Ever seen a child clinging to his mother in pure desperation, in the middle of chaos, fire, or flood? That unfiltered, primal grip that says, "If I let go, I disappear"? That was me right now.
Clinging to telekinesis like a drowning child clings to breath—because if I let go, I'd be nothing but a mangled corpse beneath this monster's weight and wrath. I was gripping it so hard that I felt my own mind splintering under the force, as if the invisible strands between will and mana were beginning to snap, one by one.
The Chimaera's body was thrashing, twitching erratically now—her control was fraying too. Her thunder had dulled, like her storm was burning out. She still pushed forward with pure muscle and feral instinct, but the surge of lightning that had once surrounded her like a crown was now little more than sparks bleeding off her frame.
I felt it. She was spiralling, too. Meltdown. It applied to us all. No matter how strong. No matter how monstrous.
You stretch your mana past its safe limit, and eventually, your own mind and mana turn against you.
The Chimaera's muscles twitched out of sync. Her pupils, once locked on me with perfect predatory intent, flickered now, darting, erratic, unfocused. Her breaths were ragged, her jaw grinding as if her body was running on autopilot, driven purely by the final gasps of instinct.
But instinct was more than enough to kill me.
She tried to slash at me again—her claws lashing forward, carving through the air. Too far to rip through my heart, but close enough that the tips grazed my chest. I felt my bare, already sliced-up skin break. Blood bloomed from thin, parallel cuts across my ribs.
I tried to move—crawling backwards through cold muck and wet dirt, through my own blood, through grass and ash. But my legs didn't work. My right arm was gone. My left was trembling like a wooden stick in a storm.
And still, I held.
My telekinetic grip stayed, like the desperate cling of a dying soldier on a battlefield. I was so close to blacking out that my vision kept blinking in and out, fading to white and then snapping back into jagged colour. My brain didn't feel like a brain anymore. It felt like a wet cloth being wrung out from all sides, leaking mana and sanity with every second.
The Chimaera roared—louder than ever before—and slammed her claw down again, this time just beside my head, throwing mud and sparks into the air. My dull ears rang with static. My single eye caught the tremble in her limb—she was weakening. But I wasn't sure if I was strong enough to outlast or capitalise her eventual collapse, if she indeed fell a little.
The pressure in my skull built further, as fresh amounts of blood trickled from my nose. My lip split from clenching too hard. My fingers dug into the mud just to anchor myself, even though I couldn't feel them anymore.
Everything was painful. But beneath that, beneath the agony, there was fear. Pure, animalistic fear. Not of death itself. Not anymore. I had accepted that, I had to. But the fear was that if I died now, I'd leave it all unfinished. That they would suffer worse. That she would never know I tried.
So I gritted my teeth harder and latched on tighter, because that's all I could do. Hold, hold on until something gives out. Her, me, the world, whichever broke first.
It had become a three-way competition now.
Who would break first?
My mind.
My body.
Or my grip.
And I already knew the answer.
It was going to be the grip. My telekinetic hold. My last defence. My last shred of will.
The Chimaera's claws swung again—monstrous, jagged things that tore through air like they were carving open reality itself. They scraped too close, almost drawing out what was left of my soul. I tried to dig deeper, to hold one second more—
ZUPPP!
A horizontal white blur shot in from my left, slicing through the battlefield like a meteorite skimming just inches above the ground. It didn't make a sound that I could hear, but I felt the air fracture around it.
It tore straight into the Chimaera's neck. Clean and precise... And unforgiving. All of her eyes widened in a single, terrifying instant.
She pulled back immediately, staggering as if she'd just been shot by a divine rifle. Her claws, which had been moments away from gutting me, retreated.
I blinked, confused, barely registering what had just happened. My vision was a cracked lens, distorted and half-flooded with blood. But I still caught a glimpse of it—A faint shine. Silver. Familiar. Snowhite? My blade?
The very same one I had lost in that cursed pond during our first clash. How the hell—I didn't even get to finish the thought. Forza.
She arrived from the same direction, her silhouette streaking in like a comet, her sole wing trailing behind her like a torn banner in the wind. She slammed her fist, full momentum, into the hilt of my blade, driving it even deeper into the Chimaera's neck.
The beast roared—this time in pain, not rage. Her painful roar echoed inside my mind for a brief moment, carving a light but genuine faint smile on my messed-up face.
A sickening eruption of blood sprayed from her throat. It wasn't red. No. It was purple, streaked with green, that cursed poison I had tasted earlier. The acidic stench hit me before the liquid did—then it soaked my face, my chest, my open wounds. The pain was immediate.
It was like my skin caught fire and then froze over all at once. My body buckled under a whole new layer of agony. But I didn't scream. I couldn't. I just grit my teeth, eyes wide open, staring through the haze.
For once... you're on time, I thought, my lips again twitched into the smallest ghost of a smile, even though my body felt it was under a layer of molten metal. Forza didn't slow down.
Her broken wing flared with the last of its form as she spun mid-air, driving a slash at the Chimaera's massive skull, pushing it back just enough to give us breathing space. Her staff shattered on impact—couldn't hold up—but the damage was done.
She was buying me time. Time I didn't deserve. Time I could barely use.
She conjured her next spell fast—too fast. I could tell just by looking at it that it wasn't refined. It was raw. Pure mana. No elemental finesse, no filter—just destructive force. Unstable, volatile. A suicide-grade detonation waiting to happen. She hurled it like a cannonball.
The spell struck the Chimaera straight in the chest and detonated. The shockwave rippled through everything—mud, trees, wind, even the broken pond at our backs. But the beast didn't fall; it staggered and screamed, before trying to retaliate.
A blinding arc of thunder burst from its mouth—no aim, just pure desperation. A wave of lightning so intense that the ground sizzled beneath it.
Forza barely had time to react. She yanked her remaining wing forward, shielding herself with it like a makeshift barrier. The lightning ripped through it—eviscerating the construct, atomising it mid-air—but it gave her the time she needed to survive the blast. The pulse still threw her backwards hard.
She hit the dirt with a thud I could barely register. Rolled once. Twice. Came to a skidding halt several feet from me, coughing and groaning, sparks flickering around her body from residual shock.
She wasn't dead. But she was almost down.