"Wha—?"

Jair lunged at Ran, who finally registered the command and dropped to the ground, just in time for Jair's sword to stab into the throat of the brobeg who’d leaped in from behind.

Jair’s strike was still not enough to disable it, and its tongue quickly wrapped around the sword and twisted it free of Jair's grip.

In the instant that motion took, however, Jair's other hand had come up with his wand raised, firing directly into its open mouth with three bladed frost discs in quick succession.

Then it collided with him full force, all four claws slamming into his chest and stomach as the momentum of its charge carried it forward regardless of its recent injuries.

Ran jumped up and stabbed it from behind, sword skidding along its thick slimy skin, drawing a thin line of blood but barely causing enough damage for it to notice.

"You’ve really dented my armor," Jair complained as the weight of the thing slammed him backward to the ground.

It dropped his sword as its tongue snaked back around, enclosing his neck and beginning to constrict. The one saving grace of fighting a brobeg was that they had no teeth. They would strangle, dismember, disembowel, and otherwise butcher their prey with those rending claws, but what they caught in their tongues they tended to swallow whole, snakelike, rather than engage in chomping. Otherwise having this thing’s face so close to his own would have been a significantly bigger problem.

Ran didn't share Jair's optimistic view of the situation. Screaming incoherently, he stabbed his sword into the creature’s back.

This did succeed in distracting the brobeg, but it did not release Jair as Ran had probably hoped. Instead, it slurped Jair into its mouth headfirst.

If Jair were an ordinary traveler or tourist, having the upper half of his body encased in a monster's oversized mouth, its tongue actively strangling him, would have been enough to override any rational thought and turn him into a blubbering ball of panic. Panicking in a situation like this only guaranteed death, however, so Jair refrained from indulging the primal instinct.

The upper half of Jair's body also included the hand still holding the wand. His inability to breathe, see, or move did not in any way inhibit his ability to use his manabody.

He began firing as rapidly as the construct would allow.

It took rather a while.

The inside of a brobeg's mouth was not as vulnerable and sensitive as many other creatures' mouths were, highly damage resistant to accommodate the number of spiky, shelled, alive and clawing, and otherwise pointy creatures that brobegs preyed on regularly.

But resistance is not the same as immunity.

The wand Jair held directed the bladed spell at a standard propulsion rate independent of its surroundings. That is to say, firing it from no range whatsoever pressed directly into the mouth of a monster in the process of consuming you did nothing to slow the initial momentum of the attack.

It felt like an eternity, strangled and smothered in the dark, but in reality was probably only a few seconds. Jair fired twenty rounds of his frozen discblade spell in quick succession, stinging monster saliva mixing with hot thick monster blood, then the brobeg violently spat him out as it determined him to be indigestible.

Jair staggered unsteadily and fell, gasping for breath, vision obscured by the aforementioned monster fluids.

He really missed his spell imprints in times like this. Normally he’d have lifted himself rapidly out of range while safely cocooned in Absorb and Reflect until he’d recovered, but he had no such luxuries now.

Wiping away the slime and blood from his face, Jair lunged for his sword and snatched it up.

The brobeg had already moved its attention to Ran. Clearly deciding that these humans’ arms were the bigger threat, it wrapped Ran up around the waist and arms rather than trying to strangle him.

Jair was glad of that. He wasn't sure if Ran would have the mental fortitude to withstand being strangled and half swallowed without reflexively activating temporal reversion, regardless of how painful the soulspell might be.

The last thing he wanted was to lose all their progress right when they had finally made it to the Oriad.

Jair swapped out his wand, connecting one of the armbands instead. This one ran an electric charge through his sword, like a weak imitation of Discharge.

The blade sparked and glowed as the magic hummed into overdrive.

Jair stabbed the sword deep into the monster's thigh and continued to run his mana through the electric construct at full strength.

The monster shrieked in pain and twitched a final time, before collapsing limply to the ground.

He was dangerously close to depleting his manabody at this point, and it was still only their first encounter of the day. Jair hated being this young and this weak. Something like this should have barely scratched the surface of his reserves, but only so much could be done in a week or two. Even with the advantage of Nuprima compression to jumpstart his reservoir, he was far below his peak.

Jair cut free the tongue still holding Ran, untangling it and coiling it up for later. He offered his friend a hand up with a grin. “Good tensile strength in these, handy to have around.”

Ran didn’t move, sitting and staring at the bulbous corpse. "That's the kind of thing that lives here?"

"One of them. There's plenty more options on the menu. No need to worry. Though we should probably give it some distance before anything bigger notices the body and comes calling.”

Ran swallowed hard. "I can do this," he said, but tremulously. Clearly trying to convince himself as well.

Jair reached down, and this time Ran took his hand and let Jair pull him to his feet. "I know you can. And you've even got me here to help, so it's not even worth worrying about."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Ran put a hand to his chest, where the monster's claws had torn through his outer clothing and left deep gouges across the armor underneath.

"See? I told you it would be worth the discomfort."

"Yeah." Ran exhaled shakily, swallowed, and nodded again, more decisively. "Yeah."

They weren’t even out of sight before the sound of rending flesh signalled the dead brobeg’s corpse had attracted its first scavengers.

Ran looked like he might be sick, but kept himself together. Breathing deep, if a bit fast, he walked faster.

Jair matched his pace, continuing to scan the area as he checked over his constructs for damage. More expensive and less powerful than imprints, constructs also had the disadvantage of physically wearing out in a way imprinted spells didn’t. He disliked relying on constructs. With limited mana available and no time to create his imprints, constructs were a necessary evil. That didn’t make it any less irksome.

Cast an imprinted spell a thousand times and it’d only grow stronger from the use. Cast a spell through a construct a thousand times, and you’d probably been forced to replace it twice over already. Not to mention, construct casting took at minimum double the mana of an imprint for a weaker outcome, and the cost could go up to ten or twenty times that of the comparable imprint.

Ran yelped and jumped back, whipping out his soulsword from its sheath and aiming it at a thorny bush.

Jair paused when Ran didn’t follow him past the offending plant. "That is a prickle bush. It's not alive."

"It grabbed me." Ran's knuckles were white as he gripped his sword. "I felt it. It tried to grab me."

"It's a prickly bush. It probably snagged onto your sleeve."

"I know what I felt!"

"Right, desert boy. I forgot you've never encountered a thorn bush. Imagine it as a cactus that moves in the wind. Stabby branches, grab your clothing, still not alive."

Ran took a hesitant step forward and prodded at the branch in question with the tip of his sword. It swayed floppily in response. Ran jumped back.

"It's just a plant. It isn't even poisonous, or venomous. Perfectly safe." Jair stepped through the bramble in demonstration, feeling it snag a few times on his clothing, but he wasn't going to let a few scratches slow him down. Appearances weren’t worth concerning themselves with at this point.

Ran followed hesitantly, clearly more concerned by the potential of a carnivorous bush, but not enough to risk being left behind.

Jair threw his sword in a sudden flick, skewering a snapping plant through the mouth and pinning it to the tree behind.

Ran jumped at the sudden movement.

"Nothing to worry about. Just a hungry little snap vine." Jair gestured for Ran to precede him, then snatched his sword out once the thing would no longer be able to reach them. This was an older one, with mature venom pouches, so its bite would be much more dangerous than those further up the mountain.

Jair didn't bother to mention the next half-dozen threats he averted, switching between wands to covertly fire off warning shots, scare off certain predators and provide alternative targets for others.

As much as he’d love to make this a learning experience for Ran and introduce him to all that the Oriad had to offer, his friend’s tolerance levels for new dangers wasn't at peak level right now. Adapting to the forest environment for someone used to a desert was, Jair recalled, not immediate. He hadn't adapted instantly himself, so he wouldn't expect any more from Ran than was reasonable.

Of course, Jair ‘s introduction to the Oriad had been in the height of his chaos phase, throwing himself against every challenge he did find with the reckless certainty of a fledgling time looper.

He knew how to deal with these dangers because he had died to all of them more than once.

Twice more their trek was interrupted by unavoidable combat. The first, a spike-tailed vylix, was one of the faster and more dangerous creatures to prowl the hills. Semi-feline, with wicked claw-like serrations all down its over-long tail, across its shoulders and legs, and crowning its head like a declaration of violent supremacy. Its whole body was covered with tough plated hide, deep browns with glints of gold visible between as it moved.

“Run! I’ll hold it off. Don’t slow down, whatever you do.”

Ran hesitated, but Jair had no time to repeat himself. By the time he saw the vylix launch itself at them from its perch, it was too late.

He raised his off hand, firing all three of his supplementary constructs in a rapid, arcing volley. The vylix, unlike the brobeg earlier, had no way of adjusting its trajectory mid-flight, but it was sturdy enough it didn’t need to. It tanked all three direct hits, only snarling in annoyance as the impacts knocked it ever so slightly off course.

Jair crouched and let the creature soar over him, sword raised to slice a line along its stomach.

It rounded on him in a flash, lunging for his chest before he could get the weapon up between them.

Ran yelped, then something hit the monster from behind.

It turned to face the new threat, its long tail snapping behind it in a too-fast whiplike slash that sliced straight through Jair’s armor, leaving deep gouges in his shoulder and across his chest, destroying one of his constructs completely and knocking another askew so its intake no longer connected to his manabody anywhere.

“I said run!”

Jair stabbed out, activating the electrical charge on his sword the instant he felt the contact. Slashing attacks were little use against a vylix, piercing was the best option.

He hit it in the thigh, the electric and magic discharge enough to throw off its gait. It would recover, but it’d be limping long enough they might be able to outrun it.

Jair jumped into a sprint, catching up with Ran in seconds and grabbing his arm. “Faster.”

Even limping, the creature was fast. It yowled, tail thrashing as it bounded forward. Jair fired off more basic attacks from his wand, ice and light flashing out to hit the thing’s chest in perfect rhythm each time it jumped forward, but the vylix wasn’t something Jair was prepared to actually kill. He hadn’t expected to encounter one. Vylix normally required serious preparation and a long hunt to locate. It must have sensed their weakness and found them irresistible.

Jair’s constant barrage slowed the plated feline enough that they could outrun it, but its dogged pursuit forced them into a full on sprint for long enough that their young and untrained bodies were trembling and gasping by the time it finally gave up.

“I don’t think I like this jungle,” Ran panted as they finally slowed to a jog.

“It doesn’t like you either. I don’t think I’ve seen a vylix more than twice before except when specifically hunting for them. You’re either very good or very bad luck.”

“That was a vylix? I thought they were smaller.”

“The kind you’d hunt in Almas are a different breed. Jungle vylix are one of the most dangerous monsters around.”

Ran looked at Jair’s blood-streaked armor. “Looks like it.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’re bleeding. A lot.”

“Yeah, nothing to worry about.” Jair tapped his chest. “Healing augment, remember?”

“I thought that was one-time use only for emergencies?”

Jair laughed humorlessly. “A vylix is an emergency. If we meet another, we’re definitely dead. I have no mana left and what I can replenish goes straight to keeping me alive. But it’s fine. They’re very territorial, so we’re likely safe.”

Ran didn’t look reassured.

“Just don’t slow down. We still need to get out of its sensory range or it may decide to come after us again.”

That did the trick, though they were both drawing on energy they could ill afford to waste. They’d need to use more than standard food when they finally stopped to rest, if they wanted to be any use the next day. Alchemical supplements were another questionable shortcut, inefficient for long-term usage with diminishing returns and increasing costs, but like with constructs there were times you had to swallow your pride and set efficiency aside for practical necessity.

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