Morgan Mackenzie was running for her life, with a warbling scrubby giving panic-filled trills while desperately hanging on to her shoulder with whatever loofah magic that Lulu used. When the first giant wolf had appeared at the far edge of the meadow, she had felt confident in her abilities to defend herself with her magic. But [Naked Instinct] had simply kept ratcheting up in its intensity, and when [The Naked Eye] had revealed at least a dozen more wolves closing in through the trees her confidence had drained away like the last swirling dregs of dishwater flowing down the sink. Nervousness became naked fear as a dozen became two dozen became three.

Thankfully [Naked Instinct] was more useful than a simple feeling as she had found herself rolling to the side without thinking, just as Lulu had given a warbling warning right in her ear. The wolf that had managed to sneak up behind her had missed its lunging attack, but its near-silent passing over her was equally disturbing. As Morgan rolled back to her feet she had tossed a sizzling bolt of lightning at the creature, but it had simply twisted in mid-air with a snarl, avoiding the charged projectile without so much as singeing its fur as it landed with a roll through the dirt.

The girl had immediately turned to run, only to find the entire meadow surrounded. The lone attacking wolf was merely the vanguard before the rest of the pack closed in. [Spell Surge], followed by her tossing several [Flame Bolt] spells, resulted in new craters and one side of the encirclement scattering. Morgan had wasted no time sprinting for the opening, and that was how she found herself dashing madly through the forest with howling death nipping at her heels.

The damaging backlash she had suffered from using [Spell Surge] with the fire magic had left her hands once again blistered and cracked. She did not even consider slowing down, however. The pain was tolerable thanks to her [Pain Resistance] and the damage was fairly superficial thanks to her affinities for Heat and Fire and the associated resistances.

Her boosted physical capability both from her spent stat points and the skill [Naked Athleticism] were paying dividends with interest now. Similar to when she had climbed down from the giant tree, the skill helped her instinctively make the most efficient movements as she ran, and her increased strength meant her strides practically launched her with each step, while her agility helped her keep her balance with the impact of every footfall. Morgan had never imagined being able to run like this, and would have been amazed at her speed if not for the sheer terror driving her heart to pound like a jackhammer.

Any possible thoughts of slowing down were immediately curtailed by the moonlit shapes keeping pace with her through the woods in the distance to either side. As fast as she had been running, the wolves were easily keeping pace, almost as if they were toying with her. They had closed in a few times, and she had responded with bursts of lightning and flame and terrible accuracy since she could not spare the attention to aim. The oversized canines simply melted back into the trees unscathed, howls mocking her every effort at retaliation.

Morgan ran for hours. She had no idea how many miles she had covered. Probably somewhere between a whole bunch of miles and a heck of a lot, she thought to herself, having no breath to spare to speak out loud. As night had fallen sometime around the beginning of her running, the moons had soon risen somewhere to her right. With no frame of reference for the greater surrounding region as a whole, she figured north was as good a direction as any. Between the moonlight and [The Naked Eye] she could see better in the pale night than she had been able to during the day before she gained the skill.

Back on Earth, a run like this would have killed me all by itself, she thought with mixed emotions. It was almost surreal that she could even think in a situation like this, but her options were simple and required little thought to process. Either run, fight, or die. Twice she had tried to slow down to make a stand with her back to a large tree or earth abutment, and twice the wolves simply melted away from the reach of her spells, panting like laughter as if she were merely a game to them. With fighting proven useless, her choices were reduced to running or death.

Morgan had found she could spend Stamina like extra effort in short bursts. She had leapt over fallen trees and jumped over a small stream with the enhanced exertion, resulting in feats that would make olympic medalists on Earth feel inadequate. Her stamina could not recover under the strain of her fear-driven flight, however. When she let herself slow enough that it began to restore itself, there was always a wolf or two right on her heels, nipping at her backside as Lulu’s warning warbles rose to a piercing pitch.

This is an endurance race, she realized with sudden dawning clarity. Every big jump or dash brings my Stamina lower, she thought, and they won’t let me slow down enough to get it back.

That realization almost brought her to the brink of despair. With their numbers and the ease with which they kept pace with her it was only a matter of time until her stamina was low enough that her body would begin to devour itself to keep her going. Simply running, even at her impressive pace, was no terrible burden on her reserves thanks to her improved stat attributes. She could tell through her healing skill’s senses that Stamina aside, she would run into sleep deprivation problems before her caloric reserves became an issue, going by how efficiently her body seemed to presently be operating.

Stamina was simply her ultimate problem. Every bite at her flanks and bare bottom, when the wolves rushed her or she slowed her pace, required healing at least enough to stop the bleeding. Vaulting streams or other obstacles and the healings each cost her a small portion of stamina, and running at her current pace took enough of it to keep her from regenerating it, even with her high Vitality stat.

Mana, on the other hand, she had plenty of. There has to be a way to use Mana instead of Stamina to go faster! Her thoughts were frantic; she could not exactly stop to experiment or look for a solution. But I have to try something now while I have the Stamina to recover if it doesn’t work, she scolded herself.

After running so long, she was getting familiar with how her body used up Stamina when she burned it to speed up or jump higher or dodge the snarling fangs. If I can just use Mana instead of Stamina, but I have no idea which Element…

At Lulu’s sudden trill of warning that her pursuers were once again closing in, Morgan seized her Mana without attempting to filter out the Elements she had already become familiar with. I’ll just have to throw it all in and hope something sticks, she thought. She pushed off with her legs in the same way she had used Stamina to jump before, hoping to at least lunge ahead of snapping jaws, but willed her Mana into the jump instead.

She had hoped to gain a few dozen paces in a burst of speed. The result she actually got was a burst of Mana running wild as the ground underneath her exploded under the pressure of her foot’s impact. Startled yelps and snarls she barely noticed behind her, as she was launched several dozen Morgan-lengths ahead at a truly frightening speed. She would have considered it a resounding success except for the fact that her left knee had shattered under the shock, and she was not only flying through the air but also tumbling while a terrified Lulu emitted purbling whimpers right in her ear.

Morgan hit the ground in a flopping roll, only her [Pain Resistance] skill keeping her conscious. She could see with her recovery skill that the bones in her knee joint had compressed together with such force that the crystalline marrow core had fractured, then splintered against each other and practically exploded inside her knee. The marrow-crystals burned with mana and were quickly dissolving back into her blood as [Naked Recovery] regrew then re-aligned the joint almost before she hit the ground, but even with her resistance the pain was enough to have her screaming. She was worried she might have spent too much Stamina to heal it so quickly, but it was necessary if she were to remain able to run.

She scrambled to her feet, still limping but quickly recovering. Lulu had come loose from her shoulder when she landed and she dashed franticly over to the scrubby and picked it up, sticking the loofah back on her shoulder as she looked around for the wolves. She could see many in the distance running between the trees, and the two who had harried her were both over a hundred yards away, shaking the mud and dirt off their tawny brown fur. They were standing in the middle of a splattered sprawl of earth and brushy detritus that had been kicked up by Morgan’s sudden launch, and it was only the sudden shock of it that had bought the girl a moment’s respite

She had rolled partway up a low rounded hillside, and she put her back to the mounded earth as the pair of wolves closed in. Every moment not running was a few more points of Stamina regenerated, but that wasn’t the only reason she stopped. The rest of the pack had been left farther behind the two vanguards, and Morgan was not about to miss a chance at some payback. Especially not when her Mana was literally brimming over, the channeled recovery skill having topped her off. As the wolves spread apart to attack her from both sides, she planted her feet and timed their simultaneous lunge as much by instinct as by sight.

[Spell Surge] caused violet arcs of wild power to snap at the air around her as she pulled on every bit of Earth Mana she could muster and shoved outwards with both hands. No amount of twisting could save either wolf as the ground around Morgan exploded towards them in a massive [Earth Wave]. Hundreds of finger-width spines of jagged stone, accompanied by tons of smaller rocks and a cascading wall of mud, blasted outwards from where she stood. The raised wave of muddy dirt fell away but Morgan was already certain of her victory because of notifications, even before she could see the pincushioned canines suspended in the air mid-charge.

You have defeated [Wildlands Direwolf Scout(Lvl - 6)]

For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.

+300 experience gained.

You have defeated [Wildlands Direwolf Scout(Lvl - 6)]

For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.

+300 experience gained.

A minor victory, but she felt a surge of exultation anyway. The sudden and massive expenditure of power had drained her mana by almost two thirds, but it was quickly coming back as she activated [Naked Recovery] to finish healing her shattered knee. The rest of the pack seemed almost stunned by her sudden violent retaliation, slowing their approach through the trees and slowing to a creeping stalk as they paced through the trees around her. The deaths of two of their packmates did not go without consequence, however, as a new howl Morgan had not yet heard shattered the hushed whispering quiet of the night.

The howl wasn’t just louder than the previous ones that had so terrified Morgan during her frantic flight from the pack. It was deeper, and it vibrated her bones with mournful notes that spoke to her soul of ancient rage and forlorn despair and wild expectation all at once. The night itself stilled as the sorrowed sound laid like a blanket across the world. With this new eerie howl turning her fear to stark terror she actually wet herself. As one, every wolf in sight sank to their bellies, even the ones closest to her. Those four had stopped just shy of her range, and they now lay trembling before the moonlit grief of that primordial howl. The shaking woman grit her teeth and fought to keep from kneeling as two more howls, just as powerful though shorter and not quite as deeply pitched, answered the first.

Farther behind the crouching wolves, the dappled moonlight seemed to bow away from three massive shadows that even [The Naked Eye] could not pierce. All of the pack were huge, as tall as Morgan even crouched as low as they were, with massive triangular heads that turned in deference before their betters. The three shadows stepped into the bright moonlit night from under the forest canopy, and Morgan understood why the pack had knelt, as the same urge to kneel almost overcame her senses.

This was submission, for the Alphas of the Pack had arrived. On her shoulder, Lulu’s whimpering purble trailed away to a quivering vibration that Morgan could feel as the scrubby tried to shrink itself and hide in her hair. The Alphas were true giants, and she could have easily walked underneath any of them without her head so much as disturbing their chest fur. Two of them were golden shades of dappled brown fading to darker reddish hues along their ears and paws and tails, and they spread out to the sides with silent steps to bracket her position. The third was slightly larger than the first two, and dark grey, with black ears and muzzle instead of brown. Undeniably the dominant male leader of all the others, he stepped forward to where her earthen spikes had skewered the two lesser wolves.

With a chuffing rumble and growl that gave off power she could feel from over thirty yards away, the spikes holding up the two wolves crumbled to dust and the corpses fell to the ground. Morgan backed up slowly, trying to angle her path to bring the hillside between her and the wolves. Her plan was to put some distance between her and these mighty beasts, even if she had to burn half her Stamina and Mana at the same time to do it. She was in a place somewhere beyond fear and dread, and it was empty and calm and clear as the still surface of a cold winter pond. She knew, beyond all certainty, that she would either live or die, and all she could do was all she could do. She had no hope of outrunning these three, not even with enhanced abilities nor with any magic she could imagine, but she had somehow decided that she would not just lay down and accept it.

The massive Alpha male silently gazed down at her as the two females stepped forward, each gently lifting the smaller dead wolves by the blood-matted napes of their necks like cubs. The Alpha turned his head to watch as they somberly strode away to Morgan’s left, while she backed away to the side of the hill readying her will for a last-ditch effort to sprint away to the right. She called forth her Mana in full with [Spell Surge], the Alpha snapped its muzzle back in her direction with a snarl, and then the hill to Morgan’s left side stood up, and all hell broke loose.

Morgan fell to the ground, staring at the terrain to her left that kept on rising despite its appearance of being a mere hill that had no business having any methods of locomotion whatsoever. The Alpha, too, fell flat on its ass, and Morgan took a grain of comfort in that she wasn't the only one who had been surprised by whatever this new catastrophe happened to be.

Her eardrums were simply blown out by an impossibly loud hooting roar, somewhere between a steam whistle and a jetliner on take-off. Dirt and rocks and even small trees tumbled all round, and her ears -now ringing as she healed herself- revealed shocked yips and snarls as the sudden mountain turned. A mighty chelonian foot the size of a steam-shovel bucket descended next to her, sending her tumbling to the ground once again. As the rubble continued to fall away it revealed a broad domed shell that had been the hilltop only moments before, and as it finished turning the mighty beaked head struck.

In the span of a heartbeat one of the female alphas was completely devoured in a single echoing snap of that horrible maw. The wolf’s front half, including the cub it had been carrying, were simply gone, leaving shortened hindquarters that took a ludicrously stretched out moment to fall over. The Pack scattered, and the Alpha’s howl of rage shook even the moonlight itself.

Morgan did not stick around to watch the imminent battle. She still held her Mana, and now she tried again to boost her speed, this time using her Stamina at the same time as a sort of guide. She headed north once again, fueled by terror and adrenaline and urged on by Lulu’s whimpering purbles. With her Stamina and Mana together, she was finally rewarded with a most exceptionally useful skill:

You have learned the skill [Naked Acceleration]! All too often, sheer speed is the key to survival! Expend mana to accelerate your body with a temporal dilation effect, but beware! Inertia is not cancelled out by this skill! This skill shares synergy with [Naked Instinct], allowing you to more easily compensate for high impact movements while the skill is active.

The experience was surreal, especially given her situation. Morgan wasn’t moving faster so much as the rest of the world was barely moving at all, at least to her senses. As she curved her path around what she had already mentally named the Doomturtle, the rocks and trees still tumbling down moved in slow motion. Sound was felt more than heard, a full body buzzing like low pitched static while swimming underwater. As she leaned into turns to dodge nearly still rocks slowly descending towards the ground, her bare feet punched divots of dirt into the air every time she kicked off to change direction.

She now understood what the skill description meant by inertia and high impact movements. She could feel her knees and ankles developing microfractures she constantly had to heal with her stamina as she burned mana to keep her speed up. But while she felt as if she was running normally, albeit at a full sprint, she knew the reality was that, well…

This is fucking FAST! Morgan thought to herself. A glance back had revealed that the wolves had barely begun to react, and the Doomturtle’s movements were nearly imperceptible. She turned her attention back to putting as much distance between her and the danger as she possibly could before her Mana got too low. Every step she pushed off with launched her forward in bounds that covered over twenty yards per footfall. She felt she could go even faster, but that would cost too much Stamina due to the constant healing. She paced herself in order to allow her Stamina to recover. By the time her Mana had dropped below half she had put several miles between herself and the pack, and she let go of the newly acquired skill.

Panting, she slowed to a stop, shaking from the adrenaline and remnants of fear. Lulu was quite upset as well, manic purbles and warbles a riot of vocalization from the little scrubby. Its own concern and panic were quite obvious as the poor thing seemed to not know what to do, hopping all over Morgan as if checking to make sure her everything was okay. “Oh shit, I’m sorry Lulu,” Morgan said, pulling the scrubby in for a comforting hug. “That had to be terrifying if the haste effect didn’t cover you as well.” The loofah took several long moments to finally calm down, followed by stern wurbling as she scolded her mistress for such a distressing experience. Morgan knew they could not tarry for long, as the howls in the distance were already closing in.

She no longer felt totally hopeless though, and took a brief time to let her mind settle and try to think of a plan. She thought very seriously about using [Earth Sculpt] to burrow down as deeply as she could, but that plan was tossed out as she realized the wolves could dig, or might have other abilities she hadn’t seen. At the very least they could simply camp out in the area and ambush her wherever she popped up for air or food.

Morgan knew she just had to keep running until she found a place the wolves simply had no possible way to follow. With the howls getting closer once again, she started doing exactly that. Heading north again if only for lack of a better idea, she once again used the acceleration skill. This time she warned Lulu first, however, and the scrubby responded by burrowing up into her mane of hair, anchoring itself solidly before giving a purble to announce its readiness for the impending burst of speed.

This time Morgan was starting with both her Stamina and Mana almost full, so she didn’t hold back. She took off at a full sprint and kept it up. It quickly became apparent just how hard she could push off against the ground before damaging herself, and she soon settled into a loping pace that she could maintain for hours. And she did just that. Navigating the forest by moonlight was almost trivial under the light of the twin moons, especially with [The Naked Eye]. The greatest difficulty she had came from slowing down and releasing her haste skill so she could jump over fallen trees and the like. Her singular attempt at jumping over a stump while under the effects of [Naked Acceleration] had launched her through the next tree in the way.

Broken bones and warbling protests had punctuated another break from running while she healed herself again amidst the shattered ruins of the tree that had stopped her. As her flesh knit itself back together and her bones realigned, she staggered to her feet. She could hear no howls, but [Naked Instinct] still screamed danger to her senses. The frequent healing was also beginning to take its toll on her body’s reserves that she had gained from eating most of a giant crispy cat, even with the extreme metabolic efficiency of [Naked Recovery]. She was nowhere near starving yet, but as things were currently going she would need some form of food within a day or she would burn through her body’s reserves. That time would be greatly reduced if she had to recover from more extreme injuries.

The forest seemed truly endless to Morgan as she continued to run, and everything sort of fell into a pattern of sameness. She would cancel [Naked Acceleration] and slow to an easy lope for a time to let her Mana recover while she healed the accrued damage that built up from pushing her body so hard. So far her bursts of speed had kept her far enough ahead of the pack that they were no longer chewing on her backside as she ran, but Morgan knew that this was their game.

Run the prey to exhaustion, she thought, recalling every wolf documentary she now wished she had actually paid attention to. Dad always loved his animal shows; he’d know exactly what to do. The repetitive cycle of accelerated sprinting and slower loping really did leave her mind almost too free to wander. Aside from the occasional creek or boulder or fallen tree, she only really had to think about navigating the sparse brush that grew under the gaps in the forest canopy. That all changed when the forest gave way abruptly, the rolling hills of the woods dropping off to a vast grassy field that stretched for miles in either direction. And from her higher vantage point at the forest edge where she had slowed to a stop, she could see just a mile or so in the distance a river winding through the plain.

This was no small stream, she realized as the fading light of the moons gave way to the first glimmers of dawn that sent rippling reflections twinkling across the water. She had been running all night, and she felt the first spark of hope in all that time flare up while she gazed at the other side. In the distance past the far riverbank, a sheer cliff rose up from the low hills. The vertical stone walls stretched skyward for thousands of feet, the tops of the cliffs shrouded in mists not yet burned away by the day’s rising sun. She could see with [The Naked Eye] various cracks and formations in the winding ribbon-like walls of rock. Trees and brush and lush verdant ivy painted intense green contrast to the nearly black mountainside where ledges and outcroppings allowed plants to find purchase.

“AHA!” she shouted in exultation as she jumped up and down clutching the scrubby in her hands despite its surprised purbling protests. “Lets see those fuckers climb that shit, Lulu! And I can make my own handholds!”

Her sudden outburst had startled more than the scrubby, however, as Morgan’s [Naked Instinct] reared its insistent head once again. Two utterly massive oversized ears suddenly appeared above the shoulder-height grasses less than a dozen yards from the surprised woman, the tips of the ears almost comically flopped forward and tufted in white. She would have thought they were cute, if the Morgan-length ears had not kept rising, followed by a very not-cute and honestly quite frightening caricature of a rabbit’s head. The eyes were solid red and, instead of the typical rodent incisors she would have expected even a giant sort of rabbit to have, its mouth opened wide to reveal double rows of wickedly sharp fangs. As it rose up on its haunches, the horse-sized creature let loose a scream that gave Morgan a notification and left her body frozen perfectly still and helpless.

Status afflicted: [Paralysis]! You have been frozen in place by [Tyrannorabbit]’s [Scream]!

Morgan’s mind was nearly as frozen in shock as her body was. Her magic was dropping away as if there were a layer of static interference between her and her Mana. The whole absurdity of her situation only fueled her outrage, and she furiously willed herself to move as the new threat hopped towards her with a ridiculous wobbling gait. She had just managed to get her fingers and toes to move as it pushed its way out of the grass and came into full view, but her magic was still not responding. The creature looked almost cartoonishly mutated, its front limbs smaller and held in close to its chest while its hind legs and feet were oversized in the extreme. The juxtaposition of its name and its mutated form were not lost on Morgan, and she would have laughed were it not for the danger. It lacked the balancing tail that made its namesake dinosaur beneficiary so mobile, and that gave it a waddling gait that belied the obvious lethality of that ever-widening maw of teeth.

She managed to stumble back a half-step, as the [Tyrannorabbit] duck-walked closer, and saw several more pairs of ears pop up in the grass beyond. But these were not facing her direction. A sudden basso snarl revealed exactly what they were listening to as the familiar canine form of a wolf slammed into the [Tyrannorabbit] with enough force that she felt the thump of it in her chest from the impact. With her legs working slightly better she tried another step, and fell backwards away from the brawl.

The fall was enough to clear the paralysis and her magic once again felt under her control. As she rolled to her feet Morgan saw wolves pouring out of the forest, and what had before been a beautiful dawnlit landscape devolved to snarls and howls and rabbit-esque screams that cut short in sprays of blood and flying fur.

She wasted no time making her break for the river. The tall grass was much harder to run through than the mossy dirt and leaves she had grown used to padding across with her bare feet in the forest. A full sprint was practically impossible, stubs of grass and roots tearing her feet to a degree that would have been crippling without her [Pain Resistance] and [Naked Recovery].

A wrenching, rage-filled howl that bent the grasses down in rippling waves as far as the eye could see had Morgan instantly re-thinking that full sprint. She ignored the pain from her feet and leaned into a pulse of [Naked Acceleration] as the giant Alpha from before made its appearance. [Naked Instinct] spiked again as the bigger wolf ignored the other prey and homed in on her, almost keeping up with her accelerated rush. As Morgan broke free of the grassland onto the sandy bank of the river, her feet kicked up a rooster tail of sandy dirt sprays behind her. Approaching the water at a pace faster than most highway speed limits, she called upon [Spell Surge] to boost her acceleration skill even farther, and burned almost half of her total Stamina at the same time to temporarily empower her body.

Less than a step before the water’s edge, Morgan planted her feet at the lowest point in her stride and pulled Lulu from her shoulder to the middle of her chest, and with both her Mana and her Stamina aiding her efforts, she jumped.

Between the force against the ground and her feet and legs, Morgan managed to launch herself up and across the river at a speed that was truly frightening, even as her mind was buffered by [Naked Acceleration]. The kick-off had crushed her ankles and knees and even fractured her hips and pelvis, and the same force against the ground had excavated several tons of silty sand and mud. As she tumbled through the air she watched the Alpha charge right through the spray wreathed in enough of his own ambient power to repel the wave of dirt, and also the water of the river as he continued the pursuit.

At the apex of her flight trajectory, just as she levelled off and began to descend, Morgan released [Naked Acceleration] but not [Spell Surge], as she used the only form of manipulating the Air Element that she had so far managed. Already using her Stamina furiously to heal the damage from her jump, she curled herself into a ball and cradled a very loudly warbling and panicked Lulu. Empowered by [Spell Surge], she hardened the Air around them into a round ball.

She did not quite make the distance, hitting the water almost thirty feet shy of the far bank, but her improvised sphere of Air Mana worked. She bounced once off the water, skipping like a stone to plow into soft sand and leaving a shallow furrow excavated out of the earth. She also gained her very first Air spell:

You have gained the spell [Wind Barrier]! What cannot hit you cannot hurt you! Increase the density of the air around you and shape a barrier as you desire! Expending more Mana increases the strength of your Barrier!

Morgan dismissed the notification almost without a thought. She had no time to stop and play with the new spell, not with less than a quarter of her Mana left and her Stamina reduced to a similar amount. She sacrificed even more Stamina as she scrambled to her feet, preparing to resume her sprint for the cliffs. Expecting to face the pursuing Alpha, she turned and could only stare in shock.

The rest of the pack, including the remaining Alpha Female, had all stopped well short of the water. From the edge of the grassland they stood witness to the same sight that now held Morgan transfixed. The giant alpha male that had been chasing her had made it across the water right behind her, but was now in a fight for its life. Thing was the only word she could think of to describe the new monster now embattled with her pursuer barely a few dozen paces away from where she had landed.

The rest of the pack refused to come any closer to the water, and Morgan well understood why, if the monster she was now seeing had any relatives lurking below. She had thought it was tentacles at first, but as she watched the battle play out she realized it was more like a cluster of eels growing out where a larger eel would have had a head. The wolf and the thing thrashed in the shallows, deep rumbling snarls and slimy sounding hisses roiling against Morgan’s eardrums. The great wolf’s flanks were shredded and bleeding, and it was now missing an eye, but it was giving even better than it had got.

She stood there watching almost in a trance, letting [Naked Recovery] heal her fractured bones and restore her much depleted Mana. She could feel Mana being used in the fight as well as see the effects. The eel-hydra seemed to be made from electric eels, as several of its heads latched onto the wolf’s forelegs and sides and green lightning arced around them. It was only temporarily effective though, as the mighty wolf had managed to sink his jaws into the clump where all the necks grew out from the main body. With an almost contemptuous snarling the wolf dug in with its hindquarters and viciously jerked its head from side to side as it worked the massive eel monster farther out of the water.

With its biggest advantage negated the thing tried to escape, thrashing in the mud in an attempt to retreat to the safety of the water, but the enraged Alpha was having none of that. With all four feet on solid ground it danced around the weakening strikes, tearing at one neck after the other. When the last of its heads finally came free, the main body thrashed a few more times before going still. The giant wolf, wheezing and exhausted, gave it one final vicious shake with its jaws before dropping it. The victor stood with his front paws on his defeated foe and gave one last victorious howl to the sky.

Just in time for Morgan’s [Spell Surge] amplified [Flame Bolt] to blast its head from its shoulders in a singularly impressive display of burning brains and bones and teeth. And then several surprising things happened almost all at once.

You have defeated [Lesser Direwolf Alpha(Lvl - 14)]

For earning your victory while [Naked] and [Unequipped], experience gain doubled.

+5300 experience gained.

Morgan stared in shock at the notification. “Lesser!?”

Lulu made strange purbling noises from her shoulder and suddenly began glowing, startling Morgan back to attention as another notification popped up.

Congratulations! Lulu has reached Level 2!

Followed by another:

Congratulations! Lulu has reached Level 3!

And then another:

DING!

You have reached Level 10! Health and Status partially restored!

For reaching this milestone while [Naked] and [Unequipped], rewarded points doubled.

10 distributable Stat Points awarded.

10 Skill Points awarded.

Class Selection Unlocked!

Initialize Class Selection for one-time review before choosing. After reviewing available classes, you may choose your class or choose to Delay Class Selection to allow new possible class options later. WARNING! Levelling capped at Level 10 until a Class has been Chosen!

Initialize Class Selection now? [Yes/No]

Morgan had but a moment to parse this new influx of data, however. WIth the death of the [Lesser Direwolf Alpha], the howling and yipping rest of the pack had fallen silent on the other side of the river. Every previous feeling of fear and panic spurred on by her [Naked Instinct] suddenly faded to a pale memory as without even thinking she instinctively crouched low in the sand clutching Lulu, and activated [Naked Camouflage]. She had almost forgotten she even had the skill, and it was no comfort before this dread pressure now squeezing the very light out of the day.

A low roiling mist had began to slowly creep out of the trees, and it flowed across the ground and the rest of the wolfpack. The mist curled almost lovingly around the pack members before thickening and rising higher. It came to the very edge of the now calmed waters and stopped there, as the morning sunlight seemed to fade back to the dim pre-dawn night. The mists gently roiled higher until they obscured the trees of the distant forest edge, and then receded like a slow sigh finally released.

The pack of wolves was now simply gone. In their place, on the other side of the river and looking directly at Morgan was an utterly massive wolf, easily twice the size of the [Lesser Direwolf Alpha]. It made no sound and did not blink, and though its fur rippled as if there were a breeze, there was no wind. She stared back at it, entranced by the glow of its ancient amber eyes. And she had no doubts, this wolf was old. Its fur was a yellowed gray with white on its muzzle and ears. She could suddenly hear its slow growling breath even from hundreds of yards away, and as it kept its eyes locked on hers yet another notification slammed into her mind:

The Ancient Direwolf Packmother has Marked you as Enemy of The Pack! Cross their territory at your peril! The Moonlit Hunt is Unending!

She could feel something hit her along with the notification, something that rattled her entire body and knocked her out of [Naked Camouflage]. A whisper of Mana of a type she could not touch brushed across her bones, leaving traces that faded a heartbeat later. Any delusions of being hidden fled her mind, and Morgan stood up with resignation. If this wolf wanted to cross the river, it would, and Morgan knew she could not outrun this one. Her only salvation was the fact that she seemed to have made it outside the territory of the pack. This ancient being not only respected the oldest rules, for all Morgan knew the thing had written them.

The Packmother raised her head to the sky, and what came forth could not simply be called a howl. It was grief made manifest, a resonating sorrow that caused the land and waters to vibrate kicking up dirt and river spray. It was a memory of a time older than ancient, when mankind feared the dark and worshiped the life-giving fire, and the only safety to be found in the world was within the light of those embers. It made Morgan want to rip her own heart out of her chest in mourning, and at the same time she wanted to dance for triumph and sheer joy of survival.

The piercing cry carried on and on and brought tears to her eyes as it faded. She felt like she had lost something important as the sound faded away, but gained a new understanding as well. As she blinked the tears away the daylight returned between one moment and the next, and the Packmother was gone.

Sobbing for multiple reasons, Morgan fell to her knees as [Naked Instinct] finally faded and the adrenaline shock hit her. Relief at no longer being hunted warred with a guilt she did not understand feeling over killing the Lesser Alpha. She knew it would have killed her, but that did not make her proud of it. It only meant she was the one that survived. And so she sat and cried while Lulu made comforting purrs.

It was a much needed release, and after a few minutes Morgan felt much better, and well recovered in Mana and Stamina. Her body’s reserves were low, but there were literal tons of fresh meat less than a dozen yards away, so with food and safety at least minimally assured, she returned her attention to the previous notification.

Initialize Class Selection now? [Yes/No]

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Lulu.” she said. The little scrubby responded with a puffling gesture very evocative of a shrug, and hopped off her shoulder with a warble. The precocious loofah seemed completely over the train wreck that had been their entire night, and seemed to have decided to stand guard while Morgan did whatever it was she was about to do.

Without any further words, she responded to the notification with a mental yes.

Class Selection Initializing. Preparing Temporal Suspension Instance.

And then the world vanished around her.