The spear “only” took out 53% of his HP, but the bleeding and the spears that would soon follow would take him down for good.

His time in Krystyna’s form, by far the strongest he had access to, had been terribly short. He’d managed to take out two of the three remaining mages… but that wasn’t enough. He needed to take them all out. Already the hole in the wall was shrunken so that it was barely big enough for a gnoll to fit through. Half a minute more and it would be impassable.

He switched forms, and his new gnoll body was blessedly free of the spears. Another three spears struck at where he had previously been, and in the confusion he was able to temporarily slip past the warriors and strike out towards the last mage on all fours, hitting a speed the spear-wielders couldn’t match.

Two throwing spears landed beside him, and a third hit him in the back.

Switch.

He reached the mage just in time and knocked it down with a claw swipe. He ducked and rolled, grabbing the body on his way and ending with it on top of him, almost as a shield. The hapless gnoll mage absorbed two throwing spears and died.

Jerome used Recoil Burst to fling the body into the row of approaching warriors.

It disrupted their middle, letting Jerome right himself and attack the flank to his right. For a precious few seconds, he had ’only’ five warrior to worry about.

He could survive being impaled on a spear as long as he had a form left and he didn’t get hit in the head or neck, so he could afford to be reckless. It still hurt to get impaled, and he would feel every single spasm of the dying body’s pain, but the adrenaline and heady Purpose let him risk it. He used Blast Off in order to get high enough that his head wasn’t at risk. He lost control of his trajectory the second he left ground, so he was practically guaranteed to get stuck, but it would only get his lower body and torso.

Sure enough, one came up through his stomach and pierced his lung, taking out 54% of his HP. Air and blood escaped through the hole in his stomach, almost making him pass out before he remembered to

Switch.

He was in a new body and the pain was only an excruciating echo in his head, like he was remembering a wound from last week. He was also among the right flank and prepared to wreak havoc.

First he kicked out at the one closest to the other flank and used Recoil Burst to send it flying into them. That should distract them for a bit. He dodged a spear, but then was taken by surprise when the gnoll spun the spear like a staff and knocked him to the ground.

Right. Spears were versatile weapons. The pointy ends got all the press, but there were multiple ways to make them dangerous.

Said pointy end almost found his neck. He dodged that one, but another found his leg.

He used a Crystal Overload + Magic Burst as this form’s final contribution.

Switch.

At this rate he would run out of forms before killing the rest of the warriors. Either that or they’d get lucky and end up spearing him in the head. These weak gnoll forms wouldn’t be able to withstand that much damage.

Which of his moves wasn’t he using?

Portal Hands.

He used Blast Off to escape the current tangle and ended up about five feet away from the group he’d been fighting. Then he sent a Portal Hand and knocked a gnoll to the side with Recoil Burst, immediately recalled it, then repeated the trick with a second gnoll.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

However, they weren’t taking much damage. They only took a couple % of HP damage unless they hit a wall, and even then it was less than 10%. If he was in his own form he might be able to portal in two hands and snap their neck, but as this gnoll he could only send in claw attacks, punches and kicks, and Recoil Burst.

He could still use Crystal Overload. Not in channeled form, since he’d doubtless get taken by a throwing spear, but with Magic Burst. Based on his number of forms and the amount of damage the warriors were taking per hit he wouldn’t be able to finish them off with that alone… but it could contribute. A warrior changed him, and he created a burst of Crystal Overload which crippled the gnoll long enough to make it drop its spear and topple over in the direction it had been running.

Jerome took that opportunity to use Portal Hand on his leg and curb-stomp the warrior to death.

There it was. There was his strategy. If they ran at him he’d kill them with that combination. If they began moving slowly out of fear, that was a victory in itself.

Eleven warriors left. He could do this.

But the farther group, they still weren’t approaching. In fact, they were huddled around… one of his army! His army was wriggling painstakingly through the tiny hole in the wall that remained. One every ten seconds or so. The farther group was killing them almost as soon as they entered, but Jerome could put a stop to that.

Portal Hand + Recoil sent one of the capital gnolls tumbling into two others. There. Now the fight was one on three instead of one on six. His gnoll would still lose, but maybe the next one would make it inside the walls in time.

A capital gnoll tried throwing a spear at the new invader before he exited the hole, but Jerome did a series of frantic Portal Hands to try and punch the spear off course. It was expensive to his SP, and it took several tries, but eventually the punch landed and the spear ended up a foot to the side of Jerome’s relieved ally.

Three against eleven. If he could keep the two gnolls on this side of the wall alive then soon it would be four against eleven. He wished he could widen the gap in the wall, but that would require Heavy Channeling and he wasn’t able to spare the attention. At least no other capital gnolls were coming — they were quite occupied with the two other fronts that Jerome’s armies had opened.

Four gnolls approached Jerome slowly.

Against four he could hold his own, even in a weaker gnoll form.

Then he realized: he’d touched some of these gnoll warriors. He could transform into them.

So he did.

Yes, this was power. He had increased Strength and Agility — not as much as his base form, and not even close to when he was in Krystyna’s form, but much better than when he was a random gnoll off the street. He also had some skill with spears, and if he grabbed hold of one he’d be able to do much more than simply throw it.

Two spears stabbed at him and he knocked them to the side with his arm. Then he twisted his hand so it grasped the shaft of one of them, turned so that he could get his second hand on it, then spun to yank it out of the gnoll’s hand… and swung back around to spear it with its own weapon. Its eyes went wide.

The others weren’t just standing around while that happened. As soon as his spear stuck in the gnoll, the two who hadn’t attacked before took advantage of his presumed immobility and made their strikes. However, he had no reason to try to pull out the spear or even keep using it as a weapon like they presumed. He let go of it and dodged them both.

Once the tips were past he slammed his foot down on one, knocking it out of the gnoll’s hands. It panicked and tried to pull out a thinner throwing spear, and Jerome took advantage of that to land a solid round kick on its ribs. It lost its footing, and a second kick to the same spot sent it into the other recovering gnoll.

Jerome pounced on them both, pinning them to the ground and using Recoil Burst to splatter their brains against the street.

The fourth gnoll in the group then speared him in the back.

Switch.

Another warrior form this time, one of the two he’d just killed.

From here it was easy. The numerical odds were evened, and he had access to the stronger gnoll warrior forms.

After the warriors were slaughtered he channeled Shape Earth to let his army in even faster, and pretty soon they were all through.

Krystyna saw him and, after a second where she most likely checked his stats to be sure of his identity, she came over and gave an excited smile.

“It’s working!” she said.

“That it is. Let’s go relieve our troops.”