Chương 102: Two-And-A-Half-Years-old (3) A Thousand Years Of Pain! (The serious version)

This isn't the first time I'm being chased by a monster. A big. Big. Big. Monster. This forest is a mess. This world is a mess. And if the giant worms weren't hint enough, the animals are crazy strong around here, well, not all of them, but some are genuinely crazy strong. I saw my fair share of bullshit while hunting. Never killed one. But it's not the first time I get chased by something like that. Talking about that. I look back at it.

It's closing the distance, not because it's getting faster, but because I'm leaning back and turning my feet closer to each other. Slowing down a bit. The crater is still pretty far away from me, but I'll probably reach it in a dozen of seconds at that speed. Problems problems. Looking around me, I categorize the space around me. There's still trees, way less trees than usual, but there's still trees. My eyes lock on a single tree that's healthier than the others, its pretty close to the crater.

Lifting my hands up, I start to shake them around, readying them for what's about to start in some seconds. In any case. As I was saying, not my first time seeing a monster like that, first time its a snake tho, and first time it's that hungry for me.

Most of them usually don't care much about me, I'm too small and not nutritious enough, guess they're becoming more and more hungry as they're realizing that the forest is dying and there's less and less prey, and more and more predators, giant animals like them, dangerous animals. Make sense I see more of them cause the fittest survived the fireball. A second ago I was wondering why my village hunters were having so much trouble finding meat.

And the answer to that is simple, already knew it really, it's because I'm really fucking deep in the forest. Deep enough for no hunter worth their salt to risk going that far, way too much monsters around here. I'm probably the only one going that far. Well. And someone else. But he doesn't really hunt so he doesn't count. Going limper and limper, my fingers almost brush against the moving ground beneath me, a look back, it's way closer. Perfect.

I let it come closer and closer and closer as I get closer and closer and closer to the tree I'm aiming for. As I do. I focus on my flow. And then. I follow it. My left hand brushes against my shoulder, slide down, slooooowly, over my forearm, over my wrist, and finally, over a closed fist. One hand straight and extended over a closed right fist. That's what my flow likes. No idea why.

But my flow reacts well to different weird movements of mine, that's sometjing I figured out those last few months, and this kind of hand movement? This one helps a lot. Feeling my flow and how it's moving, I manhandle it. Keep it there, and let my hands separate themselves. They dangle close to the ground, my entire body leaning forward. My nose brushes against the tree. The snake hot breath waft over my back. And I become one with my flow.

My hands close around the trunk before my face slams against it and they slide over the wood, my entire body follows close behind, they grip and slime around as I treat the entire tree like a pole, twisting my hips and pushing my legs up, I slide around the tree, turning up and around in a circular motion and getting farther and farther up, every branches in my way get dodged and are used as a platform to send me fly up even faster, I'm like a squirrel running around a tree, only difference is that I'm not running, and I'm way faster.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Behind me a giant snake follows. It twists and contorts around the tree, squeezing it in a death grip and follow me up, entangling itself and smothering the tree in the hope of catching me. Leaves greet me. I don't stop. My entire body shoot through the leaves above the tree. My entire body turns like a beyblade. No. It spirals.

Like a wave, my body spirals through the leaves, cloak flying behind me and throwing pieces of wood and leaves around as I burst through the canopy and get greeted by the sky. I keep turning for a while, getting further and further up until I end up staring at the raining sky. My front facing it. Even with how tight I attached my cloak. It's a mess now. Hanging from my body only by the sleeves. Well. Whatever. Behind me, a giant snake opens it's mouth, snaking and climbing around a tree to reach me.

Hinging it's jaw wide to gobble me up. Waiting for my body to fall down into it's gullet. And my body does just that. I finally succumb to gravity once again, and fall back first into the snake mouth. In this situation. The only thing I do is close my hands together. Put my left hand straight over my right tight fist. And let my flow run in the spiraly pattern I've been working on. You know. It's the not the first time I've met a giant monster. And it would be foolish of me not to find a way to deal with them.

My crossbow is useless. My kunais even more. My traps too. That's why I went with my bread and butter. My body backflips mid air. Arching my back and rolling in constant backflips mid-air like sonic would to gather speed, get into a ball, roll. And I do the same, left hand over right fist. My flow slide inside my body, harder and harder. During those few months, I've learned some new tricks. I puked water. A lot. Too much really.

I could probably shrug off bullet wounds at this point, even if I'm not keen to try it, and who knows? Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe I'm just really bad at handling pain and everyone would be able to shrug off my pain? Who knows? Well. I guess we'll learn now. Rght now. As I twist. Drops of water gather on my fingers. My left fingers. On the tip of each fingers, big drops of water are building, this isn't normal water. Nope. It would be useless otherwise.

Remember my fastest and preffered way to infect people with illusions? Throw my flow around. Build up my flow in the ground, the air, until the clouds are infected. And then. Every single drop of rain coming from the clouds above carry my infection. That's a long process to start. But it's really powerful. And the principle is pretty simple. As long as I put my water filled magic in someone, I can manipulate their brains. And the water on my fingertips? They are the most potent water drops I've ever made.

Magic filling it to the brim. So much that it's less water and more my magic given form. I've been thinking about a way to kill those monsters. To get rid of them. To make sure they know that the forest is my turf. I finish my spin. My entire body recoiling to throw my hand at the snake giant open mouth below me. It snaps it's mouth close. Swallowing the small drops of water I threw at it. It looks at me. I look at it. It opens it's mouth again.

I focus on my magic on it's small little brain that's just under his nose, in his skull, above his eyes, remembering my practice against smaller snakes during those few months, remembering my practice on rabbits, on wolves, on fishes, on eagles, on falcons, on everything that fell into my path. And with the knowledge of my past life, the sleepless nights with my face shoved in anatomy books, I press against some parts of the snake brain. I press. And start the flow pattern I figured out on myself.

It's opening mouth closes. I fall over its head, sliding between its eyes, my palm sticking to it as I lower myself and slime my way down it's back. As I do. My focus is on the pattern in its brain, pushing through its big meaty body and-! Its entire body goes limp, its eyes roll and dissapear somewhere on the back of its head as it falls like a limpless giant piece of meat on the ground. I fall with it, using its body to cushion my fall. What? My body sticks to the back of the snake. It starts moving. Left. Right.

Twisting, it opens its mouth but it snaps closed when he falls down and start wriggling in pain, but the wriggling hurts more, so it stops wriggling, but it hurts, so it keeps going, and the pain destroy its vital functions, it doesn't know what's left and right as it's big front fangs dig inside the ground and start squirting poison in and around the ground. Before I get propulsed somewhere by a random twitch of its body, I jump the fuck away and slide away from the giant snake.

Looking at its twitching body from a safe distance, it keeps twitching and twitching, doing its best to crawl away before messing up with the control of its limbless body, the pain too overwhelming as it falls again on the ground, a cloud of dust rising up. Its jaw hinges, a lot, until both opposite side of its mouth touch its skull, poison dripping from the extended fangs on it's body, in it's eyes, in it's nose, everything, just making a total mess. Well.

I tidy my clothes while looking at the agonizing snake, feeling through my six sense that its heart is moving around through its body, snakes can move their heart to avoid dangerous injuries. The heart is moving around so fast and so hard its bruising against its muscles and the inside of its scales, pulping it to minced meat. Probably feels so much pain its thinking its being ripped apart from everywhere, so it doesn't know what to do or what to think. I think?

I only know so much about snakes, way more than the usual person but still not an expert. Was this how I writhed around when I was born? Eh, don't worry snakey, you'll get used to it. Just like I did. Pulling out my crossbow from my back, and some bolts, I take my time to load it while the snake agonizes. Well, you would get used to it. Unfortunately I won't give you the time.