DREADWOLF

◈ Chapter 124:

“OW! OW! GAHH! STOP!” Red desperately tried to fumble for the bandages but Lyra slapped his claws away and continued bundling his leg in reams of clean white cotton.

 

“This is for your own good Red, I can't have you bleeding out all over the place before we find a healing potion.”

 

“Don't be sad, Ketchup Man, Pickle help!” said Pickle. The tiny goat child was standing next to Red who was slumped on the floor against the base of his bed. She had a bowl of chicken soup carefully hugged in one arm and a wooden spoon laden with said soup in the other. She moved the spoon toward Red’s mouth with determination.

 

“N-nNo- I don't want your stupid ssou-grAhbrGhl!” said Red as Pickle jammed the spoon into his mouth with an adorably innocent smile.

 

The goat girl had been woken by all the noise they had made after Bean and had come to investigate. She had found Red rolling on the floor clutching his bleeding leg and with a gasp she had gone running for bandages, a lot of bandages, she had returned with a spindle of the stuff half the size she was.

 

She waggled the spoon around in his mouth.

 

Rain tried to ignore the gurgling choking Kobold as best he could. He was sat cross-legged on the remains of his bed, his eyes closed, arms resting in his lap. In his mind's eye he flipped through his leveler’s menu.  

 

He had of course leveled substantially after he had taken Lyra and killed the porcupine-spike covered bear like monsters, that was just the nature of killing strong monsters when low leveled. He had been a bottom of the barrel level three, the kind of leveler that would normally take on things like goblins and slimes to level up… yet he had killed nearly fifty of what seemed to be a pretty strong monster, albeit sharing with Lyra. He had more than doubled his level in an hour, going from level three to a startling level seven and what felt like the very edge of reaching level eight. That kind of growth was unimaginable for all but the luckiest of low levelers, ordinarily it would take hunting and killing hundreds and hundreds of weak monsters to level like this because the porcu-bear monsters were far outside the ability to kill for a low leveler. However with a monstrous body like his…

 

That said he had been more than a little bit disappointed with the Skills he had acquired... Which was maybe for the best as he hadn't needed to struggle to hide any glee on his part from Lyra at the time. 

 

His efforts had gifted him two new basic Skills, Skills that he was now looking over in his mind's eye. First was Accurate Throw, a Skill that allowed him to throw things accurately. Which really wasn’t that exciting since he was very accurate without the Skill, able to throw rocks or objects with consistent accuracy on target. He hadn't even bothered to activate it when he had thrown the pillow at Bean, he was just that confident in his own accuracy unaided. 

 

But maybe he was giving it short thrift and it was better than it seemed, he just hadn't had a private moment to test it.

 

The second Skill he had acquired could have some very narrow usage. The Skill was called Feather Fall, and was described as: ‘Survive falling from great height.’

 

He knew one perfect usage for this Skill, Erin, that greedy succubus. If she still lived he would just love to see her try and fly him up into the sky and drop him now. He would land, and be completely fine, and she would be the one to suffer the damage of the fall. He could create a trap within a trap, and for a second he almost wished she would come for him. The look on her face seeing him float to earth while she went splat on the paving would be utterly glorious. 

 

But no, as much as he would derive satisfaction from seeing that disturbing demon fall it would be best if she stayed away, far far away, ideally sealed in a box, wrapped in chains, in a cave, under the ocean, on the other side of the planet. 

 

Still, nearly destroying the staircase in coming up here had given him an idea for another use of the extremely situation-specific Skill.

 

He cracked an eye and peered at Red and Pickle.

 

Pickle had her shoulder under Red’s and was trying valiantly to lift him to Red's great distress.

 

“Ketchup Man rise!”

 

“I don't want to rise, my leg is ruined!”

 

Yet somehow he managed it, his tail helping in his reluctant climb to his one good foot.

 

The Kobold was left essentially balanced on one leg as Pickle’s leaning on him was more hindrance than help. His other leg was raised, so many bandages wrapped around it that it looked like a sphere of white cotton had swallowed his shin.

 

The Kobold wobbled for a moment, genuinely surprised he’d managed to get upright.

 

But then he started to fall, the weight of an over enthusiastic Pickle dragging him down and unable to stretch out his injured leg to catch himself.

 

“C-catch me! Someone catch meeee!” he wailed as he was slowly felled like a lumberjack’s chosen tree.

 

Pickle dove to his front, hands palming his abdomen, determined to stop his collapse. She slowed his fall only fractionally and Red continued to tilt toward the floorboards.

 

“Ketchup Man nuu!”

 

Lyra stepped forward and with a flick of her wrist her wool washed black. The Kobold’s mouth opened in shock, but he could do nothing as he flipped over the top of the diminutive Pickle and flopped into Lyra’s side, the wool of her leg and arm blooming out in a cloud to catch him.

 

And just like that he was gone, leaving a stunned Pickle behind.

 

She looked at Lyra’s wool in dismay.

 

“Sheep ate Ketchup Man!”

 

“Er,” said Lyra, “I magicked him to a secret safe place to rest and recuperate, like a hospital, or something.”

 

Pickle looked up at her, her mouth an ‘o’ shape.

 

“You have secret place?”

 

“Uhhh,”

 

Pickle dove for her wool and Lyra yelped, jumping back to avoid her. 

 

“Y-you can't go in there Pickle, it’s not a place for children!”

 

Pickle ignored her and put her head down, tiny horns locking on as she charged forward after a skittering Lyra, desperately dancing back from her, hooves clattering across the floorboards. 

 

Lyra made her wool wash back to white as quickly as she could, but that didn't deter Pickle in the slightest.

 

Rain watched them pass by. The room was long and had maybe a dozen beds so they had plenty of space to move around. Lyra even leapt onto a bed, which Pickle charged under of course.

 

She bounded from bed to bed until she came to Opal. The Goblin was just finishing up stuffing the last of the gold back into the dimensional bag with a satisfied nod when Lyra flew over her head and landed in front of her, bouncing off the mattress and springing onto the next.

 

“Hey you stupid sheep you almost kicked me in the back of the head!”

 

“Sorry!”

 

The sheep raced by Rain and he extended an arm and caught her. He stood and in the same motion slung her over his shoulder. A furious Pickle lunged for his leg and tried to climb him, but finding she wasn't strong enough she slid back down to the ground on her rump.

 

Rain turned and grabbed hold of Opal too, putting her on his other shoulder, keeping her in place with his paw.

 

“We’re leaving. Tell Warwick we will be back later.”

 

“Da won't like,” said Pickle, nibbling her nail.

 

“Tell him I want to talk about nailing planks of wood over our windows!” said Lyra still slung over Rain’s shoulder. “He left out important Bean information when making our deal! We are a cheated and beguiled party and I won't stand for it!”

 

“Bean is good person!” 

 

“G-good? Th-that thing?! No Way!”

 

“Yes way!” said Pickle beaming up at Lyra.

 

Lyra struggled to process that counterargument.

 

Rain turned as they spoke and examined the nearest window. It, like the other windows of the slums, and the rest in the room, was glass free. There had been shutters at one point it seemed but most of them were broken or rotted away to nothing. 

 

Below the window sill he could see the edge of the original building that Warwick’s buildings had been built on. 

 

Half a dozen storeys below lay the deserted alley. 

 

Rain hmm’d while judging the distance. It was far, but he was very strong and he thought he could survive it with maybe only a little strain. He had experience with falling now after Erin had dropped him and had a feel for what he could manage. A drop like this was just a shallow step compared to falling out of the sky.

 

Of course this was where Feather Fall came in extremely useful, he would simply step off, activate the Skill, and then float down to the alley below and not have to take the stairs which he suspected wouldn't survive his passage.

 

That would be fine right? Well, he wasn't sure how much of an effect the Feather Fall Skill would have so to be safe he thought he had better take advantage of his monstrous abilities as well as his abilities as a leveler.

 

Experimenting, he let a flood of darkness emerge from his back, claws and talons and teeth in a slurry of shadow. When he was a leveler in Lynthia he had often used the night to his advantage. Less people around at night meant less trouble, trouble for him as being a leveler with zero levels was life threatening, that was just a fact of being so physically fragile. Some of his only company in nights spent searching trash or stealing from gardens had been rats, cats, and, of course, owls. 

 

The black spilling from his back changed form from a mess of predatory things to thinner more angular lengths, a pair of limbs and then thin flat shapes, rows of them, feathers, feathers that spread and formed the wings.

 

In moments a pair of large owl wings had formed on his back. He flapped them experimentally, bowling over Pickle with the backdraft. Yes, these would surely slow his descent even more than Feather Fall. He paused. Might he even… fly?

 

No, that couldn't be, the wings weren't large…. But still… what if he could? Real flight? The thought was tantalising. Who didn't dream of flying at some point?

 

Opal looked down at the wings in delight, 

 

“You can freaking fly?!” she gushed.

 

Lyra looked down at them in slightly less delight.

 

“D-don't you dare! N-no don't do it! Rain? RAIN?! RAAAIIINNN!!”

 

Rain pulled his wings in and squeezed through the window, stepping into open air, wings then spreading wide as he was freed. In the same moment he activated his Feather Fall Skill, and flapped as rapidly as possible. 

 

H-he was doing it? F-flying?

 

Then gravity latched onto his ankles like a ten thousand ton lead weight and he meteored groundward like a wrathful god’s fist punching the earth’s crust.

 

BOOOOM!

 

The alley immediately cratered downward in a bowl shape, the wall of the alley hit by the shockwave caved inwards in two room sized circles on either side, rubble and cobble exploding, a hail of stone that ricocheted off the walls in all directions. 

 

A surprised Bean, disturbed from eating garbage, shrieked and crawled up the walls, hissing and spitting.

 

Rain was left standing half crouched in shock at the bottom of the crater. The wings, the Skill, they had done practically nothing!? Was he really that heavy?!

 

“What the hell Rain!?” said a pale faced Lyra latched onto his head with a death grip.

 

Opal whooped and thrust her fist into the air. “That was fucking awesome!”

 

A faint yelling came from inside the building. Warwick did not sound happy.

 

“Lyra, make us invisible… quickly. Quickly!”

 

He breathed a sigh of relief as he became shadowed, the invisibility taking hold. He carefully stepped free from the crater and backed away down the alley. The door to the building flung open and a furious looking Warwick limped out, then stopped short finding the crater spanning the alley.

 

“What in the…” he stared in confusion at the crater as Pickle scampered around him.

 

Rain didn't stay to hear the rest of what was said, quickly stepping away from Warwick’s alley and into the spiderweb of alleyways surrounding it. Hopefully they would still have a place to stay when they returned, although he wasn't so sure he minded being kicked out anymore considering Bean’s nightly visits.