Luna closed the gap almost instantaneously, but she had time to send a telepathic message to her pack.


    Do not engage unless attacked by the enemy army, she sent. Remember that we are here for a stalling operation.


    What are you doing, then? questioned one of the young wolves.


    This is different, Luna thought but did not send. This is personal.


    She ignored the chatter of the wolfpack via telepathy from then on, as the distance between herself and the hydra dropped to nothing a moment later.


    Eleven serpentine heads struck at once. Luna did not bother to dodge, focusing instead on landing a strike of her own. Her armor fended off most of the strikes, and at the same time, the fangs of her right and center heads bit into the hydra’s two leftmost necks. The scales were incredibly hard, and the flesh underneath felt thick and tough. Both necks resisted Luna’s bite for a moment, like she was chewing on a hard rock.


    But she persisted in closing her jaws as hard as she could, even as it felt like she was crunching on diamond rather than a diamondback hydra—and even as the other rattlesnake heads began to land bites on uncovered sections of her body, her neck and tail regions.


    Finally, she felt the canines pierce through, and the hydra’s body shook slightly with surprise.


    “You did not think I could do it,” Luna breathed. She jerked her heads back and forth in the punctured flesh, widening the wounds and drawing gushing rivulets of blood.


    The hydra growled, and the heads that were not in Luna’s grip began to glow with a greenish tinged aura.


    Poison Affinity Mana? Luna thought she recognized it, since her father had used the same affinity.


    The wolf yanked as hard as she could with the heads that had their grip on the hydra’s necks, and with a great deal of effort, she tore the meat loose. Then she threw herself back, only a moment before the hydra unleashed a wave of a greenish mist.


    That isn’t the poisonous gas she has been using thus far…


    Luna quickly spat out the hydra flesh in her mouth and used her third head to produce a great burst of Wind Mana-infused breath. The greenish mist was blown backward, past the hydra, and Luna charged back toward the Ruler.


    As she did so, however, the stumps where Luna had decapitated the hydra’s leftmost heads were twitching. Luna reached within a few feet, and suddenly new shoots of growth sprang forth from the stumps.


    The Wolf Lady reflexively sprang backward several feet, then sprang back again, waiting for the


    They grew back! Wait…


    Somehow, the hydra had grown four fresh, fluid-covered heads to replace the two it had lost. Now it possessed a total of thirteen.


    I’ve never fought a creature that could regenerate a severed head before. How do I kill it? Do I have to rip out the heart? I don’t understand why this creature was so reluctant to fight face to face before, either. With a regeneration Skill this potent… Luna refused to finish that thought. She refused to acknowledge that the fight might be unwinnable.


    Luna also declined to scratch, though her flesh itched in the places where the hydra had planted its bites, two on her leftmost neck and one on her tail. She had observed it at the time, as the bites felt like fiery hot needles puncturing her flesh. She had simply chosen to ignore it.


    But now the venom-injected places itched something fierce, and they seemed to be bleeding significantly more than the shallow and small puncture wounds would normally justify. The Wolf Lady had a bad feeling that the duration of this fight might become an issue.


    If she can regenerate critical injuries, and she uses venom that wears you down, plus the poisonous gas she created at first, and whatever that green mist was, how do I win? And also… She ran her tongue over her fangs and confirmed it. Three of them on the right side of her central head were chipped from biting into the Ruler’s flesh. How is her body so tough? If I keep fighting her, I might break all my teeth!


    The Wolf Lady immediately rebuked herself. What do you mean if you keep fighting? You are in this until the end. Just have to find the way to win…


    Her mind raced, looking for solutions, even as she also kept an eye on the hydra, waiting to see if the Ruler would strike first. The hydra appeared to just be charging more Poison Mana in all thirteen of her heads, preparing for another green mist attack, perhaps.


    Luna took a step to the side, thinking she would circle and try to attack the hydra’s left flank again, but her foot struck something. It felt like rubber, and she lowered one head to look at it. It was the two heads that she had severed and discarded. As she looked down, she noticed something interesting about the places where she had ripped through the hydra’s necks—and those where her fangs had failed to penetrate.


    Is that what I think it is?


    “Afraid?” The voice of the hydra floated over from where she stood, arrogant and taunting. “Having to fight an immortal creature such as myself seems like a terrible burden. You are strong, though. I will give you that much. If you were to come over here and kneel before me, I would be happy to accept you as one of my creatures. All you have to do is fight alongside me and my army against the force you have coming to back you up. A reasonable ask, no? Can you honestly say that anyone in your group has the power to match me?”


    Luna threw back her central head and let out a short, barking laugh, though she felt no humor in this situation.


    “You must be afraid to make such proposals,” Luna said. “Afraid that I will make you into a pair of snakeskin boots for my King. Your fear is entirely justified.”


    She based her bluster off of things that she had heard James say before. It just seemed like the sort of banter one exchanged when squaring off against a dangerous enemy. You needed to both denigrate each other.


    Then Luna darted in again. She had a plan of attack now.


    She rushed toward the hydra, power charging in her leftmost mouth. She opened it, and at the same time that Luna fired her lightning breath, the hydra let loose from its thirteen mouths something that was emphatically not mist.


    A green liquid sprayed out and splashed all over Luna and her armor. As the hydra in front of her writhed under the impact of Luna’s lightning, the wolf stopped, dropped and rolled, as the acid from the hydra’s mouths ate rapidly through her fur and burned her skin.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Fortunately, the lightning had moved faster than the liquid, so much of the acid attack simply missed. Her armor covered most of her body and deflected most of the rest. But where the acid had struck, Luna bled profusely, and the pain of the wounds staggered her. She felt that patches of flesh on her back and front right leg were gone, and the only positive aspect of the pain was that gradually, the wounds were going numb. She sensed that was probably a bad thing, though.


    I have to finish this quickly.


    Luna forced her body to steady itself and began charging another blast of lightning breath. The hydra, fortunately, was still twitching, not fully in control of her own body again yet. That was the virtue of Lightning Mana.


    The rattlesnake army and the wolves were, she noted, still all passively observing the fight. Through gritted teeth, Luna grinned.


    I will offer them a great show. Show them how a supposedly immortal creature can die…


    She leaped off the ground, unleashed her lightning breath once more, and then opened all three sets of jaws wide. The lightning breath struck the hydra, and the Ruler’s body went wild and jerked uncontrollably with the current running through it. Then the wolf’s body struck the hydra in a heavy tackle.


    The two rolled along the ground, the wolf ripping at the hydra’s body with the metal claws mounted above her natural ones and biting into the underside of as many necks as she could reach with her three sets of jaws.


    That was the weakness that Luna had recognized. The diamond pattern on the back of the hydra seemed to be genuinely as hard as diamond—perhaps harder—but the rest of the flesh was not nearly as tough. It was still like trying to bite through an old rubber tire, but Luna’s fangs were up to that task.


    She ripped through one, two, three necks, and she kept going, each head only connected to the body by the thin flap of armored skin with the diamond pattern on it at the back. It seemed almost too easy.


    Luna ripped into another neck, and the blood smelled different. That was the only warning before the wolf felt the acid burning her mouth.


    Ahh! She replaced her blood with acid, argh!


    The Wolf Lady continued attacking, but she slashed with her metal claw weapons instead of using her teeth now, even as her middle head shuddered with pain, the acid eating through the tongue, the floor of her mouth, and ultimately dripping down through the bottom of her head back onto the writhing snake beneath her.


    The big problem with this was that Luna could not use her middle head for the strategy she’d had in mind, to attempt to keep the heads from regenerating.


    Even as she kept ripping at the creature’s necks, some of the stumps she had torn through at the beginning of this attack wiggled with renewed life.


    No, no…


    The hydra shuddered beneath Luna, then pushed off the ground with its tail, exerting great force to throw Luna off. Barely fighting through the pain of her partially dissolved jaw, Luna hardly had the strength to hang on. Her claws scrambled to clutch onto the rattlesnake scales, but she ultimately fell backward and away.


    The Ruler loomed over her, menacing and seemingly unbeatable as two new heads sprouted from each stump. Luna lay stunned, trying to focus Mana toward her mouth to forcefully accelerate her central jaw’s natural healing process. She had never done this before, so she was not good at it.


    Come on, I need fire breath… I need my jaws to work.


    The hydra flicked its tongue in the air, perhaps tasting the smell of Luna’s anxiety.


    “Almost, eh?” the snake said simply. “You put me to the test. Farewell, wolf.”


    Then she reared back with all twenty of her heads—luckily or unluckily, Luna had actually managed to tear through more than half of them—and Luna saw green venom dripping from her fangs.


    The hydra lunged toward Luna, and one of the heads exploded. Then the hydra appeared to be struck by many other projectiles too small for Luna to see; she only observed the impact, as the Ruler shuddered with each hit.


    Luna’s left head turned, and she saw the army had arrived.


    A dozen gunmen were firing what appeared to be firearms at the Eastern Diamondback Hydra Queen, Dave in the middle of them. Luna had never seen them all fight together this way.


    Those weapons are remarkably effective, she thought.


    Behind Dave and the other gunmen were the Mages, who were raining fire, lightning, and other assorted projectiles at the reptilian army. To the sides were the vast bulk of the army, the physical combat types. As the wave of projectiles struck the reptilian force, the physical combatants rushed in after it. The alligators were particularly intimidating, as they dwarfed the rattlesnakes in size.


    As Luna watched, the reptilian army was already beginning to turn and flee from the Royal Fisher Army’s superior numbers.


    Then she snapped back to the present.


    Now is my chance!


    The hydra was bleeding from dozens of wounds now, and her body had shifted to turn her back on the gunmen and Luna, facing her diamond pattern to them to deflect as many of the magic bullets as possible.


    Luna leaped onto the Ruler once more, and with her greater size and mass, the hydra fell even harder than she had before. Luna ripped into the nearest neck with her metal claw weapons, chopping through the flesh easily this time. Then, disregarding her still-bleeding middle jaw, expelled flames through it onto the hydra’s freshly severed neck.


    The Ruler howled with anger and pain, her whole body rattling beneath Luna.


    The wolf simply held on tight, pressed down with her full body weight, and waited. The magic gunmen had stopped firing or refocused their fire somewhere else, Luna did not know or care which, to avoid striking the wolf. But all that mattered in this moment was whether Luna’s plan had worked.


    She stared down at the hydra, who seemed too shocked even to try and bite the wolf that pinned her down.


    The stump of the wound, cauterized with Luna’s flames, did not grow a new pair of heads.


    Finally, I figured it out. Luna was as much exhausted as relieved. But she had a job to do.


    She raised her right forelimb into the air, preparing to begin tearing through the hydra’s other necks.


    The hydra suddenly disappeared. In its place materialized one of the Manifestations. Luna noticed large-scale movement in the corner of her center head’s vision. She raised her head and looked up to see that the hydra had reappeared somewhere among her army’s ranks.


    She switched places with one of her Manifestations, Luna thought. Damn.


    Without putting much thought or effort into it, Luna tore the Manifestation beneath her to pieces. Then she lay down on the ground. She did not have much energy to pursue the rattlesnake just now. In fact, she was feeling very tired and a bit dizzy. And her heart rate felt strangely unsteady. Luna observed that her leftmost and rightmost jaws, the uninjured ones, felt a little moist. She raised a paw to wipe them clean, and the paw came away red.


    Where did that blood come from? she thought. Is that mine?


    Luna suddenly remembered the snake bites she had received, and how the fight had turned into a battle of attrition.


    I should have expected this. My fault for being too weak. Sorry, Romulus…


    As Luna lay at the verge of unconsciousness, it was all she could do to stay awake and observe as the battle turned into a one-sided slaughter. The hydra quickly slithered away as soon as she was able to do so while keeping her minions between herself and the enemy ranged attacks, and the army, following her lead as best as they could—but far more slowly—either fled or, more commonly, were killed at the site of the battle.


    Half an hour after the fighting had finished, the enemy were all either scattered or destroyed. Even the air that had been poisonous was now breathable, as evidenced by the soldiers taking off their gas masks and walking around freely.


    Luna did not walk around freely. She lay in place and nodded very gently when the Healers asked her if she would like her gas masks removed. Then she remained still and very passive while they performed Laying On Hands to restore her body to its proper condition.


    There had been no Royal Fisher Army deaths in the battle itself. The fighting had been too one-sided, and there had been too many Healers on the scene. The worst injured was Luna herself.


    Things still felt incomplete to her. The hydra had escaped, and the Healers could not tell her that the Ruler had been captured—they just insisted that Luna please relax.


    So she did. Luna relaxed, let the healing power wash over her, and reflected on what she had done wrong. There had been many mistakes, but she was proud that she had avoided any further casualties in the wolfpack.


    I performed my duty, my King, Luna thought. You will be proud of me.