Terry’s jian had already taken on that ominous red glow that, he belatedly acknowledged to himself, he should have asked other-Terry about two seconds after the first time it happened. That blade seemed to give the dire wolves pause. Terry found that hilarious, which struck him as a little inappropriate. Given that every single one of those wolves out massed and towered over him, though, that wariness just struck him funny. The pause did let other-Terry lob out his first piece of advice. If you’re not going to use a second jian, you should channel ice with your left hand.

Terry had considered fighting with two blades. However, he’d concluded a while back that a two-weapon approach worked best in relatively stationary fights against a small number of opponents. He was pretty sure that this fight was going to be a moving fight. In a fight like that, he wanted one hand free for things like grabbing onto trees and shaking his fist at the sky in mute outrage. He definitely didn’t want to have to drop a weapon because he needed a free hand. Plus, he had enough brute strength that punching something in the head was often a more effective method of buying a few seconds than cutting or stabbing something. Of course, that still left other-Terry’s suggestion which meant…Well, it meant exactly nothing to regular-Terry.

“And how the hell am I supposed to do that?” demanded Terry.

You just… Oh, right. We never talked about that. Shit. Okay, here the idiot’s primer on channeling qi. You know about your core.

“Yeah.”

You just need to, um, damn this is harder to explain than I expected. Just picture cold moving from that core to your hand. It should feel a lot like what you’re doing with your sword just, you know, cold. Fuck! To your left.

Terry didn’t look. He just balled up a fist and lashed out with it. He felt his knuckles connect with something and got a lot more resistance than he was used to feeling with monsters. He let his eyes flick in that direction and saw one of the dire wolves flopping and tumbling away like a rag doll. It came to a stop and, after a long moment or two, got shakily back to its feet. It shook its head repeatedly, but Terry didn’t see how that played out because other-Terry was yelling at him. Behind you! Head in the game! A twist and strike with the glowing jian sent a dire wolf head spinning into the air. That seemed to cause the pack to hesitate again, buying Terry a few more seconds. He stared down at his hand and tried to picture cold streaming from his core to his hand. He focused hard, willing it with all his might, and… Nothing happened.

“What?” asked Terry.

Oh, come on! This shit never works the first time when you’re trying to do it, shouted other-Terry. You know this! How many times have you read that?! It’s not going to go work until you have your epiphany or your hero moment or some damn other triggering event.

Terry stared down at the hand that was still just a hand. Damn it, he thought. That’s true. In that case, he thought as he dodged right to avoid a pouncing dire wolf, it’s time to get my running battle on. Terry feigned like he was going to keep moving right before he turned left and charged straight at the dire wolves there. He didn’t expect to be able to elude them, but he did want to get out of the encirclement. Staying there seemed like a recipe for disaster since they could keep coming at him from all sides. He sort of doubted that trying to break out that way would work for most adventurers, but he was working with the advantage of the jian that seemed to make them very nervous. They kept leaping away whenever it got close to them, so kept it moving around him.

The pack tried to keep him circled, but the combination of his own speed and that blade let him punch through, even if did mean having to watch out for massive wolf jaws trying to clamp down on the back of his leg or neck. Oddly, being smaller than them turned out to be at least a partial advantage. He could dodge between trees that they had to go around. It only bought him a second or two of lead time the seconds started to add up. Terry decided that he hated being hunted. It was just a shitty, shitty feeling. Every once in a while, he’d turn and fight briefly before fleeing again. He wasn’t planning any elaborate escape. He just wanted to draw them in a specific direction. Away. He wanted to draw them away from his home and the town.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He also wasn’t above using what more “honorable” warriors would consider cheap tricks. At one point, he came across a small creek. He slowed long enough to plunge a hand down into the creek bed and seize a fistful of rocks. When he got to the other side of the creek, he turned and hurled the rocks back at the pursuing wolves. While he’d had to moderate his strength back in town with the arrows, he felt no such constraints out in the forest. The rocks acted like improved missiles. Not every rock hit a wolf. The ones that found a target didn’t hit the wolves so much as pass straight through them. His stomach was a lot stronger than it used to be, but even he felt a little ill when a rock blew out the side of a wolf’s head. Brain matter sprayed out in a fountain of gore.

He also kept trying and failing to channel the ice that other-Terry had recommended. He was certain that there was a trick to it. He even had an intuition that he already knew the trick, but couldn’t figure out how to use it for this new purpose. That left him with few alternatives to his current strategy of trying to defeat the wolves through pure attrition. The problem was that killing them with the sword meant getting in a lot closer than he felt comfortable with. Those polished glass teeth had made him unaccountable nervous, which he took as a bit of intuition that the pack could hurt him if they managed to bite him. Granted, that was just a hypothesis, but it was a hypothesis he wasn’t ready to put to the test in the name of science.

Just as importantly, the dire wolves weren’t stupid. They rarely let him get in range with the sword unless he tricked them into it. That sounded great but coming up with clever plans while running through an unfamiliar forest was a lot more difficult than it sounded. His brain or mind or both did seem to have been enhanced by changing worlds, but he was still just working with what he knew before and the rough experience he’d picked up since arriving. He wasn’t a master tactician or grand strategist. He got the sense that there was some of that kind of stuff locked away in the other-knowledge. Unfortunately, he also had the impression that information mostly applied to fighting people rather than monsters. That seemed like a bizarre omission in an infodump about a world filled with monsters, but it wasn’t like he could access it at the moment anyway. Plus, there was other-Terry’s lack of tactical advice beyond announcing that the direction of an immediate, looming threat.

“Any suggestions?” demanded Terry.

Um, said other-Terry. Don’t die.

“Not helpful!”

What do you want from me? If you can channel ice, it will be really effective. That’s all I know about them.

“How can that be all you know about fighting them?”

You grew up watching a television, said other-Terry. How much do you know about how they function?

Terry opened his mouth to shoot back a snarky remark, but that other personality had a point. He knew a lot about things like chip architecture and gearing software to work well with specific chipsets, but he didn’t know squat about how his actual computer monitor worked. He assumed that it was similar to how his flat-screen TV worked, but the internals weren’t something he dealt with in his old life. Well, how it used to work, he thought. I guess it’s not really my TV anymore.

Focus, demanded other-Terry. To your left.

Terry glanced left and saw a dire wolf closing on him. How did that damn thing get so close? He supposed it didn’t matter. What did matter was that he wasn’t going to be able to avoid it. Rather than change directions, he let his forward momentum slow like he was getting tired. He could almost feel the wolf’s anticipation grow. He slowed a little more and feigned that he hadn’t noticed the approaching monster. Timing is really going to matter with this one, he thought. It took a huge effort of will to let the dire wolf close on him. He swore he could feel the thing’s hot breath on his cheek as it lunged toward him. He spun toward the thing, did his best not to stare at the fangs that were closing toward his head, and slid into a crouch. He brought the jian up and almost instantly regretted it.

The blade cleaved one of the beast’s legs off before the blade’s glowing edge intersected with the wolf’s body. There was no resistance as the blade opened the chest cavity and stomach. That resulted in most of what had been inside the wolf either spraying or falling onto Terry. What felt like gallons of the creature’s hot blood drenched him. He had to fight his way free of a ropey pile he only recognized as intestines after the fact. It was simply one of the most grotesque experiences of Terry’s life. He stood there for several seconds just staring at the gutted monster. He didn’t feel bad about it. Survival first. That didn’t mean he could escape one salient fact.

“I feel violated,” said Terry.

Bet you wish you found someone to make that shower for you, observed other-Terry.

“You’re still a dick.”

Probably, but there are more wolves, so maybe you should stop standing around like a big, stupid fast-food value meal.