Gravin sighed as he watched the adventurers go about their work. He was positioned just inside the treeline looking toward the west gate of Rockynoll. Well, what was left of it, anyway.

  This site had been chosen for the experiment due to its location. It was far enough away—and relatively isolated—from a major population center to let the experiment run its full course without interruption, but it was also close enough that the second stage could proceed immediately as the subjects began to spread out from the town.

  They would likely have reached Striton within a few days on their own.

  However, now both the experiment and Rockyknoll were smoldering ruins. Somehow, the Adventurers Guild had gotten word of the subject’s activity incredibly quickly. The adventurers they dispatched arrived just two days after the experiment began in earnest and obliterated the entire town.

  A fire had started before their arrival, largely flattening Rockyknoll. The subjects didn’t appear to be very capable of the organization—or even the complex reasoning—required to quell such an inferno, so it very quickly spread from building to building until only the barest of stone structures remained. Even the palisade was not spared. What little still stood was firmly leveled by the ensuing conflict between the subjects and the adventurers.

  They had arrived in the night after the second day of the experiment. They attacked quickly, quietly, and efficiently. Gravin had watched them end the subjects brutally and mercilessly one-by-one. He desperately wanted to stop them—to see the experiment through, but his instructions were clear. Discretion is more important right now than any experimental results.

  Experiments can be restarted elsewhere, but only if he survives.

  The ease with which the adventurers dispatched the subjects annoyed him, but many of them seemed unable to adequately fight back. A consequence of the experiment, it seemed. The subjects seemed to disregard bodily functions until overcome by them completely, meaning that many operated until their bodies physically could not continue and then collapsed.

  This made it trivially easy for the adventurers to eliminate them—even when they were detected. A collapsed body with no energy left in it cannot put up much of a fight, after all.

  There was a brief moment where he had hope that the experiment could continue. The adventurers had dispatched a small group of collapsed subjects as quickly and quietly as possible, but one of the subjects managed to get an ear-piercing shriek out before being silenced.

  The horde that had been convalescing in the center of town charged toward the sound with unbridled aggression and bared, gnashing teeth.

  The adventurers, seeing the state of the already mostly-destroyed town, seemed to decide that there were unlikely to be any survivors and went loud when the horde rushed them. Two mages combined their spells—likely some combination of wind and fire—and detonated a tremendous blast that fully destroyed what remained of the town as well as its former inhabitants.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  The blast was so strong that Gravin was almost knocked off his feet all the way out behind the treeline.

  He shook his head, dismissing any unproductive recollections of the past. The experiment was over.It was time to move on and find somewhere else to begin anew.

  Yet one persistent intuition troubled him. Something was wrong here. The response from the Guild was too quick and too precise. The normal modus operandi for the Guild was to send a scouting team to investigate the problem before committing any actual combat forces.

  The adventurers who arrived, though, did so just days after the experiment had reached full force. Not only that, they were clearly high-leveled adventurers sent there to do precisely what they did. There was no investigation, no confusion, and no hesitation. They simply dispatched the subjects. In other words, they knew what they were going to find when they arrived.

  How did information get to the Guild so quickly?

  The only connection Gravin could make was something he had heard from the very first test subjects. They had talked about a young girl that was growing up in the town under the tutelage of an adventurer. The townsfolk did not seem to have anything out-of-the-ordinary to say about her other than that she arrived at the town originally having been chased by some monstrous beasts.

  However, Gravin knew that there was more to it than what the townsfolk saw. The incident they mentioned was, in fact, another experiment of his—the first in this region, during which he tested his current methods on beasts.

  Testing on animals was a logical first step before moving on to human trials. He had tested on some normal wolves roaming the forest. Once he had the data he needed, he simply left. Evidently, the mutated wolves attacked a merchant cart en route to the town—resulting in the deaths of everyone except the girl, a strange coincidence.

  Setting aside his own need to manage the aftermath of his future experiments, Gravin found it too coincidental that the girl had survived both the initial incident and this one. She was currently unaccounted for—which might suggest death—but his intuition told him she had survived.

  How had she managed to get out when Gravin was not looking? He had been watching closely since the experiment began. He had timed it to start when he knew the one adventurer staying in town would be gone, and he had watched all the way to the point the other adventurers arrived and began their massacre.

  Then it clicked—the fire. It must have been when the fire pulled his attention away. Somehow, she got out in that small window where he was distracted. How, he was not sure, but that is the only plausible explanation. Was she the one that started the fire? Did she start it intentionally to distract him?

  No, that is too paranoid. The adventurers are still here sifting through the ash and ruins. Clearly, they are just inspecting the devastation. They are not looking for him, nor is there any urgency in their actions. They very likely do not even know of his involvement—especially now that all witnesses were eliminated by their own hands.

  Gravin took stock of the situation. A new experiment must be started elsewhere. He got useful data from the first stage of this experiment, but the essential data he sought did not emerge until stage two.

  But this girl bore investigation as well. Perhaps he could include her in a future experiment…