Eyes snapping open, Jake frantically looked around.

He saw nothing more than blurs in his search, but he knew. Deep down, he knew that if he did not act soon, he would be in danger. Possibly even die.

"Oh, I see you're a—

A creaking groan of wood sounded, followed by a crash of a branch hitting the ground.

"Do not approach him again," creaked a breathy voice that reminded Jake of the rustling of leaves in the wind, "demon."

As gentile and sweet as the voice sounded, the disdain and derision loaded into it as it hissed the last word surprised him. Jake was not sure he had ever heard someone load so much loathing into a voice all at once.

Yeah, sure, he had seen it in movies and stuff. Read about it being described. But how many times have you actually heard a person speak and been able to feel the scorn and derision dripping from their words like an oil coating your skin?

Most people just don't have that level of vitriol within them. And it's even rarer for a situation to appear that it would be appropriate to use.

Vision swimming into focus, Jake watched as a tree branch lying on the ground ten feet from him lifted into the air with a creek.

It was mildly concerning watching a tree move on its own, though he knew it was something he would have to get used to. But anything he felt about the tree moving was overshadowed by the demon squatting on the ground the rising branch revealed.

Lurching back, Jake almost fell over before catching himself.

Ever seen a demon smile? It doesn't matter what the thing is smiling at; seeing it smile is… disturbing. Even when there is no particularly malicious intent behind the smile.

Not that Jake could tell if it meant him harm or not, it wasn't human. At best, it would be like trying to read the emotions of a monkey. At worst, it was looking for emotion in a rose bush.

There was one thing Jake knew, though. Something the flashing teeth of the creature made abundantly clear.

Look into a shark's mouth, opening a foot in front of your face, and you will know what Jake felt. A predator will always be a predator and can never truly hide what it is.

This one, like a shark, wasn't even trying to hide its nature. Jake could feel power radiating off the creature, instilling an instinctual fear within Jake that fed off the things striking appearance.

The demon's eyes flicked down to Jake's forearm, then to his own claws as he lifted them, looking between his spread claws while locking eyes with Jake.

Braking the gaze and glancing down at his forearm, Jake was surprised to see a five-inch line of blood streaking his fur. Fur? What the—

Jake's head twinged in pain as his vision blurred at the edges, and he raised his hand to rub his forehead in an attempt to ease the pain. It did not really work.

As he jerks back his hand back as claws scraped across his skin, Jake remembered the pillar of fire and fighting the demon. If it can be called a fight.

Stumbling to his feet to walk to the cliff's edge and trying to take in everything again, Jake began to panic. He could feel the urgency rising within him.

If he did not act soon, the situation would spiral out of control, and nothing he could do would change that.

Even as he struggled to look down at his garden, Jake could not take his eyes away from the demon.

The thing's mouth opened, and a forked tongue slithered between its fanged teeth, lapping at the bead of blood dripping down its nails.

A dark cloying power exploded from the demon sweeping over the surroundings and wrapping around Jake's body like chains.

The sky darkened like a sheet was dropped over the world, covering all light. All light but the blood-red glow of the power seeping over the ground.

The energy seemed to collect in pulsing lines making a pentacle with geometrical shapes in and around it. Eyes flicking across the lines, Jake's mind stuttered.

Layer upon layer of symbols were worked into the circle.

It was a level of control and power that Jake could not comprehend. Literally, his mind and vision shook at a glance at the lines, and he swayed as he tried to keep his feet. Blinking a few times, he felt liquid dripping from his nose and eyes.

Feeling a droplet begin to form and fall from his face, Jake's eyes flicked to it, and he saw it was crimson, pulsing in unison with the blood-red glow of the lines on the ground.

Whatever was happening, the demon caused it, and the focus was on Jake. He could feel the anticipation of the power around him.

"Do you accept?" The demon spoke, his slightly nasal voice resonating with power and will. It was as if the world itself acknowledged the words were spoken and waited for a response.

A response that Jake must give.

The words hit Jake's mind like a mountain landing on his shoulders. He staggered as his mind began to blank from the pressure, and then the words started digging into his mind.

They wanted—

No, they demanded an answer.

And the longer Jake waited to give a replay, the greater the pressure grew.

Bearing his fangs, Jake fought the impulse to charge the demon and rip it to shreds. His flight or fight instincts were kicking into overdrive.

He had only just begun to process the information his land was sending him. But he processed enough.

Before, it was an abstract sense of danger and urgency. His subconscious might have processed the information and concluded he needed to act, but it resulted in little more than Jake feeling angsty.

It was like sitting on the couch watching TV when you know the deadline for a big project, that could use some touching up, is fast approaching.

Now Jake knew his garden was being attacked from three directions. He knew that the defenders were on their last leg of strength, and though the animals had lost relatively few members so far, the situation was about to cascade into a downpour of death.

The death of his people. The people who were fighting for his land. How could he sit by and let them die for what is his without doing anything?

Already, sections of his garden were being ripped to shreds, as the defenders had to shift their attention to killing the stronger… abominations.

Feeling their twisted bodies and energy on his land with his mind was like opening his eyes and finding he was waist-deep in a sewage pit.

He needed them gone.

But he was here.

Trapped.

Like he was watching the foundation of a five-story building being washed away by the growing tide while a child screams and cries in fear. Right where the building will fall.

Every cell in his body told him to act. Yearned to do something. Anything.

But he could not. He was forced to wait in inaction and watch.

The power of the creature in front of him was unscalable. If he charged at the demon and tried to rip it to shreds, at best, the demon would find Jake as amusing as a two-year-old attacking an adult.

Could a child that young even kill an adult? Even if the adult lay on the ground and let it all happen to him? Jake rather doubted it.

Focus! Jake thought to himself, trying to gather his mind. It was hard.

If his mind was scattered, and he wasn't actively fighting the need to answer, the pressure lessened somewhat.

Gathering himself, Jake forced his mouth open to ask what he would be accepting, "ACk-ePT WhA—”

Though what came out was more accurately described as a gurgle filled with strain and pain, Jake would loosely call it a question.

Yeah, it was definitely a question! Jake thought as he had a staring contest with the droplets of blood speckling the ground.

At some point, he had collapsed to his knees from standing on… was I ever on my feet? Jake didn't remember.

Well, after he tried to speak, Jake found himself on his hands and knees, head down.

Jake could feel his body straining, his muscles bulging in effort, as he lifted his head to meet the demon's eyes.

Eyes crawling up the creature's body and finally landing on its face, Jake had plenty of time to take in all of its features and try to interpret them.

He might be wrong, though he rather doubted it, butJake would swear that he saw boredom laced with mild amusement plastered on its face.

Finally, settling on the bottomless pits the creature called eyes, Jake achieved his goal after what felt like it took a lifetime of effort.

Bearing its teeth, voice laced with amusement, the demon said, "Do you accept?"

I was right, thought Jake in victory when he heard the tone. The words struck Jake—

……

Jake blinked.

He tried to, at least.

Maybe he only opened his eyes. Or closed them.

Not that it really mattered. His vision was still black from the force clamping around his mind.

The only thing he knew was the ever-increasing pressure driving him to respond.

He had to respond.

To say something.

Opening his mouth, he tried to refuse, "hunnh~" gasped out Jake as the pressure momentarily doubled and his breath was forced out of him.

Jake thought he heard the demon chuckle at his pain. It did not matter if it was true or not. The message was clear.

He would accept, or the pressure would continue to mount until he did.

And this whole time, Jake's anxiety over his land grew into fear. Time was not on his side.

There was no other choice. Bracing what strength he could muster, Jake tried to gasp out, "I accept."

It was easy. Too easy.

The moment he began to act on his intention to accept, all the force driving him into the ground and crushing his body vanished.

He might have thought it was never there, to begin with, but the indent of his body into the ground and splattering of blood was hard to ignore as he lifted himself up off the ground.

The energy gathered around him was swirling in a storm, and he was at its heart. He was not alone, though.

Across the short eye of the hurricane of energy, the demon was still crouched down, unmoved by its surroundings.

Power seemed to be leaching out of the creature, feeding the storm and making it grow.

All at once, the storm froze. Jake had a moment for his eyes to flick to the side in mild concern before the storm walls collapsed.

The energy boar into Jake like a thousand needles.

It did not stop with entering Jake's body. No, that would be too much to hope for.

Jake could feel the invading energy clump together before it stabbed deep into Jake. Into something that he wasn't even sure even existed before recent events.

It could not be described as stabbing into his chest and through his heart. That description would be too pedestrian to accurately describe what was happening.

His body might be being skewered with demonic energy, but that was only a means to an end.

What is part of my body, is and is not within my body simultaneously, and can be connected to by passing through my body? My fucking soul, that's what.

It hurt more than anything that he could remember. How often does a person actually feel pain from their soul?

A memory prickled at the back of his mind. More of a distant, half-remembered dream. It was something Jake could not fully remember, but it made this pale in comparison.

At the half-remembered thought, the pain seemed… less.

This was just an invasion. After the initial shock, it became more like the feeling of being bloated after stuffing yourself, not the removal of a part of himself that he would never get back.

Jake stood up. The pain was still there, along with the energy still connecting him to the demon, but it was manageable.

He knew on instinct that he could not move yet. What was happening could not be easily undone—can anything affecting the soul even be undone?—and if he interrupted what was happening early, the consequences would be far worse than accepting a soul contract—cause those are apparently real—and all it entailed.

Impatiently waiting, Jake started flexing and rolling his shoulders as he began to hop in place to loosen up. He would need to act fast.

Every moment he waited to act was another death of his land's defenders.

Jake had to look away from the energy concentrating together as a blinding flash originated from it. When he turned back, the cord between Jake and the demon almost seemed to be physical, and before he could reach out and touch it, the demon spoke.

"Prepare yourself, Warden. And I look forward to our time… together."

Jake felt a shiver run down his spine as he ignored the words, but it did put his mind back to what was actually important rather than his idle curiosity. There would be time to consider everything after the immediate situation was over.

The demonic energy held in place for a moment then exploded into the prison.

It only took a moment for the wave of energy to travel through the cage and impact its walls.

The impact of the demonic energy against the mist walls caused them to ripple, and the fluctuations of the wall begin showing a shifting scene of a seemingly endless prairie.

One moment the grasslands were awash in fire. The next, it had all grown back thicker and more vibrant than ever before. Always though, no matter what it showed, large groups of black zipped across the land before they came into contact with another large group. Every time, only one left the area.

Something about the vista toughed at Jake's memory before he shook it off and turned, racing down the mountain, ignoring the demon.

Quick as the inspection of his surroundings might have been, he was more concerned about what he saw outside of the cage than within once he saw what might have been outside. Something was off.

It was a feeling that only grew as he inspected the valley below.

The ground rumbled as the demon began cackling, and the oak tree rustled angrily.

Jake paid little attention to the distractions and focused on what was really important: the hoards of abominations besieging his garden.

Racing down the mountain, Jake found to his surprise, that he was running on all fours.

It did not take any extra thought or focus as he rushed down the hill. He wanted to go faster, and he was on all fours a beat later.

Though he stumbled when he first noticed and tried to assert active control over his body. He was still faster at his stumbling run on all fours than he had ever been while running on two, but Jake did not regain the speed he first had until he stopped focusing and let his body move.

It was weird to mentally step back and let his body's instincts take over, but it was also relaxing as he mentally zoned out during the exertion.

He leaped down the path, bounding off and over rocks to go faster, Jake stuttered a few times as he paid too much attention, but by the time he reached the bottom, he felt like he was starting to get the hang of it.

Jake didn't even stop as he leaped off the top of the last twenty feet of the trail, falling ten feet over the rocky stairs that made it up. Flexing his legs to cushion his fall, Jake turned to his left, sprinting along the canal and the orchard lining this side of the garden until he got to the river.

While the other side of the garden was being pushed just as hard, if not harder than this side, it had the advantage of… his fishing line?

That was what his senses told him, even if he found it hard to believe. His… what was it? Hundred feet? Less? Of braided fishing line had become over a mile long and a few hundred feet deep patch of vines guarding one side of the garden.

It was moving, hampering the movements of the stronger and larger abominations and completely wrapping up some of the smaller things.

Jake was pretty sure that his fishing line had never done anything like what it was doing now, before. Sure he caught it poking into the ground, and some produce a few times, but it was nothing like this. Right? So what happened to my fishing line?

Shaking it off, Jake pulled back his lips, showing off his teeth.

He was nervous.

Jake had never gone looking for a fight. Sure he had been in a brawl or two. But he had never gone someplace with the express purpose of fighting something.

No, it was worse than that. He was not going someplace to fight. He was sprinting forward to kill.

Kill the abominations infesting his land. He was going to rip them to shreds for what they did. For what they were.

Jake and the abominations could not coexist. He could passively feel the energy that made them from his land, and the little he got from it told him enough. They would continue to destroy and kill until there was nothing left to destroy, or they were killed.

It was a fact he had long ago accepted. You have to be pragmatic as a farmer. Sometimes, for the good of the farm, some things just need to be killed. A sick and lame animal is one example, but also predators.

Many people on Earth forgot that killing was a necessary part of life. And even if it could be avoided, sometimes, it shouldn't be. There are things, people even, that only produce a net gain to the world once they are put down.

The abominations were such creatures—if they could even be called such a thing.

Knowing and accepting that did not make the thought of killing easier.

What made it easier for Jake and sent a shiver of thrill running down his spine was the excitement. The anticipation of combat.

Some primitive, primal part of his was excited by the idea of a fight. To prove in a physical struggle of dominance that he was on top. That he was the best.

It would be a fight he wouldn't have to hold back on the off chance someone got seriously injured. He would not have to worry and fear the police knocking on his door because someone was recording the whole thing, and he was being charged with something.

He was free.

Jake was utterly and completely free for the first time in his life.

As the mental shackles society placed on him fell away, Jake sank deeper into his body.

He was no longer riding shotgun in his altered body, watching the valley flick by.

It was his hind claws slamming into the ground and digging in, searching for purchase to drive him forward faster.

His fur whipped around in the passing wind.

He smelt the rancid putrid forms of the abominations.

And it was his claws that ripped out the throat of a man-bear-pig abomination after he leaped over the canal and raced through the trees, hitting the abominations from the flank.

Ignoring the thing as it fell, Jake lunged forward, clamping his jaws around the neck of a wolf-scorpion.

His teeth sunk into the abomination, but he could feel the energy within the thing resisting his bite. With a growl, Jake pulled on his Qi.

The Qi within his land answered his call. Qi pouring into him, Jake was filled with an unending well of strength.

As easy as twitching his head to the side, Jake snapped his mouth shut, severing the neck.

The wolf's head fell to the ground with a thud, but Jake was already gone moving to his next target.

His smile stretched farther as savage glee overcame him. He had just swiped his front claw at a group of three. He had wanted them to jump back and perhaps for the front member to take a slash across the chest before he pounced on them.

But what happened was far better. Each of his claws shown with a pale light as Jake swiped, then blades shot out at the group, cutting them into crosswise segments.

Jake let the Qi continuously pour through him as he slashed his claws, sending razor-sharp claw projections at the hoard of abominations clambering through the water.

As for the portion of the hoard already within the garden, Jake fed Qi to the plants to defend themselves.

It was mildly irritating, all things told. Not that he was using Qi to defend his garden, that was a logical step to take.

If the land can defend itself from most dangers, all you really have to worry about is the more significant threats.

And that's where Jake's annoyance came from. The land was hoarding the endless stream of Qi pouring into it.

To his Qi sense, the land he was standing on was a sun in an endless void. Literally, if he paid even a little attention to his Qi sense, it was like looking directly at the sun on a clear day.

Well, to be more accurate, the land was not the sun. He found that out when he turned away from the ground and ended up looking at the mountain he had just come down from.

That was the sun.

His land was just a massive spotlight shining into the sky, blinding him when he looked down.

Little more than drops of Qi were making their way to the plants and animals walking around his garden.

Jake needed that to change. Not so much for the animals. They were already taking in all that they could.

The plants, though? They could take far more.

So Jake opened up the flood gates that already should have been opened.

Streams of Qi poured down the mountain from the top where the ancient oak resided.

There was so much that the Qi collected and condensed until it became visible to the naked eye as a mist.

Though the Qi mist falling down the mountain appeared white and clear to the eye, it was the farthest thing from it.

Every aspect of Qi that Jake had encountered was there, along with a multitude of others that he did not have the slightest clue what they were at a glance.

It did not matter what types of Qi there were. In the end, they were all energy, and they would feed the growth of his garden.

The plants exploded in new life as the Qi washed over them.

There was the straight-up growth that Jake was expecting. Some plats more than doubled in size in a matter of seconds with the new and regrown limbs.

All of the plants close to the edges more than doubled their efforts to kill the invaders, and their efforts only grew in effectiveness as time passed.

Jake was not expecting how the plants began to change with the different types of Qi they absorbed.

An orange tree burst into flames covering it from the highest leaf to the stump, but the tree did not suffer, only growing richer in color.

Different sections of rice became what looked like a muddy brown shining metal, while another grew five feet tall. A third section crackled with lighting that shocked the nearby abominations in the water.

A section of the grape vines Jake could see swelled and become as large as watermelons, but they dripped a liquid that hissed when it fell to the ground.

More and more plants within the garden changed as they adopted an aspect of Qi until few plants remained what they originally were. It was becoming the norm for plants within his garden to be altered somehow.

Oh, there were different types of Qi within the garden before. But it was like the relationship between asphalt and concrete roads on Earth. Sure the concrete roads were out there, and nearly everyone had a concrete driveway, but it was far from the norm.

Pure unaspected Qi was the norm in his garden.

Was being the key word.

Saying that the situation had switched when Jake threw open the flood gate to the reservoir of Qi would be an understatement. If anything saying that pure Qi had become even rarer than the aspected Qi was before.

This was all passing through the back of Jake's mind as he continued to tear through the massed things attacking his farm.

Swipe after swipe of his claws signaled the end of at least one invader, usually more.

A mild concern flickered through his mind when the Qi flowing through his body dipped more a moment, but as it spiked to new heights a few swipes of his claws later, the concern vanished.

Lunging forward with his mouth wide, a phantom outline of his muzzle appeared three feet in front of his own, following his movements and snapping shut, severing the head of an eagle-faced bear.

As the thing fell, Jake slashed out at a nearly parallel "X" along the front line of the abominations rushing into the water.

Nearly have of his Qi reserves were used up at the move, but within one breath, all of his Qi was restored.

The land would not let him be without Qi for even a moment if he did not actively resist. Jake did not oppose the Qi. He welcomed it.

Letting out a howl, more Qi left Jake's body in a wave.

The visible wave radiated towards the abomination, lifting a small amount of dust in its wake.

Hitting the things, they were pushed back a step before they shivered and fell to the ground.

Within a second, the largest members of the hoard were already twitching as they reasserted control over their bodies, but Jake was already moving on.

While these abominations were a problem, the plants could handle them now that they were being flooded with Qi.

The amount of Qi that was cascading down the mountain, significant as it was, wasn't even having all that much of an effect on the reserves within the mountain's heart.

Black Qi was still entering his land as fast, if not faster than before he opened the flood gates. And any black Qi that was absorbed by his land was being shunted to him to cleanse before it was sent to the reservoir to be distributed.

It would be a long time, if ever, before the black Qi would be cleansed from the surrounding lands, so he had nothing to worry about in terms of Qi reserves.

As he fished his fun with the small fries, Jake began running to the battle that mattered. As he ran, he ignored the stray thoughts pointing out the inconsistencies.

**********

To his displeasure, he was right.

All too right, even if he was wrong about the particulars.

Does it really matter if you are right about how the world is destroyed, only wrong about who caused it to be destroyed.

In the end, the world was still destroyed.

Fluffy looked out at the water and along the banks of the lake. A hoard of a thousand abominations was marching on The Garden.

The scouts they had sent out flying over the valley had not picked out a sign of a monster capable of gathering such a hoard, and for a good reason.

Of all the spirit beasts gathered within The Garden, Fish made up the smallest number.

As Flash explained, during her and Master's disagreement, most of the spirit fish were spooked and migrated to the other sides of the lake. Especially once she started to fight back.

This is not to say that all left, but the majority did.

And with the Pillar of Black Flame happening so soon afterward… most of the spirit fish did not escape the taint.

It should have been obvious in hindsight.

The abominations can create their own twisted forms when enough energy condenses in one location—the scouts had reported witnessing such things—they also used whatever living material was already nearby.

They even saw patches of The Thicket on the north side become corrupted when it tried to expand too far from The Garden.

The only reason they weren't fighting plant abominations was the fact that plants were all scoured from the surrounding lands when the pillar of fire first erupted.

Not that it still wasn't erupting even now, occasionally sending out balls of flame further out into the dome. It was just that the pillar of fire was so small that one had to really look to notice it. It had barely even reached the tops of the mountains in recent days.

If Fluffy had learned anything, it was that everything could be tainted given time.

And they should have paid more attention to what was happening under the water.

If size was anything to go by with abominations, only the small ones were attacking The Garden. Because the monster that was making its way to shore put all of the rest to shame.

The struggle of the spirit beasts was hard and long. Fluffy did not know how much time had passed, but it was at least a week or two since the first eruption. He really stopped paying attention.

The only reason he would even guess that much was because some of the bears, sows, and does give birth to their young. That was not counting the massive numbers of rabbits and other smaller woodland creatures born. Some were even large and strong enough to join the fight.

Something about the whole situation was odd to Fluffy, but he stopped trying to think past the next fight many battles ago.

Fluffy watched the gathering masses of abominations. He could not make everything out, but today was a particularly clear day.

Everyone knew what was coming. They knew the hoard was massing along both banks and within the waters.

They had trouble holding out against the ununified forces that happened to attack at similar times.

A force directed by a single leader that was more than three times the number of any previous group? The Garden will burn.

It was just a matter of how much of The Garden they could save now.

Fluffy closed his eyes, everyone knew what was coming, and they had already worked out a rough plan, as much of one as they could make anyway.

It was time for him to gather as much strength as he could. It would be nice for him to be at his full Qi capacity even if he was tired. But it had been so long since his core had been topped off that he hardly even remembered what it was like.

"Wake up."

Jumping at the words and a nudge, Fluffy looked around with bleary eyes gathering wind Qi into blades around his ears.

"Whoa! Easy there!" said a clipped, snapping voice, "You're not in danger… yet." There was a hint of resignation in the voice at the last whispered word.

Shaking himself, trying to regain his senses, Fluffy responded, "How long was I out, Red Talon."

Fluffy could hear the sounds of a fully engaged battle below him, not waiting for a response from the golden eagle. Looking down, standing on the edge of the wind, Fluffy froze.

"An hour, maybe two. No one's been keeping track." Red Talon added with a sigh, "You needed all the rest you can get."

Fluffy side-eyed the bird. The bird let out a caw of amusement, seeing the look, "You are the strongest. There is no more or less to it than that. Someone has to kill that thing."

At the last word, the bird flipped out a wing, pointing off to the distance.

A few hundred feet offshore was…

Calling it a leviathan was not accurate. It was too large and had too many tentacles. Perhaps we were too fast to use such a word to describe what we were facing. Maybe it was better I was outvoted… kraken was a better word to describe this than the smaller ones.

"So this… kraken has yet to reach the land yet?" Fluffy asked in a neutral tone.

Fluffy could hear a chuffing sound to his side and guessed that the eagle was laughing. The eagle always did seem to amuse herself by looking at everything from a distance, "Yes~ the… kraken… has yet to make landfall. It was no achievement of ours, though. The thing was content to wear us down before coming forward."

"Ya, I can see that," Fluffy said in resignation.

Dozens of spirit beast bodies littered the shore around a pair of bodies of leviathans and feeders on the shoreline. A third leviathan even made it to the edge of The Garden and tore up hundreds of feet before it was brought down.

"Did you wake me because it's coming forward now?" Asked Fluffy.

"Nope," The bird brain smugly said with a sparkle in its eyes, "well yah, but I just thought you would want to be awake to greet the Master when he arrives."

"What!?" Fluffy exclaimed, head whipping around to look at Red Talon.

The bird said nothing, and it cocked its head to the side, looking elsewhere while fluffing its feathers in amusement.

Not expecting an answer, Fluffy began looking around, searching.

That was when he felt it. The air hummed with Qi.

It was not the density, though it was denser. The Qi felt more alive. You could not find a spect of Qi that was not interwoven with other types.

And it was all clambering to be absorbed and used.

In the past, if one encountered a high area of Qi, it was more often than not unaspected Qi. The Qi would still try and force itself into you, but the intent behind it was different.

This was only to the extent that it would not harm, only strengthen and reinvigorate.

Fluffy's body could not take much if any Qi entering it with how his channels were, but the surrounding energy was gently entering his body at a level that he would have thought impossible under the circumstances.

Groaning in relief as the Qi entered his body, Fluffy jumped when a howl shook across the valley.

A howl that originated from The Garden and contained an endless well of energy behind it.

Before Fluffy could look down, he heard a whoosh of air as something flew by. It was followed by a fleshy thud.

Looking over the edge, a wolf-like beast slashed and tore into the kraken. He knew, could feel, that it was the Master.

Chunks of flesh were torn out of the abomination. Whenever a tentacle or one of the crab-like creatures crawling around on the kraken's skin approached, a series of slashes flew out of Master's claws severing the interlopers.

Awe inspiring as the display was in terms of raw power, Fluffy knew that it would still take a long time to kill the thing in such a manner. It was just too large for such scratches to really matter.

Master seemed to realize this after a few minutes of savaging the thing as he paused his onslaught. He then reared back and jammed both of his arms into the kraken before going still.

Fluffy thought something was wrong and was preparing himself to act to save the Master as a pair of tentacles swung in when the whole thing froze.

Tumor-like bulges appeared around Master and then radiated out, covering every section of visible mass. The sores began to weep some liquid moments later.

Holding that pose for long seconds, everything changed when the Master kicked off the abomination rocketing to the beach.

As he landed, the kraken started bursting apart, and geysers of both black and normal Qi shot out from the kraken.

Some sections exploded into chunks of flesh that rapidly dissipated, not even reaching the ground before they vanished. Others broke off from the mass and started floating away from the mass of now separating flesh.

Master barely looked at the floating chunks of flesh before he ran off and started engaging the behemoths in similar battles.

With not even an hour from the appearance of the Master, the battle that they would have lost in utter destruction was won.

Fluffy hopped up to the armrest of the Master's throne and looked at the Master.

There was a little area that split off from the armchair that was perfect for him. As he approached, it felt like that was where he belonged, so he followed the instinct.

The Master didn't say anything as he settled himself on the surprisingly comfortable patch of soft springy wood as he inspected his new throne, so fluffy got comfortable as he waited.

The throne, like everything else, had changed. The fishing pole that Master left leaning against the stone chair had sprouted with new life.

Roots grew out of the bottom of the pole, wrapping around the slabs of stone while also growing into and layering over them.

Master lifted his pole, making a slight snap before lifting it up in front of his face and inspecting it. Shrugging, he set it back down where he got it with an audible click.

Fiddling around with other sections of the thrown, Fluffy heard some creaking and popping before Master sighed and began a gentle rocking.

His arm fell to the armrest before moving over slightly and started petting Fluffy's fur.

The clawed hand was filled with so much power that it constantly seeped out of it and began soaking into Fluffy.

To his abused and battered body, there could be nothing more relaxing.

If the life and energy of the Qi filling the air was a campfire to a candle compared to before, then the power coming off the Master was like the sun.

"Good job Fluffy. Things must have been hard while I was unconscious. Thank you for protecting my garden."

Fluffy was about to respond when another nasal voice spoke, "Look at you two acting like you achieved something defeating these spawn," At the words, Master's hand stiffened, then grabbed Fluffy by the scruff of the neck. The next thing Fluffy knew, he was flying through the air, but he could still hear the demon perched on top of the throne that he could now see speak.

"The Gate hasn't even fully opened yet. If you're having this much trouble now, what will you do when demons start coming threw, I wonder."

Fluffy could see his Master turning towards the creature, a look of rage and mild concern on his face.

Before he could hear the Master speak, he was splashing into the water… again.

But regardless of where he was within the dome, he would have felt the pressure and saw the light of the pillar of fire exploding with power again.

Fuck… sighed Fluffy.