It took Redmane half the fight, and most of his Corpus, to get Agneszka the Stitcher to the point where she was emotionally compromised.

With Pavel it seemed he’d done so right away.

“What did you do to my wife?!”

His voice boomed, so loud it made the team of beastman cannoneers at the far end of the barn wheel around in surprise to see what their leader was yelling at.

Pavel didn’t pause to explain anything to his henchmen. He had a blunderbuss in hand, and it was already pointed in Redmane’s general direction, so he pulled the trigger.

Birdshot sprayed from the barrel of the weapon. Redmane dove to the right, but he was too close to dodge it all. It ripped into his leg from the knee down, sprayed blood across the floor as he flew sideways.

He realized a bit late that he ought to have dodged in another direction.

Because now he was on the opposite side of the long table from Pavel, and Pavel had a whole row of loaded firearms directly in front of him, all of which were conveniently pointed at Redmane already.

Pavel snatched a musket, fired it, tossed it, snatched the next and fired.

Redmane dodged a musket ball so closely it skinned his cheek and tore his ear on its way by. He was not so fortunate with the next one, which slammed into the center of his chest. He could feel the ball of hot metal in there, searing his insides.

Corpus: 1626

He’d had enough of that already.

Redmane snarled and stepped up to grab the edge of the table and flip it. Guns went flying as Pavel staggered backward, cursing, a freshly fired musket still in his hands. He leapt over the table before the beastman could grab for another weapon. But Pavel didn’t, instead he answered Redmane’s lunge with a bayonet stab that took him in the shoulder.

Corpus: 1311

Pavel unstuck the bayonet by kicking Redmane in the gut, sending him backpedaling as he dropped the musket and stooped over to fetch another one.

Bullets struck the wall beside Redmane from another angle. Redmane flinched, looked to his left to see that the cannon team had taken up arms in defense of their boss, and were now firing pistols and muskets in his direction.

He crouched low, refocused on the foe ahead of him.

Pavel had a new weapon in hand. Already he had it aimed at Redmane.

The gun went off with a crack and a puff of smoke, but Redmane was already in motion.

His right claw struck the weapon in half, the next sheared straight down the center of Pavel’s face and chest.

Bleeding (4)

But Pavel was no pushover, even without a weapon. He struck back with his fists, battering Redmane’s guard with all the bestial strength hidden within his lanky frame. He knew where to strike, and how, suggesting he’d been a boxer before taking up gunsmithing.

Redmane wished he’d stuck to that. There was honor in fighting face to face.

Unfortunately for Pavel, the beastman was outgunned in that arena, so to speak.

Pavel advanced behind his jab, threw a body shot that landed flush on Redmane’s ribs. In exchange Redmane clawed his face open from right to left, and his chest open from left to right.

Bleeding (8)

Bleeding (12)

Pavel wasn’t looking good already. Blood poured from his wounds, coating him in red.

“Your woman put up more of a fight than you,” said Redmane.

Pavel bared his teeth in a snarl. His eyes burned with hatred. “If you harmed one hair upon her head…”

“I killed her,” said Redmane. “She was a butcher, and a fiend.”

The Powder Keg boss roared and lunged like he was going to put his hands around Redmane’s neck. Redmane caught his arms midway, which began a brief wrestling match on their feet. Both Redmane and Pavel’s arms shook with the strain as each tried to gain the upper hand over the other in a contest of might against might.

Redmane felt a tingle of panic when he realized Pavel had the upper hand. The leader of the Powder Kegs was slowly but surely bearing down on him, separating his arms, looming over him as he drew closer and closer by inches.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Another salvo of shots hit the wall around Redmane. This time one struck his hip, digging deep into the flesh.

Corpus: 1009

Redmane supposed this was going to be a brief battle, one way or the other.

Pavel’s crazed face was now inches from Redmane’s.

“Whatever you did to her…” his hateful eyes did their utmost to try to bore through Redmane’s head. “Whatever harm you brought to Agneszka, I shall visit on you three times ov—“

Redmane bit Pavel’s face off.

Only the lower half. But it did the job.

The bite landed so swiftly Pavel barely had an instant for his eyes to widen, let alone react. Redmane’s jaws snapped off a chunk of his head and he wailed in pain, his grip on Redmane’s arms suddenly slack, his face pulled away sharply. He let go and took a few steps backward, blood streaming down his chin and neck in a sheet of glistening red. The bite left Pavel's tongue dangling grotesquely, the upper row of teeth exposed, the rest a bleeding orifice.

Blood-soaked skin hung loosely from the ruin of his jaw. He gurgled, coughed out a gout of blood and attempted to speak, but the results were incomprehensible.

Redmane charged, to put him out of his misery.

But Pavel, despite his grievous injury, had at least one more nasty surprise in store.

His eyes gleamed with malice when Redmane burst into motion.

He kicked over the barrel of bombs beside him, a feat of strength even for a beastman.

And at the same time, he ripped an oil lantern off the wall and pitched it down at the bombs spilling onto the floor in front of them both.

Several fuses lit.

Redmane turned and ran the opposite direction.

Another fusillade of bullets struck the wall behind him, chasing him. The cannon team hadn’t seen what happened yet apparently.

There was an open window ahead on his left. He could dive through it, get clear of the explosion.

No sooner did his feet leave the ground did an extra force lend a hand.

The force of a massive explosion.

The popping sounds of bombs bursting multiplied until it was deafening stacatto.

The blast hurled Redmane through the window, and against the stone wall of the building next to it.

He hit the wall face first and blacked out.

When he came to, blinking his eyes open in an all too familiar daze of head trauma, Redmane again found himself buried in rubble that was once a coherent structure. His back was pinned against the stone wall, and on top of him sat a pile of blown out planks. The air smelled of smoke, and indeed, there was a growing fire burning before him on the remains of the barn.

Shouting sounded out all around him. The beastmen, no doubt wondering what happened.

The System shared the important part with Redmane. And it had a few other items for him to review.

Powder Keg Pavel Slain

Tasks Completed: 2/4

Level Up

Level 40 —> Level 41

Level 41 —> Level 42

Level 42 —> Level 43

Quality Points awaiting allocation: 3

Skill Rank Up

—

Lion's Lunge

Common Class Skill

Rank 2 - Evolution Possible

Active - Variable (Base: 15 Gnosis)

(Rank 1) The Imbued leaps at his Prey to deliver a crushing blow.

This attack channels the Hunter's primal power into a decisive strike which deals extra damage and knockback to a single creature. If the targeted creature has been marked as Prey by Hunter's Mark, their Armor is halved against this attack.

(Rank 2) The Imbued may follow the first blow with up to three more consecutive attacks, each with the same enhancement to damage, knockback, and potential armor negation as the first, at a cost of 5 Gnosis per attack. Consecutive attacks may be directed toward the original target or separate targets.

—

A fine upgrade to the Skill, truly.

The frustrating thing was its Gnosis requirement. Or rather, his enduring lack of said resource.

He took the Quality Points and put them into Grace.

Grace 16 —> 19

Perhaps he’d have avoided being slammed into a stone wall if he’d been a bit faster.

Probably not.

He checked his Corpus, bracing for bad news.

Corpus: 335

It was indeed bad news.

And there were enemies about still. He’d have to be cautious.

Down below, on the hillside, he could still here the distinctive shrieks and howls of Stitchwork creatures. The beastmen continued to hold them at bay. Hopefully they would prevail. He’d rather fight beastmen than undead, they were much more filling.

“Boss!” a beastman called out, nearby. “Aye, you in there?”

He felt weight above him. Boots walking across the pile of rubble.

They were searching for Pavel.

Redmane tried to crawl up through the wreckage to get to one of them. Get a claw around their ankle and drag them down for a quick bite.

The disturbance made all the footsteps above him stop. They had felt him moving beneath them.

“Boss?” one called out.

Redmane paused, considered what to do.

Then he put his hands on the wood over his head and shook it a bit.

“He’s down there!”

Several more pairs of feet began to clamber around above him. He could hear planks and other debris being lifted off the top of the pile and tossed. Nobody spoke. There was a lot of huffing and puffing. Evidently Pavel’s men valued him.

Unfortunately the System had sent Redmane here to eliminate them all. But at least these ones wouldn’t have to lament their misfortune for too much longer.

As Redmane felt the team of beastmen begin to close in on him from above, rapidly digging down toward his location, he looked around for a place where he could tuck himself in and hide. He’d nab one by surprise, eat as fast as he could before his mates realized what was going on.

No sooner had he done so than the stack of rubble overhead come free, exposing open air and the light of the moons.

“Boss?” the beastman extended his torch into the hole.

Redmane slid back from its light. A keener observer would have noticed the reflective points of Redmane’s feral eyes at the edge of the shadows.

“Boss, you down there?”

He dared to climb down into the rubble to get a closer look, see if he had to dig Pavel out.

But he didn’t find Pavel.

Corpus: 899

The sudden violent jostling and screams were a dead giveaway to the others, unfortunately.

One my one he pulled them down into the wreckage, using it as cover from the ones who were smart enough to open fire immediately and not simply stand and stare in shock.

They may be Monsters, but there was a true predator among them now.

Corpus: 1516

Redmane emerged from the rubble when it was done, wiping blood from his face with one hand, pushing aside a section of wall with the other.

Down at the bottom of the hillside street, a pack of beastmen were closing in for the kill on the final Stitchwork Sentinel.

Good.

He’d feast on those, and every beastman between here and the other side of the river.