Gadget threw himself back, trying to escape the shaggy wolf’s maw, but Ethan knew he would fail. He was moving almost before he even knew it; he pivoted, putting all of his strength into a powerful kick with his dominant leg at where he predicted the wolf was headed.

The kick was pretty good, all things considered. It’d been four years since he’d last played soccer or practiced combat sports, but the basic reflexes and skill was still there.

His foot struck the enormous animal right on the snout, his flip-flop flying at least fifteen feet away, but its head didn’t move an inch. He saw a tooth go flying, though, and his kick did give Gadget enough time to escape- which was all he wanted. Rapidly, he tried to pull away, but the beast’s weird legs suddenly made sense; they were articulated in a way akin to that of a cat’s, allowing them to easily claw things with their razor-sharp retractable claws.

He screamed in agony, his right leg searing. Before the wolf could do anything more to him, a large branch slammed into its head from the left, the metal shard jutting out of the branch missing the wolf by a narrow inch, and its head whipped sharply to the right. Its head snapped back towards Alyssa in an instant, and she only had enough time to take a step back before it lunged again.

Finally, Ethan’s goblin arrived. It tore forward on all fours towards the enormous wolf-thing the instant it was finished, slamming into it and tearing at its neck with its sharp claws. Its fur was so thick and coarse that nothing got through, but the three and a half foot tall goblin had charged forward at a speed that Ethan doubted anyone he knew could exceed; it was enough to push the beast off-kilter, causing it to miss tearing out Alyssa’s throat by a mere inch.

Gadget lunged forward to attack the wolf, and Ethan’s heart almost stopped. “Heel, Gadget!” He shouted, but it was too late. His beloved animal slammed into the colossal wolf… and it was tossed onto its side, the goblin still tearing at its throat.

He was stunned. How the hell had Gadget done that?

The shaggy wolf dug both of its claws into the back of his goblin, and it let out a horrible shriek. The wolf-thing tossed the goblin back as it scrambled to stand back up, but before it could, Alyssa struck its forehead with the branch hard; harder than a human should’ve been capable of; hard enough to shatter the branch, leaving behind only the metal shard that had stabbed into the beast’s skull.

The goblin was upon it again in an instant, and this time, Ethan shouted out an order. “Push the shard deeper!”

The goblin obeyed, abandoning any sense of self-preservation in order to cling to the wolf’s head and slam against the metal spike, driving it deeper into its head. Just then, the shaggy fur all over the beast began to move. Tens of pounds of fur wrapped around the goblin like it had a mind of its own and pressed.

Before anyone could try to save it, the goblin’s body collapsed with a sickening crunch before exploding into a blue mist, and the wolf staggered to a stand, its expression strangely clear for a wild animal: it was angry beyond belief.

It moved forward more cautiously this time, and Ethan wasn’t sure what to do. His goblins were dead, and Alyssa didn’t have a weapon anymore. Gadget looked tired as fuck after somehow knocking the wolf-thing onto its side, and Ethan was weaponless and injured.

‘The spike in its forehead; I need to get it deeper, somehow.’ He thought, desperate. How?

“Fuck!” Ethan shouted. His body was chock full of adrenaline, and he made a stupid decision; one that he probably wouldn’t survive… but he wouldn’t survive either way.

Ethan charged, but before he could even try to push the spike deeper into its skull, Gadget blew past him, slamming into the wolf an instant before it would’ve snapped his head off. The wolf was pushed a step back, and the leg that Gadget had slammed against was unstable enough that it teetered on the edge of falling. It scrambled to save itself from the fall, but Ethan threw himself onto the beast, pushing it into the ground heavily.

“The spike!” He screamed to Alyssa even as the feet of fur all around him began to wrap around him. For the first second, it wasn’t too bad… but then his nerves began to scream, as they constricted. His bones creaked, and the air was forced out of his lungs. Ethan screamed, and then he felt the wolf-thing shudder beneath him, and the fur lost its strength.

You have slain a Wyrdfur.

You have gained a level.

You have gained a level.

It is recommended that you open your Panel.

The System’s text came as a tremendous relief. They’d killed it… they’d won. For a few long seconds, he simply rested in the Wyrdfur’s long, shaggy and surprisingly comfortable fur, before the adrenaline wore off, and the pain in his leg cleared his mind.

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“Can you get me out of here?” He called. The fur had lost its strength, but there was still so much of it that was wrapped around him tightly. It took a full two minutes of effort from both Alyssa and himself to escape the thing’s clutches, and so much of its fur had come with him that Ethan might as well have come out wearing a parka.

After a few seconds of lying on the ground, Ethan sat up and tried to rid himself of as much of the fur as possible. As he did, Ethan spoke.

“Any ideas on how to keep this from getting infected?” He asked, gesturing at the gashes on his leg. She winced and shook her head, “I’ve got no clue, honestly.”

There wasn’t any more conversation for the next few minutes. Alyssa had a strangely distant expression, and he finally remembered the System’s text. He’d gained ‘levels’, and it’d recommended that he open his Panel.

He did, and the text unfolded within his mind.

Subject: Ethan Cross

Class: Summoner (Uncommon)

Level: 2

Rank: 0

Attributes:

Agility: 1.4

Creativity: 1.5

Fortitude: 1

Insight: 1.2

Magic: 1.4

Processing: 1.4

Strength: 1.1

Impartments: Summon Goblin

2 Minor Physicality Attribute Points available.

1 Attribute Point available.

Ethan noted that his Agility Attribute had increased by 0.1, likely due to his practice with the goblin-summoning Forms, but his attention was primarily drawn to the two strings of text at the end. He focused on the two, and it became clear what they did.

The Minor Physicality Attribute Points would let him add 0.2 to any of his ‘physical attributes’, which were Agility, Fortitude and Strength. The latter one would let him choose to add 0.4 to any attribute.

Realizing that he really didn’t understand what any of the attributes did, he focused on them each in turn.

Attribute Description: Agility is the Subject’s measured capacity to move with flexibility, efficiency and precision.

That was pretty simple and made sense.

Attribute Description: Creativity is the Subject’s measured capacity to think imaginatively.

That was… weirder. He assumed that Creativity encompassed his capacity to make connections or plans and act on them, since it was high?

Attribute Description: Fortitude is the Subject’s measured capacity to endure and recover from physical damage.

That was pretty simple, too.

Attribute Description: Insight is the Subject’s measured capacity to perceive the world with both the mundane senses and the arcane.

That sounded great and wasn’t at all what he’d expected it to be. He’d thought it’d be something magic-related… which he supposed it was, albeit not exclusively.

Attribute Description: Magic is the Subject’s measured capacity to manipulate, store and generate mana.

Pretty simple; it encompassed the maximum amount of mana he could have at any one time, the amount and the precision that he could manipulate at any one time, and the amount that he could generate at any one time.

Attribute Description: Processing is the Subject’s measured ability to take in and process information rapidly.

That seemed like it would be very, very useful. Presumably, that would increase his reaction speed, learning speed, and general intelligence; that sounded great.

Attribute Description: Strength is the Subject’s measured ability to output force and endure and recover from exhaustion.

That was simple, too. Strength was how big and strong his muscles were. It seemed to also encompass endurance, though, which was neat.

Without hesitation, Ethan used the Attribute Point to enhance his Magic attribute. After that, he used one of the Minor Physicality Attribute Points to enhance his agility, so that he could more easily move his hands in the way that his magical gang signs required him to. Before he could decide on what to use the last one on, Ethan felt the effects.

It stung a little bit, but he felt a surge of mana entering his body from seemingly nowhere, burrowing into his body and altering it. It lasted for exactly a minute according to his watch, and when it ended, Ethan stretched out his hands and felt how nimble they seemed. His mana core didn’t have enough mana to create another goblin, but he decided to practice the Forms necessary to do so regardless.

He slid through the first and second Forms with relative ease, but on the third one, he still struggled to twist his hands and fingers the right way when his attention was as split as it was. He got through that, though, and began the fourth. While he had only barely made the cut the first time, and had done barely better the second, this time he was relatively certain that he had done most of it decently- meaning that, hopefully, this goblin wouldn't be too dumb and would be able to act without his direct orders a bit better.

After that, he used the strange sixth sense he’d gained to examine his mana core. He could clearly tell that its capacity to hold mana and the rate at which his mana regenerate were vastly better than before; roughly forty percent, maybe? It made sense, assuming that an attribute level of 1 was the average for his species.

…No, actually, that didn’t make sense; humans didn’t naturally have magic. Maybe 1 was the average magic level of a human after they’d been given a mana core?

Ethan shook his head and tried to calm his mind. It was a mess; he was adapting decently, but this wasn’t good for his mental state at all. Moreover, after everything he’d just gone through, he was almost a hundred percent certain that this wasn’t a dream or something… meaning that he’d truly almost died just now- which meant that Gadget had almost just died, and that his mom was in serious danger of dying in the near future.

“Ethan,” Alyssa said from a few feet away, pulling his attention away from his depressive musings. “I imagine you agree that we should work together?” She asked.

“That sounds great,” Ethan told her, and she smiled faintly. “I can only summon goblins right now, but any number of extra hands will be invaluable.”

He hoped that she would tell him what her Class was, but she didn’t; maybe because she just didn’t think of it, or maybe because she didn’t fully trust him yet. It was annoying, since he’d revealed practically everything to her, albeit mostly unintentionally and out of necessity.

Speaking of Classes, though… what was Gadgets?