When I regained consciousness, I first noticed the vortex of fire, engulfing several wagons. Second, I found myself in a sand dune, no less than a hundred yards from Pura’s coach. Then I realized I couldn’t find my arm.

  My body groaned in protest as I rolled to my feet. Thankfully, there seemed to be a finite limit to the amount of damage the game allowed the physical body to take. I could still move my back, neck, and right arm. The rest of my body hung limp, but it could probably be restored with a healing potion. Maybe not my left arm, but the rest should be fine. Okay, not the gaping hole in my chest, but it was a video game. I’d be fine.

  An explosion rocked the desert sand.

  Sern.

  I hobbled toward her, using Crapshoveler like a cane.

  {Notice}

  [You have suffered (16) instances of [Shock]]

  [Once you have reached a stabilized mental and emotional position, shock will be automatically processed.]

  [Until [Shock] is processed, there may be mild emotional and behavioral inconsistencies]

  I almost shoved the notification out of the way. Thankfully, my mind cleared, and I grabbed it. Once the notification crystallized, I strapped it to my torn jeans, creating a surprisingly effective splint.

  {Notice}

  [Your sense of self has been drastically improved]

  [To access benefits, improve your tier or move to an area with different internal logic.]

  ~

  [10 Hp 10 Str]

  Was this seriously how you got stronger in the second area? Pushing yourself to the brink of death and then a little further, just for a handful of stats?

  Either way, I’d have to take what I could get.

  The added strength made a noticeable difference, and, despite my injuries, I hobbled back to the wagon train in record time.

  One of the wagons from said wagon train flew over my head, exploding into red and white fumes.

  There were bodies everywhere. Most of them were from the guards, but my stomach churned at the sight of a couple slaves. All of them were covered in fire.

  Beside the central vortex, a fight had broken out between Sern and Pura. I could assume Pura was struggling, given that she’d allowed all the guards and slaves to break from her spell, resulting in a general chaos all over the train.

  Several of the guards grabbed children and began running toward the open desert.

  Come to think of it the guards and the children looked remarkably similar—

  There was a guard. She was a goblin with black hair and golden eyes, exactly matching the boy in her arms, bound in chains.

  Pura was forcing parents to enslave their own children.

  I gripped Crapshoveler a little tighter and ran a little faster.

  Sern would have to be okay. Out of everyone in our party, she’d been in the second area before. She’d survive.

  Right now, I had people to save.

  A wagon train had been turned over, smoke spilling from its windows. Tens of slaves wrestled against an iron door, twisted shut during the crash. Despite their efforts, the door wouldn’t break, causing panic in the crowd which was only worsening their problem.

  I rammed Crapshovler into a wooden wall, twisting. Blackened wood splintered apart, bowing outward with the wall. Slaves joined in, heaving against the wood, and the whole side of the car shattered. Slaves exploded out, all in a rush. Others moved slower, tending to those already burned and weakened.

  Among the last to leave was a summer green goblin with black hair and a crooked nose.

  Rose bowed respectfully. “Thank you sir, though I say you cut it a little close—”

  She noticed my injuries, and her breath cut short.

  I let out a chuckle, though with my broken jaw, it mostly only splatted a bit of blood, which wasn’t very reassuring..

  She almost touched my stump of an arm, before flinching back. Then she dug into her pockets, pulling out a handful of a vial and dumping it in my throat.

  It tasted like fish and mana, but the change was noticeable. Instantly the torn muscle and bone in my jaw knit back together, absorbing the healing.

  “They work,” Rose whispered, weary with relief.

  I started massaging my jaw. “Where’d you get that?”

  Rose bristled. “The wagons rock around a lot, and in her spell, we can’t protect ourselves from falling over, so slaves sometimes get hurt pretty bad—” her eyes widened. “It’s not poisoned, is it?”

  “No,” I said.

  The healing extended to a broken rib, but not to my severed arm, or the many other injuries all over my body. Rose grimaced, stepping closer. “You need to see a doctor”

  “It’s just a severed limb,” I chuckled, taking a second to get used to having a jaw again. “Besides. Laughter’s the best medicine.”

  “Sir, you are not okay.”

  I giggled. “I am not. We should find Junior and Axel.”

  “Not yet we won’t,” Rose hissed, ripping the sleeves from her dress. She tied them around my stump of an arm, cutting off blood flow. “Do you have any idea how much danger you’re actually in right now?”

  I glanced down to the pool of blood at my feet, then following a black line aaallllll the way back into a sand dune.

  “Huh.”

  {Bleeding VI}

  [You are bleeding.]

  [Bleeding may cause varying reactions depending on [Severity].]

  [In (00:35) bleeding with result in [Instant Death]]

  The notification disappeared the moment Rose finished her makeshift bandage. “Let’s just pray that this holds.”

  We moved as fast as we could through the overturned slave wagons, the rest of which former slaves had already forced open. Junior was among the crowd, tapping his foot on the sand.

  His gaze drifted to me, and his eyes went wide, much like his sister’s.

  “I’m good,” I said, giving him a thumbs up. My fingers were, of course, twisted and broken, but he got the point. “It’s nothing a couple health potions won't fix.”

  “Grind you do not understand how healing works,” Junior snapped. “You’re going to need so much food after this.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Do you have Axel?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Not yet.” I said. “You two stay here and try to avoid anything Sern flings after you.” to elaborate, I pointed at the flaming tornado.

  “Sern.” Junior said, making choking noises.

  Rose glowered. “I knew she was dangerous.”

  “Anyway, she’s in a bit of a rough spot at the moment,” I said. “At the very least, Pura is definitely losing.”

  There was a flash of light, and a metal serpent ripped up from the sand, plunging into the vortex of fire. Soon after, it vaporized, stinking with metallic gas.

  Sern had the upper hand, but she was being reckless. She couldn’t possibly keep an ability of this scale up forever. And when it drops, she’d be too vulnerable to resist Pura’s spell.

  I took off running.

  Rose sprinted up beside me, followed by Junior.

  “I told you two to stay!” I snapped.

  Rose stuck her nose in the air. “We go where we please, Sir.”

  “Do you have an idea how dangerous this is?”

  “Very?” Junior guessed.

  “Very.”

  Rose smirked. “Do you have any idea how close to death you are?”

  My visions flickered with black and white spots as my heart briefly sputtered out.

  “I have some general notions,” I said. “But believe me, I’m far from death.”

  “You couldn't stop us from joining you if you wanted to,” Rose said.

  “Please don’t die,” I sighed, moving faster.

  “Do you want my healing potion?” Junior asked, holding up a small green vial. “Pura gave one to everybody, in case there was a fight or an attack or something.”

  I popped the cork and gulped it down. My legs strained out a little, and the gaping hole in my chest doesn't hurt quite so much.

  “Hit the spot,” I chuckled.

  “Are you drunk?” Junior asked. “You keep laughing.”

  I gestured to my left shoulder. “I’m not all here at the moment.”

  Silence.

  “Get it?” I asked, gesturing again. “It’s funny because—”

  Rose and Junior exchanged a glance.

  “Oh never mind.”

  “Why don’t you stay behind?” Rose offered.

  “Nah,” I said.

  “But you’re—”

  “Nah.”

  “But—”

  “Nope.”

  Rose frowned. “You could at least pretend to have some concern over your current situation!”

  “I’m immortal,” I stated.

  Junior blinked. “Aaannnddd he’s lost his mind.”

  The wreckage of Pura’s wagon littered the dunes for miles around, though most of the shrapnel had dug into the nearby wagons, catching them on fire.

  In the middle of the explosion, there lay a familiar chain-smothered metal-jawed white-haired monster of a man.

  “Hey Axel,” Junior greeted.

  Axel started thrashing, snapping his teeth against the chains.

  “I take it he wants out?” I asked.

  Junior froze.

  “Junior?”

  Rose froze.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned. My stomach churned.

  Axel stiffened, resisting against the effects of Pura’s spell. It cut into his skin, creating hundreds of small slits. All around us, nearby slaves froze in place.

  Pura stepped out from behind the wagons. Blood stained the side of her head, and one of her arms was in a makeshift sling, burned to a crisp.

  “You…saved the questling…” Pura hissed. She squeezed her hand and Rose and Junior dropped to the ground, clutching their necks.

  This was precisely why I hadn’t wanted them to tag along.

  My body shuddered as the spell dug in its claws.

  “You idiot,” Pura growled, and her hand turned to a fist, spiking with power. “Die.”

  Instead of crushing my organs and internal systems, or causing me to tear myself in half, or do any of the many other very painful things you could make a puppet do, the attack dissipated harmlessly.

  Pura tried harder, raising her scarred hand, aiming the full force of attack toward me. And nothing happened.

  In my lucid state, I began laughing.

  Pura took a step back. She pressed both hands together, unleashing a torrent of mana into her spell, the raw force of which stung against my skin.

  But the attack passed no further.

  “No…” Pura hissed.

  “Now if I had to guess,” I said, taking a step forward, all menacing-like. “I’d say that your puppet attack gets weaker the more injured your opponents are, since their body gets so messed up. Maybe something with mana networks. Hence why you give healing potions to your captives.”

  “I have more than gimmick magic,” Pura snapped, extending a palm. A black dot appeared, throbbing with energy.

  Even if her spell were pretty weak, this woman had an absolutely ridiculous amount of mana.

  I pointed my shovel toward her, smirking. “Behold, my full power.”

  Pura braced herself.

  I smacked Axel on the back of his head. The shock broke him from his stupor, and he started thrashing around, pushing against the bindings.

  “You’re pathetic,” Pura snarled. She squeezed her hand, and the chains began heavy with mana, cracking against the ground. I struck them, over and over, but they wouldn’t break.

  Pura formed her scarf into a whip, cackling to herself like the very reasonable merchant she was.

  “Goodbye, Grind.”

  The whip struck the back of my neck, cracking my face against the metal chains.

  {Grind}

  [(-10,000) 10 Hp]

  Exploding pain tore into my head, and I blacked out.

  C’mon. Think. I’m basically helpless and all out of ideas. So I might as well do something really really stupid, even if it's just a chance of working.

  I planted one hand on Axel’s jaws, grabbing the bolt. I’d make him angry. Perhaps he’d have the power to snap Pura’s bindings—

  Axel nodded.

  The darkness flickered, and I glimpsed something hidden beneath Axel’s folds of skin, like yellow threads of energy.

  “Well here goes nothing.”

  Axel’s muzzle broke into three pieces, tumbling down the pile of chains.

  Underneath, his face was…eerily normal.

  Other than the bright white hair and red eyes, he could have passed for a human.

  Then mana exploded from his body.

  A flood of metal beams exploded from his mouth, impaling Pura. They latched onto hunks of the wagon and twisted, wrenching wood and iron into chunks. There wasn’t any rhythm or logic to the wiring. They just went everywhere and latched onto everything.

  With a thudding explosive roar of power, the chains split apart, sliding back into Axel's mouth. There was a groan of something, almost like machinery, and the wiring retracted.

  I scrambled to my feet, grabbing Junior and running for my life.

  ~Devourer State~

  {Axel}

  [Progression to [Tin] 100%]

  [progression to [Copper] 0%]

  Pura’s whip was snatched from her hands, disappearing into Axel’s mouth.

  {Axel}

  [Progression to [Copper] 100%]

  [progression to [Iron] 16%]

  His power continued to expand, dragging Pura closer and closer.

  “Drop me!” Pura commanded, pointing to Axel.

  He froze, but the wiring kept going, ignoring her command.

  Pura clasped her hands together, and Sern flung toward us, bound in cords of purple chains. “Call him off!” Pura screamed, pointing to Axel. “Stop him, or I kill the girl!”

  She was almost a foot away from Axel. even with my limited senses, it was clear that he’d been absorbing her power. In another minute, she’d have dropped down to copper, assuming she even survived that long. But if she killed Sern…

  Pura started squeezing. “I’ll kill her!”

  Axel stopped.

  Then a figure rammed into shoving her into Axel’s massively expanded jaws, where she disappeared with all the piles of wreckage.

  There was a flash of metal, and Pura dissolved into light.

  {Axel}

  [Progression to [Iron] 32%]

  ~

  {Notice}

  [{Pura} has been wholly eviscerated]

  [{Axel} is a member of {Grind’s} party.]

  [Harvest I could not be used.]

  Axel’s eyes rolled back, but he pushed forward, scooping each of the metal muzzle pieces and clamping them over his mouth. There was a hiss of mana, severing any remaining metal tongues. Others hissed and snapped within the metal, until Axel screwed the bolt in.

  “We got her!” Rose shouted, punching the air. She stumbled, away from Axel, taking slow, deep breaths. “Wow…I-I should sit down.”

  Junior took a step closer.

  Rose slipped on the slick black ground and fell.

  I knelt beside her, barely glancing at her wounds. She’d been pierced through the spine by several metal wires, each of which dealt more than ten times her health in damage. We couldn’t heal that.

  Rose shivered. “I’m getting tired. I think I should take a nap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Goodnight Grind.”

  “Goodnight Rose.”

  The last of the overkill damage was processed. Her body turned black, turned to ash, and blew apart.

  Junior looked at me. “Grind? You can fix this, right?”

  “I…”

  I sighed.

  What could I try? What could I do?

  Nothing. I could do nothing.

  “She’ll be back,” I said.

  “NO!” Junior screamed, grabbing for his sister.

  There was nothing left to hold.

  {Notice}

  [Party member : Rose has been killed]

  [Rose has not met the requirements for respawning. Rose has been erased]