'Be smarter, be faster.' That was what my mentor - my human - said, and I was going to stick with it. 'If only this wasn't so much fun.' My heart pounded loud enough to drown out the forest, and I had long since given up trying to rein in Sage's wild wagging.
'There!' I pounced again.
With a bellowing roar, the mossbear let its frustration loose. No words were needed; the intent hit like a slap: Try standing still; I dare you!
Not a chance. I wasn’t that reckless. Sure, maybe I was enjoying myself a little too much, but that didn’t make me a fool. No, I knew better - I was smarter.
Turns out, though, the mossbear wasn’t foolish either.
When the chance came to pounce again and land more claw marks, I took it and scored fresh cuts. But when I moved to slip away, quick as ever, I faltered. Not by clumsiness - no, this stumble wasn’t mine to own.
Running free like this, on all fours, felt strangely natural, even though it was my first time in this form. Maybe it was the beast blood in my veins, the [Equilibrium] weave, or some mixture of the two - I had no idea. Either way, my front paw wasn’t supposed to get stuck.
Yet it did.
A tangle of moss shoots snared my paw in a flash. They broke easily, but it was enough to hold me up - if only for a few heartbeats. My opponent, who I had foolishly been too focused on - despite my mentor’s warnings about moss shoots - capitalized on my mistake.
Taking advantage of my slip, the beast struck fast, tearing into my hind leg. Agony seared through me, clawing at my mind, threatening to drag me under. 'No! Shit, shit, shit, NO!' To lose consciousness wasn't something I could afford. That would have been the end. A loss. And so, slamming my mind with [Indomitable Will], I narrowly managed to get out of my opponent's reach before its jaws could lock around my leg. I knew too well what would happen if it did: once those teeth clamped down, there would be no prying loose. Experience had taught me that much.
Bleeding and limping, I pushed myself farther away, muttering curses under my breath. What an idiot I had been - too cocky, too damn sure of myself - also stupid for not taking any pain-reducing weave.
'Seriously, why didn't I think of that before?'
Except I had.
The problem was that the only weave I could find that could do anything about the pain was [Painless Agony] - Slave Array weave. Even though that deranged bastard never forced me to use it, mumbling about how pain might skew his precious results, the thought of taking that weave made my skin crawl. It just wasn't [Indomitable Will] that proved so endlessly helpful to me.
Not to mention that I still had [Tale of Poison Empress] to try. 'Shit! The poison!' It wasn’t as simple as pressing a button and having my tail puff out gas. No, it needed time to gather in the glands first.
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All that preparation - wasted because I forgot.
No time to curse myself for it, though. I wish I could lick my wounds, but barely able to stand on my hind leg, I had lost the explosiveness and speed that gave me the edge in a fight. This struggle, or training, as Esu and my human called it, tipped even further out of my favor.
While the young mossbear had the luxury of mistakes, even one misstep on my part could cost me dearly. The realization hit me hard. I stopped wagging my tail and while the thrill remained, the fun faded from the fight. This was something to take seriously.
And I did.
Pouncing was out of the question now - I wasn’t fit for it in this state. My only hope lay in biding my time, waiting for the glands to fill with poison, and hope it would have some effect.
?Rawr!!!?
?Catch me if you can!? I barked back, the words dripping with defiance, though the young mossbear’s taunt had hit where it hurt. Craven, it had called me. The insult stung deep, gnawing at my pride. Running like this, dodging instead of fighting, was rubbing me the wrong way, too. But I had to be smart about it - so said my human. The truth was plain - I was too small, too weak to face those claws and fangs head-on. So, no matter how much it growled or snapped, I held my distance, waiting for Sage to be ready.
And it wasn't just that.
I may not have the [Never-Dying] weave anymore, but the Fae runes on my chest worked just as I hoped - or rather, my regeneration. It may be too short a time to get my leg fully fixed, but the bleeding stopped and the pain subsided a bit.
'Maybe if I used mana...?' Back in the cage, the beast-me had patched up my face in just a few breaths. Used a damn lot of mana, though. 'So - should I?' The idea tugged at me. The pain aside, not being able to put strength into my leg was putting me at a huge disadvantage. Plus, if the mother mossbear were to fix me later, or Esu himself, I might regret not having that mana in the following fight.
Not to mention it took me hours to get the beast to fix me back in the cage.
On the other hand, I was now a beast - the beast.
So many questions plagued my human mind. The beast in me saw it a little differently. What mattered was me and that mossbear - taking it down.
Before I knew it, mana roared inside me, wild and untamed. As if the mossbear sensed it, his efforts intensified. Much to its disappointment, though, after a few limp leaps out of my opponent's reach, the strength returned to my legs. As it did, I went in.
Once again confident, I went for a tight pass. And as I did, Sage's long hair bristled as if with static electricity, making her bulk rival my body, if not exceed it. That was when a plume of orange gas burst out from my tail’s glands, right in front of the young mossbear's nose. Of course, I didn't dart away right off the bat. That would be pretty wasteful, considering that after that initial burst, Sage was still letting out the last of the poison.
No, I circled tight around the young mossbear, staying close enough to nearly touch it, making sure it got a full dose of my poison. Had to keep it in there, let the poison work its way in. Easier said than done, of course.
For one, I poisoned myself in the process.
- You were poisoned
The apple smell was as pleasant as ever - just to lie down and... well, die.
Obviously not what the mossbear intended to do. Whether it was the unfamiliarity of the smell due to the lack of apple trees in the woods, or that the beast simply understood that staying in that cloud was not good for its health, it burst out of the cloud, trying to shake off the poison it had inhaled, sneezing.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do about it - not with my size.
'Size - more doses, perhaps? I mean, if it weren't for ma regeneration... shit!' Thinking it might take more such attacks to take down a mossbear, panic sank its teeth into my guts. In the early days, my poison was able to kill me - I died several times a night. AND I just got rid of the thing that was stopping the poison from doing so - [Never-Dying].
'I fucked up, didn't I?'