Cursed Explorer of the Arcana

As intimidating as the bear is, with all the deadly weapons it received from nature, I’m still thankful it’s a beast that found me and not a human. Beasts kill to eat and don’t fight to the death unless there’s no other choice, which is very different from people.

Despite its relatively petite size, the creature is intimidating and even years of hunting around Granhall can’t help slow my racing heart. Especially since there’s no Martha around to save my sorry ass before unleashing another lecture.

I give fleeing another shot, just in case the bear has changed its mind. I’m completely willing to give up on a meal if it means I can avoid a fight I’m not too confident about winning. As a small distraction, I blast a mix of wind and dust into its face before taking off toward the river. If nothing else I can use the water to lose the beast if it were to track me.

To my great disappointment, I’m not the only one determined to get as far from the murderous beast as possible as the fawn bolts past me the next second. The little shit dragged me into this and is now trying to ditch the bear by outrunning me… Unbelievable. It has two and a half legs of advantage on me and maybe the fact it was born for running through the woods but does the small fucker have no shame? Not to mention I was the one who came up with this first.

Of course, the bear doesn’t take kindly to its dinner trying to slip away, be that the original prey or the new addition. I feel an itch at the back of my mind, similar to when someone is watching you behind your back, and so I instinctively glance behind me. Eight vertical lines cut through the dust so sharply that the cloud isn’t even stirred.

Guided by instinct and by this point years of combat experience I crouch and prepare defenses because according to Premonition dodging isn’t an option. I grab one of the fawn’s hind legs and drag it closer to my chest just as two sloped walls of stone spring up from the ground in the shape of a wedge.

Angles, very few people seem to have realized how important angles are when it comes to deflecting an attack.

As the blades of gale meet the walls a small tempest erupts and dies down just as quickly, failing to break through my haphazardly put-up defenses. I don’t waste any time and launch my pointed triangular walls at the bear because now I know, there’s no way out of here without a fight.

The thing that worries me the most right now isn’t the bear actually, but the noise we’re making. I didn’t tiptoe through the woods for hours just to not scare any prey away, oh no, it was to avoid becoming prey.

This at large means I’m restricted to three elements, earth, water and wind. Fire isn’t known for being loud, burning a forest down however… especially when I’m right in the middle of said forest.

The bear slaps one of the stone slabs to pieces and takes the other to its shoulder without suffering any significant damage. Thankfully we’re not playing a board game and there are no rules forcing us to take turns to attack… I’d gladly break those rules anyway.

I follow up by shaping drills of hardened rock with some rotation added to their flight in hopes of at least one of them making it through the absurdly resilient hide of the green scourge.

No, not the hide but the quill-like fur I’m having problems with. Their hardness makes them behave like armor while each individual ‘strand’ is elastic enough to act as a cushion against the impact. It’s terrifyingly effective, and probably a Skill.

It only takes seconds for the bear to be fed up with my feeble attempts at taking its life and shut me down with a roar that’s a little more than noise and stench leaving its maw. A roar is just a very loud noise and noise is the movement of air, which falls firmly under the umbrella of wind magic.

The booming noise shakes me to the core and makes my vision do some funky dancing while approaching the ground rapidly. I can’t even hear my own thoughts yet a part of me, an instinct drilled into me by Martha, yells even louder.

MOVE!

With Elemental Burst I counter the bone-ratting noise with a soundwave of my own to gain clarity for just a second and roll my way to safety. My solution is only temporary, however, it does temporarily save my ass from the three more blades of furious gales.

Thankfully the bear runs out of breath rather quickly and I capitalize on this golden opportunity to silence the creature at least temporarily. Worrying about noise complaints from the neighbors is no longer an issue, we’re fucked one way or the other. At least I don’t need to hold back any longer.

A thread of explosion growing in size runs from my finger all the way to the beast greedily gathering its breath. It moves faster than my eyes can follow and stops only when the bursts of fire reach the back of the creature's gaping mouth. The blast is deafening and the effects are immediate. The lower jaw of the bear is ripped off in its entirety, leaving its throat smoldering and eyes rolled back.

“This is bad.” I mutter, taking a few slow steps backward.

No notifications. It’s still alive.

Should I finish it off? Run? Maybe it’ll give chase… Then again, other beasts are likely already on their way here… Maybe even the shadows-

I hesitate a little too long, just a few seconds, yet long enough for the bear’s hate-filled eyes to snap back at me and strip me of the right of choice. No wind rushes at me this time, no nasty blades, and definitely no more sonic roars, however… there’s a reason the creature survived the explosion.

A spark ignites in its eyes before quickly spreading across the rest of its body, pulsing like a heartbeat and growing in intensity by the second. As frightening as this is I’m more worried about the flora around us, especially because this summer has been disgustingly hot.

Gotta say the ugly thing’s mug looks like it came straight out of a horror story. Blood dripping from where its jaw is supposed to be, eyes glowing red, bright flames making the surroundings look like shadows are creeping up on us…

Before I can even make assumptions about what’s coming my way next the armored fur begins to vibrate on the bear’s back making an awful buzzing noise. Then they erupt. The burst of flames and air guided by the quills launches the bear straight at me like a massive bloodthirsty projectile.

Years of experience and my unparalleled genius work in tandem to come up with a solution yet every plan I come up yields the same result.

Rock spike? No. Slope? No. Dodge? I’ll live but probably still lose a leg. A barrier? Would be nothing more than a bad joke.

The solution turns out to be pretty simple, I don’t even need to do anything really. The small fawn, clearly frightened and without the Journey Guide, bravely bites the edge of my blouse and drags me away, or at least tries to, however, its assistance is all I need to make a full evasion successfully. After all, the bear is not the only one who can use wind and explosion.

Thankfully all I feel is immense heat rushing past me instead of my bones being crushed to smithereens after literally making the air beside me go boom. I don’t get away uninjured though.

The explosion makes me fly past the fawn, bounce off the ground and come to a halt by smashing into a tree. I don’t even have enough air in my lungs to scream as the hit makes the pain in my ribs flare up so I just quietly groan while already pushing myself up to all fours.

The bear also hit a tree. And smashed right through it. That really means something considering I wasn’t even able to cut off a branch. Unlike me, the beast only seems slightly drizzled as the flames on its back are only flickering but when its eyes meet mine…

Rage.

It clearly has an agenda against me after taking its jaw even though I would’ve just simply walked away if it wasn't so greedy. The fire coating its entire body reflects its emotions and lights up even brighter than before, reaching the treetops and making the bushes catch on fire.

This time when its back starts buzzing I’m ready, this time launching myself upwards instead with a gust of wind doing the heavy lifting. This gives me ample time to cook something up while the massive ball of flaming aggression sails past below me. And reveals an obvious yet easy-to-forget weak spot.

Martha’s lessons about soft spots on the body didn’t extend to beasts, mostly because we were supposed to be fighting people for the next three years. But if you think about it… there’s one more part of the body that should be pretty weak, logically speaking.

It’s not on the front…

Thankfully my current state of mind doesn’t allow for any hesitation, and so I act on the idea no matter how disturbing I find it. As my feet touch the ground I grit my teeth and bolt after the bear still blinded by rage and surrounded by seething flames. It still hurts to even walk with my ravaged leg, courtesy of that one last knight, but the rush of the fight, the fear of death, and the defiance in me refusing to die in this irrelevant backwater forest are shouting way louder in my head than any injury.

The bear recovers faster than expected, way before I can get in range, so I throw a few bolts of lightning at its blazing body to keep it down just for a few more seconds. My lightning was never strong enough to outright kill something. Even now the blue streaks of electricity simply disappear among the flames and thick fur yet I get the results I was hoping for.

It collapses back on the ground and my control range finally reaches it.

Without a second thought, I order the ground to harden, to compress, and to shoot up… Like… up there, to the behind.

The sizeable rock spike goes up the bear’s ass like a knife through butter and the moment it pierces through its innard the flames die down for a second and its angry huffs go silent. I can’t even describe the sound it makes a second later. Maybe a mix of pain, indignation, fear, anger… maybe it likes it, who knows.

Either way, I don’t relent and keep pushing the weapon deeper and deeper into the beast’s body while it has no strength to even stand. I’ll repent later, I’ll beg for forgiveness from its ghost but I’m too scared to learn what it’d do if I backed away now.

Soon I learn what it is willing to do to escape this torture. Anything. Blades of wind fly indiscriminately in every direction and it flails its paws, the flames clinging to its body erupt like never before and the strands of fur begin to buzz again.

But there’s something different. The noise they make and the way they stand on end…

A hunch, that’s all it takes for me to throw my advantage away and focus fully on defense. Getting injured during practice is one thing, receiving even a small wound out here could take my life with no healer around.

I only elect to raise a barrier of pure arcane mana, only about as thick as my finger yet large enough to cover my entire body and translucent so I don’t lose sight of the beast. Then another layer just to be sure.

I’m forgetting something.

It’s just me and the bear so… shit, did the fawn escape?

A glance behind me quickly answers that question. The little idiot is hiding in a bush half as big as its tiny brown body with only its head covered by the leaves. Not that they’ll provide any protection.

Should I… no, why would I? But it did save me. But I can’t risk it.

In the end, reason utterly loses this debate as my damn pride grabs the helm and makes me rush over to the defenseless fawn. I could leave it to die, hell I’d even have my dinner secured. And still, it did save my ass. I’d rather deal with a few life-threatening wounds over the guilt any day of the week. And Dad dares tell me the elves have no flaw.

Another significant advantage of the arcane barrier is how easy it is to relocate since the entire thing barely weighs anything. As I sprint toward the fawn the buzzing reaches its crescendo and the now needle-like strands of fur are let fly in every direction.

With a last dive, I make it just in time to pull the little brown baby closer before the first barrage arrives. The flaming needles batter my first barrier before the second tears it to shreds. This comes as no surprise after hearing them whistle past my face, faster than any arrow Victor has ever shot.

Then the third round arrives.

Thankfully Armory of the Arcane has Mana Armor incorporated which allows me to coat my back in an extremely flimsy and laughably poorly constructed set of defensive gear just before the last barrier could shatter.

I curl up even smaller and dig my nails into the soft creature in my embrace as some of the needles make it through my last line of defense waiting for the rain of attacks to abate. The damage I suffer is minimal, and the pain is surprisingly bearable however the knowledge that one of those needles could accidentally dig a bit deeper into me and pierce something important doesn’t let me relax.

Soon the sound of… well, hardened hair hitting materialized mana disappears leaving only me, the fawn trembling in my arms and a very naked bear. Unlike before when it had the spike up its ass, it’s now crawling toward me using only its front paws since its backside doesn’t seem to be working.

Only when I try to get up do the needles really get to work, turning even the smallest movement into an agonizing task.

“You owe me one.” I push the little fawn aside and roll on my stomach.

Pain Tolerance is just barely enough to help me stand and even then I feel the recognizable effects of blood loss taking their toll on my body. However, now it’s my turn.

The canopy above us is now completely engulfed in flames and the circle of lit-up bushes on the edge of this decimated clearing makes me feel like we’re fighting in a dome of smoke and fire. My breath is running short and I can barely see through the smoke and only now do I realize something

Can’t I just escape now?

The answer is probably yes, and any sane person likely would take this chance. Me on the other hand… I still have a turn to take. The bear thinks otherwise and opens its… right, not jaw, anyway it spits fire from its throat. A poor dragon imitation.

Time to humble this beast. Fire needs three things, fuel, heat, and air to burn. So I strip both the flames and the beast itself of the right to breathe.

The red sparks go out in an instant, before even leaving the back of its mouth, and it doesn’t take long for the bear to realize I did much more than deny its attack.

“You picked the wrong opponent pal.” I whisper as the bear keeps on struggling for air.

The act of depriving the space around its head of air is extremely taxing and the only reason I’m able to do it in the first place is because the bear is pretty much crippled.

The seconds slowly tick by as the silent contest of endurance goes on. The bear struggling for air and me fighting the urge to pass out on the ground as my body is begging for relief.

Would I really be willing to die here just to prove I’m better? I’m doing something stupid again… If you want to be so much better Eli, then be smarter.

The voices in my head echo a lot louder now that I’m on my last leg and barely able to form coherent thoughts. They’re good company when brainstorming alone and a terrible distraction when I’m trying to concentrate on a boring task.

Releasing my magic still feels somewhat like conceding defeat but I’m running out of both breath and mana. Another lesson on how stubbornness can kill you.

Even turning around to escape toward the small path of water running nearby almost takes me to the ground. And the next step does it. I can barely see my feet from all the smoke and ash flying in the air yet what I stumbled on was no plant…

“Hey little one, still breathing?” I whisper, checking on the fawn even though my debt is already settled.

Its tiny chest is still rising and falling albeit only sporadically so I muster my remaining strength and throw the little body over my shoulder. It shouldn’t weigh more than any normal dog and yet I feel like the burden on my back is about to crush me any second now.

One step, then another, then a third one…

Gulping down air becomes more and more difficult and as I’m running out of breath an unfamiliar tingling sensation takes over my body. Even with the white crystal flooding me with mana in one hand I can only do so much. Clearing a path is one thing, but gathering air to breathe when there is none… Even mana can’t help there.

Slowly my consciousness begins to fade yet I can still feel my legs taking one sluggish and wobbly step after another. I refuse to die here, not in this forest, not to the flames I could choke with a thought if only I had a little more life in me. This sliver of thought is fueling my seething will that’s now the only thing keeping me in motion but as I’ve demonstrated, fuel and heat are one element too short to light a fire.

In the end, my legs give in. It’s a wonder they carried me this long in the first place. The last things I feel are my legs hitting the ground and a shiver running down my back as something hits my neck.

Something cool.