Six water whips grew around Levi as he clung to my neck. Before the yeti could touch me, he flung them out. A whip smacked each of the monster's hands and the two remaining worked together to smash across the yeti's face with all Levi's might. It wasn't much since Levi was twelve levels lower than the yeti, but his attack caused the monster to fall off balance. The yeti staggered to the left, all four hands closed on air with an audible crunch as its knuckles popped.
I bolted into the sunlight. For a moment, the piercing evening rays blinded me. I blinked hard, forcing away the tears that formed and trying to stay focused on the mountain path that stretched out ahead. Could I really make it down to the valley with a yeti on my tail?
The monster was so close behind me. Levi's attack only hindered it for a second, and even though yetis were slow for their level, it still recovered in a blink of an eye. The yeti’s musky smell and frigid air coming from its body smothered me.
My senses screamed in warning, both from behind ... and ahead.
My wet eyes widened in shock. From inside the tunnel, an optical illusion, coupled with bad lighting, made it seem like a path connected to the mouth of the tunnel. What I didn't realize, until I was on it, was that the space in front of the tunnel was actually a seven-foot platform. And between the platform and the mountain path was a very deep chasm.
My heart stopped and Levi blasted our familiar bond with alarm. But, when stuck with the impossible choices, my mind calmed. Between being eaten by the yeti or falling to my death in the chasm with the potential of using water to save myself, I knew exactly which one to choose.
I didn’t even pause as I leapt into the chasm. As I did, I finally fully saw the inside of the one hundred foot deep U-shaped chasm. Time seemed to slow down as I took in all the details. It was sheer on both sides, except for a small cluster of boulders on a ledge fifteen feet below the lip of the chasm. I twisted my body and shot several water whips out. The water wrapped around the largest boulder, which was a little over five feet tall, and sprung me onto it.
The yeti roared as it dove over the lip of the chasm, grasping at me with three hands while the other braced against the edge to keep from falling in. Saliva dripped from its angry mouth.
Instinctively I reacted.
My feet barely touched the boulder when I released more water whips. One wrapped around each of the yeti's wrists and forearms while another wrapped around its neck. Before it had time to process, I jerked the whip around yeti's bracing hand hard enough to make it slip forward. With a strenuous yell, I gripped the whips and twisted with everything I had, moving if I was throwing an opponent over my shoulder. The tension tightened on the water, but I combined my magic and muscles together and overpowered the off-balanced monster. The yeti, before it could rebalance itself, tumbled over the edge and dropped into the chasm. Its terrified screech echoed painfully of the chasm walls. Using my water whips I angled the yeti's fall into the middle of the open space, too far away to reach me or the walls to stop itself from falling, then I released the water whips. It flailed its body about as it free fell.
Only, was a one hundred foot fall really enough to kill that monster? Some C ranked monsters could actually survive falling from that distance, I just didn't know if the yeti was one of them.
Immediately, I pooled my water around the edges of the boulder that I stood on. The water churned and ate at the dirt and the porous rock on the ledge, dripping mud down the chasm wall. I wedged my back against the wall and braced my feet against the top of the boulder, then pushed. My leg muscles groaned in protest, while a sting of pain stabbed into my temples from the pressure it put on my magic.
Levi clung to the side of the wall by my shoulder. When he saw my actions, he quickly used his own water to push the boulder, mimicking my actions.
With a rumble, the muddy base on the ledge crumbled apart and the boulder slipped into the chasm. I clung to the rocky wall, using water like glue for my feet and left hand. My right hand extended out towards the falling boulder. A Bubble grew on my palm. Before it was all the way formed, I created a water whip and used it to shoot the Bubble forward. The water bomb continued growing on the thin tether until it smashed directly on the middle of the boulder, exactly where I wanted it. The magical boom echoed in the chasm as the force of the explosion accelerated the boulder's fall. It shot after the yeti, trailing just behind.
The yeti landed flat on its back at the bottom of the chasm with a grueling crunch. A second later, the boulder landed right on the yeti's gut, ripping it open.
A minute later, I got a notification. Ding! [+192 EXP]
Ding! [You have Leveled Up!]
Levi brightened with excitement, awed that we leveled up so quickly. Then he pointed to the screen with the tip of his tail, as if asking what it said.
"Plus one hundred and ninety-two experience points," I read aloud. Did dragons have a number system?
He paused, his thoughts fluctuating between a big and small tree. It took me a second to realize that he was wondering if the number was big or not.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"It's big. The largest amount of EXP we've ever gotten from one monster," I said, and looked around.
I didn't really want to climb all the way down, but I wanted the yeti's drop items. The hide was really useful for armors and I think I remember reading ones that the hair was also a good beginner weaponsmith component. I'm sure Micah would love to play with them. But then I'd have to climb back up the chasm for the night. After all that work to clear out the cave, I sure as hell was going to sleep in it. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I wanted to slap my hand over my forehead. Did I seriously just get territorial over a cave? I was going to be a savage by the time I got back to civilization.
Levi, however, was still excited over the large amount of EXP. He immediately looked around for another monster to throw off a cliff. Of course, in his mind, he wasn't a tiny snake in the image, he was a huge leviathan, flicking monsters off a cliff with the tip of his tail.
I rolled my eyes. "I'm not going to run around, throwing monsters off the mountain." I had more dignity than that and Levi couldn't possibly get that big yet.
Levi rolled his eyes back, picturing all the ways he'd killed something. His message was, dignity didn’t matter when I killed a monster, as long as I was the one alive in the end. Spoken like a true predator.
But there was a lot of truth in that. With that in mind, I went to close the System screens, but before I did, Levi pointed at them with his tail. He wasn't pointing at the entire message, but at one letter.
"E," I said, "short for experience." I swiped the teal panel away and lowered myself to what was left of the boulder's ledge.
Levi, however, didn't move.
I paused, feeling his pensive emotions, and looked up.
As a snake, there wasn't a lot of emotion on his face, but his eyes were narrow as if he was contemplating something. Suddenly, I heard a distinct voice in my mind. Eee... The male voice was neither young nor old, but an odd mixture of both, and it almost sounded like a sigh, but it was undoubtedly an English sound.
My eyes widened and I almost slipped off the wall. "Did you just ...?"
He scrunched up his body, as if uncomfortable. ... Eee ... This time, it sounded less like a sigh, and more like an intentional voice, echoing through our mental bond.
I gaped at him as a bomb went off in my mind. Oh my god, my snake was trying to talk.
*****
Rain drizzled from the gray morning sky, pattering on the mountain and leaving dark spots on the stone. The droplets dripped into the cloud that clung inside the chasm, rolling and bubbling between the stone walls like a weightless river, waiting for someone to accidentally take a deadly plunge.
Just the sight of it churned my stomach with fear. Was that cloud a natural phenomenon, or was it created by the monster from the other side of the waterfall? If it really was a monster, was it hunting me? It seemed like this cloud was everywhere I looked.
Goosebumps spread across my body that had nothing to do with damp morning mountain air. Worried, I pinched my thumb hard, trying to use the pain to distract me. If there was a powerful monster on the bottom of the chasm, I should turn around and go down the mountain the other way, even with a turf battle going on.
I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. It was just a cloud. It was raining and clouds were a normal part of nature, especially on mountains. It didn't mean that there was a monster hiding in it. Sadly, the lie didn't help much. Monsters liked to hide in things, especially innocent looking things.
Instead, I looked at the show happening at my feet for distraction.
Levi wiggled and withered on the ground, like a toddler crying for a toy. Everything, from his mouth gaping open in a silent wail to his little blue body wiggling in knots, destroyed any dignified image of a leviathan I still had. I thought he'd run out of energy or patience by now, but the show started while I ate then cleaned up breakfast, and Levi's tantrum was still going strong. At least it was silent — well, for my ears. My head was full of his despaired grumbling. Eeee … EEEE! Eeee… As if his new vowel could change my decision. If anything, it made it worse because there was now a sound added to the emotional load.
"The answer is no," I said, completely unphased. "It doesn't matter how much you cry, I'm not casting the spell again."
That's what started his tantrum in the first place — the spell wore off.
Last night, we practiced the empowerment spell until we both ran out of MP. It took a lot of work until I could bend my water into the right symbol and infuse it with magic. The first time I tried, I didn't use enough magic and nothing happened when Levi went through the symbol. The next time, I used too much magic and the whole thing exploded, flinging us against the wall and destroying all the icicles in the cave.
By the time I got it to work, I was bone tired and nearly passed out when the backlash of running out of MP hit. It was worth seeing Levi get big. Although it wasn't as big as he wanted — thank god, because if he did turn into a full sized leviathan, the mountain would have collapsed on us — but he was excited to not be a thin little noodle anymore. But even he couldn't resist his exhaustion. Although he wanted to relish the feeling of being bigger, he still passed out and slept for three hours before I woke him up to take over maintaining the water wall.
Of course, he insisted on casting the spell first thing in the morning, which I agreed to. Practice makes perfect. But now it was time to conserve our MP for when we needed it.
"We don't know what's out there," I reasoned, staring at the cloud. "What are we going to do if we run out of MP in the middle of a battle, just because you want to be big now? There's nothing to fight now, so using that much MP on a whim is just wasting it."
Levi venomously disagreed. But it didn't matter when I said, he just wanted to be big.
I sighed, ignored him completely, then cautiously stepped into the rain. All I did was move two feet forward, but suddenly, I didn't have the surrounding stone walls giving a false sense of safety. I felt so exposed. Every time the cloud bubbled and rolled, I jumped, expecting a monster to pop out.
The rain softly fell on my head and shoulders. As it did, I became aware of something odd.
*****