Don Espadón had charged straight toward the ambushers on the hill, and now he stood among them--massive sword spinning in defensive patterns that turned arrows and ice shards aside in showers of sparks and frozen mist.

  The werewolves couldn't target him directly--he was too close, and the system wouldn't allow it. So they backed off, trying to create distance, trying to get enough space between them for the system to allow "missed" shots at monsters to accidentally pass through where he was standing.

  So he made himself the center of their world.

  "Is this the best you have?" he bellowed, his voice theatrical even in the midst of combat. "I have faced hurricanes with more bite!" He bared his teeth at the nearest werewolf. "And they had better fangs!"

  A werewolf tried to flank him while a gog--drawn by the noise--charged from the side. Don Espadón's sword came around in a gleaming arc, not aimed at either attacker, but at the ground between them. The flat of the blade struck ash-covered stone, sending up a massive spray of debris that blinded the gog and obscured the werewolf's line of sight.

  The gog stumbled into a crater, momentum carrying it face-first into the rocks. The blood-red dart the werewolf had been shaping went wide, splattering against a burned tree trunk like wet paint.

  Golden light flashed as the system tried to adjudicate whether any of that counted as an attack.

  "You fight without honor!" Don Espadón continued, his sword coming up to deflect a chunk of flaming debris--accidentally sending it tumbling back toward one of the ambushers. "Hiding behind monsters like children behind their mother's skirts!"

  He didn't have a taunt skill. He didn't need one. Trash talk was universal. He wasn't particularly good at it--most of his insults sounded like rejected lines from telenovelas--but what he lacked in wit, he made up for in volume and conviction.

  "Your fur is patchy and your howl is pitchy!" he bellowed at the nearest werewolf.

  His sword came around again, the flat catching the side of a gog's tail mid-swing and redirecting it. The barbed tip whipped around and caught a werewolf across the muzzle.

  "Your mother was a chihuahua!" Don Espadón added helpfully.

  Both creatures roared--the gog confused, the werewolf somehow genuinely offended--and turned on each other.

  "I have seen scarier puppies at the shelter!" He parried a clumsy swipe from another gog. "My abuela has sharper nails than your claws!"

  Don Espadón grinned. "Come! Let me show you how warriors of the arena fight!"

  Martha had assessed the battlefield in an instant and chosen her prey on the left flank.

  The werewolf was good—fast, trained, moving with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before. He had a short sword and a dagger, both weapons flashing as he tried to keep the skipping, giggling witch at bay. Golden light flickered with every near-miss—the system couldn't decide if these were attacks or feints, threats or tests.

  Not that it mattered. They both knew blades wouldn't end this fight. But old habits died hard, and there was something to be said for the dance.

  She dodged his thrust with a pirouette that would've looked at home in a dance recital, rope trailing from her hand like a streamer. She could feel his panic growing—gathered it like honey as they circled. Strong. Trained. Skilled.

  None of it mattered. Not when she knew how this would end.

  "You're pretty good!" she chirped, her eyes blazing crimson. "I bet you practice a lot. Do you practice on dummies? Or live targets?" Dark smoke curled from her lips. "I bet it's live targets. I bet you like it."

  He slashed—golden flicker—she swayed aside anyway. He stabbed—another flicker—she skipped back. The system was working overtime, confused by the rapid exchange of maybe-attacks and almost-hits. His weapons couldn't kill her even if they landed. But he didn't know what she was. Didn't know blades were mostly decorative when your opponent's heart stopped beating centuries ago. Decapitation remained an option, technically.

  The werewolf's eyes narrowed. He made a decision.

  The dagger went back into its sheath with a practiced motion. Smart boy—he'd figured out that steel wasn't the answer. Then he lunged—not with a weapon, but with his hands, trying to grab her. A wrestling move meant to pin and hold, to use his superior mass and strength.

  His fingers found her arm.

  Golden light flickered weakly. The system hesitated—was this combat? Restraint? Something else entirely? The protections wavered, uncertain.

  Martha twisted in his grip, her undead strength surging. She was stronger than him. The werewolf's eyes widened in shock—he clearly hadn't expected a small, pink-haired girl to overpower him. But Martha's Strength sat at 38.

  Before he could adjust, her rope was already moving, whipping around his sword arm. Not to hurt—the system might block that—but to control. She yanked hard, twisting his wrist at an unnatural angle.

  The sword clattered to the ground.

  "Oops!" she sang. "Butterfingers!"

  She spun, using his own momentum against him, dragging him off-balance. He tried to plant his feet, tried to use his superior mass—but she was relentless, and she didn't tire, didn't bleed right, didn't stop.

  The music behind them shifted. Balladin's guitar took on a different tone—still driving, but faster now, more aggressive:

  "Should I stay or should I go now?"

  The buff changed with it. Not constitution anymore—reflexes. Reaction time. The split-second edge that meant the difference between controlling a grapple and losing one.

  Martha felt the change immediately. Her rope found better angles, wrapped tighter, pulled harder. The werewolf's eyes went wide as he realized she wasn't trying to hurt him.

  She was herding him.

  Step by step, twist by twist, she drove him backward. He fought for every inch, but she had leverage, patience, and absolutely no need to breathe.

  Toward the chasm.

  He realized too late.

  His heel hit the edge. Loose stone crumbled. His balance shifted—

  Martha grabbed him.

  Not with the rope—it trailed behind her—but with her hands. She lunged forward, arms wrapping around the werewolf in what might have looked like an embrace if not for the manic grin splitting her face.

  His eyes went wide.

  She threw them both over the edge.

  For one glorious moment they fell together—ash and gas swirling around them, the glow of mushrooms rushing past in a blur of red and orange, the werewolf's scream mixing with Martha's delighted laughter.

  Understanding dawned a split second too late. His focus switched from trying to free himself to grabbing her, holding on, taking her with him.

  Then something yanked her back with brutal force.

  His grasp faltered.

  He kept falling, disappearing into the hissing depths where the light faded to nothing, his scream cutting off abruptly.

  Martha hung suspended in the air, rope taut above her, anchored to the boulder she'd looped it around before making her move.

  She grinned at the darkness below.

  Then she started climbing, humming along to Balladin's guitar—"Should I stay or should I go now?"—as she pulled herself hand over hand back up to the battlefield.

  Jack was everywhere.

  The bear shifter had fully transformed—not the cute, cuddly panda people expected and he would usually go along, but something feral. Black and white fur bristled with tension, muscles bunched under thick hide, and those claws were very, very real.

  He took a crossbow bolt to the shoulder. Barely flinched. Batted aside an ice shard that would've hit Balladin. Charged a gog that was getting too close from the right, hitting it like a truck and sending it tumbling.

  He focused on defense, not offense. Disrupt the gogs, protect the scattered party--or at least those who hadn't rolled out of his range--absorb the punishment.

  A frost shard caught him in the ribs. He roared—not in pain, but in challenge—and kept moving.

  Another gog tried to circle around from the left. Jack intercepted, his claws raking across its scaled hide. The gog hissed, tail whipping. The barbed tip caught the bear across the face.

  He headbutted the creature in response. The gog staggered back, dazed.

  Pierre stepped out of the haze like he'd been waiting there the whole time. He'd slipped away when the formation scattered, melting into the murk that clung to this place. It wasn't quite mist--too dry, too acrid, with a sulfurous bite that irritated his skin where proper fog would have soothed it. But it was close enough. Close enough to hide in. Close enough to hunt.

  Two werewolves had already learned not to stray too far from their pack. They lay scattered behind him, peaceful expressions frozen on their faces, as if they'd simply decided to take a nap by a battlefield.

  Gone was the warm, grandfatherly facade--his skin glistened with moisture now, and translucent webbing stretched between his fingers. His true form. The drowner beneath the human mask.

  A werewolf was positioning himself for another coordinated strike, focus entirely on Don Espadón's spinning blade. He never noticed Pierre slip behind him--never saw those webbed hands come up.

  Pierre's grip found the werewolf's nose and mouth with deceptive gentleness--just a hand on a face, nothing the system could call violence. Webbed fingers spread with patient, inexorable pressure. The werewolf's eyes went wide. He thrashed, tried to pull away--

  Pierre held on with the calm persistence of water wearing down stone. His Strength wasn't overwhelming, but it was enough. It was always enough when you had patience and knew exactly where to apply pressure.

  The werewolf's struggles became frantic. Golden light flickered--the system confused. Was this an attack? Restraint? The protections wavered, uncertain.

  Pierre waited. Patient. Like helping a child learn a difficult lesson.

  The thrashing slowed. Stopped.

  Pierre lowered the body gently to the ground, already moving toward the next threat.

  Beyond the hill, the fight between titans had reached a stalemate.

  Hydrion's jaws clamped down on the Rougarou's shoulder—teeth that could crush stone scraping against exposed sinew. Golden light exploded. The damage didn't take.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Jean Roux's claws hooked under two of Hydrion's necks, trying to find purchase between scales. More golden light. The hydra barely felt it.

  They broke apart, circled, lunged again. Another explosion of system protection. Another failed attempt to cause real harm.

  A gog—drawn by the titans' battle or just unlucky—wandered too close from the main battlefield. It took one look at the two monsters, turned to flee—

  Hydrion's jaws clamped down on it. Not to kill. His wrath head had other ideas.

  Pride and greed gripped the screaming creature and hurled it at Jean Roux. As it flew, wrath struck.

  The Rougarou batted the gog aside with contemptuous ease, claws catching it mid-air and flinging it into the ash-unimportant now.

  He didn't see the torrent of acid.

  It splashed across Jean Roux's skeletal frame, eating into exposed sinew and bone. Steam rose where it hit, flesh bubbling and sloughing away in grotesque sheets. The Rougarou's shoulder dissolved, ribs showed through melting muscle, one arm hung by threads of rapidly deteriorating tissue.

  Monster roared in agony. No golden barrier flashed to protect him. The system hadn't registered it as an attack on a player.

  Two of Hydrion's heads ripped another tree from the ground—roots tearing free with a sound like breaking bone. They tossed it upward, launching it high into the air. Not aiming. Just… throwing. Coincidentally, the arc would bring it down exactly where the Rougarou stood.

  Jean Roux moved like an arrow loosed from a bow.

  Flesh still smoking, still being devoured by acid even as it regrew, he charged. Not dodging. Not circling. Straight ahead, lowering his skeletal head and running directly into Hydrion as if the hydra weren't even there.

  The impact was tremendous. Hydrion's bulk shifted, necks whipping for balance as the Rougarou's momentum drove into his shoulder. System didn’t count that as an attack neither.

  But it barely hurt the hydra.

  The tree came down behind them with a earthshaking crash, missing entirely.

  Hydrion's heads snapped around, searching. Another gog. Another imp. Anything to use as a weapon, as cover for another attack—

  Nothing. The monsters were too far away.

  His gaze fell on a broken tree trunk, jagged and splintered where it had snapped during their earlier clash. One of his heads—Sloth, patient and methodical—grabbed it.

  Hydrion's body pivoted, necks coiling as Jean tried crawling onto the hydra. The five headed monster drove the splintered end toward his own neck—toward Charity, specifically. A vicious stab that would have impaled his own head if it connected.

  Jean Roux saw it coming a second too late.

  It caught him in the left shoulder, the jagged wood punching through muscle and bone and erupting out the other side.

  Black blood sprayed across the ash. The Rougarou's roar was half-scream, half-growl, his body twisting as he tried to wrench himself free. The wood lodged deep, splintered pieces grinding against bone.

  Hydrion pressed forward, using his opponent trick against him and running at all the speed at the nearest tree. Than, as he pushed himself through it, his impailed pray serving as a battering ram, he got another idea. He strained his muscles and jumped.

  The acid fizzled out.

  The last wisps of caustic smoke evaporated from Jean Roux's frame. His flesh stopped bubbling, stopped sloughing. The regeneration accelerated, wounds closing faster now without the acid eating them open again.

  Before Hydrion landed, Rougarou's claws found the stake in his shoulder and ripped it free with a spray of black blood. The wound was already knitting shut.

  Earth trembled as both monsters collided with it, but the damage wasn’t enough.

  Rougarou who didn’t get pinned under, jumped away, his body healing him back to where he was at the beggining of the ambush. He straightened to his full height. The bioluminescence in his eyes pulsed once, slowly.

  The window had closed.

  When he spoke, his voice was distorted—something between lupine and human, filtered through that skull-like muzzle:

  "This is pointless."

  Hydrion's heads pulled back, all five regarding the creature warily. One head—his wrath head—still had something clenched in its jaws. A rock, maybe half the size of a basketball, picked up after the fall.

  "Yesh," the wrath head agreed, voice muffled around the obstruction. "Yesh it ish."

  Pause.

  "Can I have one more shing though?"

  Jean Roux's head cocked slightly—the universal gesture of *really?*

  "Jusht one more." The wrath head's tone was almost pleading. "For old timesh shake."

  The Rougarou didn't move. Just stood there, utterly unimpressed as Hydrion hurled the rock straight at him, with every ounce of strength in Hydras neck.

  It flew through the air and struck the Rougarou square in the chest exploding intointo golden light so bright it momentarily lit up the entire battlefield.

  The rock bounced off harmlessly, tumbling away into the ash. Jean Roux didn't even sway.

  The wrath head sighed, a sound like steam escaping. "Had to get it out of my system."

  The two monsters stood there in the ash, surrounded by toppled trees and scorched earth.

  ———————— do t?d by?y poprawki ————————————

  "It seems not much has changed since the last time we did this." Jean grimaced, his skeletal features pulling into something between contempt and disappointment. "Decades of you sitting on your ass, sulking in the swamp like a wounded animal, yet the system decided we're equal in power. Pathetic."

  "From my side, it seems decades of prayers didn't change you one bit for the better." Hydrion's body rippled, scales receding, bones compressing with wet cracks as he shifted back to human form. He rolled his shoulders, adjusting to the smaller frame. "How's the whole divinity thing been treating you? You look like shit. Turns out gaining power from people's beliefs has side effects? Was it in the small print when you deitied yourself?"

  "It's deified."

  "Whatever." Hydrion rolled his eyes. "Where's your halo? Or horns. Yeah, you're more of a horny type. Did the game strip those away from you?"

  "Ah, so not only are you no stronger, but you're no smarter than before." The Rougarou sighed, a sound like wind scraping through dead timber. "And you're probably as clueless about what's going on as ever."

  "Oh?" Hydrion raised an eyebrow. "Last time I remember, you called me clueless about the natives. Want to do some enlightening so I can prove you a dumbfuck again in a few hundred years?"

  "You just got ripped away from your home, and you probably didn't even stop to think."

  "Some people can walk and think at the same time." Hydrion continued with the banter, tasking Sloth to keep an eye on the party scan. All eight names still showing--that was what mattered. The sounds of combat still echoed from beyond the hill, which meant his people were still fighting, but at least no one had dropped off the list. All was fine. "I guess your believers didn't bless you with that one, did they?"

  Hydrion saw Jean's jaw clench, muscles twitching beneath the exposed sinew.

  "All sorts of beings were taken unaware from their homes, and you didn't think to yourself--who could have done it?" The Rougarou's voice rose, eyes flaring brighter. "Gods! Even gods were taken by surprise! Is your tiny little brain capable of comprehending the level of power that takes? Or does splitting it five ways prohibit any complex thoughts?"

  "Wow. Did someone step on your divine tail?"

  "Whole courts of Fae were just transported somewhere, and you don't think it's important?" Jean pressed forward, skeletal muzzle jutting toward Hydrion. "Whole pantheons of beings, and you shrug it off? Do you even know where we are?"

  "In a game?" Hydrion shrugged. "And all those courts needed a decent cleanup anyway. I mean, for fuck's sake, they were multiplying like rabbits. Court of Darkness, Shadow, Gloom, Shade, Penumbra, Twilight... About time someone pulled their heads out of their asses and had them see life outside their domains."

  "You're an idiot."

  "Tell me, what difference does it all make? You get your panties in a twist about power, like it matters." Hydrion laughed. "It's like those people back in the day arguing whether the earth was round or flat, or if it circled the sun or the other way around. In the end, to most of them, it didn't matter. They still got up the next day and their life was the same. And when it finally mattered? It just brought disaster and tragedy to millions." He spread his arms wide. "If there's something so powerful it can freeze the solar system and transport us who knows where, then it won't matter to me for a long, long, loooooong time."

  He let his arms drop, and his voice hardened.

  "Also, you're a fucking asshole. You care about your power while your wolves are dying over there like flies."

  "Those?" Jean snorted, a wet, dismissive sound. "Those are just pups who needed a lesson taught to them and they will come back to life, maybe even smarter, after tutorial. My true warriors are on a hunt elsewhere, getting real levels."

  "So you're on babysitting duty?" Hydrion asked with a laugh. “And you are using my party to teach them a lesson? Well, fucking pay would be good, don’t you think? Nobody works for free anymore, you asshole.”

  Rougarou stared at him for a while, unimpressed, then shook his head, raised it and hauled. Once and loud. The sound of battle from the other side of the hill dimmed down, then died. Soon after, silhouettes run through the haze and ash, retreating in a hurry.

  Jean started backing out also, eyes on Hydrion. Then, when he was about to disappear, he added: “I’ll see you after the tutorial”.

  “Toodles!” Hydrion sent a kiss after Rougarou.

  Then he waited for a few more seconds, watching the ash swirl where Jean had disappeared. His facial expression grew somber.

  This was not good. Not good at all.

  The Rougarou shouldn't have been anywhere near him in the real world. Hydrion had chosen his part of Louisiana and through centuries, it became his territory. Those swamps were his domain, his hunting grounds, his sanctuary. And Jean Roux had not only invaded it, but brought his whole pack with him.

  That wasn't a coincidence. That wasn't a chance encounter.

  That was preparation for something.

  If the system hadn't pulled them all in when it did... Hydrion's mind ran the calculations cold. The werewolves positioning around the swamp. The pups Jean so casually dismissed as "needing a lesson." The true warriors supposedly hunting elsewhere. It had all the hallmarks of an ambush.

  An extermination attempt.