Final Hurdle

After another tiring day at the construction site, Cinder felt the fatigue building up, but he couldn't take a break now while they were so close to the finish line. He logged into the game and joined the waiting Kode inside their tent.

"Whatsup."

"Whatsup."

"Ready?"

"Tired."

"Same."

They left the tent, and Kode packed it into his inventory with the smooth assistance of his Inventory. Without another word, they set off and started walking up the gentle slope. It didn't take long before a pack of wild rabbits skittered over the road, dragging a boar behind them, which turned to them as soon as it stepped onto the path.

"Fucking rabbits," Cinder said as he raised his mace.

"I swear, one of these days, I'm going to shoot them," Kode said as he retreated behind Cinder while equipping his bow and loading it with an arrow.

"Not if I bash their heads in first." Cinder nimbly sidestepped the boar and whacked its rear, keeping its attention on him as Kode drew his bow and prepared a shot toward the boar's neck.

After a couple of rotations, the boar lost its life to an arrow piercing its skull.

Cinder let out a quick breath as the boar, like a magical girl, transformed, but into a packet of meat and a pile of fur instead of a magical girl. Four Tokens dropped as well.

"It feels like we're getting pretty good at his," he said. "These boars don't stand a chance anymore."

"Yeah," Kode agreed with a smile as he picked up the loot. Gone were the days of suffering endlessly, unable to kill even one boar.

However, their words had barely died out before the ground shook slightly, and a tree in the forest broke with a thunderous crack. A lot of hustling and bustling later, a large boar, at least twice the size of anything they had seen before burst out onto the path.

"Blame the rabbits?"

"Blame the rabbits."

Kode sprinted backward again as Cinder stepped in front of the oversized boar. It was bigger, stronger, and scarier than any monster they had faced so far, but it was still a boar. What they had to do didn't change.

Cinder's ironclad rule didn't change.

That was why he had to throw himself out of the way when the boar charged like a runaway train. It wasn't just bigger and stronger, increasing how much he had to dodge, but it was also quicker than the average boar, forcing Cinder to dodge harder.

"Shit!"

He quickly got up and chased after the boar who had continued onward to Kode. He couldn't let Kode die here for three reasons.

Cinder wasn't sure he could kill the boar without him.

He owed Kode a lot. Without him, they wouldn't have gotten this far on the climb, especially not this quickly.

Kode held all the loot.

Cinder's legs kicked against the ground as he chased the boar chasing Kode. Kode fortunately, hadn't stopped to draw his bow. He continued running.

But the boar was faster. It would catch up in only a few seconds.

"Damn it! You better kill this bitch, Kode!" Cinder shouted as he threw the mace as hard as he could at the boar's rear. Like an Olympic javelin thrower, he stomped his left foot hard into the ground as his right arm catapulted forward and launched the mace with all the speed of his sprint put into it.

It wasn't enough to injure the boar. It was enough to grab its attention. It glanced backward, slowing down enough for Cinder to catch up to it.

His mace was on the ground and there was no way he could pick it up without the boar killing him or Kode. He had to make use of the gap he had opened up in the boar's attention.

Cinder jumped onto the boar, clutching its thick and bristly fur as he climbed to its back.

'This wasn't smart.'

The boar stopped running toward Kode. It tried looking upward and backward. It even turned its body. But it wasn't an owl. It didn't have eyes on the back of its head. It couldn't see what Cinder was doing. It could only feel that something was crawling on its back like an oversized tick.

Like a raging bull, the boar started bucking and tossing, trying to get rid of Cinder, who somehow managed to hold on with cramping hands and legs trying to squeeze the boar's wide back.

When that didn't work, the boar sprinted toward the closest tree, turning to the side and tackling it. It was a small tree just like the one it broke earlier, and this one snapped in half, falling over its back.

But Cinder who anticipated the boar's intentions as soon as he saw it charge had already slid over to the side and clung to the boar's shoulder, mostly protected from the falling log and scraping branches as the boar continued ramming into the few trees of the sparse forest nearby.

Cinder, through it all, managed to clamber on. He knew falling off meant his death. That was a whole bucket of trouble in itself. But he would be trampled to death. He could only imagine how painful that was. And he wanted it to remain like that—a piece of imagination. He did not want to know how it felt.

But his hands and arms weren't made of steel. They grew tired. It wouldn't be long until he fell off.

"Don't move too much! I'm trying to shoot!" Kode shouted.

Cinder gritted his teeth. The burst of anger he felt at those words kept him holding on and kept him from talking when he didn't have the leeway.

Cinder wasn't in a position where he could decide whether to move or not. He had to stay on top of the boar and avoid being caught between an unstoppable force and a hard place.

If anything, it was Kode who had to be careful not to hit him when he had an entire fucking boar to hit.

Kode drew his bow and released an arrow toward the boar and Cinder.