It was an incredible sight: the massive clouds of krigries rushing through the misty mountains, stretching out and around in paths of black with pops of glowing color in their midst: red, and a purple the shade of their blood. They seemed to be rooting around in a frenzy for something.

The marble-patterned book, maybe?

Yeah, this whole panorama would probably change in all of two seconds.

And this was definitely more krigries than I had seen in that pit. I guessed those pit bugs had come up to join some other bugs, all ready to defend their loot. And I would say I was sorry for taking their stuff…if I’d been sorry at all. I would take their anger over my creator’s today, thanks! It wasn’t like I could kiss and make up with violent animals this incapable of chatting with me.

For now, I saw Reed as a cluster of bugs lifted me, via the book I clung to, up out of the hollow. She’d been fighting krigries herself, which wasn’t a surprise at all, now that I had a moment to think about it. Sunrise-colored energy wafted from her sword, but she didn’t quite look exhausted yet, and that was an extremely good thing.

In the middle of a cleaving blow through a fraction of the swarms, she caught sight of me and gasped, “Cat!” But the moment she took a single step toward me, there was a sea change in the insect masses. Like they all had a miniature Map in their vision with the Treasure in crosshairs.

They were coming together to converge on me.

The clouds threaded through the Kaugs all drifted. More slowly, but with more focus, too. With pops of cool colors and red in their midst.

I knew what I had to do: fortify Defense or die. And I steeled myself for the reverberating pain that would cau—

“Stop!”

A voice more powerful than any swarm rattled the Kaugs.

It was DeGalle, standing in the crook of a valley at just the right angle for sunlight to pour across her being!

At first, I had a sad gut feeling that her defiant cry would do nothing. That gut feeling called itself “realistic.” But it must have been forgetting we lived in a magical world, because actually, the insects became confused again!

She looked up at the clouds of bugs now collected into one jiggling blob. With a meaty gauntlet, she pointed, proclaiming, “You mess with anyone, you mess with me!”

The bugs on the book were wavering, dangling me about two meters off the ground. Reed, fresh off her final krigrie kills, nervously giggled. And DeGalle, un-nervously, jumped straight up into the cloud, boosted off the ground by two enormous, bazooka-strength gouts of white flame, trailing a scent of ether.

She pulled right up to the cloud of bugs and punched into the middle of it, like it was one giant entity.

Behind her, in the valley, most of her campsite—maybe even all—were fighting for space to look up and watch the fireworks. Spiral stairs were even going up around mountains. Anything for that golden view.

But…what was even supposed to happen? If she punched one, she’d just hit anywhere from one to six krigries, and—oh wait! Magic!!

The world went dark.

It blinked into total blackness.

I realized, with one of the biggest jolts of fright I’d ever been though, that I was in an endless void…but I was clearly not alone. Every human who’d been around was here: Reed two meters down on the ground, the camp people in and behind the valley—or where the valley had once been…and DeGalle, suspended in the air.

The krigries were also there, flat-brown in the expanse of black. DeGalle, almost seeming to stand mid-air, drew her fist back and cried, “Celestial Haymaker!”

The krigries seemed frozen. Until they were punched, and kicked, and walloped again, and sent flying in all directions until DeGalle teleported into all those directions one split second after the other and punched them back into position, and past it, so that they moved like pinballs bouncing against dead space (unbound by laws of physics) and back into her fists, which glowed, not as vibrantly as a single star but with the force of many and in nuclear pinpoints, smashing them, sandwiching the bugs into a single compacted junkyard-block of flesh and exoskeleton, before her next kick speared them again. And on and on, in what should have taken forever but didn’t. But it would have, if we lived in the land of logic.

This, wherever it was, was DeGalle’s world, a place of backflips, martial-artistic energy bombs, and…um…not much else. Also worth noting was the fact that I was locked in place, and could do hardly anything but turn my head. Which was useful for watching DeGalle and not much else in this vast DeGalle cinema. I turned to look at Reed and she yawned. I turned to the crowds and could swear I saw people tearing up.

If anything, I was in the middle of both camps. Her moves were pretty cool! Not that I could perceive most of them. Admittedly, it was kind of annoying that she kept shouting out “hah!” and “take this!” every fifth attack.

Then, finally, after several seconds so spectacular they could have been many full minutes, DeGalle released the roar of a wolf. She threw both of her celestial gauntlets back behind her head, jumped up from nothing-ground into nothing-sky, and with a final “RAH!” smashed them down on the swarm. They fell incredibly fast—but not long. They hit the nothing-ground so fast that the void exploded into flaming, steaming chunks of white energy that stung my ears and blurred my vision—

Booting us back to reality.

The Kaugs rematerialized, and the moment all those people had their vocal cords back, exclamations of awe filled the crowd. Reed put a hand on her chest, hyperventilating from the surprise of it. Much like me, only I also had to deal with all the krigries on my book suddenly being dead, and therefore causing my book to hurtle straight down into the ground.

Wait…had DeGalle activated a move or Skill that somehow targeted all krigries in this area regardless of whether they were in front of her?

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

That broke my brain a little. As if her first attack hadn’t already!

I tumbled into a hillock of snow, snapping all four limbs across the book’s long edge—nobody was getting this thing but me. And Reed, she could help.

She ran to me, panting, dropping her sword back into her back. “Are you alright? I’m not,” she said frantically between breaths. “I mean, I am—sorry, I am just—just…” She calmed herself down. “I was sick with worry and being forced to do nothing but watch some weird Skill didn’t help.”

As she spoke, I listened out for bugs. I couldn’t hear their telltale chorus, so the coast was seemingly clear, and nobody out of that whole crowd had their eyes on my book.

Well, before they might put their eyes on the book, I slammed it right into my Inventory.

Book: ???

Error: Undefined variable #TIME?

…Man—System—I’m too exhausted right now. Try this nonsense with me later.

And I really was exhausted. While my HP wasn’t terrible and I hadn’t actually needed to use all of my Minor Heal Spells yet, the mental toll all of this had taken, plus the physical toll of pumping myself up time after time after time…

Reed could see it on my face. “Let me pick you up,” she insisted.

Well…that might be nice. Technically unnecessary, but nice.

But I shook that thought out of my mind. I wouldn’t dare let Reed pick me up when she had to be close to as tired herself. Not unless my legs literally gave out under me! Or my System blocked my view!

Speaking of, hadn’t my System told me I was ready to Evolve?

…My head hurt.

A few people were approaching us. Darnit, my instinct told me this wouldn’t be good.

Looking past them toward the crowd, I saw…lots of people cradling DeGalle? Had she fainted from that attack? It made sense. And also implied that she had a million billion Human-SP, given the million billion moves she’d just unleashed in a single so-called haymaker.

Reed gathered me in her arms—which I let her do only because I knew she was in a hurry to run from these people, and admittedly also because it did feel nice and warm (sue me). But before she got away, a hand gripped her shoulder.

“Hey!” the man in front shouted. “DeGalle just saved you! Came after you two when she heard the commotion and saved you! And you just run away?!”

Reed broke away, vehemently at first. But then she stopped, turned around, and changed to an icy glare. “What is it,” she said.

The man didn’t flinch. “It seems a little disrespectful, is all, and I think she was hoping you two would do something to clear your names.”

“Of course I…” Reed sighed and turned down her anger. I guessed that if he wanted her to “clear her name,” staying mad would do no good in his eyes. “Neither of us have powers that could carve out the rock like that. Anyone in these woods, and in my family, can testify. We only left because we don’t want any trouble. We’re strong enough to protect our own…not exactly strong enough to protect the whole forest. Assuming it’s coming to that.””

“Mmkay.”

“And…yes. We are thankful that she saved us…” She cleared her throat. “And would not mind having lunch again.”

“Mmkay.”

“But you’re not making her any more likable by yanking a ‘thank you’ out of me.”

He and the people behind him were silent.

I gave them a quick hiss, twisted my body, and dropped to the ground. I didn’t want her to feel obligated to carry me after this weird and uncomfortable encounter.

After Reed gave them a final curt nod, we left, heading a little further west. I planned to only take us as far as my Map needed me to go to explore this southwesternmost square. We’d kind of had enough of this place for today, and not even because of the cold.

I did feel some thankfulness and even strange longing for DeGalle. Buried in layers of defensive uncoolness was a spark of adventure and altruism, and that appealed to me, resonated with me. In the end, of course—when push came to shove—I would stay by Reed’s side. I would snarl at anyone she hated, and doing otherwise seemed like a betrayal.

And besides, Reed was, like…very nice! Maybe everyone she hated wasn’t a demon, but they contained definite, prominent badness! She had nicely tuned people instincts! And when she felt frustrated, I felt the pain. Even if I didn’t get why, I got who.

As the sun started on its long set, I knew I had a lot to think about, to go over. Including one really obvious to-do.

Apparently, the window had shrunk down of its own accord. A very user-friendly change, for once! When I opened up my Stats again, I saw it at the bottom:

Stats

Taipha Ash Heather Lv. 20 EXP: 34% (1029/3000)

HP 60% (284/470) SP 39% (155/395)

ATK 75

INT 51

DEF 54

WIS 39

SPD 66

Evolution Available! Would you like to Evolve now? (Yes / No)