Flares of bright, colorful energy scattered and played upon my aching face as the raccoons activated every Skill in their arsenals. I rolled with them, snarling and snapping my fangs everywhere I could, even if on nothing but air—while they sent drills of fire-hot energy into my body. And yes, this all happened at the incomprehensible speed of a ferret chasing a ball across the playroom.

HP 84% (273/325) SP 69% (186/270)

Leaping twice earlier had done nothing to get these creatures off my back. And while my HP looks kind of alright in this snapshot, it was rapidly and erratically decreasing with every new tooth in my side.

Slash!

With flailing claws, I scored—half a hit, clipping a raccoon’s shoulder as they darted away. Cccooooowaaaaard!

At least I was surviving.

HP 48% (157/325) SP 38% (102/270)

Bbbut not for much longer. HP was going down rapidly.

HP 37% (121/325)

Ggguuuuurgh! No, you can’t put me on my fourth life already!

My thoughts hurried to my Inventory. Surely there was a good strategy there! I’d actually swapped out my robin feathers for some cold cuts, bodies at the ready to drop on the raccoons (or distract them away). Sure, this would be a sad way to win—I expected the plucky animals to lose all respect for me, assuming any had ever existed—but, hey! I could live!

Poof, poof, poof poof poof!

A hailstorm of meat, the biggest koi I could unleash, poured down on them all. Golden fish, tumbling in clouds of transcendent silver-orange and mild rot, bounced off their hides, leaving traces of rank juice.

It mostly just plopped onto the ground.

Any hope I had of that fish being a tasty distraction was lost now. The raccoons did not go for it.

Why would they ever go for it? I was on the brink of death, and if they stopped killing me now they’d leave Experience Points on the table! They did get those, right?

For a moment I tried throwing my paws up in surrender. Good game! I told them in my head. If we both agreed to treat this as a duel, they would no longer have to break my spine to get out the egg yolk that was my tasty, protein-rich Experience.

So I needed another plan.

I’d never intended to use the Debug Blade for anything but shallow experimentation, but…until Chora and the rest figured out definitively what they wanted to do with it, it was mine, taking up a precious slot.

Until I remembered how useful it was.

Poof. And bonk. The Drunken Dragon’s Blade bopped a raccoon on the head with its blunt edge.

That’s right. Things made of metal hurt more.

With a squeak of pain, the raccoon fell backward—and crumpled up into a bloody-faced heap. The sword, meanwhile, went back into my Inventory.

That made the raccoon gang stop and freeze.

Before chewing me apart again.

I was right back to flailing around, barely able to put two words together in my head. Finally I had sense enough to activate Guard, but feeling my muscles stiffen around the teeth that were currently in my flesh, ooogh, that was a terrible thing.

HP 24% (78/325) SP 30% (81/270)

I tried the same strategy two more times, and throughout I continued to work with the dregs of my Slash, but by now the rodents had learned that their best strategy was always to just go on attacking with their remaining troops through the small losses. What was one body compared to about thirty?

And they soaked up those Slashes like sponges, I swear.

HP 12% (40/325) SP 30% (81/270)

Since none of these raccoons had fallen yet, and since their rabies-like behavior didn’t give me obvious tells that any of them were about to perish, I had no reliable combat strategy going forward. 81 SP meant I couldn’t afford a new Slash once this one ran out. Frankly, though, Slash wasn’t doing me any good. Sure, I’d have the 70 SP I needed for Swipe, but Swipe was just Slash But Worse, and barely worth the cost savings.

So my only viable way to a win was the Infinite Harden Strategy. I could spend 63 SP on three Guards, curl up, and occasionally swat the vicious beasts swarming all over me. Either it’d work eventually, or…it would fail eventually.

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So was this it? Was I officially out of…

No, there was hope. But…to use it so soon?

And when Chora still had so much respect for me?

Well, we were far enough from the cabin that yowling wouldn’t bring her out of her exercise routine, not even my highest-pitch or deepest-throat death shouts. So why not summon her with the cantrip she’d given me?

Agh, I wished I wasn’t having those thoughts. Chora didn’t need me to obliterate her extremely powerful family heirloom, she needed me to eat this loss and die (not that I was totally convinced yet I would die) so I at least had a shot of Sierra rolling the dice on me again.

Still. Help would be a good thing. And the cabin must’ve been too far away for Chora to hear any of these deadly shenanigans.

Wait a second.

I didn’t need human help, I had my own!

Breaking free from a dazzling white cloud, whipping off the shocked raccoons with my gloriously long limbs, I stood up and allowed myself a millisecond’s worth of smile.

Then I booked it back to the cabin.

Maybe it was the polka-dot holes trailing blood from my arms and legs and making me dizzy, but I felt ecstatic, like a marathon runner on the vital last stretch.

And what made it so much better was the fact that I was in the clear. Those raccoons were now as scared of me as I was scared of them. This beautiful mutuality was the bedrock of a new era for us.

Then I heard a snarl rip through the forest, followed by a rolling flood of bodies.

A look over my shoulder told me that the raccoons were literally falling over themselves to get me.

…At this point, their rage was just unhealthy.

I pumped my arms and legs like there was no tomorrow. My infinite hair caught on branches, tore, sparked pinpricks of pain on my scalp.

So much for that. I phased into the form that made me faster.

And as I did, I made up my mind to Leap as soon as I spotted a cliff, a body of water, an anything.

Instead I spotted a Chora, and that made me really glad I hadn’t chosen to Leap after all.

A glimpse of the cabin clearing showed behind her as she sprinted our way. Determination locked her eyes on me, then on the raccoons who once again had been catching up. I yowled and sidestepped like I expected her to tackle them.

For all I knew…mmmaybe she would? I mean, she had slightly brawny arms. Whether she was sweating from current exertion, sweating from earlier exercise, or understandably sweating in aggravation because her exercise had probably been interrupted, I could not guess.

Still, as I dodged, Chora boldly pressed forward. The raccoons barely had time to react, to change course even if they’d wanted to. One of her feet stamped more deeply into the ground. A pivot.

She roundhouse-kicked, hitting two raccoons and knocking them a short distance away. But that wasn’t the important part. The kick brought a gale-force wind, one edged with tints of green magic.

Like living bowling pins, approximately thirty raccoons were blasted apart and sent rolling onto their backs. Chora had stepped in, and she now looked like some archetypal ideal of a wrestler: gaze steady, fists clenched, muscles taut, and elbows held at her sides while her forearms jutted out like the swords they may as well have been.

She was wearing a few rings, and I could see her anklets clearly over her exercise leggings, but wow, her weapons…she didn’t have any.

She didn’t need any?

Her weapons were magic—magic and muscles. With a windmill kick, she swirled another gale into existence, pushing away more raccoon stragglers. And then she was standing before and above me, her legs a protective arch. I could feel her aura of power, and at this distance I could see clearly a heat-devil effect making the air around her pulsate. It was palpable, exerting a constant dull pressure on me even as I did nothing but lie there and yelp my incoherent, bleeding thanks.

Chora was a flurry of kicks, chops, straight jabs, palm slaps, and composure. After every attack, she brought her feet back to the exact same spot in the grass where she’d first made the arch. And the impressions they left were deepening, as if her magic itself was heavy.

It wasn’t that her blows were strong, so much as that they kept raccoons away. This had become a war of attrition. For every raccoon I’d softened up for her to knock out, there were four that gave up. I considered reaching out to grab a slice of Experience, but I didn’t want to knock Chora out of her rhythm. Or get caught in her blasts.

Several minutes passed, but I wasn’t even aware of it—watching her fight was so hypnotizing. But eventually a time came when there was nothing more coming after us. Most raccoons were driven off. A few lay twitching in the dirt, slaughtered. Either way, they were gone now. They’d been defeated.

At last, Chora stepped away from her post, and I saw that her footprints were a full fifteen centimeters deep. With a wristband, she wiped her forehead reasonably clean. One sigh and shoulder-stretch later, she said, “I assume those weren’t the lycanborns.”

Woozily, I shook my head.

…Her joke was so funny my brain didn’t even notice.

In an attempt to thank her for saving my life, I followed my own little stretch with a bow. For long seconds, the silence was broken only by a leaf-carrying breeze.

When I looked up, she was likewise bowing.

“It’s any intelligent being’s duty to help others,” she said. “That’s what I believe, anyway.”

That struck me as an interesting idea, and while it wouldn’t have resonated with me a mere week ago, it did so now. Helping others. Making them happy. Was I really…obligated to do that?

Or was it more that I wanted to, that I shackled myself this way willingly? That I knew perfectly well I could sit like a pompous freeloader in that log cabin and Reed would adore me, and Chora would pamper me, and Bayce would hate me but she’d have no way to do anything about it?

Was it just that now that I knew helping others was possible, I wanted to pull my own weight?

“…If I have belittled your own philosophy,” Chora said, “I sincerely apologize. I…didn’t mean to.”

I looked in her eyes, and she did seem sincere. If she trembled, that was her honest guilt.

People on Vencia could be very serious.

But she had nothing to apologize for. I’d started out existence with no coherent philosophy. Then I’d had Sierra’s philosophy grafted and glued onto me. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe I did want to make Chora happy.

But…my mind drifted to practical matters. Now that I had just a sprinkling of HP left, today as I had conceived it looked pretty much ruined. I’d have to go back home, wouldn’t I? And with Chora walking solemnly alongside, making me feel all weird.

Unless…

I didn’t have this brain for nothing, and I was about to use it for a decent plan, one that would take some decent communication.

Relaxing myself, I let my tail bob the way it did when I was content. I put on my sorrowful pleading eyes, but only dialed them up to about twenty percent. I meowed apologetically, as if to say, “No need to be sorry, my dear devoted servant.”

Chora responded by clapping her hands together—not like Reed did with folded fingers, but with hands and palms straight-vertical—and declaring boldly, “If there is any concession I can make…”

Poof! To make my requests clearer, I turned into my nekomata form.

I held up three fingers, to start. Chora nodded her understanding.

One finger: request number one. I drew a bowl of cat food on the ground, bent down, and mimed eating.

Chora squinted a bit at this, likely because I was supposed to pantomime eating a sandwich and not just show her a naked woman eating dirt mush, but she was following along.

Request number two. I curled up on the ground and closed my eyes.

“…Fetus,” Chora guessed.

That was totally wrong, so I temporarily changed form into a cat again. Also, I yawned for good measure.

“Oh. Okay, sleep.”

Request number three. I pointed to her, then me, then did my best to say the word “come.” It came out mangled and slow as a mudslide, as usual, but hey, she’d understood my “sorry” yesterday. No way this word could be misunderstood.

“…Oh, you mean come along,” she said after about a million years. Though she remained composed, there was a shred of a blush on her face. Darnit. Could humans stop reading too far between the lines and injecting their own innuendo into things?!

“Meow!” I cried in the affirmative.

Chora took a long pause. I wasn’t amazing at reading behind the veil of eyes to see the gears turning in humans’ heads, but I had to guess that she’d made her own plans for the day. Plans that would have to be rewritten.

I, however, hadn’t planned this far ahead, and at this stage in the game, I did not know how to devise a gesture for “only do this if you want.”

Then again, Chora dug this hole for herself the moment she asked me to make requests.

She sighed for another million years. “Alright…”