Sherbie and I are alone on a mountain road with Horse, a Brawny Drake, and the cow(?) that it dropped from the sky. With my body and Horse as cushion, it seems the cow(?) has survived. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for poor Horse. What’s left of my mount serves as a juicy distraction for the hungry drake, giving Sherbie the few seconds he needs to enact his Druid transformation spell.

  And he just leveled up, too. RIP, faithful Horse. I’ll never forget your sacrifice!

  But this distraction could never last very long. By now the drake has caught on to my life stealing aura, and it stops devouring Horse to look up at us with fierce eyes.

  “What’s the plan, Rev?” Sherbie asks me in his comically deep ankylosaurus voice.

  “I’ll pull it’s attacks. When it’s back is turned, attack its wings. No matter what, we can’t let that thing fly out of my aura.”

  I learned my lesson fighting the griffin. So long as a mob has the capability of flight, it can always get away from me, recuperate, and return to redouble its attack efforts. With a mob as powerful as I can assume this one is, we won’t survive a prolonged battle. We have to kill it swiftly. Preferably in the next forty seconds.

  “Now!” I cry, and I begin strafing away from Sherbie, carrying the drake’s attention with me. It blasts me with a breath attack made of flame wreathed earthen balls, which fortunately counts as physical damage, so my shield absorbs a good percentage of it.

  [-84 HP]

  “Come on!” I taunt the drake, giving it a good look at my seriously aggrovating face. “Gimme your best—”

  CHOMP!

  [-90 HP]

  Holy macaroni, that thing’s fast! Like lightning it struck out with its long neck and snapped me up in its jaws.

  CRUNCH!

  [-130 HP]

  Ow ow ow ow ow ow!

  [-134 HP]

  I want to yell for Sherbie’s heals, then I remember there’s nothing he can do for me in his current form. Instead, he’s going to town on the drake’s left wing, shredding the membrane with his flat teeth, ensuring it will be impossible for the beast to fly away.

  Alright, Sherbie!

  [-127 HP]

  Dang. Almost forgot I was dying, over here.

  Right. With no healer, it’s back to basics. Potion time! Glug glug!

  I learned my lesson in previous battles. Upgraded potions that have a cooldown are no match for the low level ones that have no cooldown. Fortunately, I bought a bunch of them from Mad Wim last time I was at the Whale Base (when no one was looking).

  By alternately guzzling higher level potions for bigger heals and infinite smaller ones, somehow I’m still managing to cling to life as the drake makes a good effort at chewing me up like a wad of pink bubble gum.

  Besides the drake’s steadily dropping health bar, I see it’s taking hits from Sherbie as well. Eventually my healer turned dino fighter does enough damage to warrant the drake spitting me out, and turning in the dirt to blast the heavily armored ankylosaurus with a powerful column of flame.

  I watch in a daze as poor Sherbie tries to run away, but the drake stomps on his tail and walks right on top of him, attacking the back of his head. From this angle, the crazy thrusting struggle of two giant lizards one on top of the other, it looks like a vicious mating ritual from some kind of nature program. Then Sherbie jerks around, and I get a glimpse of a certain gleam that’s started in the drake’s eye as a particular instinct takes over.

  Nooo, Sherbie!

  I can’t just lie here and watch my friend be violated!

  With more liquid courage guzzled straight from half a dozen potion bottles, I leap atop the drake’s back and run up its spine. Having no other weapon, I proceed to bash its skull with my shield over and over.

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  “Not today! No eggs! No eggs for you!”

  The drake groans with frustration as I interrupt its private time. Now it’s really angry. With a shake of its giant head, it sends me flying. I barely get a second shield up in time for it to blast me with a blisteringly powerful fire attack, but this time the breath attack is purely elemental so it goes right through my shield.

  [-312 HP]

  Ho boy. I won’t survive many more of those.

  But as it turns out, I don’t have to.

  Just like that, one minute is up. My aura has done its job, and the drake gives a fearful cry as it shudders and collapses atop of Sherbie.

  “Guh!” I hear my friend cry, crushed beneath the weight of the enormous drake.

  “Shake it off, bro,” I say, struggling to my knee and then to my feet, coming over to help shove the beast’s carcass off of my pal. “You can do it!”

  “Gaaah!”

  Somehow, Sherbie manages to extract himself from beneath the drake, and he collapses before me, transforming in the same instant back to his elf form. Thanks to the damage he sustained, his robes are in tatters once again, revealing strategic glimpses of his shimmering pale body. For all the world, the poor guy looks like a beautiful ravaged maiden.

  He moans softly as I roll him to his back and pour a potion into his parted lips. Slowly, his eyelids flutter open.

  “R-Rev?”

  “I’m here, bro. Take it easy.”

  “Is it over?”

  “Yeah. We killed it.”

  “Thank heavens. You know, for a second there, I thought that drake was really going to make me its bit—”

  “Forget it,” I cut him off, shoving another potion into his mouth. “It was just a bad dream.”

  Leaving Sherbie to heal up for now, I go to inspect our prize. If I’m not mistaken, the Brawny Drake should drop a particular bit of loot… Here it is! Lucky!

  [+2 Brawny Drake Eyes

  Crafting item, value: 5 gp]

  These eyes sell for 50 gold on the auction. More importantly, they can be used in armor crafting recipes. It’s true I got a good breastplate from Misa-pyon, but there were other recipes that needed the drake eye. With these I might be able to craft a better shield, or—

  Just then, I look over to see a black and white spotted creature limping towards me. By this time Sherbie is up again and standing at my side and the pair of us exchange glances.

  “I thought he was a cow at first, cuz he’s so fat, but—”

  “That’s no cow.”

  “Yeah,” says Sherbie, eyes gleaming with wonder. “He’s a u-uni-uni-unicor—”

  “A horse with a horn.”

  “Sorry?”

  I indicate to the creature’s stat screen.

  [Horse With a Horn.]

  Sherbie blinks at the stat screen as the animal steps closer to me. He has a strange, almost jaded look in his two toned eyes, the left brown, the other brilliant blue. Of course that could just be because he’s half dead after being carried and dropped by the drake. He’d probably be dead right now if he hadn’t had such a cushy landing. Right on top of me and Horse.

  Feeling a bit sorry for the poor animal, I offer him a potion without really thinking about it. But of course, he has no use for such a thing. Mobs, even mounts, nothing in this game is affected by healing potions except for—

  Glug, glug. The horse with a horn tosses his head back and drinks the potion, then lowers his head and drops the vial on the ground. I stare at him, disbelieving, watching a health bar appear momentarily over his head and fill up slightly. Tentatively, I offer another potion.

  The horse starts to reach for it with his lips, then stumbles so his splotchy, slightly crooked black and white horn stabs straight into my chest.

  [-234 HP]

  OOF!

  “What the hell, bro?!” I look down in dismay at the dent in my breastplate. That could have been seriously bad! If this were real life, I’d have been impaled!

  What’s with this horse, anyway? His mouth has fallen open, and he stares at me as though in disbelief that I could still be alive after a hit like that.

  Man, something about this horse is giving me the creeps. The way he looks at me, those expressive eyes, why, he almost seems…human.

  But, no. He’s just a mount; that’s impossible.

  “Rev, did you read this? It’s a mount, but it’s got stats just like a player! And three times your intelligence!”

  Ok. I have…questions…

  “Well?” Sherbie looks to me eagerly. “Aren’t you gonna claim him?”

  Claim him?

  I look between the fat black and white unicorn-horse with the world weary eyes, and the pancaked, half eaten Horse. It’s true I do need a mount. And between the two of them… Well, I guess I don’t have much of a choice just at the moment. Not if I want to reach Highwall by dark.

  “Alright,” I say, reaching out a tentative hand to pat the side of the animal’s neck. “You can be Horse 2.0.”

  Horse 2.0

  My name was REDACTED.

  I was a 40 year old overweight truck driver who’d never had a girlfriend once in my life. My special skill was holding in poops on 14 hour drives. When I did finally stop to poop, I made a note of it each time in my diary. I was proud to say I’d pooped in 47 out of 49 mainland states, including Alaska. I was only missing Delaware and South Dakota.

  In life, my greatest achievement was surviving the botulism I contracted from eating gas station nachos. Twice.

  After leaving the hospital for the second time I figured I really was unkillable.

  That’s when a cute high school girl ran suddenly in front of my truck. By a miracle I managed to swerve at the last moment, saving her from definitely being reincarnated in an isekai romance fantasy novel. Unfortunately, my truck crashed into a brick wall and I was killed instantly.

  Truck-kun, why you do me like this?

  When I woke up, I was ecstatic to learn I’d reincarnated just like a real webnovel protagonist. Did I come back as a hero with a broken skill? Or a level 999 demon lord? I remember looking around at a beautiful fantasy world, with tiny sparkly fairies all around. Such a peaceful land just waiting to be conquered.

  And me? I felt great. For the first time in years my knees weren’t hurting. But why did it feel like I had four of them?

  Looking down, I panicked at first to see hooves.

  What the heck? What am I?!

  [You are a horse.]

  And that’s the story of how I got reincarnated as a horse in Tetra Chronicles.