The barbed tendrils of darkness darted towards the lunging baboons, slicing them into pieces as their entrails and blood splattered across the dirt. Seeing its brethren being cut down so easily, the baboon leader roared furiously and began throwing rocks at Yula.

She raised a wall of shadows and blocked the stone projectiles. With her line of sight obstructed by her own defence, the baboon leader took this chance to rush at her. Yula didn’t need to see to know what it was planning as Henry had pretty much drilled it into her, information and knowledge about the wildlife here. She now knew about the behaviours and weaknesses of nearly every creature Henry had encountered in Ulrum.

The moment she dropped her defence, a cluster of shadow bullets riddled the baboon leader, stopping it in its dash. She then sent a sharpened shadow across the ground, slithered the long way around the baboon leader, and sliced at its feet. It howled in agony and collapsed to the ground. It continued to cry while clutching its feet. Yula ended its misery by decapitating it.

“Persistent sons of bitches,” Yula grumbled as she surveyed her kills with a grimace. “Don’t they ever learn?”

“You are very delectable, Yula,” Henry said with a faint chuckle. “You look and smell delectable.”

“Or it could be because of the giant boar you are roasting on a spit,” Yula pointed out.

Henry shrugged with a coy smile. “Could be.”

It was sometime past noon. They were thinking about what to have for lunch when a heavily-bleeding giant boar came charging into their abode. Yula reacted swiftly and took out the boar with a precise thrust of her shadow tendril. As they were thinking about how to cook the boar, a small troop of baboons poured into their abode. They had been chasing after the boar and it was them who gave the boar that heavy wound.

Henry took care of the boorish baboons with a single breath of fire, charring them all into cinders. The idea of spit roasting the boar struck Henry then. With Yula’s immaculate handling of her shadows, they hastily but successfully built a spit roasting pit. Once they started roasting the boar, endless waves of hungry beasts and monsters would occasionally come barging into their abode, either captivated by the roasted boar or the scrumptious Yula.

Henry wasn’t too worried about overkilling these boorish monsters and beasts as most of them were not supposed to be here, to begin with. Aside from the baboons, the other creatures were not ones he recognised. They were completely unfamiliar beings. He felt a shiver going down his spine when he saw giant bug monsters emerging from the trees and bushes. He incinerated them without mercy and even continued to burn their ashes. It took some comforting from Yula for Henry to finally be able to calm down.

After they were done roasting the boar, Yula cut the boar into various chunks and slices. Henry simply watched Yula work in fascination from the sidelines. His quality of life had met a tremendous increase ever since Yula started living with him. Unlike him, Yula’s powers were incredibly versatile but with the tradeoff of her being a master of none. However, with Henry by her side, there was no issue with her simply being a jack of all trades.

“Here you go,” Yula said proudly as she handed Henry more than three whole quarters of the whole roasted boar on the spit.

Henry looked at Yula’s portion that looked paltry in his eyes. “I feel bad for having the lion’s share.”

“Look at me, Henry. Do you think I can finish all of that? Even this is more than how much I usually eat.” Yula gestured at her relatively meagre portion. To herself, it was more than enough.

“If you say so,” Henry said and took a small bite of his portion. Despite being a small bite, half of his portion was already gone as the boar was only slightly bigger than his palm.

Yula groaned in delight and glee as she took the first bite of the roasted boar. Her whole body shuddered in response to her joy and her lips curled into a hearty smile. “If we have salt, this would be perfect. But god, this is good enough, this is so good. Why does all the meat here taste so good?”

“Untainted by chemicals and the waste of human civilization, I guess?” Henry answered. “And you’re lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“None of this good meat was here before.”

“Oh, right. You did tell me that before… Sorry.”

“Don’t be, Yula. It’s not your fault.”

“But I feel bad for—”

“I said don’t be. I don't want you to go through what I have experienced. Never. I’m glad that you didn’t need to.”

“Henry…” Yula gasped sweetly and leaned her body against Henry’s vast side. She was holding her plate with her shadows and also feeding herself with them. She didn’t need to use her hands. In fact, plenty of her daily activities were not done with her own hands but with her shadows. She was only able to adapt to this world because of her shadows. She was glad that she didn’t become a liability to Henry. But her most exciting experience was the love Henry would impart on her every night. She would cry and scream out her ecstasy and joy, no holds barred.

Yula was happy with the way things were now. She didn’t need to care about keeping up with standards and appearances set by society. The missing convenience of modern technology was supplemented and compensated by her unbridled and meticulous use of her powers. She didn’t need to worry about the lynching of the internet mob, the pretentious envy of society, the exploitation of greedy corporations, or the ill-treatment of the hypocritical government. She could use her powers to their full extent without a single ounce of worry. Life had never been so good ever since she met Henry.

“Never leave me, Henry…” she moaned after swallowing a bite of the roasted boar.

“What makes you think I will?”

“...If something this wonderful can happen so abruptly, I fear the opposite can happen just as abruptly.”

“That will not be happening, Yula. I will not let it happen. I—” Henry cut his own words off and veered his head to the left.

Yula put down her plate and rose to her feet, brandishing her shadows in the direction Henry was staring into. “What is it? Some colossal monster?”

“They aren’t big but… they are many. Hmm, they are a little too late to the party. There’s barely any meat left but I can hear the grumblings of their bellies.”

“How many?”

“Around twenty?”

Right on cue, twenty or so pony-sized reptilian rats came crawling out of the forest. These reptilian rats all possessed a pair of razor-sharp buck teeth. Their saliva was overflowing from their shivering jaws and their eyes were bloodshot as if they all had rabies.

Yula’s face turned pale. “Are those rats or lizards?” she asked with a quivering tone.

“I don’t know.”

“Not from around here too?”

“Not even remotely.”

“There’s no more meat for them.”

“With teeth like those, I don’t think it’s the meat they want. They want the bones.”

“So we just give them the bones?”

“No. Never give monsters or predators anything to eat. They will take you for granted. Give an inch, take a mile. They are the embodiment of that saying.”

“So I can just go to town on them?”

“Like always, Yula.”

Yula laughed. “This will be a pleasure!” she cried gleefully and sent a huge wave of darkness crashing into the reptilian rats.

A few of the rats avoided the dark wave and charged toward Yula with piercing screeches.

Yula waved her hands around, swinging a long barbed rope of darkness into the hasty rats. They went tumbling and bouncing across the ground.

The shadow wave from before broke apart and the rats poured through the hole like a gushing stream.

“They chewed through my shadows…” Yula gasped.

“That’s discouraging,” Henry muttered. He stepped forward and unleashed a torrent of flames at the charging rats with a single breath.

A baboon sprang out from the trees at that moment. Henry ceased his Fire Breath and spun towards the baboon. He failed to notice the baboon simply because the wind did not carry its scent to him. He didn’t know if it was just the baboon’s luck or it was learning. He chalked it up to a little bit of both. The baboon was a size bigger than the usual ones and it had a stone club in hand.

Henry caught the stone club with its claws as the baboon swung at him. He yanked it out of its hand and smashed it into its head, cracking its skull open.

Even without the flames to keep the rushing rats at bay, Yula wasn’t perturbed. She wasn’t so weak that she needed the constant protection of Henry. She summoned another wall of shadows, larger this time around, and crashed onto the rats like before with the difference being the wall was now spiked. Yula could hear the eerie sounds of flesh rending and bones cracking along with the death throes of the reptilian rats. There were a few rats that survived but they were in no condition to continue their assault.

Before Yula could finish the surviving rats off, a high-pressure stream of water streaked across the air. The remaining rats collapsed to the ground with the upper half of their bodies sliding off of them.

“Sweet Jesus,” Yula exclaimed.

“Sarynn,” Henry grumbled the name and tossed the baboon’s carcass into the pile of dead reptilian rats.

“Hello, Henry, Yula,” Sarynn greeted as she emerged into the clearing in her human form. Her waist-long blue hair was shimmering to the radiance of the sun as she strode.

“What are you doing here?” Henry asked, squinting at the vine she was hoisting. She was hauling something.

Yula also eyed her suspiciously and cautiously.

“I caught some fish. I would like to share them with the two of you,” Sarynn said.

“Why would you do that?” Henry questioned.

“I have been thinking about what you said…”

“What I said?”

“About how easily I bared your fangs at you because… you questioned my age.”

“You questioned a girl’s age?” Yula snapped her gaze to Henry. “You don’t do that, Henry.”

“Et Tu…”

“Don’t give me the excuse that it’s alright just because she’s not a human.”

“Alright, I won’t,” Henry muttered with his gaze rolled up. “Anyway, you brought these fish here as an apology or something?”

“It’s a gift, to show you my sincerity, Henry. I truly wish to be your mate.”

Henry looked over to Yula, fearing for the worst. However, all he saw was a light frown on Yula’s face. He turned back to Sarynn. “I don’t understand, Sarynn. Why me?”

“I don’t understand either. Maybe it is as you have said, I felt a bond between me and you even though it wasn’t mutual. I just know I want us to be mates during that time, the moment I regained my consciousness after you broke me free of the accursed human’s control. So, what can I do to earn your love, Henry?”

Henry sighed. “I don’t think love works that way.”

“Are you saying that I can never earn your love?”

“I’m saying that I do not know what you can do to earn my love.”

“Allow me to answer that,” Yula said, tittering.

Henry glanced worriedly at Yula but he said nothing. He was a tad curious as to what Yula would do.

“You have an answer?” Sarynn asked.

“Not exactly an answer. There’s no answer to your question. However, I can give you advice.”

“What kind of advice?”

Yula’s titter turned into a devious chuckle.

“Yula, what are you planning?”

“Hush now, Henry. From here on, this is a girl's talk. Don’t you dare eavesdrop on us.” Saying so, Yula and Sarynn disappeared into the cave, walking arm in arm.

Henry sighed again. “Women…” There were some things that just stayed the same no matter which world one was in.