For four days, Nelly and her companions sought the mysterious Alpha cultivator of Grog’s rumors. Many a night, they slept in the tattered remnants of the war-torn city.

First, they traveled towards sunrise along the river that split the city. Then, for two days, they followed the meandering railways past farms and glades. Finally, on the eve of the fourth day, Grog announced that they’d arrived.

Batman barked in stoic contemplation, expressing his worry. ‘Too quiet.’

“It’s quiet, cos’ everyone’s hiding from cultivators,” Nelly whispered back.

Tyson and Bane flanked her protectively. Good boys.

Violent meowing erupted two corners away behind a moss-grown stone fence. The group sprinted forward and arrived to witness a squirrel slapping seven large and well-groomed tomcats all at once! Such was the power of the squirrel’s slap that it sent the cats flying all over the alley.

They each hissed in protest, saying things like,

‘Guh!’

‘Preposterous!’

‘Unforgivable!’

‘You dare strike me, the young-master of the yellow-walled house?’

Ignoring the cats, the squirrel backhanded each cat again, and left them meowing on the road.

Though Nelly couldn’t detect Qi or any other magical energy, she immediately recognized the squirrel as an Alpha cultivator. The little critter stood straighter than a 180-degree ruler. His posture was magnificent. His tiny arms were muscular, and his face carved of the same hyper-masculine angles as Titan’s, except with more squirrel in them.

‘Begone,’ said the squirrel to his foes.

Meowing pathetically, the young master tomcats scrambled and fled.

The squirrel rotated at his hips to face Nelly and her companions. Its beady eyes radiated a calm confidence as the critter walked to face her, an armored gorilla, and three man-sized demonic beasts.

‘Did Pum Baa send you?’ The intensity of his presence made Grog and the three demon-hounds flinch backwards. Just like Titan.

Nelly waved her hands. “Pum Baa? Nu-uh! We’re from Happyland.”

‘Happyland?’ The squirrel put hands on his hips, tilting his head quizzically.

Nelly pointed towards Happyland, smiling. “A mental asylum for the criminally insane. Or it was. Nowadays it’s… I guess it’s an abandoned mental asylum for the criminally insane. The staff left, most of them. But we’re sticking around! Oh I’m Nelly, and these are Grog, Batman, Bane, and Tyson, my friends.”

The four grunted their greetings, slowly relaxing despite the pressure of the squirrel’s presence.

‘Hm,’ the squirrel nodded. ‘I am Dese Nuts, an independent Alpha cultivator.’

“Wow!” Overjoyed, Nelly rushed to shake the squirrel’s hand. “Happy to meet you, Dese. I thought Grog was pulling my tail for a day or two there, heh!”

Grog grunted and slapped his chest, ‘Grog not lie.’

“Hahaha! Sorry.”

‘You’ve sought me and found me. Speak your purpose.’

“You. We came to get you. Hehe!” Nelly clapped excitedly. “You’ll love this! There’s another Alpha cultivator like you. My friend. Titan Maximus Chadman. He’s the seventh head of Gigachad sect, do you know it?”

Dese pondered with a teeny squirrel hand on his teeny jaw, and calmly said, ‘Hm. Shocking revelation.’

Batman barked in a low raspy voice, ‘You do not seem surprised.’

‘No. I more or less expected this.’ Dese smiled broadly. ‘This is a long story, but I’ll tell you the origins of my powers. Three winters ago, I found a nut that had been briefly chewed upon by someone of Great Chadness. By studying on the tooth marks, I gained sudden insights into Alpha cultivation, and became what I am today. That’s how I became Dese Nuts.’

‘Master’s teacher was here,’ Batman deduced.

What wonderful news! Nelly awood to celebrate them.

‘Awoo indeed,’ barked Batman.

“Alrigthy. Let’s go back home, c’mon Dese!”

‘I can’t come with you,’ said Dese.

Grog expressed his confusion.

“Don’t worry we’ve got trees there too. Squirrel trees,” Nelly assured Dese.

‘I’m certain your trees are wonderful. What bars me from following is a spirit beast known as Pum Baa. A cunning foe with whom I’ve traded blows to protect the Sacred Tree.‘ Dese pointed at a three-meter tall walnut tree growing in a nearby yard. Though young, the tree was unusually wide, and bent at an angle as if it was a hyper-muscular arm flexing its bicep.

‘Grown from the sacred Chadnut,’ Dese explained. ‘If its nuts contain even a fraction of the original’s secrets, the tree may well be the salvation of all squirrel-kind. I cannot leave it.’

“We could move it,” Nelly suggested.

Dese laughed boisterously. ‘Move a tree? Oh-ho-ho-ho. What an absurd thought. Trees are rooted to the ground, my friend. Not even humans could pull off such a feat as moving and relocating a tree.’

“Just a sec.” Nelly searched the internet on her phone and showed Dese videos, first an advert for a tree-moving company doing their job, and then a how-to guide by some guy named PotsAndPlants.

Dese stared at the screen, dumbfounded. ‘Moving trees. Well I’ll be. Every day is a new wonder.’

“Okay, we need a tarp, rope, and a car or a wagon.”

“Woof!” Batman barked in alarm and the boys surrounded Nelly in a defensive formation. Before Nelly had time to so much as awoo, the stone fence of a nearby building was shattered by a car-sized boar. Moss and plants grew on its back. No, from its back. Roots burrowed through its browned skin. A dozen enormous tusks protruded from its drooling snout and a pale rage burned in its white milky eyes.

‘DESE NUTS COME OUT AND FACE ME!’ The boar bellowed.

Unafraid, Dese strode forward to meet his foe. ‘Here I am.’

‘Fool. Fool. Stupid fool.’ The boar’s face split with a sneer. ’I call and you come. Walked straight to your grave.’

‘I bested you last time, and I’ll do so again,’ said Dese, raising his tiny fists. ‘Come.’

Pum Baa snorted and oinked with amusement. ‘Bested me. That was a draw. And back then, I didn’t bring my legion.’

Ground trembled. Oinks and squeals surrounded Nelly’s group, as hundreds of mossy boars filled the streets. They eyed her with hunger. Poor beasts! Nelly’s chest throbbed with a pang of sympathy. Did they have nobody to take care of them?

Dese stepped forward. ‘Leave them out of this, Pum Baa. They’re from the city and have nothing to do with this.’

Pum Baa slurped. ‘City meat. Perfect main course after I gulp your scrawny tail!’

“Oink oink!” Nelly giggled. She’d met the eyes of a tiny piglet. Little fella looked scared, hesitant to join the mindless hunger of his peers.

“Oink!” it replied, bouncing.

Nelly imitated its gait. “Oink oink!”

‘Rein your spawn,’ spat Pum Baa.

But the oinking continued. Nelly and the piglet began to play, hopping around, then wrestling. But oh no! When bouncing him in the air, Nelly noticed how truly gaunt the piglet was. All bones!

“Hold on!” She ignored the squealing and shouting going on around her, and produced a can of catfood. Mr. Whisker’s Delight was the name of the brand. Printed image of a gentlemanly feline decorated the can. “Now, the doctor says I’m not allowed to eat this,” Nelly whispered to the piglet, “But if you swear by your soul and snout not to tattle on me, I’ll let you have a scoop of the good stuff.”

The piglet swore by his soul and snout!

“Heheheee.” Nelly grinned and shared her treasure.

***

Pum Baa was outraged.

His legion, two hundred-thirty-seven boars strong force capable of upturning the floor of an entire forest in a day, was halted by a human?!

“Rein your spawn! NOW!” Pum Baa bellowed. “RIGHT THIS OINK!”

The legionnaires shuffled nervously. A voice broke through from the back.

“Ease up Pum Baa. Let the piglet play,” said a young female of fetchingly rotund bearing. “What’s the harm?”

Pum Baa snorted. “What’s the harm? WHAT’S THE HARM? He’s undermining my authority in front of our sworn enemy! Command your spawn to cease this! OINK! And attack them, so we may feast upon their flesh!”

A murmur of oinks traveled across the legion. Pum Baa raised his snout proudly, sneering at Dese Nuts. Sentiment of the legion was returning to normalcy. Not even the squirrel could defeat such overwhelming numbers. Soon, Pum Baa would consume the squirrel and his tree. He drooled at the thought!

“Hey, why’re you being such a killjoy?” The human female, a black-maned creature in a ragged white gown, addressed him, while cradling the young spawn. “Can’t you see that you’re making the rest of them uncomfortable?”

“Uncomfortable?” Pum Baa sputtered, unable to comprehend the female human’s sheer gall.

Several oinks voiced their agreement.

“Yeah. Like, what’s the point of this. You’d find more food in a forest than here, trying to bully a squirrel into submission.”

More oinks expressed support for her.

“Hey! I know. Why don’t you guys come with us. We passed by some abandoned fields on the way here. Full of unpicked plants and stuff.”

Oinkin intensified!

This is bad. This is bad! The legion was crumbling. Pum Baa couldn’t let this happen, not after all the trouble he’d gone through. Not after mistress had granted him the power of the forest.

He pulled Qi from his core, a mighty nugget of power brimming with second realm strength! Breath of the true forest engulfed his rippling muscles beneath an armor of hide and fat. His explosive charge shattered stone beneath his trotters, as Pum Baa’s boulder-like mass launched with the speed of a bird. He opened his maw and aimed to gore the woman with his crown of tusks!

Her lips turned into a frown. The piglet squealed!

In a split oink, two titanium mitted fists slammed from above, burying his head into concrete. Three supernaturally sharp jaws of dancing shadows ripped through his neck, tearing chunks of flesh and artery, ending his reign.

Last flicker of Pum Baa’s spirit imprinted onto his fleeting Qi an image of the dark-haired human female standing before him. And onto that image, emotions. Scorn. A boiling fury. Righteous wrath. And, above all else, a lingering resentment.

Eternal soul left the body of a spirit boar, fleeting towards its next role in the cosmic cycles beyond mortal comprehension. Much of the Qi in its spirit stone was unknowingly absorbed by a quiet well of power hidden within the female human. Much, but not all.

The defiant flake of Qi departed, whisked away by aether winds like the last leaf of autumn. It sailed the skies, across the lands to a continent of scorching deserts, thorny shrublands, savannas, and to the deepest depths of its most ancient jungles, where a power of alien origin now festered. The flake of Qi landed upon the roots of a sapling of the Devouring Jungle—a tree of putrid moss and strangling vines which dwarfed the glass and steel towers of Earthly mankind. Such was the vastness of its canopy, that the tree shaded quarter of Tanzania. That absorbed speck traversed the Qi-veins of the tree and joined the thundering stream of power funneled above clouds, to the living throne of subjugated woodland beings fused into an oversized seat, and further to the antlered humanoid, whose very nature bent reality.

The emotion, and all it carried, had returned to the source of woodland-Qi.

Two stars of sickly green glow flashed open against the slender silhouette. They thinned into a smile of old jaded bemusement, and spoke,

“Hello my pretender heir.”

***

Nelly wondered why the boar thought it could defeat Titan’s hounds and sparring partner. But oh well. Based on how the rest of the pigs took it, nobody took the old leader’s death as a big loss.

Rest of the piggies were happy to help Nelly and friends to dig up Dese’s sacred Chadnut tree, in exchange for Nelly leading them to the abandoned fields. There, they bid heartfelt goodbyes. Tears were shed on both sides. Promises to visit were made. Little Snort—the piglet—was invited to Nelly’s birthday party next month.

Despite having great fun on her adventure, Nelly was overjoyed to return to Happyland. After the apocalypse, the place she’d once cursed as a prison had become a true home.

***

I was outside, carving Gigachad busts from stone to create a Chad formation for the asylum’s protection, when Nelly chomped me with a running hug.

“HIII! Hi hi hello hi hi hello! We’re back!” She jumped excitedly. “Brought tree and friends!”

I smiled broadly and hugged her back, then patted each of the hounds in turn, and shook Grog’s hand. “Welcome back, friends.”

The hounds panted happily, and grog made monkey noises.

My gaze fell upon the squirrel and the tree beside him. Immediately, I recognized them as fellow Alpha cultivators, and for a moment was struck by awe. There were others like me. Others who’d met the sixth head of Gigachad sect.

Hope and joy swelled in my breast and I clasped the squirrel’s little paw with a finger. “Welcome Bruh.”

Though I couldn’t comprehend its squeaking, I understood it was glad to meet a fellow bruh on the Dao of Chadness.

“We had much to discuss, you and I.”

The squirrel nodded.

“To think you went out and found a fellow Alpha cultivator. I can’t thank you all enough.” I turned to Nelly and friends. Her smile was radiant, her entire being bright. Despite walking the path of Chadness, I could sense she was close to awakening, half-a-step from unearthing the crown slumbering within her soul.

“Let’s hold a feast tonight. After I finish the protective Chad formation. I’ll share the details later, but a certain group of dangerous individuals has me at their crosshairs and—”

Batman’s head jerked towards the entrance with a bark.

From over the concrete fence flew a dozen military-grade fragmentation grenades. A blink later, the courtyard exploded with pops of shrapnel.