I was finding out the hard way that hunting involved a lot of running.

  A part of me expected that when Aira gave up on teaching me the bow, but that part had been studiously ignored by the rest of me because of how stupid that sounded. Stupid or not, it had turned into my reality, chasing down random assortments of fauna to exhaustion and cutting them down with my sword. Which was still too short in my opinion.

  First they had me hunt rabbits, fucking annoying little shits were fast, but humanoids were built for endurance runs. So long as I didn’t lose the furry bastard, my success was guaranteed. Even ended up chasing Kit! Though that was more of a friendly game than it was hunting. The adorable little rabbit was very fast and very cute.

  Then came the smaller ungulates, which weren’t that bad. Got in some practice with maintaining my mana while I ran since those didn’t hide after a short sprint, which wasn’t very hard to adapt to but nonetheless wasn’t something I was used to. But I could do it easily enough after about the third? Something like that. Xae’s also subjected to this, and every few hours the two other hunters of our group come along to collect the spoils, not a care in the world, using some kind of monster repellent which smelled horrendous.

  Now I was tangoing with a boar, the thing preferring a fight over retreat. I stepped to the side once more and cut deep into the boar to punish its failed attempt at goring me. I had been doing that for a while, and the boar was starting to get supremely reckless in its rage. I didn’t lower my guard though, no matter how easy it was. Death came with arrogance. Or something. It sounded right enough in my opinion.

  The boar charged again, but it was a sluggish thing, providing the perfect opening for me to cut deep into its neck and sever an artery. It stumbled, then fell, blood pooling in the dirt. I didn't so much as break a sweat, courtesy of my mana.

  I was finding that my stamina wasn’t getting much better, despite how much I trained. Was that because I used mana as a substitute? Something to look into, but frankly, why would I care for cardio if I had a much easier solution?

  Efficiency, unfortunately.

  A clap broke me from my contemplation and I turned to face the large elk-man. “Good, good. The pelt’s going to run for a total of nothing, but we can salvage some of the meat at least.”

  “Which is fine, this is practice.” Aira glared at Loklan.

  “That it is, that it is,” he chuckled.

  I shrugged. “I care more about hunting than coi—”

  Death.

  So condensed and powerful it invaded my sense of the World. I tilted forward and a spike of granite the size of my forearm flew past where my skull was. My eyes widened at how close I just came to my end and turned to look at the source of my brush with death.

  It was a horror.

  A thing of ivory skin, dozens of limbs attached to a mass of muscle. Its head was barely visible under so many arms, but it was there, neck and all. Hollow eyes stared into my soul as it stretched a smile. Pristine teeth of razor sharp persuasion greeted me, gums visible if I could see through the limbs blocking the sight.

  It raised an arm, forming another spike and my instincts screamed—

  A massive blade came crashing down on the thing, cutting through multiple limbs and causing it to screech a vibration that sent me to my knees, but Loklan and Aira were barely fazed.

  Aira wasn’t far behind Loklan, harrying the monster with precise grace, and perhaps I could infer some insights if I was present enough to bother analyzing the fight. As it stood, there was just the breathing, the ringing of my ears, and the racing thump of my heart.

  I almost died.

  So easily, so quickly. Just gone.

  I didn’t even sense the whisper until a moment before it would’ve killed me.

  Aira corralled the monster with precise slashes from her dual blades while Loklan took the lion's share of the monster's attention, swinging the massive lump of sharpened metal whenever an opening presented itself.

  The monster used a deluge of earth magic, but the both of them seemed to know how to deal with every spell..

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  A clean display of teamwork and skill to be sure, but again, I had almost died.

  What did I struggle for, if not to live? Every step I’d taken had used my need to survive as the compass, and there I was, chaff to the slaughter of some monster I didn’t even know the name of.

  A hand landed on my shoulder, and I shuddered as I turned to see a concerned Xae. Fuck, I probably looked like an idiot right then, didn’t I?

  “We should move, so that they can focus on the fight.” Xae said.

  I just nodded and followed the girl.

  Atrus Aranea.

  That was the monster's name, Loklan said so, after they managed to drive it away. That’s all the two hunters could manage to do. Those words had been eating at my mind like a cancer. Growing and growing and growing.

  It wasn’t anything special, a magically inclined monster, but nothing so skilled as to hinder a proper mage. They would’ve killed it if it didn’t decide to run away, the fight was gradual but clearly one sided. It probably only survived because of the ridiculous amount limbs that protruded from its body to block anything properly lethal

  Atrus Aranea, my would be killer. After so many years of imagining things that would scorch the lands, I almost fell to some affront to biology that couldn’t even pose a challenge to two hunters.

  Expecting strength so early in the journey was naive, I knew this. But in my two brushes with death, none had been so casual. Just a flick of the finger and I’d be free of a heartbeat. I liked to think I had the tenacity to fight to the bitter end, but this? This would’ve just torn though my skull and brain and voila. No more Yir.

  I didn’t even survive because of some exceptional talent, just my sixth sense as an elf. That’s it, nothing special. Just the luck of being born alongside a people who could hear the World.

  Wasn’t that a fun thought? Luck saved me again. I hadn't thought about my encounter with Arr’Koro in months, purposefully avoiding the thought of him actually. He let me go, I was surrounded, fighting for my life, and he let me go. All for some interest I wasn’t privy to. Twice now luck had saved me.

  Twice.

  I didn’t know what to do with that.

  I hugged the blanket of my bed close to my heart, shaking just slightly amidst so much nothing. My stay at the inn will end in a few weeks, and I was thinking of extending it, enjoying the privacy. But I was starting to reconsider.

  Apprentices got their own building, given a place to sleep with nothing to separate them from one another. Just a roof and walls to fend off the curse of nature. It was free though, a nice bonus to the apprentices just starting their journey, but unnecessary for me considering how much coin I’d been making.

  But sleeping in a group, that was starting to have an appeal. The comfort of a mattress wasn’t something I needed if all I could manage was my thoughts. I didn't want to be a nuisance though, I knew I had nightmares, and my parents had said plenty of times that I wasn’t a quiet sleeper. With the nightmares? I was probably a menace. Those drove me to using mana on my brain, no matter how much my conscience screamed at the thought.

  Turned out mana could substitute sleep, it just took all I could handle to equate to an hour's worth of sleep. I didn’t have any exact metrics though, just arbitrary assumptions from years of making educated guesses in place of a timepiece.

  I wished there were numbers like in the game, if only so that my progress could feel tangible. For all I knew I was barely making any headroom at all. Just a girl making up shit to console herself of the coming End.

  All the nonsense mana theory I had gathered didn’t match the spells of a proper mage. That could’ve killed the monster, easily. If I had one.

  Strengthen didn’t count, because it just made me physically stronger, nothing like the cataclysms in my memories. And what was I going to do? Double my strength and wrestle the thing? Maybe have my demon do its little trick again? Best not to rely on that.

  A real spell was something like a fireball.

  A practical grenade in the hands of a competent mage, and still a potent weapon for bumbling idiots like me. But I didn’t understand how to invoke elemental magic, and if the imp was to be believed, then I couldn’t. Maybe I should've asked Healer Ken for guidance? He was implied to be in the know of my secret, so it wouldn’t be all that strange.

  Something to consider.

  What else could I do? Find a book? I could barely read (though I was making progress on that front), and what idiot would leave a grimoire somewhere for me to steal?

  Just keep doing my pseudo-bullshit? That…hadn’t been showing much progress. Sure, I was the queen of endurance, but that meant a whole lot of jack shit when I could die in an instant. I needed something to make me faster and more aware.

  Something like a haste spell.

  But I didn’t know what the next spell I’d unlock would be from the deal with Arr’koro, and doubted it’d be something so convenient as that.

  I could try body modification? That was an idea without merit, since it didn’t exist in the game, but if I could merge mana with my body then…something might happen. Surely. Something like turning into a living bomb. But what else could I do?

  I’d spent hours agonizing over that question, keeping myself awake through anxiety and mana over my lack of an answer.

  Circling through my thoughts wasn’t working on coming up with something to train that’d make me tangibly stronger now. Just the same old shit with using mana, and reverse engineering my spell.

  Fuck.