LUCIUS.
I summoned raw mana around my fist and launched it upward with every last ounce of power I could summon. The impact shattered my bones—my knuckles bent unnaturally from the force—but it also struck true. Her throat recoiled violently, the growl in her lungs turning into a choked scream. I didn't stop to think. Didn't stop to feel the pain. I couldn't.
She retaliated, her front claws swinging for me—but right then, the final two arcs I'd cast earlier shot toward her, precise and silent like twin assassins. They struck near her shoulder, detonating on impact and throwing her off-balance.
I saw the opening.
I summoned my telekinesis—not to lift, not to shield—but to punch. An invisible force slammed into her chest, sending her skidding backwards. Dust rose. The air cracked from the pressure.
She shrieked.
Fury and agony blended into one raw sound that pierced the rain, the wind, the sky itself. She twisted violently, her tail snapping like a whip, aiming to coil around my head and crush it like a melon. I didn't flinch.
Instead, I summoned a focused telekinetic burst—not to repel—but to grab. The world slowed for half a breath. Her tail, inches from my skull, froze midair, locked in place by an invisible force that gripped as tightly as my will.
Blood dripped steadily from my broken hand. My vision swam, lines and colours smearing together—but I held on. I had to. I could still fight.
Or so I thought.
Until a sudden jolt shot through my chest, sharp and violent, like my own heartbeat was tearing through my insides. I gasped. Blood spilt from my mouth before I even realised why—and then it hit me. The mist. I must've inhaled some of that poison.
My legs buckled.
The authority I held over my telekinesis faltered like a snapped wire. The grip I had on the Chimaera's tail? Gone. She broke free—no resistance this time—and her tail came straight for me, fast and precise.
Panicking, I tried to conjure another arc. Anything. But the mana didn't come. My thoughts wouldn't focus. It wasn't just the pain anymore. The poison was messing with my mana pathways, interfering with the way I connected to my own power. Distorting it. Breaking it.
Then another wave of blood surged up my throat, and this time it forced me down. My knees hit the mud. My head followed. I lost sight of her completely.
And that's when her tail struck.
It tore into my torso sideways, snapping me into its grip with viper-like precision. I barely had time to react before her fangs sank in deep. I felt the venom shoot in—burning, searing—like fire poured straight into my veins. It wasn't just pain. It was wrong. A violation. My body wasn't mine anymore.
The Chimaera didn't stop. She whipped me up and hurled me through the air like I weighed nothing. My body twisted violently, spinning mid-air, every rotation peeling a little more sense from my skull. I could barely hold onto consciousness.
Going up was bad. But coming down? That was going to be worse.
As gravity reclaimed me, I realised I couldn't see anymore. Not darkness—just a thick, blurry veil. Like my only working eye was fading behind a curtain of blood and shock.
Then came the crash.
The impact wasn't just one hit. It was a series of them, starting with something solid and fast, slamming into my right side with enough force to strip away what little armour I had left, probably her tail, as I felt some resemblance of electricity. Then came the rest: trees, rocks, harder surfaces I couldn't identify. Some were soft enough to break me just a few times. Others weren't. Each hit cracked something. Ribs. Multiple bones. Limbs. Maybe my jaw. I couldn't tell. It all blurred together—pain without pause.
I paused when my back was smashed into something way too hard that the rest... What might that have been? I don't know, maybe a pillar or something even tougher than that, who knows? The main problem- I mean problems were, my entire back had been smashed beyond reasons I could share, I think I broke my spine at least 10 times over, the rest of my muscles and bones, maybe the last remnants of them still remind, remembering me of them through sheer agony and indescribable pain.
My mana was gone—stripped from me, like a limb I didn't realise I relied on until it stopped responding. I couldn't connect to it. Couldn't feel it. Couldn't command it. It was like trying to move a phantom limb and getting nothing but silence in return.
The only things that still worked were my instincts and—thank the gods—my telekinesis. For some reason, it didn't draw from the same place as the rest of my mana. Maybe that difference was what kept me alive. Maybe that's why I wasn't already dead.
Flat on the ground, barely able to move, I remembered something. A fight from months ago—against that bastard Valgura. Not the whole fight. Just a sliver. A flash. I'd lost my sight back then too, even if briefly, and adapted using something different: mana sense. Sonic pulses, emitted in short bursts, feeding my brain rough outlines—black-and-white echoes of the world around me.
I focused, trying to recreate it.
It worked. Barely. The shapes it painted in my mind were fuzzy edges warped, distances off—but it was enough to tell me I wasn't alone.
The Chimaera was still coming. Fast. Heavy. Crackling with more lightning than before. Her mana was wild, erratic, and furious—and she was already too close.
And me? I was lying in the mud like a discarded weapon.
My back was wrecked. My legs felt wrong, twisted and numb in ways that made me scared to even check if they were still aligned properly. My right side was torn to hell from the tail strike, and my torso was filling with something warm and wet I didn't want to name.
But the worst part wasn't the damage.
It was the silence in my core—the feeling of emptiness where power used to be. Like I'd been hollowed out from the inside and left with just nerves and pain.
I couldn't even scream anymore. My body had passed that threshold, where the pain was so constant, so absolute, that it stopped demanding attention. It just existed. A background hum. A reminder that I hadn't passed out yet.
Rain poured on me, cold and indifferent, mixing with the warm trails of blood—or maybe tears—sliding from my one working eye. I couldn't tell which it was. Didn't matter.
All that mattered was that the Chimaera was coming. Again.
And this time, I had no weapon, no strength, and no mana.
Just one last card to play.