I approached the fox with caution, or at least I tried to. My massively increased strength shot me forward and I crumbled to the ground and blinked up to the top of its head. The fox leaned over me as it watched me with curiosity. I stared back up tat the fox, frozen in anticipation and fear. Suddenly, the fox opened its mouth and began to build up fire mana int its throat. Its mouth began to glow red and I expected dragon's breath to exit right onto me. I couldn't let that happen, though. I Blinked up to the fox's head and slammed my fist down onto its head, or at least I tried to. It appeared this fox had much more combat experience than I did because after I landed on its head, it bucked me off and rolled to the side, all the while charging the dragon's breath.

I shot to my feet and charged just in time to run into a wall of fire. I quickly jumped into the air to avoid getting burned, but I was still singed. Nearly my entire left arm and my left leg up to the angle were charred. I cast life infusion on both and decided that I didn't really have a choice but to cast lava dart. I Blinked to the air above its head, launched my dart, and fell to the ground. The lava dart moved faster than I fell, so it drilled quickly into the pavement where the fox's head had been. I immediately Blinked as far away as possible, and just in time, as I felt immense heat entering the area around my body when I teleported.

I ended up on an unsteady roof of someone's house. I knew that it was still someone's house and that the roof was unsteady because when I fell through the roof, I landed on top of somebody. He appeared to be looking out the window in preparation of any attacks, but he believed that his roof would be enough to prevent or at least deter any monsters entering, but it wasn't as sturdy as he though.

The man cried out in pain, and I really did feel guilty, so I cast life infusion on him and rolled off. My arm and ankle were healed enough to use by now, but the skin was still charred and destroyed, so I activated life infusion a couple more times. Life infusion really only cost a few mana, and with over a thousand mana in my pool, it was quite easy to deal with.

"Sorry, sorry!" I said as I helped the man up. He was eyeing me suspiciously, which I understood. He probably thought I had fallen from the sky and crashed into him. He was close, but just a little off.

"Who the hell are you?" the man grunted, his rifle pointing toward the floor but still immediately available to be used.

"I'm Hector," I said, and I slid my knives into their sheathes and held up my hands to make sure he wouldn't see me as a threat. It was hard to be sure, but he looked a little more relaxed with my hands in the air. "Whom do I have the honor of speaking with?"

"John," the man said once more, edging toward the door. I wasn't sure what he wanted, but just as he started to nudge the door closed, two women, or maybe one woman and one girl, burst into the room. One had a long kitchen knife in her hand and the other had some sort of antique sword. After bursting into the room and seeing that there were no monsters around, just a kid and some fallen shingles, they relaxed. the woman with the knife tucked it into her belt, and the girl with the sword sheathed it.

"John," demanded the woman, "what the fuck is going on? I come in here expecting monsters and find a kid and a hole in the roof." While the angry woman was eyeing John, who was probably her husband, the girl-who-was-probably-their-daughter was eyeing me. I smiled at her, and she flinched away, her hand going to her sword a second later.

I interrupted the bickering of the married couple by moving over to the window. "I'm sorry about the mess, but I really must be going. Maybe we can talk to each other later? That would be fun!" I gave my best smile and turned toward where the fox is. As John and the woman -- whose name was apparently Barbara -- grabbed my arms to stop me from leaving, I turned my head, winked at their daughter, who blinked back at me, and faced the world outside. I focused on the entrance to a doorway right outside of a building near the massive fox and Blinked away.

Just for cinematic effect, I turned back to the house and gave a cheeky wave. I then turned back toward the actual threat: the massive fucking fox rampaging around the neighborhood. Before I could deal with the fox, I had to deal with the burning buildings around the fox. I could see the fox grabbing some of the fire in his mouth and dragging it to another building, so I need to put out the fire to prevent my environment from being used against me. Then, I needed to create a water attack spell. Hopefully, I could do both in one shot.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I activated mana manipulation and gave myself the time limit of working until the fox comes over and attacks me. I immediately grabbed the blue strands that signified water mana and started winding them together into a strong rope. They wanted to come apart, but I forced them into place. Per usual, I used fire mana to separate the rope of water mana that I was using from the other strands of mana, but as soon as I grabbed the fire mana I knew that I had made a mistake.

The fox had looked up and spotted me. I assumed that using fire mana had alerted the fox to my location, due to it being so in tune with fire mana. It started strutting over to me. it was moving slowly, but confidently, as though it knew it would be able to catch me. I was nothing more than another weak, level 3 rabbit to the fox. I needed to prove it wrong, so I rapidly turned back to my forming spell.

Currently, the mana was wound around my arm, as though it was reinforcing my arm. That isn't what I needed. I didn't want to have to deal with something like the dragon's breath ever again without being able to counter it, so a water mana spell would help. I decided, since lava dart was an earth, fire, and unidentified mana spell, I would make this spell a water, air, and other unidentified mana spell. Whenever I see the ethereal mana I have been using so often, before I touch it, it is always wrapped around a green mana. This time, I grabbed the green mana and some other air mana to wind into the water. This would have to primarily be a water spell, so I mostly used that.

I took the winding mana rope of water and flattened it out into a sheet the thickness of paper. I added very little air mana at the front of the sheet but dumped enough to launch an airplane into the air on the back. This was to create a low-pressure area in the front of the sheet and a high-pressure air on the back of the sheet that would suck in air and shoot it out the back, hopefully adding to the speed of the projectile. The plan was a blast of water that had the air inside of it, adding to the speed, with the unknown green mana wrapped around, hopefully doing something useful. I realized that it might not be the best idea to experiment with unknown mana in such a dangerous situation, but if I needed to escape, I could always Blink to the house I fell through before. They might not welcome me, but they didn't seem that strong, and if they were less than level 90, which they almost definitely were, they would pose almost no threat to me.

I quickly rolled up the water mana into a tube with the air inside. I grabbed a thin strand of the green mana and wound it around the whole tube, not sure what it would do, but sure that it would be magnificent. I finalized the spell by launching it in the direction of the fox walking toward me, and I hopped out of mana manipulation to see what it looked like from the outside. Unfortunately, the water bolt was going very slowly, so the air pressure obviously was not doing its job. Unless I made a mistake, of course, in which case--

Yes! The air pressure worked! The back of the tube of water was inflating, slowly but surely. That would explain the slow speed. I decided to launch another one, so I did, and, to my shock, it appeared next to the first bolt. How did that happen? What is this spell called?

Congratulations! You have created the spell Timed Water Bolt!

I messed with... time? As I thought about what that meant, the two water bolts burst and shot toward the fox at the same time, scaring the hell out of it. It yipped and looked ready to run, but the other two blasts were already slamming into it and bowled it over, slamming the fox into hopefully abandoned buildings. It yelped in pain and stood up just in time for me to Blink behind it to stab it in the best part of the head, the brainstem. The fox collapsed and I received the notification of its death a moment later.

You have earned 174 EXP and 250 Chits.

After killing the fox, I started firing water bolts in all directions to put out the fire on the buildings. As one, they burst and slammed into their buildings. I tried to will them to be less concentrated and more spread out so they would splash instead of penetrate, and it seemed like it worked. I shot off a second round to extinguish the fires that were still burning, and that finished them all off.

As I walked back to the orphanage -- I didn't feel like Blinking -- I had a major realization. If the green mana was time, I suppose the ethereal mana always with it was space? I wondered what I could do with that, especially since it seemed to be the mana that made my Blink skill work.