“The left side is our best chance,” Noname informed as Xanhilt crawled out of the hole he had fallen in.

Shamblers attacked from three sides. Mud rained. Barbed whips cracked at the air behind them, where a wall of thorny roots barred them from escape.

Ratel-John peered through the shit-storm and saw two shamblers to his left. Four to his front. And four to his right. Taking Noname’s words as gospel, he focused his aggression between the left side and the front. He stumbled through the mud, meeting the shambler that was second from the left.

It swiped at his head with its thorny arm.

John raised a forearm and met the attack with his best defense. He negated some of the damage, but not all. He made sure to return the favor twice over. He swiped a claw through the shambler’s stomach and eviscerated it. He angled a slash up from the shambler’s hip to its shoulder. Then raked his claws through its neck, gouging out the flesh, his strikes growing faster and stronger due to a combination of [Advanced Boxing] and [Rabid Blows].

So, when it fell with a Ding! Ding!, John felt he was more than ready to face a shambler attacking from the front. Unfortunately, even with the increased speed and power, it took him just a tad too long to deal with the first shambler on the left side. The next one was swinging from the right just as John turned toward it.

Pow!

It raked its thorned hand over the side of John’s face. It nearly gouged out his eye⁠—unless it really did gouge out his eye. John couldn’t tell. Everything was freaking dark on the right side of his vision. That side of his face was a swell of hot and pulsating pain. It disrupted the flow of his combo, too.

“Should’ve gone with [Harden Body]!” John roared. He dug his claws into the attacking shambler’s armpit and hooked on. Unadulterated rage pumped through his veins as John balled his hand into a fist, his claws digging into his palm. He went primal and wailed on the shambler’s face with heavy punches. Wham! Wham! Wham!

Just when he finished off this latest shambler with a ding confirming it, two more replaced it. Then a third. And a fourth followed by more. They were all over him. They were bashing him down. They were tearing him up. They were starting to kill him as his resilience faltered and his mind began to enter a fog.

A roaring power that sounded like Xanhilt’s [Gale Stream] blasted a shambler off of him. Something long and sharp punctured a shambler’s face and drove it back off of John. He had just enough semblance of consciousness to use [Dash Step] and fling himself out of that bad spot.

Because of the slick surface, John had a snowball’s chance in hell to stick the landing before suffering serious injuries. Now, it was just easier to relax and fall however fate decided, which ended up with him in a muddy hole.

Urmatia, I hate you so much right now, John thought.

Finding a few ounces of willpower inside of himself, John clawed his way out of the grave. He turned off [Ratel Rookie], which was a good idea because it was making his head hot.

Rolling onto his back, he rifled through his pouches with slick, shaky fingers. Magical stones dropped away from him as he crushed whatever he could get his hands on.

To his detriment, the recovery took longer than he liked. The poor quality of the stones was rearing their ugly heads. Just because he had a lot of them didn’t mean they always worked as intended.

As he struggled to recover, mud kept splattering down over him, of course. He also felt the ground prick against his back.

“Move!” John roared without really knowing where his friends were compared to him. He gave the warning just in case and rolled to the side.

Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!

The bladed tops of the aoe attack pricked at his body as he got out of the danger zone. He had noticed quickly enough to give himself time to spare, too. But since he had a trend of bad luck lately, the trend continued when he ran into the shambler that had lost its legs to Noname’s blessing earlier.

John wrestled with it, grabbing just beneath the elbows to keep from getting raked by the bone spikes. Fuck, the Prankration would’ve helped a lot right now!

Using [Ratel Rookie] covered the lack of grappling skill and gave John just enough strength to throw the monster off of him and into the aoe zone. He managed to pull it off right before the blades shot up.

Shnkt! Ding!

John returned to grabbing magic stones and crushing them randomly. He worked with half a vision. That half was trying to see through a film of mud that kept getting dropped on him. At the same time, he was pretty damn rattled from the constant pressure.

It was merciful that nothing else came after him as he healed up and got back on his feet. His right eye was still a work in progress, but getting up was more important. If he stayed on his back, he left himself as an easy target. And he didn’t want that to be the case since he was out of magic stones.

Three-fourths of the shambler mob was dead at this point from what he could see out of one eye. He caught sight of Noname and Xanhilt working together to deal with one.

While the saurian distracted the monster, the girl assassin moved across the slick basin ground with grace and speed that was astounding to witness. At the end of her flanking maneuver, she swung around the war scythe with her entire body and kneed the distracted shambler.

She moved on quickly without missing a beat and whirled the polearm around again. She took out the knee of the next shambler. Then she repeatedly stabbed one of the downed shamblers while Xanhilt used [Gale Stream] on the other downed shambler.

What they lacked in John’s strength, they made up for using clever tactics and magic together.

Three shamblers remained and charged John’s friends.

John charged them in return, splashing up mud while in human form. Mid-run, he used [Dash Step] and hurled himself straight at a shambler. It hadn’t prepared for the sudden lunging strike, giving John a wide window to clobber its face. The monster stumbled aside as John turned his attention to a different shambler throwing a spike hammer fist at him.

John bobbed and weaved, taking a wide step to stable himself. Rather than tap on [Rapid Blows], John focused on using a miniature [Dash Step] to propel him into a whole-body uppercut. When his fist hit the underside of the shambler’s chin, the jaw fractured to pieces. The monster’s head snapped back hard enough to break its neck. Ding! Ding!

The [Dash Step] + counter uppercut helped stabilize John. That allowed him to back away safely from the last two shamblers that tried to swarm him from the left and right.

At the same time, Xanhilt and Noname backed John up, taking a shambler each. Another aoe attack revealed itself under them, but at this point, they maneuvered back and attacked without fail. Xanhilt used [Gale Stream] to keep one shambler in the aoe until the spikes shot up.

Noname skipped around in front of her shambler, luring it toward the wall of thorns and whips. Soon as the monster lunged, she swerved out of the way and struck its back with the flat side of the war scythe. She sent it barreling into the wall, where it got shredded by the whips and stuck dead on a patch of thorns. Since that one had taken a flying punch from John, he got an assisting⁠, cestus art leveling⁠, ding! ding! for Noname’s kill.

The girl assassin collapsed onto her knees, gasping for air. She could barely keep the war scythe propped up against her. Xanhilt ran over to share stamina stones, but Noname struggled to get to her feet even after crushing them.

Meanwhile, John eyed the young mistress. Without her servants, all she could do was fling mud at them as they kept their distance from her. She could still attack with her aoe spikes, but that attack was currently on a cooldown. For now, he checked on Noname’s condition as Xanhilt questioned her.

“How many AP of [Soul] do you have?” Xanhilt asked.

“Not many, only 15 AP,” she said.

“If you have any unspent points, you gotta dump them in [Soul],” John said. “It’ll help.”

“Really?”

“Yeah/yes,” John and Xanhilt said over each other.

“Just did it,” she said. “I feel a little better. It’s like fighting pure sadness, but magical.”

“I thought of something similar when it happened to me,” John said. “But Xanhilt and I suffered it after a fight.”

“This is way worse than the tower fight,” Xanhilt said, helping Noname to her feet.

Just then, John’s right eye finally started working again. It might’ve taken a long time to heal since the eye was a complex organism. Fat good it did him when the young mistress kept throwing mud all over them.

“Fuck!” John shouted, wiping mud off his face. “Would you stop doing that?”

“A thousand curses upon ye for bringing ruin to Father’s land!” shrilled the Young Mistress. “Thou art no heroes. Thou art mere scoundrels, vermin, pestering urchins who are unfit to sweep the grounds of my estate. I will rid of you. Then Brother, Mother, and Father will finally see that I belong with them at last.”

“I’m getting angry,” Noname said despite being one hundred percent expressionless. “She talks like someone who’ll spit on me.”

“If she existed as a female of worth in a different form,” Xanhilt said, “I’m sure her current appearance matches her perfectly.”

After allocating his new points from his level-ups, John gave the others a tired but determined look. “She reminds me of an ex. So, I’m all for chopping this bitch down.”

They passed around magic stones and then started the attack on the young mistress earnestly. John led the way, of course, with Noname and her war scythe trailing behind him. Xanhilt pulled up from the rear as John neared the young mistress’s range of reach. She looked at him like he was the filth of the earth, which bugged John. He didn’t lose his cool, though. He hopped around just out of reach, stealing her attention.

Xanhilt used that time to get in front of her and aim his hand. Noname moved from behind John and called out [Brightlight Orb], which surprised John and the young mistress equally. Unlike John’s brightlight, Noname’s brightlight was beefed up somewhat, shining farther and brighter. It did a good job distracting the young mistress since Noname flashed it in her face.

John took that as his opportunity to lunge onto the monster’s arm. He wrapped one of his arms around her forearm and transformed into his ratel self. He aimed his free claws at the joint and started slashing and tearing. The monster screamed and nearly jerked the arm away from John. Noname’s brightlight stopped working as a distraction, so the girl assassin turned it off. But right when she did, Xanhilt blasted the young mistress in the face with a more powerful version of [Gale Stream].

Despite the struggle they went through here, they’ve each been leveling up. Xanhilt was obviously pouring MCP into [Gale Stream] and AP into his [Intellect]. Now the twisting vortex came out slightly thicker than John’s arm. It hit with a good amount of force, thumping against the monster’s face with pressurized air fired like a beam. It did enough damage to remove an eye! It was enough to distract her, too, giving John time with one of her arms.

“Here, let me help,” Noname said, sliding to a stop on the other side of the arm from John. She swung that war scythe around using her quickness more than strength and chopped into the red strands of viscera connecting one part of the arm from the other. In a burst of blood, Noname hacked through the remaining strings.

“Thanks for the hand,” John said, keeping [Ratel Rookie] on even as it started to burn up his head. He dragged the young mistress’s hand behind him as the monster screamed and cursed at them.

“Withdrawing for blues,” Xanhilt said quickly as he retreated back. John quickly translated that as him crushing mana stones to cool down his mana-burn. While he did that, John got in front of the dryad.

She reached for him with her other hand. Noname ran up and skewered the middle of her hand with the war scythe, giving John some time.

“What did the hand say to the face?” John asked.

The young mistress screamed at him, her mouth opening wide in a very uncanny way. When the scream ended, something foul and dangerous bubbled up from her trunk and into her throat.

“It said shut the fuck up!” John yelled, stepping onto Ektor’s crumpled form.

He shoved the severed arm nub first down the young mistress’s throat. He yelled as he pushed and pushed, driving it deeper until she was choking on it, unable to vomit out the gunk in her throat.

“This is my exit!” Noname yelled as the hand she had been keeping occupied yanked away from her. The war scythe went with it. The girl assassin went with the polearm until the weapon dislodged from the young mistress’s remaining hand. Noname hit the turbid ground with a sloppy splash.

John tossed blues into his mouth and crunched them up to keep his hands free. Soon as the young mistress reached around with her remaining hand, John was ready. He lunged on top of it, striking wrathfully at the flesh and tendons connecting one joint to the other. It was the thinnest part of the arm, too.

At the same time, Xanhilt returned to dish out more damage. He aimed directly at hand shoved back down into the young mistress’s throat. “This is more than appropriate for you,” he said, hammering the limb deeper with his [Gale Stream].

Each attempt to wrench her severed arm from out of her throat was shoved away by [Gale Stream] or weakened by John’s vicious strikes. A breaking point arrived. John hacked off the last arm. Victorious with his goals to delimb the monstrosity, he turned just in time to notice the trunk had ballooned under the young mistress’s face. There was a clog, and it was growing since it had no avenue of escape.

“What did I miss?” A very muddy Noname stumbled up, dragging her war scythe behind her.

John’s response was to wrap his arm around her waist and hoist her onto his shoulder. He ran toward Xanhilt, who was about to crush some more mana stones, when John grabbed his arm. John hustled around the bloody mud bowl with his friends held close, choosing to get behind the young mistress, where he found the most distant hole.

He threw Noname and the war scythe into the hole unceremoniously.

“Weee,” she sang dryly.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Xanhilt asked, exasperated.

John shoved him into the hole next. “Get skinny.”

“What? How?” Xanhilt asked.

“Like this,” Noname said, pressing the saurian against the soggy walls with her body.

John jumped in last. He slid in place even though it was a very tight fit. They were all slimed up enough to make it work. With a glance to the side, John saw a dead shambler and grabbed its arm. He pulled it over, shimmied down as best he could with the others. He used the corpse to cover the top of the hole with a gap for Noname’s war scythe to stick out.

“Clever,” Noname complimented.

“Is this a human thing?” Xanhilt asked.

Before John replied, the young mistress exploded.