I drew my sword as it tensed backward before springing straight out at me a second time. I dodged back, launching a slash as I retreated which managed to glance off of its scales with no real effect. I got another great look at its massive fangs, dripping with what was probably poison as I dodged another bite and kept backpedaling. It kept chaining bite after bite, each snaps only just missing as I kept running backward. After 3 more snaps, I saw another one coming right at my head, faster than I could run. At that moment my foot caught on the very last root before I was back at the clearing and I fell down, dodging my very near death. Though I seemed to have earned myself a solid 5 seconds as I was now prone on the ground with a very massive and very hungry snake.

It charged itself up again, tensing its body like a spring before it sent itself flying at me. No. NO! I’m not dying in this batshit world. I could feel my teeth grind against each other as I raised my sword from my prone position to meet its mouth. Yichen. Me. My body, not my body. None of that matters! I’m here now! Fuck an identity crisis, I’m going to live! With that intense truth filling my mind, I felt the blockage that I had tapped into an earlier break like a flood as energy poured into my body. I met the beast's teeth with my sword, one hand on the grip the other on the flat of the sword pushing the beast back, feeling my body strain with effort to keep its mouth from reaching me the whole time.

I was taken out of my moment as a fist slammed into the side of the beast's head, sending it off course enough to miss me. li huá repositioned herself next to me as I picked myself up. “Thanks.”

I entered my fighting stance as the beast sized us up. It apparently changed decisions on who exactly was the threat as it turned to li huá and wound up aiming at her. It sprung, largely ignoring me. She rolled to the side, dodging it without much effort. While she did that, I made a decision that I probably should’ve thought about more. I leaped onto the beast's body, stabbing my sword into its back just deep enough to be able to steady myself with the handle of the sword.

I channeled the energy I was getting from my Chakera into my feet to keep myself stable as I started to mindlessly gouge into the creature's back. The snake seemed to have noticed me as it changed tune and started thrashing around, trying to throw me off. I was being forced to use all of the newly unlocked energy to strengthen my legs to stay stable, but this reservoir of energy was proving more than enough. I was entering that meditative mode as I carved through the creature, finally starting to see blood having shattered a scale with my fist and then using the sword to stab into it. I recognized in the back of my head that it would probably be better to jump off now and regroup with li huá. Despite that thought, I stayed on, a new emotion filling my chest as I started seeing red. Rage and determination.

The crotch and chest blockages both fractured slightly, allowing for a drip of energy.

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I stabbed my sword into the creature and let go of it still halfway embedded, Clasping my hands together I raised them above my head, and once again redirected the energy within me, forcing all of it that I could into my hands, enough energy flowed that a faint green glow emitted from my combined hands as I slammed them into the sword's pommel.

The blow staggered the creature as my sword managed to make it through down to the hilt, but without the energy flowing to my legs anymore I felt myself fly off as it shook once more.

li huá managed to catch me before I hit the ground. I thanked her once more as I righted myself. The snake let out a massive roar while I and li huá both entered identical fighting stances, both unarmed now. It crashed between us without much thought, both of us split to its sides and peppered it with blows. I empowered my arms when I got any energy from the 2 drips but it wasn’t often and the energy didn’t like being moved. I was using it wrong, inefficiently, I just didn’t know how. The creature kept moving forward and I realized why as its smaller but still sizeable tail whipped around and hit me directly in the chest, sending me straight into a tree which broke as my body slammed into it.

I numbly heard li huá shout my name before the creature cut her off by charging at her again. She started fighting with the creature on her own, a graceful dance of fang and fist while I laid against the root of the tree. I need to stand up. The fangs of the beast rushed at her from a sideways angle but she jumped above them before kicking into the creature's head. I need to move. The creature managed to curl in on itself enough to encircle her as she landed, trapping her in a coil of scales. I need to help. She managed to escape when it lunged at her, giving her a slight opening. My body wasn’t cooperating, the drips weren't enough, and the flood of power from the base of my spine had been almost completely used up by the previous attacks. It’s going to kill us. Unless we can kill it first. Kill or be killed, that's how this thing grew in the first place, wasn’t it? Kill or be killed. As that thought crossed my mind, for just a moment, the blockage at the very top of my head opened. Only long enough for a single drop to fall into the pool of energy.

Color. Color was a strange concept when it came to these pools of energy. After all, I couldn’t see them. Yet despite that, I still felt like they each had their colors. The overwhelming base of the spine was green. The groin and chest were orange and yellow. The heart red, the throat blue, and the forehead indigo. But I hadn’t found a color for the top of the head yet. When the drop fell, I could feel it for only a moment, an endlessly changing variety of colors, like someone, was dragging a mouse around on a color wheel. Gold, then deep red, then light blue, white, green, silver, bright red. All the different colors disappeared when the drop fell down my body, finally reaching the bottom of my feet. And after a moment, all the energy inside of me exploded. The groin and chest chakras were blasted open, and the remaining 2 were fractured, as the energy redoubled itself within me.

I stood, blood starting to pool in my mouth, sword discarded to my side, and I raised my fist at the snake fighting li huá, a few meters away from me. I placed my fist at my side, wrist turned upward, and I punched it forward, twisting it so my wrist was then facing down, and powering the long-distance blow with every drop of energy inside of me. All of the streaming green, orange and yellow, every drop of red blue, and indigo, all into a single hit. Before, I was redirecting energy, sending it to parts of my body, but now? Now I was throwing it. My fist surged forward, and for a second nothing happened, before suddenly all of the wildlife around the snake grew, it grew and grew endlessly, entrapping the beast in a wave of tangling vines and circling roots. I stumbled forward, grabbing onto the broken tree next to me, but was put to rest as I saw li huá take the opportunity, her body now glowing with a red light as she entered a similar stance, and punched her fist through the snake's head. I promptly collapsed.