Levi slashed open the giant’s jugular. Blood blasted off, so fiercely pressurized that even Levi, fully braced between the Spinal Cord and Handy, flew off. He tumbled across the ground, pushed along by the firehose of blood. Levi rolled with it rather than fighting it. When the force petered out, he completed one more loop and came to his feet. He stood at a distance, wary. He’d slit the monster’s throat, but it had a lot of blood. Just by the volume of its body, it would have longer to struggle and die than someone Levi’s size.

  Kai, on the other hand, had no such hesitations. He raced toward the downed giant. The giant, stuck on its back, lashed out with all four limbs like a cat on its back. Kai dashed left and right, easily dodging the giant’s clumsy strikes. He hammered down on the giant’s neck.

  “Hey! Hold up. I need that EXP!” Levi rushed in, charging toward the giant. Being wary was all well and good, but not if it meant Kai got all the boss’s EXP after Levi did all the hard work. There was a line between caution and missing out, and he was rapidly approaching the missing out side of the line.

  The giant turned to face Kai. The firehose caught Levi in the chest and blew him backward. He staggered and barely kept his feet. The firehose swept away. Levi charged again, but this time, he kept an eye on the spurting blood. It swept toward him and the giant and Kai fought. He darted sideways, just ahead of the blood, circling around the side of the giant’s neck. Atop the giant, Kai battled the monster’s arms and legs. Levi slashed at its unprotected throat. It thrashed, and its shoulder shot toward Levi. He hopped and landed on the bony protrusion, and let it carry him toward the giant’s soft throat. Bracing himself, he pointed his blade at the giatn’s neck.

  The blade struck. Blood spurted. This time, Levi cut upward. He tore the flesh with the blade, gashing the giant’s throat wider at the top than at the bottom. The blood rushed upward rather than directly at him. He kept cutting. The Armalgam joined in, and even the Spinal Cord stabbed at the monster’s flesh. The shoulder pushed forward, smashing him against the giant’s neck, but he single-mindedly slashed on. Blood and flesh both flew. The giant roared in pain and yanked its shoulder back. Levi hopped off and kept going. Blood pooled around his ankles. It slicked by in waves, pounding out of the giant to the beat of its heart.

  Abruptly, it whirled. Its whole body turned, and Levi found himself facing a wall of teeth. Kai went flying, tossed in the flip, but Levi had more pressing issues to worry about. Namely, the teeth.

  The giant bit at Levi. There was no time to escape, so he didn’t. Instead, he jumped, pulling all his limbs in close to his core. The mouth shut around him. The teeth slammed shut. But Levi was safe, pressed against its palate and its tongue.

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  He giggled and lifted his swords. “I just had a brain blast.”

  Wielding all the blades he and the Armalgam could handle, he carved into the soft part of the giant’s upper jaw. The monster roared, a rush of fetid breath blowing past Levi. Its tongue pressed at him, trying to push him out, to dislodge the foreign object burrowing into it. Levi cut faster. He kicked off the tongue and crawled into the tunnel he’d carved. The tongue probed after him, but now it couldn’t stop him, only push him on.

  And on he went. Up into the giant’s face. Past the sinuses, ignoring the hideous quantities of mucus that soaked into him as he went. Further and further. The giant screamed. It scratched wildly at its face. Levi couldn’t feel the scratching, but he felt the impacts of the giant’s fingers as they hit. He and the Armalgam kept on. They were an immersion blender in a world of flesh. A whirlwind of blades behind the giant’s face.

  A wall of bone loomed. Levi’s sword scratched against it. He searched around, seeking another way in, then grinned when he couldn’t find one. “You know what this is?”

  The Armalgam shrugged.

  “It’s—” Levi gasped. Air was tight, and smelled thickly of copper—and that was when the giant’s mouth was open. He shook his head and pointed instead. “Hammer it!”

  Handy reared back. Levi and the Armalgam put their all into stabilizing it as it hacked away at the bone. Chips of white rained down on them, falling down the tunnel and landing on the giant’s tongue far below. The giant screamed and pounded at its face. It rolled around, sending Levi against all the walls of his tunnel. Luckily, braced as he was for Handy’s brute force operation, it did little more than elicit a grunt.

  At last, a crack appeared in the bone. Darkness loomed behind. A pale fluid leaked out, dripping over Levi’s long-ruined clothes.

  “Go, go!” Levi egged Handy on. Handy hauled back. With one final, immense strike, it shattered through the bone. A soft, gray, gelatinous mass awaited.

  “Yes, at last. The day I’ve been waiting for! I’m inside your head, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” Levi crooned as he squeezed through the hole. It was small enough he had to temporarily ditch the Armalgam, then turn around to help it through. He stood on the skull, facing the big, gray mass that made up the giant’s thoughts.

  “Hahahaha, big brain. Fuck, I wish I had a quip for this. Not enough oxygen. Alright. Let’s finish it.” He rushed the brain.

  His sword tore into it. Some kind of membrane covered the brain itself, but there was little it could do about a sword. He slashed it into chunks of gelatin, like the least appealing desert at the buffet table. The giant’s struggles slowed.

  Levi lowered his sword. He looked at what he’d wrought with satisfaction. “Yeah. I think I did enough to get a good chunk of—”

  A horrible grating thump interrupted his thoughts. Bright light blazed through as the skull split open. Levi hopped back, dodging the blow. A sword slashed by, and Kai stood there in the opened skull, glaring at him.

  Levi grinned. “Heheh. I think this kill is mine.”

  Kai’s eyes narrowed further.