The battlefield fell silent. Yet, the tension remained. If before the members of the Squad Four broke out in cheers after each beast’s slaying, now, even though wounded, they were battle-ready, looking around, half expecting another horned rabbit to burst from over the hill at any moment, attracted by their kins’ roars, squeaks, and explosions. I was no exception and scanned the area from my position on top of the hill, ears perked.

I listened and then a little more, but only the rustle of grass in the light breeze of the first floor carried through the meadows and rolling hills. No huffing of the beasts, let alone their roars or the thud of their footsteps, reached my ears.

“We’re clear,” I growled loud enough for everyone to hear and allowed myself to ease before I turned my head back to Idleaf. “There are no horned rabbits around. Can you tell them that, please?”

“Are you sure?” Meneur asked from behind me once he made it up the hill. The big taurus was much calmer now, and though his knees no longer shook, his voice still did. I gave him a nod, and he slumped onto the grass with a sigh of relief.

I expected Harper and Freyde to do the same the moment they heard my assurance from the mouth of the spirit, but despite their injuries, they made their way to me, up the hill from which I watched their battle.

“You got those two?” Harper asked, her usual cockiness gone, replaced by a sense of defeat and disbelief. The beast they fought quickly shook them off their exuberance and snapped them back to reality. It’s happened to all of us, even me, to some extent. I, too, wanted to see what a flour explosion could do, oblivious to the consequences. And the fact that I thought I could keep the attention of two beasts during the fight at me was sheer arrogance.

Nod; I wanted to nod, to give her an affirmative grunt, but I didn’t. Instead, I let go of my beast form.

Stupidity? No, I was well aware that by doing that, I would stand naked in front of them. I didn’t have the ring or clothes Pinescar was talking about, nor did I have my rags. Those were with Deckard, and both he and the sergeant seemed to have no intention of joining us. So what madness led me to do that when just thinking about it made me feel awkward and...well, strangely aroused, too?

No, my personal pleasure was not it. I wasn’t an exhibitionist with an irresistible desire to show my nude body to others. What I wanted was to be seen for who I was.

I mean, in that fight with Hoppy, it dawned on me that even though I had accepted my nature, I hadn’t fully given in to it. I was still keeping a bit of distance, driven by a desire to prove to others that I was still human, not just a dumb beast to be afraid of.

Not any longer.

It was time to own up to the class I had chosen, to throw off all pretense and embrace myself for what I was in my full glory.

Flowery thoughts, saying I no longer wanted to hide in my beast form just because I was embarrassed. Whether I wanted to or not, I was who I was, Deviant of Humanity, one embracing change, and if not, I had chosen the wrong class. Deviant, a hybrid of man and beast, and the beasts were not ashamed of their bodies. And to be honest, apart from the beef with my boobs, I had nothing to be ashamed of either.

Not as easy to get over as I thought, though.

I felt the heat in my cheeks as the changes in my body receded, my only consolation the drying blood covering my body that was making it less...noticeable. Licking my fangless teeth to calm myself down, I cleared my throat and gave Harper a weak smile. She asked if Meneur and I had killed the two horned rabbits while she and Freyde had so much trouble with only one. Well...?

“Idleaf helped distract one, so...”

“It was fun,” added the spirit, not so helpfully, then demonstrated on a blade of grass how she accomplished that.

“She saved my life,” Meneur admitted, eyes downcast in shame. He was not a man to take credit for the work of others. Plus, he didn’t seem bothered by the fact that I was standing naked in front of him at all. I guess tauruses, maybe terrans in general, saw nudity a bit differently - fur and all.

“Korra is the one who killed both beasts. Guys, I’m not sure I’m up to this after all...”

“Hey! Don’t beat yourself up about it. By the time I got to the other one, you had hurt it pretty badly. Basically, it was on the verge of death.”

“It was not,” he retorted weakly.

“Hey, if you think you failed as a mage, I failed as a tank. I couldn’t keep those two beasts on me.”

The squad mage snorted. “That’s because you’re essentially not one. You don’t have the skills one should have; none of us do.”

His words cut deep, but no one argued. He was absolutely right. Freyde didn’t have sword wielder skills, Harper lacked marksman ones, and the taurus himself only knew a few basic spells that he was allowed to learn while keeping the campfires going. I had my build itself set up to survive, not taunt beasts.

“What the fuck was Captain Rayden thinking?” Freyde breathed out a heavy sigh, saying out loud what we were all thinking as he slumped to the ground, the tips of his ears red, his eyes avoiding my body. The quarter-gnome wasn’t outright pissed at the Captain; none of us were. Reality just caught up with us. If we were going to be a team, a squad that was supposed to function as one, it was going to take a lot of effort.

Well, what didn’t, right?

***

“Here, use this,” Harper said, tossing me an object shaped like a bar of soap, with her finger pointing all over me. Perhaps it was the fact that she was a woman, or maybe because her boobs were several sizes larger than mine, but she showed no reaction to my lack of clothing. Either way, I was glad.

“And this is...?”

“The mbath. You need it.” Yeah, no shit. I looked like a savage, covered in blood practically from head to toe. The tool, the magic bath in my hands, was indeed something I ought to use. The question was: “How do I...”

“Use it? There’s a button on one side. Either press it and it will use the power from the battery inside or put your mana into it.” The baker was being unusually helpful, and it was freaking me out. However, I didn’t question her change of heart and instead just let my mana flow into the magic tool. I had more than enough of it, and there was no need to waste the one in a battery.

As my mana soaked into the inner workings of the brass tool, the runes and enchantments within did the job they were designed to do and transformed the mana into the magic that washed over me. It was a far cry from a bath and didn’t hold a candle to a shower. In fact, I didn’t feel any water on my skin at all. If anything, it was like a hot breeze wrapped around me, and the dust mixed in peeled all the grime off me.

It was weird, a little ticklish, and unpleasant in places, but in the end, it served its purpose. I was clean. Well, clean-ish. The peeled grime just fell to the ground, and since I was sitting, a lot of it ended up in my lap.

“Better to do it while you’re standing,” Harper remarked, oddly enough, without any sort of amusement in her voice.

Under normal circumstances, she would surely have taken the liberty of mocking me for my slip-up. Now she just immersed herself back in her thoughts. Like the others, she was reflecting on what had happened, on her mistakes, while trying to recover. Meneur didn’t suffer any injuries besides lack of mana. On the other hand, Harper and Freyde ended up pretty banged up, especially the quarter-gnome.

And yet, for some reason, Pinescar and Deckard still kept their distance, leaving us alone to wallow in our misery. Who knows, perhaps they felt it was necessary, an experience to be endured? Or they just had no idea what to say.

Although, I was leaning towards the former. They had joked about this before and were too experienced not to be able to advise and help us out of the mess Squad Four had become.

Well, since it looked like they were not going to do anything, I decided to deal with it in my own way. After doing my body cleansing correctly, I checked my status screen.

[None to Squander] reaches lvl 14 [Behemoth] reaches lvl 18

Well, those notifications came after my hearty breakfast, and seeing them just reminded me of how hungry I already was.

[Wrought Hide] reaches lvl 16 [Beast] reaches lvl 45

...

..

.

Well, as I started training with my squadmates in Fallen’s Cry today, the levels of the corresponding skills and my understanding of them started to grow. And it wasn’t just my skills. Since I acted more along the lines of my deviant nature, my class level also increased.

[YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 113]

This time I didn’t think too much about that one skill point and put it in the Strength. I felt like I was still lacking in that aspect.

However, one skill caught my attention more than the new heights I reached as a Deviant of Humanity.

[Ride of Ancestors] reaches lvl 10 [Ride of Ancestors] reaches TIER II Ride of Ancestors

Active II (Deviant - 30%)

Whether man or beast, all are born with instincts built on ancestral experience. However, the scope of this deep memory from which your instincts can draw, is much broader than that of others. With them, you can gauge the strength of your adversaries, let them guide your steps in battle, dominance, and love, or simply let them find your way through life.

Tier II - You have learned to draw on the knowledge of your ancestors. Yet what you touched was just the tip of the iceberg; primal instincts hardwired into your very core and used to their best potential. Those instincts aren’t all that make us who we are, though. You are now able to reach beyond the limits of your instincts and glimpse the knowledge your ancestors gained in their lifetime while honing their bodies to their very finest.

Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I gave it some thought first. And what I came up with was that instincts weren’t always helpful. For example, I once encountered an old lady in a store whose shopping cart was so full it tipped over - don’t ask - anyway, my instinct was to stop the goods from crashing to the ground. I didn’t and only hurt my hand in the process. Since then, I knew better than to do it, but deep down, I was afraid that my instincts would react in the same way to the same situation. It was simply hardwired in me.

That was one part that I thought Tier II of [Ride of Ancestors] might touch on. The one where you learn to go against your instincts, to not be afraid of fire, to walk on hot coals, to jump from high-rise buildings or airplanes despite your whole being screaming at you not to do it, that it’s wrong.

The other part was the movements one learned to do so thoughtlessly that they became, in essence, instincts. It could have been the movements of skilled fighters that honed their punches and kicks to extreme effectiveness or merely a small tick like a glance at a wristwatch. Once my dad broke his, he went two weeks without them, and even though his wrist was free of that weight, he was still habitually glancing at it.

Yet, there was one flaw in my reasoning. Well, two, actually, as far as I could tell. One, my body structure didn’t exactly match the beasts whose blood flowed through my veins. Second, I didn’t think that kind of knowledge could be passed on the way the instincts were.

On second thought, the skills were meant to help people and others go beyond their limits, exceeding the bounds of the possible and the real - at least from an Earthling’s point of view. So, in the end, it came down to just trying and seeing for myself what the new tier-up of the skill would bring me.

Name: Korra’leigh Grey

Race: Human/Beast

Gender: Female

Age: 29

Main Class: Deviant of Humanity

Sub Class: Slave

Level: 112 -> 113

Constitution: 123 (41)

Strength: 67 -> 69 (28 -> 29)

Endurance: 38 (28)

Dexterity: 35 (27)

Intelligence: 25 (13)

Wisdom: 23 (12)

Class Skills (8/8):

Indomitable Will (Passive V): lvl 122 -> 124

Master’s Shield (Active II): lvl 27 ->29

Behemoth (Active II): lvl 15 -> 18

Wrought Hide (Passive II): lvl 15 -> 19

Unbending Resilience (Passive II): lvl 11 -> 15

Mantle of Magic (Active I): lvl 1 -> 3

Ride of Ancestors (Active II↑): lvl 7 -> 10

Call of Nature (Passive II): lvl 17 -> 19

General Skills (10/10):

Eleaden Standard Language (Passive I): lvl 9

Perfect Equilibrium (Passive III): lvl 32 -> 34

Spatial Domain (Passive III): lvl 35 -> 37

Beast (Passive III): lvl 44 -> 48

Never-Dying (Passive III): lvl 47 -> 51

Tail of Poison Empress (Active II): lvl 16 -> 18

Heart of Magic (Passive I): lvl 9

Striving Mule (Passive II): lvl 18 -> 20

Dancer’s Stride (Passive II): lvl 23 -> 27

None to Squander (Passive II): lvl 12 -> 14

***

The grass below the hill we were sitting on rustled. That’s what the grass here in the labyrinth where the eternal breeze reigned was doing all the time. This one was different, though. It wasn’t the rustling that came in waves across the carpets of grass sprawling across the first floor. This one came briefly from one place and was overly cautious.

As my ears perked up, I jumped to my feet and shouted: “Get ready!” Then, as my at-first confused squadmates, to this point immersed in their thoughts and recuperating their strengths, started to catch on to what was going on, I shifted into my beast form and charged towards the sneaky beast. How did it get here - whether it was lured in by the noise of our earlier battle or Deckard and Pinescar were behind it - didn’t matter. Maybe less than the others, but I still needed to prove that what I was trying to do here today, to find a place on the squad, wasn’t just a futile effort, a naive woman’s pipe dream.

And as I hoped, my squadmates held the same notion. Even though the fucked-up fight, the mess we’ve created for ourselves, had knocked them off their high horse, and for a while, it looked like they were considering whether the life of a city guard was for them, they too had found the inner drive they came to Fallen’s Cry with today.

I dodged the horned rabbit’s teeth and delivered an uppercut to its jaw just as the first bolt plunged into its paw. Freyde appeared behind me with unexpected swiftness, cutting into the beast as soon as he got the chance. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but he seemed to have more confidence in himself and his skills. He wasn’t afraid to go into attacks that came dangerously close to me, a thing he was avoiding so far for fear of hurting me. Meneur was no exception, and the moment I made the opening, a stream of hot embers hit the beast. His hesitation was gone, as he, too, was trying to prove that he was a valid member of the squad, not just a rejected mage tending a campfire.

I’m not saying our cooperation was perfect. Far from it. But perhaps for the first time, we fought as a team, as a squad, and not just individuals trying to work together.

Even Idleaf threw in her bit when the sharp tone of her play on the blade of grass cut through the din of battle and got the horned rabbit’s attention. That brief moment of distraction was all I needed to take a few slashes with my claws at the beast’s throat.

Yeah, being a pure tank, which is what I had tried to do so far in my squad role, was not for me. I was a hunter, a predator, and needed to feel like one. Fortunately, Freyde seemed to get the message and, as Deckard told me, was able to take a few attacks from the beast instead of me. After all, he stood his ground, fighting one of the beasts with only Harper on his side.

In the end, to my slight chagrin, it was the Bookkeeper who, after a relatively short battle, dealt the beast a fatal blow.

Your group has defeated [Horned Rabbit: lvl 44]

“Well done!” The voice and clapping of Sergeant Pinescar reached my ears as soon as the system notification of our kill buzzed in my mind. That, his attitude and the fact that he decided to join us only now just reinforced me in the belief that the appearance of this rabbit was not a mere coincidence. And judging by the reactions of others, I wasn’t the only one who came to that conclusion. No one said a word, though.

We needed that fight, and it didn’t matter if the sergeant and Deckard were the ones behind it.

“For a second there, I didn’t think you’d get your act together. I’m glad I was wrong,” Pinescar said, giving each of us a look. He wanted us to know he meant it. “If you didn’t, I would have to inform Captain Rayden, with great regret, that Squad Four of the Junior Guards has no future and had better be reorganized.”

As his words sank in, the potential consequences of our screw-up began to dawn on us. Although expected, our mess-up was a test of sorts. Or rather, how we handle the aftermath.

It was not hard to imagine that it could have turned out quite differently. A little less determination, and my squadmates might have been discouraged from diving further into the Labyrinth altogether. A little more emotion and the somber sit-down in the grass could have turned into an all-out brawl, with one blaming the other for his or her mistakes. Either of which could then lead to squads being disbanded and members being reassigned to different squads.

Glad it didn’t happen.

Partly because meeting new people made me, let’s say, uncomfortable. But the main reason was that the members of Squad Four had grown on me, regardless of their shortcomings.

Sure, Harper could be bitchy, especially when someone tried to tell her what to do or appeared weak, as in the case of Meneur. The hulking taurus was not at all true to his appearance. When looking at him, I had the feeling that if I said one wrong word about him, he would crush my head with one hand while he was meek and even a little girl would have her way if she raised her voice at him. Exaggeration, still...

With Freyde, I sometimes wished I had the skull-crushing ability I envisioned Meneur having. He could be really annoying at times, and it wasn’t just about how often he mentioned his bossy grandmother. It was probably a habit he honed over the years, the kind of habit that Tier II of [Ride of Ancestors] may very well be allowing me access to now, where even during a casual talk, he was constantly assessing our every move and gesture. Quite possibly essential in his profession and dealings with his odd family. Annoying if you noticed, though.

But they were trying to change, to find their place in this world, just like me, and their shortcomings, their struggle, not so foreign to me, made me feel closer to them and as an actual member of Squad Four.