Kynos squinted through the sunlight filtering through the trees, slowly removing the Variable from a pouch at his waist. His party members prepared their weapons as well.

The four of them had once again ventured into the forest, heading up the creek instead of across it. Along the way, he caught sight of some medium sized fish lazily drifting in the clear water, and he stopped the party to make a trap with twigs and some kernels of grain. Elise splashed about in the water, barefoot, as he worked, and Erwin began collecting various plants nearby, watched over by a silent Otto. Dinner, if they were lucky, would be what was in the trap when they made their way back to camp.

Half an hour later they were back on the move upstream. Erwin was the first to notice that the vegetation was growing thicker on the stony riverbank and soon, Otto was scything shrubbery out of the way with his long knife. It didn't take long for the sound and commotion to attract some unwanted attention.

The dog-like creatures with abnormally long hind legs and large sizes fanned out and moved in from the front. Kynos had read about these kobolds, which hunted in packs with superb coordination. Otto, shield and mace readied, moved in front of Erwin, who uncorked a bottle and drizzled some of the contents on the claws of his bladed gauntlet and on Otto's mace. He also put on his goggles. Elise, reading the atmosphere, gripped her demilune tightly as she called her insects to protect her.

Kynos began putting a few new tricks to practice. Nothing present noticed, but he had already clad his boots with shadow and, utilizing the shade cast by the grass nearby, was spreading a field towards the kobolds. As the alpha barked instructions and his pack inched forward, Kynos took the first strike.

He removed the friction from his boots and glided at high speeds into kobolds moving in from their left flank, the Variable taking form in his hands as he thrust it. Before any of the creatures had a chance to blink, the leftmost one gurgled bloody death throes, a thin metal spike in its throat. Kynos moved quickly, changing the spear to a razor and neatly slicing the Variable out of the kobold's neck as he slid through the tall grass, cutting into the next one.

As the second kobold's head fell off of its body, the entire pack pounced into motion. The alpha led two grizzled veterans towards Elise as most of the pack surrounded Otto and Erwin. A few stray, rough-looking canines circled warily around Kynos, not willing to be slaughtered like their brethren. Excluding the two dead, there were seventeen of them.

Kynos quickly glanced at Elise as Otto intercepted one with a shield bash, breaking bones and sending it flying. Elise was looking like a swarm of angry bees, and he could barely see her shape amidst the buzzing of a hundred zombie insects, every single one flight capable and poisonous after the ability merging. He judged that she would be fine as he scythed down a kobold that tried to approach him with the Variable, now a dancing silver string.

Erwin took the next move, throwing a vial at an approaching kobold. The thin glass shattered on the creature's shoulder, and it howled in pain. The corrosives were working so quickly that Kynos was already able to see bone before the creature stumbled into the tangled grass, desperately trying to rub off the liquid.

Sensing the panic of his pack, the alpha pounced Elise. Perhaps it was trying to raise morale, or perhaps it thought the girl was the weakest of the four, but when the insects cleared, the pack alpha was cleanly impaled on the crescent blade. Large swelling bumps from where it had been bitten and stung dotted its body and both eyes were already lifeless, a sign of fast-working poison.

Kynos quickly finished off his remaining three as Otto clubbed a kobold off of his shield, breaking a foreleg. The poison from Erwin's vial acted quickly, paralyzing the creature and removing it from the fight. Erwin himself laugh maniacally as he clawed a oncoming kobold in the face, causing the creature to flinch away from him. The fast-acting paralysis poison dropped it to the ground a second later.

Having lost nine members of the pack as well as the alpha, some of the kobolds whimpered and a weak looking runt fled the scene. The cowardice caused the rest of the creatures to turn tail and run, excluding one of the veterans that had been stung to death by insects and another that Kynos speared in the back. Otto and Elise cleaned off their weapons with water and cloth while Kynos flicked the blood off of the Variable. He was satisfied with its performance and wondered how much more powerful a shape shifting weapon could get.

Erwin, who was still cackling manically, poured all sorts of potions on the paralyzed and wounded kobolds. One was mostly melted through, steaming amidst now-dead grass, another two had started to grow several strange appendages from where their bones had been broken. The fourth one was foaming at the mouth and twitching, a huge empty glass bottle clamped between its teeth.

Elise refused to look, Kynos shut down his ears, and Otto said nothing.