There is one law that has persisted across all of time without exception:
The strong take everything.
My tigers arrived before the wolf could make his first move.
They came from between the trees behind me — twenty white bodies moving fast and low, their paws nearly silent on the dark earth — and the moment they registered the Night Wolf, lips pulled back, fangs bared, bodies dropping into combat posture.
I stopped them with a single thought.
Not yet.
I wanted them to watch. I wanted them to see their master walk into something that could kill him and come back out the other side. A lord who hides behind his beasts is not a lord — he's a passenger.
"Warrior's Cry."
▶ Warrior's Cry — Activated ◀
「 Endurance +10% for combat duration. 」
The warmth settled through me — familiar now, like pulling on armor I'd worn a hundred times.
The Night Wolf moved.
Not a lunge — a presence, suddenly in front of me where nothing had been a moment before, closing the distance with a speed that bypassed the space between us entirely. His pale gold eyes were absolutely steady.
My instincts spoke before my mind did.
"Spirit Shield."
▶ Spirit Shield — Lv.3 — Activated ◀
The Mana expanded outward from my chest in a dome — not flat against the skin but projected, adjustable, shaped precisely to the space I needed it to fill. Level 3 meant control: I could resize it, reshape it, compress it into angles that standard shields couldn't cover. It cost substantial Mana to maintain. I didn't care.
The wolf's claws discharged.
Lightning erupted from the tips — not environmental, not ambient, but generated, produced from within the beast the way a Mage generates fire — and it hit the shield in multiple simultaneous points. Most of it scattered. Deflected. Dissipated against the Mana surface.
I caught the remainder on the flat of Athena's Blade, redirecting the current into the ground rather than my body.
Good.
Then the second strike came.
Same direction as the first — or what looked like the same direction. I was already moving to intercept at the same angle when I realized half a second too late that this one had curved.
The lightning found my left foot.
The pain arrived all at once — not a sting but a full-body seizure of sensation, every nerve from ankle to hip firing simultaneously.
▶ Left Foot Injured — Recovery: 10 minutes ◀
I hit the ground.
The Night Wolf approached without rushing.
Of course he doesn't rush. I lay on the forest floor watching him come and thought with some detachment: He knows I'm injured. He knows I can't close distance effectively. He'll work the angles, stay at range, wait for the Mana to exhaust or for me to make a desperate move.
Smart.
I had read about wolves once — in my previous life, in one of those stolen pockets of time when I was still the version of myself that read things instead of burned them. Wolves don't start at the extremities. When they bring down large prey, they go for the center immediately. The organs. The places that bleed fastest and hurt most and empty the body of everything it needs to continue functioning.
Heart. Liver. Intestines.
He will not do that to me.
The wolf covered the remaining distance in a single stride.
"Shadow Steps."
I was behind him. Athena's Blade already swinging toward the back of his neck —
He was already gone.
Not reacting — anticipating. He had leapt the moment he felt the displacement, putting distance between us before I could complete the arc, landing in a low crouch ten meters away with those pale eyes tracking me with the calm assessment of something that has survived a very long time by understanding how its prey moves.
He clocked my injury the moment I landed. The realization arrived with the particular clarity of things observed too late. He's been managing the range deliberately. Staying far enough that I have to close distance on a bad foot. Making me come to him.
Infuriating.
Magnificent.
The wolf came again — fast, direct, the trajectory of something that has committed entirely — and I watched him come and let him come and waited for the specific moment when commitment becomes limitation —
"Illusion."
He found himself attacking empty air.
I was already moving.
"Flash Sword — Lv.4."
▶ Flash Sword — Lv.4 — Activated ◀
The white light was brighter than it had been before — the level upgrade visible not just in power but in the quality of it, something more sustained and deliberate in how it moved through the blade. I drove it through the sequence I had practiced — the rapid arcing strikes targeting the joints, the tendons, the anatomical gaps in the wolf's natural armor —
Something shimmered across his coat.
A defensive layer, thin and almost invisible, like compressed air wrapped tight around his body. Not a Mage's structured shield — something more instinctive, something beasts of sufficient age and power sometimes develop without being taught it.
The strikes landed. They drew blood — shallow lines across his flank and shoulder — but the extremity removal I had been aiming for didn't happen. The layer had absorbed enough of the force to prevent it.
He has a natural barrier.
Fine.
Before I could reorient, he was on me.
Six hundred pounds of Night Wolf came down with every ounce of force he owned, and Athena's Blade left my hand when we hit the ground together, and his jaws found my shoulder with the specific targeted precision of a creature that knows exactly where the most damage can be done most quickly.
The pain was absolute.
Not sharp — deep, the kind that comes from something structural being violated, something that doesn't have the courtesy to be localized and instead radiates outward through everything connected to the point of impact.
I am going to die on the ground in this forest.
No.
I moved my free hand.
Found one of the shallow wounds I had opened on his flank.
Pressed my palm flat against the wet heat of it.
And whispered:
"Blood Venom."
▶ Blood Venom — Activated ◀
「 A Beast Tamer skill absorbed from captured texts. Introduces a targeted toxin directly into the bloodstream via wound contact. Rapidly depletes all internal energy from the target. Warning: Skill drains the user's complete energy reserves upon activation. 」
The effect was immediate.
The wolf's jaws released my shoulder — not from choice but from the sudden cascade failure of systems that had been functioning moments before. His body began the particular kind of shaking that happens when something is losing its fundamental integrity from the inside. He stepped back once, twice, each movement less coordinated than the last.
His head went up.
One long howl — mournful, territorial, carrying across the dark forest in all directions.
Then he fell.
Dead.
I lay on the ground beside him and felt my body catalog its inventory of damage — the shoulder, the foot, the complete absence of any internal energy whatsoever, not a thread of Qi, not a wisp of Mana, nothing. The Blood Venom had taken everything. I was essentially a body-shaped collection of injuries with no power to do anything about any of them.
The next attack that reaches me kills me.
Anything. A stiff breeze.
The notification panels appeared before my vision could finish blurring:
▶ Level Up ◀
▶ Level Up ◀
▶ You have reached Level 25 ◀
▶ All energy reserves fully restored ◀
▶ All external wounds healed ◀
▶ 1 Warrior skill slot unlocked ◀
▶ 2 Mage skill slots unlocked ◀
Oh.
The energy returned like a tide coming back in — not gradually but all at once, filling every reservoir simultaneously, the absence replaced so completely it was almost disorienting. My shoulder knit itself closed. My foot stopped screaming.
I sat up.
Opened the Warrior skill panel and found what had been waiting behind the Level 25 threshold:
▶ Iris Strike — Learned ◀
「 A skill blessed by Iris, King of Kings of the Earth. Details unlock with further study. 」
Then the Mage panel:
▶ Soldier's Blessing — Learned ◀
「 Raises the combat power of all allies and tamed beasts under your command by 20%. 」
▶ Heaven's Light — Learned ◀
「 A mass-damage ability. Targets multiple enemies simultaneously. Details unlock with further study. 」
Iris Strike. Soldier's Blessing. Heaven's Light.
I turned the names over in my mind, feeling the specific pleasure of things filed away for later — weapons not yet loaded but secured, waiting for the moment they'd be needed.
Today was a good day.
Then I heard it.
Howling. Multiple voices. Close.
I turned.
Five Night Wolves stood at the edge of the clearing. Not moving — just standing, looking at the body of their leader on the ground between us, their heads raised, a sound coming from them that climbed in pitch and volume until it stopped being noise and became something more like weather.
His death cry.
He called them with his last breath.
The five wolves turned their pale eyes from their fallen leader to me.
And charged.
I could leave.
The logic of survival — the law I had lived by across two lifetimes — said: Transform. Eagle form. Go up. Come back when there aren't five of them.
Or: Flash Speed plus Qi. Be somewhere else before they cover half the distance.
Both options were available. Both were reasonable.
I looked at the five wolves coming toward me through the dark bioluminescent forest, their black fur absorbing the light, their eyes catching it, the sound of their paws on the ancient earth growing louder —
And I smiled.
The particular smile that lives on the other side of all reasonable options.
"Warrior's Cry."
"Soldier's Blessing."
"Flash Speed."
▶ Warrior's Cry — Activated ◀
▶ Soldier's Blessing — Activated ◀
「 All tamed beasts: +20% combat power. 」
▶ Flash Speed — Activated ◀
Behind me, twenty white tigers felt the blessing land — felt something in their bodies sharpen and intensify — and their posture changed from watchful to ready in a single collective breath.
I moved.
We moved.
I don't know how this ends.
But I know where those wolves are going.
The same place everything goes when it meets me.
I am the one who sends things to hell.
I am the Joker.