Chapter 13
The little fox did say to not try anything funny while fighting, you just have to go for a sure death every time you throw an attack. It did happen many times to the little fox that while trying new forms of killing something, it instead ended up becoming stronger.
And now it happened to me. With a huge bear that could turn me into a puddle of blood with just a punch. The thing is, this bear turned more violent with that injection of qi. The cracks that the bear have all around its body turned from blue to red. Like the animal went overload.
Let's run, with some luck the little fox could get out of the house to help me after her evolution. It has already been an hour or so since the little fox produced that phenomenon with her core, so she should be getting out soon.
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She did not.
I have already waited for another hour while going around evading the bear and killing weak monsters. Now my stamina is at its lowest bottom, just a little more runs and I would not be able to even use my legs.
The good thing about this situation is that I did start to prepare in case the little fox doesn't get out early. I prepared a sort of "cage"; the thing is that this "cage" is, in truth, a barrier. I did have to reverse it, so instead of protecting from the outside, it protects from the inside. That way I can put up a bomb inside and blow up everything present there.
That is to say, I would explode the bear within a concentrated space. I'm sure It would not survive such a thing, and even if it does it would become a walking corpse for a couple of seconds.
I immediately put into action the plan.
While going around and trying to not get caught by the bear, I finished setting up the runes that were left for the "cage" to function. I set it up in a relatively wide area, to prevent the situation in which the bear happens to evade the trap.
On the other hand, the bombs were more difficult to set up, as it required quite a significative amount of mana to function, I needed to stay in one place for at least half a second. Enough for the bear to close the distance and attack me. Enough time for me to become a meaty pulp.
I ended up drawing the runes in the air while I was running for my life. It was an arduous activity, to spend qi while running for my life. To draw runes, you need quite a bit of concentration, it's not that you need to make every rune with utmost care with every one of the lines in a perfect state, there can be quite a good number of errors while drawing a rune and it would still be usable. The difference with a perfectly carved rune would be the effect; the rune that was carved correctly and with enough detail would be more powerful.
The problem was that I had to split my concentration into crafting the rune and evading the bear and obstacles that appeared every now and then. This took a toll in my mind and stamina, even more than when I was battling directly with the bear.
And I need to make sure the rune bombs are powerful enough to bring down the damn bear. Which means that I need to make almost perfect bomb runes every time.
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Quite some time has passed. I have been going around while creating numerous bomb runes.
My stamina is hitting an alarmingly low level. My eyesight is starting to get blurry and my vision sometimes gets blocked. My arms are going numb already, and they have been trembling for quite some time now. Every time I try to make a rune, my fingers would not respond to me. I need them to make runes as they act like a sort of pen. The realm of just making runes with my thought are too far away from me. Maybe those days would not even come because of this bear right here but let's just give my all to protect the little fox.
While thinking that, I tried to gain enough concentration to keep making rune bombs. I just needed to make five more or so, nothing compared to the ones I've already made. But making even one of them was enough for my body to scream in agony. Every movement made me feel like I was puncturing myself with needles all the time and I felt as if my skin was burning.
Quite an agonizing experience, I do not even know how or why I was still standing and outrunning the boar.
I could not see clearly, but there were less and less animals nearby.
Right now I wasn't even hearing the sound of wind crashing against my body; thinking about it now, I couldn't hear anything at all.
I stopped, trying to see what was happening around me.
Why was I not hearing anything? Maybe it's because my body is in the verge of collapse, maybe because I utterly lost my sense of hearing, maybe both.
But even then, why are there no more animals going on around me, and why the boar did not catch me already? Did it start to play with its pray? Seeing me run around with so little energy, could it have made the boar think that I was an easy pray and it tried to give me hope just to eat me in the last second?
All sort of thoughts came crashing in my head the moment I stopped. My aching body tried to complain with an enormous amount of pain, but for a second, I just ignored it.
After turning around, I tried to see the scenery with my decaying eyesight. What entered my vision was an amalgam of colors. For a couple of seconds there wasn't much to see except a sea of colors with abstract objects taking place here and there.
When I regained my vision with enough clarity, the scenery around me was truly a grand spectacle.