Everyone rushed into action the moment John's words registered. The memory of how much damage the rock golem had inflicted on them with its shockwave attack still lingered, and they didn't want to stick around to see what would happen if it blew up for real.

And so, even though she was still feeling a little dazed from her near-death experience, Jade ran.

When Jade was eleven years old, she met a fluffy cow while on holiday in Ireland, and it had dawned on her, with utter horror, that burgers came from a cute creature just like that one. She hadn't eaten meat since. A few years later, she discovered that other non-meat animal products were generally gathered in horrendous conditions, and had sworn herself to a life of veganism.

They settled into their little formation by instinct. Doug in front, with Jade a little behind him. Lily and Alissa on the flanks. Chester at the rear, ready to draw attention to himself and let the others do the killing, if need be. The birds, all four of them, flew overhead in a diamond, the crow at the tip, the parrots at the sides, and the dove at the back.

John zipped ahead of them, back in his superspeed Spell, making a beeline for the monster once more.

It didn't just stop there. She hated to see animals hurt at all. Even the mildest mistreatment triggered a blinding rage in her, and she'd got herself in more than a few fights over the matter.

The rock golem had been reduced to a shell of its former self under John's tender care. His arrows seemed to rot away the rock and chains, and he'd seemingly figured out that the shockwaves created by splitting its chains were less substantial if he broke one link at a time, rather than snapping it halfway down the chain.

The arrows hadn't done that before, and Jade found herself idly wondering just how many Spells that guy could possibly have. Surely there had to be a limit to his versatility.

Her dad had often got on her case about it. Called her soft-hearted. In her more rational moments, she could admit that she could be overly empathetic to animals while struggling to muster the same understanding for other human beings. But animals were generally innocent, and people were generally disappointing, so it was a hard habit to kick.

And yet, the monster still moved, tried its hardest to get to the humans and kill them. It wiggled like a turtle that had been turned on its back. Its remaining chains undulated like writhing worms, reaching for them as they passed.

Despite everyone constantly giving her grief over it, she'd never become one of those militant, preachy types. The only time anyone ever discovered her diet was if they went out for meals with her. She never told anyone off for eating meat, or lectured them about the conditions animals faced in mass farms. All she did was silently judge them for not putting any thought into their consumption, while recognising that most people just didn't have the material ability to change their ways. It was frustrating, but such was life. She didn't have the energy to argue with people about it, most of the time.

Her heart was in her throat as they passed the monster by, doing her best not to look at the area of its body where her attacks had scored deep marks. You'd think a monster like that would feel no pain, but she knew for a fact it had. She wouldn't have gained the points to level up and heal herself, otherwise.

At some point, she'd decided to become a vet. Helping sick and injured animals seemed like the perfect job for her, having a real impact on the world, however small, rather than futilely throwing herself into a hopeless cause only to meet derision and disdain—she'd always been realistic about these things. Everyone wanted to consider themselves a good person, so they got defensive when their moral character was placed in doubt. In those cases, it was easier to attack the person making them feel bad than to examine their own habits.

And none of it ended up mattering anyway, because the world came to an end before she could finish her veterinary degree.

To add insult to injury, she'd been given superpowers that demanded she inflict maximum pain on other living things in order to grow. Then, the world had demonstrated quite emphatically that survival demanded greater power.

How fucking typical.

John had to step in front of them to keep the monster from attacking them. Its longest remaining chain lashed out like a whip, and he somehow managed to deflect it with one of those blades. From the trajectory, it looked like it would have skewered Chester otherwise. The young lad let out a whimper, breaking formation to get himself as far away from the monster as possible, putting everyone between him and it.

Jade didn't relax even after the monster was behind them. Flames still burned at the exit, though they weren't the solid wall of angry red they had been when John had first set them off. He hadn't topped them up in a while, and she could hear monsters screeching and screaming beyond the blaze. How many waited for them, through there? How many more would they have to go through before finally escape this hellish portal?

After her first kill, she'd thrown up her lunch. In her defence, bashing a two-headed goat's head in with a rock had been a harrowing experience, especially for a girl who'd never hurt an animal in her life. She knew, rationally, that it wasn't really an animal. There was nothing gentle about the creature. She'd seen it headbutt a man hard enough to shatter his ribs, and it had pinned her down, snapping and biting at her face and missing only by millimetres.

But it looked close enough to a goat to turn her stomach, even with two heads that vomited black bile.

Just as they reached within a few metres of the exit, staring grimly into the fire, John finally joined up with them. He dashed ahead, moving in normal speed again, and quickly shot over his shoulder: "The monster's starting to crack apart. It won't be long now. Stay close to me."

Then he was running straight towards the fire, and they had no choice but to follow. The crow let out a mighty caw.

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That had been her general experience throughout the madness of the last few days. Killing anything that looked like it could be an animal made her want to be sick all over again. She'd been getting better about it. As evidence of the soulless evil of these demons stacked up, it was becoming easier to mentally categorise them as something other that deserved none of the empathy reserved for animals. Even if they still screamed in pain when she hurt them.

Even if she still hated it, despite everything. Despite all logic and rationality.

Fundamentally, at the core of her being, she just wasn't meant to hurt things.

But that was the whole point, wasn't it? Something, somewhere, wanted to watch her suffer.

Somehow, John had yet another Spell. Thrusting one hand out in front of him let out a massive stream of water, like what you'd expect to see burst out of a fireman's hose. There was a great hiss as it doused the first of the flames, steam and smoke taking the fire's place. John then thrust out his other hand repeatedly, and an invisible wave of force shoved back the dark grey smog. He repeated this combination with commendable speed, barely having to slow his run as he charged into the exit.

It was about as wide and tall as a regular bus, so his forward momentum was only creating a narrow passageway through the flames, not putting them all out. They had to move single-file, and Jade found herself at the back, watching their flank. There was nothing else for her to do up front, after all. Her powers were only meant for hurting things, offering her sadistic options to flay skin, crush bones, and generally inflict agony. She was no use here.

The birds swooped in with them, but soon found themselves without room to manoeuvre. The crow moved up ahead and landed on John, while the parrots contented themselves with Doug's shoulders. The dove ended up on Lily's motorcycle helmet, and Jade had to hold back a pang of jealousy. She'd wanted to help the birds so badly, but had no supplies to work with, and her Spells were the exact fucking opposite of healing.

Looking back over her shoulder, she could see the rock monster was indeed on the brink of collapse. Only its head remained out of its rocky body; John had managed to break apart its chains until it had nothing else left. However, she understood immediately why he was worried about it exploding. Cracks ran through its remaining rock, and from within them glowed a malevolent yellow light. Was that the colour John saw when he looked at this monster's soul?

Jade turned ahead and kept running, feeling ill again.

The fight they'd just dealt with hadn't been all that bad, on the nausea front. Most of the monsters hadn't been particularly animal-like. Only the rat monsters had been close, and their propensity to walk on two legs allowed her to distance them in her mind.

She knew she wasn't acting optimally. Her system based its growth on inflicting pain, not killing. But she'd found that the moment of agony before death was enough to give her a decent trickle of points, even if she knew she could be gathering a hell of a lot more.

The rock monster had just shown her that. Barely a few seconds of touching it with Caustic Hand and shredding it with Spike Storm had yielded thousands of Pain points, while outright killing things had never given her more than 400. She tried to tell herself that was just because the monster was what John called a yellow, but knew that wasn't true.

Eventually, she'd have to accept the system's true challenge if she wanted to make it through this. She knew that. Had already prepared herself for that eventuality, lying to the others about gaining a Spell called Reaper's Toll, in some lame attempt to offset the initial lie she'd given when she'd claimed she gained "Soul" for killing monsters. That way, she'd still be able to kill things without drawing criticism from her comrades.

Comrades, Jade thought, inspecting the others as they ran ahead of her through a passage flanked by raging fires, monsters screaming up ahead. It was getting hard to see through all the steam and smoke.

She'd struggled with people most of her life. Not that she was awkward, particularly. Getting through a conversation was no issue. She just… preferred animals. It sounded so lame, like a teenager's desperate attempt to seem edgy. But it was true. Her social battery had an incredibly low capacity, and she was running on fumes, here.

But her discomfort had to come secondary. Sadly, she wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to go the lone wolf route, right now. Strength in numbers was to be her salvation for the foreseeable future. At least they'd been doing pretty good on that front.

It seemed that was about to be tested again imminently, and she prepared herself to do her worst. After that scare with the rock monster, it was clear to her that she couldn't keep holding back.

Telling herself that was one thing. It remained to be seen whether she'd actually act on it.

They reached the end of the flames and came face to face with yet another horde of monsters, and she supposed it was time to find out. She readied her machete, keeping her Spells ready at the forefront of her mind. Drawing in a deep breath, she tried her best to harden herself.

Then the rock golem finally exploded.

The shockwave tore through the place like a speeding tsunami. It threw her off her feet like she'd been hit by a brick wall, sending her tumbling down the corridor. Heat washed over her. The world spun. She landed hard on the grey floor with a great clang from her increasingly impractical armour. Her breath rushed from her lungs, and she was left wheezing.

And yet, somehow it wasn't as bad as last time. She took a moment to feel her body passively. Wiggled her toes. Flexed her fingers. Rotated and bent her joints how they were meant to. Nothing particularly painful there.

Eventually, she pushed herself to her feet, a little dazed. She blinked at the sight before her, wondering if the shockwave had affected her vision, somehow.

All the monsters were dead. Hundreds of them, it looked like. They were all sprawled around in a pile, lifeless bodies mingling together until it looked like one giant blob of black gore, rapidly diminishing before her eyes as the monsters decayed in death, like they always did.

She found herself looking at John, and he met her gaze.

"The explosion killed them," he said. His eyes gained that eerie glow they always had when he was looking at souls.

They felt so piercing in those moments, like they were peering into her very depths. She hadn't worked up the courage to ask if he saw human souls with that Spell, yet.

"I see," she managed to say, looking around as everyone else got to their feet. Behind them, the passage had collapsed.

"There's no more of them further on," John murmured, sounding suspicious. "They all vanished as soon as the rock golem blew up. That shockwave shouldn't have been able to clear out this corridor. It goes on for nearly another mile."

"More stupid games," Alissa spat.

John nodded.

There was a moment of silence.

"Well," Doug said jovially. "Onward, then, lads and lasses?"

"It should be a straight shot to the core of the bus kraken, if my Spells are right," John said. "But keep your guard up."

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