In Loki's Honor

It was a battle of attrition. I took more time finding the lizard-folk patrols than fighting them. {Guerrila Warfare} was working double-time to let me ambush them time and again. The lizard-folk used weapons made of monster parts. I saw scorpion stingers attached at the tip of some spears. Sharpened enamel from some hard monster's carapace. Seldomly I found a metal weapon, in a hideous state of disrepair.

Three days after I killed the first group, scavengers and opportunistic animals and monsters started to get their share of the fun. They came for the carcasses and ended up as casualties in my grind for Exp. I had no qualms about killing them, as none of these looked sylvan or sentient. That added to the carcasses in that patch of the forest, which attracted more monsters.

Food and water were secured through pseudopod cleaning of the frequent gore baths I was submitting myself to. I stopped only to sleep. I would burrow underneath the roots of a tree, shift into kitten form, and rest. Don't ask me what happened with my mass as I shifted forms. From lighter to heavier, they were the kitten, human, and were-jaguar. Let's shelve that under "it's fantasy!" and move on.

Another thing you could attribute to how the System processed things was that I wasn't big enough to fight as I did. But back when I was a tiny rabbit I could kick people down, the Attributes subverted the laws of physics. I had seventeen in all physical Attributes in hybrid form and it was enough to match the lizard-folk I met so far.

On the fourth day, I met more monsters and less lizard-folk. I knew the way to their village and it was time to pay a visit. Prowling between the evergreen giants, I made my approach.

The warriors were all guarding a flimsy rickety wall that was chest-height for them. Some of the beasts feasting on the carcass festival out there would plow through that like a wet rhino through rice paper. A few meters around the fence was clear of debris and I would have no chance of crossing that without being found. I had to wait and come back at night. Back to the slaughter.

Most of the monsters were mutated or chimeric animals. The most dangerous were those three, from least to most troublesome. A boar with a scorpion's tail. A bear with four furry tentacles ending in barbed spikes protruding from its back. A stag whose antlers shed a cold fire that only burned flesh, not wood. There was a plus to finding them. They all had Exp multipliers because of their difficulty. Which meant they were "harder" for their level.

I found one such "beartacles", as I was calling them. Its level was fifty-seven, the highest so far. The giant beast, four meters long, was eating some lizard-folk bodies not two hundred meters away from the lizard-folk village. Its combat strategy was simple. He would barrel forward and lash wit the spike tentacles from the sides. Getting impaled by them meant he could tear you apart with his claws and teeth without a chance of escape. I fought only one of these before. I dropped from above and bit off the tentacles before going for the neck. I climbed a tree and crept down a branch to position myself above the bear.

I pounced down but this bear was smarter. It twisted around and sent all four limbs my way. I steeled myself and waited until the last moment to activate {Backflip} and rotate in the air, dodging the furry tentacles. I bit one of them and pulled. {Vorpal Bite} ripped it like twine. The others got some scratches courtesy of my claws but I was already on the bear's back.

This critter was slow and strong. All agility was invested on the tentacles. While the one I cut off was flailing around and spraying blood everywhere, the other three were coming my way. I clung to his hide and prepared myself. The appendages dove at maximum speed and I dodged. The bear roared as his own spikes pierced his flesh.

With the threat of the spiked tentacles neutralized for a moment, I went wild, clawing and biting at the appendages. I got two when the third came to me.

Beartacles attacked with Barbed Tentacle. You lost 95 HP. The tentacle is lodged. Attempting Strength to break free. Failed. You are partially restrained. You are bleeding.

Fun fact about the System. The combat messages use whichever name you know for the creature. It could even change halfway if you learn something new.

Beartacles tried to pull me off of its back. With my unique perk, it was impossible to remove me. At least as far as I knew. What happened was that the spike came out, taking chunks of me with it.

You lost 243 HP. Your bleeding worsened. You are stunned.

There went a third of my HP. The monster brought his tentacle to the front and chomped on the barbs, getting a taste of me. I was losing seventeen HP every second, the worst case of bleeding so far. The Great White One would be dead in three seconds at this rate.

The beartacle roared and thrashed around, kicking lizard-folk bodies everywhere. It seems I was so light and he was in so much distress he didn't notice me clinging to his back.

The bleeding ended. My regeneration was fixing the damage but it would take more time than I had left. Another stab like that and I was gone. So I used every Skill I had to skulk undetected around the bear to reach the base of the last tentacle. I failed and the monster noticed me.

He whipped the tentacle but I was faster. He would have to throw the spike away to pull it back in an arc as the tentacle itself had not much strength as it had speed. I reached the base of the tentacle and gnawed on it as fast as I could. A spray of blood told me I was out of danger of being impaled for the rest of the fight. Now I only needed to reach its neck.

The bear fled. The massive beast charged through the forest, trying to get away from its incoming doom. I rocked and slammed on its back several times but my {Absolute Clinging} had this name for a reason. I was the perfect yandere girlfriend this bear didn't ask for.

I crawled up the beartacle's back and was reaching the neck when the forest ended. We were past the treeline and only the hisses and shouts told me my unwilling ride was charging straight to the lizard-folk village.

You gained the Exotic Mount [Bear] (rare) skill.

Yes, thank you, System.

The lizard-folk engaged the beartacle, stabbing with their monster-crafted spears and leaving scratches on the bear thick hide. There's a reason I cut off the tentacles and go for the head. Digging my way inside this panzer-sized flesh monstrosity would take too long.

With my new Skill, I found that I could steer the beartacle somehow. I drove it toward the masses of lizard-folk, trampling their flimsy huts and killing them by the dozen.

Your mount killed level 24 Warrior. You gained 7,200 Exp (5,760 base x 10,000 perk x 0,0001 curse x 2 size x 1.25 perk x 0.5 mount)

....

Your mount killed level 33 Lizard-folk. You gained 13,612 Exp (10,890 base x 10,000 perk x 0,0001 curse x 2 size x 1.25 perk x 0.5 mount)

But the beast was hogging half of the Exp. Unforgivable. I reached its neck and dug in with my teeth. The bear's head popped out in the seventh bite as I scored a crit.

You killed level 57 Beartacle. You gained 609,187 Exp (32,490 base x 10,000 perk x 0,0001 curse x 5 size x 1.25 perk x 3 creature rank).

You reached Monster Hunter level 16.

You gained 1 Attribute point.

You gained 3 Skill Points.

You gained 2 HP.

You gained 0 MP.

The bear's body moved forward on momentum alone, rolling and crashing into its last hut. I jumped to the side of the body and hid. I knew some lizard-folk noticed me, but I didn't want an open fight. I was too wounded for that.

Cheers erupted in the village. The lizard-folk celebrated the "defeat" of their terrible enemy.

The 2 HP the class gave me was multiplied by my Endurance score of seventeen and the bonus from my {Health UP} Skill. My HP jumped up by sixty with this level up, closing some of my wounds. It seemed the relation between your HP and how close you were to death was a reciprocal of your current HP as compared to the maximum. Losing half the HP you had would bring you halfway closer to death. A person with 20 HP left would be twice as much battered and likely to die than someone with 40 HP left if they had the same maximum amount, for example. The bottom line was that healing had a bigger impact on your physical condition when you were lower on HP.

I snuck a glance. Some lizard-folk were approaching to harvest the bear's body and there was one huge fellow that towered over the others but didn't look like a lizard-folk. While the others had curvilinear bodies with smooth scales, this one was rugged, leathery, and had an envious jaw. It was more a bipedal crocodile than a lizard-folk like the others. He had a massive maul resting on his back and jewelry made of shiny ores, twine, and teeth all over his body. The deference and fear the other lizard-folk displayed toward him told me that guy was the chieftain. And {Appraise} told me he was level sixty-six, to boot.

I stuck to the shadows and waited as my regeneration did its job. Covered as I was in the bear's blood, they wouldn't pick my scent. I just had to keep my pseudopods from cleaning myself, but they weren't automated.

The lizardfolk that came to butcher the bear were lean and had softer scales. Their tails weren't half the thickness of the others. It didn't take much to figure out these were the females. It was the first time seeing this kind of creature, so they were a society with strict gender roles. The elves were more egalitarian.

But half my cover was the bear's corpse, the other half a semi-collapsed leaning wall. As the females swarmed the body to carve it, my choices became fewer. I should've bolted and left the village, but the pain of my wounds and the adrenaline crash made me remain still. I needed to backstab the chieftain. If I pulled it off, the rest of the tribe would go away.

Even if it would make me weaker, I shifted into kitten form. In this shape, I was slightly bigger than a housecat. I scuttled from shadow to shadow, keeping all my skulking Skills active. Each would fool a different sense as I moved out of the beartacle crash site and hid behind the next intact hut. So far, so good. Using my clinging perk, I went to the roof of the hut. Anything heavier than me would crash through the flimsy trellis that didn't even keep sunlight out.

The chieftain was on the other side of the village inspecting the damage. The warriors watched while the female and younger males dragged the dead bodies away. I looked and it was in the same direction they took the chunks of bear they were carving out. I heard a little plastic spaceman gasping in my mind, "they're cannibals!"

Disgusted, I felt an urge to not let even the females return to their fetid swamp. It was the were-jaguar's bloodlust. Even though I was immune to the rage, I still felt the impulses from time to time. I returned to the middle of the roof and laid down to bask in the sunlight. I could wait until nightfall to make my move.

Night came and I was fully healed after a nap. And starving. A foul funk wafted from the trail of gore the bear left in its wake. The village wasn't sleeping. The lizard-folk warriors were walking around, patrolling the perimeter and the village. They talked in their hissing language but I was hopeless if I had to understand it.

Finding the chieftain was a non-issue. He was in the biggest hut in the middle of the clearing they'd claimed. Torches were lighting up the inside of the hut while outside light only came from Vester, the blue moon. Perfect for a cat's night vision. And lizards too. They were moving around without trouble.

I went to the back of the hut carefully. Some women and youngsters were sleeping there, despite the stench from the nearby bear carcass. I returned to the ground and shifted to the hybrid form. I was able to do so without becoming human. I crawled toward the fence and heard two lizard-folk warriors talking. They seemed younger as their race kept growing as they leveled. They probably evolved upon certain thresholds too.

I could pounce one of them but the other would sound the alarm. The only way I would get them both was to get smarter and use the heads. Their heads. I approached from behind but I backed off fast when I heard a patrol approaching the sentries. I looked around for a place to hide and I wished I had a cardboard box. I didn't. With little time left, I decided to go all out.

I jumped on the two sentries, clawing and raking with two sets of claws on each one. My right arm failed to connect but the other three blows left large gashes on their scaly skin. They bled like nobody's business, splashing some on me. I went for the one on my right as he was the least injured one and bit his neck. {Vorpal Bite} failed to trigger but I bit down hard and ripped open his throat. Their physiology was close enough to a human to have those pesky blood vessels close to the surface. He too went down incapacitated by {Stunning Bleed} and by the amount of blood squirting at regular intervals, he wouldn't survive. I bit the other one's head off. Because they were stunned, I landed a crit.

It wasn't a flawless execution by any means. The noise drew the attention of the sentries. I turned around and they were pointing their monster spears at me, hissing a warning. I crouched and jumped. At the last moment, I triggered {Backflip}. My body twisted in the air, landing a heel on the rickety wall. I let {Double Jump} propel me in a different direction as I sailed over their heads. At the apex, I raked with my legs and ruined one of the lizard-folk guard's eyes.

I landed behind them and spun in place counter-clockwise, dragging my left claws across the guard's ribcage and scraping the bone. The hideous bleeding debuff forced him down on his knees from sheer pain. I jumped to bite the other one but he was smart. Dropping his spear, he clawed at my exposed belly.

I let him. All I cared about was to reach his neck. I even clamped on his forearms and kicked the crouching guard to raise my hips and end up with only scratches while I went for his snout. Yes, snout, because he tucked his chin down. I bit in rapid succession, not caring to sink my teeth in his face as much as to get as many hits as I could in the shortest amount of time, hoping for a critical.

{Vorpal Bite} might sound like a joke on a rabbit but its effects were all too gruesome. The fourth strike with my teeth found his ear holes and I scored a critical as I chewed the side of his head and the cranium was bisected in two by an invisible force. Half of my enemy's brain slid off perfectly cut along the skull.

You killed level 27 Guard. You gained 9,112 Exp (7,290 base x 10,000 perk x 0,0001 curse x 1.25 perk).

I finished the other guards, getting between seven and eight thousand Exp from each. Without a second wasted, I became a kitten and climbed to the roof of a hut.