My first night sleeping as a Legion was odd. I hadn’t expected to dream. The whole night, I dreamed of conversations I’d had in ASL. Ninety-nine percent of them were translations. I was translating for my sister, signing for her as someone voiced.

Despite the vivid dreams, I woke up feeling like a million bucks. No, I mean, really: I felt RESTED. While I remembered almost nothing from my life before The Jungle, I knew I hadn’t been an easy sleeper. But now? I felt awesome, like I was ready to take on the world. I clambered to my feet, yawned, smacked my jaws a couple of times, then stretched. Front paws out, back arched, tail up… ahhhhh.

The sun hadn’t risen yet. It was dark and humid, a knee-high mist hanging over the jungle floor below the grotto. Angel was still sound asleep, bundled in her bedroll under the conical grass hut she’d built. Lulu was goobering around, curiously engulfing and examining the tools Angel had left around the camp. As she passed over them, she left them clean and spotless. No dirt. Definitely no food scraps.

“Okay, Lulu.” I shook myself out and stretched the tentacles. Stretching felt real good. “You and me? We’re gonna go hunting.”

“Ooh?” Lulu stopped sucking bits of organic detritus off Angel’s cutting board, her mass twisting back toward me.

“Yup. We need to find a wild Legion and kill it.” I paused for a moment. “Assuming it isn’t a cool guy or gal like you and me.”

Lulu made a miserable sound, and hunched back. She shook from side to side.

“I know you’re not exactly a stone-cold killer, Lu, but this is a survival sim. You remember what a V.R is, right?”

Tentatively, the slime nodded.

“That means nothing here is actually alive-slash-real,” I said. “Most of the Legions and all of the dinos and other animals have never been people. They’re just lines of code in a server somewhere. A server run by some kind of organized criminal outfit.”

Lulu hunched into herself more. “Nuuu.”

The control collar didn’t give us two-way telepathic conversation, but it increased my sense of what Lulu was feeling. She was scared – really scared. Not just anxious about our current circumstances, but about something she wasn’t able to verbalize with her limited ability to communicate.

“Look, I get you’re stressed out. Believe me.” I sat down, tucking my tail around myself like a cat. “I woke up in this green hell as a monster with a letter from some psycho telling me he murdered me for being a cop and is now after my family. The problem is-”

Before I could continue, Lulu gasped. She bounded toward me and sprang up to hug me around the neck and chest, cooing reassuringly.

“Foo…moo.” She tried to sound out ‘family’. “Mmm… toooo.”

“You too? You got family on the outside?”

Lulu quivered violently, clinging to my scales. “Mmhmm.”

“Then it’s even more important we go out and level up. Whatever happened to us out there is the past. We’re here in the now, and we have to play by their rules until we find our way out of this mess,” I replied. “That means we gotta become the toughest motherfuckers in this jungle. The faster we do it, the sooner we’re out of here.”

I felt her steel herself. She dropped to the ground, and gave a determined little wiggle. “Ooh!”

“Let’s go hunt down a Legion and see what we find. Maybe they’re human minds in monster bodies like you and me, in which case, we’ll try and negotiate. And if they aren’t, we kill ‘em and see if we have any sync moves,” I said. “Maybe we can get you to Absorb an ability or something?”

“Aboo!” Lulu seemed happy about this.

I crouched down, and she hopped forward to mount, winding her mass up my limbs until she was on my back. She was cold at first, but quickly warmed to my own body temperature. I crept off to the ledge and anchored myself into the cliff wall, climbing down as quietly as possible. All things considered, that was pretty damn quiet.

“So, hey. What do you think Angel was gonna ask us last night?”

“Uuu-woo.” ‘I dunno’.

“I figure she was gonna ask me if I’d let her clap her collar on over mine.” I dropped down to the damp forest floor. “To be honest, I don’t know if I want to stick with her or not. The plan was to split from Angel once we delivered her to her guild. She’s a nice gal and everything, but damn, is she ambitious. Gives me the feeling that she’d stop at nothing to get ahead of the pack, you know what I mean?”

Lulu hummed non-commitally.

We stalked the jungles for over two hours before we picked up the spoor of something that wasn’t a dino, a reptile, or a prehistoric mammal. Something big, something that smelled like wet dog and decaying mushrooms. I lifted my head, scanning the terrain. I could see in infrared: there was a cooling trail leading away from the spoor site toward a dark, close, swampy area of jungle. Unlike the human trails, this one was blue, not red.

My eyes narrowed. “Okay, Lulu. Here we go. Let’s get our dermal armor on.”

Lulu wordlessly spread out over my skin, extending herself and flowing over my hide. It kind of felt like wearing an all-body condom. It was hard to believe she would be alright if we were struck.

I followed the trail for nearly a quarter of a mile until we spotted the Legion. It was some kind of weird turtle-like thing. Stocky, round, with stumpy armored legs, a round shiny shell, and a flat, horned head. The legs, claws and head looked like they were built more for digging than fighting, but they were sharp enough and big enough to do some real damage.

[You have studied new Greater Legion: Testudo – a common Legion in the Jungle, it is capable of tunnelling through solid rock and leaping out of the ground to surprise opponents.]

I flicked my tail, crouching low. As I focused on it, a Level indicator appeared. [Testudo Level 8]. The description hadn’t given me an element combination key, but if I had to guess… I’d say Body, Earth and… something else. I didn’t even know all the Legion types yet. Hopefully not Metal. I watched it for signs of intelligence, but there was nothing even remotely human in the way it acted. It had the placid, dumb mannerisms of a cow.

“Hey buddy!” I called out telepathically to it. “Can you hear me?”

The Testudo pulled up some cattails, munching on them with no sign of recognition.

My eyes narrowed. “Okay, Lulu. Me and you, we’re going to take this bad boy down. You ready?”

“Nuu…” Lulu shuddered.

“One, two… three!” I shot out from the underbrush, tentacles pressed flat along my back.

The startled Testudo reared its head as I leaped at it like a panther, claws outstretched. We collided like linebackers: I snapped at its stubby neck as it brayed and twisted, taking a punch to the gut from one of its smoothly armored forelimbs. The shock of the impact diffused through Lulu’s mass. I barely even felt it.

[You take 112 reduced damage.]

[Lulu takes 38 reduced damage.]

[Testudo takes 0 damage.]

Zero damage?! My teeth and claws scrabbled fruitlessly over the Testudo’s slick shell. “Shit. Is it immune to slashing damage?”

The Legion bellowed and knocked me off its back. It turned and dived headfirst into the ground, spraying mud as it vanished until the surface of the earth like it was made of water. I trusted my instincts and stood in place, until the ground rumbled under my feet. I leaped straight into the air as the Testudo came up underneath me, mouth opened to snap.

I twisted in the air and rammed all four tentacles down, jamming the bladed points into its head. The Testudo squealed as one plunged into its eye; one skidded off the collar of its armor shell, and the other two lanced in to either side of its neck. I dragged it toward me by the head, using the tentacles like fishing lines to pull it out of the earth and crunch it between my jaws. The edge of its shell broke under the pressure, and within seconds, its HP evaporated. I dropped the heavy corpse to the ground.

Jesus. After what Angel had told me about Legions being tougher than normal monsters, I’d expected more of a fight. But this had been… well… EASY.

[You have gained 144 EXP. You are Level 16.]

At Level 8, the Testudo had given me about the same amount of EXP as the Level 22 T-rex. That meant Legion kills gave nearly three times the amount of points as dinosaurs. That seemed crazy, until I remembered – the game was made for human gladiators, not crazed murder muffins like me. A human couldn’t jump twenty feet in the air to avoid the Testudo’s earth swimming attack. The crude stone and bronze weapons accessible by gladiators like Angel would simply break on the Legion’s hard shell. They couldn’t smell its position, sense the tremors of it through their feet. For a human, that would have been a difficult, maybe even fatal fight. For me, the Testudo was just another prey animal.

Even weirder… I didn’t feel strange about that any more.

“How’re you feeling, Lulu?” I asked the slime. “You okay?”

My turtle-proof vest quivered, then condensed into a giant teardrop that plopped onto the ground. Despite her lack of discernable features, she looked kind of sad.

“I hate to say it, but killing gets easier the more you do it.” Tail lashing, I went over and levered the Testudo’s shell up, cutting with my claws to free it. With some sawing, I was able to get it off. “Let’s make sure we didn’t kill this thing in vain. I’ll take the meat and parts, and you hop on and start Absorbing. I’m pretty sure this is a medium Legion.”

Lulu made a mournful little noise, but determinedly bounced off the ground. She fanned her mass open and landed on the corpse with a splat, crawling over it like a slime mold.

[Lulu is Absorbing Testudo (Level 8)]

Absorb took ten minutes to work, so I padded around the battle site, sniffing, scratching and chewing at various interesting smells. There were some other Legions around – or had been. They’d cleared out during the battle.

Ten minutes later, the Testudo corpse was gone. There was only Lulu, pulsing up and down thoughtfully. Maybe I was hallucinating, but I thought she looked a little bigger.

[Lulu has Analyzed Testudo. Lulu has gained an ability with Absorb: Quicksand.]

[View results and new abilities in your Legion and Knowledge Base menus.]

I moseyed over to her and opened my Menu to check out this mysterious Knowledge Base. Mentally querying the term brought up a database that listed all the animals and Legions I knew. The depth of the knowledge was ranked by stars, with 0 stars meaning that I’d seen the creature, but knew nothing about it, and 5 stars meaning that I knew everything there was to know. Animals I’d eaten or killed had 4 stars. The only 5-star entry was the Testudo. I opened the entry and got a page with a rotating 3D figure of the Legion, as well as a very detailed breakdown of its strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and elemental types. It was a Body/Earth/Water Greater Legion, ranked C for ‘Common’.

The most useful part of the Knowledge Base entry was the Abilities section. All three of the Testudo’s abilities were listed there in detail. At Level 8, it had three abilities: its Prime Ability, Burrow, plus Quicksand and Hard Shell. Lulu had absorbed Quicksand, so I focused on that Ability and got a pop-up explanation of its effects:

Quicksand

Induce the earth to soften into a sucking mire that traps humans and small Legions and slows Medium, Large, and Giant Legions. 30ft targeting radius, 20ft circular area of effect.

“Yeah… this is good. This is very good.” I leaped to my feet. “Alright, Lulu. Quicksand! Give it all you got!”

Lulu vibrated intensely for several seconds… before a small two-foot patch of soil turned to a sucking mire of liquid mud. Three feet away from her.

“Oooh.” The slime deflated sadly.

I scratched my nose with the tip of one tentacle. “Well… good try. Maybe…uh… maybe you’ll get better at it with practice?”

Lulu twisted from side to side, as if she were shaking her head.

“Absorb HAS to get better as you get stronger.” I was kind of trying to pep myself up at this point. Much as I hated to say it, Angel was right. Lulu wasn’t exactly the Mike Tyson of Legions. Didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to help her… but if we had to battle to advance here, there was a good chance she was going to die.

Lulu inched toward me. Then, almost sadly, she extruded the edge of her Lesser Legion collar toward me.

“Huh?” I looked down.

“Nuuu.” She jabbed it at me insistently.

“No. Nuh uh. If I take it off, you’ll die.” I growled aloud. “Besides: Your damage reduction by itself is worth its weight in gold, kid. Let me take a look at our abilities and see what pairs up.”

“Mmmm.” Lulu hummed sadly, poking around the edge of the tiny quagmire she’d made as I squinted at our sheets.

“Dermal Armor and Toad Skin? That might make some dual Poison/Acid type armor that works on Metal-type Legions. Drown and Poison Cloud, maybe?”

Lulu paused, and I had the distinct impression she was looking at her own HUD. After a couple of minutes of not moving, she began to blob up and down in excitement. “Chuuu! Uuu!”

“What?” I cocked my head at her.

The blobbing intensified in speed. “Suuu… duuu!”

“Sudoku? Sushi?” I narrowed my eyes in confusion.

“Suu duu!” She squeaked, gesturing wildly with several small pseudopods. Mimicking my tentacles.

My eyes widened with sudden realization. “Soul drain?”

“Suu duu!” She hopped up and down in agitation.

Soul Drain and Absorb. I reread the descriptions. Then it hit me.

“You can drain abilities from other Legions,” I repeated to myself. “Oh. Shit. It doesn’t say anything about draining abilities from JUST enemies, does it?”

Lulu responded by bouncing over to me. She swarmed up my leg and onto my back, vibrating with excitement.

“But if I Soul Drain you, I’ll hurt you.” I looked back at her.

“Suu duu!” She repeated, firmly.

“Well… okay.” I braced myself, reared the pud squad up, and drove them down at Lulu’s mass.

The obsidian-tipped points sunk into her squishy body, and she quivered briefly as the Soul Drain engaged. As they did, time warped to a near standstill – and I got a list of abilities to pick from.

Analyze Drown Absorb Water Saber Liquid Armor Quicksand

I picked Quicksand, and time warped back to normal. Heat flushed through my synapses – and somehow, I knew exactly what to do.

“HRRRAH!” A wave of psionic energy pulse out of my forehead and blast out into the ground ahead. Thirty feet away, a much larger mire opened up in the soft earth, gurgling and popping. A small tree near the center leaned over, then toppled to the ground.

I stared at the scene of deliciously moist carnage, stunned by the implications of what we’d just done. My Lesser Legion could permanently hold up to ten Absorbed abilities of any type, any element, from any Legion. As her trainer, I could pick and choose which abilities she had in her stable, plug into her, and use any of those abilities during a fight. It made us almost completely unpredictable to our enemies. And I was going to abuse the ever-living shit out of it.

“Lulu,” I thought back to her. “You’re a motherfucking genius.”

“Oooh!” She crooned in agreement.

“If we train up, level up, and work this strategically, you and me are gonna rule this whole fucking world.” I licked my chops in satisfaction. “Come on: Let’s get back to Angel. I wonder if I can sit on in any of those Iron Centurion training classes she was talking about?”

No sooner had I thought that than I heard a gunshot: the rolling CRACK of a rifle echoing through the forest like a shockwave. Birds and small flying dinosaurs vaulted into the air in clouds, screeching. Bellows rang out, followed by a second and third rapport from the south-west.

The direction of the grotto.

"FUCK!" I turned around, skidding on the mud in my urgency, and broke into a mad sprint.

The Hell Pigs had found Angel.