The 5th Hero is a Beast [Queer LitRPG Isekai]

A shudder ran through the fleeing adventurers as a tremendous bellow echoed across the [ territory ]. It was a deep sound that resonated through the night air, re-activating the humans' flight or fight instinct as they escaped the gryphons.

Several adventurers froze, not halted by fear but realization.

Guillaume tightened hir grip on hir weapon.

"That is a kjerrborn," ze identified, to help soothe the worries of the other humans.

Internally, the beasthunter was livid. Ze did not bring the gronfaine, their beast companion, for this nighttime mission as the beast had poor vision and would only prove a dangerous obstacle for the crowd of adventurers.

Yet there was a second adult kjerrborn, one whose presence Guillaume failed to detect in the [ territory ].

If it decided to track Guillaume as revenge for killing the other kjerrborn, ze would be woefully unprepared.

And it was a waste of a good pelt to be so unprepared.

Ikraam and Grim made eye contact. It was only by the quick reaction of the rogue that Grim did not sprint back into the woods.

"Your responsibilities are here," Ikraam said in a measured tone, trying to remain calm under the circumstances. "Escort the others to the Post."

While Rajiv and Dagmær were unharmed – casters protected behind shields and wards – there were other guild adventurers who were injured beyond what a healing potion could quickly fix.

Healing injuries was a time management task, even with magic and potions. A dagger through the heart could be mitigated if the healing was immediately administered before the wounded could bleed out.

The same could not be said about broken bones, talon-ripped organs, and injuries acquired while forced to keep moving and to dodge beasts.

Healing required the wounded to remain still and stable. Upright, lying down. The position didn't matter, as long as they remained still and acted quickly.

One adventurer had been picked up by a gryphon and dropped. They had broken ribs, a broken leg, gashes from the talons along their arms and hip.

Another was dragged across the forest floor. Gashes on her leg prevented her from walking, in addition to perforated innards from a stray limb slipping through a gap in her armor as she was yanked away.

There were smaller injuries. Slashes from claws, gashes from beaks, scrapes and blunt force damage from falling.

But all the humans were alive.

They would remain alive if they could make it out of the [ territory ] within the healing-limit of an hour, so that the others could be stabilized and healed.

"Hallvar is back there," the armsbreaker nearly growled, frustration mounting in his voice. "Where the gryphons went. Where the roar came from."

Grim had loyalty in spades, yet he had sense to follow Ikraam's instructions, albeit reluctantly.

There were wounded. Multiple lives could be saved, guaranteed, compared to one life that may not even be in danger.

"I'll go," Ikraam whispered as the group lurched back into motion.

With a grunt, Grim agreed. He knew what Ikraam was capable of.

They could remain unseen.

It took effort to sneak away unnoticed. Ikraam had to delay their disappearance until they were closer to the [ territory ] edge, as attention lapsed when the adventurers slipped out of survival instinct and into recuperation and recovery.

[ skill: fading sight ] didn't activate immediately, regardless. The Unseen subclass rarely granted skills that vanished one into thin air.

Instead, Ikraam became less distinguishable as an individual, just one of the others moving about in the aftermath of the gryphon fight.

Then, they became less distinguishable as a person, registering to the human eye as part of the background.

Soon, Ikraam's movements were as relevant as the rustling of leaves in the trees. Completely overlooked by anyone with an awareness under 20, but still difficult to spot by those exceptional few.

As long as the rogue didn't attack, the illusion of invisibility would persist. It was rarer still for a beast to possess dispelling magic, so Ikraam was confident in their safety.

The rogue didn't know how to feel about Hallvar's absence. They knew about the beastmaster's lowered threat skill, but did that count during active conflicts?

And, if Hallvar was capable of changing their body – regardless if it was in pieces like the ear movements or much more transformative – then could Hallvar evade notice entirely?

Ikraam traced the group's escape path, following drips of blood, snapped branches, and footprints back to where they left the hero behind.

The rogue expected to find very little evidence of a conflict, as gryphons had no chance against the adult kjerrborn heard earlier. It would serve the flight to escape and find other prey, especially since the gryphons were barely injured, if at all, by the humans.

The rotting beast corpse was still present, untouched. Ikraam could smell it from a distance.

Even with augmented night sight, the rogue stopped short of a lump on the ground, peering at it in the darkness to identify the thing.

There was a slight shine of something liquid as the tree-filtered moonlight scattered on the object. It was spherical, like a lump with wet protrusions sticking out of it, maybe leaves or grass, and an angled shape hidden underneath.

Ikraam nudged it with a foot.

[ skill: night sight ] didn't allow for color vision, but the rogue understood immediately what color was present as the gryphon head flopped over, pivoting on the beak half-embedded in moss below.

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With some effort, Ikraam activated a few skills, further enhancing their senses so they could witness the extent of the carnage.

They were roughly 30 feet away from the nearest gryphon corpse, which to Ikraam's logic, suggested that the kjerrborn decapitated the beast with a swipe.

Earlier, the forest was largely undisturbed, only a few scrapes and gouges marking the rotting kjerrborn's fight with the beasthunter. According to Guillaume, ze tracked the kjerrborn across the [ territory ], wearing it down over time through bleeding and poison effects.

Now, there was a newly fallen tree. A small one, but a tree nonetheless. A second gryphon carcass was splayed across it, back broken into an unnatural angle.

Ikraam counted three more dead gryphons, in various states of whole-ness. The rogue was particularly disgusted by a gryphon whose ribcage looked as if it'd been completely flattened.

Yet, no human bodies. No Hallvar.

The rogue investigated fresh claw marks on a few nearby trees before they spotted the boots on the ground, and then Hallvar's satchel.

And their weapons and armor.

Curiously, it was all dry. Nothing shined with blood in the sparse moonlight.

It was as if Hallvar decided to go for a swim in the lake and merely left their belongings on the shore.

Without a better option, Ikraam belted the weapons and armor to the satchel, throwing the strap over their own shoulder.

If Hallvar was safe – and despite the gryphons, that looked to be the case – then they should be able to find their way back to the Post without their human equipment.

---

"– and this is what was left behind."

It was a new day, a few days later, that Ikraam, Grim, and Guillaume had to awkwardly report to the guildmaster.

Not only to the guildmaster. To Stella.

Behind his desk of authority, the guildmaster pondered. To the others, it was a keen, indeterminate stare leveled directly at Ikraam.

This entire situation unnerved the rogue, but they understood that the guildmaster's gaze was not sharp enough to mean disapproval. That usually was delivered with some verbal jab.

"And there was no– ?" Stella questioned in a too-controlled manner, inquiring about the possibility of a corpse.

"No," was Grim's immediate answer. "Nothing. I made Ikraam take me to the site the next day, and there really was nothing that could be Hallvar."

"Hm. Dismissed." The guildmaster ordered bluntly, providing no sentimentality about a guild member's disappearance.

The others stood to leave, clearly fighting the urge to argue or debate. It was a battle Guillaume lost, pausing in the office door as ze exited.

"I could keep watch for the beastmaster," ze suggested. "Or select a few good hunters to search, if–"

"There is nothing to be done." That was the guildmaster's final ruling.

The others saved their arguments and complaints until they were downstairs and well out of the guildmaster's earshot. Once the guildmaster made a decision, there was no changing it. Not without an exacting amount of proof that the change was necessary.

Stella sat quietly in her chair, poised to the side of the large desk so she could observe the conversations.

It was Viktor who broke the silence. "No reports of a red gryphon corpse."

Stella nodded. There was no evidence of this pattern, just an intuitive guess.

If Hallvar's dark red hair affected the fish hawk, it would probably affect other beast forms they took on. The lack of a red gryphon suggested that none of the existing gryphon corpses could possibly be Hallvar.

There was also the question of–

"The kjerrborn," that was Stella's inference. "Guillaume mentioned that it was unaccounted for during hir hunt."

For months, there were reports of a pair of kjerrborns – a mother and the cub. It was possible a third wandered down from the Staargraven, but without being noticed once? And with such immediate timing?

The coincidence was possible; however, both Viktor and Stella knew this was a function of luck.

Ever pragmatic, the guildmaster moved on. "Would you like to take the hero's belongings? Or should we pack them away downstairs?"

"I will take them." Stella thought that was the easiest, since Hallvar would inevitably return to their home, to her.

The guildmaster returned to his work evaluating a large-scale quest that several Adventurer's Guilds were cooperating on.

It was a requirement of the kingdom's Commander Rask to address System Flares, but other kingdoms could afford to be laxer with [ territories ] that existed in the middle of the desert, the Staargraven, or in Drac Dūmon.

Certainly, those [ territories ] were less of an issue than the ones near cities, but a potential System Flare meant beasts would spawn in daily, overrunning outposts and homesteads alike.

The guildmaster knew cooperating was the best course of action. For fame. For glory. For bragging rights. But he intended to pen some scathing response and hope to goad the other guildmasters into meeting in Amnasín.

Otherwise, Viktor would miss out on all the fun.

A glint caught the guildmaster's eye and he looked up from the verbose and pointless letter in his hand.

There were a pair of sheathed daggers attached to Hallvar's belts, the ones Stella was rearranging to move.

"If I may?" He inquired, gesturing toward the weapons.

Hallvar used an axe with a rear point and an arming dagger.

Hallvar did not use a pair of identical triangular-blade stiletto daggers, both with the wave-shaped ornamentation on the edge of the cross guard that was the signature of a well-known Myelford blacksmith.

Now, this could mean nothing… but…

In a casual tone, the guildmaster asked, "Is there anything odd in Hallvar's belongings?"

There were no assassins' guilds in Aestrux. That would be silly. What would assassins need to regulate? The willingness of the rich to pay for the death of others?

However, there were some known families. Some clandestine behavior was cultural rather than global.

Stella opened the satchel and began pulling out each item. Potions. Ink. A sparkly rock wrapped in a handkerchief.

In the Qhai Republic, orders were given on reed paper, written in common charcoal, and subsequently burned upon retainment. Contractual mercenaries of any variety would sometimes have traces of soot on their fingers.

Travel pen. Spare shirt. Journal.

It was the fashion in Staareaux to use black ink on black paper for orders of assassination, requiring one to distinguish the subtlety in order to read the missive.

When Viktor was working in the trade, Staareaux would emboss orders on the inner margins of books, making secretive arrangements with local book merchants to display the goods. The coded language was "to borrow a book," which was confused and made obsolete by academic libraries.

Kuteli, Kovatelli, and Myelford, however, had a dainty little structure currently in play. They often traded textiles across their national borders, thus small loom-woven sampler bands became the normal method of giving orders. One simply sold the object as a bracelet once the job was complete.

Like the bookmark in Hallvar's journal.

The bookmarked page was inked with dozens of wildflowers, no clues within. However, Viktor noted the dried blood on the edges of the pages. He flipped around until something stood out – a few pages were stuck together, the rust color of dried blood seeping through the paper.

Stella watched closely as Viktor fished out a thin blade from his desk. For opening letters, of course. He carefully separated the pages until a message could be read.

SORRY 30

The elf took over the pages now, flipping back and forth as she tried to ascertain what the message could mean.

Viktor subtly took the bookmark while she was distracted.

The warp contained basic physical information, arranged in a required order. Red-brown for hair. Peach for skin. Brown for eyes. Green to indicate they were a native of the location, black otherwise. White strands, six, height in feet. Black for someone who would be armed; a grey if they were regularly unarmed.

The weft had the location and all other pertinent information. A knot broke up each piece of information, words encoded by tiny glass beads sewn and tied into place. Each section of thread was an individual letter, which could be indicated by one or several beads.

Viktor could make out a few familiar words without great effort, though the rest would require an up-to-date codex. Amnasín. Adventurer's Guild. [ territory ]. Alone. Quest.

"Find Ikraam or Grim," the guildmaster ordered, startling Stella by accident. "Ask if Hallvar was acting unusual before they entered the [ territory ]."

Without enlisting an expert, Viktor couldn't verify the source of this assassination order. There were slight differences in the beast hair or fibers used in textiles between Kuteli, Kovatelli, and Myelford.

And Viktor hated to give the Court Mage something to complain about so soon.

There was one thing that was certain. If Hallvar survived an assassin as a human, then they were free and clear as a beast. No one would look twice at a beast and presume it was their denoted human target.

If Hallvar was alive, they were safe.