I watched the numbers vanish.

  The blue windows flickered in my vision, overlapping with the sight of the Matriarch gorging itself.

  It wasn't just meat. It was everything I have worked for.

  That salted badger represented twelve hours of waiting. It represented the heavy drag of the salt rock across the basin floor. It represented the risk I took bluffing the Wire-Rats.

  Crunch.

  The Badger chewed with its mouth open. Saliva and brine dripped from its jaws.

  That was 250 XP. Gone.

  It swallowed.

  The image in my mind, the one I had projected reaching Level 6, shattered.

  I gripped the bark of the Iron-Bark Oak until my talons splintered the wood. My heart hammered against my ribs, not from fear, but from a cold, rising pressure in my skull.

  Inefficiency.

  This was the ultimate inefficiency.

  The beast rooted through the debris of my home. It found the Fermented Wire-Rat. The one I had saved. The one that was perfectly aged.

  It tossed the rat into the air and caught it.

  Gulp.

  [Larder Alert: Biomass Lost]

  Zero XP.

  It was stealing my evolution. It was eating my future.

  My logic centers, usually so cold and precise, began to overheat. The risk assessment algorithms flashed red, screaming that the Badger was a Level 15 [Tank Class] entity. It warned that engagement was suicide. It calculated a 99.9% probability of death.

  I ignored it.

  The math had failed me. The math said if I worked hard, trapped smart, and preserved my kills, I would grow. The math lied.

  The Matriarch licked its chops. It looked satisfied. It looked smug.

  It turned its head, sniffing for more. It found the last scrap. The Iron-Shell Beetle. The one I had nearly died to secure for Briar.

  It crunched the beetle like a piece of popcorn.

  Something snapped behind my eyes. A fuse blew. The cold calculation evaporated, replaced by a white-hot singularity of pure, unadulterated greed.

  Mine!

  That was mine!

  I screamed. A primal release of frustration.

  I kicked off the branch.

  [Skill Activated: Flight]

  I folded my wings tight against my body, turning myself into a missile. Gravity accelerated my descent. The wind roared in my ear holes.

  The Badger froze. It heard the scream. It began to turn its massive, scarred head upward.

  I saw the target.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The eyes.

  The milky, cataract-filled eyes. The only soft point on a mountain of iron-hard muscle and fur.

  If I could blind it, I could kill it. If I could kill it, I could eat it. I could get it all back. The Larder would accept a Level 15 Boss. I would jump to Level 10 instantly.

  The logic tried to reassert itself, to tell me this was a gamble with infinite odds, but the velocity was too high. I was committed.

  I extended my neck. I opened my beak. I aimed for the left eye.

  I was fast. Faster than I had ever been. The Agility points I had invested were paying off. I was a blur of grey feathers and black hate.

  I was five feet away.

  Three feet.

  I saw the pupil dilate. I saw the reflection of my own desperate dive in the glossy surface of its eye.

  I prepared to strike.

  The Badger didn't flinch. It didn't roar. It didn't even fully look up.

  It just lifted its right paw.

  It was a lazy motion. A casual swat. The kind of gesture one uses to brush away a persistent gnat.

  But the speed was deceptive. The mass behind it was absolute.

  I saw the paw coming. It looked like a wall of mud and claws.

  I tried to bank. I tried to flare my wings to brake.

  Too late.

  [Impact Detected]

  The world turned sideways.

  The paw connected with the side of my body. It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a dull, overwhelming concussion. It felt like flying into a mountainside that decided to move.

  My hollow bones flexed to their breaking point. The air was forced out of my lungs in a single, agonizing wheeze.

  I was no longer flying. I was a projectile.

  The force of the blow redirected my momentum instantly. I spun wildly, the forest blurring into a smear of green and brown.

  [Critical Hit Received]

  [HP: 12/35]

  [Status Effect: Stunned]

  I crashed through a canopy of Razor-Ferns. The edged leaves sliced at my exposed skin, but I didn't feel the cuts. My nervous system was already overloaded by the blunt-force trauma of the Badger’s paw.

  I hit the tree.

  I slammed sideways into the trunk of an ancient Iron-Bark Oak. The bark was as unforgiving as a castle wall.

  SNAP.

  The sound was wet and loud. It vibrated through my skeleton, louder than the wind, louder than the blood rushing in my ears. It was the sound of a dry branch stepping on a wet twig.

  I bounced off the bark. I fell.

  I hit the forest floor with a dull thud, rolling through the Gloom-Moss until I came to a stop against a protruding root.

  For a second, there was nothing. No pain. No sound. Just the static of a brain rebooting.

  Then, the sensory input flooded back in.

  It started as a cold numbness in my left shoulder. Then, the heat arrived. It felt like someone had poured molten lead into my joint.

  I tried to stand. My legs wobbled. My talons scrabbled uselessly against the moss.

  I tried to flare my wings for balance.

  The right wing extended. The feathers caught the air.

  The left wing didn't move.

  I looked.

  My left wing was bent at an angle that geometry didn't allow. The primary feathers were matted with dirt. A jagged piece of white bone poked through the grey down of my shoulder, glistening with fresh, bright red blood.

  It hung limp. Dead weight. A useless appendage dragging in the dirt.

  A chime rang in my head. A harsh, dissonant sound.

  ALERT

  Critical Structural Failure Detected.

  [HP: 4/35]

  [Status Effect Applied: Broken Wing]

  [Effect: Flight Disabled. Agility Reduced by 60%.]

  I stared at the blue text.

  Flight Disabled.

  The words pulsed. They mocked me.

  I looked up. Through the gaps in the fern leaves, I could see the branch I had dived from. It looked miles away.

  I looked toward my hollow log.

  The Scavenger Badger was still there. It hadn't chased me. It hadn't even bothered to check if I was dead. To a Level 15 apex predator, a Level 5 bird wasn't an enemy. I was a nuisance. I was a mosquito that had been swatted.

  It finished chewing the last of my salted beetle. It licked the salt from the wood of my former home. It let out a low, satisfied grunt, scratched its ear with the same paw that had broken me, and lumbered away into the undergrowth.

  It left me alive.

  That was the ultimate insult. I wasn't worth the calories to kill.

  I tried to drag myself under the shelter of the root. My left wing caught on a fern stem.

  Pain white-hot and blinding shot up my spine. My vision greyed. I gasped, my beak opening wide, but no sound came out.

  I was grounded.

  I looked at the bone sticking out of my shoulder.

  [Flight Disabled].

  I was a bird that couldn't fly.

  I was prey.

  Want more violence?

  I post daily on Royal Road, but the backlog is deep on Patreon.

  Read 10 Chapters ahead of the free release.

  Thanks for the support!