For such a large monster, it was surprisingly quick and agile. The talons at the tips of its winged forelimbs were sharp enough to stab deep into the pavement, giving it the traction to drag its great bulk along, practically catapulting itself towards him. It had to tuck its wings to its side to get through the door, however, and even then it had to squeeze itself through with some effort.

That delay was more than enough for John to punish it. With one hand still spewing out shadows, he threw a Fireball right in its face with the other. At this range, it was impossible to miss. Flames rolled over the bat monster's squished snout, and it reared back, screeching louder than ever. The darkness around them rippled, as if its voice was vibrating the very air. Maybe it was.

John stumbled back, disoriented, feeling like someone had just stabbed a shard of ice between his eyes. The world roiled and tilted. He slashed out a few Wind Shears to keep the bat monster busy as he bade a retreat further into the room. Glancing behind him, he saw the others with their hands over their ears, in varying degrees of distress. Lily was doubled over, and there was a pool of vomit at her feet. Jade was leaning against the wall. Chester was actually handling it best of the three, standing up straight despite the strain.

Are they even going to be able to contribute at all, at this rate? Gotta handle this fast.

Easier said than done. The bat monster recovered almost immediately from John's attacks, seeming to decide its best recourse was to weather them and take down their source. It was dragging itself into the room, coming right for him, ignoring Fireballs and Wind Shears and Aqua Shots and Burning Gales alike, despite the black ichor oozing from dozens of wounds all over its body. Only a well-timed Force Push halted its advance, shoving it back into the wall.

Shifting into Accelerate, he dropped Shadow Stream in favour of dual wielding Mana Blades and dashed towards the enemy. Even in time dilation, its sonic attack rendered him nauseous. He had no choice but to fight through it. Darting in close, he abandoned any thoughts of finesse or technique in favour of slashing the fucker as much as he could in the scant heartbeats the Skill allowed.

Black blood sprayed over the walls as he gauged deep furrows into its wings, forelimbs, face, and upper body. The disparity in speed between them left it helpless to stop him, and he managed to get in a dozen cuts in half as many heartbeats. By the time he dashed backwards to avoid any counterattacks, its wings sported multiple holes each.

Let's see you fly like that, you piece of shit.

Accelerate came off cooldown, and he used Force Push to shove it back against the windowsill. Its mouth hung open in a silent scream.

Then the darkness began rapidly draining away at the broken door and window, left with nothing to replenish it. John was halfway to lifting his hands to add more when the bat monster unhinged its jaws like a snake, eyes going so wide they looked millimetres away from popping out of their sockets.

A shockwave erupted out of the monster's gaping maw. The world blurred. Next thing John knew, the wind was punched from his lungs as his back slammed against the far wall. There was a pop, followed by dull ringing. Something wet trickled out of his ears and down his neck, and then John heard no more. He scrambled back to his feet, but it was already too late. His darkness was blown away, leaving his comrades exposed.

But the bat monster was exposed, too.

Golden light shone, the great machete projection spearing out from Jade's weapon. The woman herself had been thrown to the ground and was lying in a heap against the wall, but she still had the strength to lift her machete and almost drunkenly slash at the monster. The monster hadn't a hope of dodging. It turned its head and blasted out another visible sonic attack at the oncoming blade of light, but it was ineffective. Sound waves rippled right through the blade, striking the walls and roof above and shredding them. Jade's attack kept going unimpeded, almost seeming to move in slow motion. It bit deep into the monster's torso, slicing right through one of its wings before vanishing. Black blood spurted from the new wound, and the monster stumbled onto its side, screeching out more sonic attacks.

John moved to stand, hoping to take advantage of the bat's distraction, but the world spun, his stomach churning. He stumbled back against the wall. Sound was muffled, overpowered by the ringing in his ears.

Increased Vitality Level 3 -> Level 4!

-800 Aura

A wave of energy surged through his body. It massaged muscles, strengthened bones, and made his blood feel like it was boiling with power. It reached for his wounds and soothed them. After a muted pop, sound flooded back in, and John took action.

With one hand, he launched a Shadow Stream right into the monster's gaping maw. It was in the midst of scrabbling upright with its one functional winged forelimb, but it still tried to dodge away from the attack. Just as the skeleton had, it didn't anticipate Shadow Stream's ability to curve. The black cloud struck it, dampening its sonic attack to a more manageable level.

Then the humans let loose.

Golden light flared once more as Jade's machete projection came down in a brutal slash. Lily kept up a near-constant stream of crossbow bolts. Even Chester was getting involved, though John wasn't sure how much effect the guy's pink flashes were having.

John himself cycled through his available ranged spells, hitting it with Fireball, Wind Shear, Burning Gale, Aqua Shot, and Soul Arrow on a rotating cycle.

There were many ways John anticipated things going from there, and he felt justified in thinking the majority of them ended with the bat monster's demise. Indeed, for a while, things were proceeding as anticipated: the wounds on the monsters kept increasing, and its strength visibly waned until it was barely trying its sonic attacks anymore, instead trying to drag itself back towards the door, leaving a foul black stain on the carpet.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Quite possibly the very last development John expected was for a pair of parrots to come flying in through the window. Even lower on his list of possibilities was for the red-and-green parrot to open its mouth wide and fire a fucking laser beam at the back of the bat monster's head, while the blue-and-yellow one created ghostly white clones of itself that kamikaze bombed the monster, causing little explosions that left behind white fire which seemed to eat away at the monster's flesh.

John felt he could be forgiven for briefly pausing in his attacks, his mind overtaken by utter bewilderment. Certainly, he wasn't the only one. Lily's crossbow bolts had come to an abrupt halt, and there was no further hint of pink flashes. He even heard Jade mutter, "What the fook?!"

Then the two parrots looked at them in eerie sync. The red one flapped over to John, got right in his face, and squawked, "Hurry up!" in a high-pitched woman's voice. Then, with a more manly tone: "You wot mate?!"

The blue followed, landing on his other shoulder. "Loooooooser," it shrieked in his ear before going back to its pale clone attacks.

Mirroring its companion on John's other side, the red parrot decided it had no more words for him, merely landing on his shoulder and firing off staccato bursts of red laser beam from its beak.

Getting harassed by a pair of goddamn parrot snapped him out of his stupor, and John quickly shifted back into battle mode, cycling through his ranged attacks once more. The others soon joined. Controlled chaos settled on the suburban living room as six sentient beings unleashed their magical attacks on a monster. There were flashes of red, gold, pink. A cloud of black darkness rolled over the floor. The parrots let out whistles, clicks, tweets, and a wide variety of other birdy noises, interspersed with snippets of human speech they'd picked up here and there.

Their words seemed rather pointed.

"Fuck you!"

"Bitch!"

"Cockjuggling thundercunt!"

John was fairly sure that last one was in Ryan Reynolds' voice.

The battle didn't last much longer. With its sonic attack mostly negated and its wings shredded, the bat monster had no ability to fight back, and it kind of felt like they collectively ganged up and bullied it to death. Its yellow soul proved itself in how long it survived such a wide variety of attacks.

But it wasn't invincible. Eventually, it fell still, not even trying to drag itself along anymore, and the sonic attack stopped. After that, their attacks seemed to deal considerably more damage. It wasn't as if they'd been scratched and flesh wounds before, but now Jade's machete projection sliced cleanly through it, Lily's bolts punctured straight through its torso, the red parrot's laser gauged deep into its flesh, and the white fires caused by the blue parrot's projections seemed to spread faster.

And, finally, John dropped his Shadow Stream and fired a Soul Arrow right through its skull. It burst like a water balloon, spraying gore out through the front doorway.

+2500 Aura

Silence filled the room.

"Pussy ass motherfucker," the red parrot squeaked, taking on a teen boy's voice with a terrible attempt at an American accent.

"Punk bitch," the blue parrot added, in the same voice.

"What the fuck?" Jade said. She dragged herself to her feet and moved to stand in front of John, wide eyes going back and forth between the two parrots. They bore her attention with haughty dignity. "So I guess animals can get powers too?"

"Looks that way," John said slowly, feeling more than a little uncomfortable with these things on his shoulders. They felt like bombs ready to go off.

The implications of animals getting superpowers inflicted him with a surprising amount of alarm. Human beings with low moral character receiving magical abilities was bad enough. But for animals, morals didn't even really come into it. Nature was brutal. The natural gaining a supernatural edge felt like it could only mean bad things, if animals remained at their baseline intelligence level.

Assuming these parrots had gained a similar system to what he and the other humans had… How would they even work it? If they were as smart as regular parrots—read: not very—they wouldn't be able to make any considered decisions unless the system nudged them in certain ways. And that wasn't even getting into how they'd use those powers.

Then again, they came back here to finish off the monster that had been chasing one of them. It went to get its buddy as reinforcement. And then… Was that a conscious decision to help out the people that had helped them first, or was it some weird animal instinct thing?

Looking closer at them, John found himself blinking.

"No way," he muttered. "You guys aren't the same two parrots I freed earlier, are you?"

The chances of that seemed infinitesimal.

The blue parrot was uninterested in him, content to nibble at its wing.

On the other hand, the red parrot stared up at him, meeting his gaze. "Polly want a fucking cracker," it said in an older man's gravelly voice.

"Is that a yes?" John asked.

"Polly want a fucking cracker," it repeated.

John sighed.

~~~

They didn't stick around for a second longer than they needed to. Thankfully, the others had escaped the fate John's ears had been subjected to, and there weren't any serious injuries. They had, however, drawn some attention. While the others dealt with the handful of blues that had come to see what all the fuss was about, John hung back to try something.

It turned out that he could indeed shove monster corpses in his inventory, but there was no indication on whether that would do anything to stymie the rapid decay process monsters went through after death. Just like with his backpack, the entire thing got shoved into his inventory, taking up a neat 130 kilos, but the inventory gave him a sub-menu that listed all the component parts of the creature. It listed the monster's bones, skin, eyeballs, organs, teeth, fur, and so on.

Most interesting were the three items listed at the bottom of the monster's parts. John had no idea what an Infernal Essence, Monster Core, or Beast Blood were, but he had some guesses what they could be used for. That Alchemy menu option seemed abruptly more enticing.

The parrots stayed on his shoulders, keeping quiet throughout. They showed some brief alarm when the monster corpse abruptly vanished, but calmed when they realised no ambush was imminent. Even as he finished up and moved out to the back garden where the others were finishing off yet another blue-souled rat, they remained in place. Could that be taken as evidence they really were the same parrots he'd freed? He wasn't sure. Honestly, he kind of liked the idea they were the same ones. It made him feel like he'd been rewarded for a good deed, somehow.

"Fuck you," the red parrot cried when he reached the others.

Then both of the parrots flew off, corkscrewing away into the sky.

Admittedly, the jury was still out on whether this could be considered a reward.

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