Once the set was buried and their [Last Rites] were given, I started to move on from the fight.

“Wow, you just got them, huh,” Selly said, a bit of jealousy in her voice.

“Yeh, I guess I did.”

I hadn’t thought about it. I had just walked up and killed three people.

They weren’t skeletons; they weren’t monsters, they weren’t even necessarily working for whom I intended to fight, though I was reasonably sure they were.

That idea put a pit in my stomach. What was worse was that I didn’t feel all that bad about it, they're death meant nothing to me. I had stopped myself from killing a man who had wronged me. They had bound me and pierced my body with metal spikes, and I hadn’t killed him.

What was the difference? It’s not like the humans were less hostile somehow. Was it just that he was human? That I saw him as more of a person than the diseased vermin-like people? If they were people.

I didn’t know, and I didn’t know if I wanted to know.

I followed the path of footprints in the dirt as it wound through the dark forest, my senses giving me an ever-increasing ominous feeling.

The feeling of the place, not the physical place, but the magical part, the mana and the way it flowed through the environment, gave me the willies and made my hair stand on end.

I started to feel watched, even though I was, to my knowledge, unspotted by the creatures that I had seen watching over the area.

To check, I had made sure I had gotten off the path and hidden until the next party passed. Three more verminous creatures looked sick with their patchy fur and sharply pointed ears, red with scaring. But they didn’t notice me, they hadn’t sniffed me out.

They just walked on past me, and I once again snuck up behind them.

Death claimed three more, this time, they fared even worse. I took out two silently while they walked in a staggered formation, and the last was confused when I hewed it.

Three more I gave their [Last Rites] and buried.

If I had to guess, they were weaker than the first ones. The feeling of sending their souls off filled me very little, though based on the feeling I had, I was likely to level up already.

I had practiced for a few weeks and gotten less than a handful, and yet I had almost made that up in less than a day.

I caught the feeling of myriad eyes staring at me, again the feeling worsening and paranoia rising as I spent more time on the path, and I found myself looking over my shoulder and looking for a side path or any way to get off the trail and away from the vibe of the place.

It left me unprepared for when I was genuinely being watched and meant that the first arrow took me by surprise. It skimmed past me, a lucky near miss as it skimmed past my shoulder, and while it wasn’t serious, it still drew blood.

I spun to try and find them, and it wasn’t tough to spot them, it was honestly quite an embarrassment.

A group of 5 of the creatures were about 50 feet from me, partially obscured by the brush. At a glance, three had bows, one had something that looked like a sword, and the other had a long pointy stick, not quite as long as mine based on their height but still longer than arm's reach.

It had been a stupid mistake not seeing them, but it had been a blessing that one of them shot first, the second and third weren’t ready to shoot, and the third was still taking out their bow while the second was knocking an arrow.

They made a warbling hiss of noise in their skittery tongue, a language I had no clue how to translate that probably amounted to ‘fire,’ and I started to run.

Whatever they were, they weren’t very well trained. Even just a little bit of thought gave me a plan of attack. The two with a way to stab me were to the side, closer to me and easier to hit.

I activated [Long Strider], doubling the distance I could cover to help close the distance and throw off the aim of the other [Archers] and sprinted towards the front two vermin.

They prepared themselves, levelling a spear and sword towards me, readying to strike when I swerved around them.

The second [Archer]’s bow twanged, flying towards where I was going but missing me as I ate up the ground.

My feet pounded against the soil as 50 feet halved almost every other second. The two in the front caught on to my plan and started to move, trying to collapse on me, but it was too late.

They were too slow.

They had put their warriors forward, with their archers to the side and back, to get a good line of fire. [Warriors] in the front to fight, [Archers] in the back. It was the milk and toast of a formation, but leaving the ones with bows farther back left them totally unprotected from me. I was just too fast, and my legs and my skill left the distance negligible.

I pulled my shovel into a two-handed grip as I closed on the one closest to the right side, the one that had barely gotten the bow out. Panic overtook it, it was going for an arrow as it watched its death blur toward it.

It stared at me like a deer, both panicked and frozen solid at the same time, it didn’t even try to get out of the way. It didn’t contest me as I hewed into it, cleaving through fur, skin, and viscera.

The hit almost tripped me, the shovel getting stuck in my body, unmoving while I was going forward, causing me to jerk, pulling it forward and onto the ground.

The first [Archer] took its chance, its shot firing from the bow with a speed that implied a skill at play. That and the skill it spoke, “[Long Shot].”

It whizzed towards me, and it was my turn to be a deer. But I wasn’t a deer and wasn’t afraid of an arrow. I put my foot on the fallen creature and kicked it off my shovel with some effort, reflexively ducking to get under the arrow.

It thumped into my left shoulder and stuck in, my shoulder went limp. My fingers numbed and left my arm useless.

“Shit,” I cursed.

“I’m out, nice knowing you,” Selly said, slipping up off my now drooping shoulder.

“Yeh, yeh. Watch my back,” I told her. What else was she going to do? She was less than an inch tall and unarmed.

“Okey, Dokey,” She replied in a chipper tone, flittering up and out of sight.

In retrospect, trying to duck a skill-enhanced shot was just dumb, but I didn’t exactly have a [Battle Senses] skill.

At least my shovel was out of the thing.

I moved towards the next [Archer], he was winding up a second shot. I jerked forward, pushing off the ground and checked the others behind me who were rapidly catching up.

I can’t let them catch me yet, I still need to get rid of the [Archers]… come on, think. I don’t just have a shovel, what can slow them down…

Trip them?

Can I do that somehow?

They’re too far for my [Aura of Soil]…

Plants! My [Aura of Renewal], I’m an idiot!

I reached out to the edge of my [Aura of Renewal], which was twice the distance of my [Aura of Soil], which only reached a few feet away.

It reached out farther, and it was thematic, I didn’t know if that was important for extending the skill as I had with [Displace Dirt], but in a fight, I didn’t want to find out.

“[Gild Growth] [Guide Plant],” I called out, activating and guiding the grass and brush to tangle in the hope of tripping them as I made my way to the second threat. I could feel the plants burst up from the ground, my [Verdant Senses] showing me as they sucked up the mana, rapidly sprouting up and out, rapidly thickening until the grass bore a close resemblance to bamboo, more grass growing up and out until a wall of greenery sprouted up behind me.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I rushed towards the next bow-thing, for I had no idea if it was a male or female, but it was apparent that it would soon be meat.

It panicked, calling out, “[Rapid Shot],” before it began to run, turning away from me and crying out in its skittery voice. The skill caused its arms to blur, grabbing an arrow and firing it rapidly.

Go figure.

I was too busy sprinting at it like a maniac to veer out of its path, and I ran into it. But luckily, it didn’t go anywhere vital, pounding into the same shoulder that was already useless.

It still stung like a motherfucker as it went in, cutting through flesh before slamming against the bone of my shoulder blade. A white-hot lance of pain jolted down my not totally immobile left arm; in a moment, the limb went from just numb and immovable to pure dead weight.

I could see a hint of pride, a smirk on its face.

The thing I thought it had landed a wound on me, something I could not recover from.

Maybe it thought I might flee, run from it and the things behind me where it could turn me into a pin cushion, but I didn’t.

The wall of green came up, and the arrow thunked into my shoulder, and I just kept running at it. Hefting my spade in one hand, relying on [Tool Proficiency] to make sure I wasn’t going to drop it, the thing's face lost the smirk as it held the spade like a lance, tucking the haft into my armpit and holding the spade at the point of balance.

I still had one good arm, and that was far more than I needed.

It screeched out and levelled its bow, and I heard the first letter of a skill get called out, a simple “[P-]” was all it got out before I snuffed its life out by running its chest through. Impaling my shovel through bone and lung just below the collar bone of the shorter being before freeing the shovel, just barely, out the other side of its chest.

I moved around as it stood there, gasping, looking down at itself as I ripped the shovel out of its back, pulling on the head until the haft had gone all the way through it.

I was about to start off after the last archer when, from above, I heard Selly cry out in her familiar tiny voice, “Behind you! Behind you!”

I stepped back and away from the [Archer] before turning around to check behind me. Behind the still-standing figure that thought it was still alive, staring at its chest like it thought it would still be there. The spear-wielding thing was coming for me; the second was pulling itself out, but it was still stuck. But the [Spearman] or [Warrior], whatever class it was, was too close for me to get a proper stance and fight the thing.

I spun around and crouched a little before getting behind the still-standing corpse. It was clutching at the wound in its chest, fingers fumbling at the hole.

I was honestly surprised that it was still standing, I could probably see through the hole I had made in its chest. It was almost dramatic.

“Sorry, you’re about to have a second hole,” I told the thing.

It sprinted up to us in a moment before letting out a bellowed “[Power Thrust].”

It gripped the spear with both of its furry-clawed hands, planted its feet, and its arm blurred out in a forward thrust.

I grabbed the thing and pulled it the rest of the way in front of me while moving, getting ready to counter the thrust.

I had been hoping not to get hit by a skill; I had been banking on its incompetence and made a bad plan.

The thrust took the still dying [Archer] through the shoulder, a few inches to the left of my hole. A few inches left for it.

Unfortunately, left for it was right for me.

It came through my meat shield’s back, slaked in gore and caught me in the rib, punching an inch into my left side. It left a painful ache when I pulled back from it and continued to just around the side, hefting my shovel with one hand and hewing around to slash at it. It connected, although it was a bit skewed. The shovel couldn’t be held flat with only one hand, so it bit sideways and down into its shoulder.

It still broke the bone, the strength of my blow, and my [Durable Tool] skill, not letting the shovel break or chip as it bit down.

“Behi-” Selly cried out in a warning.

A shock of pain cut off her warning, I stopped hearing for a second as the arrow pierced through my lower back. I choked back on a scream of pain and forced my eyes to stay open.

I’m not going to let some pain detract from the fight, not a little pain like this, I have been impaled with stakes. This? This is nothing.

I reached out and started to [Displace Dirt], hurling it up from around me, to back behind me. I even said it out loud despite how well I understood how to use the skill, to use it with a little more oomph.

It wasn’t doing all that much, compared with what I needed to do, at least. I was trying to throw up a wall of earth behind me while fighting the [Spearman].

In a bit of desperation to make it work faster, I had my second goodish idea of the day, the first being a ramp.

I pushed mana into the skill.

The mana inside my [Magi] skill was like a reservoir, a pool of extra mana I could use to cast spells independent of the environment. I didn’t have to do the extra legwork of getting mana from the environment, I just had it.

But there was a source of internal mana.

The body already had some in it, taken from the environment, from breathing the air, from drinking water, and eating and so on, which helped nurture my body.

I found out through reading later that the difference between active and passive skills was that active skills used almost all mana, pulling it out of the body like a spell, just shaped internally.

It was why active skills tired you out, they drained the mana out of you, literally sucking out the energy that nurtured a person's magically enhanced stat-improved body.

But I had an extra source, and one with a lot more energy sitting in it than my body.

The dirt started to flow up and out of the hole as the mana flooded out of me, hurling the dirt out in a cone behind me.

I blinked as I sucked down air, and my mind did what minds are supposed to do. Come up with a better idea.

I tried a second thing. Pushing mana into a passive skill and found out that it did something as well.

The [Aura of Soil] was relatively short, only reaching about five feet from me, but as even more mana flooded from me, it doubled in range, reaching as far as my [Aura of Renewal]. I reached out and found that my aura could also be flexed, just with much control over the effect.

And importantly, it let me do something that would win me the fight against the [Spearman] because, despite the fact we were both down one arm, the spear could be held in one arm, my weapon was more like a malformed halberd, which was too heavy to easily be used with one arm, at least with my Build.

The [Spearman] called out a few abilities as I reached out to the ground below his feet.

“[Retrieve Spear], [Retributive Stri-IEEE.” It called, pulling the spear back out of the body one-handed before it began to slip into the softened dirt.

The body, too, began to fall, losing whatever counted as its footing, and both of them, like me, began to drop in elevation when I displaced the earth below them back past me and up to the growing pile.

I managed to duck in time to see an arrow thump into the growing wall of the hole. It would have hit me if I was still up, and I counted my lucky stars that I hadn’t been hit with a second.

I could hear Selly yelling something, but it was mostly freaking out, so I focused on the threat in front of me. The wretched thing was flatfooted as it slipped, vulnerable for a hit in the growing pit.

I changed my grip until I was holding it under my armpit again and thrust at it three times, missing the first, hitting it poorly on the second, but getting a good hit in on the third, where I landed a good hit on its stomach.

It grit its teeth but managed to get out a hissing, “[Retributive Strike].”

Its flabby arm aimed and thrust out, its skill empowering its thrust, which lashed out into my gut.

My body tensed from the pain, and I let out a howl, but I powered through the pain, my vision narrowing in on my foe. I managed to suck in a breath before I thrust and kept thrusting, hitting it with strike after strike until I dropped my form and just wailed on it, throwing pound after pound of dirt away from us and into a wall.

It cried out, managing to pull out the spear, but all that did was let me kick its arm before turning my ire to its one remaining arm.

It started howling, too, until my shove hit its head, and it went silent. I hit it a few more times until I saw a flame roll out of its body, and I stopped to breathe.

I tried to hold my hand up to my stomach, but it did nothing, my arm didn’t move, it was totally silent, unmoving. I couldn’t feel it.

My heart was beating frantically. I didn’t even register that it wasn’t moving or that I had a gut wound.

I just needed to fight.

My blood was thumping in my ears, I could hear my heart beating, my mind was baying for a fight, and I could barely breathe properly.

I collapsed the wall and rushed up the slope, my feet and my heart slammed in sync. Hammering my chest. Hammering the ground, I solidified underfoot.

The archer let out a fast shot, but once I got within range, I carved away it's footing before slamming down on it, once, twice. I could hear its shrill squeaking; its cry grated my nerves, so I kept slamming, no form, no grace or forethought, just animal instinct, momentary taught that flittered into my head before rushing off, and I kept doing it until I heard another shrill cry from behind me.

The blade slammed into me as I turned, but I didn’t even recognize it, I just turned and tried to slam my shovel into it, but it was too close, too unwieldy, so I dropped it.

Push it over, it is small. My instincts told me.

Staring down at it almost a foot, I must have seemed like a red-headed behemoth to the five-foot-tall ugly rat-like thing.

It let out a shrill cry when I grabbed it and levered down on it.

It was so much smaller, so much lighter.

So much weaker.

Its blade came free, panic growing in its eyes as my claws came out, and I started to rake, gouge, and slice at it. It, in turn, started to do the same, dragging its filthy nails through my skin as it slashed and cut at me. It flailed its weapon, poking and gouging my side and back, but I ignored it.

We were a ball of screaming flesh as we tore into one another, horrible, animal brutality, spurned on by nothing more than the instinct to kill and the instinct to live, egging one another one. The part of me that was not a person but an animal saw weakness, guiding my strikes to down prey.

The blood smelled like nothing but blood, the iron tang driving my heart to beat until it screamed in agony. My lungs burned alongside my arms from my excursion. I started to bite it, slamming my teeth into its neck as my one good arm raked over an eye, and I bit down, my instinct to salvage it.

I slammed my head back and forth, trying to snap its distended neck.

I savaged it, blood screaming out to kill the thing below me, and I listened, savaging it.

“Stop!”

I bit down, tasting blood. It was not sweet or tasty, carrying only a curdled texture and a taste of iron, but my body was thrilled, and I wanted more. My body shivered.

“Gods above, stop! It’s already dead.”

I heard the voice but didn’t care, it was trying to distract me from my fight. I had to fight, I needed to live, I needed to kill it, to-

The little body slammed down on my nose and started to pound its little fists into my brow.

“It’s already dead, you idiot, cut that out. Breath!” she yelled.

I blinked at her, I was going to swat it, but I recognized her. It took me a second, but I let go and breathed.

Oh. My lungs weren’t burning from exertion.

I hadn’t been breathing at all.

The part of my mind that recognized that must have passed the message because I started to choke down air as I looked down at the very obvious corpse.

I retched.