Jerome was held down by a long-distance wrist lock, his soul was separated so he couldn’t transform without a horrible cost, and the kid he was trying to rescue was about to be mauled to death.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Jerome broke his own wrist.

Every instinct, every impulse told him not to do it.  Wrists don’t heal quickly, and the ability to transform doesn’t make one immune to pain.  Wrist locks are designed so that pulling against it is so painful, so obviously harmful to the joint’s long-term health, that the victim would rather just stay there.

But he did it.

He yanked hard and the delicate tendons in his wrist gave way.  The many small bones of his wrist pressed and ground against each other in an unnatural manner.  The whole process was much more complex and painful than a simple snap.

Then he just kept on pulling, ignoring the pain as best he could and watching his HP dwindle.  It was a hellish life-or-death tug of war.  If he could get his hand free he could portal it back and transform.  If he couldn’t, he would die in pain.

Rayi faced a charging gnoll twice his size, so he wouldn’t be any help.

Except he was.

Despite the beast barreling towards him, Rayi portal punched the one that was killing Jerome.

Even after the gnoll ran into him and took him down to the ground, Rayi send another portal punch, knocking Jerome’s gnoll in the jaw.

Madman.  The kid was a madman.  Only an insane person would sacrifice themselves that way.  Was it because Rayi was religious and thought he would respawn?

Whatever the reason, it worked.  The gnoll let go of Jerome’s wrist long enough that he could pull it back through the portal.

He had less than 5% HP left when he transformed into a different gnoll, soul intact and with a body as good as new.  Lesson learned: don’t use Portal Hands frivolously or it could cost part of his soul.

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His next use of it was anything but frivolous.

Rayi was dying.  He was at 44% of his HP, pinned to the ground, with the gnoll scratching at him relentlessly and tearing off huge chunks of flesh and health.  Rayi’s strikes, on the other hand, were doing practically nothing.

If Jerome ran at the gnoll to take it down, without risking himself by using Portal Hands, then Rayi would surely die before he got there.

So he used Portal Hands.  He put his newly-discovered soul at risk.

This world was making him an idiot.

The first strike was a simple Recoil Burst against the gnoll from the side, knocking it off of Rayi.

The burst didn’t take the gnoll very far, however.  It was already on the ground and it was able to quickly right itself.  Soon it would be back onto Rayi.

Jerome sent out a claw strike with Portal Hands.

It was a risk.  The creature was aware of him now.

The beast blocked most of the damage, but it didn’t have enough time to grab Jerome’s hand before Jerome pulled it back through the portal.

Clearly Jerome was a bigger threat than Rayi.  The gnoll got up, backed away from the boy so he couldn’t be tripped, and prepared to counter the onslaught.

In a straight one-on-one fight the gnoll would probably win.

If Jerome used his Portal Hands to push on the thing’s chest, he ran a huge risk of losing a part of himself permanently.

So he got clever.

He Portaled a hand behind the gnoll and then maneuvered it… to the back of the gnoll’s knee.  One quick Recoil Burst and the creature collapsed onto the ground, dazed and howling in pain.  He hadn’t gotten the hand exactly behind the knee, so the Recoil Burst had been at a bit of an angle, and knees were fragile things.

The rest of Jerome’s body caught up with the fight’s location and he leapt onto the gnoll.  He slashed at its face repeatedly, taking advantage of its pain and confusion, whittling down its health.

It screamed horribly.

And then it was dead.

It was dead and they were alive.

Jerome used Refill HP on Rayi.  It was slow because neither he nor the gnoll whose body he inhabited had high Focus or Connection, and Jerome’s low Healing skill was cut in half.  But it did the trick.

It was only after a good ten or fifteen seconds passed and Rayi was fully healed that they thought to wonder why the second gnoll hadn’t attacked.  That’s because it had run off… and was now coming back with three more gnolls.

They couldn’t defeat four gnolls.  They’d had enough trouble with two.

However, the gate was currently unguarded.

“Let’s run.”