Chapter 4: Pest Control

Toren Daen

I wound up my left arm as the mana beasts approached, a rock a bit bigger than a ping-pong ball clenched in my hand. I threw the rock at the rightmost creature, adding a burst of telekinesis as it left my hand. The projectile whizzed audibly as it approached its target. The monsters tried to move out of the way the moment I began to throw, but my projectile was too fast. It impacted against my target's back leg, the sound of bone cracking audible even from where I was.

The remaining monsters wasted no time rushing me as their friend's leg crumpled, slightly impeded by the creek as they splashed through. Mana rushed from my core to strengthen my body, but it was slow. I was forced to backpedal for a few seconds before the warmth finally spread to the rest of my body. Just in time, too: both of the monsters jumped at me from the front, trailing water behind them.

I swiped the air with my good arm, the crest on my back powering the action. My telekinesis pushed against the creature on my left midair with a burst of white mana, slamming it into its companion. They crashed together in a tangle of limbs and screeching snarls.

The rat-lizards tumbled into the creek haphazardly. They weren't hurt, really, just incredibly pissed off. They scrambled in the creek, kicking up water as they flailed to disengage. But they were wide open. Quickly retrieving a handful of rocks from my pouch, I threw them at the downed creatures with another burst of telekinesis. The spray pelted the two with a barrage of dull thumps, punching a dozen holes into the creatures. The creek began to run red as the two died, spasming and twitching with weak screeches.

Served them right. My anger was rising, vindictive pleasure bubbling in me as my enemies died. My pulse pounded in my ears; my breathing faster than normal as victory approached.

I turned back to the final monster, which was trying to piteously pull itself back into the forest on three legs, dragging a mangled hind leg behind it.

I watched the rat-lizard try and struggle away, emitting loud screech-snarls as it went. It was somewhere between a pig squealing and the snarl of a dog. But even I could recognize the terror the beast felt as I slowly followed after it.

My anger drained as I watched, replaced with pity and self-disgust. I shouldn't take joy in ending these mana beast's lives. This thing felt terror just as much as any animal I knew from Earth. And it knew it was going to die.

I silenced the thing with a well-placed stone to the head, giving it a quick death. Even if I let the rat-lizard go, it would be easy pickings for whatever other predator roamed these woods. They relied on their leaps and bounds to clear distance, but I had shattered its back leg. Its death was inevitable, whether that be to bleeding out or some other predator.

But my victory tasted like ashes in my mouth. I had never killed anything before coming to this world, and to go so quickly from terrified to vindictive unnerved me. I knew I needed to kill to survive in Alacrya, and I knew I would likely continue to kill. It was the nature of mages in this world: they were weapons first and foremost.

And now that I knew the patterns of these creatures? They were easy pickings for me, as long as I kept them at a distance and had a supply of pebbles.

I tracked north once more, noting the position of the creek in case I needed to track back for water. My steps were less cautious, now. I felt a great deal more confident in my steps now that I had overcome the greatest threat I had yet witnessed.

Feeling a bit bolder, I strengthened my limbs with mana once again. From experience, I knew that mana granted not just enhanced strength but also greater reflexes. I hoped I could put these to use now.

I peered up at the trees towering above me, casting shadows onto the forest floor as they blocked the sunlight with autumn leaves. I didn't recognize what kind of tree these were, but they were far taller than the average tree on Earth. The closest branch was some ten feet above me, well out of my reach.

At least without mana. I jumped straight up, reaching with my left hand to latch onto the wood. I cleared the five-foot vertical jump easily, actually ending up overshooting. I went too high, barely managing to latch onto the branch as I fell. My hand scrabbled for purchase on the branch, and once I finally grabbed hold my enhanced strength allowed me to pull myself up with ease.

I laughed lightly, my plan seeming more feasible from up high. Looking out, I spied another branch a good five yards away. Feeling bold, I shifted my balance on my perch, prepping to leap. Then I jumped. I sailed through the air, a laugh bubbling from my lips at the incredulity of my situation. Me, a mage! Trying to parkour through a forest like a godforsaken ninja!

But I knew almost immediately that I would fall short of my target. And even with an enhanced body, I didn't want to fall ten feet to the forest floor. It would still hurt. Instead, I reached my arm out to the branch, pulling for all I was worth. A flare of white telekinesis flickered around the branch, brightening as I got closer.

The pull was a bit weak with how far away the target was from my body, but as I got closer the pull strengthened. A glimmer of hope rose in that split-second, only to be brutally snuffed out when I accelerated into the branch.

I impacted my chest hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs. What was even more unfortunate was the fact that the strike rattled across my sternum as well, disrupting my mana core.

I remembered reading at some point that getting struck in the mana core was a lot like getting kicked between the legs. Now from experience, I could say they felt awfully similar.

I slid off the branch with a pained groan, falling to the floor as the mana pulling me into the branch winked out. My mana shroud broke as I hit the ground, shattering to as many pieces as my pride.

Leaves fell slowly from the tree onto me as I curled inwards, recovering from what did feel uncomfortably close to getting a boot in the family jewels. After a few minutes of self-pity, I stumbled to my feet as my mana core finally snapped back to functioning.

I dusted my shirt free of bark and dirt, then peered back at the branches of the trees. An idea began to form in my head of how this could work, and it would save me a lot of time in the long run.

—

It took a decent bit of trial and error to finally get where I was now, leaping from branch to branch through the forest. I balanced on the bough of a particularly tall tree, my legs already bent and ready to leap off to the next one. I jumped, my mana-enhanced leap sending me ten feet across. But that wasn't enough to reach my next handhold.

Reaching out with telekinesis, I pulled on the branch in front of me. Instead of the branch snapping in half and flying at me like an arrow, I was pulled towards the bough instead. I deftly grabbed hold of the limb with my good arm, anchoring myself and then pulling myself up.

I quickly scanned the treeline, finding my next couple of targets. I cleared the gap to the next branch, which was a bit shorter than the last jump. I didn't need a telekinetic pull for this one. With barely a moment to balance myself, I took another leap toward the next branch. With a telekinetic pull, I was able to hoist myself up onto that branch, too.

I fell plenty of times as I slowly mastered this pseudo-parkour. One of the first things I learned in this endeavor was that every action had an equal and opposite reaction. When I used telekinesis to pull on a branch, I had better hope my weight wasn't enough to snap the wood. If the branch was too weak, it would break off the tree and come hurtling toward me like a spear.

That caused one of my falls. Now I was extra careful to make sure a branch could support my weight.

Another hard lesson was learned when I misjudged a jump again. I had a backup plan in case that happened: pull on the branch and push on the ground, hopefully allowing me to reach the limb. Instead, the strain of trying to use two effects at once had caused me to fail at the pull, and I crashed to the forest floor once again.

I wasn't able to do two actions with telekinesis at once yet, but I could probably do so with some practice.

My progress across the forest was faster than when I was on foot, even hampered by the fact that I only had one good arm to climb with. My right arm had been dislocated a day ago, and any strain on the limb hurt it pretty bad.

By now, the sun had passed into late afternoon. Several hours of this parkour had allowed me to slightly adjust to heightened strength and reflexes, but it would be a long time yet before it felt truly natural.

My musings caused me to misjudge a jump, and my pull didn't exert enough force to drag me to the branch. Instead of panicking, I stopped pulling on the branch and switched to pushing as fast as possible. Aiming at the ground allowed me to slow my fall ever so slightly, and I landed with a crouch.

I refocused myself, wiping sweat from my brow. I prepared to hop back into the trees, but something tingled on the edge of my perception. I paused, a frown on my face. It was like something was watching me. I felt the hair stand up back of my neck as I slowly turned about, surveying my surroundings.

I pressed mana into my eyes and ears, trying to find discrepancies in the forest around me. I had killed a few more of the rat-lizards as I made my way north, and was feeling quite confident in my abilities by now.

I heard a slight whoosh in the air, like something was moving. No sooner did that happen than I leapt to the side out of pure instinct. I flew a few yards and failed the landing, not entirely used to the strength mana granted. I rolled in the dirt a few paces before jumping up hurriedly, looking at where I used to be.

A mana beast stood there, covered in barklike skin that shifted and moved as the creature turned. It stood on four powerful legs, its shoulder reaching my stomach in height. It was much more reptilian than the creatures I had fought before, looking almost like a Komodo dragon. But the legs were longer and lither than those of monitor lizards, and the tail was as long as the body itself. Orange scales lined the creature's spine, and I realized with a start that this thing must have been extremely camouflaged against the autumn trees.

Its reptilian gaze locked onto me, a thin slit of a pupil amidst a sea of orange. The thing was out for blood. I felt a hum in the air as the creature's spines glowed slightly.

Then it opened its mouth, revealing several rows of razor-sharp teeth and a swirling green sphere of wind.

My eyes widened as I leapt out of the way, barely avoiding the oncoming projectile. It barrelled past me with an audible whoosh, ruffling my hair before carving a chunk out of a nearby tree and dispersing. The monster wasted no time capitalizing on my distraction, rushing me with deceptive speed. I backpedaled on instinct, narrowly avoiding a snap of the creature's mouth by the skin of my teeth. I reached upwards, using a pull of telekinesis to yank me towards a branch several yards away. I jumped simultaneously, rocketing off in the opposite direction of the beast.

Midway through my leap, I stopped pulling on the branch and reached into the pouch on my belt. Withdrawing another handful of rocks, I threw them with both mana-enhanced strength and a pulse of pushing telekinesis. The stones zipped nearly faster than my eye could see, a deadly hail of earth directed right at the mutant lizard. A hideous snarl was wrenched from the monster's mouth as my attack struck home.

I landed awkwardly on my rear, skidding back slightly from my momentum. I held my breath, hoping against hope that the beast was dead. Unfortunately, my sight of the lizard was obscured by a small cloud of dust and dirt kicked up by my assault.

I didn't even see what impacted me next. One moment I was standing still, peering at the dust could, and another I was sent hurtling backward with extreme force. My mana shroud had shattered around my chest, but that didn't stop whatever hit me entirely. I struck a tree hard and fell down to the forest floor, but my strengthened body thankfully spared me a broken spine.

My ribs weren't so lucky. I shifted slightly on the ground, but each movement caused my bones to creak in a way that told me that if they weren't broken, they were certainly close. I coughed painfully, each wheeze jostling my ribs and shoulder. I blinked through the pain, dimly registering that the lizard's tail was detached and writhing a few feet from me. The monster itself was bleeding from a dozen coin-sized holes across its body, with one having barely missed its throat. Instead, the monster's lower jaw was a bloody mess.

Damn.

The creature roared piteously, its murky barklike skin painted a deep crimson in several splotches. A few of the orange spines had snapped, leaving the creature a broken remnant of what it used to be.

But it was still alive, and very, very angry.

The spines began to glow once more, this time with a light that far outstripped the previous time. The beast opened its malformed jaw, and I watched in horror as another missile of wind began to condense.

Scrambling with my left arm, I didn't so much pull as I yanked a nearby rock. It slammed into my hand with a painful thunk, but I had no time to think about that. The beast's attack was almost charged.

I switched my runic function quickly to push and focused on the rock in my hand. A weak flare of white shot the rock from my hand with far less force than if I had thrown it, but it completed its objective.

My rock collided with the building spell in the mana beast's jaws. I locked eyes with the creature as my stone disrupted the spell, causing the sphere to ripple and distort. A veneer of panic began to show, but not before the spell exploded, taking the monster's head with it.

The mana beast collapsed to the forest floor dead.

This was the second time I had caused a monster's head to explode in two days. At least this time I was far away enough from the blast zone to avoid getting coated in red.

"Serves you right, jackass," I said with a wheeze, savoring the victory. If I was feeling a bit better, I might've called it something a bit more creative. But I almost had my chest caved in, so I was cutting myself a little slack.

I struggled to my feet, gingerly feeling said ribs. Thankfully, they weren't broken but were certainly bruised or cracked. I would have to be even lighter on any exercise from now on.

Speaking of how my ribs nearly shattered, I inspected the still-writhing tail of the monster lizard. Now that I was thinking more evenly, what had happened seemed clear to me by the cut of the tail. It was absurdly long, tapering off into a whiplike shape. Which was exactly what had impacted my chest: the lizard had snapped its tail at me like a whip but lost the appendage in the process. Probably some sort of defense mechanism, like the lizards of my world.

I stumbled over to the dead beast's body, noting a gleam from one of the monster's wounds. With a bit closer inspection of the gruesome sight, I realized exactly what I was looking at: it was a beast core.

It was colored the same shade of brown as the creature's skin, with splotches of familiar autumn-orange streaking the surface. I grimaced: if I wanted it out, I would have to retrieve it.

I reached my good hand into the wound, gagging at the squelching noise and squishy feeling of pulped flesh. I got a good grasp on the core, though, and ripped it out with a slight tug. I wiped the blood away on my dirty trousers, inspecting them once more. Then I stashed it into my pouch.

I'm not going to be doing any more parkour today, I thought grimly, wincing with every inhale.

I walked north once more, my left arm clutching my ribs and my right held limply at my side. But my luck had finally won out. The treeline broke after a couple of minutes of walking, revealing rolling hills of green. There was not a cloud in the sky, allowing me to bask in the welcoming warmth of the sun.

But what really welcomed me was the sprawling city barely a couple of miles away, surrounded by thick walls and sturdy battlements. Some part of my soul echoed an emotion of yearning for this city. A strange sense of familiarity settled across my weary bones.

That city was my home, in some sense of the word.