"God, those Naga bastards are repulsive. They look like a pile of wet, muscular intestines wrapped in obsidian scales."
Jessica had finally snapped out of her trance. She was back on her feet, leaning heavily on her good leg, and glaring at me with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred. I don't know what her problem was—I just saved our lives by stripping that snake of his illusions—but she looked ready to kill me before even glancing at the monster.
"Cool it, you hag," I rasped, spitting out a glob of dark blood. "Focus your anger on the overgrown lizard over there, not me."
She slapped me. Hard. My head snapped to the side, and for a second, I saw stars. That bitch. I really thought that without his Illusion Magic, the Naga would be a sitting duck, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Even without his mental tricks, the bastard was terrifyingly fast. He moved like a whip made of razor wire. His claws whistled through the air, inches from my throat, as he tried to decapitate me in one fluid motion.
I managed to roll away, but the Naga didn't stick around for my counter-attack. He correctly guessed that Jessica was the bigger threat—or perhaps he just thought she looked tastier. He lunged at her with a guttural hiss.
But Jessica wasn't a "Death Angel" for nothing. As the Naga swung his massive, clawed hand, she ignited. White flames erupted from her palm, searing the creature's scales and charring his fingers to the bone.
Wait a minute, I thought, narrowing my eyes. This old witch has way more mana than she let on. She had been playing it safe, letting me take the brunt of the damage while she hoarded her strength. Should I kill her? Seriously, what do you think? Is she more useful as an ally or as a mana battery I can drain dry?
Whatever. I'll do what I think is right. I've always been better at making bad decisions on the fly anyway.
While Jessica and the Naga were locked in a dance of fire and steel, I channeled my Shadow Shaping. I tried to weave dark cords around the Naga's tail to pin him down, but the creature was ahead of me. He was baiting us. He waited for Jessica to commit to an overhead strike, and the moment her guard dropped, he pivoted with impossible grace. His claws raked across her arm, nearly tearing it from the socket.
"CELOSIA! STOP STANDING THERE LIKE A DECORATION AND KILL THIS BASTARD!" Jessica screamed, her voice hitting a frequency that made my teeth ache.
"Haha! Yeah, because I'm just overflowing with power right now!" I yelled back.
I was a wreck. My mana was a dry well. My sword was lost somewhere in the black dust of the abyss. My body was a roadmap of scars, fresh wounds, and internal burns. How was I supposed to fight a high-tier Naga and actually win?
The Naga turned his slitted eyes toward me. He ignored the burning on his hand and started toward me, his tail swiping the ground in a rhythmic, menacing beat. "When I have finished killing you," he hissed, his voice like dry leaves on stone, "I will feast on your marrow. I will take your magic and make it my own."
"You stupid prick," I growled, my hands shaking. "The only thing you're feasting on today is my shit. I'm going to make sure you never play another mind game again."
But seriously, guys... do you have any idea how I'm supposed to win this? What, by being a "cockroach" again? You little arseholes really think that's my only move?
Wait. Actually... you might be on to something.
The Naga lunged. I threw myself to the side, dodging the initial thrust of his claws. I tried to kick him in the ribs, but his hide was like armored stone. He caught my leg in mid-air and slammed me into the obsidian wall. Again.
Laughter hurts when your ribs are broken and you've just been used as a human wrecking ball. Did you know that? It feels like someone is twisting a knife in your lungs.
But the impact had a side effect. The force reopened the deep gash in my shoulder. Corrosive, toxic blood sprayed outward, hitting the Naga directly in his iridescent eyes. He let out a shriek of agony as my "snake-tainted" blood began to sizzle against his retinas. Eat that, you blind bastard!
He hadn't let go, though. He'd left one of his jagged claws embedded in my thigh, and with a roar of pain, he hurled me across the clearing. I flew through the air and landed right next to Jessica.
I looked at her arm—the one he'd nearly torn off. It was glowing with that intense, pure white flame. My Shadow Magic screamed in protest just being near it. It was light. It was "holy." It was everything I was supposed to stay away from. But if I didn't get a mana boost now, we were both dead.
"Screw it," I whispered. "What's the worst that can happen? I die? I've already done that twenty-five times today."
I reached out and grabbed Jessica's bicep. Her arm was twice as muscular as mine—which was humiliating, honestly—but the moment I initiated the Absorption, the world exploded.
The White Flames didn't just flow into me; they invaded. At first, there was a fleeting second of warmth, like a healing balm. But after twenty seconds, the "Holy" nature of her magic realized it was inside a demon. It began to burn me from the inside out. It attacked my mana circuits, my blood, my very soul.
It was an internal war. My Shadow Magic surged outward in a desperate attempt to suppress the light, wrapping around my body like tight, black constrictors. I was caught in the middle of a magical supernova. My skin began to crack, glowing with an eerie, white-violet light. I felt like my heart was being squeezed by a fist of fire.
The Naga, blind but driven by pure malice, chose that moment to charge. He couldn't see me, but he could sense the massive mana fluctuation.
My body wasn't even under my control anymore. Just as the Naga's claws were about to pierce my skull, my system reacted. It tapped into every scrap of energy—Jessica's fire, my shadows, and the residue of the solar thief magic.
"Sawing Sun of the Four Colors!"
It wasn't the full version, but it was a desperate, concentrated burst of violet-white radiation. The shockwave blew the Naga backward, his scales melting and flying off his body in charred flakes. Where did I get the mana? Can I... can I absorb raw mana from the environment during a crisis? If so, that is going to be incredibly useful if I survive this.
For ten minutes, I lay in the dirt, my body a battlefield. When the two magics finally stopped fighting and settled into a shaky truce, something had changed. My wounds had closed—not perfectly, but they were sealed. The scars on my chest and arms had shifted, darkening into "Shadow Marks"—permanent sigils of the trauma I'd endured.
I pushed myself up, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I looked around and saw a glint of metal in the ash.
I crawled toward it and picked it up. My heart sank.
It was the Sword of Qelo. Or what was left of it. The legendary blade I had stolen from that bastard "Hero" Cassian was shattered. The tip was gone, and the edge was jagged and dull. A god-killing weapon, reduced to a piece of scrap metal.
"Great," I muttered, clutching the broken hilt. "Another thing I've managed to ruin."
I looked at the Naga, who was twitching in the corner, and then at Jessica, who was staring at me with a mixture of fear and awe.
"Don't look at me like that," I snapped. "We're still in a hole. And I still hate you."
Until next time.