The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 387: Unpredictable

The following afternoon, the forest felt like a trap waiting to spring.

The hunt had been technically flawless. Yesterday’s haul was already being salted and packed, morale among the men was at a seasonal high, and even the brutal cold seemed to have reached a tolerable plateau. Yet, Soren couldn’t shake the sensation of a phantom needle pressing against the nape of his neck.

He sat atop his stallion, his eyes narrowed as he scanned the ancient pines. Everything appeared normal, but it was too normal. The wind carried the scent of pine and old snow, but the birds had gone curiously silent. It wasn’t the respectful silence they gave a predator; it was the hollow silence of a graveyard.

Am I overthinking? he wondered, his fingers tapping a restless rhythm against the riser of his Imperial Bow. The men are happy. The quotas are met. Maybe I’m just looking for ghosts in the frost.

He glanced at Eris, who rode beside him. She looked comfortable, her fire magic shimmering just beneath her skin to ward off the chill, her gaze sharp and observant. He decided not to alarm her yet. There was no sense in haunting the party with his paranoia until he had a target to point at. But he stayed alert, every sense dialed to a frequency that made his skin itch.

The opportunity arose an hour later. A massive Snowback Elk herd was spotted grazing in a wide, bowl-shaped clearing. The plan was a standard pincer movement: drivers would flush the herd toward the center, where the archers waited in elevated positions.

Soren had moved Eris to a high, rocky outcrop under the pretense of "observation."

"Stay here," he’d said, his voice carrying that protective weight she usually ignored. "You’re an observer so just watch the form."

"Watch the form," Eris had mimicked under her breath, clutching the recurve bow Soren had "instructed" her on the night before.

The hunt began with a cacophony of shouts from the drivers. The herd spooked, a sea of white fur and jagged antlers surging through the snow. But nature was rarely predictable.

A massive bull, easily twice the size of the others, didn’t follow the herd. Panicked or perhaps emboldened by territorial rage, it broke from the pack and charged directly up the slope toward the rocky outcrop.

Guards scrambled, their boots slipping in the knee-deep powder as they tried to intercept the three-hundred-pound wall of muscle and bone. Soren pivoted, his hand flying to his quiver, but the angle was tight, and the elk was moving at a terrifying full sprint.

Eris didn’t wait for a command. She didn’t check for permission.

She stepped to the edge of the ledge, her stance widening into that "mountain foundation" Soren had mocked. She drew the string in one fluid, blurring motion. There was no hesitation, no "instructional breathing", just the cold, lethal intent of a woman who refused to be a spectator.

Thrum.

The arrow sang. It cut through eighty yards of thin mountain air and buried itself with a wet thud directly behind the bull’s shoulder. The creature didn’t even have time to stumble. Its heart vanished mid-beat, and it dropped instantly, its momentum sliding its massive carcass another ten feet through the snow until it came to a rest just below the ledge.

Dead silence followed.

The drivers froze. The guards lowered their spears. Even the wind seemed to catch its breath.

Thyren was the first to break. He blinked, looking from the dead elk to the Empress. "...Did she just, "

"Yes," Ryse said, his voice flat with genuine shock.

"That was at least eighty yards," Jorel added, rubbing his eyes. "While it was running."

One of the younger guards stared at the arrow protruding from the beast’s side. "I’ve seen veterans miss that shot on a stationary target. She hit the heart at a dead gallop."

Eris calmly lowered her bow. She didn’t look at the guards or the officers. She turned her gaze to Soren, who was currently staring at her with his mouth slightly ajar, his brain clearly experiencing a total systemic failure.

She let a slow, dangerous smirk pull at her lips. "You said I could be better, Soren. Was I wrong?"

Soren tried to speak. He looked at the elk, then back at Eris, his expression shifting from shock to a look of such pure, unadulterated smitten adoration that it was actually embarrassing to witness. "That was... you... the arrow..."

Thyren snickered, leaning toward Ryse. "He’s gone. Completely lost. We should probably start taking orders from the Empress now."

Soren finally managed to find his voice, though it was breathy. "I’m keeping you. I’m never letting you go. I’m locking you in the palace and making you shoot targets for me every day."

Eris rolled her eyes, though her cheeks were flushed with the thrill of the kill. "You already have me, idiot. Now are we going to stand here all day, or are we going to process the meat?"

The mood lightened instantly. The guards began to cheer, their respect for Eris shifting from "the Emperor’s wife" to "the woman who can outshoot our best." Joking remarks about how the Empress could hunt better than half the palace guard rippled through the clearing. Eris accepted the praise awkwardly, her shoulders losing some of their defensive tension as she climbed down to the clearing.

It was a brief, beautiful moment of levity.

It lasted exactly two minutes.

The first sign was Bjorn.

The wolf, who had been trotting happily toward the elk carcass, suddenly went rigid. He didn’t just stop; he locked his joints, his tail tucking low and his hackles rising into a jagged silver ridge. A low, vibrating growl started in the back of his throat, a sound of primal, instinctive terror.

Soren’s humor vanished. The "puppy" was gone, replaced instantly by the apex predator. "Weapons. NOW," he roared, his voice cracking like a whip across the clearing.

The officers didn’t hesitate. They knew that tone. Within seconds, the guards had formed a defensive circle around the elk and the Empress, spears leveled at the treeline.

Then came the sound.

It wasn’t a growl or a howl. It was a deep, resonant rumbling that felt like it was coming from the marrow of the earth. The ground began to tremble, not the sharp jolt of an earthquake, but the rhythmic, heavy thud of massive weight being displaced.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Eris felt the fire magic at her fingertips flare to life, her eyes darting toward the ancient pines. She stepped back, her shoulder blades meeting Soren’s. "What is it?" she whispered.

"I don’t know," Soren said, his voice grim. "But it’s big. And it’s not alone."

Then, they emerged.

Five massive silhouettes broke through the trees, shattering trunks as if they were dry twigs. They were monsters of ice and myth: the Thraen.

Ancient ice golems, standing nearly twenty feet tall, lumbered into the clearing. They were terrifyingly beautiful, their bodies were composed of translucent, compacted ice that had frozen so hard it was denser than granite. Inside their chests, stone cores pulsed with a rhythmic, frozen lightning, and ancient runes glowed a sickly, electric blue beneath the surface of their skin.

"The sentinels," Soren whispered, his face turning ashen. "They’re not supposed to be active. They haven’t walked these woods in centuries."

"Why are they here?" Eris asked, the heat from her palms melting the snow around her boots.

"Something’s very wrong," Soren muttered. "They’re supposed to guard the ancient tombs in the third zone. They only awaken when the balance of the forest is threatened, but they should be assessing us. They should be warning us."

But the Thraen weren’t assessing.

Their faces were blank, featureless slabs of ice with glowing, hollow eye sockets that leaked blue mist. Their arms didn’t end in hands; they ended in massive, crystalline blades and club-like protrusions. They didn’t stop at the edge of the clearing to roar. They didn’t declare their territory.

They charged.

They moved with a heavy, unstoppable momentum that defied their size. Their target wasn’t just the hunters, it was everything living.

"Shields!" Ryse screamed as the first golem swung a ten-foot arm of ice, the sheer force of the blow sending a shockwave through the air.

This wasn’t a territorial dispute. This wasn’t the forest protecting its own. This was an extermination.

"Eris, get back!" Soren yelled, drawing an arrow tipped with enchanted ice-crystal. "Standard steel won’t touch them! We need heat and heavy impact!"

"I think I can handle the heat," Eris snapped, her eyes turning a molten gold as she raised her hands, a jet of white-hot dragon fire erupting toward the leading giant.

The hunt was over. The survival had begun.