“I’m not exactly unarmed,” she said as she raised a hand. There was a noise like the flick of a switchblade, and her nails suddenly grew and became metallic. On the ends of her fingers, instead of nails, she now had slender, curved, six-inch blades that gleamed in the light. They looked razor sharp.

I laughed. “Alright. I’ll just send one cougar at you for now. Give you a bit of a chance to get used to its attacks.”

“Whatever you think,” Astrid said with a smile, then gave a shake of her head, as though she felt she hardly needed the chance. From what I’d seen of her, that was likely, but I was still unwilling to risk accidentally causing her harm through my own carelessness or bravado.

I was about to speak to the cougar and give it the command to attack Astrid, but it sprang forward before I could speak. Had the creature read my mind? Or had I issued a mental command simply by thinking of having the cougar attack Astrid?

There was no time to consider the question, because the cougar moved so quickly that I could barely follow it. With an Agility score of 20, its speed wasn’t exactly surprising. In a blur of gray-colored fur, it came within a few feet of Astrid before it bunched its hindlegs and vaulted itself toward her. As the cougar was midway through a diving lunge with its forepaw raised to strike, the lycan performed a lightning fast kick that hit the creature in the stomach. The cougar was sent flying across the arena, back toward me.

In mid-air, the cougar dispersed into a cloud of swirling mana—after only a moment, it had vanished, and I felt the psychic connection that bound me to the summoned creature snap as it vanished out of existence.

I wasn’t sure what the notification screen that appeared in my vision meant, but it seemed like the dungeon was observing Astrid’s Cleave spell, the one she had used to kick my cougar so hard that it had vanished into thin air.

“Looks like you’ve got an idea of the speed of the summoned cougars,” I said to Astrid. “Your Cleave spell is pretty powerful. And you didn’t even change into your werewolf form, or use your slashing claws.”

“I didn’t need to,” she said with a shrug. “Should we continue?”

“Ready when you are,” I said, and Astrid dropped into her fighting stance a second time, her blades at the ready.

I turned my attention to the remaining eight cougars. Astrid seemed more than capable of handling one cougar, but could she deal with all eight at once?

I was about to find out.