The adrenaline-fuelled flight or fight response, or in Goodie’s case, the flight or flight response, combined with the chilling cold of the Burrow’s winding tunnels had served to numb him enough that he was mostly oblivious to the unnecessary stimuli within his surroundings, a biologic function meant to free up his mind in order to allow it to focus on more pressing matters, like not getting his head bitten off by a bunch of over-sized rodents. But now that he had been given a moment to breathe, the very brain that had blocked off that sensory information now started working overtime to sift through everything that hit had missed.

Information like, for example, the flaring pain in his right ankle, which now hurt like a motherfucker; it had hurt when that mole-rat’s teeth had tried to give him a lifelong discount on future boot purchases, but the pain that Goodie was now experiencing was intense enough that it had him feeling like he was going to vomit if he did not soon find some form of relief from the sensation.

He had felt pain before, pain far worse than what was currently coursing its way up his leg, but still, the effort to keep himself from moaning out like a wounded animal had him breathing through his teeth in sharp, ragged gasps.

There was nothing else to be done, he opened his [SYSTEM]’s screen and activated two of his one-time abilities, minor healing spells, of course.

He felt the soothing effects of the spells cascade across his body, the inability to focus their healing properties to a specific area a major drawback in an already lacklustre spell, hence the need for two of them. He actually needed more than two, he noted as he tenderly shifted his weight onto his now far less inflamed ankle, but his supply of that particular one-time-use ability was far from unlimited.

One-time-use abilities, one of the random reward options offered to him after the use of his [SACRIFICE] cheat.

He had accumulated a number of them during his time in the city, the near-endless supply of rats beneath its streets, providing him with an ample supply of fodder for the ability, but with him essentially being banished due to those fucking royals, Goodie had to tighten his belt as much as he could in every part of his life now that he had no way to replenish his resources. The consequences of defying the extreme environmental protection laws of the adventurer’s city and the neighbouring territories antagonistic attitude towards people from Earth meant that trying the same methods out in the countryside would have resulted in a literal death sentence being placed upon him and he had seen the examples made of people who had received capital punishment in this world far too many times to ever be stupid enough to even entertain the notion.

He could, of course, have chipped in with either of the fights happening around him, the Burrows being exempt from said laws, but he was damned if he was going to help any of these narcissistic pricks more than he had to. That, and the fact that the deeper down that they went, the more he and Her Majesty became near useless as whatever it was that helped the creatures of the Burrows detect her presence prevented her from relying on her go-to tactic of stealth & assassination and his near-complete lack of combat capability made any attempt at a direct confrontation a fool’s errand that would have only resulted in him being screwed. A fact that also meant that any attempt to escape on his own would most likely only result in his demise.

Not that he even could escape, that is, as he had yet to find a way to shed the runes that Alpha-Bitch had enchanted upon him, the strain of their presence, even now, feeling like a vice on his mind.

He shook his head as he tried to dispel those thoughts, he had more pressing matters to attend to than his fear of decapitation by firebomb at the moment.

Goodie rubbed his neck as he looked round to see if anyone was watching him.

The front-lines were doing their thing with the rabbits, likewise, Bip & Bop were pounding away at the mole-rats to the rear, most of the others acting as support for one of the two sides with the exception of the skaters who were still doing whatever it was that they were doing.

But Mousy-Girl, the girl next to him, she was watching him.

Shit.

Well, he thought, as much as it pissed him off, revealing one of his abilities, if the girl had even cottoned on to what he had done, that is, there was little he could do about it. Goodie instead chose to avoid thinking about the issue by turning his attention to more pressing matters. Namely, things like the wet sensation running down his back. Not just the back of his armour, but the actual skin of his back.

When he had shot through that puddle of post digestion liquids, some of it had gotten into his collar, sending a wave of discomfort rippling through him as it worked its way down. A sensation that he had mercifully been ignorant of until he had begun to calm down.

Even now, a particularly gooey chunk of something was working its way down along his spine, but as much as he wanted to tear off his clothes and scrape the offending area across the nearest rock, he did not spare a thought to the foolish notion of even considering taking his armour off in the midst of battle, even if he was keeping himself as far away from it as he could, it would have just been a waste of brain-power.

Goodie flinched, fully closing his left eye as some type of bubble of energy suddenly expanded from the direction where the skaters had been huddling together, growing to encompass a large part of the tunnel around them. As the translucent orb flew out, a kaleidoscope of coloured bolts of lightning danced across its surface, seemingly to no effect as it passed over the team of adventurers with little sign of doing anything beyond being pretty.

But as the orb reached the denizens of the Burrows, the dazzling display turned deadly as the bolt drew in towards any creature it came in contact with, burning them with a brilliant display of lights that flashed out, temporarily painting the walls of the earthen tunnels in a distorted rainbow of colours each time they hit.

A marvel that was completely lost on Goodie as he was too busy being occupied with clutching his head and screaming out as a wave of torment flooded through him; He collapsed to the ground in pain and terror, thrusting both hands down into the soil to grasp at the dirt floor as if he could somehow take hold of whatever it was that was the source of his suffering, to somehow throttle it.

Her Majesty, something had happened to Her Majesty and she, like him, was screaming.

She had been in the path of that bubble as it spread, what he had assumed to be some type of defensive force field, but the shell had hurt her, nearly destroyed her. She had escaped with the use [SHADOW RUN], but the brief moment it took to dive into wherever it was that the skill took her was long enough for that bubble to completely disintegrate the lower part of her body. Being a shadow demon, she could survive as long as a shred of her form remained, or at least that was what the library back in the city had written down, but the books mentioned nothing of just how painful losing a part of herself was.

With their shared link connecting them, the loss of her body, the pain he felt, her pain, had come through as clear as if it were his own. It was as if there was both a void, an absolute emptiness where his body should have been, but also as if every molecule within the part of his body that should have been missing was burning with all the rage of a dying sun.

Not like the pain of being burned by fire or being cut, just pain, pure and unfiltered by an inefficient system of nerves and biological functions.

Her Majesty had nearly died, her body nearly vaporised by that blasted ability. Somewhat of an oddity as every encounter that she had had any type of energy had so far strengthened her. But that had mostly been indirect contact with heat and sunlight. It may have been due to the magic, but she had once been hit by a lightning jolt spell, an accident on his part when he had been testing the effects of a few of his one-time-use rewards, and the only consequence of the slip up being a slight increase in her overall speed for a few seconds.

Perhaps the higher level of mana within the spell had something to do with it…or perhaps the system or whatever else that governed the rules of magic just decided that it should do so.

Whatever the case, Her Majesty, relying on pure instinct rather than her shocked mind at the moment, chose to flee as far as [SHADOW RUN] would let her go.

Which was far, very far. Goodie had never let her travel so far before, mostly because he had never had reason to do so and that he would have been left defenceless without her nearby, but also because he had assumed that their connection had some sort of limit to its range and that their link would have been severed if she had crossed it.

He did not know how far she had travelled, but he sensed that she was now amongst a large population of people, not one of the nearby villages, a proper city or at least what passed for one in this world. But the waggon train had been at least a month’s worth of travel-time from the nearest one.

[SHADOW RUN] was one hell of a skill.

Something for him to look into later, but for now, he had to get himself together to deal with what had happened.

With his senses flaring, Goodie was only vaguely aware that people other than him had begun screaming, not in pain, or at least not by the sound of it, but in shock.

He suddenly became aware of a presence; someone had grabbed him. From the direction and distance that the touch had come from, he guessed that the hands that were now holding him belonged to that Mousy-Girl. He had feared that it was some form of attack, but after a moment of inaction, he slowly realised that it was not, which was confusing as he could not think of any other reason for her to do what she was doing. It was rather pathetic that it took him a while to recognise what the girl had been attempting to do was to try and comfort him in his time of need.

It was a sad fact that, aside from his parents, she was one of only two people to have ever to try to do so. The second stranger to ever have tried in two worlds.

Even his so-called relatives, even his sweet cousin Theresa, had never done so.

Even when his parents had just died.

But as pathetic as that may have been, he did not need her comfort, he needed to pull himself together; taking hold of himself, he began to rise, doing his damnedest to ignore his pain as he tried to focus on his surroundings.

Taking in what lay before him, he realised that Her Majesty had not been the only one to be hurt by that bloody bubble.

Even now, the rabid rabbits that had gathered ahead of them threw themselves against the field with no regard for their own safety…no…Goodie looked closer, towards the back; he could not be sure that it was the same one, but he was almost certain that the intelligent one from earlier was still hanging behind the others of its kind. There were two more rabbits beside the one Goodie was looking at, however, and he could not say for sure if any of them were the one he was thinking of or if that one had already died.

Or all three of them were some intelligent variant of the Burrows creations, a far more dangerous foe that the simple brutes from before.

Now there was pleasant a thought.

But none of that was important to him, right now.

He turned to the skaters, who backed off as they saw the disturbing look upon his face, the rage burning in his eyes.

Goodie had never been one to place much stock in emotions. While most people would go on and on the importance of feelings, he tended to approach the subject with more than a bit of apathy if not outright disdain, being of the opinion that those that did go on about the importance of feeling were either people who did not like to think or politicians hunting for votes.

But right here, right now, he was angry. Angrier than he had ever been in his life.

He screamed, “What the fuck did you do?!”

Everyone, the Skaters and Mousy-Girl, froze, mouths agape. The tunnel grew unnaturally silent but for the crackling of energies as the manic bunnies continued their berserker’s assault.

What did you fucking do?!” Goodie roared.

He was about to step forward but stopped as a thought fluttered to the fore of his mind.

Bringing up his [MENU], Goodie shifted the screen to Her Majesty’s character sheet and as he suspected, her stats had gone down, not just her physical attributes, but all of them.

It should not have come as a surprise to him due to what he had learned back in the city’s library, that and just common sense, even when magic was involved, you did not lose half your body without some form of toll being taken, but as he took in each of her attributes, noting the numbers next each of them, two now, rather than one, he collapsed again, a jolt of pain shooting through him as his knees thumped into the ground, a pain that went unnoticed as Goodie was occupied coming to terms with what had happened.

Nearly a year’s worth of sacrifices lost in the blink of an eye. Nearly a year’s worth of hardship, pain, and fear, wasted because a pair of arseholes could not be bothered to give him a heads up.

He did not want to think about it for fear that he might end up screaming or crying, or both, so he focused on the numbers in front of him.

The first set of numbers listed after the attributes was a garish red in colour and excessively low, nearly a single digit for some of them. It was, he assumed…or, at least, hoped was a representation of a temporary debuff due to the shock of what had happened to her. The second set of numbers were the normal white, but they too were lower, not as much as the ones in red, but still, most, especially the physical ones, were less than half their original value.

Goodie shut his eyes and mouth tight, tensing his entire face as he tried to force the maelstrom of emotions within him to pour out through the pores of his skin.

After a moment he inhaled sharply through his nose before breathing out. He repeated this a few more times, trying to focus himself, trying to let the storm swirling within him calm down enough for him to think.

These arseholes had enslaved him, brought him into this death trap, and now they had hurt the one and only true ally that he had in this world or the next, the only real protection he had from the dangers that this world posed to him. Admittedly, she never really had a say in the matter, but still, she had stuck with him through thick and thin. And now, she was in pain; hurt, terrified out of her wits from nearly being killed by these fucking bastards, and gone to who knows where.

He breathed in more slowly this time, holding his breath for a moment before once again breathing out.

He was going to kill them.

He was going to kill them all.