The sin bear scorpions charged en masse through a forest clearing surrounded by dead trees. They ran with an unusual gait that appeared to slow them down. But despite that, it wouldn’t take all that long for them to reach Charlie and the others. Only the largest of the bears, the one still standing in front of Bleedy, remained where it was. It watched as the others stampeded towards their prey. Bleedy turned to look back as well. He wore a worried expression and took a step to run toward Charlie. But the massive bear behind him roared and slammed its claws into the ground in front of Bleedy to cut him off.

  The racooneever went still.

  Charlie wasn’t sure why the bear wasn’t attacking Bleedy, but he figured it had something to do with the reason that his furry friend had run off in the first place. Bleedy wasn’t in danger now, so Charlie could focus on the fight at hand. He would keep everyone else safe.

  “Orb!” Charlie called out quickly.

  Orb floated in the air beside him, watching the bears approach in the distance. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not like usual though. I can’t seem to target them with my ability for some reason. Even with the recent upgrade!”

  Charlie frowned. “Do it anyway! We have to try,” he urged. He needed to know if violence was really the only way out of this.

  A surge of power leaked from the floating blue dungeon core.

  “Sentience!”

  Nothing.

  “Greater Sentience!”

  Orb let out a mental sigh. “Nope! It’s not good.”

  Parent interjected. “The bears appear to be under the influence of something already. They’ve been forced into a rabid-like state, though the one with Bleedy appears to have some resistance to it. Regardless, because of the way the sentience ability works, you won’t be able to target them while they are under the influence of something else,” he said.

  “Can we knock them out of it somehow?” Charlie asked hurriedly.

  “No. Like sentience, the change is permanent.”

  Charlie nodded. So, they had to fight. He could tell just by looking at the bears how dangerous they were. It was obvious what a creature like this could do if it got too close to a town. Innocent people would get hurt. A not insignificant part of the surrounding forest had already been damaged, and this was an isolated area. If the bears found their way toward a large city or even the capital road, a lot of people would get hurt and killed. They had taken the quest so they could train and make some extra money. But now Charlie saw how important this mission really was. He would face even worse creatures if he continued down the path he had started down. Charlie had to protect the people who couldn’t protect themselves. He had to get stronger.

  He wouldn’t back down now.

  “Vetica, put me down!” Charlie said.

  She looked down at him in her arms, and then her eyes flickered back toward the approaching bears. “What? Why?” she asked.

  “Down!” he said again, more forcefully this time. There wasn’t time to explain.

  She was hesitant but obliged him. As soon as Charlie hit the ground, he started crawling towards the bears as fast as he could. He was far slower, comparatively, but he wanted to get at least a little distance from Merlin and Vetica.

  “Uh, Charlie, what are you doing?” Merlin called out, a hint of nervousness in his words. “Maybe we should talk this out first?”

  Charlie slapped a hand against the ground.

  “Summon Minion!” The ground underneath Charlie swelled and lifted as a large scaly creature erupted out of it. As King Scalea rose to his full height, Charlie grabbed a hold of his back and settled into position. His palmar grasp ability would keep him from falling off during the fighting to come. To the left and right of them, the other nine komodons rose from portals in the ground as well. Bonehead was among those on the right. Without missing a beat, the scalers finished freeing themselves of the ground and slithered towards the charging bears.

  Charlie was worried the bears might prove too dangerous for the smaller scalers, so he left them inside the dungeon for now. They might be able to help, but a lot of them would be wiped out in the process. He wasn’t willing to take that risk unless it was absolutely necessary. For now, the ten komodons would have to face the much larger group of fifteen sin bear scorpions.

  “Get them!” Charlie ordered. King Scalea nodded and turned his head toward the komodons on either side of him.

  “Arca!” he roared. The other komodons picked up their pace and sped forward.

  Charlie focused on his powers and activated his next ability.

  “Dungeon Manipulation!”

  He threw a hand forward, intending to land the first blow.

  Three rock arms shot out of the ground in front of him and traveled towards the frontmost bear with their fingers outstretched. They were smaller than Charlie intended them to be. Almost a third the size they usually were when he made them in the past. The amount of detail and precision that had gone into them also surprised him. The hands appeared as if they had been finely carved by a master sculptor. It was far unlike the crude manifestations Charlie usually created.

  “Those look like palm trees on steroids. Well, bulkier than that, but you get the point. What happened? You running out of juice already? Why aren’t they as big as usual?” Orb asked.

  Two of the rock hands split to the side and past the first bear. They each latched onto one of its hind legs. The third arm shot forward and palmed the creature’s face. It retracted and pulled the bear downward, smashing the creature’s face into the ground.

  Charlie’s jaw dropped as King Scalea lumbered forward. He had intended to throw simple punches. He hadn’t instructed the arms to do any of that at all. What the heck was going on?

  King Scalea didn’t miss a beat. He flexed his powerful legs and shot through the air toward the fallen bear. The frontmost hand readjusted its grip and grabbed the back of the bear’s head to pull it up. The bear was still too disoriented from the initial attack to fight back. King Scalea took advantage of the opening and sank his teeth into the exposed neck of the sin bear to finish it off.

  Dark red blood sputtered into the dirt.

  With renewed roars of anger, several bears sped toward King Scalea to get revenge. His loyal, scaly subjects leapt into the air to intercept the attackers.

  Now it was on.

  Scaler battle cries and sin bear roars filled the air. The two forces crashed together like colliding waves of green and brown. A battle of claws, teeth, and tails.

  The bears could sense just how much stronger King Scalea was than the others. Three of them attacked him at once. The dungeon hands moved with a mind of their own, striking and pulling the bears away to create some space. King Scalea was overextended from jumping so far into the fray, so he flexed again and jumped out of the fighting to survey the battlefield. The rock hands managed to take down another bear on their own, crushing its head between themselves in some kind of bloody high-five.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  A chill ran through Charlie’s body. The hands were moving completely on their own.

  Orb turned a shade of sickly green. “I’m gonna be sick. What the hell was that?”

  After dispatching one bear and injuring another, the hands retreated to join King Scalea and Charlie on the backline. As one, they turned to face Charlie, their fingertips all pointing straight towards him. He didn’t have much time to think about what was going on. They seemed to be fighting on his side, at least. “Parent, analyze them! Something’s going on,” Charlie said.

  “On it.”

  With that, King Scalea saw a komodon being beaten back by two sin bear scorpions and leapt back into the fray. The hands followed. The scaler king landed on one of the bears’ backs and slammed its claws into the sides of the bear’s head. A roar of anguish erupted from the creature.

  “Watch out! The tail!” Merlin called out with cupped hands from a distance.

  Charlie and King Scalea both turned and noticed it. King Scalea jumped straight upward moments before the scorpion tail landed where they had been a moment ago. Charlie looked over the side of the komodon he was riding and aimed a hand at the tail. Dungeon manipulation activated, and a pillar fell from his hand. It dug into the bear’s back. The beast went still. Its spinal cord damaged by the attack. The komodon that had been on the defensive before King Scalea arrived struck the other bear while it was distracted by its fallen brethren. It too fell dead seconds later.

  Charlie took a deep breath and surveyed the battlefield.

  The bears were larger and more powerful. They swept their hands in powerful, earth-shaking swipes that would be devastating if they landed. But while they worked together well enough, the komodons fought and moved as if they had one mind. They watched over and protected one another. They cried out barely audible warnings to their peers, often allowing them to dodge otherwise fatal or incapacitating blows. At the same time, they used those warnings to fight alongside each other as well.

  A komodon cried out moments before it spun around and sent its tail sprawling into its opponent’s side at just the right moment. The bear lost its balance and fell. It tried to recover, but a different komodon abandoned its own opponent to strike the bear before it could recover. Victorious, the two scalers then leapt toward the other bear in unison and took it down together.

  Their tactics were effective, and Charlie realized the same instincts that made normal scalers excel in dungeons were even more impressive when you added the bulk, size, and power of the komodons.

  So far, the komodons hadn’t suffered any casualties, but that didn’t mean they were uninjured. Their wounds were piling up quickly. A thick green liquid dripped down the sides of many of them. Charlie recognized the unusual look of scaler blood. The scalers were covered in teeth, claw, and scorpion tail marks. A few of them were adorned with even deeper gashes. It was good the venom didn’t seem to affect scalers, but they could still use some help.

  The hands smashed into a bear carcass repeatedly, as if they didn’t realize it was already dead. When they sensed Charlie watching them, they shot up and directed their blood-stained fingers towards him. Normally, Charlie could focus on what he wanted the hands to do, and they would. But when he tried to send them to attack some of the other bears, they ignored him. Just staring at them with what he could only imagine were invisible eyeballs on the tips of their long, earthen fingers. He grunted, annoyed.

  “Do something! Go fight! Help the scalers!” he yelled telepathically.

  Orb scoffed. “Charlie, they’re literally hands made of rock. They can’t hear—huh. Would you look at that?”

  The hands shot forward and leapt back into the fray. He watched them shoot into action until a noise pulled his attention.

  “Grar!” a bear roared to his left. Even King Scalea was caught off guard. The scaler king jumped out of the way with seconds to spare. Charlie swayed to the side at the sudden movement. The enormous bear had a gruesome scar that ran through one of its eyes and its long, thick scorpion tail waved from side to side, dripping venom with anticipation.

  King Scalea bared his fangs towards the creature, tensing up in preparation.

  The bear roared and surged forward. It was obvious it had the advantage.

  It was all King Scalea could do to sidestep and jump away from claw swing after claw swing. That, plus the added promise that the scorpion tail could strike at any moment, kept them on their toes. Charlie dared to look back over his shoulder and realized another bear was approaching from their rear. If King Scalea got cornered, things would get bad. The other komodons were preoccupied with their own fights, and even the hands couldn’t make it back to assist them in time. They had to make a move, and they had to do it fast. His grip tightened in one hand, and in the other he lifted a hand.

  “Dungeon Manipulation!”

  Several sharpened spikes shot forward, one after the other.

  It surprised him when the bear swatted the first two spikes away. Luckily, he had enough time to alter the third before it reached his target.

  “Drill!” he thought. Mid-air the sharpened rock spun. This time, when the bear swatted at it with a powerful paw, the spinning rock turned the creature’s hand to pulp.

  The bear recoiled, rising to its hind legs, and roaring in pain.

  King Scalea saw the opening and leapt forward. The scaler king pressed the bear backward and forced it onto its back. King Scalea bit down into the face of its pinned prey and tore it to pieces. The attack left him oblivious to the bear’s final attack. The powerful scorpion tail whipped around blindly.

  Directly towards Charlie.

  Charlie held a hand up to cover his face and focused on summoning a protective wall. The scorpion tail was too fast, though. Before the wall could properly form and harden, the tip of the scorpion tail broke through.

  Charlie just barely heard Parents’ warning.

  “The tail is strong enough to pierce the rock skin passive!”

  A blur of movement.

  Shing!

  Charlie blinked as the scorpion tail fell to the ground.

  Vetica landed just past them. She flicked her blade. A mix of blood and venom splattered onto the ground. In the background he saw the decapitated corpse of the other bear that had been coming to flank them. She’d struck it down as well. Vetica looked back at him. “Are you alright?” she asked. He noticed her blade was glowing black. The color of her unnamed hex.

  He nodded. “Thank you,” Charlie said. King Scalea looked back; his teeth coated in blood. He squinted when he realized Charlie had almost gotten hurt. The king of scalers lowered his head in shame.

  Charlie leaned forward to pat him on the head. “Don’t worry! I’m okay!” he said.

  Charlie looked up again and smiled. The komodons were wrapping up the rest of the sin bears now. The hands worked to cover the injured komodons. They kept the sin bears from taking advantage of weaknesses they had worked hard to create, while also making openings for the komodons to strike. Together, Charlie’s forces were wearing down the enemy.

  Bonehead was fighting a particularly large bear who was bleeding profusely from its mouth. It must have tried to bite the komodon bone scaler. It reminded Charlie of when he had first met Bleedy. The creature’s roar came out a garbled mess. Bonehead wheeled around and smashed his hardened tail into the bear’s face. Its neck broke. It was dead before it had even realized what had happened to its powerful jaw.

  There were only a handful of bears left now. They were winning. No, they had all but won.

  Charlie’s smile deepened a second before it faded.

  The ground shook violently and the bear that had first met face to face with Bleedy roared.

  When the second wave of sin bears rose from the ground all around them, Charlie realized it had been a trap all along.

  King Scalea quickly assessed the situation and roared. “Arca!” The other komodons turned as one to face their king. They hurried over and together, the ten of them formed a circle. They were completely surrounded. Vetica stood in the circle beside King Scalea, ready to fight alongside them. The hands joined as well. Spreading out evenly to support the scalers as need be.

  There was heavy breathing behind him, and Charlie looked back to see Merlin hurry inside the circle. The sin bear scorpions had completely encircled them. Even the safe place from where Merlin had been watching the fighting before. He had had no choice but to join them in here. Charlie swallowed.

  The komodon scalers were on the verge of exhaustion and covered in injuries. They had paid for every fallen sin bear with pools of blood. What was worse was that the ones they had been fighting were far smaller than the new ones. He had assumed the one near Bleedy was larger because it was the leader. But now he realized it was far from the only bear that size. These new bears were much larger than the first wave. They’d spent a lot of effort to overcome the first force, and now they were facing another twenty, plus the two or three survivors of the first wave.

  “Well, what now?” Merlin asked.

  “Come on, man, you already know. Now we go out in a blaze of glory!” Orb said excitedly.

  Vetica rolled her eyes. “The minute things get bad; you’re just going to fly out of here.”

  “Yup.”

  At least Orb was honest.

  King Scalea looked back at Charlie for confirmation.

  A baby grin cracked on Charlie’s face. He nodded. “Yeah, it’s time.”

  King Scalea rose to his full height and lifted his jaw towards the heavens.

  He roared.

  Notice

  King Scalea has activated the ability: Roar of the Scaler King.