For all that I wanted to help, the shock of seeing Mia brutalized like that kept flashing in front of my eyes. The prospect of being crushed underneath the spike feeder’s teeth haunted me. I could see it in my mind’s eye. Its maw pushing against my fur, pressing harder and harder until the air trapped within collapsed and the teeth broke through, filling me with holes. I would become a pincushion, just like Mia, leaking blood until the last of my life force drained out of me.

“Snap out of it, Perry,” Vera cried, lunging at the spike feeder once more. The wind detonated around her horns, but the spike feeder seemed prepared to eat the blow, weathering the miniature storm she conjured. It would take more than what Vera had done before, as it held its ground against the second impact.

I started to run forward, trying my best to swallow my fear. Trying wasn’t good enough, however. The spike feeder flicked its giant tail at Vera’s jutting horns, crushing them on impact. Vera fell back from the force, landing on her butt. “Vera, no,” I cried, still running forward.

“I’ll just manifest them again,” she said gritting her teeth. The horns started to reappear over her head, but our fixation on her head distracted us from the hand coming from the side. It grasped her body, and the spike feeder started retreating from the ground, Vera in tow.

“No, no, no no no no, no. Perry, help me!” she wailed, desperately pushing at the hand that held her, but the accumulated gales around her horns couldn’t break through the concentrated, prepared force of the spike feeder’s fist.

So much of me didn’t want to move closer to the threat range of the spike feeder, but I had to press on. I couldn’t abandon Vera. She had already proved to be braver than myself. I couldn’t fail to live up to her example. I couldn’t let her be taken into the water. I couldn’t let her drown like Levin.

I had run the distance, but the spike feeder was already halfway into the water. It was getting damper and damper, entering the muddy depths. Its hide looked a lot more thick than any of the other spike feeders I had fought against, but I couldn’t go on without trying.

I Electromuted the spikefeeder, halting it in place for a moment and jumped in, scraping at its side with my spurs, trying to pierce through the skin. I didn’t think I would be able to pull apart those arms, but perhaps the pain of my venom would be enough to have it drop Vera, at the very minimum. I didn’t know if it would fell it like it did the others, given how much larger it was.

My fears were not fully unfounded. My spur managed to pierce the flesh, finding a groove in the scales to pierce through, venom pumping through its body. It roared out in pain, Vera falling from its hands a short distance to the water, running as soon as she hit the ground.

Not content to just cry out in pain, the spike feeder slammed its now-free hand into me, colliding with my Swollen Fur technique, sending me flying through the air. Even though my fur cushioned the blow, I still felt enough of the impact to feel battered from the result. The spike feeder was terribly strong. Mia’s survival of its death roll was only a testament to how talented she was, because my fur would not have stood up to that continued assault.

“Get up, Perry,” Vera shouted. “It’s coming straight for you!” I shook my head, trying to focus amidst the waves of pain, only to see the spike feeder barreling towards me, screaming out in rage. Its scream lingered in the air, a heavy thing pushing upon my thoughts. It was hard to think through the noise, let alone the pain, but this was what training was for.

I urged my body to move, inflating my Swollen Fur once more, and as it just nearly sideswiped me I Electromuted it, halting its conscious steps so that the inertia carried it forward, a spike glancing off of my extended fur. That was far closer than I would have hoped for, but one stumbling incident wouldn’t be enough to stop the raging beast.

“I don’t know how much longer we can handle this, Vera. I hope Javier gets back soon,” I shouted, seeing the spike feeder charging back at me once more.

“I’ll try and derail it, if you can halt it in its movement once again, Perry,” Vera said. She was bruised and battered, but her horns were already gathering wind for her technique. She was carrying the same fears and concerns I had, but we couldn’t stop. Not until Javier returned and carried us out of this mess.

I swallowed my anxieties and actively refreshed my Swollen Fur technique. I couldn’t just have it maintained from the prior attack. I didn’t know how much stress it had taken from that spike, and when it had successfully connected with me, I went flying. I couldn’t afford any mistakes. “You got it, Vera,” I said, trying to draw the spike feeder’s attention upon myself. I had to draw its ire, if we wanted a chance to survive this encounter.

It fell from its standing position to all fours, tail thrashing about behind it. It started running at twice the speed it had before. “Shit,” I said, seeing its giant form barreling towards me.

If it hit me this time, I didn’t know if I could get up after the impact. I couldn’t play it as close as I did before. When it was twenty feet away, I Electromuted it, the momentum carrying it forward once again. With the extra time I side stepped out of the way, safely dodging the impact up until its long, muscled tail slammed into me as it went careening by.

Even though Vera had followed up and rammed the spike feeder while it was distracted, that didn’t stop me from flying backwards, slamming into a sturdy tree along the waterside. I felt blood trail from my lips, internal injuries leaking out. I wasn’t even sure if I could move much further. I certainly wasn’t going to be running any time soon.

My few labored breaths felt as though I was being stabbed, and trying to lift my arms took strength I no longer had. “Is he back yet?” I croaked, hoping fervently that Javier was there to rescue us.

“No, not yet,” Vera sobbed. I could see tears streaming down her face. It was now just up to her not only to endure but also to try and herd away the spike feeder from finishing me off. I didn’t know how else we could recover from here.

The spike feeder rose from its grounded position, angling towards the two of us once more on all four limbs. It screamed in outrage, bloody teeth showing in its killing roar. I was prepared to come to terms with things, when the spike feeder collapsed, and Alain rose from behind it.

“Sorry for being late,” he said, scratching his claws against the back of the spike feeder. “I didn’t expect it to take so long to get back here.”

“Alain? You’re all right?” I groaned, sitting against the battered tree. I didn’t have the strength to rise.

“Better than you, anyway. From what I saw on arrival, you two did well to hold it off. More than well, even. This was a strong one. I’m sorry that my absence fucked with the formation.” With a smooth flick of his wrists, he lopped off the head of the spike feeder, ensuring that it would rise no more.

I wanted to cheer, but cheering would have meant more active breathing, and it fucking hurt to breathe right now. Vera, on the other hand, took the opportunity to have a quick breakdown, falling to her knees and sobbing. “I, I thought, I thought you were dead, Alain,” she said, through her tears.

“It’s not that easy to kill me,” he said, running over to reassure her. “I’m made of hardy stuff.”

“Where were you?” she said, drawing him closer to her, needing the reality check to confirm that everything was alright.

“I was running off an errant spike feeder and then tracking it to ensure it wouldn’t attack anyone else. It was a person-rank spike feeder. I knew that I could handle it alone, I’m just sorry that my message got lost somehow. Must have been an errant breeze.”

Although we didn’t need corroboration, Javier walked up, helping me off of the ground. “That’s right. Sorry I couldn’t get back earlier. I sent Alain off ahead, when I saw him at the camp. Had to bandage up Mia, but I was confident that he could help you hold things down until I arrived. He was even kind enough to bring some corpse fragments with him.”

I raised an eyebrow, staring at Alain in confusion. “What? It’s a pretty big reason as to why I disappeared. Couldn’t let it be thought that I just got cold feet or something. I had to be doing something important to compensate for the extra effort you had to put in with my absence.”

Vessen Swamp was now clear of its largest threat, but that didn’t make things a proper success for our team. “This is not what I had hoped for in this mission,” Javier said. “I was hoping for one of you injured at most. Not nearly three of the team in such varying states of suffering. Now I don’t want to diminish your results. You did an excellent job of stalling and creating an opportunity for Alain to kill it… I’m just trying to restrain from having an outburst about how injured you and Mia are. Shit. We’re gonna have to train you even harder when we’re back. I knew it was too soon but our tight timeline didn’t allow for any deviations. Shit.”

“So Mia’s alright then?” Vera asked. She had made her way over to me, lifting me over her shoulder to help hobble me along with Javier.

“I wouldn’t call her alright. I’d call her quite horribly injured. If she didn’t need to be triaged like that, I could have left her behind and returned much earlier, but she had taken a serious amount of damage. I needed to staunch all the bleeding and ensure her wounds were sterilized. Thankfully she’s stable, but we need to get her back to the city for some proper treatment. Perry too, who by the way, did great for having had only three days of training.”

“You left her alone?” Vera cried out, punching Javier in the shoulder.

“She’s got the horses with her. If they sense a threat, they’ll bolt for a bit. It’ll suck for us to have to look for the carriage, but they should be trained enough to mitigate the danger… although I hope that they wouldn’t reopen her wounds too much. Look, Alain isn’t trained enough in first aid… which is something else we’ll have to rectify when we’re back. The both of you too. You can attribute all of your injuries to my foolishness in your training. I won’t be so lenient going forward.”

I didn’t quite like the implied threat, given how exhausting the current training was. Conversely, if more training meant that it wouldn’t hurt to breathe, and that blood would refrain from leaking from my mouth and nose, I would begrudgingly accept those terms.

“That’s right, boss,” I groaned. We had arrived back at the carriage, Mia’s suffering figure in the heart of the cabin.

Vera and Alain helped hoist me in side, before taking to the sides of Mia. “Will she be alright on the ride back?”

“I wouldn’t say alright,” Javier said. “Be sure to monitor her at all times, and as soon as you see something awry, say something. We’re also doing staggered shifts tonight. Everyone’s going to have at least two people for their night shift. Well, for some part of the shift. The person with the last shift will end up standing alone until the rest of us wake up. This is to compensate for the gap we’re going to have with Perry and Mia out of commission, alright? Alain will cover the first shift, I’ll take the middle shift, and Vera takes the last shift. They’ll overlap so that I’ll be present for both of your shifts for some point of time.”

The others nodded in agreement, while I gave a hearty groan of appreciation that I wasn’t going to be tasked to cover a shift while in my injured state. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle it, and if he had told me to, I would have laughed in his face at the audacity of having the injured man keep watch.

“Alright, time to go back to Titan City. We’ve done what we could here. It’s time to rest and recover,” Javier said. A silence fell onto the wagon as our horses returned the way we came. To think this was the outcome of our first outing. One severe injury, one middling injury for the cost of one person-rank spike feeder and one village-rank spike feeder. We had to get stronger, fast.

I had to get stronger.