POV — Kai / Sector 3 / Level 1
The eight creatures arrived all at the same time.
Kai assessed them in the second it took them to cover the twenty meters.
They were quadrupedal — the size of a large bear, their bodies covered in black scales that overlapped like roof tiles.
Six legs, not four, with the two central ones longer, giving their movement a strange rhythm, like something that gallops but in three beats instead of two.
The head was wide and low, no visible neck, with the lower jaw longer than the upper and two tusks that jutted upward from below instead of downward from above.
The eyes were lateral — large, yellow.
Eight of them.
Qi active from his feet.
Kai smiled.
Not the small smile when something turned out right.
The other one — the one that came out in the ring when the opponent was exactly the level of interesting problem.
'Good.'
'Let's see.'
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