I move through the darkness like a reaper, my sight piercing the gloom as if it weren’t there. There are only a couple of the thugs that can actually see, and even then just barely. I deal with them first.

  I manage to slaughter nearly half of them before Jory speaks, cutting through the grunts and screams of pain and terror.

  “Tristy, Hogart! Stop her, now! Don’t break her too much!” he roars.

  At that, both he and Tristy vanish.

  “Aw, no fun!” I cry out, but I never stop moving. Never stop killing.

  It’s even easier than when I slew my way through the goblin camp, now that I have all of my classes. It almost feels as though they’re weaker than the goblins, even though I know that’s not possible.

  I hear the stomping of massive feet before I see him coming. Hogart is using some kind of charge Skill, boosting his speed to an absurd degree and making it nearly impossible for me to dodge with such short notice. Instead, I can only brace myself.

  I know I can’t stop him with anything less than truly absurd Strength and Constitution, but it wouldn’t matter. I can heal. I just had to survive it, first.

  One moment, I’m standing there with my arm through the chest of a thug, and the next I’m slamming into a wall some distance behind me with the crunch of bone. I swear that I feel my skull shatter for a moment before everything goes black.

  But I’m still present, somehow, and the shouting is all I hear. I don’t understand what this is, but I listen.

  “Dammit, Hogart! I said don’t break her!” Jory’s voice echoes, scattered and distorted. “If she’s still alive, get Yvonne to heal her up!”

  “Sorry, boss,” I hear another man say, slow and sonorous.

  Hogart?

  Then, just as suddenly, I’m fully present once more and buried in rubble. And Fae Ferocity shifts.

  Punish.

  While forcing my way through the rubble, I hear someone else speak up.

  “Uh… Boss! She’s still moving!” It’s a feminine voice, but rough, raspy, and worried.

  Tristy, then.

  I’m already standing atop the rubble when Hogart turns back to me. There wasn’t a scratch on me anymore thanks to Arcane Regulation, but my—or rather, Cari’s—clothes were significantly worse for wear after getting punted through a wall.

  Using my bangle, I don my enchanted cloak to ensure I’m decent.

  “How in the hells?” Jory says, gaping openly.

  I just give him a toothy grin. Then I move, the world becoming a blur of motion as I use everything at my disposal to eradicate the remaining small-fry dotted throughout the room. It doesn’t take long.

  I’d been testing the waters before, wanting to see what kind of resistance I was up against. But after whatever I just experienced, I don’t think I should hold back anymore. It only takes another twenty seconds or so before there aren’t any more thugs standing, their corpses strewn about the space in bloody fragments.

  Hogart was spinning in place, trying to keep track of me as I sped around the room, and Jory and Tristy had just vanished into thin air again. They make several attempts to interrupt me, but only Tristy is close to keeping up.

  She’s faster than Jory—just not quite fast enough for me.

  The moment I finish off the last of the fodder, I use every ounce of speed to move to my next target. As far as Hogart can tell, I practically appear right in front of him. With two quick swipes of my claws fully enhanced by Arcane Strike and Bloodmist Fist, I tear through his biceps, disabling both of his arms.

  He roars in agony, but my third strike is already landing. My hand, folded to a point with claws fully extended, gives me a rudimentary spear. Given the difference in height, the only thing I can do is swing up. So I do, stabbing into his stomach with a powerful uppercut, shoving my arm deep into his chest cavity.

  “No!” Tristy is screaming now, her voice filled with terror.

  His roar ends abruptly with a wheeze as the air vacates his lungs. I use my newfound leverage within his core to pull him to his knees, and he crumples immediately, crashing down with a gurgle as blood spills freely from his mouth and nose.

  “Stop!” she yells, appearing at my side.

  Before Hogart can make another sound, my free hand yanks his head back by the hair, exposing his throat. Tristy’s daggers flash, but my teeth are already tearing through flesh before I can even register what I’m doing.

  Warm blood and meat slide easily down my throat, leaving a gaping hole in Hogart's neck. I get one more bite in, nearly severing his head from his shoulders entirely before Tristy’s blades slam into me.

  As expected of a Rogue, her strikes are focused and clinical, with one sinking deep into the side of my throat and cleanly punching out the other side, and the other buried into one of my kidneys. The next moment, she’s twisting the blades, dealing as much damage as possible as she rips them out in wide arcs.

  But I wasn’t idle. The hand that was holding Hogart's hair finds new purchase on Tristy’s face, my claws digging in to lock her in place. A deep, rumbling growl emanates from my core, reverberating through my whole body, and when I look Tristy in the eyes, they’re filled with rage and grief.

  It becomes terror when I start squeezing. The pain is clearly too much for her, because she drops her daggers to start scrabbling at my hands, trying to get me to let her go while screaming.

  “Boss! Boss hel—” she cries, but is cut off when I squeeze down the instant Jory finally appears.

  His rapier is already mid swing, and at the exact same time my claws crush the front half of Tristy’s skull and brain into paste, his blade finds purchase in three places at once. The familiar glow of mana shows the usage of a skill, but I can’t track the movement.

  I can feel it, though. The arm holding Tristy is severed cleanly at the shoulder, the meat and bone treated as a laughable obstacle at best, even with my boosted Constitution. The second strike slices through my clavicle at an angle, carving deep into my chest. The third punches straight into my heart and out the back before it’s retracted.

  My sight dims somewhat once the damage is done, but I don’t care. The urge to end them all reigns supreme over everything else in my mind, all other thoughts scattered by need. His grin of triumph turns into disbelief the instant I slam Hogarts body into him with so much force that I hear the crunch of bone.

  His grunt of pain is music to my ears, and I take his brief lapse of focus to tear my arm out of Hogart and pin Jory to the ground myself. His wrists shatter where I hold them against the ground with my remaining arm, as do several of his ribs where my legs wrap around his chest.

  That's fine though. I have him now, and he’ll live until I say otherwise.

  Dozens of spectral blades appear around me, some powerful skill he has activating near the end of our battle, but I activate another skill. A max power Scarlet Barrier appears around us, and the spectral blades meet crystalized blood. With my boosted Intelligence and Wisdom, it blocks them all with ease.

  “I've got you now,” my voice rings out, still raspy from my healing throat, but my raw glee is palpable in the air.

  The giggle that bursts from me sounds manic and insane, but I can’t help it. I ignore his pleas. The world demands retribution, and it was time to punish him for tainting this haven.

  ***

  The world spins wildly around me as I come back to myself. I’m surrounded in a sea of blood and gore and straddling what used to be Jory. Everything hurts, and the taste of iron refuses to go away.

  And I remember everything.

  I should be sickened but… I’m not. So instead, I let my mind churn.

  First, I’m fairly certain I died, or mostly died in some way. I wasn’t sure how I survived exactly, but I had a hunch that it was some aspect of the Mind, Body, Soul skill. I’d have to learn more, somehow. Scary, sure—but I’m alive. That’s all that matters for now.

  Then there was the fact that I quite literally ate Hogart. Or at least, I ate some of him. That was actually the least concerning to me, because I was fully aware of the history my species has. Beastkin's first interactions with the other races were as hunters, where they were the prey.

  I just hadn’t thought I had that in me.

  Then again, I’m not just a Beastkin anymore, am I?

  I make a mental note to research all the myths about the Fae as soon as I can. I need to know what it is that I am, specifically, and what it means for those around me. Or if I need to adjust my diet.

  Lastly, there’s what I did to Jory. There was almost nothing recognizable left, and it took a while because I was healing him half the time. He… probably deserved it. I think. I’ll ask around to be sure, but I’m not going to let myself lose sleep over the death of some gang boss creep.

  My thoughts are interrupted by a quiet whimper from behind the reception desk, and I suddenly remember who else was in this room and overheard what went on.

  Shit, shit shit…

  I use Hemokinesis to gather up all the blood around the room, which turns out to be quite the task as the floating orb of blood grows to nearly the size of my torso. Then, experimentally, I try to store it in my bangle.

  It actually works.

  Oh, thank the Gods.

  While removing the blood, I line all the bodies up in one corner of the room and snatch any coin and magic items I find on them. I also drain the rest of their blood so they wouldn’t make more of a mess.

  Then, realizing how silly I am, I also remove the blood from myself, adding it to my growing sudden stockpile. Unfortunately, some of it remains behind, dried and thoroughly caked onto my skin, leaving me still looking filthy.

  But I’m at least more presentable than I was before. After ensuring I’m decently covered in my cloak, and once more mentally apologizing to Cari for her poor clothes, I round the counter.

  She lays there, curled into a ball and shivering. When I round the table, she visibly flinches, but then her eyes widen with shock. Given how dark the space is, I’m actually surprised she can see me.

  “How…” she whispers, so quiet I almost don’t hear it.

  “I’m pretty strong,” I say with a grin, flexing my bicep to add a bit of much needed humor to this dark space.

  She doesn’t seem to notice my antics, but a few tears spill from her eyes at my words. “Are you okay?” she asks, quickly wiping her eyes and composing herself.

  As much as a woman in the fetal position can be composed, anyways.

  I just laugh at the question, genuinely amused by her apparent concern for me rather than for herself, and hold a hand out to her. She doesn’t seem to notice, and instead just stares into my eyes.

  “Come on,” I say, wiggling my hand at her. “Let’s go check on the other girls.”

  That gets her moving. Where her concern with me is a drop of water, for them it’s an entire ocean. She follows me closely as I walk upstairs and through the left hallway. It doesn’t take long to reach the room I’m after, and to my surprise I catch someone peeking out of it.

  The moment I lock eyes with the stranger, the door slams shut and I hear the locks engaging. I just chuckle. It's smart of them to have a lookout and lock themselves in if things seemed off, so I just politely knock on the door.

  Nyria’s familiar voice breaks the silence, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Emilia,” I say, just loud enough to carry through the door.

  There’s a pause before she speaks again, only this time seemingly right next to the door.

  “Is… is everything okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I took care of things,” I say.

  To my surprise, the woman next to me speaks up next.

  “Nyria, it’s Krissy. Open the door,” she says, her voice brooking no room for argument.

  The instant she makes her command known, the door's locks disengage and it swings wide open. Nyria lets us in before quickly closing and locking the door behind us. There are nearly two dozen women in the room, each wearing a terrified look on their faces.

  “You… you’re covered in blood. Are you really okay?” Nyria asks, pulling me from my examinations.

  I can’t help but laugh at that. “Yes. I could seriously use a bath, though. Any way I could get some help with that?”

  At the request, Krissy pipes in, her entire demeanor shifting. A confident glint appears in her eyes.

  “Oh, can definitely help with that,” she says, her voice low and sinuous. But she changes topic swiftly, interrupting my suddenly stuttering thoughts. “First, though, what exactly happened? Are we safe?”

  “Yeah, you should be safe,” I nod. “But are there any Ratweavers left up here?”

  “There were a few, but I think they ran when they heard the… uh… the screams,” Nyria says, a glint of fear breaking through her gaze. “What happened?”

  Her question comes out as a whisper, and I can make out the whites of her knuckles from how hard she clenches her skirt. Like before, I consider her for a moment, deciding what to tell her. And like before, the truth wins out.

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  “Jory, Hogart, and Tristy are all dead,” I say.

  Most of the girls stare at me with skepticism, but Nyria barely seems able to hold herself together. Even Krissy, who was there, didn’t seem to believe it until I said it outright, and now that I had she almost collapses with relief.

  I decide to take out Jory’s rapier as proof. It’s one of the magical items I stashed earlier, and it’s not like he’d have just willingly given it up. The moment it appears in my hands, gasps fill the room, and several women start crying.

  Then Krissy gets to work. She was crying a little herself, but had quickly composed herself and started talking the other girls into a semblance of stability. Nyria, on the other hand, managed to glue herself to me.

  “You actually did it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she says, hugging me tight.

  I just channel my inner Cari again and start petting her head. It seems to do the trick, and I start wondering if Cari does this to me to manipulate me somehow. It’s apparently super effective, so I doubt I’d have ever noticed without using it myself.

  “Okay girls!” Krissy says with a loud clap, and all attention is suddenly on her. “Go check on the others and then get settled in your rooms. Nyria, find Madam Yvonne and let her know what’s happened and that I’ll need to see her in the office in about an hour.”

  When they immediately move to follow her orders, their tear stricken faces firming into looks of determination, it dawns on me that Krissy has some serious sway here. They file out quickly, and Krissy takes a moment to look me up and down. Then, with a demure smile, she takes my hand and leads me out of the room as well.

  “Come on, you’re a mess. Let’s get you that bath,” she says.

  “Oh, Gods, yes please. I haven’t had a bath in… actually, never-mind that,” I say.

  It was just today, but there’s no such thing as too many baths.

  Krissy just raises a brow at me questioningly, but shrugs it off and tugs me along. She starts walking past the balcony above the main lobby, and I notice the lights have gathered enough mana to be active again. Then I see Krissy starting to turn her head.

  As fast as I can manage, and far faster than she could ever react, I interpose myself between her and the vision of gore behind me. I did my best to clean up, but like the dried blood on my skin, there was only so much I could do.

  And the bodies were still there, in all their assorted pieces.

  My free hand comes up to her cheek, guiding her to focus on me. To my surprise, instead of the fear I had expected her to show again, a small smile creases her lips. Her reaction instantly makes me realize how this might look from her point of view, causing my face to warm.

  “S-sorry. You don’t want to see what’s down there, is all,” I say.

  “Right. Saving me again, I see,” she mumbles, her eyes lingering on mine for a moment before she turns away, pulling me down the hall once more without so much as a glance at the lobby.

  We go through a series of hallways until finally entering an area that looks like private quarters for the working girls here.

  Upon seeing my questioning gaze, she shrugs and explains. “This dorm isn’t used by any of the girls right now. The moment Jory’s gang started harassing us, a lot of the girls simply stopped working here. It freed up a lot of space.”

  Makes sense. A shame though… this place is gorgeous.

  Thick purple curtains separate the sleeping spaces at their entryways, each room a small private space with a comfortable looking bed and a medium sized chest clearly meant for personal belongings.

  As we walk through, we pass several stations with benches filled with beauty products. There are more powders, sprays, and lipsticks than I even knew existed.

  To be fair, I haven’t exactly had much reason to pretty myself up before.

  Eventually we make it to an area in the back that’s partitioned off by sliding wooden doors. When Krissy slides one open, a cloud of warm steam billows out, immediately moistening my skin.

  Inside is the largest bath I've ever seen. It's more like a small pool, with how it's set into the floor. From the looks of it, it's easily capable of fitting more than twenty people and deep enough to reach my waist while standing.

  I can't wait to get in. My tail betrays my eagerness, but I don't care. This is better than even the System-made bath.

  Releasing my hand, Krissy wastes no time in going in and fidgeting with the controls. In seconds, she’s done, and the entire tub starts to bubble and froth as a fresh citrus scent permeates the air.

  The next moment, things change. She turns to me, her movements lithe and graceful, full of raw temptation as she approaches slowly. Then she slips off the shoulder of her dress. My brain stutters for a moment at her actions, and before I can make sense of anything, she’s naked before me.

  At the sight, my face turns into a furnace.

  “W-what are you d-doing?!” I say, my voice several octaves higher than usual as I quickly turn away, my eyes swimming across the room in an attempt to preserve her modesty.

  The gentle padding of bare feet on tiled ground approaches me, and my nervousness flies through the roof. Against my better judgment, I try to sneak a peek, only for my eyes to wander down from her face.

  It was only a split second, but when I finally look back up to her, praying that she didn’t see, I’m met with a mischievous smirk.

  Oh, Gods dammit.

  Desperately, I peel my eyes away, looking anywhere but at her. A solid surface presses into my back then, and I realize I’ve been backing away from her, and I’ve just backed into the sliding door.

  Suddenly, she’s before me, the smirk still on her face, more prominent than ever. Her arms wrap around my waist, pressing the cloak against my bare skin where she touches. Her arms shift, and the door behind me slides shut, cutting off my escape.

  “Well then, Lady Emilia. Lets start by peeling away the stress… and the layers,” she says.

  This is absolutely not what I had in mind when I asked for help. I try to say just that, but it’s held back by a tiny, tiny part of me that is excited about what might happen next.

  A bath with a beautiful woman? That doesn’t sound that bad. So long as I don’t stare, it should be fine. Right? Right. This is fine. Totally fine.

  “A woman as beautiful as you shouldn’t be embarrassed, you know,” she says, and with expert ease, my cloak slides off my shoulders.

  My face feels like it might catch fire at this point, but she ignores it. Gently, she guides me out of my tattered clothes, and each time I try to help in any way, she softly swats my hands away. Eventually, clearly having had enough of my interference, she speaks again.

  “Please—” she says, and her voice cracks.

  She hides it as best she can, but it’s there. She's hurting, and doing everything she can to hide it. She tries again.

  “Please let me take care of you, Lady Emilia. Relax, and enjoy being pampered for a bit,” she says, her voice back to its normal sultry tones.

  She all but begs while holding tightly to my shirt, only half raised due to my meddling. And I understand what this is. She needs a piece of her life back. She’s hoping to return to some kind of normal, if only for a little, through me.

  I admit, it even sounds incredibly enticing. But towards the end there, her voice took on a different quality that sent shivers of anticipation down my spine, and I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  So, I just floundered in my own mind and let her do her thing. In moments I’m in nothing but the underthings Cari gave me. She expertly unwraps my chest, far quicker than I thought possible, before glancing down with a sly grin.

  When she helps me out of my underwear as well, her face is upturned, watching my own the entire time. I was utterly captivated, despite my embarrassment.

  There was a hunger in her eyes, but she didn’t push. She was just… enjoying this. Teasing me, and watching what came of it. And I learn something new about myself.

  I may kind of like it. Not that I'll ever tell anyone that.

  The next few minutes are spent with her teasing me for being so shy, and me struggling to hold myself back from trying to hide scars that no longer exist. Then teasing becomes fussing as she works to scrub away the blood that dried onto my skin.

  The entire time, she never gives me an opportunity to do anything myself. When the cleaning starts, I'm brutally reminded that my ears are incredibly sensitive, prompting another round of teasing from her.

  When I'm finally clean enough to enter the tub, she drags me into it and I try to overcome my eagerness with sheer force of will, only to fail miserably. My tail wags furiously, betraying my excitement.

  But I’m trying.

  No being a creep, Em. You got this…

  Hoping for a distraction, I look at the massive pile of notifications I received after todays adventure.

  You have leveled up! X8

  Stats gained:

  +16 Strength

  +16 Constitution

  +40 Dexterity

  +32 Intelligence

  +32 Wisdom

  +16 Charisma

  +80 free stat points

  Pain Resistance has leveled up!

  Level 7 -> Level 8

  Poison Resistance has leveled up!

  Level 4 -> Level 5

  A slight smile comes to me at the level-ups. With pretty much every one of the thugs being a higher level than me when I started fighting them, it turned into a pretty nice windfall.

  I start working out where to put my free stat points when my focus is ripped away from my status at the new sensation between my legs. Freezing, I look down and see Krissy’s hands working their way up my thighs, her caresses soft and enticing me in ways I can’t even begin to work through.

  I immediately panic.

  Before I started going through my notices, she was washing my back for me, and it was incredibly soothing… at least, while I wasn’t focused on her. So I just let her do her thing while I distracted myself, lowering my guard.

  Spinning abruptly to face her, I back up a few paces, I send a small wave of water splashing over the edge of the tub at the rush of movement. I cover myself without conscious thought, my arms covering my top and my tail hiding the rest.

  In the blink of an eye, I’ve escaped her questing hands. My face is, of course, on fire. I try to protest, but my voice is more of a squeak than anything actually intelligible.

  “Well, we need to clean those places too, right?” she murmurs in a sultry tone, slowly sauntering towards me.

  Her hips move with a hypnotic sway made more obvious by the distortion as she gracefully wades through the water. I see what’s coming, but I’m stunned with indecision.

  “B-but—” I weakly protest, only to be interrupted by her lips meeting mine.

  My heart is pounding too hard, my mind racing too fast. I can’t think. For a moment, I even forget how to breathe. It feels like it lasts forever, and then it’s over. When she pulls away, she gently cups my face in her hands.

  “Do you want me to stop?” she asks, her voice soft, but there’s an undertone of deadly seriousness to it.

  There is none of the pain she was hiding. None of the worry, or fear. Just her, seeking the truth of me. It snaps me out of my hazy thoughts.

  My gaze locks with hers, and the heat in my face rises to a new level. I’m trapped in the golden flecks of her amber irises. There’s concern there, but also understanding. Excitement, but also restraint.

  I’ve dreamed of moments like this countless times. Experimented even, sometimes. Especially during my estrus cycles. But the scars always punished me for my curiosity, courtesy of the sensitive bits that had been carved away to save my life.

  But I know that things are different now. And Krissy’s touch just moments ago only reinforced that.

  Well, okay, do I want this right now? And with her?

  Of course I do. The damnable bathing situation has me more aroused than I think I’d ever been in my whole life. I thought I’d been doing everything I could to hide it. Apparently, I’d failed miserably.

  As for her… well, she works in a brothel, and she’s the one offering its services. I never considered trying a place like this, not because I was averse to the idea, but because I knew I couldn’t even enjoy it.

  But now that I can… wouldn’t this be the ideal place? With my non-existent confidence in this area, I can’t help but feel that having someone teach me about my new body would be more than a little helpful. Even if it’s unbelievably embarrassing.

  And she is very pretty…

  Increased Intelligence or not, it takes me nearly five full seconds to work through all of this. I can see hesitation and doubt starting to cloud her eyes.

  She’s worried. It’s written in her gaze. She thinks she overstepped. But she couldn’t be more wrong. Deep in my core, there is an aching need to just be with someone.

  And she’s offering to be that someone. Not out of pity, but desire.

  Oh, fuck it!

  “Don’t stop,” I say, my voice breathy and several octaves higher than I intended.

  Relief floods her features, and her lips meet mine once more, turning my brain to mush.