The pressure that had been weighing down on me lifted as I realized it. I called on the mana, and this time, it answered. Not much, I knew there was more of it that could have. But it was enough. More than enough to cast a spell.

I focused my mind on one thought, one emotion. I hadn’t been able to do it in all those meditation sessions my mother forced me on, but now I could. The rabbit needed to die.

Two notifications blinked in the corner of my vision, but I ignored them. This was not the time.

The Court of Justice exerts its influence

Darkness has awakened

A bolt of darkness flew off my hand. Even in the darkness that surrounded me, it was clear. The bolt hit the rabbit in the face, slamming right into that smirk that had annoyed me.

That felt far better than I thought it would. I hadn’t been a person that threw punches, but maybe I was a person that threw bolts of darkness.

The rabbit growled at me. I had the very immature urge to growl back. But I did not, and instead looked at my enemy. The rabbit had been hit right in the face by the projectile. So it was logical that it would be hurt. Perhaps bleeding somewhere, or at least bruised.

The monster looked just fine. The knife was still lodged in its back, but it was just fine otherwise.

The rabbit’s eyes began to glow. The red in them had already been scary, but now it made me terrified of what was to come. The monster’s hair stood down, the knife slowly exiting its body as I watched.

I shot another bolt of darkness at it. This one was weak, barely containing any mana and having even less emotion. In my hurry, I had forgotten to concentrate. I had lost my anger.

Calling on it was more difficult than before, those eyes making me more afraid than angry. Could fear work? Did that count as a negative emotion? I tried it. A bolt of darkness flew from my hand. But it was not the same. This one was less deadly, the mana having a different feel to it then before.

I knew instinctively that if I had tried to use it to awaken Darkness, I would not have succeeded. Darkness was connected to fear, but not as much. And even when it did connect, it was different.

This mana seemed to prefer to hide and run away. The emotions I used to conjure the bolts clearly had an effect on how they acted. I had to take note of that. Perhaps it would be useful. But there was something else that drew my attention at the moment.

I had thrown bolts of darkness at the rabbit. More than one. And yet, it was not bleeding. The bolts seemed to have done no damage, and by this time even the knife had all but left its body.

The rabbit was not yet defeated. I might have discovered magic, but the rabbit clearly had something else ready.

Jumping from its position, the beast launched itself at me once more. Just like before. But this time it was faster, and it had magic on its side. I could feel the cloak of power around it, an unknown mana shaping surrounding it.

And I knew I could not dodge. The rabbit was too fast as usual. I tried to shape mana, trying to defend myself. But it took too long. The rabbit reached me, its claws slicing through my skin as it passed me by.

The pain shot through my body, making me wince and lose what little concentration I had. The rabbit barely stopped for a moment, dropping to the ground only to use it to jump once more.

I did not have time to shape. So I just threw mana at it. If you didn’t shape the mana, it would just take on the shape of a random thing. A proper Story could influence that into something helpful, but without you were just hoping to get lucky. That was why most just shaped the mana.

I did not have such a choice. I threw mana at it, something similar to a gust of wind appearing. The rabbit stopped and abruptly headed towards the ground. But it was too close to me to dodge the attack.

The two of us looked at each other as we waited to see the results of the attack. Even I could tell that the rabbit was puzzled when the attack seemed to have done nothing. Perhaps darkened the area a bit, but it was already so dark that it was difficult to tell.

The rabbit huffed in a manner that made it look human for a second. I wrapped myself in darkness mana powered by fear, hoping that it would shield me.

The beast ignored it, rushing towards my neck in a clear attempt to kill me. I hit it with my fist. That seemed to stop it. The rabbit was fast and seemed particularly resistant to magic, but physical attacks still hurt it.

I could use that. But no sooner had I thought that then I realized that it was harder than I imagined. The rabbit somehow got even faster, jumping nearly vertically to slice my chest and then bounce off it. I could not even find an opportunity to react.

The rabbit was simply so fast that my body could not react. I had to try to keep it at a distance. I threw magic at it again as it shot towards me, the magic turning into a bolt that struck the rabbit in the face.

Of course, it shrugged it off, heading towards me with its claws extended. I tried to punch it once more, but I missed, and the rabbit sliced through my hand, jumped off my arm to sink its claws into my other hand before it got off my body.

Then it turned around to try it again. The thing’s legs were working like they were missiles, launching it towards me so fast that I could not react. I tried to do something against it, but it just ignored it and continued attacking me.

I rushed to retrieve the knife from where it had fallen off the rabbit's body. The rabbit reacted by kicking me. The legs hit me like a truck, sending me into the air and pushing me back at least two meters before I landed back on the ground.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Then the rabbit rushed at me, its claws rushing towards my face and slicing through my cheek. I was surprised it hadn’t cut my eye. Heck, I was surprised I hadn’t broken a rib. That kick hurt. This was not looking like a battle I could win. Not if it kept going on like this.

The rabbit just kept getting faster, ignoring my attacks and showing more moves every other moment. How was that even fair? Two more wounds appeared on my body as I stood there thinking. Was I really just helpless against this rabbit?

Now that just made me angry.

And anger was good. I used that anger before it could go away, shoving it towards the rabbit with all the force I could bring to bear. A wave of darkness emerged out of me slamming into the rabbit. There was no wound. But it did get pushed back.

This was the first time my magic had even affected it.

The rabbit growled, its voice echoing among the trees until it resembled a roar. The cloak around it strengthened, and I could feel it turn different. Not a good different. There was someone, perhaps even something that was adding power to this rabbit. Or had the rabbit just been taking it easy on me?

I mean it had been wounding me little by little. If it wanted to, it could have killed me at once. If that kick hit my neck I would probably die. Wait.

Would I? The kick should have broken bones. But it hadn’t. I looked down at my arms and was surprised to see that most of the wounds looked like they were hours old. Magic. I had forgotten that magic enhanced the body too.

The rabbit wasn’t the only one that had it. Now that I had mana, it would enhance my body. And I was a Rank 3. I grinned, curling my fist as I called on the mana. In my hurry I forgot to even think of an emotion. The spell worked anyway. Figuring out why was not difficult.

The determination to kill. I had that. That was what was helping me right now, letting me shape mana. I had been so sure that it wasn’t an emotion that I hadn’t tried it. But apparently it counted.

And I was going to use the heck out of it.

I sent a bolt of mana towards the rabbit and then multiplied them. A dozen bolt shot towards it from a number of directions, cornering it in place.

The rabbit just looked at me, and then scoffed. The cloak of mana around it seemed to unfurl as it did so. The bolts of mana popped. Like they were balloons and someone had struck them with a needle, they popped.

The silence deafened me, and I just stood there for a moment, looking at the rabbit with a blank expression on my face. I had really thought that would work.

The wind picked up as I watched, and I knew instinctively what was coming. A spell. The rabbit was going to use magic of its own to fight me.

I called upon the darkness, the mana coming far easier than I had expected it to. A single moment of fear and it came running. I paid it little mind, though I would have to think of that later.

I had other things to deal with.

I was unable to see them, but their presence was still clear to me.Blades of Wind, easily a dozen in number. The rabbit had built its spell. A spell it should not have built. Wasn’t this supposed to be a test of Darkness?

Why was it using Wind now? This did not align with its previous actions. But that did not matter did it. Not here, and not now. The rabbit had simply decided to attack like this. And now it was up to me to stop it.

Or else I would die.

But stopping it was easier said than done. I had only started casting magic a few minutes ago. Now that I thought about it, I knew no spells.

That made my magic weaker than the rabbit’s.

A spell did not require an element’s emotion to act as support, and it used mana far more efficiently than what I was doing. A mana shaping could not stand against a spell. The latter would cut right through it. And the rabbit already seemed to have more mana than me.

I did not have time to think more about it. The rabbit had already released the spell. And I was very sure my shield would not stand against it. So I did what I could.

I dodged them.

The wind blades struck my shield, a couple of them even dying against it. Then the third blade broke through. Thankfully, I was not there for it to target. A bit less thankfully, it curved around to target me.

That had to take a lot of mana, I knew. This kind of spell usually did. But I did not know how much mana the rabbit had, or how much this spell consumed. I did not know how long it could last. And that meant I had to do something about this.

I had to kill the rabbit somehow.

The blades curved towards me, and I attempted to sidestep them—only I couldn’t. There were more blades coming from the opposite direction. The bloody rabbit had decided to conjure more of them from somewhere, like ten weren’t already enough.

This was a problem. I had but a second before they reached me, and I could not find anywhere to dodge to. This was a problem.

I do not know how I came up with it, perhaps I had read it in a book somewhere. Perhaps I was secretly a genius in combat. Or my brain had seen my death coming and decided to work faster than it had before.

But either way, I kicked the toes of my feet against the ground, flinging myself backward with all the force I could muster. Then I conjured shields, eleven of them. I could feel myself weakening as I did so, a power leaving my body.

Mana. I had used a lot of mana, though I did not know how much I had remaining. How did one go about discovering that? As usual, I did not have time to think of it.

A single wind blade headed towards my neck, having made it past my shields. I did not know how. I had counted the blades, those shields were enough. But here was a blade that made it through anyway.

I did not have the time to conjure a defense. The blade was but centimeters away. I closed my eyes, wincing as I waited for the pain to come.

There was none.

I opened my eyes to see Elena standing a few meters away from me, huffing with her hand held up, facing my direction. What had happened?

“Just - “ Elena huffed, still out of breath. Had she been running? Hadn’t she mentioned something about an illusion where the distance did not change? Had she broken through that to come here?

That had to be it. I was kinda touched.

“Just stop.” she forced out. The rabbit simply looked at her. The mana around it flickered. The expression on my face turned serious as I realized the amount of mana it was working with.

A wind blade appeared beside the rabbit. And then another. In seconds, they multiplied until there were hundreds in the space before us. I knew that I would not be able to block this. How was I supposed to face something like this?

A rabbit I could not damage, that could conjure hundreds of wind blades. This had not been something I could beat from the beginning.

“Elena.” I began.

“Run.” she interrupted me.

How funny. I was about to tell her to do just that. The two of us did not bother saying any more words. Turning our backs on the rabbit, we just ran.

But we both knew we would not make it.