Moonwash, Baston, Luine, and I walked through the overgrown forest, away from any established roads. We all carried very large packs on our backs, but it barely slowed us down, as strong as we were.

We had gone past all the Angelorian settlements this side of the continent, and had already ditched our escorts. The centaur couple were beginning to ask ill-advised questions, as they had taken notice of my ability to wield curse-aligned magics. It was apparently a very rare ability, and very frowned upon.

Skill issue. Sounds like they should work harder.

Something scurried within the brush, I saw a familiar horn. I dropped my large pack and went to hunt it, because I could. The bush was swatted away by my sword, and the horned rabbit hiding within jumped in fright, shooting a tide of flames at me as a distraction, but I didn’t even bother to dodge. That was ill-advised, against my loadout. My flesh was resistant to heat.

My legs flexed, and I charged. The rabbit was pulling away on me at first, but I quickly sped up. And then it turned, choosing a circuitous route while blasting its behind with flames every so often. Nothing that would prevent its capture for long, but I chose to do more.

My demon eyes gazed into the monster, and the rabbit gazed back. The wild creature paused in fright, against all instinct to keep on fleeing away. Menace aura oozed off off my form, finally causing the tiny monster to faint in sheer terror.

“Hey! I won!” I cheered, taking off my hood and waving to the others. They followed after me, and Moonwash killed the rabbit for good, before butchering the remains.

She cooked us a nice brunch, because she’d gotten better at that too.

My friend really was amazing.

The thoughts of how she was an arrogant show-off were only the whispers of menace magic.

~~~

I woke up, still in my armor. My vigilance was rewarded when I found a tiger stalking us from the bushes. I picked up my sword, and nodded at Luine who was keeping watch and could have killed the animal at any time. But she left it for me to have for breakfast.

I was thankful.

I broke into a run. An unstoppable charge that had the tiger freaking out. It took one moment to decide that fleeing was the best option, but my demon eyes and magic intimidation aura made it hesitate.

That was enough. My sword bit deeply into its torso. The tiger snarled, and tried to fight back, but the existing wound was already limiting its movement. I landed another slash across its face, and the attack split bone. The animal was staggering now, barely able to keep standing. I put it out of its misery with a proper menace-infused beheading.

“Good Morning!”

~~~

A few days into our travels, the air around us began to change. It became more humid, and more damp. There was an oppressive pressure, as if I felt in a small way the pressures of the deep ocean, a darkness that blotted out all light.

It didn’t take long until a new kind of foe found its way towards us, when we stopped by a clear and serene lake. Baston warned us in advance, and I hid behind Moonwash who had her shield up, the both of us in full plate.

A piercing ray of water then shot out of the lake, which Luine deflected with her daggers, showing the depth of her skill. The smirk that followed us showed just how necessary that was when she could’ve just dodged. The woman rushed towards the water to chase away the enemy. She tossed her knives into the lake, but the water slowed it down enough to allow the slithering creature within to survive. The weird-looking monster disappeared back into the depths.

The monster that I could only barely make out was actually a light blue snake with two heads, one on each end. One was really good at intaking a huge amount of water, bloating its body into segments that nearly looked like a worm’s. Meanwhile, the other head was shaped weirdly, like a gourd, and its sole function was to expel the water as a highly damaging stream.

“Aquaboros,” Moonwash said.

“You beat me to it!” I complained.

“What?”

“...You said the name first.” It was in that book we read before coming to this area.

“You can still say it.”

“It’s not the same!”

“Yes it is. The name aquaboros remains unchanged.”

A pause.

“Aquaboros.” My voice was filled with the pride of a scientist unveiling a new discovery.

Moonwash clapped. Slowly.

~~~

"I want to kill one." I said, chewing on my fish. I imagined that it was the taste of an aquaboros instead. Not that I've ever had any, they were only found in this untamed wonderzone away from all civilization, and we only knew about them because we were nerds.

Not that it was impossible to tame these lands. It’s happened before as evidenced by the sparse few remnants of civilization peeking out from a few trees and vines. But a long time had passed since the harpies razed the settlements here to the ground, and the Angelore Empire had still not recovered enough to retake it. I hoped it never does.

"Me too. I want to see how that water shooter thing works," Moonwash replied, likewise imagining the same taste of aquaboros as she ate her own meal. Maybe.

We followed our desires and proceeded to try and murder a creature. I got shot in the chest for my trouble, but I continued to charge, heedless of the danger. I reached my target, a snake the width of my forearm previously sitting on shallow shores, but it had already swam deeper by the time I got there. Its shooting head was able to discharge water in a different way, as propulsion for their travels.

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I tried slashing at the water, but it predictably did nothing.

“Well shit. First try, it’s fine. The first time always sucks.”

I checked my armor for damage, and there was a slight groove through the surface, showing that the monster did good damage. Certainly not enough to get through in one go, but I did not want my gear to suffer this early on. It was new, for fuck’s sake! And repairs were difficult this deep in the wilderness.

~~~

I thought about it for a while, and I came up with a bright idea. A very bright idea. Hence my use of a fire wand, controlling a veritable wall of fire mana in front of myself.

A beam of water hit me before I could activate the magic.

“I wasn’t ready! Fuck!”

I dodged away, and the water beam tried to follow me, but it eventually petered out. My eyes caught sight of the aquaboros, and it was still trying to reload. The next time it attacked, I was ready, and the wall of flames erupted in front of myself, hotter than anything I’d ever summoned before. It did absolutely fuck all, and I staggered away from the water beam. I touched where the damage was, and the grooves cut into my armor might have been a tad smaller, but not by much. The water was just going far too fast for the heat to have done anything meaningful. Fire really wasn’t meant for defense.

“Just use my shield,” Moonwash said. That was the obvious solution, wasn’t it?

…It was.

“...Okay.”

~~~

I charged straight into the lake with Moonwash’s shield, and I barely felt the impacts of the waterbeam beyond. I reached the shores of the water, I waded into the dangerous lake, but my prey was gone all the same once I was there.

I was back to the same problem.

“How the fuck do we reach it!? The damn snake just runs away!”

“We could just move on,” Baston suggested.

“Never!” I was invested now!

He shrugged, and I went back towards them to entice the aquaboroses to seek us once more.

There I found Moonwash pacing, she was murmuring to herself while keeping her eyes on the lake.

“We can’t reach it, the aquaboros will just run away, and we can’t move nearly as well in the water. So then what if it wasn’t our slow and inefficient bodies doing the traveling but something else… Haell!”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to try something.”

“Okay.”

Moonwash picked a wand from her collection, we really should be trying to be more economic about this considering how hard it would be to find mana this far from civilization. We were committed!

My friend levitated a rock, and once an Aquaboros came near the shore, the projectile of stone rocketed towards it. The snake swam away, and the projectile's speed bled away as it sank into the water.

I clapped. “That’s better than what we’ve been doing before!”

I tried to do the same thing with my menace bolts, but they weren’t fast enough to begin with, propelled solely by magic and only partially subject to physics. The water still slowed it down somehow, if only a little. Not that it mattered, my attack wouldn’t have reached the hidden aquaboros regardless.

Moonwash was the one to try again after that. She focused and concentrated, readying a big spell. She wasn’t that good of a mage on the fly, but give her time and my friend can exceed all limits. I protected her while she charged up.

By the time Moonwash was ready to shoot, the aquaboros we were hunting had already swam away, having lost interest when its water beams did no visible damage to Moonwash’s tower shield. She shot the small boulder into the lake regardless and it impacted as if it were a cannonball.

It was mighty impressive, but again, the target was long gone.

We sat on the problem for a while, neither of us willing to abandon the mission and give up. I will not accept my defeat! Not from the two-headed prick!

“I got it!” I exclaimed. I explained the plan to my friend and got in position.

The water beams impacted my shield again, and I shook from the force. I shivered, cowering from the pain, as Moonwash’s spell continued to form.

The aquaboros slithered closer to the shore, it was so close that just a few more inches would spell my doom for sure!

“Gaaahhh!! Aaarrrggghhh!!!!” I howled in agony tilting my shield into a collapse. And then Moonwash’s spell finished. It shot into the water, and hit our prey!

I quickly rushed over in search of the snake, uninjured because it was all a ruse! I reached the bank and saw a small trickle of blood, but our enemy was long gone. I could barely make out its silhouette from under the lake.

“Darn! So close!”

Moonwash nodded in agreement. She took out another wand, this time of wind.

“I will try a joint spell.”

My eyebrows rose, up to my forehead. A joint spell, using two different elements. Hell, using two wands of the same element at once was already a mighty difficult feat. Two different elements at once, wielded separately, was even more so, no matter how easy my mother makes multi-spells look. The different elements required different sorts of mindset after all. And a step even further beyond that was a joint spell that had two elements working in harmony. That was what my friend wished to try.

I could scarcely even use two wands at once myself, let alone of different elements. So was Moonwash really just that much better than me!?

She is in certain respects. I will not be manipulated into hating my best friend, menace mana. Not on your life.

I gave Moonwash space as she created a pointed speartip out of stone, meticulously shaping and compressing it into what she wanted. My friend then struggled to incorporate wind mana into it, and she was able to maybe push the stone a little bit faster with the help of the wind.

The difference was insignificant, and she most certainly could not rapidly switch between elements like my mother could. So she slowly practiced and attempted to perfect that single attack of hers.

“I need speed, and the air could give it. The wind typically serves as a resistance, even. So I want to remove that… obstacle of force, and have the air push my projectile instead.”

“Air resistance.”

“What?”

“That’s the word you’re looking for,” I said.

“Oh. Air resistance. Thank you.”

“...You’re welcome.”

Night came, dinner was eaten, and dawn had broken when Moonwash finally decided her preparations to be complete.

“Let’s give it another go.”

“Okay.” I crouched into position, and we waited for a while until an aquaboros finally wanted to take a shot at us. I writhed and groaned under its assault like before, a performance worthy of an oscar. Moonwash’s spell eventually finished forming, while the monster was still so convinced that it’d take just a little bit more for me to be defeated.

A spike of earth flew through the air, faster than all prior attempts. Its path was a blur, and it sank into the lake with great force. The water became tinged with red right after.

I quickly ran for it, to find our bleeding prey. What I saw was an aquaboros, still writhing, but unable to slither away with its flesh lacerated, nearly torn in half. I grabbed it forcefully, and that alone finished the job. The monster died, now split in two.

I carried the aquaboros back to camp. The snake would’ve been twice as long as I was tall, from head to the other head.

I had it for breakfast, and the taste of crab mixed with eel made this whole entire detour worth it.

Moonwash was fascinated by the corpse. From its capabilities to slurp up large amounts of water, to the compression and propulsion mechanics behind the water beam.

My friend ate more than usual.