I have survived the cold, haunting nights. Weathered the storms with nothing more than the shade of a tree and made my way through long, searing days without complaint. I have run with my all for my life and have escaped from the unending damned ants a handful of times.

Even so, almost all my experience here can be summarized as me, being protected by the creatures most of the time. In front of their weird magic spit, all my injuries seem trivial.

I have yet to go explore on my own a tiny part of this place. Of course, I know that doing so is paramount to suicide I am just not even a nuisance to most monsters here.

So, because of this, I stand here now. Channeling spells ready to be activated through my hands. Walking around my opponent, at a considerable distance. Closing in.

It eyes me warily, ready to pounce at me.

I sought challenge, to prove myself. For my peace of mind. To assure me that in the case of the creatures' demise I can keep going. That I won't stop. That I can resist on my own because I am strong.

Before anyone else could, I stepped forward. To claim this as my fight. As I have learned from observing the creatures. How many fights have I seen? A hundred? Two hundred? I don't know.

The creatures showed curiosity in their faces as soon as I stepped forward. They can talk.

In their own way, of course. Took me long enough. It's in their ears, mostly. They express basic things with the movement of their ears and even more when using their eyebrows, mouth, and tails too. If not for me trying to decipher the origin of their strength I wouldn't have realized that these quick movements of their ears had any meaning.

And right now they are curious about my actions, this would be the first time that I'm participating in a real fight since that time.

The monster is aware of being fully surrounded, must be scared but it still growls. Standing in four it's bigger than me and when it stands on two legs it towers even the tallest of the creatures.

I keep walking closer to it and it turns its body to face me every moment. Strategies to defeat it have crossed my mind before and still fill some of my thoughts now. We are fighting in a patch of forest where trees are far in between. Its brown fur is coated in fresh mud. Around here doesn't seem to be any mud, I wonder what it was doing before being trapped.

The monster still eyes me as I slowly get closer to it, reducing the distance between us with my circular movement around it.

Even with its size and strength, I am not at the disadvantage here. I have seen its kind before. Fighting the creatures. I have seen them crying. And I have seen them all die.

The monster deems that I am close enough now and charges at me. It's faster than me but it far slower than the creatures' top speed. It's slow in my eyes.

I was ready for it. I sidestep to my right a few times and easily avoid the attack. It couldn't turn enough in time. I hasten my steps and go to its back, barely avoiding its arm as it launched it sideways.

I keep moving fast around it so close that I could stretch an arm and touch it, but not so fast as to reach its back. And the monster keeps trying to turn around and face me. So dumb.

I need to be careful, though. It could just jump on its side and smash me on the ground. For now, I have limited its movements but it's still dangerous I wonder who will get dizzy first, even though that is not my goal. However, I have practiced this kind of rounding movement while facing a direction before.

After half a minute of doing so, I finally let its face catch up to me and it growls some more until I slap it in the snout with a quick movement. It stops for a second but resumes its pursuit with renewed vigor. Now I tread a dangerous thread.

As I thought, its body is just too hard to punch it. Even with a slap my hand is hot and throbs with pain. However, I still keep slapping it and attracting its maw to my hands, barely avoiding it as it snaps at me each time. As I do so I unsheathe the knife discretely with my right hand.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Although just a mistake can cost me my life I don't feel nervous. Neither do I feel the thrill of battle I have felt before. Nothing. I am aware that my movements are a bit strange, like forced but I do them like something I have done thousands of times.

I slap it again with my left hand but instead of slapping it I quickly remove my hand. The monster immediately snaps at where my hand was, leaving itself plain open for an instant. I don't waste the chance.

My right-hand thrusts forward, the knife stabs its left eye deeply, almost without resistance. I knew it would happen like this, I have tested the knife many times before.

As fast as I stabbed the eye with the knife I quickly retract my arm. The monster stays still for a moment. Perhaps it's shocked or maybe its brain is trying to puzzle together what had just happened. When it ends, if it did, it lets go of a deafening roar of pain and anger to the heavens as it stands on its hind legs.

I am so close to it that apart from feeling dwarfed by its sheer size I feel annoyed by its roars and cries of agony. So, after initially covering my ears I stab it in the leg after moving to its side again. The knife cuts smoothly and the half-blind monster turns to roar at me.

I just keep moving to its back and it goes to stand in four again as it can't move as fast standing on two legs. I keep moving to its back as it spins, standing on its blind side, the monster is still as dumb as before but now it is more vicious, saving no strength and just giving with its all to get a hit on me.

I know that slapping it again is so bad of an idea that it would be impossible without losing a hand. I should end this now.

I finally stop running in circles around it, I was starting to get dizzy anyway. I lower my own stance after jumping back, flexing my legs, and activate the two spells I was holding since the beginning of the battle. Ghost Hand, to trip the monster's leg where it's putting its weight as it's turning to face me.

My spells have become stronger but even so that one Ghost Hand alone cut off a third of my mana. I have trained a lot, without rest. Before, I switched between casting methods all the time. It was useless, except to remember the chants of the spells. But now I doubt I would ever forget them, they are my life and blood.

I changed the approach in my training. Apart from starting to control inner-mana, I have started experimenting. Changing and controlling the output of mana I add to each spell has gotten me better results. Identifying what does each pattern that I can have gone well too.

Ghost hand is a little more special, it activates with whatever quantity of mana and stays active as long as you supply it mana, consuming more the more strength is applied against it. And direct contact of the spell with the body increases the mana waste a lot more. The skin is a natural protection against foreign magic. You can't activate a spell inside the body of someone else.

"Earth Lance."

My second spell struck its neck as the monster was falling headfirst to the ground, impaling it and piercing its skin, muscles, and fat all the way to the other side, getting stuck in the middle of its neck, piercing it completely.

It started to make strengthless cries of pain, terrified of its demise. Pitiful too.

It couldn't even cry properly with the magic projectile still obstructing its throat. It died after a minute, probably it drowned with its own blood. It stinks. The monster pissed itself in its last moments. To spit in the face of destiny, or perhaps of pure terror of death.

This mess is not pretty at all. The eye is still bleeding, staining the fur in all its head. The injury in the neck was cleaner. It seems I didn't it an artery and it just bled internally, who knows. To check that it is still death I stab the other eye and it doesn't move.

I'm not a stranger to killing. Children back in the town were brought out to the plains and animals were used as targets of our spells so that we knew what those, and of what we, were capable of. To create and become aware of it. That our magic wasn't to play.

I have read many types of books. Some dwelled about the morality of killing, of the act, of the emotional load in the individual. Many stories did at some point and many did it at many. I don't know if it's the fact that I have read much or that I haven't read enough or my education that caused that I didn't feel any trouble at the time. I know that isn't good but those, doing it or not, just doesn't have any weight on my conscience.

Even so, this time it feels especially wrong. I don't regret it neither I am sad. I just feel strange. This was so void. So pointless.

I have talked more to the creatures more often, out of fear of forgetting but also to practice the three languages I know. But also of fear to forget myself, what I know and Who I am.

So, who I am right now? This just feels like a waste. I comprehend that it was just killing for killing. I didn't fight for my life this time, I approached the problem myself. I didn't escape from anything neither I thought of feeding the creatures. I just wanted to test my strength in an animal I knew had no chance against me. That I knew it would die anyway.

Just mindless killing. Just because yes. Not even the creatures do that, not even once I have seen it here. They avoid as many fights as they fight. They eat everything they kill. I don't even have hunger.

I should stop doing this kind of thing, this kind of test. Not because is wrong or bad but because it somehow doesn't sit right with me.

This kind of thought isn't something that someone my age should have, is it?. I half-smile thinking about it and leave the corpse behind for the creatures to deal with.