Jun ran faster than he ever had in his life.

He careened through the cave system, taking turns at random, shearing through obstacles as he went. It was a wonder that, with each new corner he took, there always seemed to be yet another way forward.

Either this cave system was truly massive, or he was burning through his luck at an expeditious rate. In the latter case, he could only hope his string of good fortune continued.

Otherwise, he had this sinking suspicion, call it a hunch if you will, that things would not go well for him in the long run.

On the bright side, he and Ivory managed to outpace many of their pursuers. On the other, two of the beasties were still hot on their heels. Able to match his pace with relative ease, damn them. This despite his circulation being pushed to its absolute limits. And not only were they keeping pace with them, but they were actually starting to gain on them.

Loping forward like bats out of hell, they were nightmare fuel on four legs. With flashing teeth, beady eyes, and saliva dripping from vicious canines, their four-inch claws dug divots in the hard stone—every long lope accompanied by a trail of orange sparks. They didn’t appear to be tiring either. Unlike Jun, who was almost on his last legs.

I mean, my two legs against their eight?! What kind of rigged game is this? Where’s a damned referee when you need one? I call foul!

Panic began to creep up on him then, and almost reflexively he flared out his cutting aura to combat it. In an instant, cold rationality reasserted itself, and a detached sense of calm settled over his mind.

Able to properly assess the situation once more, he realized he would need to do something drastic and quick if he didn’t want to end up rat chow.

Formulating the vague framework of a plan, he acted before his body’s innate squeamishness could convince him otherwise. He clearly recognized that this was a matter of life or death. Jun decided in that moment that he didn’t much care for the latter.

After rounding another bend in the tunnel, he immediately skid to an awkward halt.

Turning sharply, he scaled the nearest vertical surface—using fingers swirling with aura to find purchase where there wasn’t any. Rock chips rained down steadily as his nails gouged shallow furrows into the stone.

Now several head heights above the ground, there he waited.

It was a struggle, though he made an effort to slow his breathing and still his body’s trembling. Seconds passed. Still shaking slightly, but with his breathing under control, he listened intently for the scrabbling of claws on stone as the two beasts approached.

Ivory rose to hover beside him.

To his surprise she appeared less reproving of his last stand than he would’ve expected. In fact, she seemed more grimly resigned than he thought he’d ever seen her. Apparently, she too recognized the precariousness of their situation. Whether or not that meant she approved of his plan he couldn’t say, but she wasn’t trying to stop him, which he appreciated immensely.

The first rat rounded the bend at a full sprint—skidding across the stone in a cascade of sparks.

He allowed it to rush on past, completely oblivious.

Well, he said “allowed” but in truth the thing’d been moving so fast, he hadn’t made out more than a roughly animal shaped blur. Still, that didn’t mean he’d gained nothing from its swift passage. Using its appearance in conjunction with the sounds of its passing, he was able to roughly gauge the second rat’s approach.

He didn’t have to wait very long.

Confident in his timing, Jun let go of his perch, and, with a spirit empowered shove, hurtled downward at a sharp angle. He shot headlong towards the spot where he knew the beast would be—stiffened fingers trailing one long ribbon of crimson smoke. He flooded his strike with all of the cutting force at his disposal, leaving his hand shining so brightly that his bones were made visible.

Jun jabbed forward just as the second rat-kin rounded the bend—stiffened fingers meeting toughened hide at suicidally high speeds.

The pseudo armor of the beast’s thick coat proved as much of an impediment as the subsequent layers of muscle and bone—his hand sliding easily though one end and out the other. Punching straight on through with an explosion of stinking gore.

It was surreal.

He might have dipped his hand in a tub of uncomfortably warm jelly for all the resistance he felt. Jun’s stomach lurched.

Too close!

Almost in a panic, he shifted his weight, twisting so that his shoulder took the brunt of the impact. Better that than his face. And not a moment too soon either. When at last their bodies did collide, Jun slammed into the corpse with enough momentum to bruise organs, and, going by the sound of it, fracture bones.

The poor creature never even knew what hit it.

CRACK!

Unlike the pest-control pancake, Jun didn’t stay down for long. It might not have been pretty, but he was already staggering to his feet before reverberations of the impact had fully subsided. Just barely able to free himself from the mess he’d made of the rat-cake, before the one that’d gotten away even noticed what had happened.

The pain pulsing down and along his left arm was immense.

Or would have been, rather, had he not had his cutting aura active. Nifty that. Jun pulled a spare mending pill from his dimensional storage and swallowed it. It would take several minutes for the pill to do its thing, but he’d figured it was best he take it now, rather than later.

When the beast finally turned around and caught sight of its fallen companion, it let out a terrible, ear-piercing shriek. Jun staggered from the sudden sensory overload.

Without any more warning, the spirit beast attacked.

Now that he was standing still, Jun could fully appreciate just how fast these things were. In an instant, the beast crossed the full twenty paces separating them—maw yawning wide and brutal claws extended.

Upon him before the sparks created by its pounce had lost their radiance.

Thankfully, Jun had anticipated as much. That being said, the thing moved so incredibly fast that, even though he’d been expecting it, he still nearly botched the execution. With a pivot of his torso, and a spirit empowered swing, he blindsided the snarling beast with the corpse of its fellow. As it turned out, giant rat tails served as very convenient handholds. The two bodies connected with a wet slap and explosion of gore—splattering them both quite liberally with awful.

Sent careening off course, thrown for a loop by Jun’s unorthodox attack, the beast was suddenly in no position to dodge as he turned about face, and went on the offensive. He sped his circulation until his entire body trembled.

Meanwhile his eyes, coldly serene, calmly tracked the beast’s trajectory. When he felt the timing was right, he threw himself at the writhing thing like a loosed projectile—the cave floor developing tiny fractures where he’d stood.

He appeared before the rat-kin in much the same way it had him—already jabbing his right arm forward in a viciously aimed thrust. He focused all of his will on the simple act of amassing aura—positively flooding his system with the odd strength. The swirling drill of ruby red smoke only growing and growing for every moment that passed.

He gathered up the force until his head felt fit to burst. Unaware of the pain, never once did it occur to him to maybe hesitate. Slow down and think for the barest instant. Even as his vision began to blur, and blood to run freely from his nose, his mouth, his ears. He pushed on regardless.

And then, just as his strike was about to connect, something altogether unexpected happened.

His aura…

To his utter shock and astonishment, he felt his aura, the extension of his will, his universal concept—the greatest weapon he had in his arsenal by far—falter, waver, and then dissipate completely. Extinguished like a candles flame on an especially windy day.

A cloud of thick, silvery mist burst from the rat-kin in a wide detonation, obliterating his aura in its entirety, like a dollop of blood dropped into the ocean.

For a split second after, Jun was rendered inert.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Both by the physical shock of the conceptual cloud slamming bodily into him, and by a different paralysis born entirely of disbelief. There was no mistaking it. Jun had pushed with all he had, only to have some rodent push back even harder.

And it hadn’t just pushed; Jun’s force had been crushed. Only belatedly would he recognize the irony in such a statement. This rat-kin clearly owned a crushing concept of some kind, much like his stepbrother Cedric had. Before he could properly absorb this revelation, however, he noticed from out of the corner of his eye, the streak of a pink tail trailing silvery smoke.

Why did it feel like he had this coming somehow? Was it the rat attack thing? Something about desecrating the dead? He’d say he was sorry if he thought that would help.

Thinking fast, Jun attempted the same trick the rat had done, straining with all of his mental might, he pushed. Flaring his aura brighter than he’d ever done before. Things even seemed to be going well, to a point. If only it wasn’t taking more and more out of him to do so. More of his concentration to ignore the hot stabs of agony which followed each and every action. Which seemed intrinsically tied to any use of his concept at the moment. All the same, he did what he could to resist the incoming blow.

Whether or not it worked, he ultimately wasn’t sure. All he did know was that, the next thing he knew? He was impacting the furthest wall with a terrifying…

CRUNCH

The world went white for what could have been a second, but felt more like an eternity. Sounds strangely muffled past the incessant ringing in his ears. He felt his body peel away from the shallow imprint he’d made in the stone. Then, it was a long time, far too long, before he at last impacted the cavern floor. And suddenly, the world came roaring back into focus—his breathing much too loud in his ears.

His only saving grace at this stage the fact that his body was still flush with healing energies.

If given enough time, he might recover from even this. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear as though the rat-kin was keen on giving him that time. Once more the massive rat seemed to appear as if from nothing, tail already lashing downward in a spinning, diagonal arc. An attack that, should it land, would likely flatten him to paste.

Acting fast, Jun shoved off of the cavern floor with all the strength left in his good arm. He was awarded with a muted jolt as something broke. His quick thinking still shot him clear of the beast’s attack, however. So that when it landed, it met stone instead of his tender flesh.

Another deafening crack resounded throughout their share of tunnel. A spiderweb of fractures radiating outward from the point of impact. The entire cave groaned ominously, buckling in places. Jun, for his part—still flipping madly through the air—gulped. So that was the power of a true crushing alignment, huh? It was a far cry from his brother’s punches, that was for sure.

Then he blinked. Frowned.

There was also something about the force of it that was bothering him. Something that put into question the use of his own aura. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to think on it for more than a second before his body reached the apex of its ascent, and so began to fall. Fall, that is, right into the waiting arms of the visibly enraged rat creature.

He could see that its periodically flicking tail was becoming denser with that intractable silver aura by the second. The beast ready and willing to keep on swinging until he was little more than a nice coat of paint on the walls.

Every casual flick of its tail was followed by the crack of splintering stone—the cavern floor practically quaking from its mere proximity to the dense mist.

Yeah. Not happening.

Jun kicked off the ruined wall with all the cultivated strength he could muster, barely registering something else break in his foot as he did so.

He hadn’t had the forethought to aim himself exactly, but he was headed in a direction opposite that terrifying buildup of power, and that was all he really cared about. Far too soon his body was reunited with the ground. He was quite disheartened to find that it was not a loving reunion.

He hit the rough stone hard, scraping off layers of skin in the resulting tumble, until he came to a skidding, dizzying halt—a bruised tangle of broken limbs. Even with his aura active, he simply lay there for a second, dazed and confused. Before, with a jolt of panic, he shot back to his feet.

He was… almost fast enough.

The aura laden tail was already in motion, aiming horizontally for his chest with its indomitable truth. He could feel it, from mere inches away, the immensity of the force hidden behind the simple blow. The force of an ideal whose only purpose was to break; to crush into submission anything and everything in its way.

And it was then—in that strange limbo between life and death; wherein one made to pass off the torch to the other—that he felt a familiar pair of arms wrap around his neck. And, in the next moment, time just seemed to… stop. His heartbeat slowed, his eyes dilated, and everything around him wound down to a crawl.

The world—now a bland monochrome with brief flashes of color—continued as if submerged in thick sap. While, by contrast, his mind veritably raced, inspired as he was by a sudden moment of clarity. For, in the moments before the fatal blow arrived, something fundamental clicked in his mind.

Because the overwhelming force he now felt from the tail was very familiar.

Extremely familiar.

In that it represented the way that he’d been thinking of his own concept up until now. Incredulous, he only now realized how much of an idiot he’d been. He’d been using a universal truth primarily as a blunt instrument. A force lever whose only purpose was to enhance his, to his mind, “prodigious strength.

Idiot that he was, he’d gotten so caught up in the newfound power he could bring to bear using his circulation, that he’d forgotten, or outright ignored, the innate nature of the concept itself.

Put simply, he didn’t wield the will to crush.

He didn’t need devastating force to dismantle his enemies. And yet he’d been using his concept as if that were all it was good for. Down that way lay the path of the brute, however, and the path of cutting was not one of brutality. Nor was it one of overwhelming strength. It could be mighty, yes—he had seen as much in his ideal vision—but that was not where it derived its strength from.

He didn’t need to be stronger than his opponents to be better than them, and to attempt as much anyway would only be an exercise in futility. From what he recalled, there had been little to no physical element in Feathers’ devastating attack. Instead, in place of brutality, there had only been speed, an iron wrought will, and most importantly…

Precision.

Instead of flooding his strike with all of the force he could muster, he focused his intent instead. He honed it; guided it. Sharpened his intent to an incredibly fine point, until it too resembled a blade in truth. He then zeroed in on precisely where he wanted to strike and made of his mind a tool crafted for that singular purpose.

Huh.

It suddenly occurred to him, as color returned to the world and time seemed to renew its usual pace, that he might’ve used the strange moment of heightened awareness to evade the incoming attack. Now though, he found there was no longer any need.

Time resumed. The tail whipped forward. Jun desperately backpedaled.

And then, with but a simple flick of his wrist, he severed the two-meter-long tail from its body at the base—sheering through the once impenetrable cloud of resistance as if it weren’t even there at all.

The tail still collided with his chest like a charging pack animal—slamming him sideways to impact yet another wall—but, now severed from the main body, and so without the overbearing will of crushing behind it, the blow was ultimately a survivable one. And to make things even better, no headache followed this new and improved use of his aura. He couldn’t help but see that as a good sign.

The beast howled in agony as Jun was just staggering to his feet—pulling a bruised hand away from the base of his neck, where he’d tried to protect Ivory from the worst of the collision.

Upon him in an instant, rage was alight in the rat-kin’s beady eyes. Clawed foreleg upraised, it held nothing back in the sudden bullrush. Trailing streams of stinking saliva as it made to deliver a vicious swipe. A truly prodigious amount of silver mist indicating it wasn’t out of the fight just yet.

However, this was the third time it had used that tactic, and, say what you will about Jun, but fooling him three times in a row was a bit much.

It’s a little insulting, actually. Who does this guy take me for, a chump?

Now, it couldn’t be said that Jun stepped aside gracefully. His right arm barely worked, his left was all but useless, and he was pretty sure his ankle was sprained, if not outright broken. In truth, it was more fluke than anything that he expertly leapt out of the way in time. Well, tripped might be the colloquial term for it, but he’d never been one to conform with societal norms.

Nevertheless, even off balance, broken, and inexperienced as he was, his newfound abilities proved potent enough to get the job done regardless. Severing the rat’s head cleanly from its shoulders as it recklessly sped past.

The headless corpse colliding with the cavern wall shortly thereafter. Although this time, no earth-shattering boom accompanied the impact. Only the sickening crunch of a rather unfortunate end. Dragging his eyes away from the sight, Jun mutely took in the twelve-inch-long claws that’d somehow sprouted from his knuckles.

Each shone like colored glass with a brilliant, ruby red luster—faint tendrils of mist lightly wafting from their jagged crystalline surface.

For a long time after, Jun merely swayed on his feet. Stared blankly at his hands, over at the corpse, then back at his hands again—not entirely believing that it might really be over. Eventually, the truth of things fully sank in.

He collapsed onto his back in the very next moment, exhausted.

His aura winked out at almost the same instant. Immediately, he felt like he was going to hurl. It was either that or pass out, and he honestly wasn’t sure which he was looking forward to more. Gasping, and trying very hard not to retch, he turned to watch, with almost morbid fascination, as the rat-kin’s head rolled its way over to rest barely an inch from his nose. He stared into its lifeless black eyes for several long seconds. Then he got a good long whiff of its indescribable musk, coupled with the sharp iron tang of spilled blood.

Jun’s stomach roiled.

He promptly turned over onto his side, and heaved up his breakfast. And considering he hadn’t really had any to speak of, he had to settle on puking his guts out instead. Acidic bile burned at the back of his throat with a sickening regularity.

Before he could actually cough up his stomach lining, however, his personal ‘me time’ was interrupted by a cheery system chime.