“I want her. It was my idea in the first place,” he growls out, bringing me closer to his face and inhaling deeply.

  Is he fucking scenting me?

  Indignance suffuses every pore at the thought, but I just barely control myself.

  “That’s too fucking bad, we’re out of time,” she rasps angrily. “Bomb’s going off in less than a minute. Lets secure the Princess before she’s alerted.”

  Wait, Princess?

  The bearkin lets out a disgruntled chuff, but ultimately obeys, tossing me over his shoulder and joining her on the way out of the room. I risk a peek towards Krissy and Nyria’s door and find it still closed, the girls tucked safely inside.

  Relief floods me then. Despite my situation, I’m fairly certain I can at least get away. Beating them is another matter entirely, but… maybe? Sense Danger stopped flaring so hard when I started healing myself, so I’m fairly certain I could win.

  Just before we reach the lobby area, a wave of mana suddenly washes over me, erasing the river of mana that flowed through the train along with it. Then the sound of metal screeching against metal fills the air as the train shudders, rapidly slowing down and shifting the momentum, pushing me into the bearkin's back.

  The woman curses under her breath then starts sprinting through the lobby with the bearkin hot on her heels. Shouts of surprise and confusion erupt from all around us as we pass, but in seconds we’re in the opposite hallway.

  We jerk to a stop outside of a normal looking door into one of the wealthier rooms, and I can hear the Engineer getting to work. The bearkin takes a moment to sniff me again, and I almost lose it as Fae Ferocity activates.

  Punish.

  It takes every ounce of willpower to just hold still until the right moment, but I convince myself to wait just a bit longer.

  A few moments later, there’s a small explosion. Bits of shrapnel from the door ping against my lower body, though nothing dangerous, and I hear the door slide open. Something rolls along the floor, and there’s another explosion, followed by a scream of surprise from within the room.

  The bearkin doesn’t move though, apparently leaving this all up to the Engineer lady. When the sounds of struggle stop, he steps inside, closing the door behind him.

  The room is freezing. Looking down, I see fragments of ice scattered about the floor haphazardly, giving me a hint as to what happened.

  Ice magic? Or some Engineer fuckery.

  “Now we have time,” the bearkin snarls out, sending a cold shiver down my spine with the implications in his tone.

  He tosses me onto the bed across the room before turning to shove the Egineer and their captive into the attached bathroom.

  “Seriously, Gorz? Now? What the f—” she complains until she’s cut off by the bathroom door closing in her face.

  When he turns back towards me and reaches for my waist, I decide it’s finally time to stop playing around. I’d been pushing my urges from Fae Ferocity back, but now I set them free, and explode into motion.

  All For One gets instantly supercharged, eating three-quarters of my mana regen and boosting my stats further. Then a maximally empowered fist slams into his face. He takes a faltering half-step back with a grunt of surprise and pain, but he doesn’t seem all that hurt.

  Fucking bearkin. Too tough for their own good.

  Hitting him was like hitting a boulder, but I’d broken rock with my fists before, and that was well before I'd hit Tier One. The intrusive mana from Arcane Strike definitely helps, too.

  I turn into a blur of strikes, fully aware that I have to finish this quickly, before the Engineer catches on. Unfortunately for me, Tier Two is no joke, and he catches one of my kicks with his bare hand.

  Before I can react, he whips me through the air again, this time flipping me clean over his head. I manage to curl up and activate Scarlet Barrier just before I slam into the floor, and it actually helps to soften the blow.

  Instead of the barrier breaking, the floor gains a nasty dent. Using Hemokinesis, I blanket the area around me with mana, swatting any and every noise out of the air.

  My leg, in the meantime, screams at me. It's currently wrapped in the bearkin's grip, and very broken. Fragments of my shin poke through the flesh just above where he holds me, and I have to force myself to look away.

  With Total Suppression, I easily push through the pain, instead taking advantage of his moment of surprise.

  Heh, I’m not gonna crumple from just that.

  With a burst of movement, I push off the floor and swipe my claws through his eyes before he can flinch away, and he starts to roar in agony. I'm surprised when I can actually hear him, but only for the briefest instant.

  I immediately shove my other hand deep into his mouth, doubling down on my usage of Hemokinesis to crush the sound of his outburst, interrupting him before he can truly begin.

  The mana actually tries to resist my manipulations so close to him, but I overpower it thanks to my absurdly boosted Wisdom and Intelligence. I couldn’t let him signal the Engineer to investigate. Not yet.

  Of course, he tries to bite down, but he isn't fast enough. My claws carve a gory path down his throat as I shred everything I can touch while shoving my arm shoulder deep into his gullet.

  Still, he succeeds in the end. Despite the agony clear in his expression, he bites down—hard.

  His teeth sheer through flesh and crunch the bones of my arm, severing my arm at the shoulder entirely. I have to bite back the scream, and it distracts me for an instant.

  At the same time, his hands come up to wrap around my head, peeling me off him and holding me in the air. When he starts to squeeze, I panic and punch him in the throat with a growl of my own. He lets out a wet gurgle, and his grip loosens slightly from the strike.

  I doubt even my boosted Constitution could resist his attempts to crush my skull.

  So I repeat the process. Again and again, punch after punch lands on his wounded and clogged throat. My severed arm has already sealed up, the bleeding stopped before it really had a chance to start.

  My leg, too, has mostly healed. With Arcane Regulation, it doesn't take long to fix things like breaks or tears anymore.

  But my arm will take time to regrow, so I use the one I have left to tear him apart from where I hang.

  After several more attacks, he flings me away, then reaches into a pouch at his side. He pulls out a small vial filled with a deep, purple liquid, but before he can even uncork it, I'm moving again.

  I dive towards him as he tries to pull my arm from his throat. This time, I wrap one leg under his raised arm and the other around his neck, locking them by the ankle at his back. He tries to push me off him, using his own claws to rip into my thighs, but I’d noticed his actions weakening.

  With as much internal bleeding as I’d inflicted, I’m not surprised. He blindly stares at me when my claws dig into the flesh of his neck, his face twisted into a mask of horror and pain. He claws at me in a wild panic, shredding my clothes and carving deep lacerations into my torso.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  They heal faster than he inflicts them.

  His other arm joins into the fray, dropping the vial, but my claws reach his spine before he can grab my arm and stop me.

  He falls forward, crushing me under his weight, but I don’t stop. Grinning, I stare into his panicked, bloodshot eyes as my muscles strain against his flesh until, with a snarl, I finally manage to give my hand a vicious twist.

  There’s a loud snap, and he goes completely limp, all the strength he had left leaving him in a rush.

  For a moment, his choked breathing is the only sound in the room.

  Then even that fades.

  A different kind of rush flows into me, and I know I’ve just gained a massive boost towards my next level.

  “Yessss,” I hiss.

  Finally! Progress.

  A quick peek shows me that I haven't actually gained a level, but I hadn't been expecting that anyways. I'm sorely tempted to face off against Tier Two monsters from here on, but if just this guy can do so much damage to me... I doubt my odds would be good.

  I pull my hand from where it’s buried within his neck with a sickening squelch before scurrying out from under him with a grunt. The bathroom door is still closed, so I stalk over, Fae Ferocity urging me onwards to finish the job.

  Quick steps carry me across the room, and when I open the door I find the Engineer bent over an unconscious woman. She whirls at the sound of the door opening, and its clear from the look of fury on her face that she’s ready to yell up a storm.

  She freezes at the sight of me, her eyes widening with a mix of shock and horror, and I dash through the open bathroom.

  “Wha—” she starts, but then I’m on her.

  My fist connects with the side of her head, sending her crashing into the wall to my left, eliciting a loud crack as she slams into it. She slides down, landing in the tub in an unconscious heap.

  I almost keep going, claws outstretched and ready to rend her open just like her bearkin friend, but I hold myself back at the last second.

  I’ve done enough.

  Still, I keep the anger in my core simmering. Instead of killing her, I push a bit of Arcane Regulation into her to make sure I didn’t scramble her brains. No point in letting her die and missing out on the answers to what exactly is going on.

  Just a fucked up skull. Good.

  I move on to the apparent Princess, pushing healing into her as well and finding that she’s perfectly fine. Just a bit bruised up and unconscious.

  That’s when it hits me. After whatever these fuckers did to the train, the river of mana that powered it vanished. Despite that, there are wisps of ambient mana floating around, moving in their strange ways.

  And none of them would go anywhere near her.

  It's the woman from the lobby.

  Human Mage

  Level 62

  For a moment, I can’t help but stare. She’s slim, though her curves are accentuated by obviously well-tailored clothes. Now that I'm looking at her though, my expectations of long, flowy dresses and excessive jewelry are shattered.

  She wears tight brown pants and a simple red top with loose sleeves, the clothes seemingly more for mobility than appearances. Her crimson hair spills over her shoulders in loose curls, giving only a peek at her pale, unblemished face.

  Still, I know that if she were to open her eyes, I’d be met with the bright crimson irises I’d been drawn to earlier this morning. By all accounts, she is a stunning beauty. Different from Cari’s more cute attractiveness, or Krissy’s more mature looks.

  She somehow looks regal, even while asleep.

  My gawking is cut short when the train comes to a final, shuddering stop beneath me.

  Fuck.

  Quickly assessing my situation, I decide to wake up the Engineer first. Though my arm is only half regrown, it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure I can handle her if it comes to that, given that I handled the actual fighter.

  So I drag her out of the bathroom by the collar of her shirt and prop her up on the bearkin's corpse. After reestablishing my grip on her collar, I push Arcane Regulation into her, fully healing her head injury.

  She comes to seconds later, bleary eyed and confused. She looks around, for a moment, as if lost, until her eyes focus on me and she freezes.

  “Hey there. Who are you guys?” I ask. My voice comes out casual and calm, despite my inner turmoil.

  Thank you, Charisma. Thank you, Krissy.

  Her gaze hardens, and I see the muscles in her jaw twitch as she clamps her mouth shut.

  I scoff at her.

  Time to speed things up, I guess.

  I let go of her for a brief moment, then slap her in the face. She screams in pain, though I’m not surprised. She doesn’t have the fortitude of a Fighter, and I just hit her hard enough to shatter her cheekbone.

  The bearkin's body stops her from going anywhere, though. I grab her again, and with a thought, I push more healing into her, nearly instantly removing the quickly growing welt on her cheek.

  She stares are the bearkin's corpse behind her, a look of shock written plainly across her face. I shake her to get her attention back on me.

  “Hey now,” I chide, “Don’t go doing anything silly. Just answer my questions so things don’t get much, much worse for you. I can heal you from just about anything, you know.”

  My grin is feral, and something in her eyes shifts.

  “W-we’re mercenaries! Hired to capture the princess!” she stammers, nodding towards the unconscious woman.

  Success! Though… maybe I’m getting too good at this?

  For an instant, I think back on my experience with Jory, the leader of the Ratweaver gang back in Bephis, and what I’d done to him before killing him. He gave up just as fast, though I was far more brutal then.

  “Why did you stop the train?” I ask, tilting my head and letting my ears flop.

  “J-just in case she managed to run, our crew would be able to chase her down,” she rasps out.

  “Crew? How many of you are there?” I ask.

  She hesitates, the question seemingly returning a bit of her spine as she looks at me with a slowly growing smirk. This time I press her into the bearkin, my fist compressing her chest with enough force to make it harder for her to breathe.

  Her eyes widen and she scrabbles at my wrist with one hand before wheezing, “Sixty-two! There are sixty-two of us! Me and Gorz are the only ones on the train though.”

  When I quirk a brow, she panics.

  “I swear it! The rest are in the tunnels near where we expect the train to stop.”

  “Fine,” I say through a disappointed sigh. “How strong are they compared to the bearkin?”

  If they’re all as strong as him, I’ll be in serious trouble. Everyone will be. I’d honestly never even heard of the trains being stopped on the tracks before, so this is all new territory for me.

  “If I answer your questions, will you let me live?” she asks instead.

  I answer is saccharin sweet in tone. “I don’t know yet… but I know what will happen if you don’t.”

  “Okay! Okay. Gorz and I are some of the strongest. Only fifteen of us are Tier Two, the rest are Tier one,” she says.

  “The leader?” I inquire, pushing her into the bearkin a little harder. “Keep trying to hide things and I’ll just end you here and be done with this.”

  “H-he’s Tier Two, but near the peak,” she grunts.

  “You said earlier that she’s a Princess? Why is she alone?” I say, shifting topics suddenly.

  She looks confused, but answers. “I, uh, don’t really know,” she starts, but when my smile widens, she rushes to continue. “Wait! I mean it—the rumor is that she was banished, but nobody knows for sure.”

  I give her a little ‘hum’, but she looks like she’s genuinely at a loss. She could be lying, of course, but I have no way of telling. Either way, it won’t matter.

  “Great!” I say, grinning suddenly and pulling her back towards me. “See? Was that so—”

  That’s when she finally tries to do something stupid.

  Sense Danger flares to life as mana builds around where she holds my wrist. I try to wrest control of the mana from her, leaning heavily on my Intelligence and Wisdom milestones to overpower whatever it is she’s doing, but I’m not fast enough.

  I know for certain that I could overpower her, if I only had time. I just don’t.

  Before whatever it is fully triggers, I yank her towards me and sink my fangs into her throat, determined to end her before she gets any chances to escape or turn the tables. Her eyes go wide with shock as my teeth slide easily through the flesh, her Constitution clearly nowhere even close to that of the bearkin's.

  Then there’s an explosion of light and noise, and we’re blasted apart with a wave of heat and force.

  My fangs shred through skin and muscle, ripping her throat clean open as I’m flung across the room. It fills my mouth with the taste of iron and something far, far more enticing, and before I can think better of it, I swallow.

  Whatever it is that she did caused a decent amount of damage to my eyes, and the itchy feeling of them healing is now the new worst thing I’ve ever felt. Blessedly, it’s over quickly, and my vision returns quickly enough.

  It’s blurry at first, but clears up second by second. Across the room from me, lying against the opposite wall, the Engineer clutches at her throat with one hand as she fumbles feebly with a pouch at her waist.

  In the time it’s taken me to restore my vision, she hasn’t even managed to unhook the clasp and open it. Her fingers, covered in her own blood, slip against the leather over and over, and I watch as her attempts grow steadily weaker.

  Then, just a few seconds later, her arms fall limply to her sides, and a familiar rush of energy flows into me. It's less than I'd gained from the bearkin—likely because she was less of a threat in comparison—but still more than I'd gained in the past two weeks.

  Another peek at my status tells me that it's still not quite enough to push me into the next level, and I let out a disappointed sigh as Fae Ferocity fades.

  A wave of fresh pain slams into the forefront of my mind as it does. I let it wash over me, tingles fluttering to life all across my body as I recover. I stare across the room at the gaping wound in the Engineer's throat, feeling somewhat conflicted.

  The taste of iron and raw meat are still fresh in my mouth, but I can’t bring myself to be disgusted by it. This is the second—no, third time I've done this. I had already almost forgotten the fight with the gang trying to bust prisoners free of Bephis' jailhouse.

  I don't even know how many times I'd bitten people as I rampaged, there.

  Either way, this has happened three times, and each time Fae Ferocity was urging me onwards.

  While I don't particularly care too much about biting people, it brings with it the understanding that I'll have to be even more careful with Fae Ferocity going forward. It may not be the same as Skills like Berserk or Battle Trance—both of which completely remove any form of self control—but it's close enough.

  I shake the thoughts off and stand with a groan. My whole body aches, but I force myself to get on with it.

  It’s time to wake up a Princess and figure out what to do next.

  Can’t just let bandits raid a train full of my friends, after all.

  I barely get the bathroom door open again before a blur of red hair and sharp elbows crashes into me.