I hurled the small ball of Canaver remains into the air and, as the Argentinian monetary base, they expanded in every direction.

“Do I need to barkticipate?” asked Mariana.

“Not for now.”

Canaver landed with a heavy thud. Panting, muscles rearranging under the surface, eyes flowing all over the body to gather on the head.

“Can I?” asked Mariana.

“Yes, can you are,” I told her with an endearing tone.

“I am a can who can, then?”

“No, you are a can who can’t.”

“But how can I be a can who can’t if I am a can still, for that would make me a can’t. An undog. The ontological walls would close in,” she argued, tilting her golden head.

“Well, suppose you have an Asian friend, and you want to preserve him for posterity: Can a can can Khan?”

Canaver and Dogclad clashed, his hands finding the undead mounds of putrid flesh and probing a hole in it, just to then heave the big abomination and smash it against the ground, spreading pit bull ungoodness all over the dance floor.

But I had to carry on. I had a mission. “Furthermore, suppose a dog descends directly from a biblical character, by means of adoption of course, and wants to preserve his Asian friend: Can Cain’s kin can can Khan?”

Mariana’s eyes did as magnets and the pupils repelled each other, her gaze unfocusing for a second.

“Yes. Yes he can.” Was her unsatisfactory answer. I had won, I had broken her. Canned her into submission.

“And if he is canned and in a tropical paradise: Can canned Cancun Cain’s kin can Khan?”

Florencia snapped and Walter got slapped.

“Stop that,” Dogclad begged as he struggled against Canaver, with his hands keeping the maw open. “I will not stand it for another second.”

“You mean you can not stand it?”

Sabrina produced a frying pan out of nowhere, hit me with it on the top of the head, and stashed it back into her inventory. Her weak-ass noodle arms didn’t manage to hurt me, but it was slightly disorienting.

“What do you use the pan for usually, sis?” asked Florencia.

“I am an engineer. Hammer, fan, measurement tool: the uses of a pan are endless.”

“Cooking?” she pronged Sabrina on the shoulder with the index finger.

“Only synthetic drugs, as you know.”

By the third time Dogclad had torn Canaver asunder, I got slightly vexed. It costed me a few points of mana to reassemble him, it took me a whole three seconds to regenerate that amount. Three!

“How much do you want to go away?”

“I don’t do this for money, I do it for the trill of the hunt.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Choose a number of zeroes.”

“If you happen to have a trillion of gold, I’ll gladly take…” I gestured Mariana to make the transaction “That’s… that’s a quintillion…”

“That’s because Mariana is a decent person.”

“I am dog,” Mariana astutely observed.

“And I am fucking rich! I can buy the dogs I need to kill now, pay schmucks to take them to the shrines and then give them to me once they have their bloodlines unlocked.”

I snapped my fingers to recall Canaver to my side. Like a big slug he slithered, leaving putrid dog bits there where he touched the floor.

I raised an accusatory finger “Listen here, motherfucker. To this world, I am a full-fledged villain.” I began pacing from side to side, hands behind my back, stare on the floor. “And that has to have some positive effect on how they treat me: respect by fear is respect all the same.” I turned to him, walked up to his sexy figure, and placed a finger amongst his manly, hairy, bare pecs. “What would they say if they realize I helped reform the widely-feared Dogclad?” Opened my arms and took a few steps back. “Look at yourself, dude, you are like a the perfect murderhobo. Your murder dogs! You wear their skin! You can somehow use their bloodlines still! Genderbent unwashed Cruella de Vil, you are!”

“Hey, I shower biweekly,” the wall of stench complained.

“That’s beside the point, cumshine.”

Dogclad raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue.

“Did he just say ‘cumshine’?” I heard Felicia ask the princesses.

“Ever read the passage of the bible where God promises he would not flood the world again? That is because he devised Walter as a punishment for our sins,” explained Sabrina.

“Don’t be that harsh on him, he just needs love and a few more beatings,” added Florencia.

“Fine, I’ll see to keep the appearance of a villain. A sophisticated one.” He flicked me on the nose, and I swear I almost felt the septum digging into my brain, biting its way in like a Teredo attending a convention of fan-fickers.

The next thing I felt was the floor against my back, and it wasn’t supposed to be there, nor the hole in the ceiling in front of me.

The border collie skins around Dogclad’s shins and feet began to shine, emanating frolicking clouds of sheep-colored light. “See you later” he said, crouching. Then, he jumped, flailing his arms as he traversed the air, flying towards freedom.

“Look at him go, like I didn’t deserve to maul him and his family,” lamented Canaver.

“Oh, oh, I wanna try!” said Mariana, and, after a few stretches, she crouched as far as she could and bounced like a spring, with about half the grace of Dogclad and a quarter of the aim.

That’s how the roof of that building got his second hole that day. I stood and went up to Felicia.

“Well, that gets rid of him, tell me about the shrine, now.”

“The deal was beating him, not paying him to go away. You rewarded a criminal for his behavior,” she said all haughty and offended.

“What do you want to tell me where the Retriever shrine is?”

“Bring us Dogclad’s head on a platter. No… me. Bring me his head on a platter,” she proposed.

I cursed under my breath, counted to fifteen, and faced the half-elf sisters.

“As soon as Mariana comes back, we are teleporting to the castle.” Turned back towards Felicia. “You will have his head one day, and if you back off on the deal then, remember dead collies make for very good zombies.”

She grabbed me from the belt poncho.

“Touch my collies and you are a dead man.”

“I already died once, lady. The only thing I fear is elves.”

“And women,” Sabrina muttered, thinking I would not hear her.

“Listen to me, bitch,” I exploded against her. “Women fear me. I am the scourge of femalekin all over the land! I have learned how to render them unnecessary for my enjoyment, I have grown far more powerful than your standard masturbator,” I said all of this while gesturing rather liberally with my hands. “No man walking the God-forsaken Earth can fathom the terabytes upon terabytes of hentai games stashed in my hard drives, some of them funded solely by me, and for me. I am the sponsor of the only farming sim where, instead of crops, you grow slime girls, and instead of watering, you need to—”

“Flor is here,” Sabrina said, between her teeth, looking at me in a way that suggested that, were I to ruin her sister’s innocence, I would be met with a fate worse than death, which probably included… integrals.

Sorry, the mere thought sends chills sideways through my spine.

“… you need to take extremely good care of them and supply them with only the best organic fertilizers.”

“That sounds boring.”

“It’s a game best enjoyed in hard mode,” I said, and winked at Sabrina. Her grimace could have been accepted as the dictionary definition of disgust.

“Is he always this… ribald?” asked Felicia.

Sabrina nodded.

I nodded.

Mariana telepathed a nod.

Flor shrugged.

“Anyway, we are stuck here until Mar comes back, so, Felicia, can I ask for a dog related favor? A small one.”

“No…” her frown gradually became an expression of defeat as she looked around. “Okay, but be quick.”

“Show me your finest collection of Poms.”