Pissed off, I stood up and picked up a wooden sword.

"Oh, the little filly has fire in her eyes! I like it!" Rude rancher chieftain guffawed.

Enantinos was giving me all the "don't do it" non-verbal cues he could. I only saw red. Maybe it was the berserker Class rearing its head. Probably not.

"Come, child! Show me what you got! Show me what someone worthy of Queltphion's acknowledgment can do!"

Not much, I reckoned. For as powerful as I was, I was the System's bitch. Without the System, I was just a sentient mass of flesh and bone with some ability borne of the memory of previous lives. However, most of the skill I had was actual muscle memory and died with my previous bodies. Two Yznarian years was too little to retrain that muscle memory back in this centaur body without System assistance.

That's what Rabhorktaar warned me of when I wandered too deep in the ethereal dimension down that M.C. Escher-ish parallel direction that led me away from the world. I would leave the System's sphere of influence and flop down as just a mermaid in a raging ocean of monsters.

And right now, I was just a centaur child. A petulant filly that couldn't recognize her betters. I charged the mass of muscles. Maybe I could break his knees and bring him to submit. Yeah, dream on.

The guy's arm blurred and the next moment I was flying over my playmates. Some of them grinned wickedly at seeing me bleed. Damn "humans". I hate them. My arm flailed in front of me. It had fractured and I could see the bone poking out of the skin. I crashed on the sand and hit my back against a rock. More injuries but a child's body was made of rubber. I may have cracked some ribs.

Everything was pain. I couldn't think straight.

Once the stars stopped blinking in my sight, I saw the two chieftains having at one another. Fuck. I had my moon-bound regeneration working on my body, healing fifty-three HP every second, more than three thousand every minute. I would be back at full health in about fifteen more. It felt like a horde of ants crawled over my arm as it regenerated and the muscles set the bone back in place.

But the other chieftain came prepared for treachery. I saw the poisoned weapon cut Enantinos and his muscles locked down. Before he could deliver the 'coup de grace, the elders ganged up on him and started to pummel him with training weapons and rocks. Overwhelmed, the visiting chieftain withdrew.

I was outraged and humiliated, feeling the truth about my weakness. No signs of an [Emergency Activation] whatsoever. I stood up and brushed the blood off of me with some sand. My arm cracked back in place and the skin closed over the wound. As I approached, one elder blocked my path. It was the same one that talked back to the other chieftain.

"I'm sorry, Snowdrop. You better stay away from the herd and hide while we talk. A council meeting was called to discuss your situation. I'm afraid some will try to kill you before the chieftains and elders reach a conclusion."

I nodded and met his eyes. "I understand, elder."

He removed a leather-wrapped package from his backpack, "It will take some days, weeks even to gather all the chieftains in the plains. Do you need some food?"

I shook my head, pushing the package away, "You've seen me fight al-Mi'raj. And I'm stronger now. I can fend for myself."

I trotted away, letting some tears flow down. The rules were simple. All adults were expected to find a mate in the opposite herd. Those that didn't were exiled. While the rule applied mostly to males, it was just because females had no trouble getting mates if they wanted to.

I didn't and couldn't find a mate, so I was forced to walk the path of the exile. Wait until I find a six-linked armor! Just kidding! [1]

Stupid barbarians. 

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One Week Later...

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I needed to find something to fight, something to give me the [Emergency Activation] I needed to go [Death Princess] all over that horse ass rancher. But I was afraid the System wouldn't give it to me.

One day wandering northeast toward the sound of crashing waves led me to a beach. I saw no signs of sentient life around but after roaming up and down for a while, I found some crab monsters skittering on the beach. Each had a body about a meter wide and legs that stretched for two meters on each side. But crab monsters were a terrible matchup for me. Their carapace would allow them to ignore any damage I could cause.

Yeah, I was badass in the trials, but they were ultimately tuned for children and teenagers! I couldn't handle five-meter-long giant crab monsters.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

My hearing picked the sound of hooves on rocks and I knew I had other kinds of monsters to worry about. Maybe...

Oh, yeah.

I ran down on the beach, kicking sand up and shouting at the crabs. They clacked their pincers and turned around to look at me with their stalky eyes. I ran past one and two, drawing their aggro. Finally, I aggro'ed three. No more, no less. Three was the number of monsters whose attention I'd drawn and the number of monsters following me was three. Four, I did not attract, nor did I attract only two, except to reach the number three. I had difficulty keeping up with them, so five was right out. Once the number three, being the third monster I reached, then I led thy monsters, the angry crabs of Antioch, toward my centaur pursuers, who had been naughty in my sight, so they shall snuff each other. And maybe cut each other to bits.

Amen [2].

"There she is!" The centaurs from the rancher chieftain's tribe pointed at me as I jumped down from a particularly large rock. They were stupid to ignore the sound of clacking chitin on the rock.

The barbarians came at me with nets and poles with arched bands on one end meant to catch prisoners alive, probably to take me as their trophy back to their tribe.

One thing they didn't know, was that I was fast. In fact, twice as fast as a filly my size had any right to be. And I had lifetimes dodging attacks from creatures larger than me. I feinted to skid right and the net was cast. I then punted the sand with my hooves to change gears and duck left, causing the net to miss. Now he'd need to waste time he didn't have to fold it back again to throw.

To evade the one with the catcher I slowed down to a normal speed until he committed to the attack. he needed to get an angle where he could pin me against something otherwise the weapon would only shove me away. It had no swiveling arms to embrace the target as a medieval mancatcher had. Once he thought he had me, I dashed ridiculously fast and he missed. I then ran past the net guy and punched his leather codpiece as hard as I could. He bucked up and kicked the air in pain. I could swear I heard him whinnying but that was probably wheezing. I pilfered the metal dagger in his waist and then I was scot-free and running over the rocky terrain.

That's when the crabs joined the party. No frightened boy would survive. They didn't have weird heads grossly pasted on them but they looked just as creepy [3].

I knew better than to loiter around and watch. I kept going until I found a place with many escape routes where I could hide and hear. The barbarians engaged the crabs. My money was on the monsters. By the screams of pain and the frenzied chittering of the crabs, I didn't take a risky bet. Once the screams ended, I knew I had little time.

A centaur has a lot of meat. No wonder, we were half-horse and horse necks don't have much meat, compared to the rest. When you replace the horse neck and head with a human-like torso full of chest, abdomen, and arm muscle like these guys cultivated, it is a safe assumption that a centaur had more meat than a horse of the same size.

The crabs were busy eating the centaurs. I climbed up the rock I jumped off before and landed on top of the first one. Quick stabs took out the eyestalks and the antennae. Then I slid down the back and circled around to climb the rock again and jump on the second one. The first crab was trashing and when its legs touched the third crab, he struck with the pincers. Without eyes and antennae, he could rely only on the hairs of the legs to sense things. In pain, it lashed out at everything. The second crab sedately ate, ignoring his siblings. If monsters had families. Big if. The second crab also lost its delicate sensory organs. This time, I jumped forward and ran away.

I only needed to finish the last one of them. Now that I could take a good look, the centaurs did a good amount of damage to the crabs but they faced the monsters head-on, like the dumb barbarians they were. The front legs and claws had some cracked parts and one of the crabs lost several on the left side. I waited as the crabs fought and cracked each other, softening the carapaces. Unfortunately, crab fights were as standoffish as one could think of. They walked around and kept each other at a pincer's distance. The second blind one joined in and they ganged up on the first blind one.

So much for waiting for a survivor. They would exhaust each other and I didn't want to waste much time. Once these two centaurs didn't come back with the young filly, they would send more after them.

I went around and found an opportunity to climb on number three. This one still had eyes and didn't like to have a passenger. The claws came from above to pinch me, but number one and two forced him to pay attention to the other ones. I walked over the rugged carapace, making sure I could keep my footing over the swaying platform. Oh, well. Time to carve me some sweet Kani.

I laid down over the carapace, right above the pincer junction. I grabbed the edge of the crab carapace and looked at the monster's beady black eye. In my imagination, the crab was fending his enraged brethren and shouting to me, "don't do it!" Then I took my time and stabbed the joint, letting the dagger slip into the flesh underneath. I didn't want to break my weapon so I only struck when I was certain I could score a critical. Five stabs and the claw hung loose. Then the other side. The dagger started to chip and dull.

Now one and two were gaining on three, pulling his legs off of it. I helped and crippled one side of three's legs. Then I timed my jump and went over one, repeating the same treatment. Finally, two also became crippled. Two hours later, I was carving out the last crab leg. The dagger was more like a blunt instrument now.

With great effort, I stabbed the most wounded crab in the leg openings until it started to bleed. It took me an hour. Then the next, the next, over and over. The sun rose and the crab stopped moving. I was sure it died but no [Emergency Activation]. I carved the mouth open and stabbed everything that looked like a brain. I had a few chunks of crab innards on the ground. Nothing. Raging against my powerlessness, I threw the dagger at a rock. It broke.

Rummaging the remains of the centaurs, I fould two other daggers and a steel shortsword along with a few supplies and tools that weren't ruined. Of consumables, nothing.

I killed the other two and still didn't get the System to trigger. Fuck.

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[1] In the game "Path of Exile" game (notice I added a "the" in the text), a six-linked armor with the right gem colors is a very good endgame drop.

[2]: Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

[3] www.rathergood.com/vid/ - If you are scared about Flash Player Security (you should), Youtube search for "Joel Veitch crab flash video" - Anecdotally, all my friends think that dwarves singing should sound like the first part of the song.