Plip. Plip.

One by one, slimes dropped into the shallow cavern, lured by the lamp’s dancing flame. The walls shimmered with flecks of brilliant white and blue like some strange crystalline grotto.

And lurking in the shadows was a monster.

No sooner did a slime manage to wriggle through the gaps in the stone than Bayler pounced, shifting shape as he lunged forward so his body dissolved into an onrushing wave of gelatinous weight. He would envelop them in a single move, crush them with his superior strength, and devour. The brainless creatures fell easily and quietly. They didn’t have mouths to scream with. Conversely, their entire bodies were mouths to eat with.

The mana flame in his chest, almost depleted, was soon overfull. The more he worked the more acute his sense of it grew. Every time he transformed, his exterior senses faded away, but the fire remained a constant, and his lack of distractions allowed him to focus everything on that.

And it was much, much less disturbing to do it this way that eat them as a human, one by one.

There was a mental effect too, he realized. When he transformed his thoughts slowed. His mind dulled. It was calming, meditative even. Bayler had never gone in for meditation but the simple, brutally efficient work of killing and devouring the slimes his lamp lured in was oddly soothing.

The first kill had been panicked, a life or death struggle. By the tenth it felt normal to devour his enemies. Repetition brought skill and skill made it easier to slip into rhythm.

For the seventh time, the crossbow jumped in August Pike’s hands and one of the creatures barking and baying at the gates went down, dead. They were more or less dogs, if dogs had no flesh on their faces, everything past the neck peeled down to a gristle of bare red meat and long teeth. They snapped, they drooled, but they pretty much couldn’t get over that fence.

Which meant easy points towards the next ranking. Pike’s crossbow was a thing of beauty, carved from sleek red wood with twisting veins emblazoned in gold across the stock. He felt it like an extension of his limbs, and the shots twisted to follow his will.

One by one, his bolts punched holes in the skulls of the hounds.

A pair of teenagers - kids really - were limping away from the gate, having just gotten through in time. The boy had the back of his calf torn open, limping against the girl’s shoulder as they both flinched away from the snap of teeth and the hellish barks behind them.

See, that was the difference between him and them. They only saw the danger of the situation, the misery of the pelting rain and the fear of the monsters lurking in the shallow rivers pouring down the streets.

He saw opportunity. Of course, it helped he had guns, a warm place to sit as he fired them, and cans of sugary coffee to chug as the rain splattered down and his kill counted lifted. They had soaked-through clothes and a pocket knife.

But that was life.

A last shot kicked through the crossbow, answered a split second later by a hound going tumbling over with a bolt through its head. Pike drew back from his second story window and padded down the stairs to unlock the door for his runners.

It was a good arrangement they had. He liked his warm, comfortable house, and they did too, so they had to go out in the rain and fetch for him.

The girl was glaring at him as he opened the door, half of a granola bar wedged into his mouth. She shoved a plastic bag at him.

Peering down like a kid on halloween examining the haul, Pike counted three dark green beads. Mana beads. The granola bar was gulped down in a hurry as he made way to place one on his tongue, the cold glass melting away, a fire pouring down his throat as he swallowed. It tasted like nothing and felt like swallowing razors.

But the surge of strength that rushed through him was all but addictive.

His head swum, his heart hammering, his fingers clutching tight to the bow. He ran his fingertips along the etched veins and felt like he could read them, like they spoke to him in a language he almost knew but had forgotten.

By the time the high faded, he had been leaning against the doorway long enough for the rain to build a puddle underfoot. The hellhounds had retreated from the gates, leaving their dead behind. Slowly, flickering light consumed the bodies, burning them up from within. Ash dissipated on the wind of the storm. A few of them would leave mana beads behind.

So he’d send the kids out to gather them, and before long, the hounds would catch wind and come rushing back to his killing fields.

It was an easy cycle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Behind him, the boy was crying and the girl - Lauri, that was her name, Lauri - was fussing over him, saying Pike’s name, asking for help. With a sigh, Pike swung the door shut.

Bayler climbed up through the rubble, fitting his body through gaps the size of pencils, shaping himself to ooze through each obstacle. Cement dust and fragments of rock pressed into his body, piercing through the oily outer membrane. Dragging himself up against gravity, he insinuated himself through miniscule cracks and dripped out the other side.

All the while the flame inside him was shrinking, shrinking. It was impossible to tell what time it was, but he’d measured the rate at which this form took up his mana, and by his best guess, it had been maybe five minutes.

He could hold the transformation for just eight.

It was six minutes in, when he splashed into a puddle, that he knew he was going to make it. Rain was pouring down, filling in the cracks with tiny waterfalls. He followed them up, going as fast he could, the cold rainwater refreshing, invigorating.

With a final rush of speed he slid a pseudopod up into open air and hauled the rest of his body through, coming tumbling off a shelf of cement wall and down a rubble slope. By the time he hit the bottom he had shaped into a human again; a rail-thin, leather-skinned, dressed in a torn hospital gown, looking more corpse than man.

Lifting his head, he stared up into the sky, feeling rain against his cheeks. A grimace of triumph spread across his face. That was three times now. Three times the world tried to kill him, and missed.