Warren Ellington made his way through the streets of Puppet Town, on the hunt for his prey.

The crowd parted as he crossed the town square. Even cored individuals walked to the other side of the street when they realized who was headed their way. When they saw the expression on the manslayer’s face, they ran.

Today, Warren wore a dark scowl instead of his infamous icy grin. While he usually kept his emotions bottled up inside, it had been years since he had felt so frustrated. So thwarted. So… denied.

Disappointment and setbacks were old friends to every professional bounty hunter. Just another part of the difficult, dangerous job. But he had never suffered anything like this before.

Despite having a specialized core and decades of experience, he had failed to track a bounty so inept that he normally could have claimed it in his sleep. Not just once or twice, but for the better part of a week.

Running into problem after problem out of the blue was enough to make him see red.

What should have been an easy kill had gone wrong in more ways than he could have imagined possible. To the extent that Warren wondered if the universe was conspiring against him, or the System was fucking with him. Or perhaps another party has decided to intervene.

While he had been able to collect several smaller bounties over the last few days without the deputies catching wind of his involvement, the true prize he was seeking, Edge Vasher, had slipped through his fingers time and time again.

Just being angry wasn’t reason enough to strike. Warren needed to be sure that Edge was wanted first. He only killed in the pursuit of bounties or in his own defense. It was the code that he had lived by his entire life, long before setting foot onto Ord.

Even that had taken far longer than it should have. Following the man and gathering information had come with several unusual interruptions. Stranger still, he still had no clue what had happened. His skill-summoned drones had been disrupted on three separate occasions, and Edge had shown no sign that he even knew they were there.

But now, now he was sure. Yesterday, Warren had finally been able to keep a drone in the air long enough to follow Edge out of town and into the grasslands. At first, his actions were no different from that of any hunter, albeit a particularly green one.

But then something strange had occurred. Edge had been forced to use the shadow ability that was supposed to be his core’s ultimate early in the fight. Then, near the end of the brawl, he used it again, when it should have been on cooldown for the rest of the day.

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And that discrepancy was just the beginning. After the battle, Warren watched as mana gathered around Edge’s neck. When his face lunged forward, Warren realized that the man had used peck. The same skill as beast he’d just fought. A skill that only beasts should be able to learn to begin with.

At that point, Warren’s body began to tingle. A shiver ran down his spine—a thrill that only arose when he was hunting the juiciest of prey. I knew it. He was sure in that moment that there was something special about Edge’s core. That turning it in would pay out the biggest bounty that he’d ever made.

He suspected that it was more than an epic. That the man had somehow gotten his hands on a legendary core or even a unique. At that point, the manslayer understood that the clock was ticking. A core of that caliber meant that Edge was far more dangerous than his average quarry and would become even more so at a remarkable rate.

He would have headed out then and there. But at that point, his drone had been disrupted again and he lost track of Edge’s trail. No matter. Next time I’ll follow him out myself. If Warren wanted to take Edge, he needed to move fast, before the man’s powers grew or someone else got to him first.

Right now, the manslayer was still a whole stage ahead of his prey. He had higher attributes and superior gear, including several high-grade magtech devices. All his skills were rank-three or four, and most important of all, he had Betsy holstered at his hip. Each chamber in his six-shooter was filled with spellshots that would put down almost anything below stage-three in a single round.

At last, their dance had reached the final steps. The manslayer was finally going to bring this hunt to an end. The information-gathering phase was over, and now it was time for Warren’s favorite part, ending the life of a wanted man.

He’d still offer Edge a chance to surrender of course. That was part of the ritual after all. But regardless of whether he gave up, Warren was going to put him in the cold, hard ground.

Just because Edge was here in the flesh wasn’t a reason to stop killing. In fact, it only made the prospect more exciting. This was how hunting a man was supposed to feel. It made everything that had happened before the anomaly trapped them in their puppets look like a washed-out photograph compared to the gore-splattered masterpiece he was painting.

Now he just had to wait for the right moment, say his piece, and strike from concealment, ending the fight before it began. Then he would use the Credits he earned to find a way off this planet and make his way back to his people.

While he was eager to strike, he couldn’t afford to let his bloodlust get the better of him. Warren had to wait until his quarry was alone. Edge had been training with Trapper’s crew part of the time, and the manslayer wasn’t willing to risk taking out a core member of town if they decided to join Edge’s side.

One dead puppet alone on the plains wouldn’t attract any notice. But an experienced hunter disappearing at the same time would be another matter entirely.

Since contact with the other settlements had been severed, Warren couldn’t afford to get run out of Puppet Town or risk sparking a confrontation with Earl the Earth Hammer, one of the few people in town he wasn’t sure that he could take in a straight fight. And several of the deputies were plenty dangerous in their own right.

The next time that Edge stepped through the gates alone, Warren would make his move. It was time to add another name to his list and get rich beyond his wildest dreams in the process.