Plop plop plop

  Julia’s plopping footsteps echoed in the quiet swamp. She hadn’t had many chances to use her Water Walking spell, but it was a life saver here—literally. She’d seen many swamp creatures that might take a bite out of you if you were in the water with them, but she passed relatively undisturbed on the surface.

  The spell was rather simple, even before she learned about the composition of matter. It was easy to visualize walking on water; after all, you could even find creatures that did it naturally—so performing it with magic came naturally too. It only got easier once Julia understood surface tension. It cost her almost nothing to use the spell—especially now that her body was mostly mana.

  She couldn’t swim through the air like Trixy, but she could shift her weight around—make herself lighter or heavier—depending on the situation, which further reduced her mana usage when water walking. This also had some fun implications for acrobatics, but she was focused on survival right now.

  Julia had surveyed the surroundings from her perch on the branch on which she’d evolved, but it was all marsh or swamp as far as she could see—she wasn’t completely sure what the distinction between the two was. In this sunken forest, the water reached about her waist on average, but the depth was variable. This plus the sucking mud underneath would make travel extremely slow for anyone without magic or a boat.

  It was also dangerous. Many times Julia spotted a snake head pop out of the water before quickly submerging again. There were likely also carnivorous fish and…crocodiles or whatever. She wasn’t well-read on swamp creatures beyond the very general.

  Since she was in unfamiliar territory all alone (save for Trixy), she sometimes opted to jump between trees. This mode of travel was possible thanks to her dramatically reduced weight, but it was still exhausting leaping from tree-to-tree, so she only did it when she felt particularly unsafe or unsettled.

  She had traveled for most of the day, pausing periodically to survey her surroundings from above. Just an hour-or-so ago, she had spotted what seemed to be an end to the sunken forest. The landscape shifted to a waterlogged grassland—a marsh? It had water that looked similar to this swampy area, but it was all tall grass sticking out of the water with no trees.

  Julia was not the best at geography, but she figured this change of scenery might indicate a nearby river or some other significant body of water. If she could find a river, she could travel it downstream and likely find civilization of some kind. Hopefully, that civilization would be able to point her…where, exactly?

  This was the conundrum that she was currently chewing over. Where would she go? Should she go back to Striton? Almost everyone she knew there is dead. Ravina might be able to make her way back to Striton from her teleportation, but Julia wasn’t confident about that.

  Surely, if this man that planned to infect Julia knew about Ravina already and planned a teleportation trap for her, he would have configured it to send her far enough away that she couldn’t interfere with him in the future, right? That he decided to teleport Ravina rather than fight her lent some credence to Julia’s theory that the man was likely a Mithril-level threat.

  He had strange powers, but they seemed to originate from his connection to the—the creature, whatever it was. An Abyssal creature, clearly, but just calling it that didn’t do its presence justice in her mind. It was truly horrendous. The man serving it was likely strong, but not anything special himself. She felt certain he would have simply killed Ravina if he were confident he could.

  Regardless, the only people left in Striton that she knew were Ratia and the Guild Master. Both were more professional acquaintances than anything. So, although she liked them, she didn’t feel particularly compelled to make the arduous trek back to Striton if she discovered herself a thousand journeys away or whatever.

  She could figure that out when she had actual information to go on. She was deep in thought, so when her Spiritual Sense picked something off to her right moving quickly, she reacted instinctively. She Dashed backward just in time to see a huge pair of jaws snap right where she’d just been heading. Her senses were heightened by her Mana-Fueled Perception Skill, and it seemed as if time had slowed.

  The jaws closed and splashed back down into the water, but the creature was too big to completely disappear into it. Its scaled spinal ridge stuck out of the water like a mountain range out of the ocean. She saw a pair of yellow, slitted eyes peering at her from just above the waterline and realized she only had a second to act.

  She launched into the air and used her Gravity magic to pull herself, now extremely lightweight, to the nearest tree. Right as she jumped, the creature lunged at her again. Her feet nearly scraped the top of its snout as it passed underneath. She also got her first good look at it.

  It resembled a massive frog the size of a small house—but longer and scaled. Its long snout was lined with gleaming teeth that declared a carnivore more clearly than anything else about it. Its webbed feet were attached to powerful-looking legs that propelled it at a speed she wouldn’t expect from a creature so large.

  Some kind of cross between a frog and a crocodile, Julia guessed. She was aware that scaled creatures were often adventurers’ most-hated foes. Scales were notoriously difficult to pierce. You could use a bludgeoning weapon, but if the creature was large enough, it would be to limited effect. Usually, they would have to aim for known weak points on large scaled creatures.

  Julia didn’t have such restrictions. Electricity didn’t particularly care whether a creature was scaled or not. She lifted a hand towards the creature as it recovered from its failed attack, saying a quick apology to any fish or other animals that might be in the water nearby, and loosed the Bolt.

  It traveled to the creature in an instant, but instead of frying it, or at least stunning it like she had expected, it flashed across its body and into the water. The creature recoiled, stunned, but not from electrical shock. It seemed stunned just by not understanding what had happened. It was mostly unharmed—gods dammit. There was some sizzling across its scales—perhaps some internal damage, but nothing significant enough to halt its attack.

  Maybe the water on its scales was attracting the lightning to travel across its surface, or maybe lightning usually did that when striking creatures. She didn’t have enough experience to say for sure, but she figured she’d have to get some prolonged contact to actually do damage to its internals—maybe she could focus her intent on striking its nervous system? That should be a fantastic conductor.

  Before she could act, Trixy Streaked past her and dove directly into the creature’s eye. She had a physical core, so she couldn’t enter its body, but she could latch onto its eyeball before unleashing a Bolt of her own.

  It made a horrible growl and thrashed around in the water before it stilled, most of its body sinking below the waterline. Julia swung down from her branch and landed beside it. She heard a gross squelching and resisted the urge to pick Trixy up and interrupt her disgusting meal. Julia just hoped she stopped at the eyes and didn’t try to eat her way into its skull.

  ________________________________

  Julia swung from a branch, using the momentum to launch straight toward what she called the “crocfrog’s” face. Blue lightning crackled around her sword, casting a subtle glow punctuated by bright flashes of blue. She plunged the blade into the crocfrog’s eye and gave it a twist for good measure.

  This was Mana Weaving, one of her new Magic Swordsman Skills. The Skill was an alternative to conduit enchantments. The principal was nearly the same, but rather than sending mana directly into a material, she created a “weave” around the object.

  This narrowed its use almost exclusively to combat scenarios and was slightly more mana-intensive, but the increased damage was worth the cost.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The crocfrog, having overcommitted on its initial lunge at Julia, spasmed with its limbs splayed out in the swamp before falling still. Julia withdrew her blade as Trixy swished through the air to nibble on its eye—or rather, the remaining eye, since Julia had pretty thoroughly destroyed the other.

  They had developed a system for taking crocfrogs down—provided they could detect them. The creatures tended to lunge at their prey with wide-open mouths, fully committing to the attack. This left them vulnerable during the recovery after a missed strike.

  Typically, either Julia or Trixy would draw them out and dodge the initial attack before striking one or both eyes with lightning. Targeting the optic nerve sent the electricity directly to their brains, killing them almost instantly—turns out the optic nerve is fantastically conductive, provided one aims for it.

  The closer they ventured toward the marsh, the more of these creatures they encountered. They had been largely unbothered for several hours until the first crocfrog appeared; since then, they could hardly move a few jogs before another locked onto them with jaws agape.

  A nagging thought whispered in the back of Julia’s mind: would she really find civilization by heading toward stronger monsters? Yet she had no other bearings, so she decided to at least make it to the marsh and figure things out from there.

  Maybe she’d turn back, or maybe she’d continue on—either way, she intended to keep moving.

  The crocfrogs weren’t the only monsters they’d run into. There were also giant snakes lurking in the waters with jaws to swallow a person whole. They’d even seen several trees wrapped in a giant web…they did not investigate the monstrosity lurking in there.

  Strangely, although bugs were present, they didn’t seem interested in Julia and Trixy. Trixy, being a spirit, made that less surprising. Julia, however, was a demi-spirit. Her body might be made mostly of mana, but as far as she knew, it was still formed into flesh and blood.

  Whatever the changes, the bugs were uninterested in her, which was wonderful—especially considering how large some of them were. There were mosquitos the size of her palm flying around!

  The palm-sized mosquitoes were being hunted by dragonflies with a wingspan as wide as her arm, or snatched out of the air by a fish that had undulating whiskers on its face that it used to grab prey and stuff it into its mouth. This place was a nightmare.

  Julia now spent most of her time swinging from tree branches. This let her avoid any of the nastiness lurking in the water as long as she took frequent breaks, but the crocfrogs were so large that she was still in their leaping range. She needed the largest branches of the trees to support her swinging and jumping, so she couldn’t go high enough to avoid them completely.

  The one bit of good news was that this constant fighting had done well for Trixy. She was up to 18% evolution progress, which seemed low compared to how quickly it went with just a few voles. However, if evolutions were anything like Levels, her second evolution progressing slower than her first was reasonable—no matter how large and strong the creatures she was consuming were.

  Julia was roused out of her thoughts when she saw the end of the swamp ahead. The transition to marsh was abrupt and unnatural—not that she had ever seen a truly natural biome transition between swamp and marsh, but surely it wouldn’t happen in an exact, straight line, right? She was going to muse on this more, but her attention was drawn by what was beyond the treeline.

  Giant bugs, with bodies the size of a house, prowled the marsh. Although large, their bodies were dwarfed by their long legs. Their house-sized torsos hung suspended nearly a full clamber in the air—about 10 stretches high—which, considering Julia’s stature, was the equivalent of 11 or 12 of her stacked atop one another.

  Their legs curled around their bodies and arced to the ground like a spider’s—though these legs were more rigid, with sharp angles at the joints. They didn’t seem capable of quick movements.

  That was likely not a concern for them, though. As Julia watched, the nearest lowered its body to the ground, until it was only a half-clamber from the water, and a proboscis-like appendage launched straight out from its middle. The appendage shot forth like a spear, piercing something below the water and reeling it in.

  Julia gasped when a crocfrog was yanked completely out of the water by the appendage impaling its back. Once the crocfrog—now motionless, either dead or resigned to its fate—had been drawn toward the creature’s main body, the enormous being shot several smaller proboscises into it, accompanied by an awful sucking sound.

  She realized that the water must be deeper, and the creatures even taller, than she’d initially suspected. The crocfrogs were so large that they couldn’t even submerge completely in the swamp she’d been traipsing through when they squished themselves flat to hide. Yet, this one was yanked from the water like a fish from a river.

  She tore her eyes from the sickening scene and scanned the area, noting that more of these creatures—which she’d decided to call water bugs—were becoming apparent the longer she looked. They were hard to hide…or were they? Could their legs lie flat enough to allow them to submerge, lying in wait under the water? Julia wasn’t keen to find out.

  With even larger and more terrifying creatures—as well as deeper water—waiting in the marsh, she decided to follow the treeline for now. She still wanted to head toward the source that was likely providing the marsh and swamp with their water, but she wouldn’t risk traversing the marsh unless her need became dire.

  Surely, the marsh must not continue infinitely, right? She could move parallel to the marsh/swamp divide until one or both ended. If it was a river sourcing all this water, its banks couldn’t be lined with marshlands for its entire length, surely.

  Fortunately, Julia didn’t have to worry about food or water—both were plentiful here. She could simply use magic to draw clean water away from the muck—a method that also allowed her to yank fish straight out of the water.

  She also seemed to be at least partially sustained by ambient mana now. She still needed to eat and drink, but not nearly as much as before her evolution. Still, she was careful to eat and drink regularly to maintain her stamina.

  She recalled once that Braden had said to always boil water if you’re unsure of its safety, so she would do so even after separating “clean” water from the marsh water. After all, clear water isn’t necessarily safe to drink, and she was in no position to take chances.

  The hardest thing out here was sleeping. Not only was finding a suitable spot difficult, but once she did, sleep frequently eluded her no matter how tired she was. This swamp was alive at all hours, and the sounds at night were markedly different from the day. She was constantly jolted awake by this-or-that throughout the night.

  She’d even been awoken once by her Spiritual Sense pinging a venomous snake that was slithering over the branch toward her. It was good to know that the Skill would alert her even while unconscious, but it was also not a flawless detection system.

  Julia’s nerves were wearing thin by her third day of following the treeline. She and Trixy had been massacring the crocfrog population, though not by choice—they just wouldn’t leave her alone! On that third day, with heavy-lidded eyes, Julia tripped and splashed face-first into the muck.

  She cursed as she righted herself and attempted to stand, only to find her foot caught. Whatever she had tripped on had snagged her boot. She tugged and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. Not wanting to risk damaging her shoe, she activated Truesight and peered into the water to see what had her ensnared.

  She yelped and jumped back at the sight—causing her to fall once more, her foot still caught in what turned out to be a skeletal hand, its body half-buried in the swamp bed. The skeleton began rising out of the water, pulling a large, rusted sword with it. It was a humanoid skeleton with sickly brown bones, encrusted with gunk and detritus from being submerged in swamp water.

  It stood a head taller than Julia—were she even standing—and had a bright purple glow in its skull that she realized was only visible to her Truesight. What was visible to her eyes, though, were the dim glows emitted from the eye sockets. She didn’t know why, but Julia thought it had a malicious quality.

  The skeleton raised its sword with clunky, jerky movements and made to strike her while she was down. Julia threw her arms backward and gathered all the water she could with her magic before thrusting forward.

  A deluge of water poured around her and engulfed the skeleton, halting its motions. She forced the water to retain its shape, preventing the skeleton from deforming it and escaping or attacking her further. Then she sucked the heat out of the water mass until it froze solid in a matter of seconds, with fog rising around her from the heat she was siphoning.

  The skeleton was now little more than a chunk of ice—except for the hand still gripping her foot. She drew her sword and smashed the hand with the pommel, breaking it off at the wrist before shimmying away from the ice. Standing up, she turned back toward the skeleton, noticing that the purple glow still persisted in its skull, despite it being frozen and immobile.

  Julia was unsure why, but she knew with near-certainty that she hadn’t killed it—or whatever killing an already-dead (undead?) thing was called. That glow appeared to be animating the bones, and as long as it was present, they would continue to move, she suspected.

  What in the Utter Dark is going on in this gods-forsaken place?