I had twenty seconds at most before I had to unleash the spell I was holding onto in my mind. For some inexplicable reason, my brain chose now of all times to recollect what I had learned about essence and spellcasting. Maybe I was subconsciously searching for a solution out of this problem that I had overlooked somehow?

Essence was somewhat simple to manipulate once you knew the framework of its mechanics. The essence in the environment was purely neutral, so a water spell wouldn’t necessarily consume less essence if there was water nearby. Before casting, one had to determine whether the spell would create water from essence or manipulate any existing water.

Depending on the type of spell being cast, essence would either magically transform into the desired element or summon it from another plane of existence, which was the most debated topic of the mage community, or it would reach out to the existing elements and manipulate them instead. Obviously, manipulation was easier than creation, as it drew less essence from a caster’s individual reserves, and allowed them to manipulate the elements directly, though their personal essence was still required, if in smaller amounts.

Personal essence acted almost like a carrier signal of intent and will, which was the most important factor in casting spells, being doubly true in my case. All the craziness of my taming spell and the beast space had been kickstarted by nothing but my meager-at-the-time reserves of essence, and my intention to live, though the how and why of it all still eluded me.

I sincerely hoped I would live long enough to get questions to those answers. I knew why I was rambling in my mind, looking for a distraction from the wall of bodies about to rain down on me.

Fear. I didn’t want to die, at least not like this.

Death was inevitable for everything, an indisputable fact of life, which is why I had such a hard time accepting that I could die to forces outside my control. If I had to die, I wanted to do it on my terms, as a way to wrench a tiny piece of control back into my hands. But it was all just bluster and a facade. I had absolutely no control over how I died the first time, and I had no doubt that my final death would be…unexpected. Hell, I could even be six feet under in the next five minutes.

But if I was going to die today, I would make damn sure to take my pound of flesh from whatever did it.

Or more accurately…my pound of blood.

I tore my gaze from the sky, where dark clouds were swirling and gathering together, lending an air of foreboding to the area, and looked at the horde of animals all stampeding towards me. There was no order to their frenzied dash away from certain death; some ran, some slithered, others dove under the sand and went underground, where I lost track of them soon after, my attention focused on the surface and the slaughter that was about to happen.

Five seconds at most; that was how long I had before I would either be trampled, or chomped on, or otherwise forced to a gruesome death. The sounds of the hissing and warbling horde got too loud and made me lose my concentration, causing me to accidentally lose control of the spell I was preparing, and trigger it early.

The sky, which had been growing darker since my spell’s inception, turned blindingly white, unleashing a bolt of lightning that arced through the beach and collided with the ocean’s surface. Anything even remotely wet was instantly electrocuted, my extra essence ensuring that the lightning didn’t stop until I deemed enough of the horde dead.

Unfortunately, my last-second fumble meant that, while the electricity had enough power to kill everything it came into contact with, its range was less than optimal.

I had cleared out maybe thirty percent of the closest animals near me, their bodies spasming and smoking even as some of them clung to life. I had no time to go through and double-tap all of them, so I ensured their deaths in the quickest way I knew of:

By ripping the blood from their bodies.

With barely a thought, the blood of every electrocuted being on the beach broke out of whatever bodies were restraining them and surged free, tearing out of limbs and skin, faces and hearts. The dying whimpers made me think of my own death, and how powerless I was at that time, and now I was doing the same thing to these –

I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood. I could wallow in memories and be introspective later. Right now, I had to survive.

There were at least fifty liters of blood for me to work with, and I started by molding a few of them into caltrops, dotting the beach with them to impede whatever crossed the surface. I could have gone with the spinning helicopter blades again, rotating them at high speed and clearing out everything, but I spotted enough glowing shells and scales to know that wasn’t a guarantee of success. I wasn’t the only one capable of using magic here.

I saw nothing in the remaining horde that could fly or had wings, so I hastily shaped half the blood into a small square platform, compressing it enough so it would support my weight. With one quick glance at the horde, that began sprinting in my direction once it seemed I wouldn’t repeat my trick with the lightning, I levitated the platform into the air…while I was still standing on it. Thankfully, my control and affinity with blood were high enough for me to attempt such a thing, otherwise I would have definitely tested its feasibility in safer conditions.

I rose into the air slowly, but quick enough that nothing attempted to bite me or send any attacks my way. Hate-filled eyes looked up at me before continuing their dash into the mainland, content with ignoring me, if it meant saving their own lives.

Unfortunately, that was where they encountered my next obstacle: caltrops, spike strips, and pitfalls with blood-red stakes at the bottom.

The blood constructs proved no challenge to create, but arranging them was another matter. I had to simultaneously hollow out numerous pits and place the blood-constructed spears at the bottom, while also scattering the caltrops and spike strips in a large enough area to affect most of the creatures. Seeing as I had no materials on hand to conceal the pits, I had to keep their top layers of sand intact with nature magic, while gaps of air separated them from the bottom of the pits.

It was an unprecedented use of magic as I had used two schools of magic almost at the same time to form numerous traps. Unfortunately, I couldn’t clap myself on the back quite yet, as the shrieks of pain erupted from the beasts who had my traps lodged in their bodies. The caltrops and spike strips were effective at stopping the beasts from continuing their sprint inland, and the smaller creatures that fell into the pits quickly bled out. The larger ones either ignored them entirely or the spears had less of an impact on them than I would have hoped.

By now, another few hundred of the beasts were finished off, and there were less than half their original number, though it was possible I was inflating the number as the remaining beasts were all larger and in better shape than the ones I had downed thus far. They looked pristine, and I could tell these were the older beasts and creatures, likely to possess vast amounts of essence and possibly even sentience. None of the turtles or eels or shelled birds looked pleased at my standing so far above them, but another ground-shattering tremor put their priorities back in order, as they rushed for the grasslands that could offer better shelter from the two titans battling for supremacy in the sea.

I had to maintain the blood platform’s integrity as I sat down on it, mentally tired from all the spells and quick thinking I had just done. The remaining beasts eyed me warily from the ground, but I disregarded them as I tried to relax. If I really pushed myself, I could maybe tame one or two of the beasts in the back of the horde, which were already gaining speed as they moved through the grassy plains of the continent, but….

I couldn’t run myself ragged for something the beastfolk were capable of dealing with on their own. Yeah, I had the stupid beastkin friendship bracelet or whatever, but I had already done my part by reducing what they would have to deal with. This couldn’t possibly be the first outbreak of sea creatures that the tribes had faced. They could handle it; like I said, beastfolk senses were no joke.

My mind slowly unwound from the stress of the past hour. They never tell you how exhausting casting multiple spells in quick succession is in the academy. No, it was all about setting a good foundation, and learning the basic skills to enable you to make your own discoveries one day, far into the future, when you’ve –

“Motherfucker!”

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I lopped off the head of the snake that bit me, as it wriggled about even after its death. It came from nowhere and bit me when my guard was down, and I could feel the left side of my body going numb.

I mentally sensed the snake’s venom traveling through my bloodstream, and tried to isolate it, stopping the flow of blood around my kidney area. I had no time for delicacy or a sterile environment, so I encapsulated all the venom in a layer of blood, and forced it out of the vein by rapidly ejecting it from my skin. the numbness quickly wearing off and letting me feel the pain of my self-inflicted wound.

I gasped as I doubled over, lying prone on the blood platform…until it lost its cohesion and reverted to a puddle of blood, sending me straight to the sandy beach from thirty feet up.

I tried to reach out and reform the blood platform, but my brain just wouldn’t cooperate so soon after ripping a new hole in my stomach. I fell through the air, wondering if I was about to die, when my shoulder hit the ground first, and I heard an audible crack that was accompanied by a lance of pain through my left shoulder.

Though I wasn’t in the greatest physical condition of my life, I wasn’t dead yet, and I took that as a serious victory after the rapid chain of events that just occurred. The body of the snake that bit me ended up falling onto my leg, four inches long and the same color of the yellow-brown sand. It either flew up to me, or camouflaged itself as I was forming the blood constructs and waited for me to finish. Either way, it was dead now. I would have spat on it if I could feel my face…

Wait…why can’t I feel my face? I can’t move my left arm, either! No! I got rid of the venom as quickly as possible! I didn’t miss any of it, I’m certain!

I roved through my bloodstream, checking for any traces of venom that I had missed, and came up empty. There was either nothing there or it was too small for me to detect. Theoretically, I could transfuse clean blood into myself while flushing out all of my own blood, thereby ensuring there were no toxins left…but I wasn’t an idiot. That would require precision, skill, and understanding that I currently did not possess. Even at the best of times, attempting something like that would be insane. Doing it now, in the aftermath of my reenactment of the Battle of Thermopylae, would make me a certifiable lunatic.

I couldn’t move my body, but I could still sense the blood around and on me that had once been my platform. I could make something like a gurney or a stretcher and seek shelter with the closest tribe. It was possible they were fending off the remnants of the sea beasts, but I needed to heal, and that required food, water, medicine, and a clean environment, something lacking in this beach that was covered with bodies to the point that sand wasn’t even visible.

I started moving the blood around me into a rectangular form, reshaping it into the platform shape I was familiar with, when I lost control of that too. I couldn’t move my body, and now I couldn’t use essence, either. Was this another effect of the venom, a slow-acting paralytic that inhibited me from –

“Stop struggling, human.”

I would have turned to see who spoke, but my paralyzed body prevented me from doing so. Whoever it was, their intentions couldn’t be anything good if they were showing up after my battle like this, when I was more vulnerable than a baby. At least a baby could cry or shit itself.

I tried to clench my fist but was denied even that small movement.

I didn’t have to wait long to see who had spoken, as their wet, glistening fur shimmered in the afternoon sun, unveiled by the clouds that had dispersed after I called upon them.

I heard heavy steps squelching atop the bodies I had left lying on the beach, and the unmistakable swishing of a tail going back and forth. The fact that the voice had called me human, and that they were heavy enough to need a tail to support their balance….

My suspicion turned to certainty as I saw a scaled pseudo-crocodile enter my range of vision. I was currently lying on my side, my likely-broken shoulder on the ground, so his full reptilian body was visible from where I was. His body was a deep blue, bordering on black, but it was no vorander I saw; there was too much…gloating…in his expression for it to be anything but a beast.

His snout was stubbier and more curved than a crocodile’s, and he had six legs instead of four, but the teeth I caught a glimpse of as he spoke looked dangerous enough that I didn’t care what he was, as long as he left me alone.

A hope that was about to be dashed to pieces as I heard it speak.

“All my people tried to do was seek shelter, but you couldn’t simply let them be, could you, little human? No. You had to interfere, like every other human with their…intentions.” He spat the word like it was a curse, his disdain for humans obvious.

“And now, because of you…thousands will never know what tomorrow holds.”

The croc paced around me as he spoke, relishing his victory. I was too caught up trying to figure out a way out of this to pay any attention to his words. There was one option, but I would have to be extremely lucky….or unlucky, for it to work. Either way, it would likely involve a great deal of pain.

If I was able to, I would have shuddered at how quickly I had gone from fearing pain to treating it as a mild annoyance. Maybe the thing in my soul was affecting my brain.

Not the time, idiot.

“Do you require my assistance, contractor?”

Not right now…but maybe in thirty seconds. I’m about to bring you a new friend to play with.

“That boorish fellow? He’s far too old for us to be friends.” Spearmint said, from within my beast space, his meaning reaching me rather than the words themselves.

“What would you do in my place, human hatchling, if it were your spawn and mates fleeing for their lives from a power that rivals the dragons of old?” the crocodile was speaking at the same time as Spearmint, and it was irritating that I couldn’t goad it into attacking me so I could enact my plan. I was never good at following two conversations at once, which is why I always turned on subtitles when watching anything.

“But they will not be alone in their deaths. You will follow after –”

“I believe this one is more suited to be a piece, rather than a player, as you would say, contractor. “

“ – and it will not be quick, or painless. No, you have earned a far more –”

“Should I jump out and trample him? His scales may be strong, but they’re no match for my horns.”

I would have sighed if I could. He wasn’t even referring to his antlers, but to actual conical drill-shaped protrusions on his sides and neck. They were little spearheads that just...popped up one day, with no explanation. Spearmint even said they weren’t natural for others of his kind, and was as puzzled as I was at their appearance, though that didn’t stop him from bragging about the new opportunities they provided him.

“Do not fear death. It comes for us all, in the end. Yours just happens to be standing beside you, waiting for me to eat your heart.” Finally, the croco-beast had stopped his monologuing, and was about to sink his teeth into me.

All according to plan.

I only had one option available to me: bring the croc into my beast space the moment he came into contact with me. Before the battle, I had considered whether or not the massive sea serpent or the vorander it was battling, or even the elder dragons, could detect me entering the beast space, but if I had to choose between my life or my secrets, my life would always come out on top.

That meant I couldn’t just enter my beast space alone, as I had no idea if or when I would be done healing from my injuries, and I didn’t think disappearing from thin air in front of a magic beast that wanted me dead would be the best move. He would likely infer I used spatial magic to escape, and it was possible he would just wait on the beach for me to come out. I couldn’t say that he wouldn’t do it, so…he was coming along with me.

Plus, the fact that he was entering my beast space meant that he would fall under my control…in theory. I had never brought anything inside without it being tamed first, so I was gambling a lot today, but even if he retained his free will, I had an army that could kill him in my place.

As he finally stopped pacing around me, he nudged me with his foot, pushing me onto my back and keeping a foot on my chest. The extra weight did not help with my injuries, as I felt like I could barely breathe with my lungs being squished.

He was about to bite into me when he noticed the surroundings had changed, turning around abruptly, and thankfully removing his foot from my torso to do so.

“Where is, no…no! I –”

That was all he managed to say before my gamble paid off, and the crocodile’s personality turned to that of an automaton. He simply lowered his head to me, as I saw his head dip, and waited in place without moving or uttering a word. The beast space had tamed him for me, though it was more…aggressive about it than previously. Another of its features I had ‘unlocked’.

The mystery of the space’s growth could wait. I was bruised and bleeding, numb and in pain, all at once. But most importantly…I was alive, and safe. I had enough food and water for…too long, honestly. Now all I had to do was heal, and hope neither the massive sea serpent nor its monstrous foe took notice of me when I left the space.