Chương 28: Chapter 27: First Thunder

The crystal resisted for a moment longer, then the circle settled. The lines I'd drawn on the surface sank inward. I stared at the core in my palm. The lightning circle was part of it now. A permanent circuit waiting for someone to feed it more mana to activate. I activated it. Not a full cast — just enough to feel the circuit close. The core pulsed once. A brief, contained surge of something that made the air around my hand prickle. Then it settled again. Ready. I sat there for a moment, turning it over.

A piece of crystal I'd pulled from a dead beast and carved with a spell I'd designed myself. Now, hopefully, it could help me get rid of the monsters outside. Or at least hurt them enough to make them run away. There was only one way to find out. I stepped outside. The cold hit my face, but I barely felt it. I walked past the front door, past Yato's spot on the porch, until I found a rock jutting from the snow near the garden edge. Not a large rock. Knee-high. Heavy enough to not move.

I aimed the core at it and pushed mana through the circuit. The lightning cracked across the distance and struck the stone. A chunk of it sheared off, leaving a blackened scar where the surface had been. The smell of ozone and dust reached me a moment later. I stared at the impact site. It had worked. The spell had worked. I looked at the core in my hand. The glow was still there. The circle was still intact. I could feel the charge in it, waiting for the next command. I could do this. I walked back inside.

The knife was on the counter. I picked it up. Held it. I needed to know if the lightning could kill. If I was strong enough on my own. The rock wasn't alive. It lacked the natural defense provided by the monster cores these creatures possessed. Armed with the knife and the stone I went outside. I walked toward the border of the village, toward one of the beasts. I passed the bathhouse, the barn, the empty houses. The remaining monsters were still out there. I could feel them. All three.

But I was heading toward the closest one. I kept my distance from the barrier. The bodies were scattered across the field, half-buried in drifts. The monster was thirty meters ahead, lying beside a carcass it had been feeding on. It saw me. The moment I approached the barrier, its head came up. Ears forward. Eyes fixing on me with the sudden attention of something that had been waiting for a long time. It was the one from the north side. Dark-furred. Horned.

The same as the first one that had been feeding me for weeks. The gashes on its flank were healed now — pink lines through the matted fur, scabbed over and tight. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. It had healed while I was busy learning magic. It stood up. The creature took a step toward me. Testing. The barrier was right in front of me — I could feel its presence there, warm, solid. I had no reason to run. I pulled the beast core from my pocket.

The crystal was warm against my palm. I closed my hand around it, reached for the circuit I'd carved, and pushed mana into the shape. The circle activated, pulling around one fifth of the mana my body had accumulated. The sound that came out was wrong — not a bang, not a crack, but something in between. A rip. A tear. Like the air itself was being pulled apart. The lightning came down on the creature like a spear and hit it in the chest. It didn't fall. It staggered.

The impact pushed it back a step, and the smell of burnt fur reached me a moment later. The spot where the lightning had landed was blackened, smoking, the skin beneath it red and raw. The creature roared. Not in pain — in anger. It charged and slammed into the invisible wall a meter from my face. The barrier held. The thing shook its head, confused for a moment, then fixed its eyes on me again. It didn't understand why it couldn't reach me. But it knew I was the reason it hurt.

I stood there, breathing hard, looking at the wound I'd made. The lightning had hit. But the creature was still standing. It paced along the barrier. Back and forth, its burnt flank steaming in the cold air. Every few steps it would pause, look at me, and growl low in its chest. Waiting. I looked at the core in my hand. The spell had worked flawlessly. I'd designed it myself. And I now had proof that the principle was sound. The execution had produced real visible lightning. But it hadn't killed.

Everything inside me that had been running on excitement and adrenaline was settling into reality. The magic worked. Had I been the one hit, I would have died on the spot, the effect was nothing to scoff at. Yet, the beast was still alive, barely injured. And I had no idea what to do next. I tried again. Pushed more mana into the core. Traced the circuit. The lightning came dow n once more, thinner this time, less certain.

The creature flinched as it hit, a spray of snow kicked up around its feet, but the blast was weaker. The follow-up barely scorched its hide. The drain was real. I still had reserves left, but I could feel the gap. The mana escaping my body faster than the Second Circle could replace it. I had maybe three more casts at this strength. Then I'd be empty. The creature stopped pacing.

It stood at the edge of the barrier, watching me with the flat, patient eyes of something that had been hunting long before I existed and would keep hunting long after I was gone. The wound on its chest was still smoking. It wasn't dying. I needed to finish it. The thought was cold. Practical. I'd had this thought before — standing in the yard with a drugged pork chop, watching a different beast stumble and fall. Last time the pills had done most of the work. I just had to cut its throat at the end.

This time there was no poison. Just me, magic and the knife. The same knife I'd used to finish the first beast. The same weight. Same situation, scaled up and louder. I walked to the barrier. The creature was still there. Its head swung toward me as I approached, and something in its posture shifted — it had spent the time I was gone convincing itself I was a threat worth killing. It was right. I stepped through the barrier. I didn't wait for it to charge. I raised the core and fired with all I had.

The lightning hit its head. The creature buckled, one leg giving out as the muscle seized. It stumbled, caught itself but it was too late, I was already behind it. I dropped the core. It wasn't a plan. My hand just opened and the crystal fell into the snow, because I needed both hands for this, and every second I spent fumbling was a second it could use to recover and instantly kill me. I jumped, grabbed the creature's shoulder, and I swung.

The blade caught it across the face — a glancing blow that opened a gash along its snout but didn't stop it. The creature's head snapped to the side and came back, and its foreleg swung at me like a club. I stepped back. Not enough. The creature was bleeding now. From the chest. From the shoulder. From the cut across its face. It was still alive. I didn't think. I just moved forward and put the knife in its throat. The blade sank deep. The creature made a sound I hadn't heard before — wet, surprised, cut short.

Its legs buckled. Its weight came down and I had to let go of the knife to avoid being pinned. It lay in the snow. Twitching. Blood spreading across the white in a dark pool. I stood over it for a long time I could feel the other two beasts now approaching, they knew I was outside and they wanted a piece. The snow was cold under my boots. The creature wasn't moving anymore. I looked at my hands. They were shaking.

Not from cold — from the inside out, like my body was trying to catch up with what had just happened and couldn't find the right response. The knife was still in its throat. I'd have to pull it out later. Clean it. The core was somewhere in the snow behind me. I turned and found it. The blue glow was still there, steady, the lightning circle still perfect. A piece of rock that had done exactly what I'd designed it to do. It had wounded. Stunned. Given me an opening. It hadn't killed.

But it had been enough to distract the thing. I crouched beside the creature's body. The fur was coarse under my fingers. The wound on its chest was still warm, the lightning strike leaving a pattern I didn't want to look at closely. I'd killed it. With a knife. The way I'd killed the first one but this time I had made a mess and almost died in the process. The deja vu settled over me like a second skin — standing in the yard, cutting a dying beast's throat, feeling the blade part tissue and blood.

I'd done this before. I'd hoped I wouldn't have to do it again. But I had. And it was not pretty but it had worked. I looked at the core in my palm. If something the size of the dragon hit me right now — even with the core, even at the second circle — I wasn't sure I'd survive. Not out here. Not without the barrier to keep me safe. I stood up. The blood was freezing on my hands the two other beasts were almost there. It was time to go home.