Brent kicked off the ground, his [Battle Trance] Subskill working in full force and gorging itself on his Ki like a gluttonous beast.

  The effects were proportionate and instant and had him grinning from ear to ear as the surge of power flooded him.

  Instead of having to slowly, gently guide his Ki through his channels according to the various techniques to squeeze the most direct power out of the ephemeral energy, his Ki flowed easily and quickly.

  [Battle Trance] made it so the techniques he had spent many hours engraving into his memory, both mental and muscle memory, were reduced to subconscious action.

  Just a thought was all it took for the technique called ‘Bull’s Charge’ to activate, with Ki flowing into his legs. Another thought had a general power enhancement settle over him and yet another lightened his weight for a brief moment to allow him to gain more momentum before his Force-enhanced blade smashed into the lizardman’s side with the force of a bull.

  Scales cracked, crimson blood spewing forth, coating his blade as it sank deep before he took a large step back. ‘Fluttering Steps’ activated, the Air aspected technique quickly taking him out of claw range.

  Brent eyed his opponent. If his amateur anatomical knowledge was not wrong, he should have brushed the scaly cunt’s kidney. Which should hurt like a bitch.

  So why wasn’t the beastkin down on the ground, passed out in a fetal position? Brent had caught a stab to the kidney once, just a nick that barely touched the organ, but he passed out from the pain in moments.

  His opponent stumbled as his wild claw swing hit thin air, then a grimace stretched across his bestial features while a hand went to cradle his injured flank. Blood coated his hand, gushing out of his wound in pulses.

  “I win,” Brent declared, casting a level stare towards his opponent as his [Battle Trance] deactivated, leaving behind only a single Air technique to increase his reaction time should the lizardman try to play tricks.

  “Yes,” The lizardman growled like a dragon whose tail had just been tugged. “But I’m not finished with you yet. You used Skills, I have not. Another round.”

  Brent took a moment to think, noting the worried gazes of the people behind him. The people who had come to rely on him for leadership and on his measly talents as a swordsman.

  It had taken him far too long to realise that and to grow into the responsibilities it entailed. It had taken that catty kid running off on him to drive it in how badly just some nasty words could fuck up something in this new world where life was so very fragile.

  Back in the old world, he’d have just snorted at the kid running off, certain that he’d be slapped upside the head by reality and get some personal growth out of it, but in this new world, reality checks could be much more lethal. Worse, that meant most people couldn’t learn from them. With them being dead and all.

  Still … he was enjoying himself. He had been the stoic pillar supporting the group of people gathered around him, and it was tiring. In contrast, fighting was thrilling. He deserved some fun of his own every now and then.

  “Fine then,” Brent said, a grin still on his face as he flicked the lizardman’s blood off his blade theatrically. “Whoever gets three bloody strikes or gets the other onto the ground.”

  “If I hit you, you won’t be getting up,” the lizardman spoke with surety. “Perhaps, ever.”

  “Never learned restraint?” Brent raised an eyebrow.

  “Never had a need for it,” the beastkin said with a half shrug. “So?”

  “I’m pretty sure my friends will blow your head off if you do kill me, so I'd recommend trying to avoid that,” Brent said dourly.

  “Brent!” Helene whispered, but it sounded like a shout to Brent. “Won’t you stop this idiocy? You won, you could get seriously hurt.”

  “Women,” the lizardman snorted, his slitted eyes flickering over to the woman Brent was slowly growing to care about much more than he should. The dismissiveness in those eyes infuriated Brent, and a part of him wished Helene would blow her top and blast the idiot in the face with the full power of a Storm. “Will you cower and run away from a fair fight, human? I was starting to think you had some backbone. Was I wrong?”

  That wasn’t Helene, though, and the woman did nothing beyond narrowing her eyes. Brent however, caught the magical shackles binding the beastman they’d captured dissolving and knew he had to act quickly to defuse the situation.

  The mother might have been willing to ignore the idiotic beastman’s words, but the daughter was not.

  “Her words are more for your protection than they are for my own,” Brent said, taking a step to the side to place his body between the fuming pink-haired girl and the beastman who nearly got himself sent flying. Or exploded, if Mia's livid expression was anything to go by. “If you push me, you might start losing limbs at the very least.”

  “Good.” The lizardman ‘grinned’. “Let’s continue.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Brent said, turning to look at the group behind him. He saw that while Mia had been quickly calmed down by her mother and vampiric friend, there was a dangerous glint in Lina’s eyes as she stared at the opposing beastkin. “Let me have this. I haven't had the chance to fight someone of my own weight class yet.”

  “We can’t grow back limbs, Brent,” Helene said, worry clear in her voice. “We can’t allow you to be injured for something like this.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Brent promised. “You don’t have to worry. I also still have the Ward on me.”

  “Fine,” Helene agreed reluctantly, and Brent knew the rest would follow from there.

  With that out of the way, he put himself back into combat focus and reactivated [Battle Trance].

  Brent considered his options. His Affinities were Air and Fire, both at upper Minor, but that was enough to allow him to practise all the basic techniques of both elements. That meant he could hit like a meteor and was swift as the wind.

  Bull’s Charge and the technique he used to empower himself were both Fire techniques, for example, while Fluttering Steps was one of Air.

  His only weakness was his defence, but his Force Armour was a thing of legends, and he loved it to bits. It handled that part perfectly for now and would continue to do so for at least until he hit the mid-10s in level.

  What to use now, though? The lizardman was quite tough, but if Brent drew on his Armour’s reserves of stored kinetic energy, he could have cleaved the man in half with that last attack.

  Sure, it would have exhausted a large part of his stored energy to cut through something that hard, but he could have done it.

  “That attack could have taken off your head,” Brent informed his opponent in a level tone, but he couldn’t quite manage to not make it sound like a gloat. His grin probably didn’t help, either. “Last chance to back out.”

  “Good,” the beastman growled. “That means you are not a weakling … so I can use my Skills. Try to survive.”

  The way the lipless mouth stretched across the scale snout reminded Brent of a feral grin, which he supposed was the expression it was supposed to be.

  A shimmer ran over the scales of his adversary, which Brent could watch in detail as the man wore nothing beyond a pair of jeans shorts to cover his privates and left the entirety of his torso and his legs from the thigh down bare.

  Brent heard Mia gasp behind him, which made him tense up and activate two movement techniques and two more to aid them. The elfin girl could see magic, which meant whatever the scaly cunt used must have been quite powerful for the girl to react that way.

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  He shouldn’t have bothered, though, as when the lizardman stepped forward, he was slow and lumbering. The step he took made a thud loud enough to make Brent narrow his eyes.

  The scales went from an unassuming dull grey to shimmering steel grey, and all ten claws on the man’s arms glinted in the sunlight like curved daggers of wicked sharpness.

  Brent instantly changed course, discarding his Air techniques and activating as many concurrent Fire ones as he could without the techniques disrupting each other. He only had so many energy channels, after all, and techniques with similar effects usually used the same channels, too, which meant they were mutually exclusive.

  Still, he felt his power surge as he stepped forward, stepping aside and sidestepping the titanic claw strike coming his way before lunging forward and sending the tip of his blade sinking into the thigh of the lizardman.

  His blade sank deep, piercing through the steely scales with only some difficulty, but with the techniques he was using and Ki he was burning every second that was no surprise. Not to him, at least.

  The lizardman took in a quick gasp of air and stiffened, which was just enough time for Brent to tear his sword out with a grimace. He really should stop smacking his poor blade into things this tough. Keeping the edge sharp was an uphill challenge already, and only luck had kept it from chipping at a dozen spots already.

  Should I just punch him? Brent mused inwardly, eying the lizardman who glared back at him. Punching seemed prudent; his gauntlets could handle some wear and tear and were not as important as the edge of his blade. Also, the cunt has steel skin. I need to knock his insides around for him to get some sense.

  Carefully, Brent placed his sword on the ground and kicked it away. Inwardly, he activated a brawling technique creatively named Power Punch.

  He had been reluctant to spend time internalising and learning just the rudimentary version of the technique, but he’d reasoned it would be good to know how to fight with just his bare hands if his sword ever gave out on him in the thick of battle.

  “Are you mocking me?” The lizardman asked, growling and looking about as angry as humanoid lizards could.

  “No,” Brent said. “But I don’t want to chip my sword trying to break through your thick skull. Fists will do just fine for that.”

  The beastly man lurched forward, pitifully slow but with the weight of a mountain behind his every movement. Brent doubted even his trusty Armour could absorb the full force of a blow from this towering beastkin.

  A simple jump brought him to the side again, but before he could once again make use of his dodge to deliver an attack, a clawed hand was already swinging his way. It seemed there were enough brain cells in that thick lizard skull to learn from previous mistakes.

  Brent ducked under the swing, a hint of fear running through him at the knowledge that if he hadn’t moved his head in time, it would have been torn right off his shoulders.

  He considered sending out a jab but saw the lizardman’s leg raise for a kick, and he instead rolled away. A kick off the ground sent him a few metres further as he circled the lizardman who’d just stomped down on where Brent had been a moment ago.

  He surged forward, fiery power and airy swiftness working in tandem under the influence of his [Battle Trance]. The lizardman might have gotten steel-hard scales, but Brent was quicker, and he was sure he could hit hard enough to make it hurt still.

  Dodging the simplistic punch that came his way was effortless, and in one fluid movement, Brent was inside the man’s guard and his fist, enhanced with the punching technique, was already slamming into his solar plexus.

  The beastkin tried to grab him, even as it gasped for air and coughed, but Brent dropped low and easily slipped away again, only to circle around the man before he could gather himself and slam his foot into the back of his scaly knee.

  That brought the lizardman down on his knees and then all fours as a wild swing of his touched only thin air and was repaid with an ankle smashing into the side of his head.

  The beastkin went down on all fours again, barely catching himself from the force of Brent’s kick. Brent was so close to winning, but his [Ki Core] was running low. He only had about another half a minute on full power with the amount of techniques he had been using.

  By their agreement, he had to make the cunt bleed one more time, or put him to sleep. He doubted he could do the second with how his kick to the head only dazed him, so making him bleed was the more viable option.

  “Yield,” Brent said in an attempt to avoid having to pummel the ever-living hell out of the poor man, who probably never got into any combat more serious than a bar fight before turning into an overgrown lizard.

  “No,” the beastman wheezed and threw himself at Brent.

  It might have been surprising had Brent not been watching out for some desperate lunge already. The moment the man started turning, Brent was already Flutter Stepping away.

  With a brief sigh, Brent launched himself into an attack. He slipped by his opponent’s guard, landing vicious punches all across his torso and even managing a nasty kick right at the larger man’s thigh that had him limping from then on.

  When his Ki was about five seconds from depleting, and the lizardman was barely standing, just staggering in place, Brent made his final attack. It was simple. Just a single punch with all of his most powerful techniques behind it that landed right on the beastkin’s gut, but enhanced with some additional kinetic energy.

  The lizardman actually fell back, taken off his feet for a brief moment before he went sprawling. A moment later, he rolled over with a groan and emptied his stomach on the asphalt.

  “Yield,” Brent repeated as his [Battle Trance] deactivated and his [Ki Core] was left with only the tiniest embers of power. He let neither of those show on his face, or allow them to shake his confident demeanour.

  “Hah!” The lizardman chuckled, his trunk-like arms shaking as he tried to prop himself up. His face was a deep grimace, his sharp teeth bloodied and eyes bloodshot. “Fine. You win, human. I yield.”

  Brent could at least respect that fighting spirit. The beastkin had barely any skill as a brawler, but the fact that he was still trying to stand after the beating he’d been given was worthy of some respect. Also, Brent could admit that his sword had given him a sizable advantage through the added reach it granted him, even if it was less effective on the magic-hardened scales than it should have been.

  The lizardman sat back, and even now, he was trying to put on a strong front despite all of his limbs shaking like leaves in the wind.

  “Good,” Brent said easily, cracking his neck and sending a grin at the group of beastkin who were staring at him and their downed leader with varying levels of fear and disbelief. “Now, I’d like those questions we had for you answered sooner rather than later. You wouldn’t go back on an agreement, would you?”

  “Never!” The lizardman declared, throwing himself up into a sitting position as he stared deeply into Brent’s eyes. “You won the first bout. That earned you the right to have those questions answered already. Winning the second earned you my respect.”

  He even seemed mildly offended by the question, like he couldn’t stand having his honour questioned. Curious.

  *****

  Mia breathed a sigh of relief but kept alert and on the lookout for any of the dumb mutts deciding to do something dumb.

  From what she gathered, the lizardman was their leader by virtue of being the strongest, and while he seemed to be intent on keeping his word, the wolf-kin goons behind him seemed less than pleased by that. Which was why they’d been demoted to dumb mutts in Mia’s head.

  They were growling like animals, letting their base instincts take over, and a part of Mia found that … pathetic. On second thought, that part was probably heavily influenced by her own Bloodline.

  With Nikki having taken over from her in keeping the captured skulker bound and her Familiar still perched atop his chest, Mia could focus entirely on making sure she was prepared should a confrontation break out.

  “Questions,” the lizardman chortled, waving over the two barely humanoid wolf-men who helped him stand while a small boy scampered over from the back of the onlooking group and held a hand to the large lizardman’s skin. “In a moment.”

  Mia’s eyes almost tingled as the boy’s hand lit up with a golden glow that surged forward and split. It forked a dozen ways, each thread of the Light mana crackling through the air and plunging into a wound.

  The cuts, holes, and the many internal wounds that remained hidden from the naked eye ate up the golden energy and started healing at a rapid pace.

  The lizardman breathed slowly, his spine straightening as he pushed his two helpers away roughly and patted the boy on his fluffy blonde head, right between his pair of labrador-like ears.

  “Thanks, Tom,” the lizardman rumbled, catching the kid by the shoulder as he wobbled unsteadily. “That’ll be enough.”

  “O... okay,” Tom said with a weak stutter, his magic sputtering as the bushy tail behind him wagged tiredly.

  Light magic healing. Mia’s gaze followed the boy as he ambled back, helped by one of the large wolf-men. He was treated with extreme care, like a fragile vase or something.

  “Firstly,” the lizardman drew the attention back onto himself. “Introductions. My name’s Gunther, but everyone just calls me Rex since I’d been … “

  He motioned at himself with a phlegmatic wave of his hand. Then he finished his sentence, “ … changed.”

  “Brent,” said Brent as he stepped forward and held out a hand, which ‘Rex’ reciprocated by grabbing it with his enormous clawed hands before giving it a ginger shake. “I’d say ‘Well met’ but it wouldn’t be true. Now, would you share with me what was that guy doing, skulking about around us? Your group should have kept to the other street far that way as far as I know?”

  As the tension started dying out, a dark thought entered Mia’s mind. These were beastkin, the same beastkin who were responsible for the tide of Evergreen monsters that had ravaged through several suburban city blocks. The same beastkin who had been taking advantage of the army’s focus on clearing rifts to raid anything they could find at the edges of the city, close to their hill. And the ones who murdered Zeigler’s men guarding the food storage … not the exact same beastkin, probably, but they might as well have been.

  Murderers. Despite knowing it was inevitable that maybe she herself would become one in the future, Mia still felt peevish about having these people near herself and her friends. There was also a difference between committing murder during mugging or robbing someone, and killing in self-defence, or in defence of another. Mia would never do the former two unless the centuries of life ahead of her eroded her morals beyond repair somehow, but the latter two? That could happen any day now. But the beastkin resorted to murder in the very first month after society unravelled, giving in to their baser instincts, choosing the easy route forward within a heartbeat.

  They were dangerous. Unpredictable.

  I can’t let my guard down.

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