so I hurried to follow after her.

“Now, you’ve got my bow. Just shoot it. Don’t worry about aiming, just let ’em loose with everything you’ve got.”

“Without aiming? That’s nuts!”

“Normally, sure. But I’ll be using magic to make it hit the wyvern. You just focus on using enough strength to pierce its scales. That makes it so we’re both putting in the same amount of work. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? You in?”

“Yeah, I’m in.”

“Good! We’re almost at the lake, so let’s head downwind.”

I swallowed, now on high alert as I followed after Nishka.

The injured wyvern was lying on its side near the bank of the lake. It occasionally let out a feeble growl, which was almost cute compared to the deafening roars from the battles before. Almost cute. Still terrifying.

“It’ll need to rest before using magic to heal its wing,” Nishka explained. “It’s going to wait a bit before attempting the regrowth.”

“How long will that be?”

“Half a day at most, maybe less. That’s why we need to take it out now. By the time tomorrow rolls around, it could be fully healed. Be careful, now. These things get wary when they’re about to go to sleep.”

None of the other search parties had shown up at the lake yet. Nishka was right to call this place her own private garden. She knew shortcuts none of the other local hunters could hope to find. Just like how Wak’wakgoro went after lynxes, wyverns seemed to be Nishka’s specialty.

“All right, no more talking. I’m leaving the bow to you, so get ready to fire when I give the signal.”

“Where should I aim?”

“The eyes. We’ll take away its vision, then aim for somewhere easier. After we pop an arrow into its other eye, we’ll go for its lungs and brain.”

“So we’re trying to gouge out its eye in one shot. Can you do it?”

“This isn’t a can-or-can’t situation, man. We’re going to do it, and that’s that.”

Nishka shoved her longbow and quiver into my arms. I took them with a nod.

“I’m damn good at wind magic, so just leave it all to me.”

“You’ve got to teach that to me sometime.”

“If we get the chance, maybe.”

With that, we dropped to the ground and crawled through a grassy plain. We were downwind from the wyvern, so it wasn’t able to smell us coming. It was a classic predator tactic, and Nishka the Scalesplitter was at the top of the food chain in this forest—if she wasn’t all bluster.

We squirmed along, flat on our bellies, pushing forward with our hands and knees. Nishka inched toward a good shooting spot and I followed right behind.

I found a boulder I could use for cover and hid, pulling an arrow from Nishka’s quiver. The tip looked like it had been hammered out of some kind of uneven rock. Obsidian, maybe? Nishka gave a satisfied nod as I examined it. I pulled out a few more arrows to have ready for a quick follow-up shot, just like I’d seen Wak’wakgoro do before.

Leaning against the boulder, I finally stood to peek around my cover. There were about one hundred and fifty feet between me and my target, though the size of the wyvern made it feel much closer. My gut instinct screamed that it could be just a hundred, maybe even fifty feet away. How was I supposed to line up my shot when I couldn’t even get the distance right? Still, I kept a firm grip. Pulled the bowstring taut.

Do it, Nishka signaled with her hands.

I let go. An amateur could have seen the power behind my arrow, even as it whistled through the air and way off course. Nishka muttered something to herself beside me. Wasn’t she supposed to be guiding this thing?

Then it happened: the arrow turned in mid-air, its point aimed right at the wyvern’s face. It was like she said—I was in charge of the bow and arrows, she was in charge of hocusing and pocusing them on course. You could call us a sniper and his magical spotter.

The arrow made a visceral squelching noise as it lodged in the wyvern. Well, it didn’t really make a noise, but my brain made one up to fill the odd silence. A brief silence, too, because the wyvern let out a gut-wrenching scream and began to writhe its head in pain.

“Next one, hurry!”

Obviously. I nocked the next arrow and let it fly. The king of the skies gave a roar that once more sent the very earth trembling as the arrow embedded in its head. Both arrows stuck firmly in each eye as the beast swung its head wildly, desperately, as it tried to survey a world it could no longer see. I readied my third arrow.

“All right, this time aim near the body. Doesn’t have to be exact. Not yet, steady…now!”

I loosed the arrow at Nishka’s command and again it found its mark, sinking into the wyvern. It got the lungs. The wyvern had left its stomach exposed as it thrashed about. Its belly was soft enough that the arrow lodged deep—much deeper than I expected.

The wyvern flipped over backward and collapsed with a thunderous boom. No flailing. Not this time. Before I knew it, Nishka dashed toward the barely breathing monster. She whipped her machete from her back and lunged for the wyvern’s neck.

I didn’t have time to worry about counterattacks, or failure, or any of that stuff. She just plunged the blade deep into its throat—this one last, greatest weak point—with all her might.

The king of the skies could offer no resistance. Its eyes gouged, its lungs pierced, the wyvern gave one last shuddering whimper before finally perishing.

A pool of blood spread out over the ground, spurting red and fresh from the wyvern’s severed artery. Before I even had time to take it all in, Nishka came over and snatched her bow from my hands, along with an arrow from her quiver. She turned her aim toward the sky and let the arrow fly straight up into the air.

“What was that?” As I asked, a loud whistling noise sounded out as the arrow sailed into the distance.

“A whistle-arrow. That your first time seeing one?”

“Yeah, it was.”

“It’s a signal. Shouldn’t be long before the other search parties follow it and get to us.”

Nishka retrieved her quiver and slung it over her back, then took out her machete and stabbed it into the wyvern, already starting to carve it up.

“Oh god, that reeks.”

“’Course it does. This thing doesn’t even brush its teeth, whaddya expect?”

She seemed totally unbothered as she plunged her machete into its guts over and over again, her massive attitudes bouncing all the while. Carving out the intestines was the basic first step when it came to prepping an animal after a successful hunt. Guts start going bad as soon as they’re out, so it’s best to just toss ’em. We fished the bodies of the dead hunters out of the wyvern as well.

Nishka had clearly earned the title of “Scalesplitter.” She was an old hand at carving up wyverns. Every dozen seconds or so came another huge splash of blood as she dug through the wyvern’s intestines with her machete. Her pretty face was smeared with blood to which she was utterly indifferent.

She took a chunk of meat from the wyvern and offered it to me. “What, you hungry?”

I wasn’t. I didn’t know if I’d ever be hungry again.

***

The battle against the wyvern had finally come to a close. Three hunters lost their lives in the initial fight, and two more were gravely injured in the second, eventually succumbing to their injuries. As Nishka and I dug through the wyvern’s intestines, we found the body of Saki’cho, the goblin leader of the hunters, bringing the total number of casualties up to six. The poor guy hadn’t even been fully digested.

In accordance with village tradition, the bodies were covered in clean cloths and placed inside coffins. The victims were all hunters, either from the village or the settlements located close by. The fact that one of the victims in the second attack was a young man from the top brass must have been a hard blow for the village.

It was the second funeral I attended in the new world, and this time the whole village was at the graveyard for the proceedings. Well, only the people who had the time to come attended, but that number still came to over a hundred. Even the adventurers showed up.

I stood with my wife and Ossandra; the three of us put our hands together in prayer. Cassandra and Ossandra clasped their hands in accordance with their religion, while my palms were pressed flat in true Buddhist fashion. What I prayed for, how we prayed, none of that mattered. We were there to honor the dead.

I stepped forward to help bury the fallen on behalf of our village.

Nishka was there too, standing off to the side quietly. She was out of her bloodstained clothes and wore her normal yellow blouse, vest, and hot pants. She wasn’t wearing her handguards or leather tights this time, but rather a pair of long boots.

As was customary, we all wore crimson-colored scarves. That day I learned the scarf’s purpose. The color was meant to evoke the image of blood. We the survivors inherited the blood of those who passed on and would carry their blood to the next generation. We had to. Or we would truly lose the departed, forever.

Instead of the usual scripture readings and prayers to the victims and the Goddess, the village chief began to speak.

“Though we may have lost many, I was glad to see our whole village unite as one in order to eliminate the wyvern threat,” she said, gazing at the attendees.

“‘Whole village’ my ass,” Nishka snarled. “These guys didn’t do jack.”

She had a point. Everyone was only concerned for themselves during the first attack, at most just complaining to the village chief. None of the other villagers even showed up to the first funeral.

Japanese society had shown me that being ostracized meant being ignored by everybody outside of only the most important occasions. This village really outdid us there. The only thing uniting these guys was their devotion to being gigantic assholes. Oh, but here they were, showing up to the second funeral! Probably because they saw the young man who died as one of their own. The other hunters could eat shit, I guess.

“I also offer my sincerest regrets for the loss of so many hunters, these indispensable servants of the village,” the village chief said, turning toward the hunters and our families. “Our work here is only halfway done. Hunters are essential to the development of our village—life would grind to a halt without them. That is why I will be looking to recruit new hunters from town, as well as more workers to assist in building up the village.”

Was she talking about replacing the dead hunters with new ones? And on top of that, recruiting more builders?

“Hmph, so she wants to bring more deadweight?” Nishka spat, just loud enough for Cassandra, Ossandra, and I to hear. “We don’t need more useless meatheads who’re all talk.”

Damn, that was a harsh way to put it. But then, as far as the hunters and their families were concerned, this just meant bringing in more people who didn’t understand hunters or what we did for the village. More people who would treat us like dirt.

The village by Apegut Forest was on the very edge of developed society. Maybe someday it would end up a hub for the region. But that would only be after decades of building and trade. Right now it was nothing more than a poor village. The newcomers would be from towns, from bigger cities. They’d spit on us just like the other villagers.

Nishka nodded—she must’ve seen the look of disgust on my face. “Yeah, I feel you,” she said. “The only ones who should act any kind of high and mighty are the ones ready to throw their lives on the line.” Cassandra and Ossandra gave me a shocked look, but they said nothing more.

Which was probably for the best, because the real shocking bit was coming right…now.

“I will be sending personnel from the village to gather the necessary people from town. To that end…Shooter!” the village chief cried. “I wish for you to act as the escort for this mission.”

“Hey, would you look at that?” Nishka said, grinning. “You’re going to be carrying that deadweight.” My wife and Ossandra were staring at me now as well.

“M-me?” I stammered.

“Yes, you. You haven’t seen anything outside the village beside the forest, correct? Think of it as a chance to broaden your horizons. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.” The village chief’s voice boomed with authority, and that was that. This was Alexandricia’s great order, and she’d given it to me.