My eyes stay locked on the sphere of water as alarm bells, rusty from not being needed for years, slowly start going off in my mind. If the water affinity functions like time, then she has to be burning off mana to actively control that much liquid at once.
I flick my eyes back to hers, and I know I’m showing some of what I’m feeling on my face. In what feels like slow motion, my heart drops and my suspicion blooms into horrible certainty as she sets her jaw and raises her free hand towards me.
Like I’m turning on a faucet, I open the channel from the time half of my core to my mind. Ice spreads across my skull, and the world turns to actual slow motion.
Her hand is half-extended, and a spike is protruding from the sphere of water towards me. Shit, even in [Moment of Clarity] it’s moving relatively fast, tunneling through the air towards my head.
I start lowering my hand towards the claw I dropped earlier - back when I was so overwhelmed with relief at seeing another person that I forgot humans are assholes. I judge the relative speed my hand is moving at compared to the jet of water.
I’m not going to make it.
I change plans, throwing my body to the side. From what I’ve seen, she’s controlling her attacks using her body as a conductor. The water is faster than me, but is she?
Halfway through my roll, the world crashes back into motion. What the fuck? The loss of control sends me crashing into the dirt and I hear water splashing against the ground behind me. I flip over, heart beating wildly, expecting to see a cloud of water inches from my face right before it envelops me.
Instead, she’s eyeing me with surprise. “An agility build? At Level 2?”
I stare at her, panting. She just tried to attack me, and now she wants to talk?
No, wait. I glance at her orb of water, smaller now but once again being fed from the lake. She’s stalling. Her attacks are fast, but she needs to ‘charge’ up first to gather enough water to do something meaningful. I glance at my own stats.
HP: 23/24
MP: 07/46
Time: 20/49
Although the cost for [Moment of Clarity] extends as I use it, it seems like it has a hard cap at 10, forcibly ending the ability when I hit that number. I’ve regenerated a few points of mana on my walk here, but not enough fill up my Time again.
That means I can only use it twice more at a minimum.
Every second I waste means her next attack will be stronger. I need to run, get away from this psycho as fast as possible.
I stagger to my feet and turn around, sprinting for the tree line. Adrenaline courses through my body, fueling my every step. The trees loom in my vision, growing bigger and bigger. I just need to get there, to break line of sight, then-
I feel something wet grab my ankle. I’m jerked backwards, the sudden halt in momentum sending a jolt of pain through my body.
I land on my back and the wind gets knocked out of my body. I manage to look down, only to see a long rope of water extending out from her and wrapped around my foot.
Slowly, I start getting reeled in. I kick wildly and scrabble at the ground with my fingers, but it’s about as useless as a doomed fish futilely tugging at a fisherman’s rod.
“Sorry,” she says without a hint of remorse as I get dragged across the dirt. “It’s nothing personal, really, but I don’t have much time left. The lake’s empty now, it can’t help me anymore. If the woods in that direction are as barren as you say, then I need to secure my fifth level now.”
The realization hits me with all the subtlety of a three-ton truck. That’s why she’s doing this.
Animals aren’t the only thing you can kill to gain experience.
She’s not going to let me go, either. That means I have to fight back somehow.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The orb of water she was using to power her attacks has been transformed into the rope that is being used to pull me in. She’s weaving her arms in some sort of pattern, both pulling the water in and coiling it up again so there is no slack.
As she pulls me in, I pass where I dropped my claw. I grab it. Although it’s lacking, it’s my only weapon at the moment. If I want to use it, I have to get much closer.
I feel the vice around my ankle release me. [Moment of Clarity]
I turn around and surge upwards as my thoughts accelerate faster than my body can handle. Her eyes track my movement and her body tilts away from me. She raises an arm coated in water up in defense, driving another water-covered hand towards my face in what I’d imagine a magical palm strike would look like.
I tilt my head to the side, watching her arm go sailing past my face as I close in. With the hand that's holding the claw I sweep upwards, angling past her guard. I see her begin to tilt backwards, but not quite fast enough. The tip of the claw digs into the flesh above her collarbone, slicing open a diagonal tear up towards her neck before she escapes its reach.
My ability ends. She backpedals swiftly, holding one hand to her wound and glaring at me. I manage to stay on my feet this time as I adjust to my body catching up, which is an improvement. If I tripped over my own feet every time I used it it wouldn’t be that useful.
I squint at her, trying to figure her out. Her strengths are obviously range, so why would she bring me closer, especially if she thinks I’m fast? I think back to my own experiments with mana usage, and I think I see why. Considering how hard it was for me to create thin mana constructs, I doubt I would have enough mana to reach across such a large distance. She’s a couple levels higher than me, but she’s still at risk of running out of mana. She’d rather bring me in close than risk fighting at a distance, running out, and having me run into the woods. As to why she didn’t just shoot me down, I have no idea.
My hand tightens around the claw I’m holding. She wants to kill me so much she’d give up an advantage to secure my death? Fine.
I’ll make her pay for it in blood.
I switch vision, bringing the filter from [Eyes of Time] across my eyes. I begin taking strides towards her before she can gather enough water for another blast. She puts her forearms together, spreading out a shield-shaped disc of water, going for defense to hold me off while she charges up. I drop to the ground, activating the last [Moment of Clarity] I can afford, then begin to slide, aiming for the area right under her shield.
Her shield extends towards the ground where one of my legs has slid, frost slowly forming a V-shaped wedge along the bottom of it. She begins to lower it with a vicious smile.
I brace my feet against the ground and tighten my leg muscles, bringing my thighs to my calves. The shield/chopping block inches closer, just waiting to cut into me. I raise the claw above my head in both hands and throw out all 6 of my last MP behind me in my best approximation of a mana parachute extending from my back.
Then, I jump.
My leap catapults me into the pocket of fast time left behind by my mana pushing the sand out of the way behind me, accelerating my momentum and sending me flying upwards fast enough to avoid having my leg chopped off.
The fast pocket melds with my accelerated thoughts, bringing my body’s reactions up to speed for a brief moment before the sand rushes in around me, filling in the gap left in time. I’m left falling rapidly towards the water mage, with the claw swinging down towards her from the apex of my fall.
Most importantly, I’m above the shield.
She tilts her head up towards me, and [Moment of Clarity] gives me the ability to see her smug smile slowly fall off and be replaced by a look of shock. The shield loses shape as she stops maintaining it, falling harmlessly to the ground as a blob of water. She raises a hand towards me as I fall, and I see something reflective catching the light from inside her robe’s flowing sleeve.
[Moment of Clarity] cuts out.
I'm going to die. Again.
I have just enough time to hope for at least taking her with me, when the familiar feeling of ice pouring through my veins comes back, except it's far stronger this time. If before I was plunging into arctic water, this time the water is pulling me under and pouring down my throat, cold spreading to every corner of my body.
The dull sound of a gong rings out, echoing into eternity. I feel it reverberating in my chest, setting my core trembling. Ripples spread out in the air, softly vibrating in tune with the echoes of the gong. An endless amount of gray sand precipitates out of the air, coalescing around the waterbender and the shard of ice heading for my heart. The sand gathers, clinging to her and forming a gray cocoon. The filter across my eyes slides away and I’m left staring at her just as she was, pointing at me with an icicle suspended in mid-air in between us.
Timer for ability [Split Second] reset!
I barely manage to tilt myself enough that I earn a scratch along my ribs rather than an impaling.
I crash down on her, plunging my claw into her right eye.
She’s still looking upwards, pointing her arm at the sky when she dies.
*DING*
Congratulations! You have killed [Human] [LVL 4]! Thank you for helping your species through the SAD process! Remember, it's for your own good.
Level up!
You are now [Level 3]!
Level up!
You are now [Level 4]!