Intimacy Bonus?

He had hundreds of pounds of solid fur and claw towering over him, so he would have to figure out later what an Intimacy Bonus was. If they survived this, maybe he could explore it later with Krystyna… it sounded fun.

A claw came at him and he dodged, much quicker than he was used to. Then he sent an upper-cut into Karamir’s jaw, hurting it, dizzying it, and only doing a tiny bit of damage to himself.

Having both legs again was nice, especially since his opponent was still hobbled.

Grappling felt more natural than ever before. When the next swipe came he dodged and applied an elbow lock on the outstretched arm, smoother than when he’d practiced it, then used an extra-strong Recoil Burst to break the joint.

Karamir was still vastly stronger than him, and had more endurance, but the tables had turned. It was at 21% health and had two blown joints.

“How?” The giant gnoll asked plaintively. It knew the battle was over as well. “Please, don’t let Katani tame you. If he tames you, it’s slavery for the rest of us.”

Who was this Katani that he kept talking about? Some enemy of Karamir’s gnoll troupe, and a powerful one at that, but that could be anything.

Could he take this gnoll prisoner and question it? Jerome looked at Krystyna, saw that she was out of MP and running quickly out of SP. He could leave this giant gnoll here, but if it had some way of healing then that could be a fatal mistake.

Better to be sure.

Jerome put one hand on the side of the giant gnoll’s neck and another on the opposite side of its head, then used Recoil Burst.

Its neck snapped, killing it instantly.

Time to clean up the rest of this mess.

Krystyna was holding her own against the eight smaller gnolls. They had only managed to get a few hits on her — eight against one! — but her MP was gone and her SP bar was at 19%. Another minute and she would have been on the ground gasping for breath while they pummeled her.

Jerome jogged towards the melee, not going full pace so that he could channel Refill SP on Krystyna while moving. She didn’t dare look up at him, lest she get hit, but she smiled. She knew what it meant. Help was on the way.

Once her SP bar filled completely Jerome sprung into action. He sprinted towards the nearest gnoll and grabbed its arm while placing his other hand on the shoulder blade. A quick Recoil Burst and the thing’s shoulder snapped.

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How had he known how to do that? Krystyna had showed him the basics of standing grappling, how the various joints didn’t want to move, and how Recoil Burst could quickly make them move in those directions anyways… but that was smooth. She’d shown him a shoulder lock while grappling, and he’d then transferred that principle it to standing grappling as if he’d practiced it a hundred times.

He glanced at his Grappling skill and it was… 10?

His base Grappling skill was 5. Krystyna’s was 9. Somehow the average of that was 10?

What?

No time to think about it. He was half scared that if he looked again it might go down. Just use it while it was there and don’t ask too many questions, at least until all the gnolls were dead.

The one in front of him still had a working shoulder, one attached to a set of claws. It turned around swiped at Jerome. To counter, Jerome pulled on the arm he was already holding to throw the gnoll off balance and make the swipe miss. Then in the same motion he swept the gnoll’s ankles with his foot, sending it onto its back.

He reached down, put his hand on the thing’s face, and used a Recoil Burst. The head, already resting on the ground, had nowhere to go, and so it was like hammer striking an anvil… with a watermelon in between.

All of that happened in ten seconds or less.

It wasn’t the absolute most deadly he’d ever been, but it somehow felt more brutal doing it this way, in a human form, than when he had exploded gnoll bodies using a couple dozen suckers. Being in an ockdine body always felt strange and unreal, but ripping apart limbs and exploding faces with bare hands felt real and raw.

If it wasn’t for his Quest, and the fact that the gnolls had attacked them first, he might even have felt guilty.

But he did have his Quest, and the gnolls had indeed attacked first, so he didn’t feel guilty at all about what he did next.

First he wanted to clear some space. He did a basic two-handed Recoil Burst on one gnoll, aiming it so that it hit two of its comrades and knocked all three of them over. His Recoil Burst was vastly stronger than he was used to, so the gnolls went farther and took more damage that he would have expected.

Four visibly nervous gnolls remained standing against Krystyna and Jerome. They knew they were dead. Everyone involved knew what was coming. It was just a matter of cleaning up.

“What’s going on?” Krystyna asked as she dodged a blow from a gnoll, tossed it over her shoulder, and then kicked a econd one in the chest. “How are you suddenly so good at hand to hand combat?”

“Maybe,” said Jerome, “I’m just really good at being inside you.”

Krystyna stomped a gnoll’s face until it died, caught another one in a sacrificial flip that left them both on the ground, and choked it out while punching it in the face to hurry up the dying process. During that time Jerome had thrown a gnoll into another, toppling them both, then did the hammer-anvil-watermelon trick with both of their heads at once, one hand for each. Then he went over to the pile of three gnolls he’d knocked over earlier, who were each in various stages of recovering their feet, and did spectacular violence on them until they died.

Victory.

They’d fought twelve gnolls, including a mage and a giant Commander, and won.

Krystyna slapped him.