I had a terrible dream…
In this dream, many died, most in gruesome ways, all different faces, different names, every one of them, had been me.
Jericho was lynched for suspected demon worship…
Isacc was mutilated by a hoard of undead…
Sommerton was banished from Clover and died in a Grand Mana Zone…
Ferroway got digested by a plant...
Ezekiel got disemboweled...
Geild actually managed It but died in a suicidal attempt to kill Him back…
Patris got pierced through with swords of light…
Marvin was stabbed in the back…
It went on for what seemed like years.
But with each and every death, the one consistent thing, the one pattern that brought it all together.
The glare of those gold tinted, crimson red eyes, molten and cruel, had been there every time, staring into me as if looking at a speck of dust to be cleaned up.
But it wasn't just that they died, no, thei-
- - - -
A loud groan came from my door, followed by the roar of a beast woke me instantly, forcing me to completely disregard the dream I just had to look to the door.
I jolted out of bed, my eyes widening as I saw the shabby wooden frame about to give in, and whatever was on the other side was most certainly not a friend…
I thought I was safe here, so I didn't set up traps on the door, or the floor, or anything, my hunting equipment and anything sharp was in a pile near the door that was about to-
Crash!
The door fell in on itself, revealing the massive muzzle of a Dire Bear, my face went cold at the thought of such a beast.
Before it had the time to get it's bearings I unlatched the window next to my bed, opened it and jumped through into the cold blizzarding exterior of the night…
It was then that I realized that I was in my sleeping clothes, that, while still warm for the insides of a house, quickly became damp with the thigh deep snow, my shoeless feet quickly began screaming in pain at the contact with the frost and ice crystals that rest under the fresh snow…
As if thousands of nails were biting into my legs, the thin pants quickly became damp…
The shock of the temperature difference and the pain of the ice under my feet stunned me, but the roar of a rampaging beast in my house brought me just enough back to reality to understand that I had lost enough time and needed to get to a warm, dry place before I lost both my legs, then my life, to frostbite, or a really big bear…
I tried to move through the deep snow, but even if I could get through the newly fallen snow the old snow that slightly melted then refroze into a layer of sharp ice was absolutely too painful to get through…
The sudden thought of my mana strings brought a desperately needed solution to the problem, I emulated the mostly faded memories of a man with spider powers within me as I latched one of my strings onto one of the branches of a tree near my home.
I then reeled in the string, which since the thing I was reeling was firmly stationary, it ended up dragging my tiny body closer to the tree, which was what I was intending, it took a few moments, but I was now in the air and out of the immediate danger of the snow. My legs were inadvertently shaking from the pain and cold, seems like I would have to move tree from tree to get to town…
A moment of frustration flashed in my mind that I couldn't remember what I was dreaming of, but before I can focus on it for too long another thing catches my attention.
[DING]
A notification from the system…
[Quest board activated: EMERGENCY QUEST, DIRE TROUBLE]
[QUEST OBJECTIVE: Choose. Run? Or fight.
REWARD: random E-rank reward for completion.
SECRET REWARD: learn to endure. There is more to the body than enhancement magic.
SECRET REWARD: complete objective without going down to half mana reserves.
Eat. It's. Heart. Fresh. And. Still. Beating.: ???
[QUEST FAILURE CONDITIONS: USER'S HOME IS DESTROYED BEYOND REPAIR
FAILURE PUNISHMENT: USER GETS EATEN]
I read it and groan in annoyance…
Of course…
- - - -
as the wind pushed through the trees, it caused a piece of ethereal string to sway to it's tune, but it also made the young girl hanging from that string unconsciously start to shiver.
she turned to look at the cabin behind her, and a determined look flashed in her eyes, as she extended one of her arms toward another tree and another string appeared from her palm and wrapped itself around one of the trees branches, and pulled, while letting go of the first.
Though she stopped after that, most likely realizing that the action was too expensive on her mana reserves, so instead, when she cast out her next string, she reeled in the one she had just been using, rather than dispersing it.
she continued these motion, slowly becoming less jerky and awkward with the movements, she found a clearing, and nodded to herself as she began to set the stage for something...
- - - -
As I finished with what I had been doing, I looked to the sky and noticed that the moon had moved a lot, doing the math I realized that had taken way longer than I thought.
I then quickly swung back to my house, the bear was still there, it seemed to be distracted with something inside.
I got it's attention by shooting it's ass with a tiny magic bullet. as it felt the pain, it tried to stand up with it's head still inside, and the cabin groaned, but, luckily it still held on.
the bear decided to just extricate it's head from my door before standing, it was in intimidating three stories of muscle and fat, and from what I've been told about it, supposed to be hibernating...
it roared at me once it noticed me, it's glowing, sickly yellow eyes focused only on me, as it began to rush towards my hanging form. these things are supposedly really fast, so I quickly began to swing to the clearing I had turned into a death trap -well, hopefully, a death trap.
I swung myself onto a high branch, then climbed a tree and flung myself into the clearing just as the beast burst onto the scene too, I cast a line onto some of the other strings I had already made, and swung myself onto them, and carefully brought myself to stand on the massive collection of intersecting strings interweaving at the highest tips of the trees surrounding the clearing.
Fun fact about this little mana formation, most of the inefficiencies came in from the initial manifestation, not lengthening it, in reality, I had only used four strings and just lengthened them to make the illusion that I had made a lot.
This was the first trap, an attempt to make the bear give up and leave, get it to consider me too much trouble for too little food, a sound tactic.
That is, if the bear had been thinking rationally, or at all, really.
But as it stared up at me, all I could see from it's Ki was an overwhelming want to see me dead.
No, humans as a whole, the bloodlust wasn't oriented only at me.
This was behavior exhibit by Beasts from a Beast Tide, creatures that have lost their minds to rage and fear.
But as it started to attempt a jump at me, I pulled one of the strings that was bit further away from the others, and as it wound back into my hand, the forest floor under the bear began to heat up rapidly…
the ground slowly began to glow a dull red from under the snow, as the largest runic array I had ever made came into view.
sixteen lines of power, four basic commands repeated four times, all turning ever so slightly counter clock wise, all funneled through to a control circle, so that it all doesn't explode, four lines of power that all turn ever so slightly clockwise then funnel the power into a square loop, that then intersects with itself in an X shape, in the very center.
this thing has the explosive potential of, well I don't actually know, but I do know that it won't stop absorbing the ambient mana around it until it's been destroyed.
it then converts all of that mana into heat, then it locates the largest sign of life, and then marks them as the target of the spell, after these four commands are executed, it repeats itself.
all the while it will funnel all of that potential heat closer to the very center and will, of course, continue until there is no more mana left, or is destroyed, or the target leaves the area…
anyway, all of that potential heat and locational force is then brought to the center square.
With runes, the more sides a shape has, the more places magic has to escape and go back into nature, this is why circles are the most used, no real places for the mana to escape, the other shapes are used, of course, squares are mostly used like how I am using them, as the point used for expelling of the mana or magically created substance.
all this to say when I pulled that string, a massive pillar of fire expelled from the center of that rune, and then started to curve and twist like a snake and directly into the center of mass of the huge bear.
Before it could really get going and pierce through to the other side, the bear's thrashing at the flame disturbed the rune it was standing enough that it puttered out and died, which was, of course, a part of the design, that if anything stopped working, that it would all stop, as a failsafe so that nothing would explode.
that didn't mean that the ground wasn't still piping hot and steaming though...
with all that prep, the bear collapsed to the ground, but was still breathing, and no blood spilled out, due to the fire searing the deep wound shut...
This was the second trap made to dissuade it, harm it a bit, have its survival instincts overwhelm the fear and get it to run, as much as it was impressively big, it was made on muddy, soft soil, covered in snow, it was bound to get destroyed in seconds.
but although it was still alive and clearly in pain, it was now even more pissed, and it lumbered up onto it's paws, heaving heavily, and for a moment, I hoped it would finally, simply leave. but the blood frenzy it was exuding increased to such a massive extent, that with even my paltry Ki sensing abilities, I could feel even more distinctly, just how much it wished to kill me, not to eat me, just to kill me.
Fun fact about dire bears, they're a species of naturally occurring magical animals, they can't cast spells, but they eat mostly ambient mana to maintain their frames, they also eat huge fish, humans are too small to be calorically viable to hunt.
but I had one more trick up my sleeve before I called it quits and ran...
- - - -
as that little Shepard was thinking to herself, the gargantuan bear leapt up into the air, and reached out jaws first for the girl, only to be rebound and shot back into the ground by the elasticity of the mana strings.
but some of the force the beast put into its jump transferred into the string, making them act more like a weird trampoline then a collection of ridged strings.
as the strings did this, Shepard crouched and then scuttled through the string until she was upside down, and facing the beast, only hanging on with her hands and feet, she began to manipulate the string in such a way as to compound on the already present force, making the violent elasticity even more so.
and just as some of the trees being used began to snap under the extreme movement, she let go, and rocketed herself at the bear...
- - - -
as I did what was most likely the most stupid thing I had ever done, the world around me slowed to a crawl, and I was left a bit confounded at what to do now, I hadn't really thought this far ahead...
just as I was about to begin to berate myself, I felt more than saw, the inner part of my mana form pushing itself to the surface, and condensing with the mana that was already there to form a physical, sort of, mana skin?
ohhh, right, mana skin, I forgot about that, but it seems that my body instinctually knew what needed to be-
but before I was able to think more on the subject, the bullet time ended and the world blurred, and a few seconds I found myself in a very dark, goopy and ungodly smelling place...
- - - - -
yep, that's the end of this chapter, i hope you enjoyed. I really like this one,
remember, if you find any typos or confusing language, just comment about it and ill see what I can do, and happy new year!
Edit: sorry for the mess this chapter is, I was too exhausted after writing it to fix the mistakes hope you all have a geed rest of your day.