Fleabag 2 E-Book

SomeoneToForget

• Herausgeber: Podium Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Fleabag
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 698

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Evolving with human traits that conflict with its animal nature, a wolf is stalked by those seeking to capture and control it, in this grimdark fantasy. Wounded and fighting for survival in a complex dungeon consumed by civil war, a wolf's need to lead its own pack is fulfilled by a loyal and devoted connection to its elven companion, Emhreeil. Lost to each other, they've become easy prey for the monstrous creatures that prowl the multilevel mazes. To find Emhreeil, the wolf must learn to control its shapeshifting physiology and other supernatural abilities. Meanwhile, despite losing an arm and her sight, Emhreeil isn't completely helpless against the horrors of the dungeon. Having experienced her own transformation into vampirism, she now feeds on anything—rats and humans alike—to stay alive. Joined by her friend Katherine, she's drawn into the escalating conflict between various dungeon factions and vows to slaughter anyone who threatens their growing circle of allies. As she embraces her rising savagery, Emhreeil is determined to increase her bloodthirsty powers and find her beloved wolf. But Emhreeil isn't the only one searching for the wolf. Baron Manos Ironheart, a ruthless dungeon lord, has learned of the extraordinary beast's existence. Now he's determined to possess it, tame it, and make it his pet—and, eventually, his weapon. The bounty Ironheart places on the wolf's head tempts every merciless hunter in the dungeon. But with each confrontation, the hunters unknowingly strengthen the wolf's evolution . . . The second volume of the hit LitRPG adventure series—with more than a million views on Royal Road—now available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook! Tropes include: found family and fight to survive.

Leseprobe

— Book 2 —

SomeoneToForget

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Podium Publishing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2025 by Theodoros Zapris

Cover design by J Caleb Design

ISBN: 978-1-0394-5409-5

Published in 2025 by Podium Publishing

www.podiumentertainment.com

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

About the Author

Chapter 1

Fixing itself was not a matter of difficulty, not this time.

It was relatively stable. Extremely injured, but not dying.

It was simply an issue of time. It was so thoroughly injured that just fixing itself would take a couple days.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time for rest. Not with all the scavengers eating its prey all around it, and trying in vain to chew into the wolf itself.

The rat gnawing at its tail was particularly annoying, because it just wouldn’t give up, despite having made no progress in chewing through the burnt remnants of its fur to get to the meat underneath.

Not to mention that it was lying right next to an extremely abundant source of meat, according to the two or three antennae that hadn’t been snapped or torched off yet, and it wanted to steal its prey’s biology before it deteriorated too much.

All these thoughts led to the simple realization that it had to eat, and get moving. It had to find some little hole or somewhere quiet and just sleep everything off.

It was finally outside the innards of the human nest, back to a familiar place, so it wasted no time whatsoever in changing its “hands” back to paws and getting rid of the cartilage blocking its ears from the open air, the process of reinstating an older version of itself very easy on both mind and resources.

Fixing its injuries was a lot more costly.

Its skills were so frustrating. It had full memory of what it had been up to during [Maddened Frenzy], and it was confident it could have avoided most of the burnt fur and the jagged trails of flesh in its abdomen if it had the presence of mind to care about dodging beyond the most basic of instinctive reflexes.

And its poison.

Its damned poison.

It had completely forgotten it even had poison available when the fight started. Completely and utterly. It could have injected the thing with more than enough of that neurotoxin to render it a flopping bag of meat within a minute, but it was so panicked and surprised that its mind just forgot in the sheer heat of the moment.

It could have come out of all this relatively unscathed if it hadn’t been stupid.

With teeth tightly shut in frustration and pain, it breathed in the unpleasant scents of its prey’s insides, mixing with the chemical rivers’ scents, quickly moving around in [Devourer] and fixing things, big and small, one by one.

It could process whatever this thing was and what it had gained from it, after eating it and finding a safe spot to recuperate.

As soon as it had confirmed everything it wished to fix, it pushed away the [Devourer] skill and turned to the symbols’ updates.

You have progressed on your Path.

[Hound of the Keeper] Level 18→ Level 21

Attribute Points Available: 3

-Attributes:

Strength (+1)

Speed (+1)

Dexterity (+0)

Endurance (+8)

Perception (+1)

Resolve (+1)

Intelligence (+5)

Soul (+1)

Three “points” felt . . .

Not nearly enough for the amount of pain it had gone through to acquire them.

Its foul mood was already getting fouler—

And would this stupid rat give up already?!

It snapped back into [Devourer] for just a moment, switching to manual change, and twisted its tail around, forcefully jabbing the rodent with the poisonous fang at the tip of its tail, right between the ribs, squeezing the tiny gland in its tail absolutely dry in the moment it took for the rodent to process the attack.

Then it flicked the damned thing away, despite the eye-watering pain of its faulty vertebrae grinding together.

As it felt its twitching assailant spasm on the stone, it disregarded its annoying screeches and turned back to the system, exiting its skill to “stare” at its attribute points.

Its main issues so far were still Endurance, as it seemed like the world was utterly determined to do its best to kill it, and Intelligence, because Intelligence made the [Devourer] skill understand more about what it was eating, giving it access to more tidbits it could use. Like the mana cells. If it didn’t have the Intelligence to understand those, it wasn’t sure if its skill could so smoothly incorporate them into its body like it had.

It also allowed its brain to process more information, and faster, which was seemingly the best way to prevent information overload. It also considered that maybe the skill was getting faster and easier to use because of Intelligence. It felt like that was the reason, but it didn’t really know.

That attribute also helped the wolf with using the “mana” things indirectly, because of visualization, more capacity for imagination, and things like that.

On top of all those reasons, it kept having the realization that it was, in fact, not nearly as intelligent as it had assumed. The constant slipups confirmed it.

It still couldn’t get over the fact it completely forgot about its poison.

So in truth, nothing about its point distribution had changed. Endurance and Intelligence were its main tools to stay alive and thrive.

Endurance (+10)

Intelligence (+6)

The attribute screen faded, and a small wall of symbols replaced it.

-Acquired Skills:

You have gained the Skill [Danger Sense - Level 1]

-[Pain Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 21→ Level 23

-[Infection Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 8→ Level 9

-[Poison Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 15→ Level 16

-[Corrosion Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 5→ Level 8

-[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 19→ Level 20

-[Tough Skin] has Leveled Up. Level 7→ Level 12

-[Bloodrush] has Leveled Up. Level 5→ Level 6

-[Sonic Blast] has Leveled Up. Level 3→ Level 5

-[Tremor Sense] has Leveled Up. Level 4→ Level 5

-[Maddened Frenzy] has Leveled Up. Level 1→ Level 4

The only skill it really cared about was [Danger Sense]. Even just the vague idea of a seventh sense dedicated to notifying the wolf of surrounding danger sounded incredibly valuable. It assumed that it would feel like that prickle on the back of its neck that it had felt a moment before the thing’s tail slammed into the bridge.

As for the rest?

It was, once again, not terribly impressed. It would never complain about tangible, visible progress, but the effects of most of those skills leveling up would be rather minute changes, so it brushed them aside and went back to resting, just enough for its bones to knit themselves back together.

It could deal with the pain of most of its injuries, but trying to walk with bones made of frayed tissue would feel like trying to force a bag of unsupported meat to walk properly. So it prioritized its bones and relaxed.

Unfortunately, a downside of [Restful Awareness] skyrocketing in levels was that if it had any subconscious issues or worries, they would constantly tug its mind out of rest. So while its body rested, its mind continued to race with errant thoughts.

Its most prominent worry was actually about its human. It had no idea where she was, because the moment it activated [Maddened Frenzy], [Pack Hunter] completely stopped regarding her as an ally.

It was likely that she died, because to put it bluntly, she hadn’t exactly been strong. It couldn’t come up with a way she could have survived being flushed down a flaming river, never mind how susceptible humans were to the toxic air down at the abandoned floor if that’s where she also ended up.

It was a rather bitter thought, one that made its chest tight and burn with a strange phantom sensation of sadness, but there wasn’t anything it could do about it. Death was a regular, ever-present part of life. It had been fully aware she could die at any moment.

It was just . . . sad and disappointing.

After all the trouble it went through, all the fun they had together, she died. It was just . . . it didn’t feel nice. And it was likely that she died because of the wolf. If it had reacted faster and kept them on that bridge . . .

Ah. This was the first time it had ever felt “guilt.”

It was very unpleasant.

It really wanted something to kill or fight just to take its mind off of it, preferably something weak enough to not cripple or severely harm itself.

That thought made it pause, a light reprieve from its depressed mood.

The dogs.

Those were just free food at this point, weren’t they? They’d be nice to let out some of its self-directed frustrations on.

There were a lot of them around the human nest, and they were even weaker than humans. It had seen some of them gang up on a human and eat them, but for the most part, they scurried around humans and tried to avoid them, clear signs of a weaker pack.

Sure they had fur, and it would be annoying to eat them, and many of them were little more than skin and bone and diseases, but they were an extremely easy source of food it could prey on.

Then it remembered that it had assigned the bottom half of its body to be covered in glowing moss, so it put that idea in a corner of its mind for later.

That was something it had to work on. It hadn’t even considered life on the outside world when it added the moss.

It just wasn’t used to planning things in advance for later. It had lived its entire life up to this point going day by day, the concept of “the future” wasn’t even something it could ever focus on or be certain would ever arrive.

Now that it was relatively sure it had a future, it had to start actually planning. Or at least attempt to.

A slight problem to its plans of hunting the dogs for free food was that they were all on the upper part of the human nest, above this abandoned part. Among humans, it had no idea how they would react upon seeing its rather . . . healthy and sizable frame, and the glowing moss on its bottom half. Judging by how they reacted to the wolf having glowing eyes, they would either stare incessantly or react like that human that tried to capture it with some kind of mana skill.

So, if and when it ran out of things to hunt for in the abandoned floor, it would just get rid of the moss in favor of its old fur and go skulk about on the upper parts of the human nest, hunt and wipe out the dogs.

Mostly because they were free food, but it could not deny a slight hint of spite and anger remained in its mind about how the dogs had treated it when it was small and weak.

Now, they were small and weak, and it would have a lot of fun ridding the human nest of all of them.

Oh, and the rats. It hated those damn things. They’d been some of the most consistently terrifying and infuriating parts of living in the human nest. It had gone so many times into an exhausted nap, only to wake up to a screech from some rodent that skulked out of some tiny crevice, and it had to be constantly ready to jump to its feet and run to the humans so they’d kill the thing, or try to lead the rat into some dangerous crevice or canal predator to kill it for the wolf.

Come to think of it, that was probably how it learned to pay attention and use its environment, so it had been a learning experience.

It was still terrifying to its tiny, old self, however, and it really wanted to let out some of its aggression on the vermin. [Devourer]’s incessant, soul-deep hunger seemed to agree.

Judging by how the rat behind it had stopped twitching already, and how it had spent half an hour trying to chew through its fur and skin, they weren’t strong at all, at least not anymore. Free food, again. And entertainment.

It had lost its human, and it couldn’t deny that it was a little . . . no, it was very depressed about it, especially considering that it was mostly its own fault, or so it felt. But the future looked bright for itself. It had grown a lot. The thirty-foot behemoth it was almost lying inside of proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. The human nest was full of food, fights, and entertainment to be had. It had lost its human, but it had gained insurmountable strength compared to what it had before.

So while it wanted to curl up into a ball and mentally mourn how it lost the only pack member it ever had, it knew that doing that would be useless.

It would . . . give her a howl. That felt appropriate. It would give her a howl as an apology, and a show of mourning, like it had seen countless dogs do before for their fallen kin, and move on to greater things.

Its mind ruminated on memories for a while, but eventually, with a heavy sigh, it moved on, because that was all it knew how to do.

Plans. It had to learn how to plan.

One of its main problems was that it wasn’t sure how humans would react to its changed form. So it could just . . . walk into the nest and see how they reacted. If it was negative, it could just run away into the shadows.

The floor above was quite densely populated by humans, but there was an absolute heap of machinery to navigate through, higher, unlit walkways around and under them, and plenty of alleyways it could prowl through without drawing much, if any, attention from the humans. It could easily stalk around the human nest without getting noticed, especially considering [Echoes of Oblivion].

That activity might become a bit harder on the floor above that floor, but it had only been there once or twice by sheer accident, and had no reason to revisit it.

It still remembered when that random human threw some kind of spark missile at it for seemingly no reason.

Actually . . .

Its memory was rather hazy, and its nose was not nearly as great as it was now, but it was pretty sure it could find that human again by his scent.

Something to entertain for later, once more.

Mostly because thinking of human scents brought it back to its human and made it feel bad.

It thickened its vocal cords significantly in preparation within [Devourer], and rested.

Eventually, its bones were healed, just enough for the wolf to stand and walk around its prey, so it woke up, shaking off the vast amounts of burnt fur it had detached, most of it peeling off in half-melted chunks, and it opened its single fully healed eye to observe a few wriggling maggots, gently glowing green, chewing through its prey’s meat.

It wasn’t particularly bothered. More food on its food.

It would also answer the question of what would happen should it try to eat something alive.

The pain was . . . not mild, but not enough to deter the wolf from forcing itself upright on shaking limbs, [Pain Resistance] giving it the ability to hobble around at the very least.

Most of its bodily injuries were healed only to the extent that they wouldn’t deteriorate while the wolf ate its prey.

It really needed to find a way to make eating things a faster process.

A rather absurd but efficient idea came up as its eye roved over the charred, leathery mass sprawled out before it, and it let out a long, tired breath.

This was . . . going to take a long time. And it probably wouldn’t even taste good. It really had to eat a human again. If nothing else, just for the better taste and texture.

But first . . .

A howl for its own.

It remembered the first time it used [Sonic Blast], the way it poured emotion and memories into mana and let it out in a short, violent burst. This was the opposite of that burst, but the principle was the same.

It gingerly sat on its haunches, staring through its prey’s mutilated neck.

It had to draw that emotion out, and pour it into its howl. At least to make this feel proper, in a sense, even if it wasn’t sure of how humans mourned their dead pack members.

The best way to draw that emotion out that was to simply go back to the beginning, go through everything.

And slowly, it drew the memories forth, categorized them, from the start to the end. The human playing with her mana in the stairs. The fight in the trash pit, them against a few hundred rodents, the endless road down the pipe. Her fingers in its fur. The fight against the insect. Halfheartedly playing on the support rods. Sleeping next to each other.

The emotion built, and built, and its body wished for a way to express it, to relieve it.

It poured a slow, steady stream of mana into its lungs and took in a breath, one so deep it felt its lungs start burning from exertion. [Mana Conversion] and the mana cells in its lungs got to work sucking the mana out of the air, providing the wolf with a steady stream.

And so it let it all out, slowly, feeling its vocal cords be used to the verge of snapping, but holding, as the slowly building howl vibrated the metal and stone all around it, slammed into its ears incessantly, enough for a serious bout of ringing to fill its ears.

Across the fourth floor, workers, trackers, predators, cultists, they all slowed their steps, their thoughts fleeting as a strange keen echoed and filled the wasteland like a wave.

It was like the sound of someone pressing too hard on a violin’s strings, mixing with a wordless wail full of loss, an eerie sound that bounced and echoed and rattled against the metal, swirled through the smog and fog, pierced through their ears to clutch their hearts, and twisted their spine in eerie unease.

By the time it faded, not a single soul on the fourth floor was moving. The communication lines stayed eerily silent.

Motion resumed, haltingly. Most ran, protocols and basic self-preservation driving them forth to retreat, away from whatever made such a sound.

Not all, however.

“I’m not complaining too much. I just wish—” he replied through the mask’s speaker and immediately cut himself off as a sound built up in the air, like the beginning hums of a song.

Except it was no tune, nor melody, but a single drawn-out keen that slowly built itself up into a howl.

Niet stiffened, hand already clutching his short sword, glancing around them with clear nervousness.

Him? He just focused entirely on the sound, tilting his head up. Part of him was captivated by the mere sound, the emotions it forcibly wrung out of his withered heart. Another part of him was curious and terrified at the same time.

Despite both sides of him warring for dominance, a single memory ran through his mind.

A meeting, held almost eight months ago at the Prospectors Guild, telling them to report any doglike creatures they might have run into or seen during their work, for a hefty monetary reward should the creature be caught because of said tip. Something offered and paid for by a dungeon baron.

His first instinct was to go back to the guild right this moment and try to report it before anyone else did, then realized how pointless that would be.

That howl was loud. There were likely at least a dozen other people across the floor right now that had the exact same thought he did, maybe younger, maybe closer to the guild, maybe faster than him.

What they didn’t have was experience with trapping and hunting. Even after all these years, his Path remained the same, not only in the system but in his heart. He’d still trap rodents and slugs and all manner of curiosities to increase his level, but also because it was fun.

And as the howl faded, its distorted echoes still flooding through the mask’s speaker, he considered the reason that baron wished to find this creature.

Considering how, for something like a dog, the only way to survive down here would be if it was exceptionally mutated or Awakened, the answer was obvious.

Awakened dogs were very rare. Awakened dogs that were strong enough to withstand life on the fourth floor were . . .

Unheard of, actually.

And if it was mutated to high hell, it would still be much stronger than a regular dog. It would still fetch a lot in an auction.

Greed warred with caution for a brief moment, and as even the remnants of the echoes faded, he made up his mind.

“Niet. How would you like to make a few hundred gold crowns?” he whispered, breathed out into the mask’s microphone, and he saw his friend’s mask snap to him so fast he swore he heard something in his spine pop through the grimy bodysuit.

He seemed to consider it for a moment, his head and gaze drifting in thought.

He understood why. This would be dangerous. And neither of them were exactly in their prime anymore.

Then Niet gave a sharp resolute nod, sheathing his sword.

He smiled, an unusual formation for his wrinkled skin and fading musculature.

“It carried a lot, and echoed even more. And the only large open areas in the fourth floor—”

“The canals.” Niet cut him off.

He nodded, turning around and briskly walking toward the nearest guild lift, glancing at the magic compass in his hand and hearing loose metal plates grind and creak beneath his steel boots.

Something in his gut told him this was a bad idea, but temptation overpowered his caution.

“Let’s go grab my old gear, friend. We’ve got a dog to catch.”

Life was an unfair, psychopathic bitch.

And she was absolutely certain that said bitch had a grudge with her.

It was a long series of unfortunate coincidences she couldn’t even bother to count or recite at the moment.

Long story short, she was fucked over by being unlucky several times, in the worst timing and manner possible.

So she’d gotten assigned to this bullshit.

She’d gone from being a half-respected gangster under a respected crime lord’s boot—or dungeon baron or whatever the fuck they called themselves—to this. Lugging around almost eighty pounds of gear, looking for some fucking dog in the fourth floor. Day in, day out.

For a goddamn month.

It wasn’t just the time sentence for her fuckups, it was the fact that her task was fucking pointless. There was no fucking dog, and even if some dirty mutt could somehow survive down here for longer than ten minutes, there would be no fucking way of fucking finding the fucking thing, for fuck’s sake.

Fuck.

And because some plucky rumor about some adventurer and a dog reached her boss’s ears, her sentence was doubled, along with how many people were sent down in this shithole.

This place wasn’t nearly as big as the third floor, but it was still fucking massive. There were hundreds of others being forced to scour around this shithole ’cuz of Mister Crimelord Dungeon Baron Manny or whatever the fuck his name and title was, when they would need several thousands to even catch a whiff of a goddamn dragon if it decided to live down here.

It was just wasted manpower. Wouldn’t they need her and everyone else they could use up above? The situation was tenser than a stretched, fraying piece of string. One or two guards, or gangsters, being killed, could ignite the shitstorm. Everyone was looking for a reason to lash out.

But did Manny fucking Ironskin or whatever the fuck give a shit? Noooo, he wanted to find his lost pet or something.

Unfortunately she couldn’t complain to anyone, nor voice these thoughts without getting her limbs cut off and thrown into a sump, so she complained to herself. Like a sane individual.

Probably.

She just continued to stomp through gravel, plates of steel, and cracked stone, trundled through oceans of bolts and scrap metal forming hills that blocked half the thin metal alleyways she wished to go through, with just a shitty fucking compass to guide her back once her ten hour shift was done.

This endless bullshit was driving her insane.

Fucking stupid fucking—

Then she heard it.

She tensed, her spine going stiff, her gloved hand braced against a twisting pipe, as if made from rope and turned to metal, her right knee to her chest as she was about to squeeze through a mess of pipes to continue her meaningless wandering.

There was something about the sound that so openly declared mourning and loss, that she couldn’t help but let her mind wander to those she herself had lost, people she hadn’t thought of in months.

It was also exceptionally eerie. It felt like she’d just sat and listened to a requiem, the parting eulogy of someone far more significant than her, and she couldn’t shake off the goose bumps that rose on her skin because of it.

It was like a siren, declaring, Here you will find death.

It took almost a full minute of sitting frozen for her to realize what she’d heard, breathless, from how fucking loud that was. She could swear her eardrums hurt.

Her first action was to check the speakers on her gas mask, gingerly tapping along the plastic circles clamped around her ears.

No, they worked just fine.

And she was . . . probably not hallucinating. She hadn’t taken any cloudsugar with her.

It took a few seconds for her mind to start processing what to do and what to make of that sound.

First of all, that was so fucking loud, holy shit.

Which meant that it was probably close to her.

And it also meant she’d been completely and utterly wrong in almost all of her assumptions. And that she could get out of this chore of a job if she could capture it.

Her hand jerked down to the comms tablet that had been bouncing at her hip for two weeks without use, and she hesitated.

If she could capture it without any help, how much rep would she get on the streets? That thing had some lungs on it.

Actually, how dangerous was it?

She brought up the system screen, her lips pressing into a thin line.

Level twenty-eight. There was no way she’d lose to a fucking mutt.

As she turned around and began to sprint toward the direction that haunting howl came from, she could have sworn something was staring at her through the smoggy alleys and pipes, yet despite checking around her continuously and seeing nothing, the feeling never faded.

She disregarded the feeling after a couple minutes as she vaulted over a buzzing engine, chalking it up to nerves and anticipation.

Hanging across wires and prowling beneath bits of debris, she never noticed the small entourage of spiders that seemed to follow her with their beady red eyes.

Gears creaked.

The hiss of a hundred chassis drawing breaths, a hundred fans whirring to life behind metallic chest plates, the buzz of electrics, they filled the air, the empty space behind him warming with presence.

Incense and oil fumes filled the air, and Archbishop Varmond rose, hands unclasping.

A question whispered.

An answer eluded it.

A question demanded answers of form. Of self. Of creation, of futility. Of negative value, and the transaction of flesh and metal. The maddening crown that could not be worn, the incompatible conjoining in nirvana.

A question of perfection, lost.

Through the temple’s vents, a wordless, distorted wail longing echoes and loss flutters into his ears.

A question of perfection, found.

A series of clicks, and he unfurled. Hydraulics hissed like angry hydras, metallic joints clicked and cracked into place as his true body formed, pressed, compressed, decompressed, reformed, a silent demonstration of near perfection, of flawless machinery.

He gazed at the symbol, scrawled onto a tattered red cloth with black paint. The eye gazed down, down.

A veneer. A lie.

Soon, brother. He whispered in his mind with a voice that wasn’t his, and he turned.

A sea of yellow eyes extended before him as he towered above them. Contempt and hope raced through him.

“Soon. The hands of the clock wear away and fade. The answer nears. The eyes shall find it.” Three voices rumbled through the gramophone in his chest, and a fuzzy, distorted melody long lost to the tides of time began to play, a fathomless importance reverberating through flesh and steel, through wires and crystals.

The melody tingled at a phantom heart within his frame, an ancient memory.

A memory of loss.

Of ascension, broken.

Of perfection, lost.

Of perfection, never found, but perhaps echoed in another.

Chapter 2

Her confidence in beating this dog without severely injuring or killing it had very, very sharply declined the moment she laid eyes on it, after almost a fucking hour of sprinting around trying to find the damn thing without getting lost.

Not because it was particularly gigantic or intimidating, despite its strange form, but because it was eating something several times bigger than itself. Like, fucking eight times bigger. Without stopping at all, biting whole ass chunks out of it.

Without being disturbed by anything.

She didn’t for an instance think that this thing was what killed the . . . what looked like the mutilated remains of a spearhead shark. It was something that it probably just stumbled upon and decided to eat, because she couldn’t fathom how something that small could kill something that large. It just didn’t make sense.

She was still confident she could beat this thing into the fucking dirt before hog-tying it and slinging it over her back, whistling merrily all the while over her free trip back into the Beakers’ good graces. She just wasn’t sure she could do it while holding back. Accidentally killing this thing was a genuine concern. Baron whateverhisnamewas was very insistent about catching the thing alive.

It was just the attitude of everything around the thing that made her hair stand on end.

Whether it was the carnivorous vines around the canal that seemed to actively lean away from the massive free meal right next to them, the acid flies that only seemed interested in melting the carcass’s tail as far away from the dog as possible, or the sump frogs and acid slugs, everything that came close to the massive carcass to scavenge some easy pickings, they all very quickly turned around and left.

And she knew that nothing in nature, or as close to nature as one could get inside this shithole, would ever give up a mountain of free food without a valid reason and concern.

She idly noted the withered signs posted occasionally up and down the miles-long expanse that stretched to her right as she observed from a lightly vibrating venting pipe a few hundred feet above her catch, her left leg swinging as she hugged her right.

Something about this all felt off, and she wasn’t sure what. Just to be safe, she mentally noted the canal number and sign, in case she needed to call in assistance from the comms tablet.

After a brief moment of self-reflection, she sighed and rolled her eyes at her own attitude.

She was being such a fucking pussy about this.

It was just a fucking dog, and even if she couldn’t beat its ass with her bare hands, she had a thirty-pound harpoon gun she’d been forced to lug around for two weeks. And a healing potion she could feed the thing once she’d sufficiently tied it up, to prevent it from bleeding out.

“All right, come on, it’s showtime, you jittery fucking bitch.” She murmured to herself, a familiar phrase she’d muttered to herself before every cage fight, and hopped off the pipe onto rusty metal with a worryingly loud bang. She stayed crouched for a moment, nailing her eyes on the dog’s form below.

Besides a twitch of its ear, no reaction. It just kept biting giant chunks out of the carcass.

Holy fuck, how much could this thing eat?

Beginning to unstrap all unnecessary weight from the filter canisters to the backup respirator, she only kept a single flare, a healing potion, and the comms tablet on her belt.

Just as a precaution.

She picked up the harpoon gun, checked the crank and arrow, and began stalking closer with a deep, steadying breath, ducking beneath a crisscrossing box made of wires and squeezing through tight crevices for the best shot possible.

It turned its eyes to the tail currently getting melted by glowing flies, and after throwing its head back and swallowing a giant chunk of oddly textured organ that almost got stuck in its throat, it clacked its teeth shut and began limping over to shoo them away.

It wasn’t very interested in chewing up the thing’s digestive tract.

It was very interested in how this thing got its tail to be such a devastating weapon.

Thankfully, its tail was about half as wide as its main body, never mind its gigantic, arrow-shaped head, so it took little more than forty-something minutes to eat through it all, up to the base of the thing’s spine, which, oddly enough, had hip bones connected. Without any legs.

Weird. And redundant.

With only a vaguely cylindrical piece of meat left, around six feet long and half as tall, almost two hours after it began eating, it was quite honestly more than sated. Even [Devourer] seemed more than content enough. Its diminishing reserves had been restocked to more than it had before it went down into the enclosed spaces of the human nest, [Devourer] wasn’t hungry for once, and the wolf’s jaws were beginning to hurt from constantly biting and chewing and tearing out chunks.

For . . . probably the second time in its life, it considered actually leaving free food behind. It didn’t want to waste another hour with this. It had to get going and find some crevice to sneak into—

A distant click and a faint whistling sound made its ears shoot up, and it detached from its prey, planning to crane its head around to investigate the odd sound, one that didn’t quite fit with the normal ambiance of the canal’s surroundings.

The ghostly prickle of a needle at the side of its mind from [Danger Sense] made its head snap to the left before it could do so, just quick enough to see an arching blur fly out of the foggy reaches of the walkways above, just a dozen inches past its head.

It slammed straight through its left hind leg, the skin and muscles not enough to stop the projectile without its fur to assist, the impact jerking its hips to the side from the force. It yowled in pain and surprise, forcing its protesting body to jerk back and turn away from its assailant.

It didn’t need four limbs to run, despite its awkward half-changed paws.

Right as its claws dug through the stone to propel it forward, with its left leg curled up to its stomach, the metal pulled, three jagged points digging into the inside of its thigh and using its own flesh to pull it back.

Its chest and jaw slammed into the stone as [Bloodrush] activated and it began getting dragged back with unreasonable speed. Any attempt to resist the pull only shredded its flesh further, so it didn’t hook its claws into the stone at all, instead squeezing as much adrenaline out of its sac as it dared to, throwing its left paw back to hook into the stone next to its hip.

It twisted its waist with as much force as it could muster as it pulled with its paw, launching its body backward, granting it some relief from the pain. Its left eye saw the tense steel cable that led to the metal in its leg, and without hesitation, it backhanded its claws through it, sending it reeling back to whoever held it.

Its antennae, the few that had regenerated, writhed against the floor, feeling the vague vibrations of someone or something dropping from one pipe to the next.

Its eye focused on the piece of metal, and in the few seconds of respite it had gained, it pressed its palm on the blunt back of the arrow-shaped thing, forcing the metal through its flesh with a pained whine-snarl.

Then it moved its left hand under its abdomen between its legs, and with a flick of its finger, cut off the sharp, spiky bits that had been hooked into its flesh, then moved to the outside of its thigh to yank it out.

Then it realized that it would only bleed even more should it do that, and instead cut off most of the metal with a flick of its finger to make it less awkward to run, and quickly turned around once more, sending one last glance to the human that had attacked it for no reason before it began running.

As its assailant sprinted out of the fog, however, it paused, its lips curling into a sneer, its eye narrowing.

Its body was still wrecked. How long could it run for before it would have to activate [Maddened Frenzy] and get itself even more injured than before? Five minutes? Ten? It was fast, normally, but could it run with two hands instead of paws, heavily injured, and without using one of its legs? While bleeding the entire time?

Realistically, it couldn’t run away.

But as it used its single functioning hind leg to hop its bottom half around, turning to face the human, it came to a simple conclusion, one that might be born of overconfidence for all it knew, but felt right.

Why should it run away?

It was so tired of running.

And this was just one human.

As hundreds of feet rapidly turned to dozens, the human slowed down, its knees bent and its fists held loosely in front of its body, slowly closing in.

In the dim light, it couldn’t see any sort of weapon on the human, at least none that it could recognize as such, so it idly wondered if he was holding on to some other hidden trick—like whatever he had used to shoot it.

Because there was just . . . no way he was actually planning to fight the wolf with his fists.

This wouldn’t even be an actual fight if he tried that.

Yet even as the distance closed, and the wolf silently glared at the human, it took nothing out to wield.

Maybe its wishes for an easy fight were less unrealistic than it had thought.

In fact . . . it could probably kill him without even fighting.

It just had to crack the mask.

And then it could just let it die without interfering, before inevitably biting its head off.

Despite its desire to coil its tail for a strike, it allowed its appendage to wag a little, restricting the snarl in its chest into a low rumble.

This fucking thing was making her skin crawl.

Not only was it almost completely hairless, giving her a very good understanding of just how fucking muscular the damn thing was the closer she got, the way it had dealt with the harpoon made no fucking sense.

She’d fucking blinked and the steel cable had detached from the harpoon somehow.

The more attention she paid as she slowly circled the dog, the more hesitant she became about fighting this thing.

The harpoon that should be in its leg was nothing but a thin hollow pipe now, without the head or the tail attached, two clean cuts. The canine’s body was covered in cuts and deep, jagged wounds all across its back and shoulders, which were disturbingly humanoid, and the way its single glowing eye followed her with an intelligent, laser-steady focus made her hair stand on end.

Twenty feet of distance slowly turned to seven. One lunge from either of them would start a fight.

But neither of them moved, even as her eyes followed the steady stream of blood that dripped onto the stone from its injured leg.

Then its tail began to wag and its lips began to curl into a snarl, a low rumble building in the air, and the feeling of something not adding up only increased.

She felt like she was in the cage again, having to fight some blood-crazed psycho with a giant grin on their face at the prospect of beating someone up. Those were the fights one wanted to avoid.

Its body language, from the low stance and the reluctance to move, screamed defensive, while the way its almost humanoid hands gripped the stone below, the low, rumbling growl that sounded more like an engine’s purr, and the wagging tail, they all screamed “I want to fight.”

It was so contradictory she couldn’t tell what this thing was going to do.

Despite her wounded pride, her instincts and the bizarre way this thing looked and acted sealed the deal.

Her left hand went for the comms tablet, and the dog’s—no, the beast’s eye, followed the movement, hopping once to realign its bottom half with her, still crouched but significantly more tense all of a sudden, its tail curling strangely.

So the mutt understood the concept of “weapons” and the danger they posed. It had to have been around humans for a while—

In an instant, it blurred forward and to the side, whipping its lower body toward her by using both of its legs to kick the stone as it used its hands to stabilize its upper body in place, adding to its momentum and torque, its back facing her as its thick, muscled tail blurred straight toward her face.

She jerked back, a practiced movement.

Not quite far enough. She hadn’t realized how goddamn long its tail was.

She activated [Challenger’s Focus] just in time to watch in near slow motion as the strange black thing at the tip of the beast’s tail slammed through the glass of her gas mask.

Boxers learned how to not close their eyes when facing an incoming hit, as it would only hinder them in a close fight.

And that was the thing that doomed her, as in that moment of panic, her natural reflex to close her eyes simply did not occur, beaten out of her from repeated bouts in the ring.

Shards of glass, big and small, slammed into her open eyes, and she let out a cry of surprise and anguish as she backpedaled in a panic, almost tripping over herself and spinning in confusion. Her legs buckled and she almost careened forward before managing to catch the ground with her fist and spin, pushing off and away from where she thought the beast was.

Where she thought, because no matter how hard she tried to focus and stop herself from blinking, her vision was nothing but a blurry sea of grimy green and gray and red, with a single undulating dot of gold glaring at her through the muck.

“F-fuck! FUCK!” She snarled, backpedaling further while keeping some unstable form of a stance as her left hand fumbled with the comms tablet, struggling to remember where each button was. She slowed just a bit and straightened, despite the panic clawing at her heart, in the hope the damned dog would keep away long enough for her to call reinforcements if she just pretended to have her shit together.

That blurry golden dot disappeared, and something slammed into her ankle as she took a step back, just hard enough for her lead boots to scrape at the floor and make her lose her balance. In the middle of falling onto her back, she curled her left leg in and stomped where its tail was, all her points in Speed allowing her to do so before it pulled back.

She was rewarded by a slight yelp before her hips and back rolled onto the floor, and she carried the momentum by curling her legs and rolling back, ass over head, and staggering upright, unbalanced, feeling fear and agony claw at her mind and body.

Every breath felt like a million fish hooks were being dragged through her nostrils and into her lungs, a deep-seated feeling of wrongness permeating her body.

The scrape of nails on stone sounded out from in front of her, and in a move both desperate and fearful, she jerked her upper body low and threw out her fastest right hook.

Her fist moved through something solid as if it wasn’t even there, the flesh and bone splitting effortlessly, the tendons snapping, before her knuckles slammed into the top of wet, hot, rough flesh, a sandpaper tongue scraping at her pinkie.

A split second before the agony registered, innumerable sharp points clamped around her wrist, and with a twist, she felt the flesh, the bone, the tendons, everything, be sheared off, like paper meeting scissors.

An ear-grating, shrill scream left the human’s lips—a female, it noted from the scent—as her mutilated hand lay comfortably nestled into its jaws, covered by some kind of skin-fitting covering. It quickly spat it out, watching with concern as the human backpedaled, tumbling over her own legs, hyperventilating and clutching at the clean-cut stump on her right wrist, agonized, choking groans leaving her lips as blood dripped down her face from her punctured eyes.

She was being loud, and the wolf was fairly certain she was just going to attract more of her kin to it if she kept it up. It was concerned about having to fight more humans. Besides, it didn’t really hate humans, so despite wanting to fight and kill this female, it had no reason to draw it out or toy with her.

It had to kill her quickly and leave, leaving her corpse to be food for the various vermin of the canals. It was kind of a sad situation for the wolf to be in. All that meat, wasted.

Her free hand let go of the stump, fumbling for some kind of vial at her waist as the wolf patiently hopped and prowled around her. She downed it in what seemed like a single gulp, before tossing it with force toward the wolf, a couple feet off the mark.

It quickly wreathed its claws in darkness and stopped its instinctual growling to deny her its rough location, watching in both fascination and annoyance as skin quickly formed over the bleeding stump.

The human fumbled for the strange metal device as she backpedaled even farther, posturing as if she was fine, despite the way her legs quivered and the way her fear was so thick in the air it could almost note its undertaste from beneath the acrid chemicals.

A series of strange beeps and clicks came out of the device as her fingers pressed as many buttons as they could reach, and it tilted its head, the device’s design reminding the wolf of those strange grated boxes that would make a bunch of noise, whether it was some human speaking or some cacophony of sound that humans seemed to enjoy listening to.

It paused, its eye widening as it realized what she was trying to do. As she opened her mouth, bringing the device to her mouth, the wolf put down its injured leg and rushed forward.

“HELP! JACQUELINE HERE, I NEED HELP, CANAL F TH—” The human was cut off with a wheeze as the wolf’s shoulder slammed into her midriff, its left hand curling down and behind her knee before raking through, severing the tendon in her legs without issue, as its right hooked into her lower back, the farthest it could reach, and sheared through her back, severing the end of her spine.

It knew all the weak points of a human. It knew how to disable her without effort, and so it did, its eye nailed to her elbow.

As her torso reeled back, her hand extended, and the wolf saw its opportunity, unwinding its neck and opening its jaws to clamp onto her elbow, its canines scraping against one another as its front teeth cut through her forearm.

A violent jerk and twist as they fell, and the device flew through the air above their heads along with the human’s arm.

Some buzzing voice responded through the device as it clattered to the floor, but the wolf didn’t care enough to listen to what the human on the other end was saying, focused on shutting up the human below it as fast as possible.

It knew what humans sounded like when they were calling for their kin.

A breathless cry of terror and pain left the human as she threw her arms above her head and neck, and the wolf, left without a choice, started clawing through, its jaws closing around the single forearm the human possessed as she jerked and writhed around, its claws hooking into her shoulder muscles and raking through, jerking its jaws back and to the side, a clumsy maneuver that didn’t manage to sever her defense, only partly cutting through her forearm due to her stump smacking into the side of its face from the motion and not allowing it to twist further.

Without her shoulder muscles to help her arms move, and her legs completely paralyzed, it didn’t matter. Its right hand’s “fingers” clamped around her elbow and pushed it up, away from her head without much effort, allowing the wolf’s teeth to cut through flesh and thick, threaded cloth.

Its tail felt along the human’s limp lower body before jamming into her suit in vain, the fang not sharp or strong enough to pierce through the thick suit.

As the human’s upper body continued writhing, her chin tucking into her neck, it twisted, throwing her severed forearm to the side and opening its jaws as wide as they would go.

Then it snapped forward.

Its canines cut through her eye sockets and cheekbones effortlessly, and without anything to block it but the human’s annoying screaming and bucking, it began trying to dig its fingers into her neck, trying to either cut through her spine or neck, to make her stop making noise already.

Its hind leg, the functional one, kicked its lower body up in the air, then kicked down at her stomach right as its weight came crashing down, the impact making her abdomen curl and her mouth open in a breathless wheezing cough.

It saw an opportunity and immediately blunted its teeth, yanking her head up and sideways by pulling at her skull, the tips of its fangs scraping at the edges of her brain.

It lifted its right paw, phasing its claws through her open mouth, down her right cheek and jawbone, before turning and finally managing to cut into her throat, her gurgling screams as frustrating as they were worrying.

It snarled, a rising, sharp sound, and engaged its pained, torn muscles as much as it could, trying to force its fingers deeper into her neck, being blocked by her blood-soaked chin as she desperately tucked her shoulders up.

In frustration, it gave up and grabbed on to the detached jawbone it had cut through, then yanked back with all its strength, the guttural crack of snapping bone and tearing flesh predating the animalistic, gurgling screech of agony that the human let out as the wolf’s arm trembled with the effort of trying to tear her jaw off.

It just wanted to jam its claws into her spine and be done with this, but she would just not give up.

It flattened its ears to save its hearing from the sound, and with urgency and genuine anger, let go of her head by cutting through with its teeth and yanking back. It quickly grabbed her half-connected jaw with its left paw, its stubby half-transformed fingers barely getting a decent grip, then wrenched to the left, exposing her flopping tongue and neck.

It formed a rough fist with its right arm and punched the side of her head, just strong enough to expose her neck further, and it jammed its snout into the exposed flesh, opening its jaw progressively and allowing its teeth to cut through tendons, arteries, and flesh.

Unfortunately, no amount of twisting would reach her spine, so it adjusted its grip, blunted its teeth, and yanked her half-limp, spasming body off the ground.

Its hands rose to the back of her neck, and with a forceful rake of its claws and a twist of its own trembling neck, the human died with a final jerk, her spine severed completely.

It adjusted its grip on her neck, then pushed down with its hands on her torso and pulled up with its back and neck. With a sound of wet, tearing paper and a spray of delicious blood, her head finally detached, making the wolf jerk back from the sudden lack of resistance, leaving it hanging from the left side of its jaws by a few scant ribbons of flesh.

It had really missed the taste of blood.

Even as [Bloodrush] faded, it didn’t feel particularly tired, its breaths only mildly heavier than normal as it breathed through its catch.

It was just injured and frustrated at its current circumstance. It wanted to relax for one day without something trying to kill it. It was almost tempted to crawl back into the tunnels for some peace and quiet.

At least it could take the only part of the human it cared about, her brain, and run away to eat it somewhere safe.

Because there was no way not a single human had heard her cries for help, especially judging from the urgent voices coming from the little metal box thing she’d been holding on to.

As if the world sought to validate that exact thought, another prickle from [Danger Sense] made the wolf instinctively duck and throw itself to the side in an awkward hopping manner, dropping the human’s head and letting it roll away as it turned its gaze skyward.

It snarled at the shady outlines of two humans crouched atop a precariously positioned walkway that connected two leaning towers of steel, more than a hundred feet up and away, but both clearly focusing on it.

It had to run away, so it turned and . . .

Stumbled over its own feet, its shoulder and the side of its snout smacking into the small pool of blood cradling the human’s corpse. Confused and alarmed, it pushed off the ground, planning to resume its attempt to flee, and saw the world begin to rock side to side, as if the wolf were in a barrel floating down a stream.

Something tugged and prickled at its back, and it twisted, almost falling over, staring uncomprehendingly at the half dozen tiny metal spikes that dotted its backside, swaying and lightly bouncing with each movement.

It understood why it hadn’t felt them, considering how much pain it was still in, but when had those gotten there? Had the humans above thrown the spikes down?

A word for them formed in its mind as its vision blurred and the world tilted, sending the wolf drunkenly stumbling onto its side, watching the glowing canal twist like a worm across its vision.

Needles.

A wide, heavy net covered the wolf and squeezed its adrenaline sack dry, the conflicting chemicals in its bloodstream battling for dominance, and it snarled in effort as it ground its knuckles into the stone, getting up and taking six stumbling steps before the adrenaline was overpowered, its limbs and fingers getting tangled in the net.

It didn’t even have the energy to swipe its claws through it.

It fell unconscious, and immediately its mind flitted away into [Devourer], frantically trying to disable and target the poison in its veins.

It wasn’t paralyzing poison, so the wolf didn’t have experience with how and what it was doing. It seemed to move through its bloodstream and into the brain, and then act like a hyperefficient version of melatonin, forcing its mind to rest.

By the time it forced its quickly flagging mind into properly programming its mana cells into attacking the poison, however, its chemical bonds seemed to have altered and changed, and eventually, it couldn’t even understand what it was doing or looking at, its mind succumbing to a deep sleep.

“HELP! JACQUELINE HERE, I NEED HELP, CANAL F TH—” The voice cut off with a thud and a wheeze on the public channel, and across the fourth floor, gangsters, mercenaries, and hopeful nobodies alike all paused, some replying with requests for location and details.

But all heard the ensuing bloodcurdling screams, the gut-wrenching gurgles of agony, the spine-chilling snarls, the sounds of tearing flesh and snapping bones, distorted through the speakers, until all that remained was the low static of a damaged comms tablet.

And in a metal tower, nestled into the walls of the third floor, a pale, gray face curled its lips into a sneer as it listened to the replay, an hour late.

Newly regrown limbs crushed the crutches they held in trembling fists, while steely eyes glared at a complex machine of mana crystals and countless buttons and wires sprawled across a dark, carpet-less room.

“I knew you were alive, you fucking mutt,” he snarled under his breath and swept his glare off the hub machine, and onto Kolak, his brown eyes staring back at him, unflinchingly.

Good.

“Get Mason in here. And the comms crystal that’s labeled ‘Trackers.’ Now,” he growled, and didn’t wait to see Kolak nod before he grabbed a hold of the boxlike microphone, pushing the WLF-SCT button with enough force to hear something crack.

He brought the microphone to his mouth and cleared his throat.

“To everyone currently assigned to the fourth floor on dog-catching duty, this is Baron Manos Ironheart. And I will make myself very, very clear,” he rumbled, planning on doing his best to make it as clear as possible how serious this was and how fucking furious he was.

But then he remembered that many of them were tracking groups, mercenaries, and people he had little hold over, as well as how he couldn’t make it obvious how important this was. Thus, he forced out a hissing breath between clenched teeth to calm himself down.

“If you do not catch that fucking dog soon, you will all either be out of a job or a floating corpse in a gutter, depending on your incompetence and efforts. My patience has limits. So I’ll add further incentive: Whoever brings me that dog, alive, will be paid their weight in gold, and will have one favor granted by me, within reason. I’ll relay new instructions through your superiors.”

He was met with silence as he tossed the microphone aside, letting its curled cord swing it along the edge of the machine.

He was going to burn this fucking floor to the ground if he had to, to find that wolf.