Inari suddenly grew until she was the size of a grizzly bear and howled towards the Moon. Her threatening cry echoed throughout the entire forest, carrying traces of her Nature aura along with it.

Sarah grumbled “Ugh, for fuck’s sake! At least ya could’ve warned us first!” Those long, sensitive elven ears were sticking out of the sides of her skeletal mask and were nearly deafened by the ridiculously loud fox.

Elina sniffled a bit and dejectedly brought out her battlestaff, muttering “Rachael’s only a few days old… I can’t believe you forced her to fight and kill those magical-beasts. What if she ends up traumatized because of this?”

“Calm your big-ass titties and get ready; I can feel somethin pretty damn powerful comin this way…” The skull-faced ‘Shadow’ suddenly teleported into a distant tree and engaged her cloak.

A deep bellow rang out, as a ferocious beast rapidly approached from the east. The moment that she saw it, Elina shouted “Aw~, it’s so cute~! Why couldn’t it be some kind of hideous monster?!”

“The Forest King, Level-33 Squirrel Lord, Rank-C, Raid Boss,” was the size of a tiger, with black stripes along its fluffy orange fur. That bushy tail was enormous and had thousands of deadly, poisoned barbs hidden beneath the normal hair. It’s green eyes glowed brightly, as it chirped and made clicking noises towards the two intruders.

Inari growled fiercely, while exposing her enormous canines and those bright-blue eyes emitted a dazzling radiance. However, instead of immediately attacking, the enormous rodent actually asked “Green One, I allowed your pack to traverse my territory unhindered… I even ignored the fact that you ‘stole’ thousands of my ‘subjects’! Did you mistake my benevolence for fear and weakness?!”

“Ah~?! It can speak!? I change my mind; it definitely isn’t cute! It’s terrifying!” Elina was strangely surprised and horrified by the talking squirrel, even though her Companion could do the same.

The vixen barked angrily, before shouting “You, are, food!” and vomiting out a thick glob of purple mucus, towards The Forest King’s face. He squeaked loudly and leapt up, dozens of meters into the air, latching onto an enormous tree-branch and creating dozens of ominous brown acorns in his right hand.

Ten thick vines erupted from Inari’s mouth, which smacked against the seeds and knocked them towards that giant squirrel. Moments later, there was a series of violent explosions and thousands of leaves began raining down around Elina.

The Forest King managed to avoid the ‘Nut-Bombs’, but the moment he landed on a nearby tree, an incredibly sharp obsidian blade was plunged into his left hind leg. That colossal tail reacted immediately, clashing against six shadowy tendrils and flinging the insidious assassin far away.

His health had dropped down to 2735/3000, and he was screeching in agony, from losing copious amounts of bright-yellow blood. Sarah vanished into the darkness and abruptly teleported to the beast’s gaping maw, throwing an icy shuriken down into its throat; it only dealt a little over a hundred damage, but the purpose was to temporarily stun the enemy.

Inari hopped up off of the ground and swiftly appeared in front of the giant squirrel, though she was a bit larger. With a casual downward swipe of her right paw, The Forest King was sent plummeting down into the dirt.

When it landed next to Elina, she screamed “Solar Flare?!” and a beam of incredibly powerful Light aura erupted from the golden tattoo on her forehead. However, the spell merely grazed the rodent’s fluffy tail, making a small ‘-79’ appear, and burning the trunks of five huge trees in half.

Before The Forest King was able to counter-attack, the angelic cat-girl furiously flapped her wings and soared up into the sky. Then the bear-sized vixen spewed sixty small, magical, bright-green hornets from her mouth, all of which attempted to sting the frantic squirrel.

The ground began rumbling and quaking, eventually, an enormous ‘Soil Golem’ enveloped the giant rodent. The gargantuan monstrosity was in the shape of a humanoid, with the head and tail of a squirrel.

It was impossible for the sixty wasps to deal any damage to the enemy, so they just dispersed into the woods randomly, searching for new targets. Sarah teleported over to the colossus’ left foot and stabbed her blades into its ankle, but there was no damage at all.

Even when Elina cast another ‘Solar Flare’ directly into the creature’s chest, it merely caused the dirt to harden and dry up. A ‘-100’ appeared, though the attack didn’t manage to harm the Raid Boss that was hiding somewhere inside of that Soil Golem’s body.

Unfortunately for The Forest King, Inari was an outrageously powerful shapeshifter. Within seconds, she entered her ‘normal’ fox-girl form and swiftly began growing at an absurd pace.

By the time that the giant ‘dirty’ squirrel-man reached her, she was already ten meters tall and around the same size as the Soil Golem. Those seven enormous tails whipped around behind her back and lunged in front of her body, blocking the vicious ‘tail-swipe’ from that monster.

After that, the naked fox-girl used her fists to start pummeling the colossus, knocking huge chunks of its ‘flesh’ away with every strike. Inari roared in agony, as she finally managed to strike the enemy’s true form.

The squirrel’s poisoned barbs stabbed into her knuckles, but he was sent flying out of the collapsing golem’s back. The Forest King smashed straight through a huge pine-tree, which was ripped in half by the force.

As he was tumbling through the air, the disoriented beast used his right hand to block three slashes from an obsidian wakizashi. His tail was broken, so he could only use his left paw to swipe at the skull-faced assassin.

Sarah parried his claws with her serpentine dagger, stabbing her worm-like tentacle into his right eyelid. She wasn’t able to deal much damage, but it distracted him long enough for her to slice off his right arm at the elbow.

Elina swiftly ‘dispelled’ Inari’s poison, as the giant fox-girl transformed back into a tiger-sized vixen and chased after the Raid Boss. Once the angelic woman was left behind, her right leg abruptly exploded, sending golden blood and silver bone fragments spraying everywhere, while she flailed around and crashed into the ground.

She cried out “Michael, save me!” before casting ‘Flash-Heal’ and sealing the wound completely. Unfortunately, it didn’t have enough power to instantly regenerate the missing limb, so she was temporarily crippled.

Even though her physical state appeared terrible, her health had completely recovered and her mana-pool was practically full. The lower-half of her gown was torn apart, but that had no influence on the amount of stats she was receiving by simply wearing it; her right sandal was laying on the ground next to her and was still ‘technically’ equipped, regardless of the fact that her amputated foot wasn’t considered part of her body any longer.

“Elly, don’t be such a pussy, it’s just a leg, you’ll live… Well, you won’t if you keep crying and ignore the bitch that’s tryin ta kill ya. Just shoot her ass with your death-ray!” Michael’s irritated voice resounded in her mind, as she looked up at the archer who was aiming a nocked ‘Dark-Wind Arrow’ at her face: “Lisa the Outcast, Level-31 Half-Elf Shadow Huntress, Rank-D, Boss.”

The furious woman growled “Who do you three fools think you are?! This is ‘my’ territory! If you do not answer within five seconds, I’ll blast your annoying head off next!” She was nearly six-feet tall, covered in mostly brown and green camouflaged clothing, which was too baggy to tell if she was fat, incredibly skinny or extremely muscular.

Her green eyes and blond hair made it seem like she was of ‘High-Elven’ origin, but her height and facial features weren’t quite up to par. There was a myriad of terrible burn-scars across her face and her hair was so short that it was obviously shaved off recently.

Elina struggled to stop crying and a beam of blinding light suddenly fired out of her forehead, crashing into the ‘Dark-Wind Arrow’ and continuing to sear Lisa’s hands off. That dark-green compound bow was melted and destroyed as well. Unfortunately, the ‘Solar Flare’ wasn’t able to end that Shadow Huntress’ life, because she teleported away before the beam of superheated plasma managed to overcome her flame-retardant clothing.

However, rather than simply retreating, she immediately reappeared, standing upon the cat-girl’s back and screaming “You’re courting death!” The heel of her right boot was plunged into the angelic woman’s neck and severed her spinal cord, but death wasn’t instantaneous.

Before she was able to finish Elina off, an obsidian blade erupted from Lisa’s mouth, along with a stream of crimson blood. Thus, the handless Huntress was instantly killed, and Sarah managed to save her Companion’s life: more or less.

Inari came running back, with a giant squirrel carcass in her mouth and at the same moment, the shadowy assassin and angelic Oracle were both engulfed in blinding light. A monotonous feminine voice announced “You have reached level twenty-six!” and “You have reached level twenty-eight!” at the same time.