2-44 Bigger fish

EnroItzal

The Pallid Serk was more than Erin could handle. The only advantage she had against the giant lizard was her ability to strategize but in the face of such a beast and the limited amount of resources she had, it didn’t feel like it was much of an advantage to her. Against the Razor Grizzly, Erin felt that through some miracle and clever tactics, she would stand a chance but she bore no such optimism towards the Pallid Serk in her current circumstances. 

Erin surprised herself as she did not hesitate to run from it. She was a prideful person but she tried her best to not let it turn into arrogance. Throughout her years as the Sword Saint, she had come to understand there was a fine line between bravery and stupidity. It had made her constantly wonder whether she had been brave or stupid for all those years. And now, running from the Pallid Serk might have been a coward’s move and a wound to her pride, but she wasn’t fighting for herself anymore. She wasn’t here to challenge an unbeatable trial. She was here to save a life.

That said, running from the Pallid Serk wasn’t an easy task especially when she had a serious wound on her right arm. It throbbed with pain for every step she took. As she ran, she also put some focus into healing but strangely, the wound wasn’t healing as fast as she assumed it would be. Furthermore, there were a few daring monsters that came attacking her from outside her field of vision. Unfortunately for the monsters, her eyes weren’t the only perceptions she had. Using her heightened hearing and smell, she easily avoided a humanoid monster’s sudden lunge. She did not bother to give the monster a glance and kept running but she surmised it to be an ape-like monster.

The next monster to ambush her was a near-furless Dire Wolf with pale skin which aimed for her legs but she promptly sliced its jaws apart. The Dire Wolf’s level was the same as Erin’s but nevertheless, as vicious as the other monsters in the vicinity.

[Experience gained +15% - Level Progression: 95%]

The second one was a Goblin the size of a human, a Hobgoblin. The Hobgoblin looked sickly and pale like the Dire Wolf and the Pallid Serk. It was wielding a bone-made sword. It had dropped down from a tree into Erin’s path with its sword raised but she parried its blow and kicked the Hobgoblin out of her way. She had intended to kill it but with the Pallid Serk closing in on her, she prioritized her fleeing.

The only monster she killed thus far was the Dire Wolf. She had only come close to killing the others but killing them would require her to stop stall a second in her sprint, which would be enough for the Pallid Serk to catch on to her. Hanging on to the five percent of experience away from a level increment, Erin clicked her tongue every time she failed to finish her assailants.

Erin glanced back and saw the Pallid Serk was neither catching up nor falling behind.

The Pallid Serk wasn’t slow by any means. The only reason it had yet to catch on was its sheer size. It was hindered drastically by trees that had grown densely together. It had to deliberately ram into the trees to make way for itself. Even so, its pace was still nothing to scoff at. Erin, with her size and nimbleness, traversed the forest with ease and if she didn’t have the wound on her right arm, she would have easily lost the Pallid Serk on her proverbial tail.

“Damn it. Why is it healing so slowly?” she cursed. She had been trying to heal her arm for a good minute now but the wound had only stopped bleeding. As she wrought her mind for an answer, a realization struck. She took out her map and gave it a good thorough glance. Sure enough, she was still less than a mile away from the Singularity. However—

“No way...” she gasped as she used Spirit Vision. No matter where she looked, the Spirits’ presences were tremendously low. In the stead of the Spirits, gray smoke loomed. Plunged with these facts, she came to a single conclusion. The strange phenomenon of The Singularity had grown out of the basin. She hadn’t heard anything about this which could only mean the growth phenomenon was quite recent. 

The information she had gathered about The Singularity was stale. It made her wonder just how much more had changed. Her mind began to wonder. She thought she had made the minimum preparation but with this abrupt change to what she knew, everything could also have changed. 

“What if the Mist Pearls no longer grows…” Her mind drifted to such horror. “No. I must not think that way. Even if things have changed, the changes will be gradual. I might still have time,” she convinced herself to keep moving with these thoughts.

But her lapse of concentration once again caused her a fatal mistake. A Rot-rat lunged out of a bush. It was smaller than the previous monsters but the fastest so far. Its strength wasn’t so great but it threw its whole body at Erin. If she still had her focus, it would be an easy kill but she noticed it too late. She managed to block the Rot-rat’s clash with her swords but it made her stop in her tracks. Before she could swing her swords, the Pallid Serk quickly caught up to her. 

“Fuck!” she shouted out loud at the insane speed of such a huge creature. 

The Pallid Serk spun its whole body, devastating the trees around it. With the wound on Erin’s right arm, she couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the attack. Its oversized tail slammed into her. Her Arcane Armor absorbed most of the damage but she was still sent flying across the ground. Needless to say, the Rot-rat was pulverized as an afterthought of the Pallid Serk.

Erin crashed through two trunks of trees before finally stopping at the third. Her Arcane Armor held on but cracks were all over. Erin was unharmed for the majority but her bearings were thoroughly disordered. She tapped her pockets and heaved a sigh of relief when she felt her vials of potions were still intact. She laughed weakly at her choice of increasing Arcane Armor’s level all the way to its maximum. She made the right choice. 

“It’s too early to give myself a pat on the back...” Erin reprimanded herself as she felt the ground shake. Lifting her gaze, she saw the Pallid Serk approaching fast. She struggled to regain her balance and her footing but the Pallid Serk moved fast. Its jaws were wide opened, ready to devour her. 

Erin threw an Aura Shot at the Pallid Serk with unsteady hands. The projectile hit but the Pallid Serk was unharmed. Had she coated the Aura Shot with Mystic Blade, it would harm the Pallid Serk but the drawback would leave her a sitting duck. Erin dove out of the way at the last second and Pallid Serk’s jaws crushed through the thick trunk of the tree. 

Erin sharpened her focus and infused lightning into her saber along with Arcane Edge. While the Pallid Serk was still reining in its own head, Erin plunged her saber right into the top of the Pallid Serk’s head. The monster gave off an ear-splitting cry as it flailed about. 

Erin was prepared to be dragged along in its flail of agony but the unexpected happened. Her saber came right off its head as if it was only lodged into some fragile wood as the Pallid Serk flailed around erratically. The hole on the Pallid Serk’s head was a crack rather than the usual appearance of a wound. There was no blood. There was only a trail of gray smoke leaking from the hole Erin gave.

“What. The. Fuck?” Erin blurted out.

The Pallid Serk flailed about for a few minutes before suddenly freezing up in its movements. The pain in its expression was gone. Agony no longer dyed its gaze. It snapped its head to Erin. Its indifferent gaze slowly contorted into an expression of rage. It roared with a screech of a dying creature instead of a beast’s howl.

Witnessing this abnormal occurrence, Erin’s premonition of The Singularity’s dangers grew. The overgrown Serk in front of her bore no resemblance towards the Serk she had encountered in Green Scar saved for its appearance, even that aspect was on a blurred line. 

With a kick of its hind legs, the Pallid Serk pounced at Erin. She dove under the ghastly beast, but its tail was lying in wait for her as she avoided its jaws. She had no choice but to take the tail head-on. She conjured up an Arcane Aegis for more assurance. The tail smashed through the Aegis with ease and tossed Erin into the air, but this was her plan. She let her momentum carry her up to trees. Instead of the ground, she gracefully landed on a tree branch higher than the Pallid Serk’s height.

Without wasting a single thought, she broke off into a sprint of leaps across the trees. Never had she imagined herself to be running from her opponent without being forced by her opponent’s strength. No matter how strong her opponent was, she had always stood her ground and fought. She desired glory. Her pride demanded to be sated. But all those were in the past. Since glory wasn’t her purpose now, there was no point in struggling against a tilted scale battle.

The Pallid Serk could jump but it couldn’t stay in the air. The tree branches were much too soft to support its weight. Erin spared not a single glance at the Pallid Serk and continued making her way to the basin. She could see it now. A basin of trees, shrouded in a dense fog. She swallowed a gulp as she pondered on the threat she would likely face. If all the monsters were as strong as the Pallid Serk, she was, for a lack of a better word, fucked. Of course, that was only if she was in her normal state.

“Huh? What the—” Erin raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar scent that drifted to her nose. It was a new kind of monster but when she glanced around, she didn’t see any monster that she hadn’t seen before. Her Sixth Sense went off and immediately after, a tremor happened.

“From the ground!” Erin shouted in her mind. The ground below her burst apart and out came a gray snake that spanned the length of more than ten meters and with a width of a log. Its bifurcated jaws widened as wide it could. Erin dodged the bite of the giant snake with a difference of a split second. She landed on another tree branch but she could take no breather. The giant snake, the Grave Wyrm, caught Erin back in its sight. Her Sixth Sense screamed at her. She didn’t know what the Grave Wyrm was going to do but she judged to move first and ponder later. 

However, even with that cautious mindset, Erin was way too late. The Grave Wyrm spat out a stream of gray murky liquid from its mouth. The stream flew fast and ferocious. It bisected everything it touched, including Erin’s whole right arm. She saw it coming but with the strain her wound was tolling on her, her body could not meet the demands of her mind. 

Erin couldn’t even shout. Her mouth was agape but her scream was voiceless. Her wounds did not cease at just her missing arm. Horror dawned on her face as she realized the properties of the gray murky liquid weren’t just its high pressure. Slowly, from the fresh stump of her right shoulder, her flesh began to decay. Only then, her agony screams regained their volume.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” In the face of desperation, there were only curses in her mind. The decay spread to her face and her chest. Her brain and heart rotted together as her vision started to fade. The last glimpse of her mortal coil was the Pallid Serk battling with the Grave Wyrm for taking its prey. Her body fell off the branch as life slowly left her body. The pain crept all over her body but she was at the point where she no longer had command over her body. As her corpse touched the ground, she had shuffled off her mortal coil.

“In the end…, despite my best efforts… this is how far I could go… Damn it… I really hate being weak...” Even the voice in her own mind slowly faded into oblivion.

Her memories flashed before her but these memories began to dim like a dying light. One by one, her memories crumbled piece by piece until she could remember nothing.

And then there was truly nothing.

An empty abyss. A hollow and endless space that she felt as if she was thrown into.

She didn’t know how long she could fall through. She didn’t know how far the abyss spanned.

She had no idea how much time had passed. Soon, the sensation of falling changed. She began to feel like she was drifting in a sea of vast emptiness. The waves took her further and further into the endless darkness.

She felt nothing...

But all was not lost.

A message appeared at the dark end of her life.

[Conditions met - Revenant activated]

At that message, Erin felt a surge. She didn’t know what kind of surge it was. It just felt like everything was flowing into a single point at a tremendous pace.

[Experience lost -10% - Level Progression: 85%]

Erin lurched up from the ground instantly after the messages with a sharp scream. She touched all over her body. She frowned at the strange sensation she was having. She was moving both of her arms and the pain she was feeling didn’t seem to have a definite source on her body. Baffled, she gazed down at her hands. Her right arm was no longer missing and devoid of injuries. Her frown deepened. 

Her gaze moved from her hands to her whole body. Her apparel and armor were still broken from all the abuses and attacks she had suffered but other than that, she found not a single wound on her body, not even a scratch.

She whipped her gaze around her. In the near distance, she saw the Grave Wyrm, her killer, munching on the carcass of the Pallid Snake. The day was still bright; the brightness changed not a bit from the time she had died. Her Magic Vigour still had the same amount at the time she had departed briefly. Aside from her experience, the only thing she felt taken from her was her mental vigour. She felt exhausted.

“It seems only a few minutes have passed... This is… acceptable...”

While she was grateful of Revenant, she could already understand the weakness of this ability. A lot of things could happen in a few minutes. And if her opponent knew of this ability, she could imagine them lying in wait for her revival and struck immediately after she was revived. It wasn’t as if she could immediately fight back after her revival. So to say, Revenant was only effective if her opponent was witnessing it for the first time or if she had allies covering for her.

Erin laughed meekly at herself. Her limbs were trembling, whether it was out of fear, excitement, or uncertainty, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. She was alive, that was all she cared about. She pushed herself off the ground and to her feet but she immediately fell back on her rear. She refrained from uttering her pained cries. Her body was still numb. The sensation of the agony before her death was still lingering on her body. Phantom pain, she remembered it was called.

With a heavy heave, she brought herself to her feet. She could walk straight albeit with shivering steps. Her right arm was the only part of her body that was still numbed to the core. It was where her injury was the gravest and the phantom pain latched on to her right arm greatly.

The only choice Erin had was to wait until the numbness subsided but… the Grave Wyrm had once again caught Erin in its sights. It looked baffled for a moment. It even canted its head at her. Nevertheless, it was back to its hunting form. It went low and began to slither towards Erin.

Even though she was no longer wounded, Erin was still at a disadvantage. There were more than ten levels of difference between them. Erin sighed and took out a vial of pinkish concoction. She was thankful that she landed on her back when she fell from the tree branch. Otherwise, she would have crushed all of the vials in her pocket. She opened the lid and downed all of the contents of the vial.

“Let’s hope this works,” she prayed as the Grave Wyrm slithered closer and closer.

Erinthea - Faerie-kin: Three-Tailed Fox-kin

Level: 19 | Status: Moderate Exhaustion

Might: 20 | Arcane: 27 | Finesse: 24

Magic Arts

Spirit Magic Lv. 8 | Arcane Edge Lv. 5 | Arcane Armor Lv. 10 | Lightning Magic Lv. 4 | Arcane Aegis Lv. 2

Combat Arts

Sword Art Lv. 7 | Fleet Foot Lv. 5 | Brawler Lv. 5

Innate Skills

Appraisal Lv. Ex | Night Vision Lv. Ex | Sixth Sense Lv. Ex | Toxin Resistance Lv. 2 | Lust Deviant Lv. Ex

Unique Talent

Mystic Blade Lv. Ex | Revenant Lv. Ex

Level Progression: 85%

Remaining Skill Points: 2

Remaining Ability Points: 2