“System.” Veronika called out and groaned when System was showing herself as being offline. “Damn it.”

Ten mid-size insectoids rose out of their slumber and shrieked with rage as they rushed for her with sword like limbs swiping for her head. Toxic gas was being released into the air at each of their movements.

Alerts flashed before her, showing the strength of her kinetic armor barrier to be at 90 percent. She figured that the barrier would deteriorate the longer she was enclosed with the bugs. If that were to happen, forget being made into sushi. She would instantly die from suffocation and toxic poisoning.

She yelped when the insectoids’ swiping had increased in speed and ferocity, and all she could do was dodge them.

“Think, Veronika!” What did she know of herself to date?

She was currently cannon fodder with only the skill of a brush-pen. She could dodge effectively, but not be able to attack with anything but the pen.

“Wait!”

She was once the glorious, legendary, Wu Chen! Master of the Light Sword. And the greatness of the last Law Bringer. But before that, she had started as a nobody-weakling like everyone else. What did she do at her weak level back then to survive?

A flashback to when she was an eight-year-old Wu Chen surfaced in her mind. It was an old memory of her sect master throwing a rusted sword at her feet and telling her to kill all the giant toad monsters in a swamp with it. The sword had been a third of her body size at the time. She recalled the rust powder sticking to her hands when she wielded it.

She braved a moment of stillness to close her eyes, and brush-visualized that rusty old sword.

“Brush, give me Wu Chen’s rusty old sword!”

Her pen’s tip swelled with all the spirit energy she could feed into it to bring forth a glowing white ball of magic, When the ball exploded a dagger replica dropped into her hand.

If she remembered right, the base metal for her old sword was of a silver-white soft metal, where the rust somehow added protection for skin contact contamination. In the same room with toxic gases, it had a tendency to explode with a magic to negate the poison in the air. It was also effective in breaching toxic materials and destroying them.

Without thinking too hard, she threw the dagger at the closest insectoid head, but it bounced off and landed on the ground with a crude noise.

“Right. They have reflective barriers.”

She called out to System for an analysis, but received an offline message about being busy running firewall patches, and how a certain, useless Casey Fodder should deal with her own issues for a change.

An alert flashed into Veronika’s mind, showing that her barrier strength had reduced to 80 percent. She yelped and dived to the ground to avoid a leg swipe and landed in a cloud of toxic gas.

She picked up her dagger and clumsily wielded it about, dodging more attacks and coughing badly as the gas clouds were making it hard for her to breath.

The insectoids could tasty their victory. Their approach was full of arrogance at having to have an easy prey land into their den. Why hunt for food when prey stupidly came to you like a delivery run? If that was a thought in their heads, it was a likely one.

“Screw that. I’m not some easy take-out!” She bellowed, not willing to let her life end like this. It was just plain embarrassing. Not to mention, she had made a promise. She was once Wu Chen who didn’t need anyone to help her before. This kind of fight had been child’s play.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

A thought occurred to her that she was using the dagger wrong. A memory of her child self was applying spirit energy to the rusty sword to wield it about the toads’ limbs without physically holding it. There was fire involved.

“Rust. Toxic fumes... FIRE!”

She rushed around the cave to create some distance between her and the bugs. Then brush-visualized a campfire. A tiny fire appeared on the ground before her. She tossed her dagger into the fire to bathe it with flames, then closed her eyes and opened up a heat map view of the area in her mind. She could pinpoint the insectoids locations by their biological readings on her map.

“You can do this, girl. Remember…” She said to herself and concentrated on easing into her spiritual sea to tap into her spirit energy reserves. The dagger trembled as she laced her energy to it. It rose off the ground and began moving to her mental whim. She used the heat-map as a guide, navigating the flying dagger toward a target.

The flames ignited the insectoids barriers to dispel them. The dagger sped through a flesh joint of a limb to sever a nerve, so they were unable to move it.

There was a cacophony of confusion and outcry as the zippy dagger sliced through nerves before they could counter it. A swift paralysis had overcome them. In a fraction of time, all insectoids slumped to the ground with their limbs disabled.

A warning alert flashed into Veronika’s view. She was heaving for breath and feeling her body becoming heavy with fatigue.

[Warning! Warning! Kinetic barriers at 20%]

“Right... Have to finish this up quickly.”

By this time, the viability of the toxic gas had subsided, but it was still a threat to her health. The insectoids had stopped advancing and were showing real pain, but they were still alive. Another alert flashed before her.

[Insectoid kills: 0/10. Task success rate: 0]

“Chet. System, when you come back online…” She grumbled with her complaints.

But she rose to her feet, knowing what she needed to do. There were a lot of oxygen particles overwhelming the toxic fumes, all of them flammable.

“Let’s see if you can handle fire overload.”

A smug grin broke out on her face as she maneuvered her flaming dagger into the air and brush-actualized a fire-proof barrier around her. With her last bits of spirit energy, she caused the dagger to explode over the insectoid’s heads.

Sparks caught onto some very flammable particles in the air to make the cave light up with a massive fire that covered everything.

She screamed and prayed her barrier could hold up, as the shrieking bugs exploded into ash. After some healthy burning, the fire died out when it lacked the oxygen to keep going.

An alert appeared before her, she frowned at the values that were present.

[Insectoid kills: 0/10. Task success rate: 0]

It instantly changed when a room scan confirmed that she was the last being standing in the cave, and the danger had passed.

[Insectoid kills: 10/10. Task success rate: 100%. Level increase: one level. Skill gain: Brush Actualize Flaming Rust Dagger. Treasure gain: Wu Chen’s Rusty Old Sword]

The numbers rose in her core stats as her the strength of her kinetic barriers returned to full. Her old long sword materialized into her view. It was at its full length and size. She slipped it to her back kinetic holster, which seemed to fit snugly there. At least, she had another attack weapon now.

“System?”

System was still showing herself as being offline.

She grumbled and assumed a moment to catch her breath before leaving the area through the opened door at the far end. No doubt, System had used her hacking ability earlier to seal her in.

“Evil System.” She muttered under her breath.

[Complain all you want, but you were able to increase your level] System said smugly when she came back online.

“If I knew you were going to throw me into a pit of people eating bugs, I’d decline your task challenge.”

[The cave only had the weak kind. Not the type that could shoot laser beams from their eyes. I had confidence you could overcome this small clutch. I’m sure if you were truly a great martial warrior of your past life, this wouldn’t have been a challenge]

Veronika could deny this, and System’s cool manner to the fact only made it seem reasonable. “Fine.”