A tiny sliver of blue appeared in her Mana bar. [MANA: 1/1200]
“Mana Assistance! Sword!” Mikayla demanded, already thrusting her hands upwards. In a flash, the red-silver sword erupted from her right hand, and cut a bloody welt into the roof of the gecko’s mouth.
The lizard screamed, a more high-pitched noise than such a large creature should have been able to produce, and recoiled, scrabbling to drag itself back out of reach. Mikayla did the same, brandishing her sword threateningly, hoping that it would scare the monster off.
The sword flickered and vanished once again. [MANA: 0/1200] “Oh, great. How long was that? Four seconds? One point of mana buys me four seconds of sword?” Mikayla guessed. “Why can’t I see my own mana regeneration?!”
[IDENTIFY FUNCTION IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. FUNCTIONALITY WILL BE LIMITED UNTIL YOU RETURN TO A REGION WITH AN ACTIVE ATARAXIA NODE.]
“Screw off!” Mikayla barked at the aggravating blue prompt.
The lizard balked, rearing back slightly at the shout. It hissed, then inched forwards again.
“. . I want all three of my unused points added to Willpower! Improve my mana regen!”
[WILLPOWER: 13]
Mikayla sharply inhaled. There was a tangible difference inside her. She wasn’t exactly sure what ‘willpower’ really was or what a thirty percent increase to it meant, but all at once the panic that she’d been doing her very best to suppress was much easier to squash down and ignore. Her eyes narrowed, and she gestured wildly. “Listen here, you scaly little bugger! I already killed a spider twice your size! You think you can eat me? I’m going to chop you up and cook you for dinner, and then I’ll spit you back out because you probably taste terrible!”
The lizard made an odd chirping noise, tilting its head and regarding her inquisitively.
“Or!” Mikayla added, tilting her head in turn to keep looking into its eyes. “You can just back away and not deal with this! I don’t particularly want to kill you. Just go! Shoo! Get gone!”
The gecko snorted, then its scales rippled and it vanished from view once more.
“Yeah, you’d better run!” Mikayla snapped, squinting for any signs of motion. She advanced cautiously, squinting - and suddenly a patch of the sky was lunging at her head. She threw herself aside, and the creature’s camouflage shivered as it turned, the tips of trees peeling away from the sky and going for her chest.
[MANA: 1/1200]
“Sword!” Mikayla demanded, twisting aside and conjuring her blade just in time for the gecko to bite down on it. With a twist, she ripped her blade free, taking advantage of its unnatural sharpness to rip out several of the beast’s teeth, then span around in a clumsy strike aimed straight at its heart.
The sword flickered back out of existence a moment before it could land a fatal blow. [MANA: 0/1200] Too incensed to stop, Mikayla turned the motion into a shove, putting her body weight behind it and forcing the gecko back a step as she bounced away.
The gecko snarled, spitting out flecks of blood, its tail waving back and forth as it stalked towards her.
Mikayla blinked a bit, her head clearing from the rush that increasing her Willpower had brought upon her. “. . This is insane,” she murmured with a dawning sense of horror.
So she turned and fled.
Naturally, the gecko pursued.
Mikayla juked behind a tree, and the gecko’s jaws flew past her. She cast around, hoping to find something that she could climb, but the birch trees with their spindly branches didn’t look solid enough.
Geckos in general could climb, but could a car-sized gecko climb these relatively small trees? It didn’t matter, not if she couldn’t.
The gecko twisted around, its scales rippling and blending in with the trees and underbrush. The pale, stripy colouration of the birches was a blessing, it was much easier to track the gecko when it was trying to camouflage against both the white trees, the brown underbrush and the green shrubbery.
[MANA:1/1200]
Mikayla held her precious, life-saving mana point in reserve, watching the creature warily. Her eyes darted towards the massive monolith that was Astralia’s Spear in the distance. Huge though it was, it was presumably built for humans, and she could find shelter there.
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The lizard lunged towards her, and she ducked away again, taking advantage of its distraction to eat up a few more metres towards the tower. She focused on her hearing, listening for the sound of the leaves crunching underfoot, her best warning of an incoming attack.
Mikayla knew better than to just run in a straight line, instead ducking between and around trees. A cluster of bushes caught her eye. A hiding spot? She redoubled her efforts, panting heavily as she forced her tired body to continue escaping death.
[STAMINA: 332/900]
“Oh I do not wanna know what happens when Stamina reaches 0,” It wasn’t like she couldn’t feel the difference that flirting with the edges of her Mana bar was making. Her brain felt sluggish, and there was an uncomfortable sense of hollowness inside her body, as though she’d just donated more blood than was medically advisable. But feeling like her veins were full of fumes was a lot less likely to kill her than the monster gecko’s remaining teeth.
Inanely, Mikayla recalled the Cavemaw Spider, and realised that this thing probably also had a proper name besides ‘monster gecko’. She wondered what it was.
[IDENTIFY FUNCTION IS UNAV-]
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. You identified the spider, just saying,” Mikayla rolled her eyes.
Something hit her in the back with a burst of heat, and she stumbled, collapsing to the ground in a heap.
[HEALTH: 902/1000]
“What was that?!” Mikayla shrieked, looking around and desperately hoisting herself back up with one hand. Her back suddenly hurt quite a bit.
Her gaze fell on the lizard, who was snarling at her, having paused a few feet away. There was a green flash from its beady eyes, and a streak of energy shot from them. This was so far out of context that Mikayla could only stare dumbly, and only the lizard’s poor aim had the blast of light strike her shoulder, not her face.
[HEALTH: 852/1000]
She barely registered the sudden stinging pain as her shirt shoulder was burned off, too shocked by this latest defiance of logic. “. . You’ve got laser vision?!”
The gecko chirped as it stalked towards her, tail flicking back and forth. She wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t shoot again. Maybe it was already out of Mana after just those two bolts?
The pain registered, and oh sweet baby Jesus did that hurt. That burn was one-twentieth of her health? It sure felt like it had brought her a lot closer to dying than that!
The lizard had learnt its lesson about lunging at her, instead stalking closer, wary of her lashing out. Mikayla retreated, half-stumbling backwards, keeping her arms up and ready to summon her sword if needed.
[MANA: 3/1200]
Clearly, finding sanctuary in Astralia’s Spear was a pipe dream at best. It was too far away. She would have to fight and kill this thing. Should be easier the second time, right?
The gecko continued to inch closer, squinting at her, and Mikayla’s lips twisted. She needed to go on the offensive. She had twelve seconds of sword usage. Or, possibly, one second of Goliath sword usage - she remembered the feeling of blood seeming to flow into the sword. That had to have been her mana. There were implications there that she could worry about when a monster gecko wasn’t trying to eat her.
“Sword!” By the time the blade had materialised in her hand, she was already throwing herself forwards and driving it into the monster’s eye. Unfortunately, the gecko was ready for her desperate final stand, twisting its head to the side. Another blast of green heat shot from its pupils, burning away a layer of fabric and flesh from her hip, and Mikayla screamed, wildly swinging her sword in its direction.
The gecko flinched back, bobbing and weaving to avoid her strikes. She landed small nicks to its upper body, but not the fatal blow she needed. Conscious of her mana, she let the sword fizzle out and back-pedalled again, until the bushes she’d been looking at before caught her feet and almost tripped her.
She looked up, only to find that the giant lizard had vanished. It had gone back to being camouflaged.
Mikayla forced her roaming eyes to stay still. It was somewhere here, and it was getting closer. She forced herself into the bushes, ignoring the way the branches and leaves tore at her clothes and skin, keeping her hands ready. Her Mana ticked back up from one point to two.
What was it going to try next?
For a couple of long minutes she searched her surroundings, her nerves growing more and more frayed. Where was it? Could it have run away? Could she count on that? Would it just stalk her until she fell asleep?
She felt a cool breeze on the back of her neck, and shivered. “. . Screw it. I need to find shelter. Somewhere to sleep that’s safe. Astralia’s Spear is my best bet,” Shaking her head and mustering her Willpower, she stepped out of the bushes and bumped into thin air.
The entire forest around her rippled and was replaced with the belly and tail of a coiled lizard. Mikayla screamed in shock, immediately realising what had happened. The creature had inched closer so slowly that she hadn’t been able to pick out any distortions in its camouflage this time. And now it was already in range - where was its head?!
She followed the curve of its body to the right and found its eyes and open maw just in time to see it bite down on her raised right arm.
Mikayla screamed again as the teeth sunk into her flesh, her fingers spasming wildly. Before she’d even realised it, she was already screaming, “Sword! Goliath!” and twisting the hand that was already halfway down the gecko’s throat.
When she looked back on that moment in the coming days, she liked to imagine that the gecko had an expression of fear and regret in the half-second it took for a thirty-foot sword to swell inside its throat and cause its entire body to explode in a shower of gore.
[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING A FOREST GECKO!]
[LEVEL UP! CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 4!]
Mikayla’s throat was too dry for a third scream, despite the viscera that had covered her entire body after the brutal execution. She looked down at herself, then at the exploded corpse of the lizard, then at the dismembered jaws buried in her arm. She felt the sword try to draw in more mana than she had, scraping dregs of power from her empty reservoirs of energy and collapsing into a cloud of red sparks when it couldn’t. It was all far more than she could take.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed into the bushes in a dead faint.