Each of the enemies was the size of a bear, but longer, skinnier, more athletic and less bulky. They had long limbs that terminated in three-clawed hands, each fingertip holding a retracted claw the size of a saber. Tusks curved up from their lower jaws, bracketing blunt, wet noses and dark eyes. Diamond scales covered their backs, layered together into a shining yellow-gold armor.

I had hoped to corral them into the pitfall via the fence of bamboo. But as I watched, the infected one simply reared up and threw its body against the barrier– too stupid, too dazed with pain, to notice the entrance only a few feet away.

The bamboo was split and shattered with a ferocious cracking. The beast spilled through the fence, tearing the wooden posts up the roots. It sprawled down into the farmyard, groaning, and lay still, its belly and chest heaving with labored breath. I could feel the parasitic larvae deep within its brainstem, chewing away its thoughts and replacing them with brute instincts.

But the others were not so blind or dazed.

They broke through the fence in a mob, shattering the slime gourd crop with casual swings of their claws. Some dipped their muzzles down to feed on the bounty of mana-rich, gelatinous flesh. Others circled their brother, nudging him with their noses and letting out groaning, baritone cries of confusion.

I winced and prepared myself for the worst. Letting a few of my crop be shattered was a small price to pay for avoiding a fight. I had only planted them today, and no great amount of mana was wasted letting them go. Almost nothing compared to the cost of losing a single serpent.

But then one of them lurched towards the hive, drawn by the scent of honey.

Dammit.

I cast mana-sparks into the beast’s eyes, making it flinch, rear up, and roar. In that moment glowbelly mushrooms sprouted in a vibrant crop beneath its feet, swelled to full size and–

Splatters of spore and acid stripped fur from skin, skin from flesh. The beast came crashing down with its legs singed and ruined. Its claws came hacking down at the dirt, but there was nothing there. It rolled and groaned and tried sluggishly to stand.

The others had turned, and were rearing up. One by one their angry bellows shook the roof and made my songbirds tremble in their hiding places.

I was merciless. More mushrooms burst from the ground. This time the creature knew what was coming when it saw the points of light bloom– but it was too crippled to escape. It lunged forward and crashed down, unable to stand. The second salvo burst and covered its skin with etchings of acid, digging pink-red craters down into its flesh.

More. More.

I spent some thirty iotas in a matter of seconds trying to bring the beast down. It was truly drenched in acidic spores by the end, and I was able to eat the ground away from its prone body, dropping it down into a pit as I waited for the caustic bile to do its work.

But there was a cost. The others were angry now. They swept their claws around, striking for an enemy they didn’t see. The ground was torn and slashed, my crops trampled.

“Go. Strike the eyes. Blind them.” I commanded, and a flock of bees burst forth from the hive. They came in a buzzing squadron and landed on the foremost beast’s face, driving their stings towards its eyes. It managed to clench its eyelids shut in time– but the stings pierced into the thin flesh and injected it with swelling venom, blinding it regardless.

With a guttural roar it slammed down onto all fours and ground its head into the dirt, trying to scrape away the bees. Already most of them were dead from delivering their life’s one sting…

I grit my teeth and made my own sacrifice. More mushrooms sprouted beneath another one of the beasts– only four left now– but it lunged aside in time to escape, keeping the splatter from landing more than a few droplets on its fur.

They were intelligent enough for that. Damn.

“Get the queen out.” I ordered. Already, one of the blinded beast’s kin was advancing on the hive. I lifted a protective wall of bamboo, but it tore through with a single swipe. The queen was barely able to lift her swollen body after producing so many children, but her guards aided her into the air, and she escaped before that same claw came smashing down into the hive.

Honey dripped from the broken frame. I absorbed it– I absorbed the shattered slime gourds as well. But I could cannibalize my whole garden and still not have enough mana to shape a guardian that could face these things head on.

One of my serpents had returned, the one I’d sent below the earth to hunt for tunneling creatures. Now it came slithering up as I carved a pathway through the dirt, emerging behind a tuft of grass nearby the blinded beast.

The blind one was sweeping about in all directions with its claws. Sometimes it would manage to stand, only to come crashing back down. It rolled on its back, an upturned beetle.

The serpent slid closer and closer, avoiding the claws– and struck. Its poison fangs flashed through the air and sank them into the beast’s throat.

A massive paw came up and scraped at the wound, trying to dislodge the unseen attacker– but the snake had already faded back. It struck again, this time into the belly. The calf. My mana flowed into the brave little serpent, giving it the strength to produce more venom after each bite.

And I watched as the beast suddenly lunged and caught the snake in its jaws. It lifted its head up and swung it down, bashing the poor creature against the earth. Whipping its head back and forth, its teeth sawed through the serpent’s midsection entirely and cut my defender in half.

Blood and snakeskin and dripping drool hung from the beast’s jaws. It grunted and rose onto its paws, blinking open its eyes.

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

If I had blood– it would have ran cold. It was unharmed. The small wounds from the snakebite had already sealed over, and the poison in its eyelids was pushed out in a fizzing froth of blood and pus that dripped down its muzzle.

In the pit, the one I had thought dying threw itself against the enclosure. Its claws scraped and dragged at the edge, trying to lift itself up. Its hindlegs were unwounded.

They could regenerate.

All of the mana I had spent. The creatures I had lost–

I had inflicted not one wound upon them.

With a bellow, one of them reared up and challenged the house with its chest thrust forward. It took a clumsy step forward and swung– caving in the wall. Spears of light fell into the dark beyond as the beast forced itself through the gap, the roof groaning and tilting down above. It could see me.

Fear shot through my being.

No dumb creature knew what a dungeon core was; but every living thing knew to seek mana. To hunger for ascension.

I was delicious to all its senses.

It lurched forward and the boards collapsed under its heavy weight, dropping it into the root cellar. I had a moment to act.

I pushed away panic. I refused to waste a moment now, as time became more precious than any treasure. I scraped through my memories for some solution, some trick I could produce.

The wasps were effective. They had managed to infest one of the beasts with larvae and attack one of its few vulnerabilities, its brain. But that had taken hours to become effective and would take hours more to become lethal.

Was the tactic to delay? To conjure more wasps and try to mislead the beasts for long enough that the killing sting could do its work?

Below, the beast was throwing itself in fury against the walls of the cellar. It would only be a matter of time before it managed to force its way up again, even if only by blind luck.

No…

There had to be a better strategy. Even with all my resources, I couldn’t count on surviving except by moving myself to a safer position– and that would be wounding, perhaps crippling.

The flintheads. They had the most rudimentary form of fire magic.

I couldn’t kill these things, but I could show them what beasts feared most. Especially beasts who could regenerate from simple brute force and trauma.

But I needed time.

“Mele. Kahula. Imitate the largest predator you can.” I commanded, and began to work.

I reached into the archive of flesh and souls that I had consumed, flickering through possibilities. The space my mind navigated was like a constellation– bright points merged together by luminous lines. Many of these points were blank, offshoots, ancestors, and cousins that I had yet to discover, countless lifeforms unknown to me. But throughout the web a few points of light had clarified into crystalline spheres.

These were the creatures I knew or had created.

The flinthead was among them. So were the mana-eater bees.

I would weave them together with the last of my energy.

Above, Kahula and Mele wove through the air, calling out in mimicry of the massive gharials that hunted in the swamplands. The beasts froze and cast their heads about, briefly snapped out of their rage by fear of a larger predator. For a moment– they were off-guard.

– New Schema In Progress –

Precursors

Mana-Eater Bee x Flinthead Viper

Level 0.

“Fireflight Bee”

Relevant Traits:

Armored Scales: Level 1

Fire Creation: Level 3

Magnetoreception: 16 Meters

—

Cost: 3 iota

I did what I needed and paid the cost. From luminous points of pure mana came a swarm. They were rust-red in coloration, and their wings sparked like flint struck against steel as they flooded through the air.

The beasts were caught unawares as dozens of small bodies landed on their fur, paused for a moment to take the next action in unison, and began to buzz their wings. With each flickering motion sparks gathered.

And the attackers were suddenly engulfed in flames.

It was in truth, not the absolute fireblast I had hoped for. Each bee was only able to generate a fingerlength of flame with the whole of their imbued mana. As they did so, their bodies fell to the ground in a rain of twitching shells, lifeforces spent.

Above, Mele and Kahula cawed out a babbling confusion of different animal calls, creating the impression of a stampede.

Confusion ruled the moment. And in confusion, afraid of the flame, the beasts stumbled back. They had no clue why their fur had erupted into smoke and burning embers. They only knew there was some power here that could cause them hideous pain and bring forth fire.

One by one, they crashed through the bamboo curtain to flee into the woods.

Three were left behind. The one infected by the wasps, the one in the pit still struggling to escape, and the one thrashing about in the root cellar.

I consumed the stairs to trap that last one in place, and signed their death warrant by summoning more parasitic wasps.

I was not a vengeful creature. But I did feel relief at killing them.

As their bodies ceased to twitch, larvae eating through their brainstem and killing them, I absorbed the bodies. My wasps would deal the same fate to the escapees, in time.

– Schema Absorbed (Rare) –

Undying Megalonachyd

A massive relative of the common sloth, this great herbivorous monster can cut down trees with the hack of its oversize claws.

Level 5.

Relevant Traits:

Regeneration: Level 2

Armored Scales: Level 2

Adaptive Metabolism: Level 2

Iron Claws: Level 2

—

Cost: 107 iota.