FORZA
The thunder still rang in my ears—an echo that refused to die down.
Maybe it was a warning.
A whisper from the storm itself, telling me to turn back.
But I didn't.
I never wanna—especially not when it counted.
Tracking Lucius and the Chimaera through this gods-cursed storm was no easy task. Between the terrain and the chaos of clashing mana, it took longer than it should've. His mana signature flared only once—sharp and sudden—beside a dense swamp pond nearly swallowed by the storm. A dying flare. A beacon.
I changed course instantly, but before I could reach him, his aura shifted again, violently flung in a new direction. Something had knocked him clear across the field. Not good.
The winds responded to my urgency. They knew where I needed to be.
By the time I reached him, the beast had already pounced—massive limbs bearing down, claws outstretched, ready to crush him like a forgotten insect beneath its heel.
I didn't hesitate.
The second I met her eyes—those feral, soulless orbs—I struck.
My staff met her mid-lunge. A focused, reversed grip strike to the side of her skull, enhanced by a compacted wind-ord no larger than a fruit pit. It detonated on impact. The Chimaera roared as momentum flipped against her, hurling her sideways into a tangle of trees and swamp, crashing with enough force to crack the sky itself.
Lucius was safe. For now.
I turned to check on him, and what I saw nearly made my heart seize.
His body was... torn.
Blood leaked from his mouth, from his nose, and from his eye. One of them was swollen shut, the other flickering with something between fire and fatigue. His torso was a mess of slashes and shattered armour. Claw marks—or maybe bite marks—ripped across his chest. His chestplate? Cracked like a broken eggshell.
But he was alive.
Barely.
And burning.
Flames licked across the surface of his longsword—Crimson Ultima, if I wasn't mistaken—dancing against the rain. His entire mana signature pulsed with heat.
That's not possible, I thought immediately.
Lucius… he's a non-elemental. I know that.
And yet the fire danced around him like it belonged. His signature blazed like a sun, like a high-tier fire mage in peak form. But it wasn't him. It couldn't be.
The sword.
That sword was the source.
Blueish-crimson, forged with something far beyond standard magical alloys. It didn't just burn—it attracted the fire element. And not just passively. It was pulling fire mana from the atmosphere—what little of it there was in this storm-soaked region—and amplifying it.
But how?
No time.
I forced myself to look away. The Chimaera wasn't done yet.
Lucius caught my gaze. "I'm fine," he said.
The way he said it—like it was both a reassurance and a dismissal—almost made me smile. As if the blood pouring down his armour was cosmetic.
I nodded, nothing more. There wasn't time for sympathy. Not yet.
He summoned two healing potions from his storage ring and downed them, one after the other. His breathing was shallow. I could hear it from here. Each swallow looked like it burned, by his reaction.
His injuries were worse than I'd realised. Deeper. The armour wasn't just scratched. It was falling off in fragments, like his body was rejecting the weight of failure.
I wanted to say something.
An apology. Another apology, perhaps a promise. Anything.
But the ground chose that moment to speak.
A boom cracked through the swamp like divine wrath. I turned toward it instantly—toward the direction I'd thrown the Chimaera.
Lightning.
But not from the sky. From the earth.
Tendrils of raw voltage spiralled upward from the ground, thick, rooted like branches of an ancient tree, but pulsing with pure elemental fury. The air snapped. Rain hissed. The light swallowed shadows whole.
I narrowed my eyes.
The Chimaera had stopped playing. This wasn't a recovery lunge.
This was an open challenge.
One, I had no intention of refusing.
FORZA
I lunged forward, winds coiling at my back like summoned serpents, ready to crush and cleave anything in my path. The Chimaera was around thirty meters ahead, standing atop the swamp waters using mana-walking as if her own weight meant nothing to her or the swamp beneath.
I saw it then—a glint of dark red pooling beneath her neck.
A wound.
Deep. Narrow. Precise.
Not a shallow cut. A stab.
Had Lucius done that?
There was no blood on Crimson Ultima that I could see—but the angle, the depth... it had to be him, it had to be a sword-strike, I was sure.
'Good job, Lucius,' I thought to myself, the faintest grin tugging at my lips. Injuring a beast of this calibre wasn't just luck—it was proof. Proof of his hidden, unknown capabilities.
The Chimaera roared, claws cracking against the water-soaked swamp. Her tails thrashed like whips, slapping the ground with enough force to send waves crashing upward. Lightning danced around her fur, encasing her in a veil of blue-violet electricity.
She locked eyes with me.
Unblinking.
Unapologetic.
But I didn't flinch.
Her affinity may have been lightning, but mine was wind—and in this storm, I held the advantage. Not through raw force, but control.
Then came the first strike.
A barrage of slender, whip-fast vertical arcs of blue electricity lashed out from her position, cutting through the rain like linear thunderstrikes. Reflex took over. With a single flap of my wings, I sliced one forward and across, channelling a wind slash wide enough to cleave the incoming voltage.
The air cracked—the clash of lightning and wind erupting into a blinding explosion of energy. Opposites colliding.
The Chimaera leapt, lunging across trees with an agility that belied her size. Her claws dug into bark and trunks like climbing holds, launching herself forward in short, rapid bursts. Each leap echoed with thunder, each movement precise and unrelenting.
I followed, my own wings cutting through the storm, arcs of wind spiralling around me like blades waiting for command. At a thought, they fired slashes of compressed wind mana spiralling after her. She fired back, hurling bolts of lightning like javelins. Each clash detonated mid-air, shockwaves rippling across the storm-torn canopy.
We moved like phantoms through the forest—each step, each dodge, each impact shaking the air around us. The Chimaera's afterimages left crackling echoes behind, her body flickering between tree limbs like a streak of stormlight. I closed the distance. Again and again, we clashed—my reinforced staff slamming against claws sharpened by decades of survival. Our hits reset each other, force versus precision.
But her tail—gods, her tail.
It was massive, unnaturally nimble, almost serpentine. It acted like a third pillar—balancing, pivoting, redirecting momentum. She used it to twist mid-air, recover from off-balance stances, and strike in unexpected ways. The moment I recognised the pattern, I pressed the advantage.
And I landed a hit.
Finally.
My staff's edge, infused with a compressed blade of wind mana, grazed her side. A clean shot. A direct impact. Until—
She unexpectedly dodged. At the last instant. Her body twisted mid-motion, and she repositioned, placing me in a vulnerable spot, low and off-angle.
Her tail snapped like a whip.
I braced to block—but she wasn't aiming for me.
The tail curled around my staff.
Tight.
Constraining.
Like a viper around its prey.
I yanked, twisted—no good. The grip was solid, alive, and intentional.
And then I felt it.
That sudden spark.
A discharge surging through the metal—a flash of lightning channelled through her tail directly into my staff.
If I held on for a moment longer, it would've been a conduit straight into my bones.
I had let go.
Mid-fight. Mid-air.
A risk I didn't want to take. But necessary.
The instant my hands were free, I formed a gauntlet around my right arm, wind-forged, reinforced, and surged forward, targeting the rear of her falling form. Her hind legs were exposed, her momentum off-centre after the weapon-tug. One solid strike and she'd crash.
My fist closed in. Her eyes met mine.
And that's when I saw it.
She smiled.
If beasts could smile, this one did.
From beneath her coiled tail came her trump card.
Unlike most serpents, a Chimaera's tail mimics the viper, not just capable of injecting venom, but launching it. Her scales pulled back, revealing dozens of tiny barbs—like miniature fangs—and a split-second later, a fine mist of venom sprayed toward me.
Corrosive. Acidic. Lethal.
Armor-melting. Flesh-dissolving. And infused with the foulest poison this region was known for.
A trap. Laid and baited.
Reflex took over.
I launched upward, hard, my wings detonating a blast of wind behind me to catapult me into the open sky. My true domain.
The one place the Chimaera couldn't reach.
Not with her lightning. Not with her fangs.
She glared up at me, venom mist hissing beneath, eyes glowing with electric rage.
But I was already reforming my gauntlets, calling my staff back, gathering wind in spiralling halos around my legs.
"Let's try again," I whispered.
This time, I would not play by her tempo.