I prowled along the road, the trauma bear trundling along a little ways ahead. I was as ready for the fight as I could make myself. I'd come up with a few illusions that felt promising—and even practiced them a couple times to be sure. No Wisps ever showed up. Hopefully, since the trauma bear was on the move, they wouldn't show up immediately when I implemented my plan.

Prowling or not, my glowing blue aura was as bright as ever and would eventually give me away. I had a hunch that the illusions would be able to mask the glow, but I didn't know if that hunch was a remnant of a memory or if it was just pure guesswork. Either way, it didn't seem worth Wisp attention.

Despite my poor stealth, I was closing in on the creature quickly. I might stick out like a sore thumb, but my padded feet neared silent on the blacktop as I ran low. I could have run faster and quieter on all fours, but I would need the shotgun to do the actual damage.

As I approached at a quiet lope, I planned out my moves. Its eyes and neck would likely be its most vulnerable spots. Taking out its eyes would blind it, but it probably wouldn't be mortally wounded themselves—unless the buckshot could break through to the brain. Of course, blinding it would make it easier to kill without taking a hit.

The safer bet had to be the thing's throat. Monsters were as vulnerable to bleeding out as any more traditional animal, and this bear didn't even have a thick fur coat for added protection. It did have a bit of a mane, but that black fur mainly extended down its spine, with only a thin covering along its throat. Its pale and loose skin might still be extra tough, so I'd have to get as close as possible to be sure the shot had enough penetrating power.

Death would never be a welcome companion, but I'd faced it enough that it was no longer the terrifying unknown. If this failed, at least I wasn't likely to suffer very long.

The bigger problem was the cost that came with dying. Another day would be done and gone. The fact that it would give me another shot at saving the fleeing pair from the bear almost didn't matter. Stopping the bear in this loop would accomplish the same thing. The only benefit of a redo would be if I could set the spawn point of all three at the hospital, not only saving them but also ending the mother's perpetual labor. Still, I couldn't afford to give so much attention to so few people. It would only result in more people suffering from my failure.

If I could kill the bear this loop and get the memory crystal to the Gremlins, I was sure they'd have a way of preventing it from respawning. Or at least I hoped. They'd known how to stop Tickles and Slender Hopper from respawning. Unfortunately, they couldn't eat the bear whole like Mother had Slender Hopper—not unless they could get a lot bigger than I thought—and I didn't know whose trauma this was, even if I was willing to risk creating a bogey monster like Pastor Kay. Still, it was the only thing I could think of.

If I couldn't stop it from respawning, I'd have to make another terrible choice. I couldn't afford to dedicate more time to helping just a few. I needed to evacuate an average of 300 people a day. There was no way I could treat that number as a daily par, though. My pyramid scheme idea of 10 people rescuing 10 people, each responsible for 10 more, meant that losing a day or two helping three people might lead to thousands of people being left behind.

If I failed here, I'd have to carry the weight of their suffering, another necessary price for evacuating as many as possible, at least until rescuing them became practical. It would also be a secret I'd have to keep from my friends and allies. I already couldn't keep my allies focused on evacuation of the town over assistance of the briefly endangered, even if I could understand the rationale.

I'd just have to hope the Gremlins could do something.

Ahead, the bear had paused its meandering plod, raising its nose up to snuffle at the air. I tensed, guessing it had caught my scent. It was less than half a block away from me.

While sneaking up on it, I'd been focusing on the bear as a whole—rather than any one part or the space around it—conceptualizing it as a single object. As it began to turn back toward me, I visualized a bucket strapped to its head. Illusory ropes appeared as well, stretching from the bucket to the torso and legs of the bear. The ropes might not have been necessary, but I wanted to be sure the bucket would move with the trauma monster's head, which my instincts told me required mapping an illusion to the whole bear. I could have dropped an illusory blanket on it instead, but I didn't want to cover more of its body than I had to. I wanted a clean shot.

The bear roared and pawed at its head, but neither bellow nor claw had any effect on the visual illusion. Between its furiously shaking head and swiping paws, the lack of substance must have become obvious. In the next second, the illusion shattered into a flurry of blue motes of light.

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That's one.

I was banking on being able to lose at least three illusions before drawing the attention of the Wisps.

If I'd paired the illusion with a physical object, would it have lasted longer? I wondered to myself. If the bear thought it felt a bucket, maybe the illusion wouldn't have broken so quickly. I didn't know how I'd have accomplished that in this case. Still, it was something to keep in mind for later.

The bear spotted me as the illusory bucket dissolved; it let out another bellow as it turned its bulk around to charge me. When planning this, I'd considered using illusory fire or something to distract the bear, but I'd worried it wouldn't be fooled by smokeless and heatless flame. Instead, I created two illusory duplicates of myself, splitting off and running to either side of me.

My hope was that, while the bear may not believe its eyes, it wouldn't be able to tell which of me was the real one. I ran as quietly as I could—even holding my breath—trying not to give the bear any clues about which was the real me.

My doppelgangers spread out to my left and right and outpaced me slightly to come at the bear from opposite sides. If it were a human opponent, I might have had to employ some mind games to better mask which of me was real, but I doubted the bear was that smart.

I was less than 20 yards away from the monster and moving fast.

The bear rose up on its hind legs to intimidate me, and it wasn't not effective. Fortunately, it wasn't enough to steal my focus, and my illusory clones were soon within striking distance. The bear crashed down on one and spun to swipe at the other. Both disappeared into a cloud of blue motes, leaving only my real self as a target.

That's two.

I was ten yards away, having made my duplicates take the lead, but the bear was quick and could cross that distance even faster than me.

Creating the clones had been my most challenging illusion yet, partly because it was almost two illusions. The duplicates had moved identically to each other, matching my own movements; only their speed and direction were different, but those differences were challenging to maintain. Like patting your head and rubbing your stomach—or doing a moonwalk—there was some cognitive dissonance to keep both movements in mind.

As I'd watched them run, I'd been able to tell they weren't actually touching the ground, but it was a vast improvement over my first attempts. My first try had resulted in a blurry form just behind me, jittering between several places at once without ever being fully in one spot. The blur followed my movements, almost creating an anime-style afterimage. I decided to add it to my tool belt.

I was close enough that I only needed to buy a few more moments. As the bear rushed at me, I initialized the afterimage illusion, leaping forward in a running zigzag movement that created a snaking trail of hazy copies in my wake. The bear's charge hesitated, and it shook its head as though trying to see true.

Bringing my shotgun forward, I leaped back to avoid a swiping paw, the monster's confusion causing it to misjudge the distance. Shot lined up at the creature's unprotected neck, I pulled the trigger to an echoing blast and fountain of dark blood. The bear stumbled, trying to retain its footing, but was clearly dazed. Without waiting, I cocked the gun and unleashed a second shell and close range. The bear crumbled, gurgling to the ground, near-black blood pooling on the pavement around it.

It didn't die immediately, and the puzzlement in its eyes affected me more than I liked, especially considering that the creature was a dangerous killer. Sometimes, though, there aren't good solutions. There's just what we've got. The monster died shortly after that, blood loss not letting it linger overly long.

I opened up my Shadow, ready to run in case my actions had drawn Wisp attention. Hopefully, however, the broken illusions wouldn't be enough to attract them here. Hopefully, since the trauma monster was dead and therefore no longer aware of the inconsistency, there was nothing to bring the webs of light my way. Either way, I'd be quick.

Stepping into the Shadow long enough to grab an ax, I walked up to the bear and went after its memory crystal. I really hoped the Gremlins could actually do something with it.