I’ve only just equipped this scale to my back, and it’s already protecting me from several nasty bites, but it’s far too heavy. When I spin for any given thrust to stab my attackers, I’m slowed as if using an oar that’s larger than my entire body. I pant in frustration, and mild exhaustion, still determined to train myself physically, rather than relying on my space skill. The space skill is so odd to me, nearly magical.

As I swish and sway in the water, my left arm rubs against the sharp edge of the scale attached to my back, gashing it thoroughly, releasing a cloudy puff of blood into the water. Far more blood than any of the nicks or scratches I’d previously gotten. This has two surprising effects, one, many of the little fish back away and swim towards the depths, and two, a much, much larger fish than any I’ve faced appears. It looks like it might be amphibious. If I had to describe it, I’d probably say it looked like an angry vampiric mud guppy, or some sort of bipedal coelacanth. Perhaps a short-necked plesiosaur. Regardless, it’s frightening, and utterly massive.

A bit terrified by the prospect of fighting something so large while weighed down in the water, I hustle to clamber out of the pond. Panting for breath, I unequip my armor back to my inventory only momentarily to remove the scale that gashed open my arm. Then I summon my armor back from my inventory once my space magic utilizes my crafting skill to disassemble that scale.

As I feared, Vampguppy is amphibious. It rears out of the water and lashes out at the spot I was standing in. The spot I would still be in, if Lil, my brand new little dragon buddy, hadn’t just tackled me to the side.

Lil, squishing their spherical form and bobbing side to side, calls out excitedly, worriedly, “I’m here, partner, what do you need me to do?”

I barely manage to answer, “I think we have to defeat it, I’m scared, I don’t know how to beat something that big.”

“Then we’ll do it together!” The way Lil says together sounds like it implies some special bond.

“Y-yeah, together!” Curiously, nervously I manage to agree.

In my mind, I’m imagining Lilagni sort of eating me or forming around me, so that I get their lizard-like tail, and fangs, and fire breath. Their form is incredibly pliable, stretchy and compressable, like some sort of rubber, despite the resilience of their red draconic scales. What actually happens is they leap atop my head, then perch there. Bunched down and hanging tightly, Lil breathes fire on occasion as I weave around Vampguppy. Vampguppy actually has a menu box pop up with Vampguppy as a title, and a big green bar with a faded yellow bar and a faded red bar underneath them.

It seems important creatures are named by the first person that thinks to address them by something. I feel slightly foolish naming it something as childish as Vampguppy. This is probably going to end up being a habit with me, isn’t it? Yeah, somehow, despite having only a short life of memories, I’m pretty sure that sounds a lot like me. I should probably stop being my normal, easily-distracted self, and start trying to be some sort of focused warrior. I need a strategy to defeat this.

Before I have too long to think about how to fight such a thing, Vampguppy rears back and lunges, its maw wide open, encompassing me halfway from my head down my torso. Its fangs sink into my waist. VG draws its breath heavily, trying to swallow me, and Lilagni in the process. I can feel Lil’s spherical form struggling to grip the top of my head, and their tail cautiously gripping my neck and one armpit. They don’t want to accidentally suffocate me while gripping for dear life.

Thinking quickly, I combine vines and leaves to make a sort of strapped hat with armpit harness in my inventory. I place it on my head with spatial inventory management magic. This has two effects, one, Lil is no longer in danger of being swallowed as they’re completely covered in my new hat. Two, I think the leaves tickle Vampguppy or something. VG here just lets loose the oddest sound. I’d guess it was some sort of sneeze or a cough, terribly odd for an otherwise water-lunged creature.

The coughing fit was enough of a distraction to slip out from Vampguppy’s maw, and unequip the hat. With the hat off, Lil can start breathing fire without lighting both of us up. Though they may be immune to their own fire, or fire and heat in general. Lil decides to flank VG with me, so I circle around to Vampguppy’s side and begin striking at it with my spear.

As I’d feared, I can’t even penetrate its slimy leathery hide. The menu box displaying Vampguppy’s name and bars now also contains a notification icon that looks like fangs with a drop of blood dripping off of them. Is it somehow empowered after sinking its fangs into me? Did it drink my blood? I’m the only thing that bleeds in the universe, as far as I can tell, and this jerk has a skill related to drinking blood? The fanged icon is slightly faded however, while an icon with a mote of flame is slightly brighter. Distracted by these thoughts, I don’t notice Vampguppy’s massive tail swinging wide, striking me on the right side, bowling me over. I feel my right ribs crack and fracture with a loud snap. The pain is nearly unbearable.

Lil, on the other side of Vampguppy, sounds to be faring better, as I struggle from my hands and knees, back up to my feet. Lil’s flaming breaths sound as if they’re drying out and cracking Vampguppy’s right flank. The burns seem to anger it, or at least annoy it greatly, as it turns its full attention on Lil. I hear a pained yelp from Lil’s textbox as Vampguppy lays into them with an assault. Trying to strike back to regain Vampguppy’s attention with all my might, I fail miserably. Lil now sounds as if they’re experiencing incredible pain quite similar to what I’m currently enjoying, well, suffering. I can’t do anything with my current tiny form.

Giving up on conventional combat, I withdraw my equipment to my inventory, and combine nearly all the materials in my inventory onto my spear, to give it as much mass as possible, my blue bar drops heavily as I do this. I try to focus my thoughts, clear my mind and calm my breathing. I imagine this new weighted spear being expelled at the highest velocity I can muster. My space magic, or skill, whatever it is, kicks in and produces the desired effect, a spear that’s now twice as tall as me, wrapped in leaves and scales and sap and bark, with a large wolflike fang and several smaller fishlike fangs. This new spear rockets out from the air next to me into Vampguppy’s side. For a moment, everything seems to pause, hopefully meaning that its resolution reaches the vanishing point for it to derez, or something like that. I don’t know why I called it that, but I think that’s what Lil would call it anyway. There’s a weird time dilation when large things derez, and I’m hoping our current moment is exactly that.

Vampguppy’s green bar drops, and drops, and drops, until suddenly it’s empty. I wait with bated breath, hoping that it shatters into polygons like most other things when derezzing, but the green bar fades into the background, and the yellow bar brightens as Vampguppy roars in anger. I definitely have its attention now. Worse, I’ve got the mana or blue bar, whatever it is, to do that only one more time. I tentatively, timidly, trepidatiously try to pick up the spear as it drops from Vampguppy’s flank.

Vampguppy spins like a whirlwind, Lil gets flung off into the jungle nearby, high into the trees. Unluckily for Lil, there are no low branches to break their fall. They bounce from tree to tree until they impact the earth with a frighteningly heavy thud. My poor unlucky buddy. I hope they’re as resilient as they appear to be, or preferably moreso, since their defensive skills are higher than mine.

Unlucky me, I’m flung into the deep end of the pond. I cry out with fear as I begin to try to swim, or rather flail, my way back to the shore. As I reach the edge of the deep end of the pond however, Vampguppy leaps into it, and begins to swim a swift circle, creating a vortex. As VG creates this vortex, a light-blue, shimmery, translucent wall appears around the edges of the pond. Please don’t be what I think you are.

Terrified, and panicking, I launch my weighted spear again. This time I see it pierce deeply into Vampguppy as their yellow bar depletes, down, down, almost there. Oh no, it wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t it enough this time? Oh right, Lil hasn’t had any time to weaken it, it must have been a fraction weaker when I first hit it.

My blue bar bottoms out, and I can’t even call my spear back to me, I have to dive underwater to even retrieve it. Worse yet, Vampguppy’s vortex becomes stronger with their circular swimming. Even worse, I can barely carry the spear along while swimming, it’s so heavy now with all of the material sapped and glued and tied onto it.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Loathing to do it, I have to let my spear, and basically all the material I’ve collected in my short life, get carried away in the vortex. At this point I’m simply hoping it doesn’t spin around to stab me in the back while I’m treading water. I can vaguely see Lil on their back, well, whatever passes for a back on a spherical creature whose only bodyparts are their face and tail. Regardless, they lay there, their eyes like spirals, their tongue hanging out, hopefully just temporarily knocked out, at the edge of the tree-line.

Maybe if Vampguppy eats me, Lil can still wake up in time to get away. I’m sorry Lil, I didn’t know this would happen. Somehow, this still isn’t as scary as when I think of Day One… With probably the worst possible timing, my vision narrows and my pulse pounds into my ears, my head lolls swimmingly and I can’t catch my breath as panic overtakes me, thinking about the events and nightmares of Day One. In my narrow tunnel of vision, I can barely make out that it seems Vampguppy is happy with their vortex. Or at least VG is finished with it, as they’re now headed straight for me.

My panic hammers home, leaving my heart violently pulsing, sending my tinnitus screaming into my ears. My vision tunnels, then focuses and loses focuses repeatedly in turn as I struggle against the panic attack. The trauma of Day One grips me like an icy vice about my innards. I awoke, existing with almost nothing other than the trees. The first and only creature I met that day leapt at and tried to devour me. Worse, it had an innocent spherical appearance, no hints of the terrifying fanged maw it could open its front to become. Now my nightmares, flashbacks, and hallucinations are filled with every surface imaginable opening into gaping maws, ready to eviscerate me and rend me apart.

Suddenly, perhaps luckily, a thing I was fearing would happen to me, happens to Vampguppy. My spear, swirling along in the vortex, happens to jab and scrape along Vampguppy’s underbelly. Time seems to slow momentarily, allowing my sanity further moments to reclaim itself from the terror hounding it. My eyes shoot wide open, snapping my thoughts back to the present. Or maybe it’s the strange pause in time that gives me enough time to recover from my panic. As Vampguppy’s yellow bar fades to the back their red bar brightens and takes the forefront.

Vampguppy seems truly ludicrously enraged now. I’m out of inventory blue bar stuff, mana, energy, whatever, out of options, and out of luck. It’s unlikely my spear will get carried around enough times for Vampguppy to remain careless enough to be finished off. Vampguppy’s dorsal fin, or something along those lines, grows taller, its points seeming spikier and its webbing seems a sturdier sort of leathery than moments prior. VG’s fin almost seems as if it’s crackling with power, maybe green lightning, maybe a phosphorescent venom coursing through its veins. Lil said my soul is green right? Would that do anything for me? If I can juice up and return to full magical mana energy, I might stand a chance. I could reclaim my spear and drive it viciously from my inventory into Vampguppy’s cranium.

Having nearly resigned myself to being eaten, I decide to swim directly at Vampguppy’s head, and try to roll around its bite as it lunges for me. When it’s passing next to me, I grip the top of its slippery head, and shimmy my way along its back to its dorsal fin. This creature is utterly massive, it has to be over twelve meters long. When I get to the dorsal fin, it feels like a big mistake. Even holding on to the dorsal fin hurts. My hands are on fire, as well as part of my face, neck, and torso that I use to grip the fin from the front for dear life. I think the green lightning energy is some sort of, I don’t know, nematocyst swarm. It’s what I’d call a previously unimaginable pain to feel the energy dancing about me.

At this point, I’m simply kicking Vampguppy’s head with my pitiful little legs. I kick while holding on to the energized dorsal fin that’s either toxic or shocking, I can’t really tell which. Vampguppy continues to try to buck me. When that doesn’t work, VG curls into a horizontal circle, and smashes its own massive tailfin against me momentarily pinning me to its dorsal fin during each strike. I nearly black out from the force of the impacts, or maybe just the total strain across the events of the fight so far. Just then, a box pops into view, something along the lines of breaking limits. I emphatically agree to the box. I don’t really care what it does right now if it might give me any shred of hope.

I don’t notice anything different immediately, some warmth, but I chalk that up to the burning sensation from the dorsal fin. So I just begin pounding Vampguppy’s head with my tiny fists and feet, when I begin hearing faint, pleasant dinging. The tingling sensation when numbers go up occurs again, but this time, it’s incredibly rapid. Curious, I continue my flailing barrage while looking at my skills in my mind’s eye. There, every time I strike a blow, fisticuffs, blunt offense, and blunt pain tolerance raise at least one point per strike. I’m distracted by this, which must be the effects of a broken limit, allowing extremely rapid growth. Still, it doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything other than increasing some inscrutable numbers.

If I had the remotest idea what those numbers meant, I might be thanking my lucky stars for their rapid increase. Instead, I find myself wishing for any other sort of intervention at all. Lil suddenly transforming into the dragon they vaguely resemble, that they claim to be would be a miracle. It seems unlikely though. I just hope my little buddy survives this hazard, however this fight turns out.

I struggle for a moment further yet, aimlessly pounding on the back of this enormous, slick, taupe creature. The few seconds that have passed feel like an eternity, and certainly have granted me skill increases worth far more than a few seconds. I’m pretty fairly certain that, at least for these skills, I’m making more progress now, than I have since I started existing. Though to be fair, that’s only a handful of days ago as far as I know. Or at least as far as I can remember. I do know that those skills were zeroed out back then at least. Have to not think of the specific d--, breathe air, breathe. Don’t think about it. Focus on the fight. Plan, use your surroundings. Gauge what’s around.

I spy that Lil is awake, leaping frantically at the blue shimmering field around the pond. They’re unable to penetrate it though. With both of us frustrated, I turn my attention back to my assault on Vampguppy. I begin trying to jump straight up and down on its head, using all of my weight for the impact, over and over. I notice new skill ranks and speedy growth with every new thing I try. Curious, I try to breathe fire, but that yields no results. Vampguppy exploits my moment of foolishness to crash its tail into my side, sending me flying yet again. I bounce harmlessly into the barrier, but then splash down in a belly flop that leaves my front-side stinging.

My spear passes below me in the spinning Vortex. Reaching out, I barely manage to snag it. Lifting this newly weighted spear is nearly impossible for me. Striking with it more than the tiniest poke is even more difficult, but I have a plan at least. I think it’s a principle of judo or something, use an enemy’s own force and momentum against them. I lure Vampguppy close, or well, simply let it close the distance.

I’m hoping to maybe have a recurrence of the creature’s demise on Day One. Crap! Dodging traumatic panic once in a few moments is apparently as much as my brain can grant me. The triggering words allow panic to overtake me once more, causing my heart to race, forcing my pulse to pound so hard it feels like it’s going to shatter my eardrums from the inside. As my vision blurs down to a tiny tunneled point, I imagine that angry blue spherical creature with the red eyes. I imagine its front opening up into an approximation of a fanged mouth, just landing on my pointy stick, and shattering to a million bits. No such luck with Vampguppy however, as it simply swims to one side during its lunge, sweeping around to get at my backside.

Fangs penetrate my shoulders and clavicles snapping me out of my daze. I doubt physical trauma will always release me from my mental trauma, but I’m lucky it did this time. I swing wildly, trying to escape. My efforts come to no avail as I remain run-through by VG’s fangs, my collarbone caught on them. If ever there was a time for a miraculous intervention of some sort, now would be good. Any force in the universe out there listening, please?

Lil is blowing a constant stream of fire against the barrier, looking more and more exhausted by the second. At least they recovered from their daze. Lil hops side to side to get a view of me from around the obscurement of their own flames. Lil’s expression is of sheer terror and grief, expectation of an upcoming loss.

Instead of struggling, I go limp for a moment, maybe out of a subconscious plan, maybe from exhaustion. That moment of limberness slips me free of Vampguppy’s fangs. It brushes against me as it accidentally lunges past, and I just barely manage to hold my spear against its slick taupe hide. The spear bounces and bumbles along its hide, each little impact raising several skills of mine. My skills raise while my spear actually causes significant loss of Vampguppy’s red bar. But to my dismay, Vampguppy has that fanged icon with a blood droplet again.

The icon appears to let it regenerate its bar that must indicate health. Why wasn’t it regenerating its green bar? During its yellow bar, it hadn’t bitten me, but during its green bar, it had been heated up and dried out by Lil’s flames!

I let the vortex current sweep me around the deepest side of this section of pond until I’ve lined up with Lil. The barrier where they’ve been breathing is incredibly hot, but shows no signs of breaking. I just hope it’s hot enough. I try to perch myself against the shelf of the edge of the pond, my left hand against the barrier. Lil worriedly presses up against it on the other side. I imagine the heat flowing into me and out through my spear. The barrier’s heat scalds and burns my hand. I try to tell Lil, though they can’t hear me, and we can’t see each others’ speech boxes right now, that I need Lil to breathe fire on the barrier.

I think the look of determination in my eyes conveys my meaning, and Lil resumes breathing flame where the barrier meets my hand. I can feel my hand blistering and scarring. I fight back tears of pain as Vampguppy closes in. A box appears again, at the worst time, I accept it immediately, then worry it was a mistake. It said something along the lines of Limit Break Finished, or something, in that terribly hard to read script. I thrust with all my little might, hoping beyond hope that somehow the heat transfers into the spear, and to my surprise, it does, in a big way.