The Wolf rose to its full height, its back reaching the tip of the treeline.
Its body expanded even further.
The scars that riddled its body seemed to multiply until its fur was lined with webs of garish red gouges and sunken buckshot wounds.
Little Red snarled wordlessly, giving the display of dominance no attention.
She also changed to a more primordial form.
The hem of her cloak extended, fluttering behind her like a cape.
Trailing behind her cloak was a fine mist of crimson, coating the trees behind her with the scent of rust and iron.
Inside the folds of her cloak flashed her weapons of choice, the gun and blade that had been prepared for this single day in mind.
Her scythe-blade appeared in her right hand, extending to its full length as she slashed through the air.
Her shotgun appeared in her left, a single-barreled apparatus that gleamed silver under the moonlight.
Asher trembled at the sight before him, rooted in place from the sheer, pressurized emotion.
Little Red raised her gun.
Unbearable tension crushed the air, wilting the foliage and shriveling the grass beneath their feet.
Affixed in the sky, the bloodshot eye lowered closer to the ground.
The moon's manic pupil coated the forest in oily, flickering shadows.
...
Amid the treetops, a tiny white bird pushed into the air.
It was not planning to be caught in the crossfire.
However, it first glanced at the boy beside Little Red.
As if liberated by some unnatural force, the boy stumbled backwards to a safer vantage point before freezing with fear once again.
"How pleasant. Good luck, Asher." A faint buzz whispered in Asher's ears.
The bird fluttered away, finished with its meddling.
Now all that was left was for the bloody brawl to begin.
It disappeared into the clouds, wondering how much blood would be shed this time.
As soon as it disappeared, the tension boiled over its limit.
A deafening explosion rang through the forest as Little Red's gun jerked back with harsh recoil.
Thousands of steel shards flashed toward the Wolf, each carrying enough force to pierce bone and rend flesh.
The monster morphed into shadows, vanishing under the soil as the opening fire shredded the trees behind it into millions of fragments.
A coarse smokescreen of dust obscured the forest.
Little Red twirled her blade, sweeping out the wood splinters suspended in the air with a gust of wind.
Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her side.
A claw had stabbed into her stomach from behind. Dozens of cruel barbs built in the Wolf's claw prevented the claw from being taken out.
It punctured through her stomach, and blood began to dribble from either side.
"First goes to me, eh?" The lupine monster had shrunk to the size of a normal wolf, twisting its claw deeper into her flesh in a corkscrew motion as it whispered in her ear.
It glanced into her eye, expecting to see Little Red's visage filled with rage.
Instead, the Wolf growled as Little Red looked down at it.
Her eye was a mere shell of soulless hate.
She twisted around. Not a sound came from her as she kept the claw trapped inside her abdomen.
Raising her blade, she swung down with all her strength.
The Wolf attempted to pull its claw out of Little Red's body, yet her flesh was only dragged with it instead.
The serrations on the creature's claw would not let go.
As the Wolf's barbed claws ripped and tore through Little Red's flesh, it was still unable to detach itself.
Little Red's eye curved upward with an unnatural, mocking leer.
Her wolf's-teeth mask gave her visage an animalistic brutality, of a predator hunting its prey.
"Let's play then!!" The Wolf narrowed its eyes and pounced forward, clamping its jaw on Little Red's leg.
A wound for a wound.
As the scythe blade sliced through its wrist, the Wolf's teeth bore into her thigh, drawing blood on both sides.
In a single, twisting motion, the Wolf took out a mouthful of muscle tissue from her leg.
The two sides backed away, panting with adrenaline.
Little Red led an imperceptible limp, with a quarter of her flesh missing from her thigh. She ripped out the barbed claw from her side, flicking the Wolf's severed wrist behind her.
The Wolf spat out a mass of crimson as its wound sowed blood into the soil.
And Asher-
Asher blinked once.
The boy yelped as Little Red and the Wolf teleported further away from him, with fresh blood already splattered onto their bodies.
Only a fraction of a second had passed, yet they had already torn into each other's flesh in a nauseating crimson dance.
The Wolf swelled, quickly doubling its size before letting out a ferocious, beastly roar.
Little Red stared back with silent hatred, which only incensed the Wolf even further.
It ignored its severed wrist, circling around the woman with a slow, uncanny gait.
The air stilled; the forest itself held its breath in anticipation.
The moonlight flickered and dimmed, and the Wolf's fur darkened to pitch black.
As the world faded to midnight, the only light left was the bright blue glow of the Wolf's eyes.
Then even that wavering light was snuffed out, disappearing like a blown-out candle.
The forest was forebodingly silent. Little Red could dimly make out the fuzzy outline of her hands. The ground beneath her only appeared as a curtain of black.
The woman raised her blade, focusing all her attention to her other senses.
Leaves crunched and broke under the Wolf's weight.
Yet - the noise came from all sides, simultaneously.
Even above her, the crackle of leaves echoed in her ears.
"-!"
She whirled behind her, and her blade caught a claw from slashing through her neck in the nick of time.
A flash of sparks sizzled in the air, exposing Little Red and the Wolf in a glimmer of light.
The woman raised her gun, taking a shot at the wolf's snout, yet it simply merged back into the shadows once again.
As the sparks faded away, the only sound she heard was of buckshot splintering the dense forest of trees.
"Come out, Wolf!"
Yet she only heard her own echo, bouncing from the branches.
Half a second passed, yet the Wolf did not attack despite its clear advantage.
Did her shot in the dark actually hit its mark?
Then she realized-
Perhaps the Wolf chose to break the weakest link instead.
Her freedom.
"ASHER."
If the boy died, how long would she have to wait for another chance?
She couldn't let something like this happen.
Again.
Little Red still remembered the sight of the last one's dismembered body, a mishmash of human flesh.
The Wolf took its time with that one.
"...Red?" Asher called out from the darkness, cautious yet confused. Why was she calling for him?
"DON'T MOVE."
Little Red pointed her blade straight to the sky, positioning her gun toward it at an angle.
Using her gun's metal spray as flint, she launched thousands of sparks into the air in an explosive blast.
The world illuminated under the glittering shower of sparks, briefly revealing the Wolf's location.
"Wh-"
Asher froze as he found his vision filled by the Wolf.
It sat in front of him, staring into his soul with cruel, bloodthirsty eyes.
Then it broke into a vicious grin.
"You're too late, Red!" The Wolf let out a caw of victory, lunging toward Asher with its jaw agape.
Dozens of teeth each the size of Asher's leg lined the Wolf's maw.
The boy was filled with a sense of urgency that he had never felt before.
Death approached him.
There was no time to think.
'Six!'
['No. 6' has been activated. +200-]
Time had slowed, yet the Wolf's jaw had already reached his left arm.
It wasn't enough.
Asher screamed in his mind, his babbling terror only containing one comprehensible word.
'A-Again!!'
[No. 6 has been activated twice. +400 Fortitude. +400 Insight. Duration: 2 minutes]
Adrenaline coursed through Asher's veins as he watched the Wolf's teeth touch his skin. At the same time, his teeth broke into the berries in his mouth, coating his tongue with chemicals.
The liquid permeated into his bloodstream with supernatural speed, activating the effect before the Wolf's teeth could even break through his skin.
[You feel time begin to slow down. Dilation is in effect. Duration: 2 minutes.]
[465 Insight --> 930 Insight]
Time slowed to a crawl. Asher let out a quiet breath of relief as he stared into the Wolf's eyes.
What were his stats right now?
[Fortitude: 420]
[Insight: 930]
[Temperance: 85]
[Justice: 55]
Insanity.
Asher watched, almost bored, as the Wolf's teeth began to sink into his flesh.
It was more like a slow-motion movie in his eyes.
However, since his Fortitude was so mismatched to his perception of time, he couldn't move his arm away either.
And even if he could, Asher had no intention to.
Because what would happen if [Frenzy] activated?
Along with all the Insight he just gained...
A thought sprang into Asher's mind. He didn't want to be a mere supporting character. This was an opportunity to prove himself.
So he let the Wolf's mouth approach his arm.
Millimeter by millimeter.
...
The Wolf could feel that something was wrong.
Asher's gaze tracked its movements leisurely as it bit down.
They boy's expression contained... expectation?
The Wolf had experienced countless lives.
And its soul screamed danger.
Without a second thought, it dug its paw into the ground, attempting to release its clamping jaw from the boy's arm.
Only to freeze in its tracks.
Something changed inside the boy's eyes.
The grin on Asher's face grew as he pushed his arm down, allowing the Wolf's razor-sharp teeth to pierce through the flesh of his bicep.
Deep inside the Wolf's maw, the boy's hand gripped onto a tooth with all its might.
A glint flashed in his eyes.
Rip it off.
I dare you.
"-!" The Wolf felt an emotion he had never felt before. What was this determination? Who... who was this boy?
Beneath the child's skin, the Wolf sensed a creature more monstrous and vile than anything he had ever seen before.
Asher's future self displayed a fraction of its ruthlessness. A mere subconscious flash of emotion, yet an unfathomable pressure-!
The vision of both Abnormalities pulsed with a single hallucination.
A throne of human skeletons, reaching into the clouds.
Each skeleton exuded despair and sorrow, of a life ended too early.
The purest black blanketed the sky.
And the boy crushed beneath shouldered its weight, a dot in the sea of corpses.
Then the illusion faded.
Little Red backed away a step.
The Wolf instinctively tore away from Asher, ripping off Asher's arm in a desperate scramble backwards. It feebly attempted a snarl, yet its lips could not even manage to twitch.
Asher ignored the blood spurting from his severed arm, instead locking his eyes at the Wolf's soul.
Suddenly, the pressure exuding from the boy multiplied. The air crackled with tension as Asher's strength more than tripled in an instant.
The grass melted to blood, and Asher's suit morphed to a greater, unearthly form.
...
Meanwhile, Asher's mind was a battlefield of confusion. A surge of uncharacteristic ruthlessness filled his soul, and a prompt in his vision helpfully confirmed his dreadful suspicions as he found himself pressing his arm deeper into the Wolf's mouth.
[A savagery bubbles within. +666 Justice. +666 Temperance.]
Did this mean his future self was controlling him again??
'This is bad... System??'
[Don't worry, the seal on your soul has been strengthened with the Authority gained from the Scorched Girl. These are mere residual emotions of Him. Your consciousness remains unaffected.]
'Well turn it off then!' Asher utterly despised that feeling, of transforming into something he was not.
It was a feeling gained from that fateful day with Stella, the Capo he slaughtered.
Asher's determination quashed the festering emotions within him, dissipating them to nothingness.
[A savagery subsides. -666 Justice. -666 Temperance.]
The System's tone seemed to hold a glimmer of admiration.
[Your mind is unwavering; your path is iron-willed. +15 Justice. +15 Temperance.]
Asher let out a breath as his mind cleared. He winced, finally noticing his torn off arm.
The Wolf held it between its teeth, yet its expression contained a hint of fear that Asher could not quite understand.
After all, Asher did not see the hallucination that had flickered behind him for a fraction of a second.
"Ugh-!" Asher clenched his teeth as blood seeped into the soil. The wound was swift, yet roughly made.
[Frenzy has been activated. +1070 Fortitude.]
[...Temperance condition met!]
[Current Fortitude: 1490.]
Staring at the prompts, Asher quickly forgot the pain in his arm.
One thousand, four hundred, and ninety?
"Hah... Haha!"
One thousand, four hundred, and ninety?
Asher cackled, bringing his remaining hand to his face. The forest's tense silence was sheared through by coarse laughter.
The Wolf stared at him warily.