"Not this one either."
The words slipped out before I could stop them, carried on a breath that felt too heavy for my lungs. The crystal crumbled in my hand, its glow snuffed out like a dying ember. Another dungeon, another promise broken. The dust flaked away between my fingers, and with it went another sliver of hope.
They call me the strongest man alive. Sometimes I almost laugh when I think about that. Strength doesn't mean much when you can't get what you're fighting for. All the power in the world, and here I am, a fool groping in the dark for a door that won't open.
The portal stood before me, shimmering like a lie. Every dungeon leaves one behind, a swirling window into somewhere else. I've stared into so many of them by now—two hundred and thirty-eight times, if I'm still counting. I tell myself not to hope, that it will be nothing but another nowhere. Still, my chest tightens every time, like a gambler clutching dice. Just once, I think. Just once, let it be home.
But no. The light wavered, showing me nothing I recognized. No rolling fields. No crooked little rooftops. No faces I've been trying so damn hard not to forget.
"On to the next one, I suppose." I forced the words out like they meant nothing. Like I hadn't said them a hundred times already. I picked up my satchel and slung it over my shoulder. The leather's worn thin in places, patched in others, but it's lasted longer than most things in my life.
The stench of blood clung to me, thick and metallic. My hair hung in filthy strands, stiff with sweat and dried gore. Every step echoed wetly through the cavern, squelching against the ruin I'd made. Beasts lay scattered behind me, their bodies split open, shells caved in as if crushed by a giant's fist. My work. Always my work.
I didn't look at them. I never do. If I did, maybe I'd have to admit how easy it's become—killing, walking away, forgetting. It's better to keep moving.
I stooped here and there, prying magic stones from the stronger ones, adding them to my satchel. I left the rest. Too heavy, too many. It's a strange thing—how even in the middle of this madness, I still think about money. Survival costs, after all. Even for the strongest man alive.
"If only I had a bag of holding," I muttered. My voice sounded small, swallowed by the cavern walls. "Would've made things easier. Funds would last longer." Easier, cheaper, less pointless. I sighed, the sound rough in my throat.
The cavern broke open, and sunlight speared my eyes. I squinted hard, raising a hand to block it. The air outside was wet, heavy, sticking to my skin in a way that made me want to turn back underground. "Where was it again?" I murmured, trying to gather my bearings.
It didn't take long to find them—my own tracks, pressed deep into the earth. Broad, heavy prints, already half-hidden by creeping moss and roots. Untouched by man or beast. That's the advantage of going where no one else dares: your footsteps stay waiting for you.
And so ended another attempt. My two hundred and thirty-eighth failure. A hollow record, but a record all the same.
I tightened my grip on the satchel strap and started walking. "Time to see Julius again," I whispered. The words carried no triumph, no relief. Just the weight of inevitability.
And beneath it all, a quieter thought I couldn't shake: How many more before I finally stop believing?
It didn't take me long to reach Alimony. The name still makes me snort, even after all these years. Who names a city Alimony? Every time I say it out loud, I feel like I owe someone money. Then again, this world has never been shy about ridiculous names. There's a city out there called Horses—yes, just Horses. Their food was fantastic. Their sense of humor, less so. Especially after I meddled with their magic tools. Took them months to realize it was me. I'll take the win.
Alimony, though—Alimony sits at the edge of civilization. Beyond its walls lie the wildlands: shifting, untamed, largely unmapped. People have tried, of course. They send out expeditions, hire hunters, scholars, anyone with a death wish. But the land moves under your feet. Forests uproot themselves, rivers vanish, mountains sprout where plains used to be. You can't chart something that doesn't want to be charted.
That's where I come in. My work depends on going where no sane man would. The wildlands cough up rare herbs, metals that hum when you touch them, stones that glow faintly in the dark. I drag them back to civilization, and people like Julius pay dearly for the scraps.
So Alimony became the place I do most of my business. Not a home—never that—but the closest thing I've got. I bring them what no one else can, and in return, they… tolerate me. It's an arrangement.
Not that they hate me, exactly. But being the strongest man alive leaves its mark.
The gates came into view, and right on cue, the guards began their ritual. First the gawking. Then the nervous shifting. And finally, the same old precaution: shutting down the magic before I got close enough to ruin it.
It's always the same sight. One moment the city glows, humming with enchanted lights and buzzing crystal engines. The next, darkness. Silence. My arrival has a way of pulling the plug on everything.
I walked through the gates, and the silence deepened. Every head turned. Old men on porches paused mid-sentence, kids were yanked indoors, shutters drawn tight. It's hard to ignore me when the whole city powers down just because I showed up. To them, I'm less a man than a phenomenon—like a storm front rolling through.
"Hey, John. How's the trip?"
That was Tom, one of the guards. Middle-aged, steady, one of the few people left who can still smile at me without it looking forced.
"Hey, Tom. Still no luck." I grin. "City's still standing, I see. Guess it doesn't fall apart without me. Still underpaid?"
Tom smirks. "Always. Though honestly, they should double my pay just for putting up with you."
I snort. "Bold words from a man who hides behind a spear."
"At least I have one," he shoots back. "What are you packing—bad hair and worse luck?"
"Careful," I say, still grinning. "The bad hair's insured. Costs extra if you damage it."
Tom shakes his head, laughing. "You're ridiculous."
I huffed out something halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "Glad to keep things exciting."
"Someone's gotta. Julius is at the school right now. But he'll be leaving soon. If you hurry, you'll catch him. Before people start thinking the blackout is permanent."
A helpful tip—and also a polite way of saying don't linger. Can't really blame him. No one likes living in a blackout.
Still, I nodded. "Thanks, Tom. See you next time."
He smirked. "Yeah. Try not to bankrupt the city while you're here."
And I moved on, deeper into a city that always shuts itself down just to let me in.
Julius is a strange man. Almost as strange as me. If I'm the archetype of the big, brutish hero with shoulders built for breaking things, then Julius is the genius archetype—the eccentric, head-in-the-clouds, probably-forgets-to-eat scientist type.
As expected, I spotted him right where I thought I would: just leaving the academy, decked out in robes and a wizard hat big enough to double as a tent. In a world where most people dress practical—leather, steel, maybe the occasional cloak—you'd think wizards would all look like that. Nope. Just Julius. And of course, he's wearing them in this weather, which is humid enough to suffocate a fish.
He walked along muttering to himself, scribbling half-thoughts into a notebook. Probably the only man in the entire city who hadn't noticed I'd come back.
"Julius!" I shouted.
That got his attention. Unfortunately, it also got everyone else's. The dirty looks were instant—apparently shouting across crowded streets isn't fashionable. Who knew?
"Oh! It's you!" His face lit up like I'd just handed him a new lab full of sharp toys. Unlike Tom—who can't get rid of me fast enough—Julius practically vibrates with excitement whenever I show up. He loves poking through the strange things I drag back from the wilds… or worse, poking through me. I'm a unique specimen, after all, and he's a researcher to the bone.
If you asked me who my best friend in this world is, I'd say Julius. Which is… depressing, really, considering most of his enthusiasm comes from my value as a lab rat.
But still. I trust him with my life. He's saved it more than once, and I'd be long dead without him. Whatever else he is, eccentric or not, Julius is the reason I'm still here.
Julius found me first, as usual. His eyes darted over my dirt-caked clothes, the blood that wasn't quite all mine, the exhaustion pulling at my posture—and skipped all of it entirely.
"Well?" His grin was wide, eager. "What did you bring me this time?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Hello to you too, Julius. I'm fine, thanks for asking. Only risked life and limb three or four times today."
"Yes, yes," he waved me off, eyes already shining with curiosity. "But the materials?"
I sighed and dropped my satchel onto the stone bench beside us. The straps creaked under its weight before I unfastened the flap and spilled its contents across the surface. Jagged monster ores, warped metals that gleamed with unnatural sheen, a shard that pulsed faintly as though it still had a heartbeat. The kind of things most people wouldn't touch without gloves. Julius's hands twitched as if resisting the urge to dive in headfirst.
"You're unbelievable," I muttered. "One of these days, you might care more about my survival than my loot."
He peered over the collection with childlike delight. "Survival is temporary. Research is eternal."
"Comforting."
Julius was already muttering to himself, cataloguing in rapid bursts of jargon. Then he snapped upright, fixing me with that bright, distracted smile of his. "Come. Let's talk in the lab. This isn't street-corner conversation."
Julius didn't even sit down before his hands were in my satchel. He plucked up a jagged black ore the size of his fist, turned it in the lamplight, and muttered something about "subterranean crystallization under mana stress." He wasn't talking to me—he never was when he got like this.
"So," he said absently, still peering at the stone, "the warp. Did it show anything this time?"
The question hit harder than expected. I leaned against a workbench, arms folded. "No. No Earth. Just… emptiness again."
He set the ore down too carefully, like it might shatter. "Ah. I see." His voice softened in that awkward way of his. "Well. Next time, perhaps. The multiverse is… vast. The chances—"
I gave a hollow laugh. "Next time. Sure. Only problem is that it was the last dungeon on this continent."
"Then we find another continent," Julius said simply, already reaching for a twisted shard of metal that still smelled faintly of ozone. "Or you re-clear some of the old ones. Warps are fickle, unpredictable. The odds don't reset after one failure."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Just means rolling the dice again. Over and over. Maybe for the rest of my life."
For a moment, only the faint bubbling of something in his alchemy set filled the room. Julius cleared his throat and held the shard up to the light, as though studying its secrets might save him from the weight in my voice.
No one knows why dungeons create warps. The scholars spin theories—fractures in space-time torn wider when the dungeon collapses, dimensional pressure bleeding through—but none of it's proven. What we do know: the portals are stable enough to step through. And more often than not, stepping through means never coming back.
A handful of people have returned. Changed. Twisted. Unimaginably powerful. Everyone else is just gone.
Warps are good for one thing, though: alien materials. Strange ores. Impossible metals. Artifacts from other worlds. Julius lives for them. And me? I'm living proof they work. A freak accident spat me out of one. Which is why I keep chasing them. Why I keep gambling. Someday, maybe, one of them leads home.
"You've got two paths," Julius said at last, brushing a streak of soot off his robes as if he'd just made a grand conclusion instead of pawing through my hard-earned loot. He fished a faintly glowing crystal out of the satchel and held it up like a jewel. "One: keep gambling. More dungeons, more warps, roll the dice and pray luck delivers Earth. Of course, we don't know how many dimensions there are. Could be endless. Odds worse than a lottery."
"Fantastic. Really lifting my spirits."
"Or," he pressed on, setting the crystal aside with a grin that was much too bright, "two: stop leaving it to chance. Learn space magic. Get strong enough to tear a hole in reality yourself. Then—add a touch of blood magic. Find your relatives scattered across the infinite worlds, triangulate Earth's location, ba-boom—home sweet home." He clapped his hands together, dusted them off, and went back to rummaging in my satchel like he'd just solved all my problems.
I stared at him. Slowly. "That's a brilliant plan, Julius. Really. Just one problem."
He glanced up, distracted. "Which is?"
"I can't use magic." I said flatly.
Julius, elbow-deep in my satchel, made a dismissive noise. "That's not exactly true." He pulled out a lump of twisted ore that pulsed faintly, like it was breathing, and gave it an absent shake. "You can't manipulate mana, can't sense it, yes. But your body interacts with it. That much is undeniable. You couldn't have gotten this strong otherwise."
I raised an eyebrow. "You saying my workout routine doesn't cut it?"
He ignored me, too busy prodding the ore with a crystal stylus. "You can't throw fireballs, or levitate, or transmute lead into cheese, but you're swimming in mana all the same. It seeps into you, bolsters you. More than it should. And that—" he jabbed the stylus at me without looking up "—is because you're from Earth. A manaless world. You never evolved the proper organ for channeling magic."
He wasn't wrong. It's true—I'm missing a piece.
The locals call it a Nanteon. Closest thing I can compare it to in English is… a liver add-on? Whatever it is, I don't have one. Which means no fireballs, no magic tricks, not even the courtesy of seeing mana. When I first arrived here, I had my share of daydreams about becoming a wizard. Turns out, I'm more like a black hole.
Since I come from a world without mana, I don't have a drop of it myself. Which shouldn't be possible. In this world, everything has mana. Even the rocks have a trace of it. But me? Nothing. A void. A paradox. And paradoxes don't sit well with reality.
So reality cheats. It keeps trying to pour mana into me. But I'm a desert, bone-dry and never satisfied. I drink it in without meaning to, and it never stops.
Not just from the air around me. Not just from a room. From miles. Wherever I go, the land itself starts bleeding magic into me. A whole city can feel it if I stay long enough. Magical lanterns dim. Enchanted wards weaken. Delicate constructs unravel.
That's why every time I walk into a city, they scramble to shut down the magical lamps, the enchanted plumbing, the delicate wards. If they don't, I ruin them. Slowly at first, then catastrophically.
It's also why I can't use magic items. Bags of holding? Forget it. They collapse if I so much as brush against them. Magic armor? Magic weapons? Wasted coin. They fizzle out in my hands, drain to nothing. Doesn't matter, though—my fists are sturdier than any blade I've seen.
The downside? Without enchanted armor, I tend to end up with… wardrobe malfunctions. Best case, I look like a vagrant. Worst case, I'm bare-ass naked by the time the fight's done. My last run through Eros Dungeon was one of the better ones, and I still walked out looking like I'd lost a drunken bet with a tailor.
Julius finally set down the ore, nodding to himself, and gave me that earnest, scholarly look of his. "So you see, John, you're not manaless. You're mana-hungry. You don't need to learn magic—you already are magic, in a sense."
"Fantastic," I muttered. "I'm a walking magical famine. Every wizard's worst nightmare, but sure, let's put that on a résumé."
He grinned faintly, like that was exactly what he'd meant.
Julius set down the lump of monster ore he'd been prodding and clapped his hands together, as though the answer had just been hiding behind his back the whole time.
"The question now," he said, "is how to use that fact to your advantage. You, a Nanteon-less freak of nature—"
"Thanks," I muttered.
"—unable to manipulate mana. Or rather, unable to consciously manipulate it." He waved a hand. "The answer is simple: you can't. Not directly. But what if you didn't have to? What if something else manipulated the mana for you?"
I frowned. "You're talking about… tools?"
Julius reached into a drawer and pulled out a thin, ordinary-looking wand, its surface etched with faint spirals of runes. He brandished it like a conductor's baton.
"Enter the humble magic tool. This wand, for example, can cast fireball if you pump mana into it. Anyone can do it. Well—" he shot me a knowing glance, "anyone except you."
I leaned back against the cluttered workbench. "And here I thought you were building to a compliment."
"But!" Julius jabbed the wand toward me. "You don't need to. Mana pours into you constantly, like a river into a basin. What if we reversed the runes? Instead of you pushing mana into the wand, the world pushes mana into it—through you. You become the anchor, and the wand the outlet."
I whistled low. "Godsdamn, Julius. You really are a genius."
He waved me off. "Don't congratulate me yet. There are… problems."
"Of course there are."
He set the wand back down and steepled his fingers. "Problem number one: every magic tool you touch destroys itself. Your little mana-hunger eats them alive. Which means no external items. If we want this to work, the runes can't be on a wand, or a sword, or a staff."
I narrowed my eyes. "Where, then?"
"On you," Julius said matter-of-factly. "Your body must become the magic item. Engrave the runes into your skin, your flesh. Make you the tool."
I blinked. "Tattoo wizardry?"
"Not unheard of," Julius said with a shrug. "There are records. Some cultures did it long ago. Warriors etched runes across their skin, burning spells into their very bodies. They were powerful—walking arsenals, living wards. But…" He hesitated, searching for the right words. "It fell out of favor for a reason."
I folded my arms. "Go on."
"First," he ticked off a finger, "a person only has so much skin. At some point, you simply run out of room. You'll never be as versatile as a traditional mage who can study and cast any spell. You'll be limited to what your body can hold."
"Sounds like a bad tattoo sleeve," I said.
Julius didn't even smile. "Second, the interference. Rune magic twists the body's flow. Once your skin is carved full of them, you'll never be able to use traditional casting—even if we somehow found a way for you to grow a Nanteon. You'd be locked into the runes you chose."
"Better make them good ones, then."
"Third—and this is where it gets tricky—materials. Carving runes into a blade or staff is expensive enough. Carving them into flesh? That's another beast entirely. You can't afford mistakes. On a staff, you throw away the wood. On a body—" He paused, glanced at me, and let the silence finish the thought.
I grimaced.
"And it can't be just any material," Julius pressed on. "The substance used has to adapt to your body. To your bloodline, your physique. And you, John…" He spread his hands, as though displaying me like a rare exhibit. "…you're unique. The only one of your kind in this world. Which means no precedent, no guaranteed compatibility. We'd be venturing blind."
I let out a low breath. "So even if we found something that worked—"
"—the stronger you are, the stronger the material must be," Julius finished. "For me, perhaps the hide of a forest serpent would suffice. But for you…" He shook his head, eyes flicking with something between awe and dread. "You're not ordinary. You're the strongest person in the world. Which means the material needed to etch a rune into you would have to be equally strong. Stronger, even."
He leaned back in his chair, exhausted by his own explanation, and gave me a tight smile. "So yes. There's a path forward. But it will be painful, dangerous, ruinously expensive, and quite possibly impossible."
I gave a short laugh. "In other words, business as usual."
And that's how I found myself trudging back into the wildlands again. Julius paid me for the haul, of course—monster ore, metals, and whatever other shiny nightmares I scraped together—but payment in hand just meant it was time for the next job. Lucky me. I'm sure the people of Alimony were quietly grateful. Less broken magic lamps, fewer wards shorting out, fewer nobles whispering about the strange man who ruins enchantments simply by existing. I could almost hear the collective sigh of relief as the city gates closed behind me.
The task was simple on paper: find the biggest, meanest thing wandering the wastes, and beat it to death. The catch? It couldn't be just any oversized bastard. It had to be something with a shot at compatibility with me. Julius and I had already run tests back at his lab—messy, hilarious, and occasionally painful tests—and we'd managed to narrow down the list. Snakes, birds, and a decent chunk of mammals showed promise. Most likely more too, but testing wasn't exactly thorough when half of it involved "poke John with this thing and see what happens."
But that wasn't good enough. My target wasn't just muscle—it needed to have a whiff of space magic about it. No small order. Which brings me to my first candidate: the mighty Zoompony.
Yes, that's the actual name. Don't blame me, I didn't name it. Scholars call it something like Equus Aetheris or Spatial Galloper if they're trying to sound important, but everyone else? Zoompony. Because one second it's in front of you, and the next second it's galloping out of reality itself. They bend space when they run, tunneling through it so predators lose track and trip over themselves. If, by some miracle, you manage to catch one, they've got a kick that'll put even elite adventurers straight to bed.
I've never hunted one before. No one on this continent has, not according to the records. Which is both encouraging and discouraging, depending on how much you enjoy being a pioneer in bad decisions.
And just to be clear—I don't normally kill animals for fun. My job's usually dungeons: kill the monsters, clear the way, get the loot, rinse and repeat. But Zoomponies don't do dungeons. They like the flatter parts of the wildlands, wide stretches where there's enough room to run fast enough to mock physics. That's where I'd have to go, and that's where I was headed now.
I noticed the first signs of the Zoomponies on the third day. Crouched low, I studied the ground. Julius had given me a few scraps of advice before I left—half theories, half rambling lectures—but none of it really mattered out here. According to him, Zoomponies bent space not only when they ran, but even when they grazed, unintentionally warping the terrain around them. Which meant their tracks wouldn't always… line up.
I'm not a hunter by trade. My usual style of killing is to bulldoze through whatever stands in my way. In the dungeon, that's simple—everything there already wants to kill you. Out here? Trickier. Most things run first. If not, they try intimidation. Still, you live long enough in the wildlands, you pick up some tricks.
But the Zoompony isn't a normal animal. It's something else.
I followed the warped tracks for hours until I found a fresh patch. Hoofprints, broken grass… and then nothing. A gap of fifteen paces before the trail picked up again. Like the beast had blinked out of existence and reappeared.
The wildlands are full of freakish things, but even here, space manipulators are rare. I'd bet my left ball this was the Zoompony.
As I pushed further, I realized it wasn't a Zoompony. It was Zoomponies—plural. A whole herd. A dozen lean, gray horses with shimmering manes, their hair rippling like light tripping over itself. Every flick of their tails left the air wrinkled like disturbed water. They looked mean. They looked untouchable.
Perfect. I just needed one.
I crept closer, slow and measured. A straight chase was suicidal. No matter how fast I was—and I was fast—Zoomponies had the cheat code of bending space itself.
Perhaps I was distracted by monologuing internally, but I stepped on a small stick and made a crack like a typical horror movie extra.
Every head snapped up. Ears twitching, eyes wide.
Then they moved.
The world warped with the herd. One heartbeat they stood in front of me, the next they tunneled sideways, fifty yards off, galloping like a streak of light. The ground rippled under their hooves, grass bending in waves as though the land itself bent to carry it forward. Damn. They weren't just fast, they moved like a hive mind.
I ran.
As I pushed forward, it hit me—I wasn't going to catch them like this. The herd was pulling ahead, their warped space stretching the horizon between us. They weren't just fast—they were impossibly, unfairly fast. If I kept holding back, I'd lose them.
I slammed a foot into the earth, and the world shattered. The ground buckled beneath me, air detonated outward in a deafening crack, a sonic boom rolling across the wildlands for miles. Trees snapped like twigs, flocks of birds scattered in blind panic.
My vision blurred from the sheer force of acceleration—but I was gaining. The shimmer of their manes flickered in my sight, their tails whipping like silver flames.
Almost there.
Just as I was about to snag the tail of the last horse, the herd decided to stop playing nice. No warning, no flare—just raw acceleration. They blurred, and the world bent with them. Space twisted harder, light itself staggering to keep up. The air around their bodies shimmered like molten glass, dizzying, lethal. I caught glimpses of unlucky beasts in their path, shredded into ribbons by the warped edges of reality. Even the ground writhed, scarred into a jagged wound stretching across the wildlands.
Fine. Two can play that game.
I don't usually push this far. There's no point in the dungeon—everything dies fast enough, and the collateral damage isn't worth it. But here? Now? I needed more. The blood in my legs pumped, and the world itself seemed to lean under me.
Their stride was magic—graceful, elegant, like space itself was a loyal servant folding to carry them forward. Mine was the opposite. I didn't bend space. I broke it.
Air slammed against me in layers, piling up like stone walls. The resistance screamed for me to stop. I didn't. I tore through. Every step cracked the earth like thunder, each push detonating the air into flame.
And then—suddenly—I wasn't behind them anymore. I was in front.
Their stride is graceful, literally magical. Space bent around them like clay. Me? I bruteforced through it. Air resistance screamed, begging for me to stop, layers of air folded in front of me, hitting me like a wall.
The wall gave way.
The ground cracked with my step, and the air ignited under the friction of my speed. And then—suddenly—I wasn't behind them anymore. I was in front.
I threw a punch.
The ground detonated. Forests that had stood longer than my grandfather crumbled to ash from the shockwave alone. And yet—the Zoompony in front of me stood untouched. Not a scratch. That… was new.
I swung again. Same result. Another punch, another eruption, and the landscape around us was unrecognizable—no more lush plains, just shattered earth and burning craters. Still, the beast stared back, unbroken.
It tried to bolt, space rippling around its body. Not this time. I was faster now, faster than its warped tricks. The stallion hesitated, and I could almost see the realization settle in its alien eyes—running was useless. It would have to fight. Fair enough. Numbers were on their side anyway—more than a dozen against one. And worse, my fists couldn't touch them.
This was the part I hated about the weird magic types. They couldn't kill me, but I couldn't put them down either. Their reality warping little cheats always slipped past brute force.
The lead stallion came first, hooves a blur, and I met it with a right hook meant to crater a mountain.
But the strike never landed. Space folded. My arm tore straight through a pocket of nothing, redirected clean away. The stallion let out a shrill, mocking laugh before slamming both hooves into my chest. The world spun as I rocketed back, blood spraying from my lips.
I staggered upright, spitting red into the dirt. "Oh, so that's the trick. That's just—so damn annoying."
The herd circled now, their bodies shimmering like heat mirages, the world itself bending at their command. Every swing I threw ripped trenches into the plains, shockwaves flattening the horizon—yet every blow bent away harmlessly, deflected by their warped space. They weren't fighting me. They were making me fight the world.
A mare slipped in close and bucked me across the face. My jaw tore loose. I spat teeth, caught my jawbone in my hand, shoved it back into place.
"Fuuuck," I rasped. "You guys hit harder than my dad."
I charged again, faster. So fast the air screamed, ignited, turned the battlefield into a furnace. The herd blurred, their warped tunnels scrambling my path, spitting me out yards away from my target. I laughed through the smoke.
"Running outta road, ponies! I can do this ALL. DAY."
And that was the plan. Attrition. Smash, bleed, heal, repeat. Their space-bending nonsense couldn't be infinite—it had to burn mana. And me? I was a bottomless pit.
See, I wasn't just strong. The magic in these lands made me better. Stronger every fight. Faster every breath. My thoughts ran clean as a machine, my eyes cut through smoke and distortion, my reflexes like lightning. I am Captain America's wet dream.
And my healing?
I still haven't found the ceiling for that one.
Hooves crushed my ribs, shattered my arms, cracked my skull. I healed. Again. Again. And again. My body was nothing but broken meat stitched together by will.
And still, I pressed forward.
The thing about me? I don't just hit hard. I eat magic.
Each time I swung, each time their warped space bent my blow away, I could feel the strain. The air didn't twist quite as smoothly. The tunnels bent jagged, unstable. Their own magic was unraveling.
Each swing strained their warps. Each dodge stuttered more jagged than the last. The tunnels faltered. The herd sweated blood in effort. Hours bled into dusk. Still I hit. Still they struck me down. Still I rose.
Something had to give.
The stallion came again, bending space to deflect me. My fist skidded along the distortion—then, like the straw that broke the camel's back, my fist tore straight through it. The warped air screamed, shattered like glass. My knuckles smashed into his chest, and the shockwave cratered the plain.
He coughed blood and collapsed, legs twitching.
I stood over him, grinning wild, blood dripping down my chin. "One down."
The herd shrieked as one and surged around me, panic laced with fury. Maybe none of them had ever seen one of their own fall. Why would they? They were untouchable—apex by design. Space-benders. Herd-minders. Lightning on four legs. Evolution's perfect answer to survival.
Unfortunately for them, they'd crossed paths with a man too stubborn to die—too desperate to get home.
The herd bent, twisted, warped—still redirecting some blows, but not all. Every second near me drained them. Every breath, every heartbeat, I was stripping their defenses bare.
And when the warping finally sputtered out entirely, the battle became slaughter.
One punch leveled three at once, shockwaves turning the ground into hellfire. Another kick sent a mare sailing through broken space, her body folding on impact.
The rest fought on, but their tricks were gone. They only had speed and hooves left—and I had fists that cracked the world.
I roared, every strike tearing the battlefield wider, deeper, blood and dirt raining. "SPACE AIN'T ENOUGH TO SAVE YOU! YOU AIN'T GOT SHIT ON MY LITTLE PONY!"
One by one, they fell.
Until at last, the herd broke.
The survivors limped, panicked, their warped tunnels shattered beyond repair. They turned tail, fleeing into the wilds. It doesn't matter. I got what I wanted. What I had was enough.
I stood in the smoking ruin, bones snapping back into place, muscles knitting, blood steaming off me like mist. I dragged a hand across my face, smearing gore into a grin.
"Time to see Julius again."