Kurt took in Conrad's words, and his eyes went down to the dying beast, which was barely even trembling. For a moment, he felt like crying, or screaming and cursing. But then, amidst the maelstron that his brain had become, one singular memory flashed. A memory of white bone and ochre glow that caused his brain discard all useless thought and, in coloquial terms, lock the fuck in.

  "Like hell we can't," he said, immediately falling on his knees besides the wolf, uncaring for the harsh landing of his bare knees on hot asphalt, and he pushed the amber forward.

  "Dude!" Conrad exclaimed, his coice almost a bark. Once again, in another flash of blue, he took hold of Kurt's wrist. "What the hell did we have that conversation for?!"

  Kurt took a look at his wrist, and then he meet Conrad's eyes. He couldn't know how his expression looked, but the way Conrad winced back, the outrage on his face receding and the hold on his wrist weakening, Kurt figured he looked pretty intense.

  He filled his arm with Od, and pushed the amber forward, shrugging off Conrad's hold as if he were a child. "We had that conversation, Conrad, so that I would have time to think of a way of solving this."

  Carried in Kurt's superhumanly strong grip, the amber hovered over the beast's wound. Conrad began screaming at him, and even Mila began protesting, and covering the wound with her arms. This made it easier for Kurt to just hand her the amber like he was trying to. He pushed against her chest, and her arms flew to grab it.

  "Hold this for a moment, please," Kurt said, already reaching for his inventory, from which he procured a certain claw-shaped object, which was brimming with purified Abyssal magic. "We'll be using it in a moment."

  "What the heck is that?" Mila asked, her brow frowning in confusion before the realization hit her. "The demon's claw."

  Kurt nodded. "Melalo's, yeah. Forgot I even had it until now."

  Conrad knelt besides him, letting go of his wrist. "What good is that going to do?"

  "Melalo," Kurt said as he pinched the claw's rounded tip, and ripped it off the thing's main body with a flick of the wrist, before he put the rest of the claw back into his inventory. " was a demon of plague and decay. That was its essence. So when I killed it, and that essence got exposed to a metrick fuck ton of Primeval magic, the last bit of said essence not to just dissapear suffered a metamorphosis. From something that corrupts and infects..."

  Taking the chip of purified demon bone on his palm, Kurt closed his fist, flaring the Od in his arm as he did so. When he opened his hand, the only thing on his palm was a small pile of white dust, which glowed with the faintes ochre hue.

  "...to something that cleanses and purifies."

  And with that, Kurt brought his free hand to the beast's wound which, he noticed when he swept the blodied fur away, was actually a series of wounds in a row, each one corresponding to one of the thrall's fangs. Pushing any squmishness down, Kurt brought two fingers to the biggest wound he saw, and pried it open. A blood that was so dark and congealed it looked like pus poured from the wound in a lazy rivulet, and the wolf began thrashing and whimpering weakly, in a manner that almost made it look like it was begging for the pain to stop.

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  Steeling himself with one last breath, Kurt dropped the claw-dust right on the wound.

  For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, the black veins, and everything between them began wavering, as if the beast's flesh was a pond in which a rock had been thrown. The wavering soon lost its rythmic quality, and each section of those foul, undeadly infested blod vessels began pulsating at its own tune, expanding to the point the seemed ready to burst at one moment, only to contract until they were barely visible to the next.

  As if this process had given him back a measure of his natural vitality, the red wolf began growling and thrashing with great force, to the point that Kurt had to start flaring his Od to hold it down. It was then that whatever process was going on in the poor thing's neck intensified enough that they could hear its foul churning, a sound not unlike the one produced by hamburguer meat when its being worked.

  The veins began receding, slowly fading at the edges, and this fading extended like a fire, consuming them, and pushing all of their noxious venom towards one singular point: The wound Kurt had applied the powder to, the area around which was now swelling and darkening like some sort of mix between a cyt and a tumoral growth. When thta began vibrating, Kurt knew it was time for one thing.

  "Give him space! Now!" And with that, he let go of the beast, which began flopping around like a carp, and all three of them skittered away from it.

  The wolf let out a bellowing croak, as if liquid was being drained out its lungs, and then fell limply on the road, unmoving even as the bulge on its neck kept to swell.

  The seconds passed, and the silence became crushing.

  "Come on," Kurt said through gritted teeth, looking at the wolf's fallen form with both fear and hope. "Come on, buddy, you can do it."

  And then, as if hearing his words, the beast convulsed exactly once, and a sound like popping of a ballon explodded out its kneck, alongside a spurt of fluid and green-black flame that reached the seven feet into the air before it splashed down on the road.

  And then, Kurt saw how the beast's chest rose with a breath.

  "Mila!" he screamed, looking over the wolf's body. "The amber! Quick!"

  And quick she moved, reaching the wolf's fallen form even faster than she had skitterd away from it, and she was just as quick at placing the amber right above his neck. She took one deep, Pneuma triggering breath, and brought her index down on the amber like a pickaxe, chipping away from it a shard that was smaller than a fingernail.

  The golden flake fell down on the beast's neck, getting lost on a sea of red fur. A second later, a golden glow emanated from within his flesh, shinning through the crimson expanse of his hair, and causing thin plumes of white steam to rise from it.

  And then, as if the amber's light had been a match thrown on a puddle of kerosene, the entirety of the wolf's body, from his head to the tip of his tail, exploded with crimson light. Kurt remembered then the description that one of his screens had given him about the amber and how its magic worked, about how it hooked up whomever's body it entered directly with the planet's very life force. And only then he thought about how that would interact with the Humbaba's Auras, which did pretty much the same thing.

  "Damnit," Kurt muttered as he conjured his wand, pointing it at Mila. He then casted a weak Pressure Cannon that flew right over the wolf's shinning body and hit Mila square on the chest, blasting her back a few feet, and causing her to land on her butt. "Sorry!"

  Mila looked at him, still dazed by the sudden impact, and opened her mouth to say something. Whatever that something was, Kurt would never now, because the red wolf chose that moment to move. His body, just like when all necrotic essence had been purified from it, convulsed just once.

  This time though, a lot more strength went into it, courtesy of the Wyldfae's Amber boosted Red Aura. At least Kurt wanted to believe that the amber had had a significant role on the display, because he did not how they would deal with a creature that could make the eart beneath it explode with its natural might alone.

  And explode was the most apt verb for what happened. The wolf, bristling with red energy so thick its almost appeared he was made out of it, flapped once, and the asphalt beneath him first rippled as if liquid, and then simply craked and blasted upwards in a colum of dust with a thundering boom.

  Kurt and Conrad stared at the display, then at each other, showiing off their baffledment-twisted faces. And then they ran, circling around the pilar of powdered dead stone until they could see Mila, who was on the same position they had last seen her at, and staring at the display with what looked like moderate surprise.

  They reached her, and she turned towards them. Before she could say anything though, Kurt fell on his knees and looped both arms around her shoulders, pulling her in a tight hug.

  "I'm sorry for that air blast," he said hurriedly.

  He pulled back to look at her face, which was still frozen on the same expression. She turned to look at the already thinning tower of dust, and blinked twice in rapid sucession.

  "...I don't think you should be, Kurt."

  He chuckled, and rose to his feet, offering Mila a hand. "Maybe, but I'm still sorry."

  This time it was Mila who chuckled, grabbing Kurt' hand andd pulling herself up as she did so. "You and your guilt complex..."

  "Hey, lovebirds!" Conrad called. They turned and saw him staring at the blasted patch of road where the wolf had lasr been seen.

  Even through the cloud of dust, they could clearly see that this was no longer the case.