“Ah, my legend endures after all! And must have grown if you are so threatened by my very name!” Nocturnus cackled.

“I’m not threatened by a mind imprint on a Core claiming to be the Black Traitor,” Mikayla hadn’t entirely worked out how to read Keldryn’s expressions, they were just a bit too off from human. But she was pretty sure that his tail bristling like that meant he was, in fact, threatened.

“The who?” Nocturnus’ voice had dropped an octave.

“. . You don’t know?” Keldryn murmured.

“Boy, what are you talking about? What happened?”

“Um. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you,” His face had softened, eyes darting wildly about as his tail drooped. “I don’t know if the story I heard is true, it’s just what’s been passed down and probably not very accurate -“

“Spit it out! People call me a starring traitor? Why?! I never betrayed anyone!” He paused. “Well, no one who lived to tell about it,” Mikayla cast the Core a worried look.

“It’s because people say you created the Second Monster King,” Keldryn finally burst out.

Mikayla’s eyes widened.

Nocturnus made a noise like he was choking. “The - the what? But. We killed the Monster King. What do you mean, there was a second one?”

“Actually,” Keldryn’s ears went flat, and his expression went dark as he seemed to stare at something on the other side of the horizon. “There have been six,”

“Six?!” the ghost parroted in a horrified tone.

His ears twitched. “We’ve learned that Kaijus get stronger when they kill people. For some reason they get more strength out of killing people than they do out of killing each other. And that gets multiplied a lot when they kill a really strong person. Like you were,”

“You said you were level 112, Nocty. How many levels would the Kaiju that killed you have gotten?” Mikayla quietly asked.

“That . . by the Ghost Hound’s taint. I could see that. Normally, the experience would have been divided among all the Kaijus who wore me down during the course of my final battle. But I killed all of them and took their strength for myself instead, except the one that finally starring got me. All those levels, concentrated into one being, even accounting for diminishing returns, that would have . .”

Mikayla could imagine it. A ferocious warrior fighting off an endless horde of monsters, reaping dozens, hundreds of lives but being worn down just a little bit more by every fight, until eventually he was too tired to stand up straight and some lucky beast managed to land the killing blow, undoing in a single strike everything Nocturnus had achieved.

“No one knows for sure. There weren’t any surviving eyewitness accounts,” Keldryn added.

“It makes more sense than anything else I can think of, though. My men were brave warriors, they ought to have been able to carry on without me. But the appearance of a Second Monster King . . that would have turned the tide,” Nocturnus groaned. “Is that why they call me a traitor?”

“Well. Yeah. The man who threw thousands of lives away in a reckless quest for glory, who birthed the Second Monster King,” A long, slow breath escaped Keldryn’s lips. “They say you were trying to reclaim the Kaiju Coast. Is that true?”

“Of course! This was our home! How could they expect me to abandon it?” he howled.

Keldryn’s voice turned oddly throaty, and it took Mikayla a second to realise that he was growling. “You should have waited. If you’d been smarter about it, it might have worked. But because you failed so badly, no one else ever even tried! The Second Monster King didn’t retaliate. It’s been content to stay in its territory, to the east of here. Its mere existence was a deterrent to anyone hoping to retake Balmwind . . and that was before four more Monster Kings appeared, one after the other,”

“I . . I see,” Nocturnus’ voice was throaty and choked by emotion. He sounded heartbroken. “Then . . then my failure is total,”

“Hold on. You’re talking about the Second Monster King in the present tense. Is it still out there?” Mikayla realised, quirking her eyebrow.

“It is. The higher level you get, the more years the System rewards you with. Kaijus are no exception; the Monster Kings just don’t seem to get older. Only bigger,” Keldryn shook his head in dismay. “Of the six Monster Kings, we’ve only ever killed two of them. The First and the Third both tried to attack the countries to the south and massive armies came together to repel them. The Second, Fifth and Sixth are territorial. As long as they stick to their own stomping grounds, no one thinks it’s worth the risk to go after them,”

Nocturnus was silent, so Mikayla kept probing. “And number four?”

That grisly expression of hatred was back, and Keldryn’s tail bristled as he spoke. “The Fourth is a roamer. It tried to go south, but unlike the First and Third it was smart enough to retreat when it realised it couldn’t breach the defences at the Cloudfingers. It chews its way through the countryside, eating anything it stumbles across. It’s like a living natural disaster, and it’s been the bane of settlements all over the Kaiju Coast for more than a hundred years. They call it the Cityvore,” He spat the name like it was poison on his tongue.

“You sound like you’ve got a grudge against it,” Mikayla hazarded a guess.

Keldryn’s tail flicked irritably, and he crossed his arms. “I’m going to kill it,” he declared.

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“What? You, kill a Monster King?” Nocturnus had apparently been shocked out of his stupor by the declaration. “If this Cityvore is anything like its predecessor, it’d take an entire team of warriors above level 100 to threaten it at all. You haven’t even cleared the first Schema Lock,”

“I didn’t say I was going to do it today. I’m not interested in throwing my life away for nothing,” the ranger scoffed. “But when I’m strong enough, I’m going to rip it apart and scatter the pieces,”

“Hah. Excellent. I believe we’ll get along just fine, young man,” Nocturnus’ voice was hollow, his usual cheer strained.

Keldryn snorted and quickened his pace, leaving Mikayla behind for a moment. She hastened to catch up, whispering, “Maybe you shouldn’t talk for a bit, Nocturnus,”

“I do need time to consider these revelations,” he non-answered.

Once they were side by side again, and she felt she’d given him enough time to cool off, Mikayla piped up. “By the way. I wanna just put it out there that where I’m from, we only have humans, no other races. So please don’t take it the wrong way when I say I’m very curious about your, um,” She gestured to where an imaginary pair of fox ears might sit on her head.

“Oh. So that’s why you kept staring at my tail. I thought you were just some kind of pervert,” Keldryn replied with a perfectly straight face, and Mikayla choked. “Huh. A world with no beastkin? No dwarves? No yaoguai? Weird,”

“So, you’re a beastkin?” she guessed.

“Uh-huh. Foxkin, technically,” He seemed content to leave it at that, continuing to walk.

“. . Soooooo, what’s that like?”

“Huh? I dunno, what’s being a human like? It just is,”

Mikayla spluttered. “Well, tell me about foxkin then. Or at least beastkin in general?”

Keldryn shrugged. “What’s to tell? I don’t know anything about my race’s past,” He sneered a bit. “Do I look like I went to some fancy school where they teach luxurious things like history? It doesn’t matter, anyway. We all came from the dirt, and we’ll all return to it. The blade in your hands, the enemy before you, that’s what’s important. It’s stupid to think about things like whether or not someone has a tail, or their skin colour, or why that might be. It all tastes the same to a Kaiju,”

“I like this kid’s attitude, even if he could stand to be a bit more upbeat,” Nocturnus weighed in.

“I’m not a kid,” Keldryn growled, his tail visibly bristling.

Mikayla ignored the byplay. “I guess that’s fair. It’s just . . I need to know more about this world. I’ve almost died more in the past four days than in the rest of my whole life. I want to stay alive, and so far knowledge has been my best weapon. Nocturnus told me a story about Yevgenia’s fighting style that saved my life because I thought to try to copy it. I don’t wanna find out that you’re deathly allergic to human dandruff or looking you in the eyes makes you go berserk or whatever. Any little bit of trivia might make a difference,”

All that was true, but there was another reason that Mikayla was keeping close to her chest. She clearly remembered all the time she’d wasted watching Cat be the social butterfly that Mikayla had wished she could be. If ever there was a time to reinvent oneself, it was after literally being transported to another world. This time, she would make friends. This time, she would be the sort of person she’d always wanted to be. What was a bit of social anxiety after killing literal monsters?

Keldryn cast her a baffled look, oblivious to her internal dialogue. “If anything like that comes up, I’ll warn you,” he finally relented. “As for . . foxkin culture? I dunno. The Kaiju Coast grinds stuff like that down. Tradition gets thrown out for survival. If we had anything like that, it’s long gone,”

“Well, tell me about your family. That’s a good place to start,” Mikayla suggested.

Keldryn drooped, his ears, shoulders and tail all falling in a full-body slump. Mikayla’s eyebrows inched upwards, sensing that she’d transgressed. Before she could backtrack, he spoke.

“They’re all dead,”

She couldn’t help but gasp, pressing a hand to her mouth. “I . . I’m so sorry,”

“Don’t be. You didn’t kill them,” Keldryn brushed her off, that same expression of hatred darkening his brow.

Mikayla put two and two together at once. “Is that why you want to kill the Cityvore? Revenge?”

“. . Yeah,” With a visible effort, he swallowed his hatred, leaving him with a haggard expression that looked more suited for a war veteran than a young ranger. “It came out of nowhere. There were supposed to be people following it, keeping tabs on it and evacuating any village it approaches. But it learned some kind of new stealth trick. It . . it just came out of nowhere and killed everyone. I’m only alive because it didn’t notice me,”

He heaved out a sigh, and there was a flash of blue light from the Core Controller on his wrist. Mikayla tensed, expecting a weapon of some sort, but the manifestation was something different entirely.

Blue lines tinted with Keldryn’s orange aura span from his wrist and into the air before them. They traced a lean and animalistic body, extending outwards into four limbs that ended in cloven hooves. A head with skin of translucent blue glass emerged from its neck, and spiralling orange horns grew from the skull.

Mikayla’s jaw fell open. “That’s a goat. You just summoned a goat. There are goat Cores?”

The goat made a noise that sounded like a tinny recording of a bleat and gently butted Keldryn’s chest. The Ranger knelt, burying his face in the crinkled, shaggy lines of the holographic goat’s chest. “This is Bluebell. She’s my emotional support animal,”

Awkwardly, Mikayla gently patted his back with one hand, using her other to touch the goat. It had a visibly shaggy pelt that didn’t look entirely realistic, more like the outer layer of a piñata than a real animal; fuzzy, but with a texture that reminded her more closely of crumpled paper. “There are emotional support animal Cores, then?” Bluebell ignored her and comfortingly nuzzled Keldryn.

Keldryn chuckled a bit. “Nah. Bluebell is a Companion Core. It’s the same as that guy did to himself, you give a special kind of Core to a living animal and its mind gets imprinted onto the Core over time. Once the animal dies, it gets a second life as a living weapon. She’s supposed to protect me when I’m out exploring. My therapist suggested I also use her for emotional support,”

“Huh. That’s very cool, but a little ethically dubious maybe,” Mikayla mused.

“Eh. Maybe. I hear rich people down south like to import these so that old age won’t take their beloved pets from them, though. So there are upsides,” Keldryn straightened, and Bluebell nuzzled at his hip. He smiled, patting her head. “But Bluebell’s special,”

“She is? Why?”

Keldryn hesitated. “Because she’s from my aunt’s farm,” he explained after a moment, his features settling into a melancholy gaze towards the horizon. “My mum was an Engraver. She gave my aunt an unused Companion Core as a present, and my aunt put it on Bluebell’s collar. After the Cityvore came through . . I found her corpse in what was left of the barn. I had to cut the collar off to get the Core out, but it worked. Heh. She’s . . she’s all I’ve got left. She’s sweet, and gentle, and saved my life several times since I started working as a Ranger, and -“

“And she’s eating your shirt,” Mikayla warned him.

“And she’s - what? No! Stop that! Naughty!” Keldryn batted Bluebell’s head away from the hem of his tunic. “How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have a stomach anymore, you don’t need to eat!”

Bluebell’s only response was a plaintive baaa.

Mikayla chuckled, and after a moment Keldryn joined in.