"Angel! Shoot the damn wolf!" I reeled in a circle as my HP dropped.

The humans had wisened up. They'd backed out of range, taking cover in the brush to hide from Angel, and were firing from a distance while the Tulevolk tried to gnaw my head off. I roared and bucked, but it locked its jaws and held on. Then I remembered – I had other attacks. I concentrated, then emitted a sonar pulse of White Noise. It was like psionic chaff, blowing out from me in a shockwave. The humans reeled, flinching back as their eardrums popped. The Yahvim and Tulevolk weren’t affected. Psionic Legions. Right.

"You motherfucker! Get off me!" Increasingly desperate, I wrapped the beast's ribcage in my tentacles and squeezed. The Tulevolk finally wrenched his fangs away, thrashing and yelping as I coiled around him and bore down on the relatively vulnerable bones. But my plan wasn't to crush him to death - by the time he'd stop breathing, the gladiators would have tranq'd me.

I had something else in mind.

"Hey buddy!" I thought out to the Tomb Stalker rider in Russian. "Fuck you!"

"What-?" He got out the one word - 'schto?' – as I spun around and hurled the struggling Tulevolk straight at him and his mount. He pulled the undead bird around, but he was a fraction too slow.

Sure, the Tomb Stalker was immune to physical damage, but its rider? Definitely not. The flaming, yelping wolf slammed into him, knocked him off his mount, and crushed him against a tree stump as they tumbled to the forest floor. The wolf got up and shook its fur out, lifting lips over its fangs. The human didn't move.

A rifle fired, and another dart hit me in the ribs. Lulu wobbled, let out a little sigh, and slumped off me to go splat on the ground. Her tranq meter was full.

I pressed the attack, roaring as I charged the trio of gladiator, Legions, and Tomb Stalker. This Tulevolk wasn't like me, Lulu or even Kaya - without a trainer, it was just a big dumb animal. He was currently ignoring the piercing metallic warning screeches from the Yahvim, focusing on me with baleful orange eyes. When I pounced, he was ready: clashed like battling tigers, paw to paw, slashing at each other's flanks as we tumbled to the forest floor in a snarling tangle of flashing claws and teeth. The fight was down and dirty. I had tentacles, but the Tulevolk had flames. Its mouth opened, and he belched a torrent of fire into my face.

[x2 Damage. You take 670 damage. You are burned.]

"FUCK!" My skin blistered, my scales peeled, and my eyes were forced shut by the agonizing heat. It felt like all the skin had been seared from my skull, and my desperation ramped to a peak. The timer on Water Saber only had fifteen seconds to go. If I could make it...

Guns fired, but I'd lost track of the humans around us. A spike of ice lanced out from overhead and nearly nailed me in the neck. As soon as I realized that the Tulevolk was grappling me to keep me down, I triggered Poison Cloud. Venom oozed up out of my pores, as thick as house paint, and a nasty, acrid smelled filled the clearing. The Tulevolk yelped as my skin became toxic and slippery, his blunt canine claws scrabbling uselessly over the oxidising coat of slime.

I seized the chance to wrap him in my tentacles again, twisting around to rake his belly with my hind claws. Unlike the Tulevolk's, my claws were not blunt from walking. They were partly sheathed, held off the ground, and they were lethally sharp. He let out a high, strangled scream as the tips found traction and ripped at him from sternum to groin.

[Critical strike.]

"Suck it!" I snarled telepathically at him, rabbit-kicking as hard as I could.

The Tulevolk slavered as it heated in my arms and discharged Blast Shield, the same move Clive's Pyromaw had used to good effect. My tentacles slackened, and I let out a high, whistling screech of pain as more of my body burned and blistered. My HP was blinking red, the tranq meter 85% full... and then the Water Saber cooldown ended, and the blue icon lit up.

I roared over the sound of gunfire as I armed the move and used it through my back claws instead of my tentacles. The blade of water sliced open the wolf's belly, spilling the steaming contents of his gut over me and the sodden, blood-soaked ground. It let out a garbling, squealing cry, snapping at my face with berserk rage. But the light was dying in its eyes, and when I headbutted it, the corpse tumbled off me to thrash and kick on the ground.

The injured rover was still alive - and he had collared the Yahvim. As I staggered to my feet and nearly fell, I saw him vault onto the remaining Tomb Stalker, the floating Cute in tow, and spur the undead animal into a run toward the forest.

"Wing him!" I telepathically yelled at Angel.

There was a crack from overhead, and then a piercing cry as the soldier took a bullet in the back and pitched from the saddle. He crashed to the ground, the Yahvim letting out high calls of distress. The panicking Cute didn't try to stop me as I limped over and put a paw down on the human's chest.

"Who sent you!?" I demanded in Russian.

The soldier blanched. "Wh-What the… How are you talking?! Brutes can't talk!"

Rumbling like an earthquake, I lowered my muzzle toward his face, drooling poison and blood through my fangs. "ANSWER ME!"

"Aiiee! It was the King!" He stammered back. He was a raw-boned, unattractive man, horsey and sallow, with big blue eyes and a thin mouth currently split into a grimace of terror. "King Pig! He sent us to find you!"

"Who told him we were here?"

"I don't know!"

My claws flexed into the man's brigandine with the screech of carbon on metal. "Jog your memory!"

"I don't know!" He squealed again, eyes rolling and white. “Mercy, please! This is my last life!”

"Who's behind King Pig?" I leaned on him until his face turned purple. "Solonov?"

The guy snarled with pain. The Yahvim rushed at me, but by itself, it wasn't very strong. I smacked it out of the air with my tailed and sent it careening into a tree. The Tomb Stalker had fled into the jungle.

Blood flecked the soldier's lips now. "I don't know, okay? I'm just... following... arrrgh-orders!"

"Of course you are." My lips peeled back from my teeth. "Send King Pig my regards. And tell him to leave me the fuck alone."

The guy struggled to get away from me, right until the moment I fixed my jaws over his face and crushed it. He spasmed, once, then fell still.

[You have crushed your rivals. You earn 409 EXP.]

[You defeated an Elite player. You earn 312 EXP.]

[You are Level 17.]

[You are Level 18.]

[Lulu is Level 16.]

[Angel is Level 10.]

"Lulu!" I turned back to the slime. The tranqs were starting to wear off, and she was stirring herself back into a defined shape. Her amorphous nature had kept her from being trampled underfoot as the Tulevolk and I battled on top of her. "Angel! You alright up there?"

Angel pulled her ghillie helmet and gloves off and leaned out of the tree so I could see her chalk white hands and face. "I'm fine. Where's Lulu?"

"Oooh..." Lulu groaned as I limped over to her and flopped down, injured and exhausted.

"Lulu, you gotta wake up and absorb that Tulevolk before it despawns," I urged her, panting heavily. My head, neck and one flank were raw, throbbing with pain. The burn icon in my HUD was red, HP bar pulsing crimson. The tranq meter was starting to roll down, but now that the adrenaline of the fight was starting to wear off, I was feeling the toll of the drugs and the damage done to me. "Fuck. I need to get better at fighting."

Lulu made a grumbling sound as she drowsily blooped her way over to the corpse of the Tulevolk, hesitated, then engulfed it. She began to bob up and down.

[Lulu is Absorbing Tulevolk!]

I lay my head down, willing my HP to regenerate. Angel used a rope and a crude wooden pulley to rappel down from the tree. When she landed, she ran to us, expression worried and intense. "Noodles! You're hurt."

"Yeah. Again." I tried to get up, but it was no good. I'd been sitting on three quarters of my HP to start with, and I was down to a bare sliver now. "How are we going on potions?"

"We're going to have to buy more. At least we still have all those Iron coins." Angel pulled several bottles from her Inventory, uncapping them so she could pour them into my mouth. She dumped two of them down the hatch, then tipped a third green one over my skin. The pain from the burns cut sharply, and I sighed with relief.

"Those guys were a notch above anyone else we've faced. But hey: we went up a bunch of levels." As soon as I was able to move, I tried to get to my feet - only to be pressed down by one of Angel's slim hands.

"No," she said. "Stay there and let the medicine work. Now you've had those, you have the Sated status. As long as you don't move too much, you'll keep regenerating. It'll save us resources."

I growled, but didn't push it. Instead, I lay my head down on my foreclaws and watched as Angel looted the bodies.

"That Sponsored should have some good stuff," I remarked gruffly.

"Some, but his weapons were spawn-locked. That's a shame, too. I bet he had a good tier rifle." Angel stood up from him, and rapidly switched out her Centurion cadet armor for the player's much nicer [Hell Pigs Elite] set. It gave her more camouflage than the guild gear, and unlike the other armors she'd worn, it covered her completely. "Oh, thank goodness. He has heals, and money. And this?"

She held up what looked to me like a small bone pendant. I stared at the thing until my HUD identified it.

"King Pigs Valor Token," I repeated. "Could be useful. Or we could sell it: I bet there's people who collect this junk."

"I'll keep it as a trophy. Maybe it's good luck." Angel hung it around her neck, then looked worriedly to Lulu. "Absorb takes such a long time. Does she get to pick her power from the Legion, or is it random?"

"Random," I replied. "Better pray to RNGesus that she gets a fire ability."

"How are you so laid back about this?" Angel scowled at me. "You nearly died."

"But I didn't."

"You were about two hits away from dying, Noodles."

"Yeah, but I didn't." I licked the back of one paw and rubbed my face with it to wash the mud and blood off.

"This is one of those dumb machismo things, isn't it?" Angel began to pace, glancing nervously at the forest.

"Sure. I AM Maximum Turgidity Noodles, after all." I folded my foreclaws over one another and relaxed, keeping half an eye on Lulu and the dissolving corpse of the Tulevolk. “I’m sure I used to be better at hand-to-hand when I was human. I’ve got to get good again: this ‘being injured all the time’ shit is for the birds.”

"I bet you were a jailbird IRL," Angel signed back. "You were some big peacock of a guy who robbed a gas station once, went to prison, then strutted around the yard like you owned the place."

"According to dear old Dimitri, I was some kind of cop." I shrugged the puds. “And murdered by Russian gangsters, apparently.”

"A cop? Even worse."

“Hey now, I’m sure I only ate crayons every now and then. The rest of the time, it was donuts, coffee, and pure bull testosterone straight from the cow.”

Angel rubbed her face. "How the hell did you even survive to adulthood, Noodles?"

"My sister, probably."

"Right." She sighed.

[Lulu has absorbed Tulevolk.]

[Lulu has learned Inferno Ball!]

"Inferno Ball, huh? How deliciously edgelordy." I opened my menu to take a look at the description.

Inferno Ball

The Legion wreathes themselves in pure elemental fire and supercharges their speed, shooting forward to smash into enemies and knock them flying. The move burns enemies and can potentially set them on fire. On normal terrain, enemies smaller than the Legion are sent sprawling; enemies up to two stages larger can have their attacks disrupted by a successful collision.

"Hey, this is actually pretty good. Good job, Lulu." I gave the Limne a friendly pat.

"Hmm." The Limne vibrated for several seconds, then burst into flames. “EEEK!”

“Lulu, don’t- oh.” I watched as she rushed forward, squealing, and tumbled into a shallow gully. She rolled around on the wet leaves, frantically trying to extinguish herself.

"Well uh... guess it works." I sighed, head swivelling toward Angel. "So, what do you want to do now, chief?"

"Get out of here, before more Hell Pigs come." She gave the darkened jungle a haunted, hollow look. "Someone sent these people after us. I’m pretty sure we both know who.”

"Maybe. Targent's the obvious narc, but it could’ve been Falks."

Angel shook her head. "Falks? No way. She was nice to us."

"Okay. You're an engineer, right?"

"Yeah…?" She signed back in confusion.

"As far as I know, I was an investigator," I said. "And investigation requires thinking about multiple scenarios, gathering evidence for them, and making a conclusion based on what you find. IF you finger only one person in an investigation, you're blinding yourself to possibilities. Maybe Falks wants Targent's job and has contacts in the Hell Pigs who've promised her that he'll have an accident if King Pig gets his hands on us. Maybe Targent is being set up and has no idea. Maybe the guard at the gate with that little microraptor is on someone's payroll as an informant. We don't know."

Angel's expression flickered for a moment. "That's all true. I just..."

"You had a gut response. So did I. It's normal." I heaved myself up, and checked my vitals in my inventory. My HP was back up over half. I still had some burn damage, but it was slowly healing. Lulu wasn't in great shape, but her HP was ticking up due to the delicious Tulevolk she'd just eaten. More importantly, we had our secret weapon - a Fire attack that would be effective against Targent's Legions. "Anyway, let's go find somewhere secluded and make camp. We've got a big morning tomorrow."

Angel heaved her rifle up over her shoulder and trudged over to me. "We're going to have to get closer to the fort if we're going to make it on time."

“Who said anything about making it on time?” I grinned back at her.