Walking back to the cave, Bruce gathered a few dry branches, stacked them neatly, and struck a flame to life. The fire crackled, casting a warm glow across the stone walls. The scent of smoke and scorched fur lingered faintly in the air, but to Bruce, it was familiar, almost comforting.

He had earned this moment of stillness.

Ever since he slaughtered the entire lion pride yesterday, one question had lingered in the back of his mind: Was there a true lion among them? A leader? A king of the pride that simply wasn't present?

He hadn't forgotten. It was just waiting, parked at the edge of his thoughts, ready to be revisited later.

After adjusting the firewood and strengthening the flames, Bruce walked over to his makeshift bedding, three neatly skinned hyena pelts layered for comfort. He lay down, staring up at the uneven ceiling of the cave, expression unreadable but faintly content.

Twelve straight hours of nonstop hunting.

Mutant hyenas. Bronze-horned goats. Wind wolves. Blood hounds. Wave after wave, territory after territory.

Now? Now he just wanted sleep.

He knew the Adventurers Guild trial would be demanding, but even then, he hadn't expected it to be this immersive. This wasn't just a test, it was a simulation of real adventurer life with almost no filter. Danger, scarcity, combat, strategy, exhaustion, everything was authentic.

99.99% identical to a real expedition.

Survival skills. Resource management. Solo battles. Point accumulation. They weren't being taught, they were being forged.

And since the VR had no time dilation, two full days had passed here, and two full days had passed outside. If this tech could compress time, ten days of grinding could pass in one real-life hour… but the world wasn't that advanced yet. Not yet.

Bruce exhaled as the thought faded, his eyes growing heavier.

The day had started with Ozai's ambush.

Then the fight. Then hunting, testing, experimenting, adapting, nonstop. It was boring yet exciting... An inexplicable feeling...

And now it was ending in a silent cave, with nothing but the gentle pop and crackle of burning wood.

The only interesting moment of the entire afternoon hunt had been the wind wolves. Everything else felt like routine. Hyenas, goats, basic monsters… all predictable. All understood. Knowledge was power, yes, but knowledge also killed excitement.

Still, the guild was accomplishing exactly what it wanted. The recruits who walked out of this trial would be the best-prepared newbies the world had ever seen. No lecture could replace experience like this. No academy could simulate blood, heat, terror, hunger, or exhaustion like this.

But even with all that logic…

Bruce was tired.

And for the second time, he allowed himself to feel tired.

He shifted slightly, pulling the fur closer around him. His eyes dimmed. His breathing slowed.

His daggers remained within reach, always. He wasn't foolish enough to sleep defenseless, not after Ozai's ambush this morning. If not for instinct and overwhelming strength, he might not be here at all.

Bruce closed his eyes.

The cave flickered in firelight.

Night welcomed him.

Sleep finally took hold.

...

Hours passed, and the desert night slowly bled into what should have been morning.

But the sky was wrong.

It was around 1 a.m., and yet the dunes were glowing under an unnaturally bright moon, so bright it looked like the world was holding its breath beneath silver light.

And through that cold, quiet desert, something massive moved.

A beast nearly three meters tall. A Mutant Golden Maned Lion, an S-Ranked apex predator whose footsteps alone made lesser creatures scatter.

Its mane, once brilliant, now dragged in the sand, stained with dust and the scent of blood.

It walked with purpose. With tension. With barely restrained fury.

Because the closer it got, the stronger the smell became. Blood. Lion blood.

Its blood: blood of its pride...

Every few steps, the lion stopped, lifted its massive head, and sniffed the air. Each breath only fueled the rage building inside its chest. A low growl vibrated from its throat, instinctive, warning, grieving, murderous.

It couldn't believe this.

Two days ago, it had left its territory to seize another. The rival mutant hyena pack, annoying, numerous, always threatening its borders, had been massacred. Their corpses littered the sands, torn open and left to rot. It had followed the scent, investigated, and with instinct sharpened by years of ruling, deduced that whoever killed them was long gone.

So it made the obvious beast's decision:

Claim the abandoned land. Expand the territory. Grow the pride.

That was how a beast survived. More land meant more food. More food meant more lionesses. More lionesses meant more offspring, and stronger bloodlines. This was the law of beasts. The law of kings.

And for two days, everything had gone perfectly.

The hyena land was empty. The prey plentiful.

It was supposed to return triumphantly, bring the good news to its pride, breed, feast, expand.

But now?

Now, every step brought a new wrongness. The scent of blood had not faded. It had grown stronger.

And not the stink of hyena blood. Not the stink of enemy territory.

This was lion blood. His lionesses' blood. His pride.

A cold, instinctive alarm dug into its heart. A fear only beasts of high rank knew, the fear that comes when the world reminds even a king: You are not untouchable.

It had killed hyenas. Something else had killed its pride.

It kept moving, faster now. No longer walking, striding, then running, then bounding across the dunes like a thunderous shadow.

Then it stopped. A corpse lay in the sand.

Not a lioness. A young male, one of its sons. Not yet grown, not yet crowned with a full mane, but already rebellious, already challenging dominance, already trying to mount lionesses and establish his own pride.

A future rival. A future exile. A problem it planned to resolve once the territory expansion was complete.

But now the son was silent. Lying on its side, throat slashed cleanly, too cleanly. A dagger wound. Sharp. Fast. Precise. Nothing like bestial fangs or claws.

The lion lowered its head and sniffed the corpse.

The scent of death. Thirty-six hours old, it had been long the son was killed. Killed shortly after the beast had left.

Its son's body was huge, two meters tall, heavily built, but even that strength had meant nothing. One slash. Instant death.

It released a roar, longer, deeper, and heavier than any roar meant to intimidate rivals. This was a mourning sound. A beast's grief.

Then it ran again.

****

A/N

An S-Ranked has the basic intelligence of a 6-year-old child. It's to be noted beast intelligence increases as it's rank increases...

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