Rex screamed the words I’d been dying to hear. It was time and we were ready.

  Raising my bow skyward I released all the stamina I’d been pouring into my area of effect attack.

  Acid Rain (uncommon)

  Turn your bow into an entire battalion of archers and rain hundreds of acid infused arrows on your enemies like an old timey artillery strike.

  This is a stamina-based skill.

  This skill is only available to those with an Acid Weapons skill.

  The arrows I had nocked flew into the air and immediately multiplied into hundreds of acid infused versions.

  Plummeting from the sky in a barrage of pain and death, it looked as if there was an entire battalion of archers poised and ready to strike at Rex’s call.

  “Ahh!” One of the lycanids called out as an arrow pierced his shoulder and his fur began to melt.

  “We’re surrounded!” Another one shouted.

  “Raise shields!” Gorthak screamed and Broken Sheild mercenary company complied.

  As one, the lycanids raised their shields above their heads forming a massive, metal umbrella as they closed ranks and centred on Gorthak.

  My arrows had injured, and even outright killed, a few of them but thanks to their quick thinking most survived unscathed.

  Notifications popped up in my HUD and I levelled up, but quickly pushed the screens away from my vision so they didn’t distract me in the fight.

  One good thing about a level up though; it replenishes your stamina and health. Not that I needed the latter.

  However, having the former meant that I was well poised to attack again. Would acid rain work the second time if I waited for them to lower their shields? Or would a well-placed soul shot have more of an impact?

  It was hard to tell, but before I came to a definitive conclusion a large fireball emerged from inside the smoke and landed on top of the shield umbrella the lycanids had made.

  Screaming pierced the air around me, followed by a cacophony of clattering as shields were dropped to the floor, their metal made unbearably hot.

  That answers my question, I grinned and began to channel a second acid rain strike.

  As I channelled, the lycanid company in disarray below me, I heard a swooshing sound as Asmodeus entered the fray.

  Diving from above he latched onto a panicked lycanid and, through my dragon’s eye, I saw his life force draining and entering Asmodeus.

  “Alas! It is time to feast!” The dragon declared triumphantly as the dazed lycanid fell to his knees and scrambled away.

  “Not so fast whelp,” Asmodeus said, “this power of yours, it… excites me.”

  I watched as the dragon’s tiny claws grew by magnitudes of size and, with a malicious grin, he swiped at the lycanid’s throat, tearing it out in a spray of blood and sinew.

  “This is superb!” He cried, zooming from merc to merc as he sliced them to ribbons with his newfound power.

  I had planned to launch a second round of acid rain, but with Asmodeus in the fray, with Panda on his back, I realised the potential for collateral damage was too high and instead began loosing a myriad of regular shots as rapidly as I could.

  Aiming at the centre mass of a fleeing lycanid, I fired. His screams rang out through the black smoke. He sounded terrified as I imagined the damage my acid was doing to his skin. I had no reason to take pity on him, his company had broken their own chivalric code in interfering with my friend’s duel… this was the price of that transgression.

  More fireballs, albeit smaller than the first, whizzed through the smoke causing the panic to spread even further as the Broken Sheild mercenaries’ disarray continued. There was no real fight in them. They were terrified and without instruction. They were useless.

  As I continued firing, picking my targets with care and making every shot count, I caught Rex out of the corner of my eyes.

  The mercs who had pinned him previously were nowhere to be seen – likely scattered with the rest. Rex pulled himself to his feet and charged at his distracted uncle, tackling him to the ground.

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  “GORTHAK!” He bellowed, “our fight is not over yet.”

  With vicious precision and a barbarism I’d rarely seen, he began beating the lycanid leader over and over again.

  He pummelled the man’s face, tore at the gash on his neck and in moments his fur was dyed red with the blood of his uncle, the blood he shared. It was a horrifyingly satisfying sight.

  After a few moments of laboured breathing he produced a knife and seemed to mutter something under his breath. Slicing through the few remaining tendons he removed his uncle’s head and staggered to his feet, holding it high into the sky.

  “STOP!” He yelled, stunning the panicked lycanids. “Cease this, the fight is over. Gorthak has fallen!” He proclaimed and the lycanids, almost in unison, dropped to one knee in some kind of trained reverence.

  Asmodeus killed one of them with another claw strike and Bell released the fireball she was holding, attempting to send it skyward as a last ditch attempt to avoid unnecessary death. It singed the back of the young human’s head but he dared not say anything.

  Poor guy, I thought, first a broken nose, now burnt hair… and he isn’t even old enough to shave his balls yet.

  “Broken Sheild,” Rex said regally, fiercely as he dripped with the scarlet blood which covered him. “I am Rexus of the noble house Aurelius and by the ancient right of might I claim leadership of this company. Are there any who wish to challenge me for this honour?”

  Silence. The entire clearing was as quiet as the grave, you could hear a pin drop.

  Good, I thought, lowering my bow. I had been ready to make it very clear why challenging Rex would be a bad idea, but it seemed that they had already gotten that message.

  “Very well,” he continued. “Then as my first decree, I order you to cease all hostilities with the peoples of High Rock immediately. We will instead offer them relief as we search through this mess for survivors.”

  No one said a word, the lycanids were still on a single knee, heads bowed. They seemed petrified of him.

  “But first,” he continued, “we must perform the right of ascension. Form up!”

  With the speed of trained soldiers, the lycanids quickly manoeuvred into position around Rex. Kneeling, each brandished his weapon above the wrist of the merc next to him and Rex hoisted the body of his dead uncle over his shoulder. He dropped to one knee, holding up the body above his head with both arms, kind of like Rafiki holding Simba at the beginning of The Lion King.

  “Here me ancestors,” Rex began. “I, Rexus Aurelius hereby proclaim divine leadership over Broken Sheild company. I swear by the blood of the old and new that I will always uphold the code you wisely created and will lead this band to glory in both life and the realms beyond.”

  The lycanids responded to this with a single, unified bark as they simultaneously slit the wrist of the person next to them. The blood leaked out at first and then began to flow into Rex, my dragon’s eye picked up on the insane amounts of mana seeping into him.

  Then, as if it wasn’t already strange enough, it got weirder.

  Gorthak’s corpse disintegrated before my eyes, bone, flesh, and even his armour warping and spinning into a congealed ball of rotating blood. It then split into two smaller orbs which wrapped around Rex’s outstretched firsts, dying them a deep crimson colour.

  The blood that had been staining the rest of his fur slithered all around him to join the rest, seemingly taking the colour of his fur with them.

  Before my eyes, Rex’s fur turned as white as snow all across his body, his eyes turned black, no pupils to be seen. The only exception to this was his fists, which seemed to be permanently stained red.

  “Rexus Aurelius,” a booming voice rang out, catching me off guard as I desperately looked around to see whom it belonged to.

  But there was no one else there.

  “We have heard your call, kin slayer, and thus we answer,” the voice said. “We dub thee Rex of the Crimson Fist and recognise you as the new patriarch of Broken Sheild. May you uphold your values as Gorthak once did. Do not lose your way, pup.”

  Rex nodded, getting shakily to his feet as he looked around at the mercs who seemed to be revering him. Moving his arms and flexing his hands, he looked at his red fists and smiled.

  “Thank you,” he said in a low, sincere voice. “Now, get to work. We have lives to save!”

  ***

  “Who knew dogs were part of a cult?” Bell said quietly, “I’m kinda glad my parents never let me have one now.”

  “You know he hates being called a dog,” I sighed.

  “Why do you think I do it,” she said, winking playfully.

  Broken Shield were hard at work putting out fires and rescuing civilians at Rex’s behest. We left them to it, even with my increased strength I was no match for the pure power that a lycanid workforce could muster and I didn’t want to get in their way.

  Besides, I had points to assign.

  You have advanced to lvl 52

  Congratulations!

  “I swear the level notifications change slightly every time,” I murmured as I checked out my new stats, assigning all my free points into vitality. My health was already doing pretty good, but it never hurt to have more.

  “Kaleb!” Rex shouted, “you have to see this!”

  Turning quickly on my heels I ran towards him, Bell, Az, and Panda following. I had no idea what to expect but he sounded agitated so, subconsciously, I equipped my daggers.

  Rex stood in front of a half-burned house, his mercs guarding the front entrance and shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “The basement,” he said shakily, “come on.”

  His guards saluted as he walked past them, leading us to a charred wooden hatch which was hidden inside the only remaining room.

  “I think this was the prison,” he said, hefting the hatch open with a thud. “We were checking for survivors when I found this.”

  He jumped down the hatch and I followed; it wasn’t much of a drop but still deep enough to have broken my legs pre-system.

  At the bottom was a dank stone room lined with barred cells. It looked pretty standard for a fortress dungeon, though I pitied the poor souls who had been locked up down there with no daylight.

  Marching with purpose, Rex led us to the very last cell. This one was different. A strong, metal door blocked it and there were no windows or bars, no way to tell what was inside.

  With both hands, he heaved the door opened and gestured for me to go inside.

  “What is this?” I asked, looking around the strange room.

  It looked a little bit like a mad scientist’s laboratory and my heart skipped a beat as I saw an apparatus I knew all too well.

  A wooden X positioned over a vat of acid.

  Thankfully there was no one strapped to this one, but my gut wrenched all the same as I remembered Brad; the man I’d accidentally killed. As I remembered Bell’s beaten and broken body slumped in the same position.

  Somebody had constructed this here, somebody who knew about outworlders. Somebody who was hunting us for map pieces.

  “It’s awful, I know,” Rex said hurriedly, “but there’s more.”

  He carefully moved around the acid to a second door at the back. As he opened it a freezing cold swept out causing goose pimples to bump up on my skin.

  I stretched to look at what was contained inside.

  Is this a freezer? I thought.

  Laying neatly on shelves in the cold room were piles and piles of neatly folded, tattooed human skin.