Stumbling Forward

Deeper into the forest about twenty meters away was something like a boar from first glance. Though as I froze staring at its angry tusks and razor mane of hair, I saw it had a snake tail. “A chimera?! This is not what I’m supposed to be fighting right now!” The more of it that became visible I saw scales along its torso and horns dotted the spine. This was no animal, if it was I was going to be screwed.

I didn’t move, still too scared to budge. This was the sort of thing I feared. It was going to kill me. My leather and cloth gear wasn’t going to do crap against that thing. A single horn could go straight through my arm or even my chest. And the snake seemed to have seen me now with it staring at me with an extra pair of eyes.

A snapping hiss from the snake got my body finally moving. That was apparently a mistake. The moment that I bolted away from the beast it saw that as a signal to charge. It covered the distance far faster than I could manage. Flashes of my death went through my mind along with if this world was realistic or gamified. I wanted the latter badly. The worst I’ve suffered in life so far was cutting myself with a kitchen knife. Why did I come outside? The King was right.

The moment when I couldn’t dodge, flames of pain clawed up my leg. Everything went spinning. Panic couldn’t even dig into me before the ground slammed all of the air out of my lungs. The world became fuzzy and rang in my head. If the creature was still around I couldn’t tell. All that I could feel was the radiating heat stabbing into my thigh.

Seconds or minutes, I didn’t know, passed in a haze. The pain flashed in my head. It felt like my face was on fire. I gasped and bit through the intensity. This was like nothing I’ve ever felt. Was this enough to kill me?

My body rolled over slowly in fits. If I was still alive I wanted to live! I forced my eyes to open. Where was that beast?

Tilting my head back, I finally saw the thing. It stared at me. A digging hoof in the dirt looked almost frustrated. What because I was too easy of a kill? “If I was Dragon Knight you wouldn’t be looking so good…whatever the hell it can do.”

Catching a bit of light, but mostly a reflection of the forest, I saw my remaining ball just out of reach. It must have slipped from my hand when the thing rammed me. I clawed my hand at the dirt to reach out for the ball. “Dammit…”

The movement triggered the monster again. I guess it wanted to finish me off. Wincing through the flood of heat and pain, I forced myself to roll out of the way. It was just in time, but they also kicked the metal orb down to my leg.

Even though the pain was blinding, I moved to grab it up. A wash of new needles and stabbing ripped through my lower body. How much had it hurt me? But I didn’t care at the moment. I just need to focus for an instant. My eyes locked in on the boar snake hybrid as sweat covered my hand. “Lunar Ray!”

Nothing.

“Dammit, I need the other piece. Where the hell is it?!” I squeezed my hand on the singular sphere wishing that I had found the other one when I had the chance. It needed to be with me. But it was nowhere close.

A strange thrumming came from my hand. I let my hand open to see what it was doing. It started to float in my palm like I had seen it do when casting. Then I heard something disturb the forest. It wasn’t the boar, but a flash of something I couldn’t see. To my shock, the second ball flew back to my hand in a wide arc, nearly hitting me in the process. It looped around again, getting tighter until it orbited the first like before. Were they linked?

The monster snorted at me. It didn’t matter. I had what I needed. “Please be enough… Lunar Ray!” Bright colors and shapes carved through the air around the weapon as they spun. Then the chimeric creature began charging and I remembered the cast time. It wasn’t immediate and I couldn’t remember how long it took. But there was no moving my body. Not now. I just prayed.

It was within a meter when light broke through the dim forest canopy. Burning through fur and leaves, it struck the beast in the chest. I wasn’t sure if it was the pain or the strike, but it threw it off enough to smash into a tree and bounce off that still in motion.

Blood dripped over the ground. I flipped over on my back trying to see better where it went. “Was that enough?” My weapon still spun hovering like it wanted another command. But I could still see the beast moving. It looked sluggish if that counted for anything. My spell injured it, which pleased me, but turning awoke me to a new world of pain coursing through my leg.

Frantically I went through the menu to my abilities. I shoved my finger through the transparent screen trying to hit ‘Gracious Exchange’. I wish I had tested it before, but I didn’t think I’d be fighting now, dammit!

‘Gracious Tether has been applied to you.’

Something that just worked. “Thank you… Lunar Ray…” The light show grew once more with the boar creature still trying to right itself from my previous attack. A second ray cleanly hit and a warm glow of gold and silver danced over my body. The pain wasn’t gone, but it sort of felt like I took some painkillers to numb it. It let me stand up, though I think that was a mistake as the medicine wasn’t enough to wipe out the new wave that crashed upon me. I fell back against the tree.

But the monster still wasn’t down. “How much can you take? But I am a healer…” I didn’t know if it was angry or just worked through the injuries, but it was charging again. Dammit. At this range I didn’t have enough time to cast another spell. I needed to run, but that was impossible.

In frustration, I threw out my arm holding the spheres, but it didn’t leave this time. At least, in how I expected. The fixed orb stayed, but the orbiting one went flying or maybe arcing since it wasn’t going in the line that I threw. It flew in a wide circular path away from me straight for the boar.

An unsettling crack echoed as I saw it slam straight into its head. It remained stuck there as the beast staggered and tripped. Their legs broke back as it crashed head and tusks into the dirt. The whole body slid towards me, the weight carrying it through until halting less than a meter away from my feet. Its snake tail still whipped out at me, but with an unmoving body it just flailed in annoyance.

Slowly, it stopped moving as well until finally everything went silent. I exhaled heavily.

A loud congratulatory jingle rang in my head for a few seconds making me fall over. I looked around trying to see if yet another strange monster appeared, but rather I saw text pop up.

‘Level up!’