“Listen kid”, her mentor said. “Listen well.”

  Wind coursed through that long, wild mane next to her. Vic gulped down and stared at the ancient, yet ever-decomposing corpse of what was once called a “Leviathan”. The cliff they walked on barely brought a bird’s eye view on it. It was that gigantic. Its full size expanded farther than she could see. It’d died long ago, yet so much was left of it. It looked more bipedal than animalistic.

  Her mentor stared back at her, and smiled fondly.

  Vic’s hair was ruffled.

  “There’s a line that you must draw. You must do it now, before all that you stand for slips from your hands because of your thoughtlessness”, Vic heard with half-an-ear.

  “Ah?” Vic asked, tilting her head. She wondered what there was to eat tonight. A remnant of a memory of her mother describing teenagers as ever-eating monsters came up to mind. Maybe there was some hidden wisdom in that. She was just so hungry all the time. She missed sweets so much.

  Vic received a handchop on her head for her troubles.

  “Focus, Vic”, the voice said. The tone turned dangerously serious. “You have to choose now, or the choice will be taken from you.”

  Stillness, for a moment, only.

  Wind brushing through dying trees.

  Perhaps light laughter hovering above the clouds.

  She wouldn’t know.

  A voice pierced through it all.

  “When do you kill, Vic?” her mentor asked.

  Vic froze.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “What is the tipping point, kid? When is the moment where the line is crossed and you must kill your opponent?” that shadowed body asked.

  “I like you more when you make jokes all the time”, Vic said, feeling uneasy. That had been an abrupt change of topic in this conversation.

  Another handchop on her head answered her plight. Vic made a small “ough”.

  Shimmering eyes stared down at her, contrasting with the shadowed face which traits melted in the shade of a dead tree. A Cheshire like-smile, going from an ear to the other, was in front of her. Vic squirmed a little.

  “Vic, is it when the child before you tries to stab you?”, her mentor motioned, making a shade the size of a toddler attempt to butcher a taller adult.

  Vic frowned.

  “That only happened once!” Vic complained. “I didn’t know you!”

  “Yes, yes, and I’m so proud for you trying to trick me that way. Pretending to be that gullible nearly made me wonder how you’d even survived this far. Nonetheless, that is not the point. Back on track. Is it the age of your enemy that should make you hesitate?”

  Vic didn’t pout. Her throat felt a bit dry.

  “Well… I mean… kobolds are child-sized… it doesn’t even lessen their willingness to chop you up…”, Vic rambled.

  “And the youngest ones are real terrors, yes, Vic. But this isn’t about the size of your opponent. It is about the threat they pose to you, no matter their physical or mental attributes.”

  Vic frowned.

  “But I don’t want to have to… kill people…”

  There was an arced eyebrow. A questioning look was brought to her.

  “Oh? So you’re just a victim of circumstance? Is that it? Only matching your opponent’s will in kind? Brought to heel only once all choice has been robbed from your peasant’s hands and all that’s left in them is a dull, rusty knife that shakes as it can only react to the world’s whims?”

  Vic hugged herself.

  No. She didn’t want to just survive.

  “I don’t want to be that. I want to-

  “To choose!” came the excited reply. “Yes, kiddo, yes… And what do you choose? What do you choose to kill? Who do you choose to spare? Where is the line? Where do you draw it?”

  Vic felt herself tipping over.

  Her mentor dexterously caught her before she tripped near the edge. It would have been quite the fall.

  Her mentor swiftly turned Vic’s head to force her to stare straight at those two, ever seeing, iridescent eyes. The flutter of sparkles had since long only left those glimmering pools of swirling pearl-like rainbow.

  Another smile was left hanging in the air.

  “And when can you afford to choose, kid?”

  There was another gentle smile, then Vic was abruptly pushed off the cliff, her screaming and swearing and flailing only followed by crystalline, raucous, joyous laughter as the roaring of the wind engulfed all sounds into a unique, chaotic, incomprehensible mess.

  ___

  Vic cheekily rubbed her cheek and nose with a closed fist.

  She allowed the soldiers to fully encircle her position, observing their every movement and the weaknesses in their formation. There weren’t many. Hm. Her current goal was to make them spread out their forces and give her all out against one point of their snaring formation to yeet out of the circle that had been formed around her. That was her one draft of an escape plan so far. But perhaps, breaking their spirits would work better for her.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  It was only the powerful who could afford mercy.

  All she needed to do was flaunt a bit her tremendous otherworldly power and she’d be fine and dandy considering what they thought was “impressive” back in the hall. She wouldn’t need to kill terrorised chickens, they’d already be running off too far away in the first place for her to catch them.

  Alright, she was going to try to do both at the same time. Escape and terrorise, without letting them know that she was planning on escaping.

  “You have no mana left!”, the high priestess intoned with strength and power as she flew down, landing on the ground far before Vic with the graciousness of a stupidly proud flower blowing under the wind. “Surrender yourself, your struggle will be a pointless endeavour!”

  Wait.

  Wait what?

  …Wait, that high priestess had done her little debuff earlier on. Did… did she think that had emptied all her mana reserves? No way. NO WAY!

  After all… Vic hadn’t invoked any new high cost spells ever since she’d been hit by it, now had she?

  Oh. Oh this was too good!

  That certainly explained why the priestess had gotten so close, dangerously at arm’s length, to summon that big glacier in her face. She had thought that Vic couldn’t throw sun spits at her anymore because she had run out of mana juice. Teehee.

  That high priestess’s overconfidence would be her downfall!

  Vic eyed her thin sword then stared back at the high priestess, then kept going between the two with a growing smile until the high priestess’s glare turned deadly squinty.

  Vic burst out laughing. She laughed so much it hurt, holding strongly her sides, and barely had time to duck before an arrow was shot at her by a stray archer.

  “You think- you think I’ve run out? Oh my you’re too funny. You’re so funny, I might just- HA! Okay, I know what to do”, Vic cheered, removing a single tear from her eye that hadn’t existed to begin with. Ahhh, that had been too good. All of this put her in a cheery mood.

  “Allow me to demonstrate”, Vic said, slowly and manically, gazing at all her enemies with an odd glint.

  The soldiers didn’t allow her to elaborate. Arrows were shot at the same time towards her legs. Vic rolled on the ground and got back up. Silly gooses. They were all silly gooses. They hadn’t figured out yet that they shouldn’t focus all their shots at one time to be effective against her, but make it a constant streams of projectiles. They simply were too used to acting as an army fighting against a type of enemy that she wasn’t.

  “Hold your fire!” a voice cried out. Vic ignored it. It didn’t quite matter if the lady was talking to her or the soldiers as her voice firmly prattled on in the air.

  Vic quickly stretched her fingers and opened the game interface. Tapping quickly to the side, she opened the tab to her newest, most powerful spells learnt so far.

  She was outside. She could use… no, no, the first one would really be overkill. She was surrounded, too. Maybe the second? Nah, she’d failed the mini-game to achieve the spell too many times to trust herself with it, better go for the third. She was starting to know that one fairly well.

  It also consumed less but really was a show off.

  And she already had her sword out, huhu.

  She grabbed it, seeing the mini game flash before her eyes. She eyed the high priestess, who’d been talking, trying to say words to Vic, but who had now just stopped her incanting as she incredulously stared and gaped a little at Vic who was doing strange dancing gestures with her arms and fingers in the empty air from her perspective. An upbeat music spread in the air for all to hear in rhythm with her movements.

  Vic felt her cheeks redden but smiled sickly through it all. Heheh.

  They were the ones that were going to get all flustered up later on.

  She wasn’t looking ridiculous. She wasn’t looking mad. It was both of them at the same time, of course.

  Mana swiftly coursed through her in all the right ways as the game system yelled out “Amazing!” “Perfect combo!” and other scoring adjectives. Sadly enough, no one but her could hear the mini-game’s voice-over. It would have made things less awkward, perhaps. Or actually just would have made it plain worse now that she thought about it.

  “She’s charging up- s-something!” the high priestess suddenly screamed, actually panicking now. “Mages! All out! NOW!”

  Huh. That elf had felt it early. Vic hadn’t even pulled the big chunks out. That spell was still all within her, in the process of being formed in the right way. How come…?

  The air tensed as dozens of spells were unleashed from behind the lines of soldiers. An intense low murmur spread from the lines as soldiers simply remained in position from afar. A stupid strategy, for sure. Why was nobody trying to enter a direct physical fight? Was the shadow armour scaring them that much, even though she was just a gangly teenage girl with awesome, super cool, super deserved powers that made her just a little bit scary?

  “Aw, a miss!” the game intoned as she rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled in a panic, feeling an absurd amount of spells striking true… if they hadn’t phased out of where she’d just been.

  Between two rolls, she felt a skirmish of an elemental spell graze her shadow armour’s arm, that held on. The skin of her right arm barely slightly felt burnt from the oozing cutting spell. That’s all that a medium level goon’s spell could do to her now, with her shadow ghost armour on, heheh.

  She swore as she felt the composition of her forming spell begin to break down as another “Aw, a miss!” was intoned from within her brain by the mini-game. Its construct was shaking. The music was distorting. No. Couldn’t let that happen.

  She quickly readjusted her strides and dexterously kept on going. She was halfway through it now. The second third of the spell array was a piece of cake to do. It was actually her favourite part, and she’d be able to speed up her fingers’ movements.

  Vic held up her hands, in mock surrender.

  “Wait wait wait!” Vic said, and the high priestess’s staff’s light faltered. Vic let her fingers abruptly go back to the mini-game as she tapped the right rhythms to finish the labyrinth, guiding and helping the strokes of mana align mentally. The music sped up just as her fingers accelerated the pace.

  “Don’t you want to talk things out?” Vic smirked.

  Then her smile faded in an instant as she realised that the high priestess’s staff’s light had faltered not because she’d foolishly interrupted her spell to reply to her, but because she’d finished said spell.

  But it wasn’t an attack.

  Vic grimaced as she saw its effect spreading across the crowd, like she’d bitten on something very sour.

  A golden shimmer fell upon all the soldiers and mages. They were about fifty of them, that had been keeping their distance while slowly closing in, and they all now looked positively blessed.

  That was soooo unfair! Really? Buffs? Large scale buffs that boosted their stats while Vic got nothing?

  “HEY,” Vic yelled out, missing another beat in the mini-game, “That’s cheating! What about the spirit of good old fairplay?”

  The high priestess, in the very front lines, tilted her head and smirked with what looked like an evil, self-satisfied look. She looked like she was about to deliver a king’s justice and enjoyed too much her job. There was a little bit of too invested hatred in her face.

  “Now!” she yelled out, “Dispel her connection to her god!”

  Vic abruptly realised while gaping why she hadn’t been on the receiving end of that many spells. She had thought they were about thirty-five something soldiers for fifteen spellcasters, but it was more of a twenty soldiers for thirty spellcasters ratio as the mana from their spells intensified. They’d been hiding their real numbers behind the line of actual soldiers.

  Mana buzzed across the arena as an incantation that had finished being cast a few moments ago burst out.

  The collective spell struck the large area that had been left to herself by her enemies before she could leap out of it.

  But all she wanted to do was gag. But she failed to. But she had not to, as she continued the mini-game smoothly, without missing an itch of a beat. She needed to keep her focus, until she couldn’t keep a straight face.

  And she laughed, and barked another laugh, and began chuckling so loud that her lungs hurt. She desperately tried to keep her focus as she could see the uncomprehending expressions of the soldiers and mages turn into thick dread.

  The intense “divinity breaking” spell smelt like ozone. The golden edges of the area sizzled.

  And nothing else happened.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Vic pointed at the high priestess and cackled like a hyena, now on the finishing stroke of her spell. Her sword shimmered and swiftly wrapped itself with an ever thickening aura of mana.

  “You think I worship a god?” Vic asked, laughing. “Oh you think I get my power from a divinity? You think you can break a connection I don’t have to a god I don’t worship? YOU FOOLISH StoOOPid people, I don’t! Why would I?”

  Vic pushed hardly on the last arrow of the mini game, getting a last “Perfect combo!” amazed appreciation by the lifeless voice-over speaking in her head. The last note of the tune sounded in the air with finality, warping on itself with a bursting shattering sound of unleashed magic spreading in the air like a column of a tornado of fire.

  “…when I can do this without one?”, she asked, smugly, incredibly satisfied by the way the worldview of the high priestess seemed to be forever shifted in a single instant. There was horror in that gaze, and now Vic knew why, as the priestess seemed to be so very good at detecting the shifts of mana within this world.

  And she had to know it was far too late to try anything. She saw her bracing herself, incanting perhaps a spell in a panicked mutter, bringing a hand to her ear.

  Vic allowed herself a little vindictive smirk that promised violence.

  An immense aura burst out of her measly sword. It raised five metres above Vic, not even weighing more, but so very much more destructive.

  It looked like it was a burning sword, but it wasn’t. It looked like it was light itself warping the world, but it wasn’t.

  It was a motherfuckering magic sword.

  And she was going to swing that thing around like she was a fidget spinner.

  And, she did so.