“The blade destroyed the flesh but the bone resisted it,” Yuriko muttered. “Is still resisting it…” she amended when she saw its skull slowly turning red hot.

The creature howled its pain, but it didn’t stop what it was doing, eating the man’s ‘chronian gear while he struggled to escape. He was clearly terrified, but his other hand, the one that wasn’t ‘chronian, grasped at his hip and drew a handgun. Not a Defender, Yuriko thought, but a smaller version. He pointed it at the bone covered dog and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The bullets struck flesh and penetrated easily, but only through the surface layer. Yuriko could see that the bullets had flattened an inch into the flesh, where it struck thicker muscles of more bone, perhaps. The man did fire into the dog’s chest, so those might be ribs. But how unlucky was he to strike ribs with all eight shots? Either that or the creatures rib cage wasn’t a cage but a complete wall?

“Argh!”

The man yelled in agony, but it wasn’t as if Yuriko was just staring. A couple of sunblades struck, flung from her sleeves and penetrated the flesh. She moved the blades deeper into the creature's body. Her earlier conjecture was proven right: the thing’s bones enveloped its internal organs completely. How it was able to move about was a mystery she couldn’t really observe.

The sunblade in its eye socket continued to burn, but it was really slow going. Yuriko had rarely encountered things that were difficult to burn using her Radiant energy, at least not from creatures that were significantly weaker than her Anima strength.

‘I shouldn’t judge things that way, for now,’ she told herself. The fight between Heron and Big Waldo had been illuminating. The big man had been tougher than Yuriko expected and could move faster than Heron, at least for a little while. And there was the fact that their ‘chronian gear resisted her aura perception.

She used her Animakinesis to push the dog off the man, though the manifestation of her Intent was brilliantly obvious in the form of a visible golden aura around her that bulged to strike at the thing. It resisted for a few seconds while Yuriko increased the force she applied, and finally, about five times the amount of force her kinesis would have normally needed to move something of the dog’s size and weight, the kinetic push finally tossed the thing off its meal.

Click. Clack.

The bone dog didn’t make any growling sounds, and she wasn’t sure it could actually make any, considering that bone plates covered its throat too. The wounds the man had shot into it were already crusting over with blood and bone. The sounds came from when the bone plates clacked together.

“Help—no, run!” the man gasped as he scrambled to his feet.

He snagged an SMG off the ground as he ran away. The bone dog’s eyes followed him, ignoring her in a way that she found mildly offensive. But she guessed the creature was dominated by its instincts, and it was probably hungry for the man’s chronian gear, since it hadn’t touched the guy’s flesh. So why was that first corpse gutted, then? Unless he had gear embedded into his internals, huh?

The bone dog bounded forward, clearly going after the man despite her being in the way. It intended to bowl her over, didn’t it?

Snorting in annoyance, Yuriko removed part of her physical restrictions and slapped the dog.

Crack.

The bone plates around the dog’s face shattered and its neck, and spine twisted and snapped. The dog cratered into the wall, while cracks crawled around the impact site.

“Still alive?” Yuriko mused. Physical attacks proved the most effective, she realised. The sunblade in the dog’s eye socket had still not burned through into the brainpan while her slap had cracked the skull. A few more applications of brute force should solve the issue.

She hummed as she considered what to do. A brief memory of viewscreens, and videos made her hesitate.

Where did those videos come from and how did they record things? she wondered. Would her casual display of strength cause unwanted attention to her? She was, by no means, the most powerful in the city, not when something was preventing her from flying. Not when her instincts screamed at her when she was about to let her sunblades fly out of her Anima reach.

Was it the Anima that made doing that dangerous or was it the Radiant energy? She suspected the latter considering how people in Bresia and Ishodir regarded it, so maybe she shouldn’t blatantly display her Radiance.

Hmm, the eye socket had little holes in the back that led to the inside of the skull. It was too narrow for her sunblade to cross as it was, so she stretched it out into a needle shape and pushed it through. That did it.

The brain was cooked by the extreme heat and spontaneously combusted. She didn’t have direct control of flames and heat with her Collegia, but she could control the source. She pulled and contained the Radiant energy, and allowed it to dissolve into ambient Chaos, which she also siphoned by breathing it in.

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The bone dog’s body remained stuck on the wall. It convulsed nervelessly for a couple of seconds before it still. Its blood dripped out of its corpse with alarming alacrity and soon covered the breadth of the corridor. Yuriko stepped back several paces until the blood stopped gushing out. The scabbing on all its wounds had dissolved, except for the bits covered by bone plating.

Yuriko frowned at the blood smell. She was familiar with the stench of blood on the battlefield. How could she not, with her perception aura, she could feel it, see it, and smell it as though it was pressed right up to her senses. The dog’s blood didn’t smell bad. In fact, it actually had a sweet scent, and if she didn’t know any better, she would say it was quite pleasant. But the reality of the situation was stark. Why would such a creature have sweet-smelling blood?

The hallway was deserted, but the man she saved might not have gotten far. She turned around and traced the man’s steps. There were dozens of trails going through the dusty corridor, and Yuriko wasn’t that versed in tracking. It was hard to miss the fresh blood trail, however, so she pushed her perceptive aura ahead to track.

She found several holes in her perception a couple of blocks away, along with a bigger hole that she suspected was another bone dog. Several of the holes were laid out on the floor, so Yuriko rushed instead of strolling. She arrived at the intersection a second later. The winds and sounds of her passage were suppressed by her Anima. At least that still worked as it did before.

The transition into this city had been quite confusing, and the past couple of days had been too hectic. They hadn’t even thought about how they were supposed to climb the Tower or delve deeper into it.

The scene she walked into was as she expected. Several gunmen confronting a bone creature. Except it wasn’t a dog this time, but an oversized rat. It was even larger than the dog and Yuriko suppressed a shudder.

“Keep shooting!”

“Hold it back!”

“Lead it to the turrets!”

“It’s too late for that! There’s another one back there!”

The gunmen shouted at each other while blasting away at the bone rat. Yuriko identified the guns they used, a combination of shotguns and assault rifles. There were five uninjured people, with two on the floor. One of them was the same man she rescued from the dog, but this time, his guts were splayed out on the floor and not just his ‘chronian gear. He was still breathing.

The shotgun shells struck the bone rat and momentarily halted its movement but didn’t do much damage. The wounds were already scabbed over and the bone plates resisted the buckshot with relative ease. The assault rifle bullets exited the barrel at a higher speed than handguns and could penetrate flesh and bone with greater ease. The difference wasn’t too apparent with the creatures. The bullets penetrated muscles with ease, but were still stopped by bone. However, the bones were not unscathed, from what Yuriko could see. Any bone plating struck by the rifle bullets was already starting to shatter. The gunmen’s aim were pretty good, but not perfect. Most of the bullets struck in a cluster, but it would help more if they hit the same spot over and over.

The other downed man was not attired like the gunmen, but looked like a civilian. Actually, she was sure that person was dead since the torso had been ripped open, with ribs splayed out. The bone rat’s muzzle was red with blood.

“Grab John, hurry!” one of the gunmen yelled. The one nearest to the downed John refused.

“He’s already dead!”

He was? Yuriko looked and she was certain he was still breathing.

“Then let’s just get out of here!” the same man said.

“Grenade!” Another gunman tossed something, a small cylindrical thing, right at the rat.

What was a grenade? Yuriko wondered, but she didn’t miss the men running away from the rat and the cylinder. The bone rat didn’t chase the men, instead choosing to feast. The disgusting thing didn’t chomp on the dead, but skittered towards the still breathing human. But just as it was about to bite, the grenade went off.

Boom!

Metal shrapnel slammed into Yuriko’s condensed aura and bounced off. The same thing happened to the rat, but it was discombobulated from the loud noise. The fallen man still breathed, but now, blood seeped from multiple wounds across his chest. His head protection, a matte black full cover helmet, was cracked, but still relatively intact.

The rodent shook its head and moved closer. Yuriko walked closer to the beast and drew its attention.

“Second time I’m saving you today,” Yuriko muttered as she aimed her Defender at the rat’s snout. She pulled the trigger, and at the same time, pushed the bullet with her kinesis as soon as it left the muzzle, accelerating the thing by five times its original speed. The bullet barely survived the acceleration and caused a shockwave that she easily suppressed since it was all within her Anima reach.

Bang! Thunk!

The bullet ripped through the rat’s skull, shattered the front part and pulverized the brain. It collapsed in a heap.

Yuriko pushed it aside with her Animakinesis. It was still difficult to grab hold on to, but all she needed was to apply a bit more force. So what was it that they contained that made them difficult for her Anima to interact with? The same with every other person with ‘chronian gear?

The man was gasping shallowly and Yuriko barely managed to pull him away when the rat’s blood suddenly gushed out of its body. His boots were splashed, as were his legs, but at least he wasn’t lying in the blood.

She undid his helmet and pulled it off. His breathing was slowly weakening and his eyes were staring vacantly. Frowning, Yuriko reached for a healing potion that she bought back in Bresia. She wasn’t sure how effective it would be, but it should stabilise the man long enough to bring him some help. Then again, with most of his intestines gone, would he even be able to live?

While she was waffling over whether the effort of saving his life was actually worth one of the few healing potions they had, she heard footsteps coming from behind her. Since there was a void, she assumed it was one of those with ‘chronian gear.

Just as she turned around…

Bang!

Swish!

Between Yuriko’s fingers was a bullet that she caught before it could hit the man. She looked at the shooter and recognised her as one of the people from Big Waldo’s gang.

“Why?” she asked quietly. Yuriko had not felt any hostility directed at her, but then again, she had not been the target.

“That man is already dead,” the woman with black and silver hair said. “And it's best we keep it that way.”