Chương 27: Adolescent Earthen Fox

Scarlet refused to back down, but was more than happy to back up. She shuffled away slowly as the much larger adolescent fox paced toward her in an almost mocking manner. She would have been more panicked, except the feeling she was getting, the energy it was giving off, wasn't aggressive. It was eager? She watched it bend its head towards the corpses and realized in that moment the beast was stealing her loot. Impotent anger coursed through her as it ruined the pelts, tearing them to pieces with its teeth.

She backed away as she watched, trying to escape without drawing too much attention to herself. With slow cautious movements she reloaded the handgun. She doubted it would be effective, but she couldn't be picky. It was pathetic, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt Maus's intent through the bond but held him back. They were too weak. The fox savaged the bodies of who she assumed had been its skulk. The sound was a nauseating combination of tearing flesh and rocks breaking.

No wonder her bullets were having trouble penetrating. These things were built for durability. Scarlet had made it a fair distance by the time the Level 7 found what it was looking for. In the chest cavity of the Level 5, glistening at the center of its ribcage, was a mana shard. Scarlet felt the spike of glee radiate from the fox and had a terrible premonition.

Slipping into the treeline, still entirely too close and too loud, she picked up the pace, doing something she hadn't dared to, and turning her back on the fox. She hadn't gone far when she sensed the fox consuming the shard. Mana fluctuated rapidly, and Scarlet had the wherewithal to tuck Maus into her shirt mere moments before a pulse of energy blasted her back. She tumbled to the ground, her hip and tailbone hitting the unforgiving earth in a way she knew would leave damage.

Now wasn't the time to worry over superficial injuries. All her attention stayed on the fox that had become a beacon in her senses. She almost didn't want to inspect it. She did anyway. Adolescent Earthen Fox, Level 7– Level 8. She kept the skill active and watched in real time as it leveled from 7 to 8.

"That is not ideal." she told Maus, who was radiating worry for the first time she could remember. That's when the emotions the fox was projecting changed. Whatever else was mixed in, the primary feeling was predatory in the most primal sense. It was exactly what she imagined a superior predator stalking its prey might feel. On it's first step, Scarlet had her knives out and ready. By the time it took its second, she launched one. The first throw was clean.

Not enough for a crippling blow, but the blade hit the fox's snout, drawing blood and causing the beast to flinch. The second knife sliced across the fox's flank, drawing sparks as it screeched against the metallic quills that were bristling along its body. The creature only broke stride for a moment. Long enough to let her get deeper behind tree cover. It didn't matter. The now Level 8 stalked toward them with single minded intensity.

It had closed the distance so fast Scarlet knew that there was never any chance of escape. When there were maybe four meters between them., she raised her gun. It appeared the fox had been watching because it turned its metallic flank towards her and took the shots on its armoured side. At least that caused it to falter. They ended up playing an absurd game of stop and go. She went to shoot, it would pause and turn. She tried to escape; it would close in. Then cycle would repeat.

By the time she was out of bullets, the fox had not only shrunk the distance between them, but now it wasn't just eager, it was angry. Scarlet was injured and exhausted. Maus was basically spent. He didn't have enough mana to blink. Maybe one ravaging bite left. It wouldn't be enough to put the thing down unless the fox exposed its vitals and stood still. Unlikely. That didn't change the fact that she had to do something.

Deciding delusion was the solution, she shuffled backwards as she prepared herself for an all out offensive. Her mind split between paying attention to her surroundings with her new enhanced senses and making sure that she always had her eyes on the fox. She pulled more throwing knives from storage, but even knowing that they wouldn't be able to get through the fox's tough hide she held her ground. The beast lunged forward in a harrying attack, retreated, then darted in again.

It was toying with her as it lunged and nipped in an advance-retreat, darting dance. Scarlet's frustration mounted. The fox wasn't so much faster than her that she couldn't see what was going on. In her mind, she knew what was going to happen next. She could calculate exactly when the creature would begin its attack, what part of her body it was aiming for, exactly how she needed to move to avoid it. But her body simply wasn't responding quickly enough. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road.

If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. She was getting partial dodges. Pathetic aborted blocks with knives that simply weren't built to endure being pitted against a creature with skin like stone and a coat made of metal. The yips turned to snarls and bites. She twisted out of one, barely, the fox's teeth catching in the thick cloth of her field jacket. The next attack came faster. It took a chunk out of her sleeve and opened an ugly gash in her arm. She didn't feel the pain.

What she did feel, and quite clearly, were the fluctuations in the fox's emotions as it fought. She could sense as its glee spiked and twisted, turning the beast from superior-predator-toying-with-prey to the frenzied bloodlust of a feral creature spotting a wounded target. Her senses were so amplified, the energy so loud in her mind that she could almost feel the shift resonate within her own body. An incredible phenomenon she'd never get to appreciate because she was going to die and take Maus with her.

The thought was nauseating. If nothing changed this would be her end. Think, Scarlet, think. Her mind raced, and for some reason dragged up the memory of the man in the video. The lunatic chasing that woman with a glowing knife. The one who stabbed into a car. It must have been mana that made the knife so sharp. She knew what mana felt like in her body. She could try and do something similar. She hadn't been successful before, not in the few attempts she'd made back in the bunker. But desperate times.

There was no way the fox would let her slip into a meditative state and start experimenting with her mana. She needed to distract it. Thoughts, plans, and ideas raced by in fractions of a second. She could feel a pounding behind her eyes, and her nose beginning to drip blood as she pushed her mind to think of something. The fox lunged again, and she made a ridiculous decision. She leapt up and to the side, directly in its path, but away from those dangerous teeth.

Its head slammed into her center mass, throwing her backwards and skidding along the ground. Her arms tucked over her chest, protecting Maus as she went. The flora of the stone forest doing little to cushion her tumble. Her journey came to an abrupt halt as she slammed into the tree with her side, the impact forcing the air out of her. She coughed, the mask she had put on earlier making her feel like she was suffocating as she struggled to draw air in. She scrambled to her feet, ripping off the mask.

Her injured leg buckled before she stabilised herself. This felt like the exact inverse of the shadow bat situation. This time it was Scarlet who would have run if she could, but the charging fox giving her no reprieve. Wait, the shadow bat. How had she distracted it? She remembered reaching out through the field of energy and connecting a part of herself with the part of the bat that matched the same frequency. She remembered what that connection had felt like.

Remembered pushing through that connection, her own fear and sense of helplessness seeming to drain out of her as she amplified the shadow bat's, escalating its frenzy. Back then she was trying to take advantage of the situation. She had been the dominant party, the superior force. Would it work again when she was the one backed into a corner? The fox had caught up. She could feel with her senses as its muscles tensed, its quills bristled, and the mana gathered along its body. Was it going to use its skill?

Backed against the tree as she was, she had barely enough time to drop to the ground, roll, and awkwardly maneuver herself around the other side of the tree. Crouched into a particularly undignified huddle with her hands over her head, she braced as what amounted to finger-thick metal needles shredded through the forest. The mana enhanced projectiles blasted into the bark of the tree that she was sure only remained standing because, much like the foxes, everything in this messed-up world was ridiculously durable.

With the few brain cells she could spare, she tried to memorize the feeling she got from the mana-coated quills. The rest of her focused on the field of energy. Tapping into it was so easy. So effortless and natural she felt like she'd been doing it for a lifetime. Ease, however, was not finesse. As she rolled away from her tree to another one, trying to use the terrain to hamper the fox, she reached out, latching onto something within the fox's emotional signature.

There was no fear for her to grab onto, no real frenzy, but there was something there. Wariness. It was slight, but it was present. Her next actions were crude. She made it behind the new tree just in time for another rain of needles to blast out. The tree hadn't been big enough to hide her entire body, and a single needle lodged into the flesh of her upper arm. It was the same arm that had previously been injured.

She could feel the way the mana moved through the needle, the way it coated it as it stayed embedded in her arm. It hurt. Grabbing hold of her own fear, that palpable, choking terror she had been violently suppressing, she connected to it. A tendril. Her empathy seemed to amplify and support her efforts.

The overwhelming emotions she had been ruthlessly bottling up were forced through that connection and into the creature, beating at its psyche like a cudgel and exploding that seed of wariness into overwhelming, all-consuming doubt. The fox broke. For a moment, it went mad. She knew she didn't have much time. The fox would only be distracted for an instant, at least if the bat was anything to go by. A few seconds at most. There was no use running, but she didn't have the strength or power to fight.

She was also aware she wouldn't make it far. She could feel the mana in the quill lodged in her arm. There were only faint traces of it now, most of that mana having dissipated. She tried to recreate that feeling using the mana inside her body. She tried to control it, nudge it, mold it, to get it to do anything at all. Maybe if she could coat her knives like one in the video.

Was she really going to be mauled to death because she couldn't figure out how to do what some psychopath in a viral short had managed only hours after magic became real? For a second, she thought she'd felt something. A faint sense of connection? Then a sharp spike in emotion broke her concentration, reminding her that no matter how fast her thoughts moved, she didn't have time for experimentation. The fox was charging again.

Scarlet shoved down the anger and shame, pled to any sympathetic gods, spirits, or sufficiently powerful entities who might hear her, that the insane amount of adrenaline running through her would grant a temporary stat boost. Then tried, and failed again to wrangle the mana in her body or in the air. Nothing. She was out of time. Swapping her knives for her cane, she didn't get the chance to pull out the blade before the fox lunged. Mouth wide open, it went for the kill.

She barely managed to get the shaft of her cane up between her and the fox before it slammed her to the ground.