Backrooms 3: Kiosk Kingdom - Chapter 28 - 30

Hey, y'all! Been busy, busy, busy working on new Discount Dan chapters. I've got three new chapters coming at you. Hope you enjoy them. Also Nilbog, can you ask your question about Temperance again -- I know it's in one of the comments somewhere, but I can't remember where exactly. I've got some extra time today, so I'll get it answered for you!

Chapter Twenty-Eight – Christmas Kiosk

The rattling thump of a fist pounding on the door yanked me out of sleep.

I was a little surprised to find we’d all crashed in the same cramped room—Croc curled up at the foot of my bed, Temp and Harper sharing the other, while Jakob slept in a chair, propped against the door like a makeshift bouncer. Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one running on fumes.

I still felt like a bag of week-old, sun-dried dog turds, but compared to last night, that was practically a full recovery. Blinking no longer hurt, and though my skull still generally felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to it, I’d experience worse.

The thudding knock came again. Louder this time. More insistent.

It was Wulfgar, letting us know that the Jaral was waiting for us outside.

I told him we’d be down in a minute. Inside, everyone looked half-hungover and thoroughly unenthused about starting the day—except for Croc, who kept proudly showing off the new collar to anyone who would look. The dog was like a toddler with a favorite new toy. It was sweet, honestly, and the others humored him with tired smiles.

Everyone except Temp. She threatened to throw the mimic out the window.

Instead, Croc summoned Remy and proceeded to show off the collar to the disgusting red flesh maw slug, who seemed largely indifferent. Probably because Remy was an unthinking abomination from the farthest reaches of hell without the ability for higher reasoning. But Remy was a surprisingly good listener and Croc seemed pleased as punch to have a captive audience.

I didn’t know how far the kiosk was, and I sure as hell didn’t trust Nikoli to get us back in one piece, especially if things went sideways. So, against my better judgment, I slapped one of the doorway plates onto the door as we stepped out, then tweaked the settings to block anyone from Kringelgard from entering—or anyone from the shop from wandering out onto this floor. The last thing I needed was a pack of curious Howlers showing up in the middle of the Inn. It was a gamble, sure, but I needed a way back to the village.

Once we were all up and as ready as we were ever going to be, we headed downstairs to find Nikoli waiting for us outside the inn.

Unlike yesterday, he was fully geared up—red leather trousers, the bloodstained Festive Flayer Coat trimmed in white Yeti fur, massive black shit-kicker boots, and a floppy red Santa cap perched on his head.

Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but something about him looked... off. He seemed bigger—like he’d packed on thirty or forty pounds overnight. A gleaming black belt, made from snakeskin, cinched around his bulging gut, and the sword he’d been working on the day before now hung from his hip in a black sheath.

Honestly, if I didn’t know any better, I’d have said Nikoli was Santa Claus—real and in the flesh.

Except instead of delivering presents, he looked ready to smite naughty children with the full wrath of an unhinged fae god.

The sun had barely peaked its head over the horizon and the steel-gray of predawn still lingered in the air. Knowing that, we’d probably only gotten three or four hours of sleep at most. Certainly, not enough to undue the exhaustion from the day before. Nikoli probably hadn’t slept any longer, though, and he looked surprisingly bright eyed and bushy tailed. The man had the energy of a toddler on espresso and seemed to function just fine without sleep.

I wondered what in the hell his secret was.

Knowing the Backrooms, it was probably some horrible Faustian bargain involving dead puppies or burning down orphanages. Maybe even both. Orphanages filled with disadvantaged blind children who all had adorable seeing-eye dogs.

The man offered us a broad grin that never quite reaches his eyes and waved us over toward an enormous longboat sleigh—though this one was far more formidable than the one Wulfgar had brought us in on.

It had the same basic shape and design as Wulfgar’s, but this sleigh was a whole different beast. Instead of wood, it was forged entirely from steel plates, riveted at the seams with gleaming brass. A wooden mast rose from the center—carved with glowing sigils and reinforced with silver bands—like a giant, enchanted toothpick. Oddly, there was no sail. A pair of bronze cannons jutted from both the port and starboard sides of the sleigh, which looked powerful enough to give even Polaris Vora a run for its Eldritch money.

Most impressive of all—or terrifying, depending on your perspective—was the trio of creatures hitched to the front of the sleigh.

“Are those… Grippledips?” Croc asked, clearly in awe.

“Da,” Nikoli replied proudly. “Though I am surprised you know what they are, given how short a time you have been on this floor. Not many Delvers met Grippledips and live to tell tale.”

“You’re not lying,” I said, while studying the monsters.

Up close, and not actively trying to gore us, they were genuinely impressive. Each one was closer in size to a bull moose than an actual reindeer, and they were decked out in custom battle armor. Heavy metal collars, studded with spikes, wrapped around their thick necks. What made my stomach twist, though, was that the spikes lined both the outside and the inside—digging into the flesh beneath.

Something about those collars sent a cold shiver crawling down my spine.

I wasn’t sure what they did, but my instincts screamed that they were bad.

Wrong. Maybe even evil.

“All aboard,” Nikoli said, waving us up a short gangplank and onto the sleigh.

“Exactly how far away is this soul forge of yours?” I asked, while cautiously boarding the strange ship. “You made it sound like it was just up the road a little ways.”

“Ha,” he said, “is a little farther than up road. Soul Forge contains a great many secrets, so I must keep it hidden.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice, as though confiding some great secret. “Even here in Kringlegard, there are those who are jealous of my creations. But is only a short distance by flight.”

“Wait a minute,” Temperance growled. “By flight? You can’t seriously mean we’re going up there.” She jabbed a finger toward the steely gray sky. “The last time we tried that, we were nearly devoured by a sky jellyfish, Dan took a tree trunk through the gut, and he’s still short one hand!”

Nikoli appraised us with fresh eyes. “So you have met Polaris Vora.” He grinned. “Is magnificent creature. She is spirit of the 49th floor—cruel, hungry, mighty. But there is no need to worry. Is daytime. Her strength wanes during the day. And, if she gets too close?” He reached over and patted one of the cannon barrels. “Anti-Celestial Railgun. My own design. Cannot truly hurt her, but stings like bee. Polaris Vora is not used to pain, for who can hurt her? One sting, and she will run. Is no problem.”

“God I hate flying,” Temperance grumbled, as she boarded the ship behind Jakob. Harper came next, followed by Croc who brought up the rear.

“Off we go,” Nikoli said, taking a seat on huge chair near the front. He picked up the heavy leather reigns and gave them a casual flick. The Grippledips immediately broke into lumbering run, their hooves sparking against the cobblestones, their spiked collars glowing with angry blue light.

Inside ten steps the sleigh rocked back, and we rose smoothly into the air.

I glanced down over the side and saw that a small horde of Kringlegard’s residents had assembled to watch us depart, including Wulfgar and Hannah. Most showed no emotion on their faces at all. No joy or excitement. No fear or anger, either. Just flat and dead. Except for Wulfgar. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he almost looked hopeful.

In less than a few minutes, the city of Kringlegard disappeared behind us, vanishing in a flurry of snow and clouds.

We gained altitude quickly and raced high above the pine forest canopy, carving our way north and slightly west.

Despite Nikoli’s claims, it didn’t take long before Polaris Vora began slithering toward us, pulling its way through the sky with fat blue tentacles and withering tendrils of emerald green. It moved more languidly than the night before, but that didn’t mean it was slow.

Nikoli didn’t seem overly concerned, however. Not even when Temp quite forcefully pointed out how close the creature was drawing.

“Told you. Is no problem. Let us see if we cannot outrun it. Sleigh is very fast.” There was a metal control panel embedded into the right arm of Nikoli’s commander chair, and he nonchalantly pressed a few buttons then toggled a switch.

The runes covering the central mast burst to life, and a moment later an ethereal, semi-translucent sail of arctic blue light unfurled. The sail snapped taut, and the sleigh jerked beneath us, rocketing forward. Nikoli whooped and laughed as the wind slapped against our faces and tugged at our gear.

Much as I hated to admit it, the display was actually pretty impressive. Even Temperance, who clearly hated everything about this, seemed to be momentarily mollified.

But the Polaris Vora was a persistent beast, not quick to abandon such a potentially tasty meal, and before much longer it had managed to close the distance despite our speed. Nikoli tsked in evident annoyance, then killed the conjured sail. The sleigh lurched and slowed as he tugged on the reigns, connected to the Grippledips.

“You do not learn, Solnyshko ty moyo yasnoye,” he muttered, not for our ears but for the Polaris Vora, “so I will teach you once again.” He grimaced, flipped two more toggles, then mashed a button and jerked hard on the reigns. “Brace for a broadside salvo!” he thundered. The Grippledips reared back, and shot right, turning the sleigh sharply so the port side cannons now face the encroaching sky horror. Searing runes burned across the barrels, and he flipped two more switches as he yelled “Fire!”

The two portside cannons vomited a volley of electric blue cannon balls, which arced gracefully through the sky before disappearing into the swimming sea of colorful lights.

I fully expected to see an explosion of violent power. But disappointingly, there was nothing. They were simply gone. Swallowed up by the creature. But then, just when I was about to give up hope, the Polaris Vora’s entire amorphous form pulsed with a single flare of electric blue light. The beast wailed—the sound of ten-thousand voices all crying out in pain—then it went silent and began to retreat.

Interestingly, even after the barrage of cannon fire, its health bar had never appeared, meaning that Nikoli hadn’t actually hurt the creature in any meaningful way. But whatever he’d done had been enough to convince the creature to go chase easier game.

“See,” Nikoli said proudly, “is no problem.”

He flipped the reigns lightly again, turned the sleigh mid-air, and quickly brought us back up to cruising speed. We raced north and west for another ten minutes or so—just enjoying the surreal, bizarre beauty of the floor—before I finally saw a pair of tiny structures materialize on the horizon.

“We are close now,” Nikoli said, pulling a set of oversize binoculars from storage then handing them to me. “See for self.”

I pressed the optics up against my face and let out a low whistle.

Thanks to the binoculars, it was impossible to miss the red and white candy-striped archway, with a sign that read Drillhaven North Pole Christmas Kiosk Experience.

Beyond the archway was a cluster of log cabins and tiny colorful houses in eye-searing shades of red and green, blue and orange, surrounded by a cute white picket fence and a miniature steam train, lazily taking laps around the 90s shopping mall Christmas village on a set on tiny tracks.

At the far side of the display was a pavilion featuring a red velvet throne, where kids would sit and scream while a dead-eyed mall Santa asked if they’d been good this year. Except no one in their right mind would be eager to stand in line to meet the creature now occupying the chair.

Dweller 0.490658 – Krampus, the Yuletide Devourer (Kiosk Manager) [Level 58]

The stories got it half right. Horns? Check. Hooves? Check. Flaming whip? Checkmate. But what they forgot to mention is that Krampus doesn’t just punish naughty children—he hunts them. Tracks them. Sniffs them out like a sadistic bloodhound with a fetish for guilt. He doesn’t come with jingles and candy canes. He comes with iron chains, burlap sacks, and the kind of smile you only see on predators moments before they eat.

Krampus is Saint Nik’s depraved fae counterpart, forged from frostbite, coal dust, and the crushed hopes of disobedient spawn. He’s a lesser god that slipped through the cracks in the Winter Realm—tall as a lamppost, wrapped in matted black fur, crowned with curling horns and eyes like frozen tar pits.

The ethereal chains wrapped around him like garland won’t just bind flesh, they bind memory. He weaponizes regret. The Chains of Christmas past force victims to relive their worst moments—the lie they told, the promise they broke, the sibling they pushed down the stairs before blaming it on the dog. Each sin leaves a mark on their soul, glowing red-hot across like a brand, and once you’ve got enough of them, he eats you.

Soul first. Body second. Dignity last.

Krampus looked like a roided out super Yeti, his skin was cracked leather covered in spots with shaggy black fur, all stretched over an enormous frame of muscle and fat. Massive, curling horns jutted from his skull like a demonic crown, and his eyes burned with a feral red light that promised pain. Thick chains hung from his shoulders and dangled across his chest, and resting beside his throne was a crude sack, large enough to fit a grown man.

Krampus didn’t just look like death. He looked like punishment. Old, cold, and cruel.

Scampering across the shopping mall setup were a legion of twisted creatures, which more closely resembled feral goblins that anything remotely magical or dignified.

The Jultomten. The Yule Elves.

They were short and hunched with too-long limbs and their skin came in sickly shades of gray, blue, and corpse-white, like they’d been dredged up from the bottom of a frozen lake. Their eyes were oversized and pupil-less, glowing faintly in the early morning light. Cracked lips partially concealed their needle-like teeth and their ears were jagged and torn, faintly reminding me of batwings. They wore patchwork clothing made of animal hides, stolen rags, and bits of metal scavenged from god-only-knew-where.

They were the stuff of legend and children’s nightmares, and there was a shitload of ’em.

Thirty or forty, at least.

It was no wonder Nikoli needed backup.

A short distance to the east, and not far from the tiny Noth Pole display, was a secondary structure, which could only be Nikoli’s Soul Forge.

The building was roughly domed shaped and looked like a super-sized version of the workshop back in Kringlegard. It was crafted from stone and reinforced steel plates, with a series of smokestacks poking up from the roof. Even now, those chimneys spewed plumes of choking gray smoke into the air. There was a single steel door, sealed to the world, and a paved cobblestone landing strip along one edge.

It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but the insane defensive fortifications Nikoli had installed were impressive in their own right. A concentric series of deep trenches and large reinforced berms encircled the sprawling workshop. Even from a distance, I could see the trenches were filled with terrain hazards—spikes, traps, acid—while the berms were topped with glinting coils of razor wire and spits of jagged metal like some twisted holiday wreath.

The only way to access the facility on foot was by a narrow wooden bridge, which ran above the trenches and carved a path through the berms.

One way in, one way out.

The entire area blazed neon red, thanks to Spelunker’s Sixth Sense. A warning that everything below was deadly.

Assuming this was where Nikoli was keeping the hostages of Kringlegard—which seemed like a pretty good bet at this point—it was no wonder the others hadn’t managed to get their loved ones back. How would they? The place was buried in the frozen ass-end of nowhere, easily a full day’s hike from the Safe Harbor. And even if they somehow managed to make the trip, they’d need an army just to reach the front door.

An army that was okay with taking casualties. Lots of them.

Without superior air-support, long-range artillery, or precision mortar fire, trying to breach this place would be suicide. Hell, even artillery or mortar fire wouldn’t help much—not unless you were willing to risk nuking the hostages.

“You see problem?” Nikoli asked me as I slowly lowered the binoculars.

“Yeah,” I said, “they’re entrenched like a mother fucker. I’m guessing those like shit-goblins will overwhelm us before we ever get close to Krampus.”

“Precisely,” Nikoli agreed, “and this is problem. That sack? Beside Krampus?” He jabbed a finger toward the towering creature. “Is tied to Krampus. Will continuously respawn more ‘shit-goblins’ until Krampus is dead.”

“So what do you purpose?” Temperance asked, shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind.

“Glad you asked,” Nikoli said with the feral grin of a wolf. One hand darted into his coat and he pulled out several green-plastic paratroopers. The kind kids liked to chuck off the roof and watch float to the ground. I’d seen them once before. They were single-use Artifacts, which allowed the user to float gently to the ground. “An air drop,” he said matter of factly, handing each of us a paratrooper—though I didn’t actually need it, not with Psychic Sovereignty.

“I’m sorry,” Harper said, as though she’d misheard, “but did you just say you want us to airdrop into that seething ring of death?”

“Da,” Nikoli said. “Is best way. You help hold off Jultomten, Dan and I”—he slapped me on the shoulder—“will kill Krampus. Is simple.”

“But what if they overwhelm us and we need to retreat?” Harper protested.

“Retreat?” Nikoli asked. Then he laughed, a great booming thing that shook the sleigh. “Is no retreat. We win or we die. Is simple.”

“Dan?” Harper said, shooting me a concerned look. “This is a terrible plan.”

“I quite like it,” Temperance said.

“That makes me feel worse, not better,” Harper said. “Please, there has to be a better way.”

I smiled. Nikoli might’ve seen a few of my Relics, but I highly doubted he had any idea what I was really capable of. Maybe it was time to show him.

“I do have a better idea,” I replied. “Nikoli, how many of these paratrooper Artifacts do you have?”

“How many you need?” he asked in all seriousness before reaching back into his coat and pulling out a fistful more. “I always come prepared.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Bring us over top. It’s time to send in the meat shields…”

Chapter Twenty-Nine – Paratroopers

I watched from the sleigh, still circling high above the frosty ground below, as my Horrors parachuted down into the slaughter-field of the Christmas Kiosk. The Snowmaw Hag was the last to go, though the battle was already well underway.

With several Necromarshals capable of commanding field-level troops, my budding army didn’t even need me for the slaughter. Drumbo and Synthia each oversaw four reborn Yetis under their direct supervision, barking out gruff orders as they drove the misshapen Jultomten to the edges of the winter wonderland. Meanwhile Uncle Sam, several revitalized Wardogs, and my newly resurrected Grippledip fought with berserker fury to secure a landing zone in the center of the battlefield.

The Horrors were fearless even in the face of overwhelming opposition and they fought with unyielding discipline, unleashing a symphony of grotesque violence that would’ve made even the most bloodthirsty warlords nod in open approval.

Urine-soaked snowballs arced high into the air and exploded on contact with wet, yellow splatts, searing like acid wherever they struck. White hot lances of fire, carved through fortified snowbanks and set Jultomten ablaze like Yuletide logs. Everywhere, fists fell like hailstones, claws ripped, and horns gored.

Synthia, graceful as ever in her undead elegance, slid through the chaos like a ballerina made of knives—carving off limbs with her chainsaw and vomiting feral hairballs at anything unlucky enough to get in her way. I watched with a grimace as she strangled a shrieking Jultomten with tentacles of hair, before dragging the creature into the snow and popping its skull like an overripe grape. As she finished her grisly work, she turned and commanded her squad of Yetis onward with a slash of her hand.

Meanwhile, Rudolpho the resurrected Grippledip, tore through a pack of screeching elves with slashing antlers and gnashing teeth, his hooves stomping them into chunky red slush. As two more Jultomten attempted to flank the monstrous reindeer, Rudolpho wheeled around on his hind legs and took to the sky, dashing across the air as his nose burned crimson with irradiated fire, melting faces and leaving blisters on exposed flesh.

The Jultomten fought back like chaos incarnate.

There was no rhyme or reason to the things they did—no thought or broader strategy. They were a tidal wave howling, gibbering, thrashing death, wielding clubs made from femurs and axes that looked like they’d been forged in garbage fires. They swung chains tipped with barbed hooks, catching Horrors and yanking away chunks of flesh with glee. They hurled arcane Christmas ornaments like home-made grenades, which detonated in thunderous bursts that shattered bone and blackened earth, painting the snow with gore.

One of the grenades caught a Yeti who’d been just a little too slow to get out of the blast radius. It erupted in a flash of dazzling light, blowing off one of Yeti’s legs, just above the knee, and coating the poor beast in a coating of festive holiday-appropriate glitter. The Yeti collapsed, unable to stand and flutily attempting to claw the glitter from his eyes, while a trio of feral Jultomten pounced, ripping open his stomach with sharpened obsidian claws.

Uncle Sam wasn’t about to let one of his troops died, unopposed.

The patriotic madman let loose a guttural roar, the tails of his tattered jacket whipping behind him as he charged—his lanky legs eating up the distance in four strides.

One of the yule elves hurled a fireball from an outstretched hand, but Uncle Sam dashed through the flames, undeterred.

He slid to a stop, kicking up a spray of bloody pink slush, then both hands and hurled columns of blistering fire, melting snow and flesh alike. Timmy, the Kannibal Kid, stuck to Uncle Sam like his shadow, ripping apart anything that got to near to the Necromasrhal, while Uncle Sam’s Wardogs worked in a pack, hamstringing Krampus’s Christmas helpers, before pulling them into the snow and eviscerating them with reinforced jaws.

Even Nikoli seemed impressed by the sheer level of carnage my Horrors were capable of.

But for every Yule Elf my Horrors brought down, two more seemed to claw their way out of the wriggling sack that sat by Krampus’s red velvet throne. The moment a corpse hit the snow it dissolved into viscous slop, then the bulging sack twitched and another one of nightmare elves crawled free, eyes glowing, teeth snarling, ready to die all over again.

They were endless.

Worse, they didn’t even have the good grace to leave corpses behind, which meant they probably weren’t even true Dwellers at all. Just conjured minions, bound to this plane by Krampus and his holiday magic. That meant no loot and no bodies to repurpose—though killing them did earn Experience. And holy shit was it rolling in like high tide. Each Elf only netted me around 300 Experience points a piece—which, honestly seemed low given how strong they were—but there were a lot of them.

And since my Horrors were the only things fighting below, every ounce of that experience flowed into me.

[Level Up! x 1]

My biggest regret in the moment was that I hadn’t already crafted the Tome of the Swarm Herald Emblem. The passive benefits from having Will of Iron and Swarm Tactics running would’ve made my army virtually unstoppable. 

Even without them, though, my forces were doing an impressive job of holding the line.

Right until Krampus stepped into the fray.

Then the battlefield tilted.

The horned monster peeled himself from his throne with a languid, untroubled ease then burst into motion like a freight train, crashing through the front line with all the subtlety of an avalanche. He wielded a flaming cat-o-nine tails in one hand, which cracked through the air, trailing ribbons of embers as it tore into my troops. One of the Wardogs took a direct hit and the whip ripped him in two, tongues of flame crawling across the canine’s lower half and turning it to ash.

Then came the frost breath—noxious and cloying, like liquid nitrogen and rotten milk. The cloud rolled out from Krampus’s maw, freezing my Horrors mid-motion, transforming them from creatures of flesh and blood and machine, into crystalline statues. One of my Yetis caught a direct blast straight in the face and a nearby Yule Elf shattered the creature with a wicked swing of a bone-axe.

The Snowmaw Hag had finally touched down and was doing her best to patch up the wounded, but it wouldn’t be enough to stop Krampus. She raised one arm high and launched a glowing orb of light into the air, about the size of a beachball. The miniature glowing moon hung above the gore-covered battlefield, bathing everything in weak silvery light. Immediately, Drumbo and two of my Yetis began to morph and change.

Drumbo swelled in size, adding nearly three feet in height and packing on dense muscle at an impossible rate as twisted horns emerging from his elephantine head. Driven by insane fury, Drumbo rushed forward, breaking through a line of elves then throwing himself at Krampus. The two traded furious blows, and for a long second I thought Drumbo might be a match for the Christmas nightmare.

The chains, wrapped around Krampus like obscene jewelry, snaked to life, shooting from Krampus’s arms, wrapping around Drumbo and pulling him close as hooks tore off bits of skin and muscle.

That’s when I realized the Horror wouldn’t last long against Krampus’s rage.

“Alright,” I barked, “that’s our cue. Let’s get down there and mop ’em up. Jakob, Temp, and Croc—you’re on Elf patrol. Harper, stay back and do what you do best. Nikoli, you and I will take out Krampus.”

“I hate this,” Temp said, before launching herself from the side of the sleigh and activating the paratrooper Artifact clutched tight in her fist. An ethereal parachute billowed out above her as she floated through the air, looking both terrified and excited. Jakob, Croc, and Nikoli followed, drifting down on their own parachutes, while Harper flew on buzzing, outstretched wings.

I was the last to leap from the sleigh, though I didn’t bother with the Artifact—not with Psychic Sovereignty equipped. I shot through the air like a cruise missile, held aloft by invisible strands of telekinetic power, and came to a stop about ten feet from the churned snow.

The others landed on a clear patch of ground, held by a ring of berserker Yetis and my Snowmaw Hag. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t pretty, but it did buy them enough time to get their bearings and launch a counter assault. Jakob and Temperence worked in tandem, the Cendral drawing the anger of the nearby Elves with his Broken Car alarming, then tanking them with his shield, while Temperance hurled Dire Mosquitoes and hacked through limbs with her cleaver.

Croc worked alone—well, not totally alone, since the mimic had his fleshmaw slug for company and several Horrors—and Harper acted as support, planting her boundary flags, casting heals, and hurling the occasional Shadow Eagle at any Elves who foolishly attempted to punch through the battle lines.

As soon as Nikoli touched down, he drew the enormous sword riding his hip, then took off like an arrow aimed straight at Krampus. His sword was a blur of movement as he brought it around in a vicious arc, aimed at the demon’s thick neck. Krampus raised an arm and batted the blow away without even suffering any damage. It seemed he was a match for Nikoli even without additional armor or gear.

Nikoli wasn’t phased in the least and quickly launched into a flurry of slashes followed up by a lightning fast thrust, aimed low at the monster’s groin. Despite his size and bulk, Nikoli moved with the nimble grace of a ballerina as he danced forward and back, side to side. Looking for any opening that he could exploit. Alone, he still would’ve been badly outmatched, but Drumbo continued to rage beside him, hurling haymakers with his fist and launching air blades from his torso.

Even together, they seemed incapable of phasing the demonic Dweller. His yule tide chains were a whirlwind, slapping away incoming attacks with preternatural ease, while his whip lashed like a cobra—claiming chunks of flesh or turning away Nikoli’s attacks.

For the first time ever, I cast my new Frostfang Spire ability. I pushed my will into the frost-slick earth and jagged spears of ice erupted from the snow like a wall of glacial teeth, reinforcing our flanks and holding the Yule Elves at bay. Several of the elves were skewered outright, while others screamed in rage as the ice stabbed through outstretched limbs and made forward progress impossible. My Horrors surged forward, hacking and slashing as the tide turned in our favor.

With the line stabilized—at least temporarily—I switched focus.

I activated Psychic Sovereignty, summoning a small arsenal of tools from my inventory. They hovered before me like a vanguard, but I didn’t stop there. Not now that I had access to a virtually unlimited supply of weapons in the form of Hydrokensis. The snow covering the ground provided me with all the ammunition I needed.

Snow rose into the air and I shaped the water according to my will, hardening the powder into crystalline spears and swords.

I sent all of them hurtling forward in rapid succession.

My hammer caught Krampus in the shoulder, drawing a shallow wound while the screwdriver nailed him in the thigh, barely sinking through his thick hide, but doing just enough damage to stagger him for half a heartbeat. The speed square flew like a boomerang, repeatedly battering the demon’s face while icy swords and spears left dozens of shallow gashes in their wake.

Then the Bowling Ball of Rolling Momentum rocketed through the air like a cannon shot, slamming into his side and knocking Krampus off balance before curving back around in a wide arc, and smashing into his grotesque, snarling face and snapping one of his black, curling horns clean off.

Krampus bellowed in fury, his health bar dropping a little more with each successive hit.

I followed it up by casting Stainslayer Maelstrom.

A swirling storm of chemical fire churned to life, as a blue cloud of super-bleach rained down in a torrent. The toxic liquid pelted the demon, eating through hair and flesh.

Before Krampus could retaliate, I cast Hydro Fracking Blast and immediately spilt the beam into three separate forks, twisting each with Hydrokinetic precision. The jets of water, thin as needles and sharp as razors, sliced through the demon’s defenses—tearing deep into his chest and shoulder. Steam hissed from the open wounds, and chunks of flesh sloughed from his body. Blood sprayed, black and viscous, painting the snow like ink.

With these new abilities at my command, I felt like a god and I was just getting warmed up.

With a shit eating grin plastered across my face, I raised my hand and fashioned a pair of frozen manacles. Snow melted and crawled up Krampus’s legs, all the way to the knees before hardening into unyielding ice meant to cement the monster in place. Krampus struggled against the icy bindings, and though he was plenty strong, they held fast—at least for the moment.

Nikoli didn’t waste that opportunity.

He bounded back, kicking up a puff of powder, and pulled a pair tiny metallic spheres from his coat. He flung them with a flick of his wrist, and they bounced harmlessly across the ground before unfurling in a blaze of light. Where the orbs had been before, now stood a pair of steampunk-looking gatling guns, affixed to metallic tripods. The arcane guns roared to life, firing a swarm of bullets that peppered Krampus, tearing through even more of the monster’s formidable health pool.

Nikoli’s sword erupted with radiant runes as he lunged, executing a rapid chain of perfectly timed strikes. One cut followed another in rapid succession—wrist, inner thigh, armpit, neck. Arcs of blood sprayed into the air, sizzling where they touched the ice.

Krampus roared and thrashed, finally breaking free from the icy restraints through sheer force of will.

At the same time, several new Jultomten had crawled from the oversized sack near the velvet throne and were already rushing into the battle, eager to assist their overseer and warlord.

A pair launched themselves at Drumbo, pushing the Horror back a few paces with hacking bone axes, while another lobbed a pair of cursed ornaments at me. I redirected the first with a thread of telekinetic power, knocking it into another of the nearby elves before detonating with a flash, blowing apart one of its brothers. Mishappen limbs cartwheeled through the air, before dissolving into a puddle of goo.

Several more exploding ornaments were in bound, however.

At my command, mana rushed out of my core and snow surged upward, forming into thick frost shields that hung in the air on threads of physic power. The bombs detonated against the icy constructs, which absorbed most of the blast—though fire still billowed out around edges of the shields, singing my skin and leaving me momentarily blinded.

A soft voice in the back of my head shouted a word of warning.

Something was wrong. Something was coming for me.

That had to be the new Persistent Cognitive Overlay Syndrome, I’d unlocked by crossing over the first Grit threshold. Problem was, I still couldn’t see jack shit.

When I finally managed to blink away the afterimage staining my vision, I saw with mute horror that a swarm of black chains were flying straight toward me. Two or three dozen, at least, wriggling through the air like flying snakes, all connected to Krampus’s outstretched arms.

I dropped the shields and darted back, letting my newly unlocked Danger Sense guide me as I bobbed and weaved, frantically trying to avoid the cruel chains. I pushed my Dog Fighter Title to the edge of its limits, as I barrel rolled left, then right, shooting up and dropping low.

But as fast as I was, there were just too many of them.

One of the chains wrapped around my ankle, binding me in place. Another coiled around my waist, squeezing tight, while a third bit into my shoulder with a razor-sharp meat hook. I screamed in pain as the chains jerked tight and reeled me in like a prized fish.

I fought through the pain with everything I had—straining my Telekinesis, launching beams of high-pressure water to cut the chains, but they held firm. I felt the breath leave my lungs as the coils constricted, squeezing the air from my lungs.

As the chains dragged me toward the ground, they began to burn with a cancerous green light, terrible pressure settled around me like an immense weight—though this time it was mental, not physical. It felt like the sickly light from the chains was somehow burrowing through my skin and seeping into my bones. The sharp edges of panic clawed at the mind, threatening to overwhelm me.

Then the solution hit me like a punch to the face, Neural Slipstream. No matter how powerful the chains were, they couldn’t hold something that wasn’t there. Something that didn’t exist in the material world at all.

I activated the Relic and cold power surged into my limbs as the material world fell away and I became a being of pure thought…

At least, that’s what should’ve happened. It didn’t.

Instead, I felt bits and pieces of my body phase out of sync with reality, while other parts remained material and solid. The pressure in my mind, however, intensified tenfold and I felt something snap within, which is exactly when I realized that I’d made a crucial mistake. Although Neural Slipstream made me 90% resistant to all forms of melee and magical damage, it increased telepathic and psychic damage by 50%.

I’d assumed the chains were magical, but it was only as the battlefield dissolved around me into motes of shimmering light that it dawned on me that the attack had been psychic in nature.

Chapter Thirty – Naughty List

Krampus and the snowy landscape vanished, replaced by an endless stretch of sand and hardpacked road. I looked down and found that my bathrobe was gone and in its place was a set of dust-stained desert camies, with a tan Flack jacket strapped over the top.

I was in Iraq again.

Dust whipped against my face while ungodly heat beat down on me from above like a hammer. Behind me was the bulky shape of a 7-Ton, loaded down with pallets of bottled water, boxes of MREs, and enough crates of ammo to resupply a battalion—which is exactly what we were doing. Trucks and Humvees stretched out behind me, all stopped in the blistering heat as we waited for the EOD techs to clear the improvised explosives planted in the roadway.

I stood outside my truck, since the interior was sweltering, and watched as Sergeant Martin and the rest of his team triggered the bomb in the road. Martin moved with a casual ease and despite the danger, he looked almost bored. I was too. The novelty of watching EOD set off ordinance had worn off about twenty-bombs ago.

Now, I mostly considered them a nuisance.

Still, I grinned when Martin depressed a button on a handheld controller and the IED went up in a column of fire. Giant fiery explosions were never not cool. The explosion rattled my teeth and shook the world as the rest of the EOD techs watched on from a safe distance in approval. Another bomb found, another insurgent attack stopped dead in its tracks, another victory to mark down in the logs.

Same shit, different day.

Except, I knew what was about to happen.

Knew that this day was not like any of the ones that had come before it.

In less than three minutes Sergeant Martin would be dead. So would Reyes and Garcia. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop any of it.  

“All clear,” I heard over the radio as Martin stepped away from the smoking crater where the first IED had been, not realizing there was a second IED just a few feet away. He didn’t see it until his foot came down on the pressure plate, concealed beneath a fine layer of dirt, which we all called Moon Dust. Time seemed to crawl to a slow and I watched his eyes go wide in shock a millisecond before the ground erupted in a burst of fire and earth.

Clouds of brown dust billowed up as Martin’s body flipped and spun like a ragdoll, landing with a thud less than twenty feet from where I was standing. He lay there, partially on one side. His legs were gone just below the knees and blood leaked out like a busted faucet, mixing into a thick pasty mud beneath him. A loop of intestine protruded from a ragged hole in his stomach.

He should’ve been dead. No one could survive that. But somehow, against all odds, Martin was still alive, which wasn’t a blessing but a curse.

A quick death would’ve been far more merciful.

The sharp report of gunfire erupted all around me as insurgents opened fire from a set of nearby hovels, which looked derelict and long abandoned. Bullets whined and ricochetted off the armored truck, chewing into the dirt not far from where Martin lay dying. Our machine gunners, perched in steel-ringed turrets on top of the trucks, swiveled and unleashed hell with a deafening cacophony of 240s and .50 Cals.

Despite the resistance, the insurgents continued laying down suppressive fire.

I ducked beneath the truck and dropped into the prone, bringing my M16 up, sliding the buttstock tight into my shoulder pocket. I caught a glimpse of enemy muzzle flashes in the distance, but I didn’t have a clean target, and they were too far away for me to do jack shit. The 240s and .50 Cals were made for this type of fire fight. Which meant all I could actually do was lay and look at Martin, who was slowly bleeding out in the dirt.

He was less than twenty feet away, and I couldn’t get to him.

Bullets ripped into the ground nearby, though none hit the Sergeant. That was by design. He was bait, meant to lure first responders out into the open where the insurgents could pick them off from a distance. There was likely a sniper covering the spot.

Going out there was as good as a death sentence. And even if the enemy rifle fire didn’t kill me—which it almost certainly would—there was a good chance there would be another IED nearby, tied to a remote detonator. It was a common insurgent tactic, used to kill Corpsmen and other first responders. They would wait for a Doc to get close to a wounded Marine, then trigger the second explosion creating a mass casualty event.

In my head, I knew the smart thing to do was to hold my position and return fire.

In my heart, I felt like a coward as I lay there beneath the truck and watch the light fade from Martin’s eyes and his pale face went slack.

The world flickered and when I blinked, and once again I found myself standing back outside the truck, the sun beating down on me as Sergeant Martin made his way toward the first IED once more, preparing to trigger the bomb.

Fuck me, I realized with a start, I was in a memory loop.

And not just any memory—one that still haunted my nightmares to this day.

I pushed back against the mental incursion with my fortified will and Martin seemed to slow, time creeping to a stand-still with him frozen in mid-step. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, I told myself over and over again, chanting it like a mantra. The colors drained from the world, everything becoming shades of black and gray before the images began to bleed away entirely.

Then the world tilted and dissolved as the memory of Iraq faded and vanished.

But I still wasn’t back in the winter blighted lands of the 49th floor.

Honestly, I didn’t know where in the hell I was.

I found myself standing on the edge of a forest at the beginning of autumn, looking into a clearing that bordered a small town with a single dusty road that meandered its way through a series of wooden houses. A mob had assembled, many of them holding flickering torches or ol’-timey lanterns that cast odd yellow halos in the twilight. In the center of the clearing stood a large wooden pyre, with a thick pole jutting straight up from its middle.

“Please, have mercy,” a woman shrieked. “Please, Jonathan, for the love of the Lord, for the love of everything we’ve shared, don’t let them do this! You know I would never consort with devils! You must know that. Please say that you do?” She sobbed between pleas, her voice ragged and desperate. The crowd parted, revealing a pair of grim-faced men dragging a young woman forward, her arms bound in iron shackles.

My breath caught as I saw Temperance.

It was her, but different.

She looked younger, almost unrecognizable in her archaic Puritan garb. She wore a black dress flared at the waist, cinched by a plain bodice. A stark white apron hung down the front, and a bonnet of the same bleached cloth covered her hair. Her eyes were huge with fear, tear stains cut through the grime on her face, and it was impossible to miss the terror etched into the lines of her face.

Since I’d relived one of my worst memories, it was safe to say this was one of Temp’s—though why I was seeing it, I couldn’t say. I certainly didn’t want to see it, though. I felt like a Peeping-Tom, watching her undress through a window. This was never meant for my eyes. A series of words floated through my head, each one landing like a judge’s gavel.

Dirty. Unclean. Naughty. So very, very naughty.

A potent wave of shame washed over me, but despite the guilt I suddenly felt, I couldn’t turn away. I was rooted to the spot, unable to move or act. Unable to intervene.

“Please, Jonathan, you know me,” Temperance cried again, locking eyes with a man among the crowd. His jaw clenched, and he turned away. “You’ve known me since I was a little girl. We grew up together. Even as a girl, I stitched your clothes. I… I tended your mother when she fell ill. I have served you with all my heart. I am not a witch. You mustn’t listen to them. I have done nothing wrong.”

“Lies.” Jonathan spoke the word with unwavering certainty, his face hard as a stone.

A gaunt man in preacher’s robes stepped forward, his voice rising with righteous fervor. “Goodie Temperance,” he intoned, his voice deep and harsh, dripping with scorn and condemnation. “You stand accused of witchcraft, of trafficking with demons and consorting with the Devil himself. We have seen you picking herbs beneath the moonlight and reading books unsanctioned by the church. There are witnesses who claim they saw you communing with a familiar and vanishing into smoke and shadow.”

“No!” she shouted, the word cracking through the clearing. “I would never. I am a God-fearing woman! Yes, I picked herbs, but not for potion making or other forms of sorcery. They were simple spices for cooking. You hurl false accusations—a sin worthy of condemnation in its own right—for I have done no such things!”

Her cries fell on deaf ears.

The preacher turned to the crowd, his back ramrod straight with righteous indignation. “She speaks falsehoods, as all witches do. We must purify her soul through fire. As the good book says, ‘You shall not permit a sorceress to live’. And as the Malleus Maleficarum tells us, ‘burn the witch amongst you.’ That is the only way we may purify this community and purge her soul, so that she may yet have a chance at salvation to come.”

“Father, Mother,” Temperance pleaded, this time turning to look toward a pair loitering near the back of the crowd. “Please don’t let this happen. I’ve also been a good daughter, haven’t I? Always did as you asked. Quiet, meek, respectful, faithful? Were these not the virtues you instilled in me? If I had sinned, I will repent.” Her voice broke. “I swear it so. Just please don’t let them do this.”

Temperance’s mother, a woman with sunken eyes and silver hair, shot a silent but pleading look at her husband. The man ignored her completely.

“The Good Book teaches that even devils may disguise themselves as servants of the life,” her father declared coldly, “all the better to fool the righteous and lead them unto crooked paths. So far as I’m concerned, my daughter is no more.” His eyes were hard as flint, his jaw set in unwavering resolve. “She is dead and gone. I renounce this vile creature before me and any fatherly affection I may have once held for her, for the righteous cannot dwell in the house of the wicked.” He lifted a torch. “We shall burn the witch, and it shall be by my hand that the fires are kindled.”

Temperance’s mother wilted in sorrow, her eyes growing glassy at the terrible declaration. But she didn’t speak up. Didn’t try to defend her daughter.

Temperance reeled like she’d been slapped. A new wave of tears welled up and spilled over as the two men dragged her an inch at a time toward the waiting pyre.

But then something seemed to harden inside her.

She dug in her heels, bucking wildly, and lashed out with a fierce cry. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of the Temperance I knew—wild and angry, a fighter to the bitter end. One captor staggered back with a gasp as she cracked her shackled wrists across his nose. The other tried to hold tight, but she twisted, biting at him like a feral animal, and slipped free. Her bonnet fell to the dirt, revealing her tousled hair, whipping around her face as she turned on them.

“You want a witch, do you!” she bellowed, face red with rage. “Then fine, I will be your witch. If you dare touch me again,” she hissed, her voice low and venomous, “I’ll… I’ll curse your crops. I’ll rot your teeth right from your skulls. I’ll hex your cows with blindness and dry their milk! I’ll cackle in glee as this village starves. Just see if I won’t.”

Fear flashed in the eyes of the onlookers, and they took an instinctive step back.

Even the preacher hesitated, suddenly uncertain in his faith or perhaps his conviction.

I knew Temperance wasn’t a witch, but the crowd didn’t. They’d already made up their minds, and now she stood before them confirming their deepest suspicions and fears.

“She threatens us with sorcery!” someone cried. “We must burn her before she can consummate her dark pack with Satan!”

Despite the words, no one moved.

The disgust, the fear, the condemnation—they all radiated from the ring of onlookers, but fear held them in place.

Temperance saw the opening and bolted, darting past the pyre, past the edge of the crowd, and into the waiting shadows of the trees.

I watched her go, unable to say a word.

Torches turned. Voices called out. But the forest swallowed her whole.

And then the vision shimmered and broke. The dark woods faded.

I felt the loop try to start back up again, but then something caught—like a gear that refused to shift. Resistance built and then, just as suddenly as the vision had come, it disappeared, returning me to the snowy battlefield as words swam across my vision.

Nope.exe has activated!

You have successfully resisted Naughty List!

You have successfully resisted Ghosts of Christmas Past!

It felt like a month had passed but, in reality, only a few seconds had ticked by—the exact five-second duration of Neural Slipstream. The Relic had stretched time, warping each heartbeat into an eternity. But the countdown had finally expired, and with it, my partial intangibility faded. Which meant I was no longer suspectable to telepathic attacks.  

The sickly green glow emanating from the chains wrapped around me faded as they fell away and clattered to the ground, suddenly lifeless. But then I noticed there was another set of chains encircling me, anchoring me to the floor. These weren’t physical, but conjured from ghostly blue light.

Temp’s Puritanical Chains.

When I looked at Temp, I saw the same haunted and horrified expression plastered across her face that I was sure was on mine. It was the look of someone who’d just been forced to relieve once of their most painful memories in excoriating detail. Which meant everything I’d just seen was true. Her experience had been just as real as my own. I wasn’t sure what spell Krampus had used, or how exactly it worked, but clearly the arcane wires had gotten mixed up at some point.

Since I’d seen her memories, I idly wondered if that meant she’d experienced mine in a similar fashion.

“You okay,” I called down to her.

She staggered and slashed a hand through the air, dismissing the chains with a flash of light. “Fine,” she said, though she didn’t sound fine. “Just kill this, gibbering cock whore.” She paused, a hazy look in her eyes. “And make it hurt.”   

Now that was the Temperance I knew.

“Got it,” I replied, as I shot forward toward Krampus.

Drumbo and a nameless Yeti had made their way to the enormous sack by the velvet throne and were in the process of trying to rip the damned thing apart while ever more Yule Elves crawled out. They weren’t having much luck with the sack itself, but they’d successfully managed to stem the flow of Jultomten. Without constant reinforcements, Jakob, Harper, Croc, and the rest of my Horrors were finally starting to gain the upper hand.

As for Krampus, he was now elbow deep in battle with Nikoli, who threw himself at the creature with murderous fury and reckless abandon. Nikoli’s automated turret guns continued to pepper the Christmas demon, chewing through his health a millimeter at a time. Nikoli fought with his sword in one hand and wielded a strange steampunk pistol in the other.

 With a shout, Nikoli looped off several of Krampus’s fingers with his sword, then leapt back, turned a dial on the side of the gun, and pulled the trigger. A trio of rune-engraved saw blades screamed from the barrel, slicing through the air as they spun, before biting deep into Krampus’s chest.

The gun’s barrel didn’t look nearly large enough to launch saw blades, and there didn’t appear to be any place to store ammo, but then I’d seen a bazooka that could shoot an infinite supply of sofas, so it didn’t really surprise me all that much.

One of the saw blades exploded on impact, blowing a hole in the demon’s side. Another one lit up with bright blue arcs of lightning, and Krampus began to sizzle, his body convulsing as electricity surged through him. This time, my mouth fell open in genuine shock. Those were trap wards, not so different from the ones I had engraved into my playing cards. It made perfect sense that I wasn’t the only one who would use traps like that, but seeing it in the wild was still disorienting.

That gave me an idea.

I pulled free ten Balloon Menagerie Spell Cards and sent them flying forward on invisible strings of telepathic power. I didn’t direct them at Krampus, though. Instead, I carefully slipped them into the Nikoli’s belt. The man was so absorbed with his battle against Krampus, that he didn’t even notice. 

As the third saw blade triggered, a small brightly colored box appeared in the air and tumbled toward the ground. It landed in the snow with a discordant jangle and the lid popped open. A disfigured jester puppet with a bulbous nose sprang out as an eerie rendition of ‘Pop goes the Weasel’ played in the background.

I started at the strange object and a Codex entry appeared.

Jester’s Rebalancing Act

Spell Totem – Level 1

Duration: 90 seconds

Every kingdom has a fool, but only the most dangerous ones give him a stage and a spotlight. Normally, the lowly court Jester is always the butt of the joke, but not this time. This time the joke’s on you as the Jester Spell Totem upends the natural order of things, by forcibly reshuffling reality’s deck. All enemies within range have their two highest stats swapped with their two lowest. Athleticism for Perception? Grit for Resonance?

It’s all fun and games, until it isn’t.

In a flash, tanky bruisers turn into wet paper towels and glass-cannon mages transformer into hilariously overbuilt linebackers. It’s disorienting. It’s humiliating. It’s statistically upsetting. Honestly, it’s like a funhouse mirror, except now you have cancer. Say goodbye to optimization and hello to chaos. Enemies with enough Grit may resist the effect, though even those who do are still left feeling vaguely unsettled and emotionally unbalanced for reasons they can’t quite name.

“Do not waste time, standing around, twiddling thumbs” Nikoli barked. “Let us finish him together.”

Nikoli darted forward and his sword danced through the air, leaving burning trails, while dozens of micro-machines buzzed around his body—projecting shields, firing lances of light, and releasing pulses of energy that knocked Krampus back with each strike.

I hit the ground running, circling wide as Nikoli kept Krampus occupied. The demon swung his burning cat-o-nine tails in a punishing sweep, but Nikoli effortlessly slipped inside the arc, shoulder checking Krampus in the ribs, then carving a deep gash across the monster’s belly.

I called my hammer to me, and pumped mana into the handle. It swelled to the size of a medieval Warhammer and burned with otherworldly blue fire as I propelled myself forward with a roar. I had no idea what Krampus’s two highest stats were, but at a guess, I’d say either Athleticism or Toughness was at the top of the pecking order, while Perception and Resonance were probably close to the bottom.

There wasn’t a way to check, but it seemed like a safe bet since Krampus was moving with an uncharacteristic sluggishness, his footwork slow, his blows sloppy—hell, even his HP seemed to have taken a pretty nasty hit.

Now that momentum was on our side, Nikoli didn’t let up. He carved off pieces of fur and meat like slabs of Christmas ham, then swung low, aiming for the tendons. His sword caught the demon’s ankle with a crunch and a spray of gore.

The demon couldn’t respond, so instead he took a swing at me. But between his drastically reduced speed and the whispered word of warning I received from Persistent Cognitive Overlay, I easily sidestepped the nine-tails then smashed my hammer into his ribs as I triggered Gavel of Get Fucked.

He was above 10% total health, so it didn’t execute him on the spot—though it did knock him below twenty percent. I twisted at the waist and brought the hammer crashing into his knee, shattering the bone, then twirling the tool around and smashing the blunt head into the monster’s wrist. Krampus howled and dropped the whip, unable to hold the weapon in its ruined hand.

Krampus reeled and stumbled, unsteady on his cloven hooves.

He opened his maw and exhaled a wave of artic breath that rolled over me, knocking the hammer from my hand but dealing only a minute amount of damage, thanks to the Chillblister Core Sigil I had attached to my undershirt. I dropped to a knee and plunged my hand into the snow, then used a burst of Hydrokensis to form the moisture into something useable. When I pulled my hand free, ice covered my fist and footlong crystalline claws extended from my knuckles like a bad Wolverine impersonation.

I ducked in tight and stabbed up and under Krampus’s ribcage.

Blood sprayed, thick and black.

Krampus retreated a few paces as chains snapped out again—a writhing wall of metal links, meant to deflect incoming blows and keep me at range. One of the chains caught Nikoli around the midsection, dragging him off his feet. I moved fast, clamping down on the chain with a burst of telekinetic force. Nikoli grunted, found his footing, and wrenched himself free with a snarl.

“Spasibo,” Nikoli muttered, not missing a beat as he planted a boot on Krampus’s thigh, leaped up, and brought his sword straight down in a vicious chop—the weapon burning with a furious red aura. The blade carved through part of the demon’s neck and downward through his chest, before finally coming to a stop in the creature’s thick gut.

Any harder and Nikoli would’ve cleaved the demon in two.

Despite the devastating wound, Krampus was still alive—though only just. Enraged, he lashed out with the back of his fist and caught Nikoli in the chest, sending him flying through the air before crash landing in a nearby snowdrift. Then he reached down, pulled the sword free, and hurled it through the air.

My eyes widened in surprise, and I knew this was the chance I’d been waiting for.

A chance to get one up on Nikoli. Instead of attacking directly, I pulled the Etheric Walkie Talkie from my belt and radioed Croc.

“Croc,” I hissed. “Get to Nikoli’s sword. Make it disappear, then mimic it.”

I stashed the walkie and said a silent prayer that the dog would understand. With that done, I turned my attention back to Krampus.

The monster stalked toward me, though he moved with no small amount of difficulty.

Before, the Yule demon could close the distance, I raised a hand and blasted the fucker right in his big stupid face with Hydro Fracking Beam.

But this time, I paired it with Hydrokensis.

Instead of punching through the back of Krampus’s head, the beam of water swelled into a ball of burning liquid. With a thought, I reached out toward the orb of water and commanded steam. In an instant, the water expanded all at once and what remained of Krampus’s head exploded, chunks of bone and blood spraying out. The demon’s knees gave out and his body folded, toppling to the ground with a thunderous thud.

[Level Up! x 2]

Research Achievement Unlocked!...