There was a large pool ahead; a natural occurrence of where the river twisted.

Mark had learned how to leap rather great distances by now, so he got close to the ground, going down to his actual feet, and then he physically and kinetically pushed off of the ground, making sure to flick and twist his caltrops so that they didn’t catch on anything. Mark sailed across the big pool—

Something was below. It aimed at Mark.

It felt very angry.

A big turtle lifted up, water spilling off of its big brown shell, as its head poked above the surface, followed by three more heads looking up. All four heads— and then a fifth!— opened their maws and shot tendril-like wrappings at Mark, like they were some sort of spitting-spider hydra-turtle. Mark was in the middle of the air over the pool, over the turtle, by then. The turtle moved fast.

Mark returned fire with a heavy drain of resilience and a giving of weakness, as he slashed through the oncoming, expanding web-shit with his two free needles, rapidly slashing through the attack, but it was throwing needles against liquid; it didn’t do much.

Mark landed just how he expected to land, before the jump, but he got webbed. The web rapidly began to expand on his skin, pulling at him in every direction as it tried to trap him, as it expanded and expanded. Mark briefly, quickly, did a Union of Brain with purity and impurity.

Black lightning shattered the containment, cracking against the ground all around him, splattering the foam everywhere else but on Mark.

The foam continued to multiply on the ground, turning from off-yellow to deeply golden in rapid seconds, hardening to the consistency of rock. Or maybe harder.

The hydra turtle hissed more foam at Mark, but Mark battered it away with a Union of Brain for purity-impurity again, and then Mark went on the attack.

Mark had really, really wanted to kill something, and this thing was an ambush predator, so it qualified so very, very much. All the rage Mark had been feeling, all the pain he had been bottling up, came out at that moment. He didn’t even have to advance on the beast, to go into the water, because the hydra turtle was right there, trying to take a bite out of him.

With a whip of kinesis, Mark slammed a needle through the nearest turtle head, right into its skull—

And then Mark promptly lost control of that needle.

It was like a splash of cold water.

He had lost the needle. He had lost a sixth of his reserves! And it hadn’t even killed the monster, because the monster had 5 heads— 7 heads! 7 heads, all aiming Mark’s way. The single head he had attacked just flicked its head this way and that and then kept on keeping on! It wasn’t dead yet.

How high was its Body to be able to shrug off that! Had to be high 80s! Shit!

It was a lesson.

Mark pulled back, using his caltrops to pull away, and then he hit the monster with a Union of Brain, for vein integrity/decay. The hydraturtle didn’t seem to care. It was going to take a while. The monster had an incredibly high Body.

The monster hauled out of the water, chasing Mark.

Mark did not run. He needed that needle back. He was going to get that needle back. Mark repositioned, keeping out of the way of the—

Oh shit that’s a fast turtle.

Mark scrambled to back up, rapidly gaining distance. The turtle advanced. Black veins connected him to the monster as Mark raced backward, down the riverbank, and the monster spat foam as it roared tiny roars and chased him. Foam landed on Mark’s chest and legs, but he flickered purity/impurity, and the foam burst off of him. When that expanding threat was gone, Mark resumed vein decaying it.

Two minutes later, and the damned thing was still harrying Mark and not dying, but it had stopped shooting foam. That was the only real positive of this scenario. Mark had learned the terrain, too, so that was another positive, but not really. Another positive was that Mark was confident he could eventually kill the monster.

Most other people in this situation would have simply died, either from not being able to fly, to being caught up in all of the snapping turtle heads, to how fast the bastard moved. This thing was the size of a hovervan and it moved across the land with about as much power, plowing through the trees, through small rocks, and almost through boulders, too. The boulders had enough integrity to stay mostly intact, but they went flying just the same.

And Mark flew on adamantium caltrops, staying ahead of the beast.

This wasn’t working, though. Mark needed to attack it more.

Mark was reluctant to use his remaining needle of adamantium, but he could make the turtle bleed, probably, so he turned his needle into a scalpel. A scalpel wouldn’t get caught in the creature’s auric body… Would it? No. But if it didn’t work, then Mark would need to do something different with Union, maybe.

Mark turned one needle into one scalpel, and he waited for one of the heads to snap at him—

The turtle put on a burst of speed, for Mark had slowed down when he transformed the needle, and the turtle noticed. The turtle snapped with five heads, each the size of Mark’s own torso. But Mark darted backward, and like a kid trailing a finger through a wedding cake, Mark lifted the scalpel up across the nearest long, wrinkled neck.

Black metal easily parted flesh, like a zipper opening up a jacket, revealing red underneath.

Mark didn’t lose control of his blade at all.

The hydra roared and flinched, pulling back its injured neck backward as it launched its other heads forward, again, giving more chase. Mark took an eye here, he carved another wound there. But still, the turtle tried to eat him. The wounds Mark inflicted even began to heal, which was just plain fucking infuriating.

This thing must have killed so many people.

Mark made it bleed with as many cuts as he could inflict.

Minutes later, with Mark flying around at a good speed and kiting the monster well, the monster finally started to slow down, and this time it wasn’t a fake out, meant to lure Mark closer.

It stopped.

It was not dead, as it lay there on the shore, bleeding so very much and still not dying.

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Mark got to killing. The turtle snapped at him. It spat a bit of webbing. But it was already dead; it was just a matter of time.

Mark’s Union of Brain for vein integrity/decay was doing work, and his Union of Blood was pulling at the monster’s resilience and giving it weakness, but not fast enough. The monster simply didn’t care that it was bleeding from every orifice and roaring out foaming blood, so Mark began to dismantle the creature with an adamantium blade the size of a pinky. Mark focused on the head that had his adamantium needle, first. He scored marks across every head that came his way, snapping, as the creature rotated around to try and keep up with Mark.

But then it laid down, too tired to move anymore.

Mark focused, and soon the desired head rolled away—

The instant it came loose, Mark felt his adamantium inside the head return to him. He yanked it out of the dead turtle head, and then he turned it into another scalpel.

Mark finished killing the thing with two small adamantium scalpels.

More than once, Mark was pretty sure he had killed it, but it kept regenerating, or something. Even from death. Mark eventually popped its shell off and started blendering its insides. After killing the fourth heart, it died. Mark knew it died because his kinesis encountered no difficulty at all cutting through it, and then continuing to cut through it. Its astral body was gone.

That had taken a good 20 minutes! The fuck!

“Monsters are still dangerous!” Mark told himself.

And then Mark turned his attention to the hydraturtle’s pool.

How many people had it killed? Mark was probably nowhere near Memphi, or else this thing would have been dead a long time ago. But people had probably tried to kill it, anyway. There might be bodies in the water, for monsters only ate a little of what they killed. Mostly they defended territory, or they aggressively expanded, and they let smaller things eat what they killed.

And Mark needed to kill any turtle eggs, if they existed.

Mark floated over to the waters and went in, embracing the chill as he opened his eyes underwater.

It was honestly too murky to see, so Mark briefly pulsed a Union of purity/impurity through the water, like lightning crashing out in every direction. The water cleared instantly, and it was still early afternoon, so there was plenty of light.

Bones.

Lots and lots of bones, and little fish eating on the bones. Or rather, they had been eating on the flesh, but Mark had cleared all of that away. That flesh had been tucked into the world, into all the plant life out there. And all that was left was bones. According to Union, the fish reoriented on Mark, but they were not man eaters. They were scavengers. Just normal fish, really. The turtle did not suffer other monsters to live near it, at all.

… Those were bones down there.

Mark looked at the bones again, and he tried not to freak out. It was a lot different seeing this sort of thing in real life than it was on television.

Human skulls. Animal skulls. Ribcages and backpacks—

Oh! Backpack!

… Maybe it had a working phone? Maybe a map?

Was it wrong to loot the remains?

… Yes, but also Mark was out here in survival mode, so… he was going to loot the remains, and he hoped that anyone who might find his body, if a monster should ever kill him, would do the same.

Mark grabbed the bag with a twist of adamantium latching on, and then he hauled out of the water.

The backpack was one of those strong ones that could last forever in the wilderness. It was even still sealed, but water had gotten in somehow. Mark opened it up and dumped out a bunch of stuff that might have been under water for… only months, Mark supposed? A week? Maybe just a few days…

Oh holy shit.

The sudden realization that there were human skeletons down there slammed into Mark’s mind and Mark had a difficult moment. Mark breathed a bit, shuddered as cold water evaporated from his skin, and then he got back to looking at the contents of the bag.

Underwear, shorts, papers that were unintelligible. A wallet with an ID.

‘Mark Chambers of Memphi’.

Mark dropped the wallet. That was his own first name, but on a corpse’s things—

Another realization, like lightning from an empty sky.

Mark breathed out, “I told Addavein that I would have been fine on Daihoon on my own, didn’t I? Of all the arrogant, stupid… Oh gods…”

His voice trailed off as he stared at the bag’s contents.

A moment later, Mark pulled out what he could from the bag.

He went back down into the waters and grabbed two more backpacks and a third one that was bitten through. He dumped stuff onto the shore and separated out what was useful versus what was not. There was one waterlogged diary that was readable and Mark flipped through it a bit to see what was there. According to the IDs, all of these people were from Memphi, which was one of the major cities on the Mississippi, so that wasn’t too surprising. According to the diary they were roamers, cleaning up monster infestations outside the city.

Mark read the last entry, specifically.

‘We’ve scouted the turtle and Penelope thinks we can take it. Famous last words, right? Anyway. Preliminary attacks show that it has a high regenerative ability, and it can run really fast. It has that sticky foam ability, but it hasn’t used that with us, yet. It’s probably out, having spent that ability on some other monster, though we will try to bait it into using that ability before we go in for the kill. So we’re going for it! Update you tomorrow, diary. Or not! LOL!’

… Mark took another minute.

Then he got to pulling out all the IDs he could find. When he was done, Mark had 2 IDs, but the diary was the real score for identification; it contained the names of everyone on the roaming kill squad, which had been 6 people. With that done, and checking all the electronics and finding them fried, Mark scouted the clothes. A pair of shorts looked like they would work, but they were a 38 waist and too small in the thighs and ass, which did not fit at all, so Mark ended up wearing some rather short swim trunks that were a deep blue color. No shirts, though; none of them fit.

Better to go shirtless than wearing something super tight.

With new, much better clothing, along with the most salvageable of the backpacks strapped to his back along with all of the identifications that he could scrounge up, Mark once again took to the air, holding a map in his hands.

Now, he wasn’t exactly sure, but he was pretty sure that this river he was on was… this one. Or maybe this other one…

Mark hummed.

“I’m maybe 30 miles from the Mississippi, and there’s either a big lake between here and there, or not, or there’s the Ohio River first, or not,” Mark said to himself, to check if it sounded correct, or not. “… I’ll run into one of them, I’m sure, and then follow them downstream to the big river, which runs directly into Memphi.” A moment. “… Yes. This is the plan.”

Follow the water. Civilization existed at the end of the water, usually.

Hopefully Mark didn’t run into any lakes with any truly dangerous monsters. The list of powers that could no-sell him was probably longer than Mark imagined it to be, but it only really included speedsters, mind monsters, weird arcane things, and any truly dangerous S-rank things, but monsters (of the non-humanoid variety) usually only got strong knacks, like that hydraturtle. They didn’t get Mind Control, like humans did, and even if Mark met a Mind Nudger, like those goblins, he was rocking at least a tier 5 Mind right now, what with his resilience working so hard. The strength of his Mind would hard-counter most controlling knacks or even Powers—

Ah! But monsters also got illusionary shit all the time. Attacking through camouflage and along weird angles? Yes! That is what monsters did. That could be difficult.

… But Mark had his Union sense, and most monsters could only influence along the senses they already possessed, and since they didn’t have a Union sense, Mark could always know when something was aiming to kill him. He was never truly blind… somewhat. And there were also his kinesis-enabled Shaper senses, which Mark was still developing. He could only really sense his own adamantium, which was already an incredibly rare metal, so he didn’t expect to run into any of that out here… or anywhere, really. But he could still feel the world through his adamantium caltrops and whatnot. That would probably come in handy… eventually, right?

It was weird to put ‘fingers’ down into the muck and grab onto stones and propel himself forward, but Mark was getting a really good feel for that new part of his Power, which was really pretty great, in his opinion.

Mark got moving.