As soon as we reached the fishing village, I pestered Katrina until she prepared the food. With a little help from Jason’s fire magic and a slightly warped pot she somehow recovered from the village ruins, she prepared a mushroom fish stew. We used hollowed out mushroom tree caps from smaller trees to serve as makeshift bowls. Katrina assured me that the mushroom trees were non toxic, if inedible. The bowls actually resembled hard rubber.

The edible mushrooms, gathered by the kids, were from the small farms surrounding the village. The kobolds had only trampled the farms somewhat, but hadn’t bothered to harvest.

“Kobolds can eat these mushrooms too,” Jason pointed out, “Even kobolds know how to farm them. They also eat some of the larger non-toxic beetles and rodents of unusual size. Sure fighting giant rats might be rather risky considering they’re as smart as people and use magic, but theres also giant moles which are just big dumb herd animals. Grandpa and grandma used to hunt those. Kobolds could survive just fine without eating catkin.”

“Why did they attack us then?” Anne asked. “If they didn’t need us for food?”

Katrina shot Jason a look, bowl halfway to her lips, “First of all, giant moles are no joke, they weigh several tons, have thick loose skin tougher than leather, giant buck teeth as long as your arm, and can run faster than you can. Only way to kill them is a clean shot through their tiny beady eyes. There’s no way kobolds can kill them. Secondly, are you sure you should be talking about kobold eating habits to a girl who was almost eaten by kobolds?”

“I don’t mind,” Anne said resolutely, “I want to learn about kobolds so I can better kill them when I get older. I plan to kill as many of them as I can.”

Katrina looked sad for a second, then said in a subdued tone. “Well, I don’t blame you, and I’ve killed my fair share. But the truth is, that’s why they want to kill us.”

“What do you mean?” Anne asked.

“We kill canines for revenge, they kill us for revenge. It’s an endless chain of hatred. We just kill each other because that's all we’ve ever known, barring the occasional peace treaty. Which is why we need to get out of here as fast as possible, before the surviving kobolds come looking for us.” Katrina turned to face Jason. “Can you fix your canoe? Maybe we can ferry the kids to the lake’s central island? Onyx can probably store two of them at a time if we start with the younger ones.”

“Onyx broke my canoe pretty badly.” Jason said grimly, “But I suppose I can gather wood and nails from these ruins and fix it up in a few hours. Maybe Onyx can come with me and put the canoe in his storage so I don’t have to carry it back myself."

“No.” I typed out, yawning, “It’s nap time for me.” I told Jason. I ignored his glare. I’d already eaten as much of the stew as I could, and now it was time for me to sleep. I didn’t want to get dragged into anything that sounded like work until I was done.

Jason looked like he wanted to argue, but Katrina put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head, saying, “Pure felines don’t take well to being bossed around, aren’t very altruistic, and need lots of sleep. In other words, we can’t force Onyx to do anything, he doesn’t owe us a thing, so just let him rest or he’ll get cranky and possibly abandon us.”

I nodded in agreement, then yawned again. I’d already done my fair share of work and they couldn’t make me do more. Besides, any reasonable creature should always sleep after eating a meal, that was only common sense. I looked around for a comfortable spot to nap.

“Do you want to sleep on my lap?” Anne asked in a hopeful tone. Setting aside my first reaction, an instinctual mistrust of an unfamiliar human, I decided that the offered warmth was worth the risk. I made my way over to Anne and stepped into the warm bed provided. After a few rotations and kneading to adjust her position slightly, I was satisfied. Anne draped her arms over me but wisely didn’t try to pet me. She was just my blanket. Purring softly, I fell asleep while Anne sat with her back to a partly burnt wall.

“Onyx, wake up, the kobolds are back.” Katrina woke me some time later. I stepped off my warm pillow and stretched and yawned vigorously. Anne winced as she stood up, her legs had fallen asleep, but she didn’t complain.

“I’ve gathered some arrows from the battlefield, but… it looks like the kobolds are being led by something big.” Katrina explained, tension in her voice.

“Anne, go to the docks with the other kids, we’ll hold the kobolds at bay.” Anne nodded gravely and left. “They’ve got us surrounded Onyx, Jason and I can’t win on our own, we need your help again, please.” Katrina pleaded with me.

I nodded. Of course they needed my help. I was tempted to ask what would be my reward, but what more could they really offer me? I was fighting so my servant wouldn’t get killed, otherwise my previous efforts would go to waste. Also, I was fighting for XP and because I didn’t like doggos. I sauntered over next to Jason to see what we were up against.

Then I saw her. A massive black wolf stepped out from the mushroom trees and growled menacingly as the kobolds spread out behind her. She was their leader for this attack. I suppose I should describe her, though my mind shudders just thinking about her. She was a dire wolf, almost as big as a horse. Identify listed her as a . Her midnight black fur bristled as her deep red eyes stared fixedly at me. A dark intimidating aura began to flow from her as she abruptly howled a dreadful sound that filled the entire village with menace.

I was terrified. I was reminded of that doggo that had chased me from my first and only true home. Of all the horrible doggos that had chased me in my past life, of every time I’d fled in the past, and I wanted to flee now. Only my paralyzed limbs kept me from running right away as I arched my back and hissed. I felt all my newfound intellect leave and only primal fear remained.

“Onyx! Use your intimidate to fight back!” Katrina yelled, “You can cancel out another person’s intimidate with your own! Please! That wolf is too much, we need you to help us resist by pushing back!” Katrina sounded desperate.

Dimly I heard the kids trying to run away, some throwing themselves in the water or running towards the forest in blind panic, many just crumpled into a heap and started sobbing uncontrollably.

Jason looked as paralyzed with fear as I was. I threw myself into my own intimidate skill. Hissing wildly, arching my back and fluffing my fur as much as I could, I yowled loudly and pushed back.

Waves of dark aura smashed into each other, dimming the wolf’s own fearsome aura. I could tell a few things as our two intimidate skills smashed into each other. That wolf also had the Gruesome Eater title, there is this feel to the way that title charges the intimidate skill, like if the aura produced were somehow filled with bloody teeth.

Secondly, I could tell we were evenly matched, both of us grandmasters with a title boost to epic. And oddly, I could tell we were both ranked that high for exactly the same reason; we had both terrified an entire kobold village at some point.

You would think that since we were so evenly matched, at the same skill level, our auras would cancel each other exactly. But that was not the case. The wolf was just a lot scarier than I was. The underlying physical show, the natural ability of the wolf’s intimidating display, was much stronger. That baseline difference meant her aura was stronger than mine by a wide margin. But my aura canceled out most of hers, reducing the effects to something weak enough that Jason was able to unfreeze, and the children that had started panicking and running or swimming away, came to their senses and came back to huddle together. There was nowhere to run to, the kobolds were in the surrounding forest, and nowhere to swim to, the lake was too wide. Their sobbing dimmed in volume. I’d given them hope, though they were still scared.

I was still scared too. It wasn’t mindless terror like before, but rather an icy desperation. My strongest weapons, stealth and intimidate were nullified. She had her eyes locked on me, I couldn’t hide. And if I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t use an epic jump pounce, the wolf would have far too long to dodge my ballistic attack. A simple pounce with no epic jump reinforcement or stealth multiplier was barely going to tickle the massive beast. I was probably faster than this wolf, but that was it. My bite was not going to compare with the jaws of that monster, she looked like she could swallow me in one chomp. My swipe wasn’t going to part her thick fur. I had no reanimated bugs in storage, and she was over 3x my level. What skills did she have? I didn’t know, but what I did know was that I couldn’t possibly win.

So I ran away.

What did you expect me to do? Heroically stay and sacrifice myself in a hopeless fight? No, I fled like a scaredy cat. A total puss. I heard Jason curse me, but I ignored it. The sound of arrows flying broke out as Katrina started shooting the kobolds, despite the hopeless odds.

I expected the wolf to charge in and slaughter Katrina, but instead the terrifying beast chased after me. She told me, reaching into my head with her telepathic ability.

What puppies, I thought to myself, I don’t remember any wolf puppies among the list of doggos I’d killed. I was thinking those thoughts as I was running for my life. I was greatly relieved to note that yes, I was faster than the doggo. She was topping out at slightly over 60 miles per hour. At first I’d run away at my top speed, but I gradually let myself slow down. There was a nagging emotion in my heart that I didn’t like that was distracting me nearly as much as the charging wolf tearing down mushroom trees as she carved a path through the forest trying to catch me.

The wolf snarled at me mentally.

Ah great, she could read my mind too? That was a problem. How could I outsmart her if she knew what I was thinking? Wait. Hold on a second. Back up. How does a wolf have kobold puppies?! That makes no sense! I yelled inside my head as I kept a fixed distance ahead of her. I was still feeling that distracting unpleasant emotion too. What was this nagging emotion, I wondered.

The dire wolf started to explain.

Argh! A new emotion rose up inside me, one I recognized clearly. Disgust. You mated with a human?! You sick perverted doggo! I thought loudly inside my own head, knowing she would hear it.

The wolf mentally snarled at me as she pushed herself forward a tiny bit faster in her rage.

Truly, when I had thought there was a limit to the depravity of doggos, I found a new upper limit. All kobolds were the offspring of werewolves and wolves? Dear god, please wash this knowledge from my head, I prayed. I might actually have felt some sort of comforting touch from a distinctly feline feeling deity. Was this why there were no other types of weres? Had the other deities been appalled too?

The she-wolf screamed at me telepathically.

I was trying to ignore the sick perverted doggo yelling in my head. Was it “mantiality”? Was that what you would call it when the animal chose to... I needed to stop thinking about this. Instead, my thoughts turned to that other distracting emotion I was struggling with, guilt. So this was guilt? I didn’t like it. I decided to do something to try to alleviate it. I put an ability point into my new summon death wasp ability. It was useful that you could use the system interface just by concentrating since my paws were busy with that whole running for my life task. I tried to summon a Death Wasp.

Error. Death Wasp (apprentice) exceeds the maximum weight of undead insect you can control at once. Increase your Reanimate Insect (novice) ability.

Damn, I put a point into my reanimate insect ability, raising my limit to 3 pounds, only to receive the same error message, except the novice was updated to apprentice. How big are these Death Wasps, I wondered. The system whispered back, 4.5 pounds at your skill and amplitude. That time, I actually heard the system whisper clearly. Perhaps feeling the mental touch of the Great Tiger had sensitized me? Or maybe all the telepathic screaming from the berserk wolf chasing me had opened my mind’s eye? Who knows, but I was getting more attuned to mental communication. In fact, I’d hit some sort of threshold that guaranteed that psion would be one of the job options available to me at lvl 10.

But I had other things to worry about. I dumped my last two points into reanimate insect, raising it to journeyman and giving me an upper limit of 6 pounds worth of undead insect control. I then summoned my first Death Wasp. It immediately flew straight up sharply to avoid the lunging bite attack of the wolf at my heels. She’d been reading my thoughts, so she knew what I was about to do. Luckily, the wasp seemed to have a mind of its own, for it dodged without any orders from me. My regular reanimated beetles wouldn’t have done the same.

The Death Wasp whispered in my head, confirming my suspicions.

What does a Death Wasp look like, you ask? Well I could summon one to show you, but I suppose whomever reads that scroll you keep scribbling on won’t know the answer if I just do that.

They are hollow, filled with a bright green deathly glow. They are over a foot long. They are made of only chitin with no innards at all, but the chitin is thick and shaped like armor. They look as if a human knight, wearing dull black plate mail, with a helmet with clear goggles instead of a slit, had a wasp’s abdomen with an oversized thick spike of a stinger. The stinger dripped glowing green acid that applied a withering curse effect that lowers the physical stats of anyone stung until dispelled. They held a shield made of thick dull black chitin in their many claw tipped legs, making them very sturdy against frontal attacks. Death Wasps have four wide, dragonfly style wings that hum ominously as they fly or hover. The glow that shone through the clear faceted domes that were their eyes also shone through the thinner, translucent parts of their exoskeleton where it flexed, such as the waist and neck. The place where the legs joined the thorax was thin enough for the glow to pass through as well, but it was protected by that shield.

In short, Death Wasps are frankly horrifying little monsters that you would definitely not want to encounter. Creepy, scary, undead bugs that have both acid and curse effects attached to what is already a grotesquely large stinger that would work quite well as a stiletto. Even the wolf chasing me was a bit wary of the thing, backing off slightly so she could keep it in sight rather than rushing past it to chase me. I briefly considered asking the wasp to attack the wolf, but, I knew it would be futile. The Death Wasp wasn’t fast enough to get past those jaws. The wolf might take some damage from the acid as it crunched the insect, but not enough to matter. Instead I told the wasp,

The Death Wasp replied in it’s emotionless tone, then it flew off at a respectable forty miles per hour towards the fight that I’d abandoned.

Checking my party screen I saw that Jason had burned half his mana already and I’d just blown half (40) of my own mana with the summon. But, so far Jason’s HP remained at 87% and Katrina was holding on with 25% health. With the most serious threat chasing me, and the reinforcement in the form of the Death Wasp coming to their aid, maybe they can win, I thought to myself.

The she-wolf whispered in my head.

It was true. So far I’d only been running for about a minute, but as she resumed her chase of me, my mana would deplete, since any speed above 55 miles per hour was enough to overcome my mana regen, and the wolf could hit higher than 60. Eventually, she’d catch me, though it would take a while. I needed a plan, and any plan I came up with she would immediately know...