Chương 20: Chapter 21: Iron (Late)

The eastern camp grew quieter after the Greywash Stalker died. Not calmer. Never calmer. The forests beyond the unfinished palisades still answered darkness with distant howls while patrol horns echoed through the Greywash mist often enough that most workers no longer paused at the sound. Yet something in the camp shifted after Bren, Wade, and I dragged the Stalker corpse back through the gates. People looked at me differently now. Not openly fearful. Not yet.

But labourers who once spoke casually around me now lowered their voices when I approached the trench fires. Guards watched my injured arm when they thought I was not paying attention. Even the workers hauling carcasses toward the skinning pits kept glancing toward the half-healed bite marks beneath the bandages wrapped around my forearm. The wound still hurt. That somehow made it worse.

I sat beside the southern trench fires on the morning after the hunt while Wade stripped sections of hide from the Greywash Stalker corpse nearby. Steam rose from the opened carcass into the winter air while thick pale blood pooled slowly through the mud beneath the skinning racks.

The beast looked smaller dead, still enormous, still wrong, yet the terrifying speed and intelligence vanished once the body stopped moving, leaving only scar tissue, muscle, bone, and hide waiting to be harvested like any other creature. Wade drove a hooked blade beneath the Stalker's shoulder hide with visible satisfaction.

"Saints alive. Feel this." I stepped closer reluctantly. The hide beneath Wade's knife felt thick as layered leather armour, dense enough that even partially skinned sections resisted folding naturally.

"That'll reinforce half the camp shields," the carpenter said.

"Maybe more." Bren crouched nearby sharpening spearheads against a whetstone while listening silently. Wade sliced another line through the hide.

"Assuming the rest of them don't tear the walls apart first."

"They'll try," Bren replied. The older guard finally looked up toward my bandaged arm.

"How's the bite?" I looked down at the wrapping.

"Hurts."

"Good." I frowned slightly.

"Good?" Bren returned to the spearhead.

"If it stopped hurting already, I'd be more concerned." Wade snorted quietly without looking away from the carcass.

"I'm already concerned." The carpenter sliced another section of hide free before finally glancing toward me directly.

"That arm should've been ruined." I looked down at the bandages. The wound beneath still bled occasionally through the wrappings, especially during heavy labour, yet the shredded flesh had partially sealed overnight in ways I did not fully understand. Torn muscle remained visible in places, but exposed bone no longer showed through the bite. Wrong. Even now I could not stop replaying the moment in my head. The Greywash Stalker biting through my arm. The surge of heat beneath my chest.

The sudden violent energy flooding through my body afterward. The beast had noticed it too, and that part lingered worst of all. Bren seemed to sense where my thoughts had gone.

"Energy surges happen near rank thresholds sometimes," the older guard said while returning to the spearhead.

"Especially when multiple abilities advance together." Wade grunted skeptically.

"Not like that."

"No," Bren admitted.

"Not usually." Silence settled briefly around the trench fires while rain drifted softly against the unfinished palisades nearby. Then Bren looked up again.

"How close are you?" I already knew what he meant.

"Everything except Skinning." Wade paused mid-cut.

"That's it?" I nodded once. The carpenter whistled softly beneath his breath.

"That fast." Bren corrected him quietly.

"Too fast." Nobody argued. The camp returned to work shortly afterward because survival left little room for reflection. The Greywash Stalker carcass became the centre of the entire eastern perimeter by midday. Labourers hauled sections of hide toward reinforcement pits while Wade organised workers around the claws, tendon, and support bones with almost scholarly focus.

"Don't waste that. Separate the shoulder plates. No, not there, you idiot, you'll split the grain." The carpenter seemed happier processing monsters than dealing with people. I spent most of the morning beside the skinning trenches and quickly discovered I hated Skinning. Timbercraft had eventually become rhythm. Toolsmith became logic. Even Guarded Blade now carried a strange structured flow beneath the discipline. Skinning remained ugly. There was no elegance to it. No clean understanding.

Just cutting, separating, peeling, stripping, preserving. Precision mattered constantly because careless cuts ruined usable hide and tendon, yet the work itself never stopped feeling crude beneath my hands. Worst of all, the progression crawled. Hours passed with almost no sense of advancement at all. By the afternoon, irritation had begun settling beneath my exhaustion. The camp needed hides. The walls needed reinforcements. I needed Skinning. Those thoughts increasingly became the same thing inside my head.

Bren noticed eventually.

"You're rushing." I sliced another section of tendon free harder than necessary.

"No."

"You are." The older guard crouched beside the carcass opposite me while rain tapped steadily through the pines overhead.

"Skinning isn't Axe Strike. You can't force it." I wiped blood from the blade edge.

"Camp needs materials." Bren's expression did not change.

"Camp also needs you alive." I did not answer immediately because Bren was partly right and partly wrong. The camp genuinely needed the hides. But increasingly, I wanted the advancement itself. That truth unsettled me. It sat beneath the work like a second blade, not in my hand, but somewhere behind the ribs where need and hunger had begun wearing the same face. Near dusk, the eastern road finally opened long enough for a small trading caravan to reach the camp perimeter.

Four wagons rolled through the muddy trench approach carrying preserved food, lantern oil, nails, rope bundles, and replacement iron fittings badly needed by the outer line. Exhausted workers practically swarmed the supply wagons before they fully stopped moving. The lead trader, a narrow-faced Copper-ranked woman wrapped in layered wool and weatherproof leather, stared openly at the Greywash Stalker carcass beside the trench fires.

"Well," she said slowly, "that explains why your patrol requests suddenly tripled." Wade crossed his arms immediately.

"You buying?" The trader climbed down from the wagon while several assistants began unloading crates nearby.

"Depends what's for sale." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Her gaze swept over the stretched hides hanging near the fire pits before settling on my processing rack.

"Those your cuts?" I nodded once. She bent closer.

"Not terrible."

"High praise," Wade muttered. The woman ignored him while examining the cleaned tendon strips and folded hide sections beside my tools.

"I can move some of this south once the roads reopen." She looked toward the Greywash Stalker remains again.

"Especially that." Bren frowned slightly.

"For what price?" The trader shrugged.

"Greywash Stalker materials are rare. Most camps never even see one alive." Wade's expression darkened.

"Because seeing them alive usually kills people."

"True." Negotiations followed beside the trench fires while rain drifted steadily through the camp. I mostly listened while Wade argued aggressively over hide quality and Bren ensured the caravan guards did not wander too close to the unfinished wall sections. In the end, the trader bought cleaned Iron stalker hides, tendon bundles, reinforced leather bindings, preserved claws and teeth, and sections of Greywash Stalker hide unsuitable for shield reinforcement but valuable for trade.

I sold almost everything I personally held from the previous retrieval runs. When the final coins changed hands, the trader counted carefully into my palm.

"Three copper, four silver." Wade corrected automatically, "Iron." The trader sighed.

"Yes, yes. Frontier accounting." She finished counting the smaller denominations into my hand.

"Three copper, four iron." I stared down briefly at the weight of the coins, then added it to the sixty-six iron I still carried from the market. The amount felt unreal. Not wealth. But possibility. PAYMENT RECEIVED You received 3 copper and 4 iron pieces for cleaned Iron stalker hides, tendon bundles, reinforced leather bindings, preserved beast parts, and trade-grade sections of Greywash Stalker hide. Current Coin: 3 copper and 70 iron pieces. Enough to buy proper gear eventually.

Enough to matter in a town like Dunmere. The trader noticed my expression immediately.

"First decent sale?" I nodded once. She glanced toward the bandage on my arm.

"Don't spend it all fixing yourself after the next hunt." Then she moved on toward Wade's work tables while shouting at one of her assistants about improperly stored lantern oil. The dangerous run happened two days later. Another carcass retrieval team failed to return before dusk, and Bren prepared to abandon the recovery entirely until I volunteered to search deeper along the northern Greywash line where the wagons had last been seen.

"Too far," Wade muttered immediately. I checked the mud near the road edge.

"Tracks are fresh." Wade looked toward the darkening forest.

"Dark's coming."

"We need the materials." Bren studied me several silent seconds before speaking.

"No heroics." I nodded once. I did not fully mean it. The missing convoy lay nearly two miles beyond the outer patrol routes where the Greywash forests thickened around narrow blackwater channels and old drowned timber. One wagon had overturned completely along the slope while scattered crates floated slowly through the marshwater nearby. Bodies lay everywhere. Not fully consumed. Again. I hated that pattern more each time I saw it.

The patrol moved carefully through the wreckage while Wade inspected broken wheel frames and Bren checked the surrounding trees.

"Three dead," Wade muttered.

"Maybe four."

"Scavengers?" Bren shook his head slowly.

"Iron stalkers." I crouched beside one of the corpses automatically. The hide remained usable. So did the beast carcass nearby. That thought arrived first now. The realisation frightened me slightly. Bren's voice dropped.

"Movement." The wounded predator burst from the marshwater almost immediately afterward. An Iron stalker, though larger than most, exploded upward through the reeds with blood already matting one flank from old wagon spear wounds. One eye hung ruined while broken arrows protruded from its shoulder. Cornered. Desperate. The creature slammed directly into me before anyone fully reacted. Mud exploded beneath us both while claws ripped across my chest armour hard enough to crack leather bindings apart.

I hit the ground violently beside the half-skinned carcass while the stalker snapped for my throat. Guarded Blade moved instinctively. The sword caught the jaws sideways inches from my face while the wounded beast drove downward with terrifying strength. My injured arm screamed immediately beneath the strain. The old bite wound split open again. Pain flared hot through the half-healed flesh.

Bren shouted my name, and his spear struck the creature's flank a heartbeat later while Wade crashed bodily into its shoulder shield-first. The Iron stalker twisted free almost immediately, blood and marshwater spraying through the reeds while it circled unevenly around the wreckage. Still dangerous. Still fast. The fight dissolved into chaos around the overturned wagon. Mud swallowed footing.

Broken crates scattered beneath boots while rain and blood turned the marshbank slick enough that every movement risked collapse into the blackwater channels surrounding them. The Iron stalker lunged again. I met it halfway with Axe Strike. The heavy blade split deep into the creature's shoulder while Bren's spear punched through the ribs from the opposite side simultaneously. The wounded predator screamed and collapsed sideways into the reeds. Then it tried to rise again. I killed it with the second strike.

Silence returned slowly afterward. Wade leaned heavily against the overturned wagon breathing hard.

"We should leave." I looked at the fresh corpse.

"We should harvest first." Both older men looked at me. Bren's expression hardened slightly.

"You're bleeding through your bandages." I knelt beside the carcass.

"The hide's still fresh."

"Cael." I set the blade into the first cut.

"We need the materials." I was already working before the argument fully started. Skinning knives flashed through rain and blood while darkness settled steadily across the Greywash marsh around us. I worked faster now than before, almost aggressively, separating hide from flesh with increasing efficiency despite the pain tearing through my injured arm. Something clicked. Not emotionally. Mechanically. The cuts aligned cleaner beneath my hands. Tendon separation sharpened.

Pressure angles made sense suddenly in the same way Timbercraft once had. Understanding settled through repetition and necessity simultaneously. The system named the threshold while rain gathered in the carcass seams and blood ran dark around my knees. ABILITY ADVANCED Skinning has advanced from Iron (mid) to Iron (late). You now better understand hide separation, tendon preservation, usable cut lines, carcass tension, and how to recover value from dangerous beasts under field pressure.

Your harvesting work can now preserve stronger Iron-quality materials when time, tools, injury, and conditions allow. The advancement hit immediately afterward. Not the skill. The rank. Every active threshold aligned at once. Heat surged violently beneath my chest while my entire body tightened hard enough that the skin along my shoulders and spine felt ready to split. Breath caught painfully in my lungs as strength flooded back through exhausted muscles almost fast enough to feel unnatural.

The world sharpened around me: rain striking leaves, water moving through reeds, distant beast calls somewhere beyond the trees. Everything suddenly sounded too clear. Wade stepped backward slightly.

"Saints." Bren stared openly now. I rose slowly from beside the carcass while heat steamed visibly from my body into the winter air. RANK ADVANCED You have reached Iron (late). STR: 10. DEX: 7. CON: 14 (+1). INT: 11. SPI: 11 (+1). WIL: 5. The advancement settled deeper than previous ranks. Not larger. Denser. My body suddenly felt heavier and more dangerous all at once, as though every movement now carried more force than before. The pain in my arm remained, but it no longer ruled me.

Exhaustion had not vanished either, yet it sat farther away now, managed by a body that had suddenly learned to carry itself differently. The older guard approached carefully.

"You alright?" I looked toward the dark forests surrounding the marsh. More beast calls echoed through the Greywash now than I had ever heard before. Closer.

"No," I admitted quietly. And for the first time since leaving Dunmere's walls, I realised the frontier might already be losing.