I raised both hands, palms out.
"I don't know. I found them like this."
That wasn't entirely a lie.
"There was a horde of dark-colored wolf beasts. Big ones, maybe sixty in total. I cleared them out, but I got there late. She was already like this when I landed."
"How strong were they? What rank?" she asked.
I paused for half a second, as if I were actually trying to remember.
"Honestly, hard to say. Most of them were already wounded, probably from fighting before I showed up. Ranking a beast in the middle of a fight isn't exactly my specialty. I just know there were a lot of them, and I put them down."
That part, at least, was true in its own way. To me, every beast in that clearing had looked equally weak. Trying to sort them by strength would have been like asking me to rank ants by species.
Whatever they were, they all died if I stepped on them.
She didn't respond to that. Her attention returned to Reiva, one hand pressed against her friend's cheek.
