LUCIUS
"How can anyone hate the rain?" They ask. This. This is exactly how.
I've always thought swamps and rain were useless phenomena—good for little more than keeping our canteens full and giving water elementals something to chew on. But today… today, I discovered they're also fantastic conductors for this damned electricity.
Lucky me.
The Chimaera's grip clamped around my torso like a steel vice—easily strong enough to crush ribs, organs, whatever it felt like. The way it whipped me around, thrashing my body like I weighed nothing, I was half-convinced I'd already died and was just waiting for my brain to catch up.
But I didn't die.
Somehow, I lived long enough to turn the very water trying to drown me into a weapon. A compressed vortex of swamp water, guided by a telekinetic pull I didn't even know I could muster. Don't ask me how. I barely understand how I pulled it off, and I am the one who did it.
That swamp—murky, dense, choking—wasn't just rainwater pooled over soil. It was deep. Deep enough to drag even a creature like the Chimaera further down with each frantic movement. And with how bloated and oversized that beast was, it didn't take long for it to sink deeper into the sludge.
The moment the vortex, I shaped cone-like and spinning violently, slammed into it, right below its thick neck, I knew I'd struck something vital. The creature let out a muffled, guttural roar beneath the surface, expelling a stream of bubbles that rushed up toward me. Nothing dangerous in them… just panic. Raw, primal panic.
Still, for someone already half-drowned, those bubbles were enough to freak me out.
The injury must've startled her. She released me—not out of mercy, but instinct. Her dominant arm, the one pinning me, jerked back to shield the wound. But even in retreat, her claws tore through me, slicing straight through my armour and deep into flesh.
Pain exploded through my torso.
I didn't scream—I couldn't. My lungs were already starved of air and half-filled with swamp water, as the heaviness I felt in my chest couldn't be explained by anything else. Kicking against the heavy, plant-choked water, I forced myself upward. Up toward the faint shimmers of lightning above the surface. My limbs thrashed, blood spiralling out behind me, mixing with the mud and rot. I could feel the swamp pressing in from all sides—like it had a will of its own, eager to drag me back down.
This wasn't water. This was death.
Breathless, bleeding, half-conscious, and terrified, I clawed toward the surface. The fear rising in me wasn't just the instinctual panic of drowning—it was something deeper. Something primal.
The same realisation that hit every fool who's ever tried to fight underwater:
This battlefield doesn't belong to you. Like hell it belongs to anyone.
I glanced up, spotting Snowhite—my blade—buried deep in the trunk of a half-felled tree. Must've gotten lodged there when the Chimaera and I came crashing down. With a flick of my hand, I reached out for it, pulling with telekinesis.
The resistance surprised me. The damn tree held onto that blade like it had a personal grudge against me. My grip faltered for half a second, but I didn't have time to marvel at stubborn woodwork. The Chimaera was still somewhere nearby, lurking in the swamp. And every second I wasted gave it another breath.
Just as Snowhite began to tremble free from the gnarled trunk, I felt it—
A ripple.
Movement in the water ahead.
I slammed my back against the base of a young tree, lungs heaving, arms shaking. I was still trying to crawl my way upright when the surface broke. A low splash, the kind that signalled she was about to pounce.
The Chimaera erupted from the swamp like a serpent, its tail whipping behind it in a blur. Using it like a propeller, it hurled itself forward, faster than any beast its size had a right to move. And right as Snowhite was finally released—too far to grab—the monster was already on me.
I did the only thing I could. I let it go.
Snowhite dropped like a silver streak into the swamp, vanishing beneath the murk with a muted splash.
Then came the clang.
Its claws collided with my last line of defence—Crimson Ultima. The crimson-blue blade met the beast's talons in a furious crash, the sound slicing through the forest like a thunderous earthquake.
The slash didn't break my sword. It didn't even chip it...
But the force behind it?
Unstoppable.
I flew backwards. The impact launched me, slamming through a tree trunk with a clean hole blown through its centre. Then another. And another. I crashed through five trees in total, each one giving me a fresh reason to spit blood.
One tree was thick and unforgiving, another splintered like brittle bone. One had outward-pointing scales—scales—because apparently Mother Nature was in a particularly sadistic mood when she made it. Every hit cracked something new.
My vision blurred. Not from shock—my skull had literally bounced off two of those trees. Headgear? Hanging on by sheer will. My back? Numb. Legs? Can't really feel them. Arms? No idea.
Maybe it was the blood loss, or the sheer amount of blunt trauma I'd just eaten like a free buffet, but part of me almost welcomed the numbness.
Good, I thought bitterly, as I sucked in what little oxygen I could. At least that'll keep the pain at bay for a few more seconds.
But then I felt it.
Not a sound.
Not a sight.
Just a tremor beneath my feet, which I somehow felt crawling upwards, towards my battered chest.
A vibration that echoed up through the ground, like afterlife itself approaching on all fours.
I didn't need eyes to know she was coming.
Didn't need clarity to know who it was.
The Chimaera.
Still alive and well. Still relentless.
Still coming for me.
My grip tightened around Crimson Ultima, the sword still in hand by some miracle. It rose with me, barely—almost like it had adjusted its weight, sensing my body's failing strength.
My vision was smeared in blood and sweat and something else I couldn't name. My breath came in shallow gasps. My heart pounded against cracked ribs. But I still stood.
Because this monster wasn't done, and neither was the will to fight and survive within me.
The beast launched skyward on all fours, climbing several meters into the air like a boulder hurled by the gods. She curled her limbs mid-air, shadow blotting out the battered treetops above, ready to crash down and erase me in a single, brutal blow.
Apparently, these monsters have a thing for dramatic landings.
I couldn't stand straight—not really. My legs were trembling, my ribs cracked, and my vision was smeared in red and blurred. But I held my ground, blade in hand, spine locked. I didn't have a counter ready. I barely had breath. But I'd endure. Anything short of death.
Above me, the Chimaera was a dark mass blotting out the stormlit sky, her gaping jaw cracked open in a silent snarl. She was just a few seconds away from impact.
I activated Crimson Ultima.
The blade ignited with a furious surge—deep crimson fire spiralling around its edge like a phoenix screaming through the downpour. Flames bloomed wildly around me, defying the rain, roaring upward as if they knew this might be our last stand.
But then—
Something blurred past the edge of my fractured vision.
The Chimaera jerked midair, violently slammed from the left with a sickening crunch, and was hurled sideways like myself from a few moments ago, crashing into the soaked forest floor to my right.
For a second, I thought my brain had finally snapped from the trauma.
Then I sensed her.
Forza.
She hovered a few 10s of meters off the ground, wrapped in that shimmering armour forged from sky and wind. Her wings flared behind her, greyish-blue feathers streaked with mana. She held her staff in a reversed grip, palm near its base, while the head of it still glowed from a violent compression spell.
Right at the tip of her staff had been a spell no bigger than a tennis ball, so tightly condensed it whined against the air. The moment it touched the Chimaera, it detonated—a concentrated blast that knocked the beast into a new timeline. The look in her eyes—those four oddly mismatched orbs—froze, wide and unblinking, right before it vanished into a whirlwind of broken trees and ruptured swamp.
The forest shuddered. Then came the wind.
A fresh surge of divine gales swept through the battlefield, ripping across the waterlogged earth, pushing back the smell of blood and decay. It didn't just clear the air.
It changed it.
Where the storm had screamed panic, Forza's presence brought order. Calm fury. Controlled violence. Hope.
She spared me a glance.
Her eyes scanned my bloodied frame. Her brow creased slightly. I looked like I'd just been chewed up and spit back out by a forest fire. Probably because I had been.
"…I'm fine," I croaked, summoning two healing potions from my pouch. My hands shook. One of the bottles nearly slipped.
Forza didn't speak. She just gave a curt nod and flew past me, toward the fallen beast.
I tried to lean against the nearest tree, trying to breathe without coughing up half a lung. I'd barely swallowed the first gulp of potion when the sky exploded.
Not thunder.
Lightning.
But it wasn't falling from the heavens—it was rising from the earth.
Bolts of pure voltage shot upward, from the ground itself, like spears trying to stab the sky. The entire horizon lit up in an eerie violet-white glow, illuminating Forza's silhouette as she dove toward the storm. Lightning crawled around her like it recognised her as kin.
It wasn't natural.
Wasn't some storm trick.
It was the Chimaera.
Awakened.
Enraged.
Finally going all out.
I felt it in my gut. The difference. The kind of shift that separates a battle from a war.
"I have to hurry," I whispered to myself. "Can't be as late as Forza was."
Because that lightning boom just now? That wasn't just a spell.
That was an open warning and challenge.
And the monster that made it wasn't just hunting anymore.
She was declaring war on us.