Pain. Immense pain!

Deep cuts covered my body in a blink, chunks of my own flesh tumbled in the air, strings of my blood swirled around as if someone was doing rhythmic gymnastics with a bright red ribbon. Smoothie! I was getting turned into a smoothie! After tumbling in a washing machine of a crashing helicopter, I was now in a fucking blender. “Grrhwaa!” What are you doing? I demanded of Penemue.

(You deceived me!) he blasted in my head. (The Adumbrae within you is still awake!)

Before more of my muscles were sliced and I could no longer move, I flung the fucking axe as far as I could. It was a feeble throw because I was severely injured; Penemue really did a number on me in the few seconds I was consumed by the blades of wind. All of it dissipated when I let go of it, and I collapsed. I kept my sight on the axe—my one still working eye partially blinded by blood.

The lollipop axe slid across the floor, its oversized head jutting through the opening of a shattered glass window wall. I didn’t specifically aim to chuck it out, I just desperately threw it in a random direction and hoped no one else was nearby to pick it up.

A familiar hunger erupted from deep inside me. Hunger and rage replaced the agony wracking my body. Rapid regeneration rushed to stitch my body back together; furious power spread as muscles, tendons. and bones reconnected; my fangs and claws lengthened. I salivated in anticipation. The hunt was on.

But my prey was going to get away! That axe teetered on the edge of the floor, the weight of its bladed end threatening to pull the rest of it out the window.

I half-squirmed half-crawled over the floor to reach the axe like a mudskipper on land having a seizure while trailing copious amounts of blood.

(Don’t come near me, Adumbrae! I know you’re there!)

I hastened my pace. I wasn’t going to make it!

Hold on a fucking minute, you stupid bitch. I stopped and slumped down on the floor about five feet from the axe. Rational thoughts took over the ravenous cravings forefront of my mind. I rested as I pondered: should I even try to eat this fucking bastard?

The moment I made contact with any part of the axe, I’d certainly plunge into a meat grinder again. No way to eat it without my mouth and teeth touching it unless I figured out how to telepathically chew something. And I didn’t think it was also possible to finish eating Penemue before I died. Or maybe I could—woah?

Gravity decided for me, pulling Penemue down to the street far below.

I shrugged. Oh well…Not like I was confident my teeth could bite through that axe anyway.

After managing to sit up, I considered why Penemue attacked me.

From his ravings, it seemed he found SpookyErind. If only he chilled the fuck out, I could’ve explained that SpookyErind was a friend—okay, I myself didn’t believe that. And to be fair, from his perspective, he was in the same body as an enemy. I understood his surprise and drastic reaction. Still rude to attack me though. Have fun with the monsters, I thought as I stared at the window the axe fell through. I was just going to relax and heal a bit—Oh shit! Could monsters wield that stupid thing?

Fuck, fuck, fuck, I continually cursed in my head, scrambling to the window.

I kept my newly-regenerated ears, which Penemue snipped off earlier, peeled for any whistling sound. Nothing. Only noises from the monster gang war. Sensing no attacks coming up, I carefully peeked over the edge.

A bunch of monster corpses speckled the sidewalk below. Both mushroom and parasite monsters scattered whichever which way.

I turned my head right, following the trail of carnage.

There! A tentacle zombie monster with mushrooms growing on its back and shoulders shuffled to the next block, its right hand grasped the handle of a giant lollipop axe with creepy carvings, dragging the heavy and unwieldy blade across the pavement. That answered the question of who could use it. I suspected that even animals, like a dog or something, also could, although that’ll be awkward.

I was lucky Penemue didn’t come back up while I was recuperating. He was really serious in avoiding giant Mushroom Buddy, heading the opposite end of Marshall Avenue. He could also be avoiding me. Or SpookyErind maybe? I wondered what he’d seen inside me that set him off like that. Mental note: ask SpookyErind about it the next time we meet.

Seeing Penemue, the feral hunger welled up once again.

I gnashed my teeth in anticipation, but at the same time, I tried to suppress my appetite. If I fought Penemue and won, I still couldn’t eat his body. And he'd just call more monsters to wield him. So, what was the point? A useless risk and a massive waste of time better spent going after Mushroom Buddy. I buried my claws into the floor to stop myself from jumping down the building and chasing after the stupid axe. I’ll eat him…Rule #4 and all, but not now.

I slammed my head on the floor to knock some sense into me and shoo away my cravings. I still sorely needed to feed after what I’d gone through.

I sniffed the air. That smell!

“Crekekekek…”

“Ghwaaghh!”

“Hwroaw hrrwaaa.”

A bunch of mushroom people showed up, wielding an assortment of organic weapons made from hardened mushroom sludge. I grinned with my growing fangs crowding my snout. Fate was finally turning to my side, serving me a silver platter of fresh provisions.

Their clothes looked familiar. Granted, they wore generic formal attire for work so I might be imagining shit, but were they the employees Penemue protected earlier? Their faces were messed up by mushroom spore posies. But they did smell familiar.

So much for Penemue’s hard work. Serves him right for cutting me!

These people must’ve run into an almond spore pod that infected them. As they say, ‘one man’s misfortune is another man’s fortune’—or in this case, woman, me. Not sure if that was an actual saying, but I’d leave that question for later because it was time to eat.

Invigorated by a quick snack of about twenty-odd people, I chased after Mushroom Buddy. I mostly just ate their heads and the shrieking mushroom spore-folk growing on them, not bothering to finish the feast because they didn’t provide much power. Still, they did fully restore my body, and more.

My limbs lengthened, muscles bulged out. Claws sprouted through my boots, my clothes and skin merged, sprouting lush fur like a time-lapsed video of grass growing. I could move the ears on the top of my hoodie now. My braids unraveled, my hair spreading like a wildfire of gold and red in the wind.

I jumped from building to building, enjoying the exhilarating speed, savoring the cool wind. This was almost too soothing that I could fall asleep. Very different from the thrilling chase after I escaped from Serenade Bazaar, the police helicopters and drones shooting at me—god, that felt such a long time ago already.

Police and BID presence was now in the air, but they were far away and didn’t target me, seemingly busy with stopping the spread of the mushroom infection. They mostly steered clear of Mushroom Buddy—I saw a police helicopter get shot down by one of the spore pods—focusing on the small fries and waiting for BID reinforcements from the Palomar Node.

With no one bothering me, I was just feeling calm and content, the top predator in this concrete jungle…besides Mushroom Buddy. I’d settle for rank two predator then.

The titan fungus had turned left into another street, I think that was Tenth Avenue, the tall buildings mostly hiding it from view. But it was obvious where it was because of the orange cloud that followed it, as well as the spore-missile barrage it loved to do every few minutes or so.

Although I bravely headed towards it, I had no idea what to do. I might really need to transform into my giant werewolf mode to have a chance of bringing it down—and that presented a different set of problems. If I lost control of myself in the middle of a feeding frenzy and the BID big guns from the Palomar Node arrived, I’d get blasted to bits. If only I still had Penemue with me this would’ve been an easy job.

Speaking of Penemue, I had successfully quelled my hunger for that stupid axe, a significant development in taming my transformation’s feral instincts. Funnily enough, I wasn’t angry with him even if it was set in stone I’d eat him someday. Must be the time we spent together inside my head? Ewwww!

Perhaps it was because my layers of faces were pointless when we were connected.

That was kind of relaxing too.

With a powerful leap after a running start, I soared over Marshall Avenue. Even though I jumped from a much taller building than my target, I still couldn’t land on its roof, grabbing onto its wall instead—the six lanes of Marshall Avenue was too wide for one jump. I climbed up and resumed my journey. To reach Mushroom Buddy faster, I travelled diagonally to its location instead of following Marshall Avenue and then Tenth Avenue; hypotenuse-shortest-distance bullshit back in high school, god, I hate math.

I spotted a modest apartment building, one of the many that dotted the side streets branching out of Marshall Avenue, with a group of survivors on the rooftop. Former survivors. An almond had crashed onto the building and infected them with its spores. So…technically, they didn’t survive at all.

Another quick snack before I fought the final boss.

As soon as I landed, a mountain of mushroom people piled on me like it was grade school and I had just opened a bag of candies. I stood still so they could do their utmost to injure me; their blades, spikes, and projectiles could barely penetrate my skin. It was frustrating as fuck!

Anyone who at the least nicked me was instantly devoured. I had grown to a size that with two hands, I could fully grasp a man’s torso. Someone jabbed my butt with a spear. I turned around to grab him, bit off the upper half of his body—the head and the parts with mushroom colonies—before throwing the leftover carcass away.

The horrendous whirlwind of violence I inflicted on these monsters did nothing to spark the excitement of battle I sought; I almost zoned out because of how boring it was, just going through the motions of eating these weaklings. I didn’t finish them all because the remaining ones were too weak to hurt me since I became stronger after eating most of them. Resuming my hunt of Mushroom Buddy, I was still uncertain if this was enough to take on the giant Adumbrae.

Combat drones swarmed the colossal walking mushroom, shooting at it and pelting it with small explosives. It did as much damage as you’d expect shooting a building would. Some of the masses of mushroom folk living on Mushroom Buddy sprouted wings. These flying fungi attacked the combat drones and brought them down.

Keeping a safe distance of a couple of blocks away, three military-looking helicopters launched missiles at the Adumbrae, aiming downwards at what I assumed to be its feet. It seemed to be ineffective because Mushroom Buddy maintained its pace and the ground kept shaking with each step. Another round of missiles was met by the winged mushroom creatures, blocking it from reaching the main body that spawned them. The military fired their machine guns at the flying mushrooms flocking after them, before turning around to flee as more and more monsters came.

Hmmm? A police chopper zipped past.

It caught up to Mushroom Buddy, flying parallel to it, not shooting or doing anything else, before speeding ahead and landing on top of a building that was likely on the Adumbrae’s path. There was no one on the building’s rooftop to evacuate. People alighted, unloading a bunch of equipment.

Sketchy as fuck.

Why would a police helicopter hang out here when others stayed away? And what were they doing over there? Didn’t look police-related to me. They could’ve helped people somewhere else. My keen eyes spied from several buildings away that the men were in full military gear similar to the National Guard protecting EFU Medical Center. Why were they here? And riding a police helicopter?

I’d bet the next kitchen blender I’d buy this was connected to Auron Cohenn, that gloating slimy ass. This wasn’t the BID helicopter he hijacked, so this could be his minions. The 2Ms did have police connections.

I didn’t have to wait long for my suspicions to be confirmed. The bunch of military men parted as they went about their suspicious task, revealing a familiar fuckface in their midst.

Auron! I growled. I slowed my pace and kept my jumps low so they wouldn’t spot me coming closer, a building at a time.

He looked worse for wear, his torn clothes were bloodied and covered in what was likely soot. I’d like to congratulate whoever hurt him. Could it have been Reo and Everett? They did say they were near the hospital. I almost forgot about them. A small part of me wondered if those two were still alive.

Whatever injuries Auron had, most of it already healed. He directed his men to set up their equipment at the edge of the roof. They were quick in their work as Mushroom Buddy came closer and closer to their building. A couple of the winged mushroom creatures spotted them. They were quickly dispatched by gunfire from the military guys when they got close.

Auron and Mushroom Buddy in one place. Two assholes with one stone.

Fate is truly on my side!

I thought about how to approach this. What was the range of Auron’s power to negate abilities? And what was its extent? It did zilch to Penemue, so I considered if it could still do anything when I had powered up to this state. It was going to suck if I jumped in just to be reverted to Erind and turned to swiss cheese by the guns.

Mushroom Buddy shooting off another wave of its spore pods gave me an idea. You’re a fucking genius, Erind, I cheered myself. Excitement pumped through me.

I decided to position myself atop a building that was a few floors taller than the one Auron was on. A couple of smaller streets separated us. They still hadn’t noticed me. I grabbed a piece of concrete off the roof as easily as breaking off a piece of biscuit. I steadied my breathing and judged Auron’s distance. I had no idea how strong I was now, but I was certain my throws could reach them.

Here goes! I lunged, my clawed foot cracking the floor as I stepped forward, my body followed, and lastly, my arm. I whipped the rock forward using with so much force that it’d surely reach Auron before arching down and missing. The rock zoomed across the air and was about to hit its target.

One of the fake Guardsmen jumped in the way.

Both the rock and the Guardsman broke into pieces. Yes. A human shattered like it was made of ceramics. It wasn’t a human at all.

Finlay!