As I went to lay down and rest before the morning came, I realized something--Oncli, Took, Treel, and Foire were all radiating a surprising amount of heat.

[System], what's going on with them?

[They would appear to be evolving.]

How is that possible? They each haven't killed 10, so they don't qualify for a Bloodletter...

[There are nearly infinite possibilities for evolution, and differing individuals qualify for different evolutions.]

Ahh… That makes some sense, I guess. So what made me begin to qualify as a Bloodletter?

[Keelish Bloodletter evolutions prerequisites: Juvenile Keelish Bloodhunter, [Bloodlust] skill.]

Ok then. I'd figured that it would be best for me to get rest before the big duel, and quickly surrendered to the oblivion of sleep.

…

I woke to screeching laughter. I looked up, and saw that our den had been invaded by Percral and his cronies. Internally chuckling, I rose to my feet. He looked quite surprised by my obviously changed body.

"Wait… Did you know that this would happen?" Percral got up in my face, and I grinned back.

"You ready for the duel?" I got back in his face, and my pack flanked me, snarling angrily. Percral and his pack gathered together, and it almost looked like a full-scale battle would begin, when Tieran's voice echoed into the den.

"I was promised the sight of flowing blood this morning. Do I need to shed it myself to make good on that promise, runt?" He was obviously looking at Percral as he began to speak, and licked his fangs in anticipation. Percral, for his part, was enraged at the provocations of Tieran, and whipped back to him.

"I will disembowel this upstart, eat the traitors, and claim the females in front of the deceased body of their leader. Do not doubt my abilities." Tieran chuckled lowly and pulled his head out of the den.

"Regardless of any overnight growth you experienced, I will kill you today and prove to the swarm leaders that they were wrong about you and me."

I pushed past him, and my pack followed. Then, I called over my shoulder, "You going to actually fight me today or retreat, cowering as the scaleless swine you are?" I could feel Percral going to attack me from behind, but Took and Treel, now about 5cm taller and much broader, interposed themselves. Percral hissed angrily back at them, "You'll happily help me expand my pack, and will regret any feelings of loyalty you felt towards this fangless shit." The mixture of Greel-speak with his somewhat more refined manner of speak was borderline comical, but I just kept walking. Treel laughed in his face, but Took… took it surprisingly well. She coyly approached him (had she taken lessons from Shemira…?), then abruptly shrieked "VICTORY TO THE PACK!!" in his face, then, with him still reeling, whipped around and slapped him in the face with her tail.

As she walked away, I realized that both she and Treel had grown to be about the same size as Percral, still being a bit larger than me. Their arms stayed the same, so, different from me, but they had thickened proportionally, becoming what I was going to call Brutes. Oncli, while he had apparently evolved, looked much the same. Foire, however, was more hunched over, narrower in snout, and had longer arms, with nearly human-looking fingers. They were still tipped with long claws, but were obviously much more dextrous than my own. I tried to not be jealous, but to limited success.

I stopped paying attention to my pack specifically, and looked into the main, open space for us spawnlings, where the duel would take place. It was a mostly flat arena, with the dirt tightly packed from our constant traffic. Surprisingly, the head of the massive male from yesterday was poking in, watching curiously. Upon seeing me, he grinned. "Prove me right, and I'll introduce you to Redael."

"Who's Redael?" I asked.

"Ahh, he's the main alpha of the whole swarm. I'm his beta, Rulac." He leaned down and whispered conspiratorially, "I'm pretty important." Ok then…

I was going to respond, but was interrupted by the snarls of Percral. "ENOUGH! You die, here!" Rulac grinned, and spoke up.

"You want me to start you off? I'll be an impartial judge, as the weak have no right to live."

Percral nodded tersely. I, for my part, paced to the side and began to ready myself. Almost against my own will, I looked around the surrounding crowd. It looked like both Shemira and Tieran had sustained some losses in their hunts, as the total number of spawnlings had decreased. Tieran lounged against a couple of the females of his pack, while another brought him the tenderest tidbits of their hunt from the day before. Shemira seemed a mixture of nervous and unsure. She's one of those that always has a plan, and this was totally unexpected for her, so she seemed almost paralyzed by indecision. My pack stood, tense yet confident near the mouth of our den.

"Begin when I say begin, am I clear?" Rulac spoke. I nodded, watching Percral pace with manic energy. I could see ropes of saliva hanging from his jaws, and he panted, having worked himself into a frothing mess. I began to pace as well, as the nervous energy began to build in me, and, seeing that the duel was about to begin, the spawnlings all began to transform to a heaving mass of bodies. Pushing at eat other, cries of "Victory", "Blood", and "KILL HIM!" began to consume the space, and Rulac leaned into it.

"THREE!"

I saw Took begin shrieking, and the rest of the pack following her lead.

"TWO!"

Percral began speaking, obviously something derisive, but, between the rushing of blood in my head and the cacophony of the surroundings, I heard nothing.

"ONE!"

I turned one more time, facing directly towards Percral.

"BEGIN!!!!"

We rushed together, and I wanted to prove my new strength. He tried to bulldoze me over, but I lowered myself and smashed the top of my head into his jaw. I saw stars after this, and cursed my idiocy. Why would I need to prove my strength here? Fortunately for me, Percral was also sent reeling after my strike. After the first hit, the crowd went absolutely insane, and pressed in, changing our battleground from about 10m out to just 5m out. That was bad for me—I needed to capitalize on my speed. Percral turned back to me, livid and blood running down his chin. He pressed back in, going for a wild bite, and I dodged back and sent my new, dangerous hand at his eye. He was just barely quick enough to evade me blinding him, a scale flying off of his eyebrow from the close encounter.

He screamed madly and came back for a bite, and I dodged back again, but it was a feint. I was blindsided by his sudden turn, and he whipped me in the face with his tail, knocking me back another step. Percral went to capitalize on his strike, but I dodged low and sliced across the front of his leg as his strike went wide. He screamed in pain, and I grinned as his blood began flowing. It wasn't quite enough to trigger [Bloodlust] though, and I retreated before he could get his teeth in me.

There was a brief moment of rest as we both caught our bearings, before I initiated the attack this time. I went directly for his neck, and Percral lowered his head to meet mine. At the last moment, however, I jumped up, attempting to latch onto his back. I went to crunch into his spine, but his back was too wide and his scales too hard to actually latch on, so my teeth just dug in .5cm and dragged down to his haunches as I stumbled to try to keep balance. I took a deep breath as the young alpha's blood truly began to flow and, in the back of my head, heard Percral scream in pain and rage.

[Bloodlust skill activated]

The now-familiar narrowing of my vision and the reddish hue overtook me, and I immediately shifted my perspective from trying to minimize my own injuries to maximizing his. Percral whirled, trying to smash his head into mine again, and, instead of retreating and mitigating the hit, I simply raised my left hand and pointed my fingers at his face. He smashed his own right eye into my pointed fingers, and I felt the explosion of blood and other fluids run up my arm. I also felt at least three of my fingers splinter as they came into crushing impact with his hardened skull. I screamed more in anger than in pain at Percral, who had recoiled in shock and pain at the sudden, blinding pain. His face stiffening in a rictus of a grin, he leapt at me, mouth agape. I dodged back, and, when he overextended, came back forward to begin the end.

I latched onto the base of Percral's skull and chomped down as hard as I could. While he squealed in pain, I continued biting down as hard as I could while gouging out his flesh with my still whole right hand. In return, he latched heavily onto my knee, and began to twist, attempting to pull me off of him. I simply didn't care, and shut out the pain. My mouth was having trouble getting through this tough bone, but I could feel the flesh joining his neck to his shoulder become nothing more than a bloody, wet paste. Still, I continued knifing my hand forwards, reaching bone—his spine.

Percral was no longer really resisting, but succumbing to his injuries as he released my leg. The mercy of death was still far off as I didn't adjust myself, but with my mouth held his now limp body aloft while slicing more and more into his unresisting body with my hand. My jaw began to tire, so I let him drop, but didn't stop there. I could see feeble attempts at movement from Percral, but he couldn't do anything at this point.

"VICTORY BY FANG AND BLOOD!" I couldn't help myself, and, in my blood-driven craze, screamed it to the roof before diving down and, with two solid bites, liberated Percral's head from his body.

As I returned to sanity, I heard my pack echoing my cries

"VICTORY BY FANG AND BLOOD!"

"VICTORY BY FANG AND BLOOD!"

"VICTORY BY FANG AND BLOOD!"