“God, just how long are they going to sleep?”

There was no denying the might of the high-end tranquilizer designed to put anything and anyone to sleep only those with nanites could wake up relatively quickly.

Just one of the standard-issue countermeasures that the Sava corporation equipped every tactical bag with.

But as the bright hours of the day neared their last moments, the three strangers still showed no signs of waking up.

‘Well, with this thing here, it’s not all that scary to keep watch alone.’

Sitting down in the shadow of a massive tree, lodged between a thick bush and a small pile of sticks and moss, Leo continued to scan his surroundings with every sense he could employ.

With a proper rifle in his hands, he could dispatch any realistic threat as long as he got the first hit.

In the end, he opted not to bind any of the masked strangers. As rational and reasonable as it would be for him… it would also mean burying any chances at gaining their trust.

He had to show it in order for those three to give it back to him, after all.

And so, Leo waited in silence, only ever walking out of his hiding spot once, to check with the new extraction orb whether the knight’s armors were of any worth, and then again, when a small pack of some dangerous-looking predators tried to nibble at the sleeping strangers, Leo simply switched the silencer option and dealt with the issue within five pulls of his finger.

‘There’s no denying how this world has forces I cannot explain,’ Leo thought, tackling one of the few things he noticed during the fight before.

And it wasn’t the insane properties of that deceased noble’s armor that allowed the young man to afford some direly needed resupply. What got him so curious, was how impossible that girl’s punch should be within the circumstances.

She stood too far away to traverse the distance in a single leap. And surely, even if she somehow did so, she couldn’t have virtually any momentum left to add up to that mighty punch of hers.

Yet, against all the odds and all the reason, her attack still sent the knight flying, even though the noble was all braced and in the heat of a battle. And a feat like that simply didn’t seem possible for someone with that girl’s body to perform!

‘Well, each world has its own rules,’ Leo ended up summing all of his thoughts with just a simple conclusion. ‘I just need to learn the ins and outs of it.’

Still…

No matter how hard Leo tried, he couldn’t help but doubt whether he made the right choice by staying back.

As little as he would gain from the deployment if he went back all on his lonesome, with no spoils or realistically valuable information… Not to speak about the added cost of the lost truck that would heavily affect the profit rates in his next rift trips, pretty much taking the monetary incentive of this risky but rewarding job.

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That’s why, even though he could do so at the cost of most of the supplies, Leo decided not to get a new beacon.

After all, with only the extraction serving as the comm line to the corporation, they were bound to analyze every last detail of his purchase. And while ordering some basic items could happen for various reasons, as long as he could get back to the truck, Leo wouldn’t have a problem getting the new beacon.

In other words, if he were to order the beacon back home, the megacorp would take note. And moving on, every next possible transaction would bear the cost of losing the corporate investment in the form of the precious truck.

‘Well, if they are gonna fine me for losing it, I just need to earn enough to make that loss back,’ Leo thought grimly.

The corporation offered insanely beneficial terms to its men in the rifts. They had to in order to make the incentives great enough for people volunteer to at the slaughterhouse of Rift survey and colonization. But that didn’t mean there weren’t many ways for the corporate to take all of its investment back, being the sole point of contact between home and the colonized worlds.

In a sense, those megacorps evolved specifically to cater to the needs of the colonizers, creating an enclosed economy for each of the supercities they managed, often even using rifts to connect their outpost to a practically private network.

And just like the colonizers were the very market that gobbled up any and everything that the corporation would produce, handling the exchange, even with relatively small margins, made the corporation more than enough to pay back all its costs.

But again, the corporation, as it was in its nature, kept looking for ways to make more money. And what they couldn’t take in official terms, they were sure to skim off in every, underhanded way possible.

‘In the end, we are all just the workers, putting our sweat and blood in service of the all-powerful hive,’ Leo thought grimly, only for his face to sharpen when he sensed a movement up and ahead.

The young man couldn’t even tell whether he saw, heard, smelled or maybe just… noticed the approaching beasts. But as he raised his eyes to the target, carefully assessing the situation before acting, he saw just one more thing.

With the sun now reaching the epilogue of its daily performance, Leo caught just the last few rays of light to catch the girl… with her eyes open.

They were all cloudy, indicating she was likely still half-asleep…

But nevertheless, with the girl potentially watching, Leo raised his rifle with one, effortless move before taking aim.

With the gun still in a silenced mode, the first shot slingshot out of the barrel, accelerated by the miniature rail hidden within the bulky frame of the rifle.

Poof!

A sound alike the passing of a gust of wind was followed by a small, dull popping sound when the bullet reached its target and unleashed its incendiary content inside of it.

The massive, bear-like creature simply boiled from the insides with inferno unleashed upon its guts, falling down to the ground with a loud thud.

‘I think there were two of them,’ Leo thought, trusting nothing but his instincts as he cast a sweeping glance around.

And surely enough, an even bigger beast hid deeper in the trees, shocked by the sudden death of its partner.

‘And now I feel bad for it, great.’

With his thoughts all grim and dark, Leo fixed his aim before putting down the other beast before it could even see anything coming.

Leo felt no joy from the killing. But if sparing humans was still a moral choice, albeit stupid and risky, that Leo made… He couldn’t afford the danger of the wild beast attacking. And while he could easily escape its grasp… The same couldn’t be said about the three tranquilized, masked weirdos.

Leo hated the idea of unnecessarily putting down those two, magnificent beasts… But for some reason, the thought of this strange girl getting ripped to shreds as their meal seemed even more unbearable.

“Eh…” Full of a sense of self-reflection, Leo sighed heavily before curling back into his hiding slash resting spot.

‘I guess her actions were, hmm… Admirable?’

Trying to discover the truth behind this weird feeling, Leo removed all the self-censoring braces.

‘To see her standing up to the obvious danger like that,’ Leo thought, only to cast a mindless look at the girl…

And realize that by now, her eyes were wide open.