Charlemagne and Bridget headed southeast in hot pursuit of whatever had killed Charlemagne’s hens. The rooster magnanimously allowed the mosquito to utilize the Party mental link to direct him and he rushed onward at speeds that would have flattened Bridget had she not been safely nestled underneath Charlemagne’s doubly-reinforced feathers.

  “Bawk,” he demanded.

  “We’re gaining on them!” Bridget responded through the mental link. “Let’s start our descent.”

  The pair dove toward the waters of Lake Nokoue, the force of their passing forming a trough directly beneath them. Charlemagne began reinforcing his beak with additional mana, planning to impale his target in one fell blow.

  “What, wait! No!” Bridget suddenly shouted.

  “Bawwwwk!” Charlemagne screeched in anger.

  “I…I lost it. The signal is gone! But it was just ahead of us!!! It’s not my fault!”

  Charlemagne, refusing to believe that their quarry had escaped, continued to fly at top speed. He passed over the lake and skirted the edge of the ruins of Porto Novo, instinctively dodging a few stray beams of highly radioactive energy launched into the air by the monsters below. In vain did Bridget try to stop him from rushing headlong toward the coast.

  “There’s nothing that way! At least, nothing out of the ordinary. Wait…that’s not true…there’s a group of humans ahead and to the left. Maybe we should steer clear of them.”

  Charlemagne turned to the left.

  “Bawk,” he ordered.

  “Yeah, you’re flying right toward them…but aren’t we going to keep hunting whatever it was that killed the other chickens?”

  In response, Charlemagne rose up into the air, making sure that he had a bird’s eye view of the humans that had dared to enter his territory. It was a fairly large group. In fact, it was the largest group that he had seen in one place since he had undergone his first evolution. The last time he had fought such a large number of humans, he had nearly been killed by the fearsome powers that they were able to summon from objects made of metal. Despite his fury, the rooster was eager to see how much he had grown by testing himself against the entire flock at once. Individually, they looked weak, but the rooster knew that the true power of a flock lay in its numbers rather than the power of any individual member.

  Intentionally limiting himself to using his claws and beak, the young rooster crashed into the vanguard of the human force, breaking through an impromptu shield wall through brute force. One of the warriors crashed to the ground in Charlemagne’s wake, dropping both her weapons in a desperate attempt to keep her entrails inside where they belonged. The rooster didn’t bother to finish her off, turning his attention instead to the weaponless bipeds scattering in every direction, leaving their carts behind. Ignoring the few feeble ranged attacks that struck glancing blows against his feathers, Charlemagne searched the group for its leader.

  It didn’t take long for the rooster to spot a man who appeared somewhat stronger than the others. The man was wielding a long, strange-looking machete in one hand and holding a round piece of metal in the other. Charlemagne used his Identify skill on the human, confirming that he was above level twenty. Wasting no time, Charlemagne rushed to face this worthy opponent in one-on-one combat. Although the man’s eyes widened in fear and surprise, he stood his ground as the oversized rooster rushed in. Then, the human used a Special Ability of some sort.

  “Equal Opportunity!” the man shouted.

  Charlemagne immediately felt himself slowing down as his body immediately lost a portion of its strength. Everything suddenly became just a bit more difficult. His Ember Core was still circulating mana, but the energy within his body seemed to have grown sluggish. Even the mana that had accumulated around his beak was more difficult to control.

  “All right, everyone! The chicken is weakened! Let’s finish it off!” the man urged as he cowered behind the round piece of metal. Charlemagne aimed a full strength Strike at the man and pecked directly into the center of the shield. Vibrations from the impact ran all through the rooster’s body as his beak slammed right into the boss of the shield. The mana that had coalesced around his beak surged forward as he struck to enhance the force of the attack.

  The metal groaned for a moment before giving way entirely.

  “How!” cried the man as he fell to the ground, dropping his pointy stick and what remained of the piece of metal as he landed on his backside. He began to scurry away from the enraged rooster, but not nearly fast enough to escape.

  Charlemagne was about to finish off the man when a metal-tipped stick suddenly punctured his side.

  “Take that!” a woman shouted as she pulled back the stick and jabbed again.

  Charlemagne bawked in anger as he whirled to face his newest opponent as his wound leaked blood onto the concrete. The woman thrust her weapon again, but the rooster easily dodged as his attributes rose in response to the damage that he had just taken.

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  “Boss, do you need any help?” Bridget asked through their mental link, her voice sounding worried.

  The rooster did not dignify the question with a response as he ducked inside the woman’s guard and severed the tendons above her left knee with a lightning-fast claw attack. As the woman fell to one knee, her fist began to crackle with some strange power, and she actually used the momentum of her fall to punch Charlemagne right in the cheek. An intense stinging sensation flowed through the rooster and momentarily caused his muscles to seize. But the woman’s attack was too little, too late, and Charlemagne almost immediately recovered. His next Strike cut deep into the woman’s neck, and her eyes rolled back into her skull as she went into shock due to blood loss.

  Finding that the man who had weakened him had managed to rise and was sprinting away at top speed, the rooster gave chase. Weakened state or not, the rooster was much faster than his foe, but he was not able to catch up before the man reached a trio of humans that were armed with a variety of weapons. The largest, a hulking brute of a man, was carrying a long, heavy, length of chain. Next to him was a short but well-muscled woman who was wielding two small machetes in her hands. The last one was a woman of medium height who was twirling a large wooden stick with no small amount of impatience.

  As the man reached the safety of his comrades, he once again used a Special Ability.

  “Nepotism!”

  As Charlemagne continued his reckless charge, the three humans glowed with a strange power that the rooster recognized as mana, albeit in a form that he hadn’t seen before. All three appeared to grow stronger as their muscles bulged. Even their stances grew more confident as the trio of humans faced down the onrushing rooster. Then, they struck.

  A whistling sound heralded the arrival of the length of chain wielded by the gigantic man, forcing Charlemagne to hop to the side. Apparently, that was what the humans had been expecting, because the rooster had to immediately duck under a powerful horizontal swipe from the woman with the long stick. And yet, that move was equally anticipated, because it was then that final human struck, driving her twin blades deep into the rooster’s flank in the moment that he was off balance.

  Charlemagne leaned into the attack, refusing to allow his attacker to escape unscathed. His beak flashed forward as he aimed for the woman’s thigh. Then there was a clang, and his vision turned entirely grey for a moment. It took a moment for the rooster to understand what was happening: he had once again been blocked by a piece of metal.

  Hopping back to reassess the situation, Charlemagne saw that the leader of the humans had armed himself with another one of the disks of metal, which he had used to protect the woman. It was, the rooster had to admit, a very effective method of fighting.

  This infuriated the rooster. Or perhaps that was his class skill, Zenrage, activating.

  Pulling as much mana from his Ember Core as he could, Charlemagne reinforced his body, especially the areas that had taken damage. The red stream from his side slowed to a trickle as a combination of magic and adrenaline staunched the loss of blood. It was time for round two.

  “Bawk!” the rooster shouted.

  “Never!” the man yelled back, taking a step forward and readying his metal disk once more. The trio of fighters backing up their leader also took up their combat positions. Instead of fanning out to surround the rooster, which would have let him engage them one by one, the quartet of fighters remained close. Charlemagne realized that he would have to break the human’s formation in order to kill them individually, but due to the way they fought as a team, it was difficult for him to do so.

  “Boss, are you sure you don’t want help?” Bridget asked again.

  “Bawk,” Charlemagne shot back, letting the mosquito know that he was determined to handle this fight solo.

  While the rooster was distracted, the humans made their move. This time, it was the woman with the long wooden rod that attacked first, advancing upon the rooster while swinging the stick in a manner that appeared random but was in fact designed to discombobulate an opponent. As she pressed forward, the rooster noted that the other three humans had tensed their muscles, waiting for just the right moment. He suspected that the enormous man with the chain and the woman with the two small machetes would attack, while the leader with the round disk would try to block any counterattacks, just like they had last time. But Charlemagne wasn’t going to let that happen.

  There was one simple problem with the human’s fighting style, and the rooster was about to show them what it was.

  Disregarding the wooden stick entirely, Charlemagne created several mana shields at various angles as he dashed forward. The woman, having expected a head-on assault, brought the end of the weapon down right on top of Charlemagne’s head. Or she would have, had it not been for the mana shield that deflected her strike at the last moment.

  Charlemagne closed in on the woman and activated his Strike skill, planning to take her out with one powerful blow. But the woman was extremely skilled with her weapon of choice, and she recovered from her missed attack almost immediately, bringing the other end of the weapon into play as she jabbed at the rooster’s neck. That attack was also deflected by a mana shield.

  The rooster’s beak slammed into the woman’s inner thigh, tearing through her femoral artery and causing a spray of blood to fly through the air. The woman herself stumbled back into the large, chain-wielding man, who caught his mortally-wounded comrade before she could fall.

  With their formation in disarray, the humans were easy to pick off one by one. The next to fall was the leader himself, who hastily attempted to step in and shield the injured woman from further attack. Charlemagne went low this time around, shattering the man’s left talus. As the leader of the human’s collapsed to the ground, the rooster finished him off with a quick peck to the neck.

  Next up was the large man with the chain, who had his hands full trying to help his teammate. Charlemagne went for the eyes, and the man went down, his hands covering his ruined face and his feet kicking the concrete in agony. But before the rooster could finish the job, he was once again stabbed in his side.

  Ignoring the shallow cut and whirling around to face the only uninjured opponent remaining, Charlemagne reacted faster than the woman had anticipated. In her haste to intervene, the graceful warrior had overextended herself. With one swift peck, the rooster made her pay for that mistake. The small, pointy machete that the woman was holding in her left hand went flying through the air, and the hand went along with it.

  The woman dropped her other weapon as she clenched her right hand around the bleeding stump where her left hand used to be. She collapsed to her knees and cried out in agony.

  Charlemagne was about to finish off the two remaining humans who had dared to challenge him, when something caught his attention. Something not far away was beckoning his Special Ability, Food for the Stomach and the Stomach for Food. Whatever it was, it smelled amazing.