The grin that had been splitting Enochia's face finally cracked, not from fear, fuck that, but from the sheer irritated disbelief that something this big had its sight on her.

  Because there it was, barreling out from behind of one of the houses was a boar the size of a two-story building. Its hide was dark and scorched, stretched tight over dense muscle, as if the body had been hardened by heat. Steam seeped from its skin in slow, hissing breaths, and where a normal pig's head should have been sat this obscene, oversized flaming skull with two gigantic tusks that could have skewered a horse, easily. The thing had to be pushing twenty-five feet at the shoulder, maybe more if you counted the corona of fire licking off its spine like a bad mohawk.

  Enochia's knights snapped instantly into their wall formation again, shields up, but she was already vaulting clean over their heads in one fluid jump, boots kissing the pauldron of the rearmost knight for extra lift. She trusted them implicitly with the remaining imps, since those little shits were basically confetti to her summons at this point. A couple of the runts were dumb enough to swivel toward her mid-scramble, which was a big mistake. A few black blades flashed in perfect tandem, and two died before the idiots even finished turning.

  She touched down maybe fifteen feet behind the group. The boar was eating distance like it was starving, covering dozens of yards two thunderous strides. It was pretty obvious it was using some kind of skill as well, which made her a bit uneasy, although equally excited. Heat rolled off the thing in nauseating waves; she could feel her eyebrows trying to singe even from here.

  But Enochia didn't flinch.

  "Come on, you ugly barbecue reject," she muttered through clenched teeth, "Just a little closer—"

  It continued its charge, covering more and more and more and more—

  "NOW."

  [Chains of Nebuchadnezzar]

  The skill detonated outward.

  From fingertips, from knuckles, from the meat of her palms, from wrists, forearms, even the crooks of her elbows, links screamed into existence faster than the eye could track, more than fifty individual strands whipping forward in a roaring, overlapping storm. They collided mid-flight, clanging against each other with metallic shrieks that drowned out the boar's bellow, forming a writhing wall of iron links before slamming into her enemy.

  [110 DMG dealt × 35]

  They overlapped. They tangled. They crushed inward from every angle at once. The boar's colossal skull jerked once as the first dozen links punched through flaming bone; then the rest arrived like a meteor shower. Both tusks cracked. Molten hide split in ragged strips. Ribs that could have roofed a house buckled inward with wet snaps. The chains kept going past the ruined torso, past the suddenly limp legs, extending another ten, twelve feet beyond the corpse before the skill's range finally gave out and fell to the ground.

  [+13,400 XP]

  [+15 Souls]

  [+2 Great Tusk]

  Instantly Enochia’s poor arms got utterly crushed under the obscene yank of her own chains, hauling her forward like a ragdoll snagged on a speeding train through the dirt and shattered stone.

  She felt every millimeter of bone give way at once in a sickening concert of cracks and wet pops, the pressure building so fast her mind flashed one single furious word ‘Idiot’ before she tried to choke out a simple disspell, mouth already opening on the first syllable when the pain detonated fully and ripped a visceral, throat-shredding scream out of her instead.

  “FUUUUCK—YOU PIECE OF SHIT—MY ARMS—FUCKING HELL, [Disspe—AAAARGH!”

  The words came out shredded and bubbling, each one punctuated by another violent jolt as the chains kept dragging, boots scraping useless furrows in the ground, body bouncing and twisting while her arms stretched into a grotesque shape.

  [-550 HP]

  Then to top it off, a new weight slammed onto her back from a small, surviving imp, one of the overlooked runts that had somehow crawled out of the earlier slaughter, claws scrabbling across torn leather before its needle teeth punched deep into the meat between her shoulder blades.

  “FU—!”

  The rest drowned under a fresh wave of agony that rolled up her spine and crashed into the agony already howling through her arms, forcing another scream up from somewhere deep inside.

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  [-64 HP]

  With a voice that could only be called demonic, she finally forced it out.

  [DISPEL]

  The chains snapped out of existence and the sudden release felt absolutely divine.

  She pitched forward hard as her knees slammed into the churned earth, the impact rattling straight up her spine and clacking her teeth together so loud she tasted blood behind them. Instinct or whatever stubborn scrap of pride still lived in her chest made her throw her hands out to catch herself anyway.

  The second those pulped, swollen arms took weight, agony lit up again, but it was levels lower than before. Her vision grayed out for a long, sick second, but she soon got her shit together.

  Like a robot, without showing a single ounce of pain, she turned her head around. The imp was still crouched there on her back, hissing, muzzle wet with her blood.

  Shaky, brutalized hands pushed her up, and once free from her weight, closed around the creature’s throat. The grip sent fresh wet pops through her wrists and forearms, but she squeezed anyway, harder than she’d ever squeezed anything.

  She lifted the imp clean off her back, small legs kicking and claws raking uselessly at her forearms, then slammed it down into the packed earth so hard the impact cratered a shallow bowl and sent dust billowing outward in a dirty ring.

  Again.

  Face-first.

  Again.

  Each slam rang louder than the last, wet crunches of bone giving way, black ash splattering across her gauntlets while she kept going until the thing went limp and its skull felt soft under her grip.

  She dropped it, stepped over the twitching demon and raised one boot high above its head. Without giving it a second thought, she brought it down with every scrap of rage and weight she had left.

  The head burst like a rotten tomato, gray dust and squirting sideways across the dirt.

  Enochia stood there swaying like a drunk after a bar fight. Her knights were closing in fast now, even even though she was pissed they let an imp jump onto her, she had to admit it was nice to be worried about.

  As they were on their way to her, she felt a prickle that started at the base of her skull and crawled down her spine. Danger! She knew she felt danger.

  ‘This has to be that new demonic instinct skill.’ some detached part of her brain supplied. ‘Feels really weird… I don’t like it.’

  She turned her head, and there was the danger in the form of two more beasts charging out from that village. They were five feet at the shoulder easy, maybe more when they bunched to leap. These guys were demonic hounds, and they were lean and black-furred with red glowing eyes and jaws that dripped lava. Little known fact, but the more evolved a demon became, the more distinct they were. That was the reason all the imps looked the same, while a lot of beasts were different in appearance. If you were to take a knight though, almost none looked the same. The point was, they were the same as that boar. After everything, two fucking more beasts...

  No problem.

  “Cervain, time for some action.”

  A hard gust of wind slammed past her from nowhere, whipping her hair across her face

  The hounds were already closing the not that big distance, eyes locked first on the knights scrambling to get between them and that demon.

  From their point of view, that demon was a traitorous one, working with the armored humans, and she was somehow able to kill their brother in a single shot. But…

  They were smarter than the imps or spirits. Way smarter. And so, they decided to sit out and scan the battlefield before charging in, to see what the enemy was capable of. For their patience, they were able to see that she was greatly weakened, and chose to rush in before she could fully heal again. The rush and worry of those humans in armor made her seem even more desperate now.

  But, any half-formed thought in those glowing skulls vanished the instant a strange new sound started.

  [Horn of the End]

  A low, bone-rattling note blasted from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  The entire ring of Hell seemed to shudder under it. Loose stones jumped an inch off the ground. Enochia’s own teeth buzzed in her skull and even she felt a flicker of discomfort crawl under her skin.

  The hounds froze mid-stride. Just for a heartbeat, which was more than long enough.

  [Black Tread]

  Cervain appeared above them, and dropped out of the air above like a falling boulder.

  He hit the ground between the two hounds knees-first, sword already driving downward in a single brutal stab. The blade punched through packed earth with a metallic screech and black horns exploded upward from the impact point in a perfect circle. They speared both hounds through the ribs and pinned them writhing.

  [Velvet Dread]

  Small red horns pushed through the black plate along Cervain’s forearms, curling like fresh-grown antlers. His helm tilted back and he let out a scream that wasn’t human, wasn’t even demonic in any clean way, but something ancient and starving. Then he started moving.

  Fast. Too fast. And at that absurd speed started slashing at both of them at once, turning ot the other once a slash was delivered to the first one, the returning to hit the already hit one, again and again.

  The left hound lunged despite the horn through its chest. Cervain parried the bite with the flat of his sword, twisted, and drove an elbow into the side of its skull. The right one snapped at his leg, but he sidestepped, brought the blade around in a low arc, and opened its throat from jaw to shoulder in a single wet line.

  They kept fighting, but Cervain was nowhere to be hit. A feint here, a parry there, every motion graceful, put powerful. One hound almost got teeth into his thigh, only for Cervain to simply step aside and pin the hurt beast with his foot, only to trigger the finisher.

  [Goring Crescent]

  The sword came down in a crescent, trailing black smoke. It caught the first hound clean above the neck and shredding downwards. Head parted from neck in a fountain of black ichor, body collapsing in a twitching heap.

  The second hound had one heartbeat to realize its brother was gone.

  Cervain pivoted, planted a boot on its pinned shoulder, and brought the blade down like an executioner’s axe. The edge bit deep between the shoulder blades, carved through spine, and came out the other side in a single stroke. The hound spasmed, legs scrabbling in a final useless scramble, then went still.