The wall gave a shiver but didn’t budge.

Jerome cursed.

The way Recoil Burst worked was that he could apply a large impulse at the place where his palms touched.  Against a gnoll’s chest it would send them flying.  Against a rock it would send it flying even faster, like a bullet.  Against a wall that seemed to be made of one single stone, with no weak points, it gave the entire building a little shake but did no other damage.

He tried again, just in case.  Maybe he could weaken the wall and eventually break through? Maybe he could eventually shake it off of its foundations?  No; both of those would take a long time if they worked at all.

Would they have to go out the front entrance, with all the danger that entailed?

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud buzzing sound.

One of the prisoners was tracing his finger along the wall.  A fine dust sprayed from where his finger traced and Jerome could see that he was making a door shape.

Eventually the man finished his motions and began to push on the stone slab he’d separated from the wall.

“You can do that?” asked another prisoner.  “You can do that and you never thought to, you know, free us?”

“It only works on the lifeless, so I cannot fight,” he replied.  “And the noise means it cannot be used stealthily.”

This man, this glorious man with his glorious power, put his shoulder against the stone and continued his efforts to dislodge the chunk he’d cut off.

“You did well.  I’ve got it from here.”  Jerome pushed him aside and used Recoil Burst on the slab.

It shot obediently away, creating a nice beautiful opening through which they could all escape.  Jerome ran through and motioned everyone else to follow him.

He should have looked first.  In that street were three ockdine and eight gnolls, all of which were engaged in vicious fighting.

Not engaged enough that the newcomers escaped their notice, however.

The ockdine bubbled unknown commands and turned towards the humans.

The gnolls regrouped and formed a defensive line in front of the humans.  One turned towards the escaping prisoners and yelled at them.  “Go back, if you value your current form!  We can’t protect you out here!”

What kind of insanity was it going on about?  Current form?  Protection?  The gnolls had just been telling him to slice up a human, and had held all these people captive, and now they were pretending to be friends?

Well, no matter.  He would use their weird attitude to his advantage.  Let the gnolls and ockdine battle it out while he and the other humans ran.

“This way!” he yelled at the humans while motioning away from the battle.

As he said that one of the gnolls broke away from the line and took towards an alleyway.  A runner?  If news of their escape got out and there was a coordinated attempt to recapture the prisoners…

Jerome used Crystal Overload.

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After two seconds of startup time the gnoll started quivering as expected, but the move was significantly weaker than before and cost double what it had previously (that is, the full price instead of the skill-reduced price).  He was running quickly through his smaller-than-before pool of MP.  Not only did the gnoll lose HP slower than when Jerome was in the mage’s body, but it was able to take struggling steps away.  It stumbled into the alleyway with plenty of HP left, breaking line of sight and thus ending the technique’s effects.

Over half of Jerome’s MP was gone.  Krystyna hadn’t spent any time training her magic skills, and Jerome had only done a little bit, so any magic he used while in her form was going to be of limited effectiveness.

The Hold technique should still work, however.  Jerome kicked himself for not using it while he still had a line of sight, then started running after the gnoll.  If it warned the other gnolls about their escape then no one was getting out of this.

To reach the escaping runner he had to pass by the fighting ockdine and gnolls.  Could he get around them?  Sneak wouldn’t work because they could already see him (and it would take too long).  He could only hope that they were too caught up in fighting to notice him.

Jerome careened around the corner, catching sight of the runner.   He tried to cast Hold, but it only resulted in a slight slow-down, as if gnoll was running through knee-deep water. Before Jerome could try again a tentacle wrapped around his ankle and interrupted his focus.

The ockdine lifted him up quickly by its hold on his ankle, hoisting him into the air nine feet, and then slamming him back down onto the street.  The entirety of Jerome’s body reverberated with pain, both from the impact at the bottom and the surprisingly damaging, whip-like snap at the top.

38% of his HP was gone just from that one attack.  Two more of those and…

He couldn’t think about it because he was once again in the air.  He tried to reach around to put his hands on the tentacle, to get off a Recoil Burst, but the momentum was just too much.

He hit the ground and lost another 39% of his HP.  Down to 33%.

He had to transform.

It couldn’t be any of the humans — none of them could fight, and it was unlikely that any could take more than two hits like this before dying.  There was a chance that their unique power could help, but did he really want to risk everything on that sort of lottery?

That left the shopkeeper gnoll, Ninuk.  The one who had sold him magical scrolls.  Surely it would know some powerful magics, something that could turn this desperate situation around.

The ockdine lifted up Jerome for one last destructive blow but only got two feet up before the transformation took hold.

Jerome, in his new body and freed from the ockdine’s grasp, flipped through the air before landing on his back.  He scrambled to all fours and backed up out of range before the ockdine could figure out what was going on.

Time to see what this new body bought him.

Name: Ninuk (Jerome Wallaby)

Race: Gnoll (Human)

Level 6 (Level 4, 195% progress)

110/110 HP

110/110 MP

180/180 SP

Statuses: None

Strength: 16

Endurance: 14

Agility: 19

Focus: 14

Dexterity: 34

Connection: 14

No.

This was horrible.

The guy was level 7 (making their average level 6) and it seemed like the only stat it had invested in was dexterity.  Jerome had nothing that used dexterity.

It got even worse when he went to the new skills.

Record-keeping.

Calligraphy.

In this life-or-death struggle he now had at his disposal Gnollish Calligraphy.

The ockdine approached.