Nilahs high shriek went out and I had risen before I knew what I was doing, crashing through the underbrush. Where Nilah was water I was a machine. Never around, never over, always through. Even the single stat point in strength made my movements more vicious, powerful, destructive.

  Goblins screamed the alarm as I passed by them.

  "Thunk!"

  "Ping!"

  The rattle of thrown stones and sticks interspersed my heavy breathing, garbled war cries reminiscent of angry babies' screeching began to get louder. They were closing the distance. Something struck my lower back, ricocheting to little effect as I hardly noticed the pain.

  Another loud cry sent a flock of birds into the sky ahead of me and I found Nilah cringing on the ground. One hand clutched a leg, the other held high above herself, trembling. Blood mixed with the dirt where she lay. A goblin found something on the earth and rose. A great stone hung high over Nilah's head.

  She cowered and screamed a piercing wail,

  "BOOM"

  I crashed into the goblin shoulder-first, the impact traveling up my arm like lightning. Bone gave way beneath muscle as I launched it through the air. Its body went limp before it slammed into a tree trunk with a wet crack.

  Another goblin stood frozen, watching its companion's trajectory with vacant eyes. Before it could process what it had seen, my fist careened into throat. My hand cracked and deformed under the force I demanded of it.

  I turned to find Nilah ghost-white, her whole body trembling as she stared at me with wide eyes.

  "We need to go, come on!"

  She shook her head violently, cat ears pressed flat against her skull.

  "I can't! I just can't."

  The forest seemed to come alive around us. They weren't tall, but the tree line shuddered with their numbers. The goblins moved like a pack of rabid dogs, snapping and snarling, their black eyes burning with bloodlust. Their oversized heads swayed atop wiry frames as they pressed forward, like grotesque cherubs heralding our doom.

  "Damn it all," I growled and swept Nilah onto my back, careful despite my haste.

  My legs pumped like pistons as I charged forward, each stride desperate and jarring. Branches whipped across my face, drawing blood, while roots seemed to reach up to snag my feet. Stones rained down, opening gashes across my legs and back. I weaved through multiple goblin attacks, but my heart grew cold with the realization that I was slowing. My breath came in ragged gasps, my heart a forge in my chest, but it wasn't enough. Not anymore.

  We burst from the forest.

  The pursuit fell back, space opening between us. Hope flared in my chest even as my legs screamed in protest. We crashed through the last of the trees into open air. The glare was blinding, but as my vision cleared, I knew we were finished.

  A cliff towered before us, its face a maze of thick vines. Its shadow fell over us like a shroud, seeming to devour the very air we breathed.

  I turned back and felt despair claw at my heart. The goblins had us surrounded, their cackling a death knell that echoed through the clearing. Long tongues darted between rows of shark-like teeth, dripping with anticipation. The whole line of the forest vomited them out like chunks of darkness slopping out, growing legs and teeth.

  I gently set Nilah against the cliff face. She gripped my arm as I lowered her, her face ashen as she stared at the approaching horde. Her breath came in short, sharp bursts.

  "They're coming"

  "Yes."

  "What're we going to do?"

  I met her eyes.

  "You're going to have to climb"

  Rising to my full height, I felt the thunder of my heart, the warm blood trickling down my skin, the earth shifting beneath my feet. I turned to face our attackers.

  "Assign two points to strength."

  Gold light spilled from me as energy flooded and subsumed my muscles, tendons grew, doubling, tripling, before folding over one another to and tightening. Moving became strangely easy as my muscles basked in the glory of the strange energy and became empowered until each individual strand was a ripcord wire just waiting to be unleashed in explosive fury.

  I had nothing. There was no exit plan, no power to rely on, my friends were dead and I was in a alien world. Except for my rage, I would rip and tear until there was nothing. The goblins watched me, as I watched them. Too cowardly to make the first move.

  "I'm going to throw you, I need you to grab the vines."

  Nilah's eyes widened.

  "Wait no-"

  I had already lifted her up high. The goblins broke out of their reverie, closing in, yet it was too late.

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  With a roar that tore at my throat, I heaved. She soared higher than I thought possible, clearing the lower section where animals had stripped away the vines. I watched with clenched fists, praying I hadn't just sentenced an innocent woman to death. Praying the thick, rope-like vines would hold her slight weight.

  A delicate hand shot out, scrabbled, caught. The vine held firm. Her climb was desperate but steady. Now it was just me.

  I could hear them close in on me now. They were no longer throwing rocks. I felt power crackle along my arms, my legs, my heart. I was thunder, I was the cry of an army bearing down to decimate, each tendon a stampede, each twitch a rent in the fabric of reality. My muscles burned, ready, to destroy.

  My first attacker announced itself with a cry, swinging a sharp stick. I dodged to the side and swung with abandon. My whipcord reaction imbuing my fist with enough force to collapse his throat.

  Pain exploded along my side as something struck me; I heard it clatter to the ground.

  "Swoosh!"

  An axe whistled past my head. I snatched it from the air and yanked hard, sending its wielder sprawling. My heel came down with crushing force, and a sharp crack echoed through the clearing.

  I brandished my captured axe and scooped up a rock. The goblins pressed in from all sides but hesitated to attack, knowing the first to step forward would die. I dared not hope, but was that fear I saw glinting in their dead eyes?

  Two strutted forward with exaggerated swagger, grinning at their fellows with universal arrogance. They barked something in their guttural tongue and the others fell back, creating a makeshift arena.

  One turned its back, playing to the crowd. I drew back my arm and hurled the stone; my muscles screamed as the projectile became a blur, splitting the air with a whistle.

  "Thck!"

  The rock slammed into his side. A high wet cracking sound preceding his writhing, his pig-squeling, his collapsed into the dirt.

  I looked down at my hand in amazement. That rock was a comet of destruction It was amazing to see the impact of strength upgrades not as an abstract thing in the VRMMO but rather as a visceral real thing. I felt invincible even as my wounds bled and inevitability pressed in; my body had become a vessel of pure devastation.

  "Hahahaha! Come to me!"

  I was definitely losing my mind.

  Enraged, the other goblin charged. I knocked aside its wooden pike and buried my hatchet in its gut, my superior reach proving decisive. Surprise frozen on its features, it crumpled to the earth, clawing weakly until my heel found its skull.

  The surrounding goblins cackled and hollered at the violence, pressing in once again.

  I felt myself heal partially from leveling up, my screaming muscles quieting and my many shallow cuts closing. I couldn't apply my stat point now, the improvement process left me incapacitated for the second it took place.

  It was weird, being so intimate with death. Even as adrenaline, agony, fear, rage and joy mixed, I flew above it all, peaceful. I noted in some distant part of my mind that goblins bled a pale, sad red. Closing my eyes for a moment I let thought evaporate, giving myself over to thousands of hours of mob grinding.

  The goblins were definitely creative, alive, emotional, in a way they never were in the game. Yet their swipes had not changed, and I spent a lifetime honing my skills on mobs infinitely more complex than them. I was floating one second, weaving another, striking always. Serene yet maniacal, as I married skill with rage.

  A goblin stumbled forward over a fallen comrade, pushed by the crowd. I claimed its stone-tipped spear and smashed the flat of the head against its skull as it tried to rise.

  Another's hatchet swing went wide; I countered with a slash that spilled its innards onto the forest floor.

  Instantly my flowing movements became faster, the way the stone danced in the air so much clearer to me. How my hands should grasp the spear. It was never my weapon of choice, yet I relished in its length and power.

  A war cry behind me; I spun and batted a leaping goblin from the air. It crashed to earth where my spear's butt end finished it.

  The horde pressed in and my deadly dance grew frantic as I traded blows with a wall of twisted faces. The power was intoxicating. Yet I was forgetting something... Nilah!

  I risked a glance up the cliff. She was climbing frantically, but three goblins were scaling after her, their nimble bodies closing the distance.

  I dared to take my eyes of my enemies, stealing a quick glance up the cliff. Nilah was frantically scaling the side of the mountain. Yet l felt my heart drop as I saw a trio of goblins scaling up after her, gaining with their nimble dexterous bodies.

  Sweeping around me for space. I pulled back my arm, let my rocking breath sit for a moment, bundling it within me, and slung my javelin.

  It streaked through the air like a bolt of lightning, piercing the highest goblin's leg. Its shriek of pain cut short as it lost its grip, tumbling backward. It crashed into its companion, sending both plummeting to their deaths. Nilah seized her chance, sending a dislodged boulder crashing into the third climber's skull.

  The goblins swarmed me while I was distracted, their weapons finding flesh. I thrashed and raged, carving out space at the cost of my own blood as cuts and gashes multiplied across my skin. Even half-dead, I fought like a cornered beast. Punching, tearing, kicking, every movement the culmination of desperate survival and primal fury. My newfound Battle Trance sang in my blood, turning my flailing strikes into a devastating symphony of destruction. Each blow found its mark with terrifying precision, my consciousness floating in that perfect space between thought and action.

  Through my pain haze I saw a pair of purple eyes floating in a haze of darkness. A gnarled hand held towards me, sucking light from the edges of my vision, her voice everywhere, a fragmented symphony of a thousand deep tones. A cold whisper brushed against my ear as the purple eyes bore into my soul. My limbs grew heavy, and an overwhelming darkness pulled me under.

  My mind was cast adrift, my body spasming and beyond my power. No amount of my anger abated the encroach of the darkness. My vision was swallowed, and I slipped into oblivion.