Over the last day, Elyndris had shaped the explosion spell so many times it had become routine. It wasn't quite reflexive; she still needed a moment to form it. Her other spell slots were filled with her laser beam spell. Focused energy in a beam. Simple. Effective.

Only a few goblins died from her explosive entrance into the battle. She focused the energy from the explosions down into the earth. Through her tremor sense, this painted a clear and precise picture of the battle.

A few dozen goblins scattered away from her. When they realized she was a pink, fleshy monster, their hunger and greed for experience urged them towards her. The idiots.

Before she had Daggat throw her, she made sure to spend that last biotrait on something she needed to really fight well. Her new tentacles flexed and twisted from her back. Two limbs for one biotrait. Each was simply a tube of muscles. Perfect for grabbing and slapping.

She pounced at the nearest goblin and enveloped its head in her mouth. With two chomps, she bit it off. Other goblins rushed towards her, laughing in devilish glee. Elyndris spat the goblin head at one of them and slammed her new limbs against two of them.

One of the goblins wasn't knocked back by her blow; instead, it grabbed onto the tentacle and pulled. She grunted as she was pulled towards it.

"Let go, you cheeky goblin!" She yelled at it.

"No!" it slashed at her with a sword, cutting a gash.

Hissing in frustration, she wrapped her other tentacle around it, lifted it into the air, and repeatedly slammed it downwards until she received a death notification. Speaking of which, when did that start happening? Something Daggat must have done while she was changing.

"Oi, what's this?" a deep voice called out. She sensed a large goblin. Human-sized, but swollen with muscles. It had a large hammer that it dragged behind itself. This must be one of the goblin bosses.

"You in charge?"

"Of this lot, yeah. The fuck are you?"

Elyndris wasn't one for chatting with the enemy. She pounced, aiming for the same move she had just performed.

The goblin was fast, hitting her out of the air. Her body molded around the head of the hammer, and she rocketed away. She bounced three times on the ground before sliding to a stop.

That… hurt. She tasted blood. It was more force than her explosions had, all focused into one point. If she had anywhere to channel the energy to, then she wouldn't have taken the damage. But thanks to her rubber-like body, she lived.

And now she had a vendetta.

Roaring, she pounced from goblin to goblin. Biting off limbs, thrashing with tentacles, and making her way towards the boss. Finally, she landed not far from it.

"You're tough. Second smash will get you through," it said to her.

"When I am through with you, no one will remember you lived."

She leaped forward, this time without a pounce. It swung the large hammer, missing her. Then, she pounced properly. At the same moment, she blasted the goblin with a laser beam. It wasn't straight. Currently, she couldn't sense mana. But she knew that mana had been vacuumed from the area. What flooded in its place was chaos essence. The effect made her beam jittery and angular. More like a lightning bolt than a solid beam. Still, it burned at its chest and face.

Screaming, the goblin swung blindly, missing Elyndris by feet. She pounced again, this time biting over the goblin's head and neck.

Biting down, she was unable to pierce through. She could feel its roars of anger from inside her maw, vibrating through its entire body.

But… now what? She was chewing, trying to bite through the wall of muscle that made up its neck. But even with her seventeen strength, she wasn't able to bite through. The goblin tried to pull her off, but he wasn't strong enough to unclench her jaws.

They were at a stalemate.

But, just as Elyndris was forming an explosion, the goblin lifted its hammer and brought it down on her. Finally.

The force of the hammer pushed through her. She could make subtle changes in her physiology to guide the kinetic energy to where she needed it. In this case, her jaws. With that, her teeth met, and the goblin was beheaded in a spray of bitter blood.

[You have slain goblin, level 15. Experience gained.]

"Elyndris?" a timid voice asked. It was Anath. "You are red now?"

Elyndris spat the head out. Yuck. "What? Oh. No, that's just the blood. Look at all these goblins! I'm even allowed to kill them. Did you want to join in on the fun?"

Anath laughed, "Yep. Just… be careful. Zuss and I are here to back you up. Let's not stray too far from each other."

"I'll try not to blow you up."

"Do you want a potion?" Said another voice. Elyndris almost lashed out at it; it came from nowhere. Zuss. Her steps were so light, it was hard to sense her in the chaos.

"No thanks," Elyndris said, "I need to try out this form."

"We have company… why aren't they attacking?" Anath said.

The goblins had closed around them. Forming a loose circle.

"Ah. Goblins do that. They are too cowardly to attack first, but too bloodthirsty to run. What you get is this sort of… mob, until something breaks the tension." Zuss said, "Happened all the time back at the camp."

"Well… then let's break the tension, then," Anath said as she sniffed, then drank a potion.

Anath was surprised by how… not scared she was. Here she was, twelve… thirteen… fourteen now? Something around there, year-old girl, willingly jumping towards an army of monsters. But, from everything she had seen and experienced so far, this was nothing unusual. The humans were too busy dealing with the breach into the village, so the goblins were left to them.

Most of the enemy had been felled or wounded by their traps, webs, arrows, and exploding larva. Only a couple dozen remained.

But, for all of her biotraits and skills, an additional edge against them wouldn't hurt. She grabbed a potion from the inventory. Daggat had sorted them… but he really needed to label them too. She sniffed it to make sure it was correct. A milk white potion that smelled of dried meat.

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Unlike the drakeheart potion, she had tasted it earlier that evening and found it not overwhelmingly painful.

It tasted faintly of meat and chalk, and had a strange, smooth texture to it. As the potion changed her, a dreadful reverence resonated within her. She belonged in a place of rest, deep beneath the earth. Where the bones lay in their sacred, final homes. This was the influence of the essence of bones. But, she couldn't rest. There were goblins to kill.

Her chitin grew, inching across her skin. Closing together until it formed full body armor, not dissimilar to Klaw's. It had shifted from a dark gray to the off-white of old bones.

At the same moment, Zuss drank her own potion. She hunched into a more wolf-like form. The hints of a dark snout could be seen under her scarf. Her shadow cast by a nearby fire seemed to swell, then darken. It slithered back towards her, coalescing into a weapon. A bulky rope dart. It was as though there was simply too much mass to work with.

Zuss tilted her head in curiosity, then it shifted into a scythe-like blade.

"I'll watch your back. Nobody get killed." She said, then she slipped into the shadows.

"Well… I guess we can-" Anath began before Elyndris cut her off.

"I'LL START!" Elyndris lept high into the air, then descended on a group of goblins. When she hit the earth, they went flying in an explosion that bounced Elyndris into the air again.

That broke the tension. With a roar, the goblins rushed them.

Anath rushed forward as well, meeting them.

She wasn't particularly well-trained. She had some excellent instruction from the gremlin on how to use a sword properly and the general strategies in a fight. But that didn't last long. She also trained frequently with Klaw and Zuss. Daggat, sometimes. But compared to the goblins, she was a savant.

They would simply come at her, focused on where they would strike, stab, spit, or shoot. Each fought differently. Every time Anath took a step, there seemed to be a stone or piece of gore underfoot to trip her up. Half the time, when she attacked a goblin, a different goblin accidentally stumbled into the path of her various blades.

Her armor was doing its work. None of the goblins had managed to hurt her yet. It was in the middle of the throng of goblins that she realized how monumentally stupid it was to leave the safety of the walls.

What was she thinking? What was Daggat thinking? Sure, their group had its advantages. Anath's variant and the potion gave her an effective ten or so levels. Elyndris was… well, she was Elyndris. And Zuss had honed her deadliness to an edge. They had the knowledge of Elyndris's past life, three sages, and a library to help them. Not to mention some training from a master of various martial arts…

Actually. Maybe it wasn't so stupid. Ever since she had met Elyndris, things had happened pretty quickly. Until now, she didn't realize how much of a head start she had on other monsters… adventurers… or whatever they were. She let herself smile, then redoubled her efforts in the slaughter.

After a while, she began grinding her teeth in frustration. The hex auras were causing no end of trouble, and she simply wasn't killing them fast enough. These were high-level goblins, after all.

Finally, she had had enough. She raged. Roaring her frustrations into the air. Goblins flinched back or matched her roar. But Anath was now faster, stronger, and tougher. She could risk playing a little more recklessly.

The goblins began to fall. Stabbed through the eye by a spider leg, slashed by her enchanted sword, or decapitated by a charged sword slash.

When the goblins cut their losses to flee, there was a mound of corpses before her. Just before she was about to dive after another set of enemies, a hobgoblin stepped onto the pile.

This one was larger than normal, but it was lean and toned. It rested a long, black, curved blade on its shoulder, and a headband fluttered in the wind.

The hobgoblin whistled, "Impressive work, but poor skill. You face me, Natak, Master of the Sword. Prepare your soul for the battle to come."

Anath's eyes ran over the blade. It was longer than hers. Curved, but in a different shape. Almost angular compared to her more fluidly designed blade. She wanted it.

She skittered towards it, heedlessly climbing over the corpses. Natak met her charge by bringing the sword into a defensive posture. She slashed and stabbed with all eight of her weapons. Each attack was blocked with a shower of sparks. The hobgoblin's blade became a dark blur as it moved to defend. His footing was perfect, using the environment to keep her stumbling after him.

"My turn," he said once Anath was forced to take a breath.

Natak attacked as quickly as he defended. Anath did her best to defend, using her spider legs to form a moving cage and her swords to deflect. Still, the swordsmaster broke through her defenses several times, cutting deep gashes into her armor.

She launched back, putting space between them, "HOW?!" she screamed.

Natak laughed, "I was born with the gift. Master Swordsman. I had to fight my way up with sticks. STICKS! It was weeks until I was able to hold my first sword. Now that I have one of my own… I will soon be the top gob."

It was a variant, like her and Daggat. It made sense that the goblin army would have one or two. She had overheard that roughly one in a thousand people were born as a variant.

His variation was the master swordsman skill. Jumping decades of skill training and simply knowing how to fight.

A nearby explosion boomed, and a moment later, Elyndris landed next to Anath.

"Having trouble?" She asked.

"The STUPID hobgoblin is cheating," Anath yelled.

"Me cheating? You've got EIGHT swords." Natak yelled back, pointing his sword at her.

"THEY ARE LEGS!"

"He's skilled, I could feel that. You must fight him in a way where skill doesn't matter." Elyndris said.

"I can't explode!" Anath said.

"Eh, you'll figure something out. You've got a good head for fighting. Now, I'm going back into the fray. This is SO much fun."

With that, Elyndris leaped away like a frog. Stupid larva. She was of no help. Didn't she just say before not to get too far? This was why! So she could get help from them if needed. She didn't know where Zuss was either. Anath had to solve this on her own.

She charged.

"About time," Natak said. He twirled the sword in his hands, then met her.

If she couldn't match him in skill, she would have to overwhelm him. She was much stronger than he was. If one hit made it through, he was done.

Their blades clashed again. This time, they exchanged blows, trading offense and defense. This time, however, Anath tried something different. She attacked wildly with the spider legs, but the bug took a more careful approach with the swords. She used one blade to charge a power attack, and the other three to defend. The moment she slashed, she would charge another.

She ignored the slashes from Natak and focused on keeping the flow. Soon, she found herself charging power attacks in sequence, striking with powerful blows faster and faster.

The hobgoblin still managed to defend each one, but she was slowly gaining on it.

Her rage ended as her focus toned down her fury. Which shifted the strength dynamic. But by then, she had the pattern down. Steadily hitting again and again with empowered attacks until, finally, he made a mistake.

She sliced his cheek with a spider leg, then stabbed a shoulder.

"Wait, uh… point to you. Time out!" Natak said. He was looking more and more worried.

He slashed wide and then dove backwards. He was nimble, like Zuss. That would explain how he was so fast. His biotraits must have gone to his reflexes and the like. Once out of her reach, he started to run.

"Hey!" Anath called after it, then started to chase. She used her spider legs to carry her. But it was faster. She hopped into the status void.

"Spider, bring up the upgrades for the rage."

"Right, right. Skill point time!" it said.

She left the status void for a moment to continue the chase, then jumped back in. As quickly as she could, she purchased the extra uses perk. It allowed her to rage three times per day, rather than once.

She could have used a pill, but this was an upgrade she was planning on grabbing eventually anyway.

Her speed doubled when she raged. Soon, she was upon him. He turned to face her with the knowledge he couldn't escape. Suddenly, a black hooked blade caught his foot and tripped him.

Anath blended him a second later.

[You have slain hobgoblin, level 15. Experience gained.]

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