Terror

Looking up from the notification and his pot, Frank looked in the direction of the sound he just heard. While he couldn't really see anything unusual at the moment, he still felt some chills run down his spine and that the air coming from beyond the wall felt a bit warmer than that around him. As all of this began to trigger danger signals in him, he immediately got up, turned into Sylvia in case of a fight, and prepared to run for the forest.

Along with a louder growl from the side, Sylvia was about to run out of the cave, when the entire entrance was suddenly blocked by a horizontal pillar of fire that blocked her path. Having barely avoided being turned into a well-done elf, she stumbled a couple steps back, trying her best to ready herself mentally for having to fight for her life in a bit.

As quickly as it had appeared, the fire disappeared and large, red-furred bear entered Sylvia's field of vision. Upon seeing the beast stand before her, every fiber of her being began to scream to flee, but there was no way out; she was stuck between a rock and hard place.

With the cave not being much more than three meters tall at its highest point, staying in the cave was probably Sylvia's best option. As that would make the bear unable to get on its hind legs, seeing as it was at least two meters tall and approaching four meters long, if not straight up surpassing that.

In the hope to avoid the risk of straight up provoking the beast, Sylvia did her best to refrain from locking eyes with it, as the bear could very easily perceive that as a threat. So, in last couple seconds before the bear approached her, she managed to bring her fear somewhat under control and instead turn it into fuel for her will to survive; she'd already gotten another chance in this world, it'd be foolish to just lay down and accept death. Of course, the thought of laying down and trying to play dead had entered her mind already, but figuring that she was probably in its home, she had no hope that the bear would leave her alone after some time.

Then, the bear had decided that enough was enough, and at a speed that could seem impossible for a beast of that size, it rapidly closed the couple meters between them. With barely any time to dodge, the right paw of the bear was on its way towards Sylvia's head. In the nick of time, she managed to duck down and step to the left to avoid the hit.

Seeing the slightest chance for getting a hit in, Sylvia thrusted the spear towards the armpit that the bear had left open, and it failed. Even though she had hit where she wanted, the spear had barely cut into the fur at all, and just avoiding losing the spear when the bear turned towards her was plenty hard. The worst part was the loud snapping sound when the relatively thin spear tip snapped off from the tension of the bear's muscles, the bear turning, and her trying to pull it out.

Standing face to face with the beast once again, she was slightly surprised that it wasn't attacking her straight away again. Though that was quickly cleared up when the bear opened its mouth and roared, which was followed by heat rising from the mouth. Realizing what was about to happen in the last second, Sylvia barely managed to drop down to avoid the stream of fire.

As well as she could, she crawled a bit away from the fire before rolling the last part. As she had been getting further away from the heat, she'd noticed that part of her hair had been lit aflame, so the roll served the extra purpose of squashing the flames. Before she got up, an idea that could give her slight advantage took form.

So, she placed her hand down on the ground, and begged that this would work. Since she had been able to manipulate the mana in her spear the previous day, she hoped that meant she was also able to do magic from a slight range. Thus, she sent mana into the ground and directed it over to the bear's front left paw. When it reached there, she did her best to imagine moving all stone beneath its paw and a bit more, up to create some kind of wall around the paw, along with making it fall into the hole.

By the time her mana had reached its paw, the beast had stopped spewing fire and was about to turn towards her, but she a tiny bit faster. As intended, the paw and leg did fall down, causing the bear to tilt. But it seemed like it didn't serve to do much more than to infuriate it, and in no time at all the bear practically kicked its leg free and got back upright. The act of simply kicking the leg free like that shot a lot of rubble and dust into the air. Luckily the bear was still turned a bit away from Sylvia's current position, so the vast majority just went past her.

Now, more than ever, the bear seemed incredibly furious. Across its fur, some spots suddenly burst into flames. Flames that quickly began to spread across it, forming weird patterns that possibly meant something to someone. But one thing's for sure, they didn't make any sense for Sylvia, so she elected to just treat them as what they were, flaming spots to avoid contact with.

Despite the terror before her, part of Sylvia was actually relieved, as she now had another weapon in her arsenal. While the bear had been turning towards her, she had gotten up and ready to fight back. Aware that her spear as is would do little good in hurting the beast, she did her best to channel mana into said spear, like she'd done previously in the forest after dealing with the goblins.

With the mana now in her spear, reformed the broken spear head to have a sharp tip once more, before thinking heavily on two things. The first was the concept of sharpness for the spearhead, and the second was to have the pole and tip toughen up; she wouldn't want to accidentally break it in a worse way than she had done previously.

Shortly after reforming the tip, she had been forced to wait a little with the other stuff, as the bear had forced her to dodge to towards the exit to avoid next swing of a paw. A short gasp escaped her as she now stood with her back towards the exit. Speedily, in the short timeframe before the bear had fully turned towards her, she had begun the process of enhancing her spear with magic.

It of course didn't take long enough for the bear for her to finish sharpening the spearhead, forcing her to drag it out a bit more before she'd feel comfortable using the spear. To get that time, she'd have to make use of one of the two advantages she had on the bear, her nimbleness compared to it. With that in mind, she managed to get a couple steps back, before the bear was before her once again.

This time, it wasn't one of the paws heading for her, but instead a direct bite. The bear didn't seem to care for the spear whatsoever, probably due to how little it'd done previously. So, for a very short time, Sylvia wondered if she could kill the bear by stabbing it in its mouth, but quickly decided that she didn't want to risk the inside being too tough either; at least not before she had done her best to sharpen her spear.

Instead, she lunged backwards and a bit to the side, narrowly avoiding both the bite and a follow-up paw. With a slight stumble from the unsteady jump, the light of the outside entered Sylvia's peripheral. Aware that she was now outside while the bear wasn't, she dodged the next attack by strafing to the left, thereby putting the side of the entrance between her and the bear.

This would of course not do much, but it would give her a tiny bit of a breather, compared to having just dodged backwards. In the short time before the bear popped around the side, she was able to increase the progress with her spear quite a bit and felt that she was approaching the time to make her move.

Just as that thought passed her mind, the bear was fully outside the cave and was turning to face her. Then, the bear opened its mouth wide and roared, spewing out the largest, and definitely hottest, pillar of fire yet. While Sylvia did notice it in time to avoid a definitive roast by just diving down to the side, her left hand was momentarily caught up in it. And even though it wasn't more than a couple milliseconds, her hand and wrist felt like they were burning up in pain.

Her involuntary scream of pain didn't seem to do much other than excite the bear, if not even making it relax a little. As tears ran down her cheeks, she saw the bear begin to close the couple meters she'd managed to make between them, and while it moved neither quickly nor slowly, it almost looked like it smiled.

With terror running through her, Sylvia's instincts picked the third option between fight and flight, freeze. It wasn't until the bear was right next to her that she regained the slightly control over herself. As if it had sensed the absolute terror it had forced upon its prey, it had raised its head and roared in what could only be assumed to be victory.

It was at the sound of the roar that Sylvia felt like everything was over, which was the exact point she regained control. In this and the following moments, it didn't really matter what happened to her, as she had already assigned herself to death, even the searing pain in her hand, which had only grown worse as it cooled down, felt to have gone away. With a mental chuckle, she thought to herself, "If I'm going to die anyway, I may as well try to take it down with me."

It quickly became obvious that she only had a single shot, so trying to strike its exposed throat had a pretty large risk of not being fatal, meaning that she had to aim directly for the brain. To create an opening for that, she placed her still healthy right hand on the ground, without releasing her spear, and began to channel as much mana as she could.

She barely heard the roar stop and only saw the bear lower its head, after which it opened its mouth and chomped down on her shin, breaking it immediately. While she could feel that her body was trying to say something about her leg, it was just like with her hand, her mental state was too far gone to properly process the pain. So, she simply executed her plan.

With all of her mental might, she imagined a sharp-tipped cone-shaped structure rise from the ground beneath the bear's stomach as quickly as possible. As her MP drained all the way down 'til there was a little less than a hundred left, a cone shaped structure shot up from the ground and hit the belly, where it actually pierced through and went quite deep in. Immediately, the bear released her leg to roar out in a pain it hadn't experienced for many years.

Using her still healthy leg and burnt hand to move herself closer to the mouth, she held her spear as steadily as she could with one hand in her position. Before stabbing it straight into the open mouth of the beast, and to her glee, the spear pierced through the roof of the mouth and went into the brain, causing the bear to go cross-eyed. At which point she used her remaining mana to issue a single, simple, command to the stone head, explode.

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Killed Adult Fire Bear lv. 50. Gained exp

Leveled up

Leveled up

Leveled up

Leveled up

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Just as Sylvia read that the bear had died, she screamed out in even more pain than before, as the pain from both her destroyed shin and burnt hand returned with a vengeance. With tears flooding her eyes, she ended up not reading the last of the message before two other messages popped up and covered it. In great pain and with her mind beginning to slip away, she forced herself to read the two.

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You have gained the title [Great Bear Hunter].

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A blank form slot has been added to the title, [Person of Many Faces].

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Before she could really think anything about any of the two titles, her vision went black, followed quickly by her mind. She had passed out from mana, physical, and mental exhaustion.