Luna raced.


    Her body was flooded with adrenaline, and every nerve vibrated with tension. This was what she was made for. Running through the open ground, her pack at her back, her mate beside her.


    One of Luna’s heads turned to look at Romulus—and caught him doing the same back to her in turn. They exchanged toothy grins, then both turned to face forward once more. Despite running around the perimeter of the enemy’s territory, each knew that the situation they were in was dangerous.


    A large territory, Luna transmitted to Romulus telepathically.


    Rather long, at least, Romulus replied. Perhaps not deep.


    Luna nodded, then recognized he might not be looking at her anymore and sent a short, Yes.


    The territory had been fifteen miles long in total, and they had only now turned, at the corner where the aura ended, to see how deep it was. If the territory’s depth was shallow, it would probably indicate that there was another Ruler on the other side of this place that the rattlesnake Ruler had not yet been willing to challenge.


    A shallow territory would also make it easier to find the Ruler without succumbing to the poisonous atmosphere within the territory or running low on resources. Valuable intel for the Captain.


    Considering how evasive the Ruler has been thus far, choosing to use poisonous gas and hide instead of facing us directly after we killed off her border guards, it seems likely that the Ruler would also simply avoid challenging a neighbor to avoid testing their strength. Not like our King.


    If the Fisher King were here, he would make short work of this Ruler. That was what Luna’s instincts told her. Now it was their job to prove that he wasn’t the only one in the Kingdom who could slay someone at that level of power. And the wolf relished this challenge.


    The wolf pack ran for perhaps ten minutes, and Luna saw a change of environment in the distance. A different biome, one that Luna thought contained a lot more water and long, tall grass.


    The rattlesnake territory was smaller in square mileage than the Fisher Kingdom after all.


    I knew ours was bigger, Luna thought smugly. Then she returned to practical thought, and her tail began wagging uncontrollably. This was very good news.


    It is a shallow territory, she sent to Romulus excitedly. We can return to—


    There was suddenly a slight smell of sulfur in the air.


    That brief hit of foul odor was the only warning, before Luna felt it. A wave of aura hit her and then swept rapidly past, staggering her and almost taking her breath away. Almost.


    Luna resisted the pressure on her body to empty her lungs by sheer Will and simply held her breath instead. Her body responded to the unexpected strain and the sense of being under attack by kicking her adrenaline into high gear.


    The wolf’s heads swiveled from side to side, taking advantage of having three separate sets of eyes to confirm that there were no attackers within sight.


    Nevertheless, Luna’s instincts told her that she and her packmates were in immediate danger, and she began issuing orders.


    We are under attack! Same enemy as before. This creature uses poisonous gas, so hold your breath while we retreat. She sent a quick mental image of the surest path out of the territory. The enemy’s land holdings had just expanded again, and it was impossible to be certain how much it could have gained in the direction it had moved in, but Luna had no doubt that this was aggression aimed at the wolves mapping out the edges of its territory. Therefore, the Ruler would seek to expand its Dominion in a focused way that would surround the pack with its territory as thoroughly as possible. It would expect them to run straight toward the border it had just expanded, so that would be the area it covered with its aura.


    Instead, Luna had mapped out a diagonal path that would lead them back to the long side of the territory.


    She turned and took her first steps running forward, her pack swiveling to gather behind her. Luna made it ten feet. Then the ground behind her—the space where she had been standing just seconds earlier—exploded, soil flying into the air. Through the scattered particles, Luna saw a mixed group of snakes and what appeared to be some sort of large black worms burst forth, right in the midst of her pack.


    There was panic among the wolf pack, but Luna sent out a wave of calming emotions and a simple message.


    We will be fine. If they were strong, they would not need to bother with a sneak attack. It was not entirely true. She could easily see their own Ruler using sneak attacks, even though he was probably the strongest life form around. But it was what the pack needed just now. Those who were not in the front lines seemed to relax a little.


    Then the monsters lunged at the wolves closest to them, and the battle began.


    Luna invested only a moment to Identify one of the strange black worms before she moved back to assist.


    Terrestrial Bloodthirst Leech, Lv. 12


    That name sounds ominous, she thought.


    Luna lunged forward—and a huge black shape suddenly materialized out of the air before her, cutting off her path. The figure was a snake, but not like the others. It was the only monster Luna had encountered here that was taller than her, and its body was crowned with eleven heads.


    She automatically responded to the sudden intrusion with a low snarl, baring her fangs and lowering her heads, ready to pounce and throw all her body weight at the creature.


    “Hello, She-Wolf,” growled a deep yet feminine voice, matching Luna’s own ferocity. “I hope you have enjoyed your tour of my territory. Your stay as a guest ends now.”


    Luna’s hackles rose automatically at the unfamiliar, obviously hostile voice, but she did not feel a sense of danger at the presence in front of her. She sensed, oddly, something more akin to an absence of anything before her.


    The Wolf Lady did not bother to respond in words to the enemy in front of her. She did not want to waste her time while her pack was engaged in battle. Instead, she opened all three sets of her jaws and let loose a terrible, piercing, physically forceful sound.


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    Shattering Howl!


    The shape in front of her shook visibly, as if its existence was unstable. Which made sense.


    It only materialized from the air in front of me, Luna thought. The Ruler is too cowardly to appear in person. If it is only a projection, I am guaranteed to win!


    She tore into the image in front of her with fangs and claws, and it responded with bites of its own. To Luna’s slight surprise, though the creature was some sort of mystical apparition, it was no mere illusion. Her attacks hit solid matter, and the bites that landed on her flesh made real wounds—albeit small ones—and drew actual blood.


    “Your jaws are weak, though you have many of them,” Luna taunted.


    Then she returned to biting and clawing at the creature, ripping away heads and large chunks of what should have been flesh. But anything she separated from the body turned to smoke in her grip and vanished.


    The multi-headed snake struck back with more of its relatively feeble bites, but Luna noticed that the presence of the main body seemed to be wavering, too.


    She redoubled her efforts—perhaps she could have left this projection of the Ruler’s alone without it doing much damage, but she suspected it could kill some of the younger wolves with even these fairly feeble bites—and after a few more minutes of mutual biting and one-sided clawing, Luna fell through the monster’s body. It had dematerialized completely.


    “Do not think that this is over,” said the voice once more, a last few words before the final head vanished.


    “Oh, I know it is not!” Luna growled back at nothingness.


    Then she turned back to the wolf pack. They had been forced to fight for the last several minutes without her direct assistance. She was proud to see the rattlesnakes and leeches were mostly dead and dismembered—and in the midst of what appeared to have been the thickest of the fighting was her mate.


    Romulus, with his three heads and terrible ferocity, was engaged in close combat with two of the remaining rattlesnakes and a leech. Each of the combatants took it in turns trying to bite at the other side, bluffing and drawing back, trying to pull the other side into a fatal overcommitment. Standing at the backs of the three monsters engaging Romulus, two of the largest rattlesnakes hissed and rattled, trying to keep the rest of the pack at bay. There was a similar game at play there, with the rattlesnakes visibly bleeding from a few wounds that smaller pack members had inflicted with bites—but there were two wolves lying unmoving on the ground in front of them, and Luna did not know on sight whether they were dead or alive.


    When she reached out with her ability to sense the pack, she felt their life signs were still present—but weak. Far too weak.


    Luna leaped into the fray, eager to break the stalemate. Charging in from the rattlesnakes’ flank, she seized one of the two larger rattlesnakes by the neck, grasping it firmly in her jaws, and then leaped backward, out of the other creature’s striking range.


    That was all the signal the other wolves needed to act boldly. Most of the rest of the pack raced to be the first to attack the snake now standing on its lonesome at the back of the other three combatants. Luna saw the rattlesnake fall under the sheer weight of so many furry bodies, and she heard the sounds of dozens of jaws snapping. The remaining wolf pack rushed up to Romulus’s adversaries, the stalemate there doomed too. Sensing the attack coming from behind them, the three monsters all threw themselves onto Romulus and attacked him with reckless abandon.


    With all three sets of jaws, he grabbed each monster around its neck—or the place just below the jaws, in the case of the leech. There was a loud series of crunching noises as Romulus crushed the life out of all three of them.


    Luna executed the larger rattlesnake in her own jaws as she watched, using two pairs of jaws to hold the snake taught and applying the third set of jaws to chop the snake in two.


    [You killed Eastern Diamondback Rattlelord, Lv. 19!]


    [Master Forest Wolf Luna leveled up!]


    With the notification she received, the battle was truly over. She had other notifications from the successful fight with the Manifestation of the Eastern Diamondback Hydra, as the System labeled the other thing she had fought. But she was focused on other matters.


    Another victory, she thought without joy, looking at the two wolves that lay fallen on the ground.


    Then Romulus collapsed, his enemies, bodies clearly lifeless, still hanging from his flesh, attached by locked jaws.


    No!


    Luna rushed toward her fallen mate, eyes wide. She shoved aside other members of the pack without much thought.


    Go and attend to your fallen siblings, she forced herself to send. Take them out of the territory. She could not be certain, but she suspected the atmosphere around here was still poisonous. It seemed consistent with this Ruler’s underhanded behavior thus far. Do not breathe in the air.


    With that duty fulfilled, she bent to attend to her mate. She saw he was bleeding from a dozen places that had not been visible from a distance. She did not waste time in fretting over it, however.


    Instead, Luna licked at Romulus’s wounds. The wolves’ saliva had some mild healing properties. She knew it was unlikely to be enough to do much for him, but it was all she had for now, and she used that ability with furious energy. There were no wolves specialized in healing, which seemed like a major error at the moment.


    Occasionally, she stopped and spat, wrinkling her nose. The blood from her mate tasted strange. He was probably poisoned or infected with some disease courtesy of these strange monsters. Nevertheless, she continued with only brief pauses until she had covered each of his significant injuries with some of her healing saliva.


    The wounds seemed to partially knit up, but they appeared more inflamed now than they had when she started. Luna did not like the look of them, but she could not think of anything more that could be done for her mate here.


    We have to return to the group…


    Finally, she gave up on any further ministrations, grabbed Romulus in two sets of jaws, and dragged her mate’s body up off the ground and onto her back. Fortunately, after their Evolutions, they were of very similar size. He was only a little larger than her.


    The rest of the pack had largely moved on following her instructions, with only a few of the evolved Command Forest Wolves remaining as a guard for their leader.


    Finally, the remaining wolves set out, guards up, ready to be ambushed.


    They walked among the pines, twitching at every crunch of brittle twigs or brush of fur against rough wood. But there were no further ambushes, and they made it out of the territory safely.


    Luna was relieved, not because she did not want to take out her frustrations on the Ruler or any of its minions that might dare to appear, but because she could feel Romulus’s heartbeat slowing down.


    Once they were clear of the scrubby pine land, and could breathe freely again, Luna and her fellows ran straight out the rest of the way. The Wolf Lady sprinted, tireless, until she could unload her mate’s body next to a group of Healers.


    “Please, my mate. Venom. Possibly also contagion. Help.”


    The humans, to their credit, sprang into action, and Luna backed away to give them room to work. She knew every second counted. She had already felt the absence—the loss of the other two wolves that had been rendered unconscious back in the Ruler’s land. But Romulus was stronger. He would recover. He had to.


    Luna stalked off, unable to sit still while her mate’s life hung in the balance. She felt the need to do something, but her desire was frustrated by the level of this Ruler’s defenses. She waved off another Healer offering to see to the small, shallow cuts that were the only remaining sign of the bites from the Ruler’s Manifestation. She did not need help. She needed…


    The wolf found Dave Matsumoto and locked eyes with him for a moment to get his attention. He nodded, meeting her gaze. She took that as a sign to approach, so she did. She spoke her mind with blunt candor.


    “Captain. When we encounter the Ruler, I will fight her.” Luna pronounced the words in a tone that brooked no dissent. Dave looked back at her, breathed out a heavy sigh, and slowly nodded.


    “As soon as we have Romulus and the others healed, we go in,” he said. “For now, tell me what happened. Everything you know.”