The night was cold, and Leo could not sleep.

Not because the inn bed was hard — it was, but he had slept on floors for years, so that was nothing. No, it was the power. It buzzed under his skin like an electrical current. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blue light, felt it pouring into his chest.

**【Warning: Devourer saturation at 40%.】**
**【Rest is required before further absorption. Your body is not yet a vessel; it is a cup. Cups do not hold rivers.**】

"Forty percent," Leo whispered. "How much is too much?"

**【One hundred percent. Beyond that, you will burn from the inside out.】**
**【Be patient, little farmer. The world is full of food. There is no need to eat it all tonight.**】

Leo grunted and sat up. Fine. No more devouring tonight. But there was nothing stopping him from thinking.

He reached for his status screen.

**【Status】**
**Name: Leo**
**Class: Farmer (Hidden: ???)**
**Level: 8**
**XP to next: 12/40**
**Skills: Taste of Power (Lv.1)**

Eight. Eight levels in one day. A normal player took weeks to reach Level 8, even on the good spawns. He had done it in an afternoon with a hoe.

Because he had the Devourer. Because he had three years of watching pros play this game.

"Nobody knows this world better than a man who played other people's lives in it," he said quietly.

The window rattled. Outside, the wind had picked up, and with it came a sound that made his blood run cold.

Wolves.

Not one. Many. A chorus of them, rising from the edge of the village, close enough that he could hear their paws on the packed earth.

**【Warning: Hostile mobs approaching the village. Multiple wolf signatures detected. Highest: Level 8.**】

Leo grabbed the iron knife the innkeeper had loaned him for cutting bread. It was a joke of a weapon, but it was better than nothing.

He went to the window.

In the moonlight, the village square was full of wolves. Ten of them. Twelve. Their eyes burned like lanterns as they padded between the houses, heads low, sniffing at doors.

A child screamed. A door slammed.

Then a wolf howled, and the pack answered, and the whole village erupted in panic.

---

Leo ran.

He did not think about it. His feet carried him out of the inn and into the square before his brain caught up, and by then it was too late to turn back.

A wolf — **Level 4** — saw him and charged.

The Taste of Power flared in his mind, a sudden cold clarity. The wolf's weak spot: the throat, just below the jaw, where the fur was thin.

Leo sidestepped, caught the wolf's neck with the bread knife, and dragged it across. The wolf crashed at his feet, twitching.

**【You have killed a Grey Wolf (Lv. 4).】**
**【Devour?****

"Not now," Leo snapped. "Later. There's more."

The square was chaos. Villagers ran for cover. Guard Belloc stood in the center, spear whirling, holding off two wolves at once. A third circled behind him, muscles bunched, ready to spring.

Leo grabbed a fallen torch from the ground, jammed it into the bonfire, and hurled it at the circling wolf.

The wolf yelped and dodged. Belloc spun, speared it in the ribs, and threw it off his weapon.

"Boy!" Belloc shouted, eyes wide. "What are you doing out here?!"

"Saving your hide!" Leo yelled back.

Another wolf lunged at him. Leo's new reflexes took over. He dropped low, let the wolf sail over his head, and stabbed upward into its belly as it passed. It hit the ground and did not get up.

**【You have killed a Grey Wolf (Lv. 5).】**

"Two," Leo counted. "Two wolves."

"Three!" Belloc shouted, kicking a body off his spear.

The pack was breaking. Six wolves down, and the rest were hesitating, backs to the treeline, ears flat.

Then a massive shape stepped out of the shadows between the houses.

**Alpha Wolf — Level 8.**

It was the size of a horse, with silver fur that seemed to drink the moonlight. It stared at Leo with an intelligence that made his stomach drop.

**【Taste of Power: Weakness identified. The alpha's left foreleg is lame. Old injury. Strike it there and it cannot lead the pack.**】

The alpha's lips peeled back. It took a step forward.

Leo looked at his bread knife. Then at the monster in front of him.

"Belloc," he said quietly. "Throw me your spear."

"What?!"

"Throw me your spear!"

Belloc hesitated for half a second, then hurled his weapon across the square. Leo caught it out of the air.

The alpha lunged.

Leo pivoted, spear low, and drove the point into the alpha's lame left foreleg. The wolf screamed — a horrible, human-sounding shriek — and stumbled, its leg folding beneath it.

The pack broke. Wolves scattered into the night, yelping, tails between their legs.

The alpha dragged itself backward, snarling, and then it too turned and limped into the darkness.

Silence fell over the village.

Leo stood in the center of the square, spear in hand, chest heaving. Around him, the villagers emerged slowly from their houses, staring at him like he was a ghost.

"Farmer," Belloc said, his voice strange. "Boy. What are you?"

Leo looked at the bodies. Six wolves, killed by a man they had all seen weeding a field that morning.

**【You have killed: Grey Wolf (Lv.4) +1, Grey Wolf (Lv.5) +1, Alpha Wolf wounded.**】
**【Residual experience available: 3 wolf corpses nearby. Devour?**】

Not now. Later. In private.

"I'm just a farmer," Leo said, and his voice was steadier than he felt. "A farmer who's very good with a hoe."

The villagers did not laugh.

The old man with the pipe, who had mocked him that morning, looked at the dead wolves and then at Leo, and said nothing at all.

Leo walked back to the inn, the bread knife still in his hand.

Behind him, in the square, nobody could say they had seen a Level 1 farmer do that.

---

In the inn's stable, Leo pressed his hand to the last wolf corpse he had dragged in through the back door.

**【Devour.】**

The blue light filled him. His body burned, but he held on, teeth gritted, until the wolf's residual experience settled into his core.

**【Experience Devoured. +25 XP.】**
**【Level Up! You are now Level 9.】**
**【Devourer saturation: 65%.】**

"Nine," Leo breathed. "One more level and I can—"

The stable door creaked.

Leo spun, knife up. In the doorway stood a girl his own age, dark-haired, sharp-eyed, wearing a traveler's cloak despite the village warmth. She did not look afraid.

"Relax," she said. "I saw the whole thing from the roof. You're either the worst farmer in the world or the best liar."

"Who are you?"

"Name's Maya. And I'm asking the same question of you, Level 9."

Leo's blood ran cold. His tag showed Level 1. It *should* have shown Level 1.

"You're not from this village," he said slowly.

"No," Maya agreed. She smiled, and it did not reach her eyes. "And neither, I think, are you."

**【New quest suggestion: Do not trust the girl with the sharp smile. She sees too much.**】

Leo lowered the knife a fraction.

"Talk," he said. "And make it fast."

---