Deep in The Forest of The Grey Wolves, fallen leaves crunching under hastened footsteps.

Bringing the fight to the wolves, an 800-strong battalion were marching without any attempt to hide their movements, nosily hacking down the bushes in their path. High-level Villagers in their midst chatted away they swung poles with lanterns as bright as floodlights, which enticed a swarm of head-sized beetles out of the surrounding trees.

The trainees were less bold, the confidence of fighting in the open dissipating as they entered the wolves' shadowy territory. Each stride seemed to be bringing some closer to a nervous breakdown. It was hard not to feel tense, with the bug wings flapping in their faces, with the sweltering humidity of the forest understory that made sweat dribble down between their skin and ill-fitting armour.

Spiking their fear was a rumour spreading quickly amongst their ranks. Any moment now, they were being told the ambush would begin.

And they would not be the ones doing the ambushing.

At the tail-end of the battalion, a stone-faced Henry was busily exchanging private messages with a few people to save him.

Forty minutes had passed since the open slaughter, and he was still stuck at 13 wolves out of 15.

Following the disaster with the wolves turning Sentient in mass and escaping the encirclement, Henry’d sat around the military encampment hoping for another safe-ish assignment on the outskirts of this Forest. Alas, the packs, learning and adapting, had withdrawn to the interior.

His next move had been to hire a dozen Slum Empire Cutthroats to sneak into the wolves’ territory. With him having learned that he could at least attack Sentient wolves from afar without triggering a wormhole, the new plan was to have the Cutthroats abduct some pups, bring them back to him, and restrain them while he sniped them from the shadows.

Extra prepared, to guarantee his bow didn’t break again, he'd even commissioned a Woodworker to craft a replica of his short-bow out of sturdier materials.

Basic Copperwood Shortbow

Stats: +8 Damage

Level Restriction: 3 (0-1)

Quality: 40%

Material: Copperwood

Weight: 850 g

’A bow.'

The Woodworker had produced a higher quality bow before it. However, Henry had been put-off by its ominous name, 'Emperor’s Bane' and the craftsman insinuating he'd be the one to take down the big mutt. This had obviously been false flattery, but Henry nevertheless made the guy produce a plainer bow with a stock title.

So, sniping the wolves brought to him by minions, that'd been the genius plan, Wu-wei, etc.

Alas, as one could plainly see from him now—marching rank-and-file with a mob of sacrificial noobs, several kilometres deep into the heart of the wolves’ territory—things had, yet again, gone a little awry.

At some point, the Slum Empire organised everyone in the military camp into battalions and ordered them to enter the Forest. Throughout the region, there were massive wolf den complexes, where the monsters spawned, and which should contain thousands of them. Some of these complexes were presumed to not be sentient yet, and so the big boy task had been given to each battalion to find one and destroy it.

Even if Henry’d had no intention of joining in on this braindead scheme which would definitely backfire and result in the creation of even more Sentient wolves, ‘circumstance' had forced him along.

How? Every single Cutthroat he’d hired was ordered to return and play escort duty for the trainees under the threat of expulsion from their Villages. Similarly, the trainer NPCs, including bald Instructor Apari, were rounded up and given a speech by the ’Duke’ about redeeming themselves for deserting during the failed encirclement incident, which roughly translated to, “Do this, or we will execute you.”

Thus, Henry, not wanting to have to restart the tutorial because his trainer died to some RNG nonsense, like a falling branch, had tagged along to keep the dude alive - but not, of course, before making a few preparations, such as dumping his donkey on the bald trainer’s friend and brushing up on a specialised tree-climbing technique he'd learned during a past jungle adventure.

Throughout the march so far, Henry'd been trying to organise their escape. As ‘fate’ would have it, no viable opportunity had arisen yet.

On the bright side, up until recently, his battalion's movements through the Forest had actually been much less idiotic. The Beast Tamer Captain, who’d been put in charge once again, had ensured their safety by having them move along the banks of a river and occasionally stop to build forts. In case of an overwhelming attack by the wolves, the battalion could retreat to one of these forts and await evacuation by The Slum Empire’s navy. From Henry’s perspective, it'd been a pretty sensible strategy with a low chance of failure.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Alas, alas, a few minutes ago, The Slum Empire caught news of the Beast Tamer doing this, demoted him for showing too much restraint, and replaced him with a gung-ho yes-man who’d ordered them to whip out the spotlights and march heedlessly into danger.

In short, the wolves would arrive soon, and if Henry did nothing, he, the trainer, and everyone else here was going to get wiped out, thousands of wolves leaping upon them from the shadows to claw and gnaw out their organs.

Fun. Fun. Fun.

Fun.

While Henry was creating a way out of this shitshow, the meatheads were running about playfully swatting at the beetles attracted by the overly-bright lanterns.

At that moment, a Village Cutthroat came speed-walking towards Henry’s trainee group. “Gather up and listen, children! Y’all’ve received a special assignment.”

"What's the matter, Liam?" A Miracleworker who'd been assigned to Henry’s group to prevent the bald trainer from bolting questioned the Cutthroat.

“The wise guys on the construction team forgot their darn tools at the fort. Y'all being the lucky fellas furthest back, it’s now y'all's job to go retrieve them.”

“Alone?”

“What? Should I call up The Royal Guard to escort Your Majesty?”

The Miracleworker sneered, transferred his lantern to his inventory, and turned to the class. “Hurry up! We need to get back here pronto!”

And with that, Henry’s group separated from the battalion.

The forest canopy was unusually thick, obstructing most of the illumination provided by the game’s three moons. Without a lantern, during the return trip, they couldn’t see far beyond a couple of feet, leading to several nerve-wracking stops whenever a trainee accidentally tripped on a root or entangled themselves in a vine.

Soon enough, though, they heard the relieving sound of rushing water. Arriving at a riverside clearing, they were met by the last fort they'd built. Its outer walls were smooth as glass, a protective measure to prevent monsters from climbing, and they were lined with thin opening slits, slim enough for a human to squeeze through sideways but not a wolf.

Passing through the fort’s gates, Henry's group scattered in all directions to hunt down the forgotten tools. Where they might find them, they didn't have a clue, the individual making up the lie to bring them back here not bothering to create a probable location for the non-existent items.

Amongst those pointlessly looking was Dan. When the handsome lunk was searching around the southern side of the fort, he was surprised to spot a familiar monkey-masked figure through one of the wall's slits on the other side, down by the river bank.

Big Bro, wearing a pair of ugly trousers tied up with a frayed rope, stood before a bonfire with a wooden rack erected over its flames. Tied to the rack were bundles of reeds, rapidly changing from green to yellow as they dried.

Dan, slipping through the wall, approached him. “Big Bro, why aren’t you trying to find the tools?”

Henry replied via message.

-Anonymous: There are no tools, Dan. I bribed the Cutthroat to say that to get us out of that deathtrap.

Henry would usually lie about this, but, after so much had gone wrong, he was taking a new approach. By shifting up his habits, perhaps he could foil the Imbahalaala’s attempts to trap him. The mechanisms of how the monsters predicted the future were unknown; if it was based off common behavioural patterns, this might work, Henry fooling it by not acting like himself.

Revealing the truth here was a good opportunity to test this theory, as Dan knowing it wouldn’t pose a significant risk to Henry’s plans either way.

The reed bundles, now straw-coloured, leapt on their own to the ground and positioned themselves upright, Henry directing them telekinetically with a crafting spell.

“Huh?” Dan scratched his handsome hairline.

Henry, in the spirit of defying his habits, explained out loud. "If my prediction is correct, we were about to be ambushed and massacred by tens of thousands of wolves. The new commander knows this - I, Bob, informed him. However, he doesn’t care."

Prior to entering the forest, Henry'd studied a map of the area to identify ideal ambush points from the wolves’ perspective. Most of these had been nullified by the battalion creating forts periodically, which was a strategy he’d relayed himself to the Beast Tamer Captain through a hired Cutthroat.

Alas, when the Slum Empire caught wind of this, they ordered The Beast Tamer to spice things up by having the battalion charge through the most vulnerable spot and bait the wolves into attacking. He’d refused, and, in turn, they’d replaced him with someone more cooperative.

“You should have informed us, Big Bro.”

"This time, I actually did do that. Alas, everyone dismissed my generous information as a rumour."

It wouldn’t have saved them anyway unless they’d convinced The Slum Empire’s management. Given how deep they were into the forest, any parties who split off from the main force would eventually be tracked down by the much faster wolves.

Henry directed spools of rope lying on the ground to wind themselves tightly around the reed bundles.

“Big Bro, what’s with the grass?”

"Good question, Dan, and one that I'm more than willing to answer. I’m building an escape boat. This river is an offshoot of the Suchi River that nourishes the rabbit and the boar areas downstream. The moment anything turns sour, I can just hop on a skip and skip away. Convenient, isn’t it? Not at all - I planned this from the beginning."

Henry had planned everything from the start with his escape route in mind.

He wouldn’t leave right away, though. Once the ambush began, the Cutthroats were going to capture some wolves and bring them here for him to shoot. Only after that would he and Instructor Apari sail away and finish this overly-long tutorial.

In fact, a superior boat was being brought over by a friend/guildmate that Henry'd messaged. What he was making now, using an automated template from some levels he had in the Woodworker class, was a spare in the event that ‘fate’ interfered again.

“Anyway, Dan, could you pretty please go grab the Miracleworker and Instructor Apari? I need to chat with them. That would be rad sick, bro."

Using a different language style - another habit change. Who knows what the butterfly effect these minor shift-ups could create?

Dan couldn't agree with Henry. “Big Bro, you can't leave everyone to die. You've got to try harder. I'm sure if you inform my mates, they’ll believe you.”

Henry thought about the strategically optimal approach, then did the opposite. “Great suggestion, Dan. If you gather everyone, I’ll explain. For you guys, it's not as serious as you're thinking.”

Not too long after Dan ran off, the Miracleworker who'd taken control of their group came trudging alone to the riverbank to confront Henry.

"What's this monkey business?" The Miracleworker demanded an answer.