After confirming that the dust bunny is dead, I drop down onto the floor in exhaustion. That was my closest battle yet, not counting Mr. Skitters. I look down to take a closer inspection of the gash on my leg. It’s still bleeding quite a bit and I’m starting to feel a bit dizzy from the overexertion of my body. However, it doesn’t seem to be fatal. As long as I let it heal, it should be fine.

Like that, I sit still in the sewers until the exhaustion of all that happened catches up to me and causes my eyes to feel heavy.

 

When I wake up, I feel relieved upon seeing that the bleeding in my wound had stopped. Though my leg still hurts like hell, it definitely could’ve been much worse. As I regain a sense of my surroundings, I notice the remains of the dust bunny on the floor.

The most prominent item is the mana stone that had been visible inside its body. It’s glowing with a bright green hue despite its modest size. I hold up the mana stone to inspect it before chucking it into my inventory.

Next is the fluffed remains of the dust bunny’s body. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this. It feels similar to cotton, but is slightly transparent. However, what surprised me the most was its scent. It had the faintest of an appetizing aroma.

At that moment, I felt a rumbling in my stomach. I guess I haven’t eaten in a while.

Well, considering that the moss from the moss balls was edible, maybe this stuff is too? If I’m being honest, I’m a bit curious to try it out. Of course, it might be terrible, or perhaps even poisonous.

I take a tiny piece of the fluff and stick it onto my tongue. Thereupon, a sweetened taste covers my taste buds. Wow, this stuff’s pretty good. It’s like cotton candy, but not overly sugary to the point of being off-putting. Perhaps most, if not all, monsters are edible.

Unable to stop myself, I end up scarfing down the rest of the dust bunny fluff. Now feeling sated, I renewed my energy, retrieved my stone tablet, and traversed forward. To my surprise though, I suddenly notice a faint green glow encompassing my entire body. At the same time, I sense that my movements are quicker. As I scurry along the passageway, my legs seem to move at a faster pace and my steps feel lighter. The green glow surrounding that dust bunny comes to mind.

After a couple of minutes, the green glow fades and my speed returns to normal. It seems that eating the dust bunny caused that green glow to temporarily transfer to me. Well, this certainly comes as a surprise, but a welcome one.

Despite the green glow being gone, I notice another faint glow coming from up ahead, an orange one this time. I reached what seems to be a corridor that connects with the outdoors. Upon seeing the faint shimmer of the sun, I make a mad dash towards what seems to be the exit. The tunnel’s blocked by a gate, but I’m small enough to squeeze through the gaps between the bars.

Upon making it out the end of the tunnel, I bask myself in the long-missed aroma of fresh air. No more filth, no more putrid smells. The warmth of the sunlight relieves a bit from stress from within. I never knew how much I took nature for granted.

As I look around, I find that I’m surrounded by trees, likely a large forest. In the distance, I could see a large castle-like fortress. It’s that “magical girl academy” or whatever it was called, no doubt. I can probably reach it in about a day.

Though I want to sprint towards the academy to seek someone who can turn me back, I look up at the sky to notice the orange glow near the horizon. It seems that the sun is about to set really soon. I recall Angeline saying that the monsters at night are especially dangerous, so perhaps staying behind the safety of the sewers is the better option for tonight. These iron bars should also prevent any dangerous ones from crossing through.

Finalizing my course of action, I decide to spend the rest of what little daylight is left to gather a bunch of nearby twigs, the dryest I can find.

 

Once it had turned completely dark, I walk back through the iron gates while retrieving the materials I gathered from my inventory. After judging that I had taken a good enough distance from the iron bars, I lay the sticks onto the floor and set my mind to making a fire.

That being said, there isn’t much I can work with. I’m not an outdoorsy type of person at all, so I don’t have much knowledge about starting fires. All I can hope to do is rely on the friction between two sticks.

The first thing I need is kindling. I take some of the sticks I collected and begin to bear my incisors while hoping that this will work out. I hold the sticks to my mouth and use my teeth to gnaw and shave away at the wood, making thin shreds. After about one or two sticks worth of shredding, I have a neat little pile to start a fire with.

Next, I gnaw on two sticks until I removed their bark to leave the bare wood exposed. I then took one stick and held it in between my palms. I held the other stick with my feet and rub the two sticks together.

This whole process is much more monotonous and prolonged than I initially thought. I definitely need to find a better way to start a fire later.

After a while, I notice a tiny amount of smoke coming from the sticks, and I also see some charred wood dust coming out. The charred particles land on the wood shavings. Causing them to progressively heat up.

A tiny speck of oranges appears, growing into a tiny pyre, eventually becoming a modest fire that I could use. It’s quite small for a human, but good enough for the tiny body I currently possess.

After carrying out that tough task, I grab some wet moss from my inventory to soak up water from and re-hydrate myself. I’m thankful that those moss balls are edible. I was a bit worried about securing a clean water source, but it seems that the water inside their soaked bodies is clean. Perhaps their bodies have some sort of water filtering system that allows them to thrive even in the sewers.

The first order of business I carry out right after getting a drink is retrieving the sewing needle and snake meat. I gnaw a piece of the meat out, skewer it onto my sewing needle, and then hold it over the fire. I watch as the meat slowly cooks along with a savory aroma drifting through the air. Once it was ready, I took it out of the fire and let it cool down for a bit before sticking it into my mouth to see how it tastes.

...Well, it’s certainly better than it was raw, but still tastes like absolute garbage. It’s no longer raw garbage, but refined garbage now. I wish I had more of that bunny dust to eat.

After confirming that the snake meat is indeed edible cooked, I stick a few more pieces of raw meat onto the sewing needle and hold them over the fire.

Man, this sewing needle is proving itself to be an all-purpose tool. I did not expect an item I picked up on a whim to be this useful.

I ate the meat once it was cooked, and was about to stuff the rest of the snake meat back into my inventory until I noticed something.

I’m running out of food.

A large majority of the snake meat is gone, and I don’t have much moss left either, especially since I hadn’t encountered that many recently. It should be enough to last for a couple more days, but I don’t know how I will secure more food if something goes awry with my plan to convince Angeline for help.

Hmm...this could potentially be a major problem…

A sudden noise then interrupts my thought process. I turn my head towards the source of the sound and notice a daunting figure standing at the entrance of the sewers. Did my fire attract it? I thought I had set up camp an adequate enough distance away, though.I slowly approach closer, realizing that the gate is preventing it from coming any closer. When I get as close as I’m comfortable with, I realize that the figure is a...coyote? It looks like a coyote, though its fur is colored with a mud brown. I’m not sure if coyotes back on Earth come in that color.

When the coyote notices my presence, I feel an eerie sensation, the exact same one I felt back when that serpent was trying to kill me. The flickering glow of the fire illuminates the coyote’s face, revealing the intent within its eyes. Those are the eyes of a predator spotting its prey, the eyes of an animal spotting a meal.

I immediately turn tail and attempt to run, but with a howl from the coyote, the floor in front of me immediately rises to form a wall that prevents me from escaping deeper into the sewers. Before I can comprehend the situation, I hear another set of sounds coming from the coyote and reluctantly turn around to see that pieces of the earth are somehow levitating in front of the creature.

If I were to take a guess, I’d say that this coyote is not a regular animal, but a monster of the earth attribute. Those clumps of earth remind me of a Water Ball, except for the obvious detail that they’re made of earth instead of water. I’ll call that thing Earth Ball for now.

After a brief bark from the coyote, all of the clumped balls of earth suddenly hurl themselves at once towards my location. I jump away by instinct, but was too slow to fully dodge them and one of them manages to hit me square on the left arm.

An intense sting travels through my entire arm. When I take a brief glance at it, I find it hanging limp and unresponsive. I attempt to move it, but it won’t respond to my commands and sits there numb.

Now’s not the time to be focusing on such things, though. There’s an urgent matter right before me. With my escape route blocked off, all I can do is fight. However, my enemy is many times larger than me this time. Some claws and a sewing needle aren’t going to cut it this time.

The coyote conjures more Earth Balls and attempts to hurl them at me simultaneously once more. In response, I jump away from the area they were about to land on.

However, the coyote leaves one Earth Ball behind and hurls it at me right at the location I jumped to. My entire vision goes blank for a second before I force my eyes open. I look down at my body to find a crimson liquid seeping out from my flank.

Damn it, what a shrewd mutt. My wound from the dust bunny had just healed as well.

I hear a quick snort from the coyote, as if it’s mocking me.

I use my right arm, the only functioning arm I have currently, to try and pick myself off of the floor. The inability to use my left arm, combined with the blow my flank had taken, results in the process taking much more effort than normally necessary. I spend several seconds merely getting up.

This coyote could’ve easily summoned some more Earth Balls and killed me right then, but it didn’t. It’s toying with me at this point.

Once I finally manage to get up, I notice the coyote there staring at me while assuming a proud pose, as if it had already won this fight.

I need to end this quickly or else I will end up dead.

I muster up the last of my energy to charge right towards the coyote. The animal, seemingly surprised by my will, summons a meager amount of Earth Balls to hurl at me like it didn’t expect me to put up much of a fight anymore. It launches them simultaneously once more and I jump away to dodge them. It then hurls the remaining Earth Ball at the spot I jump towards, just like last time.

I see the Earth Ball approaching, and proceed to reach my right arm into my chest. Right when the Earth Ball was about to hit me, it shatters, as if it had hit a solid wall.

That solid wall was the stone tablet I retrieved from my inventory and pulled out. I had been using it as a map for the sewers beforehand, but I don’t need it for that purpose anymore. I can use it as a makeshift shield for now. That being said, it’s not that durable. Even with just one attack, I notice some faint cracks in the stone.

The coyote, shocked by the suddenly appearing stone, realizes that I may not be as easy of a prey as it thought. It renews its vigor and summons a larger amount of Earth Balls than last time.

Formulating a new strategy, I approach the coyote. I maneuver around any attacks that I can dodge while using the stone tablet to block the ones I can’t. In due time, I reach a short enough distance to the coyote to enact the next step.

While hidden behind my stone tablet, I stealthily fetch out one of the larger mana stones, the one that powered the Light Barrier from back then, and hurl it at the coyote. The coyote, surprised by the sudden mana stone tossed from behind the stone tablet, reacts too late to dodge. After the stone makes contact, it instantly loses the light coming from inside it and the coyote shudders in place for a few moments before collapsing. Even so, it continues to glare at me with a cold gaze, as if unfazed by its condition.

It seems that my aim wasn’t off, though I suppose that’s mostly due to the fact that the coyote was so close that its snout was practically pressing against the iron bars.

I stand there for a couple of seconds, hoping that the coyote would stay down. Thankfully, I didn’t see any signs of it getting back up soon. However, this battle isn’t over yet. I need to kill the coyote before it can recover and try to attack me again. I don’t want to use another precious mana stone if possible. I have some tiny ones from the moss balls, but I only have two of the four larger ones left. I used one to kill that serpent, and now I had just used another to paralyze this coyote.

I walk backwards with staggered steps while staring at the coyote to make sure that it won’t stand back up. However, I feel a heat near my feet and halt to look behind me. It was the fire I had set up, and I almost stumbled into it.

Wait a minute…

…

…

…

Should I?

…

…

...

I pick up a partially burning stick from the campfire. The coyote, seeming to notice my intentions, begins whimpering for the first time. Its previously cold gaze had turned into one of fear.

I don’t have the most pleasant feeling about what I’m going to do, but…

I carry the burning stick, now a torch, with my right hand and start to limp slowly towards the coyote. The coyote begins to whine, just like a tiny dog would. The intimidation it had before no longer remained.

I carry the torch towards as I limp closer. I know that what I’m about to do will cause the coyote to die a slow, painful death. But strategically, it’s the best option to take. Mana stones aren’t exactly the most common resource I have right now, especially those of the larger variant, while fire is available any time I have wood.

Besides, this thing nearly killed me, so why not give some payback?

Even so, I feel disgusted on the inside.

I carry the torch until it’s near the iron bars.

The coyote’s eyes alternated its focus between the torch and me, holding a look of terror.

Despite being paralyzed, I could notice some shivering.

I carry the torch until it’s right in front of the coyote’s face.

The coyote’s ears dropped down as it wheezed in a plea for sympathy.

Its eyes stared at me once, begging for mercy.

I carry the torch until its mere centimeters away from igniting the coyote’s fur.

Realizing that it couldn’t convince me, the coyote closes its eyes.

The coyote accepted its fate, accepted its death.

I attempt to carry the torch further, but find that my arms won’t move the way I want them to. Not due to any injures, but because my hand trembled as I imagined the coyote’s fate.

The flames would likely spread quickly across the fur along its entire body. The heat will slowly cook its flesh alive, burning the outer layers of the skin before going deeper into its muscle. All the while, the coyote will yelp in pain, a pain like no other it’s ever felt. The sheer agony would continue to torment it for several minutes, maybe even tens of minutes.

And I will be there the whole time. There to watch as its fur slowly turns into fine particles of soot, as its flesh slowly blackens to a crisp, as its cries of horror echo throughout the sewers, as the flames consume its body until its figure is no longer recognizable.

 

No...I can’t.

I can’t do this.

I hurl the torch behind me, take out another one of the larger mana stones, and touch the coyote’s snout with it.

The stone loses its light. I only have one larger mana stone left now.

The coyote quickly yelps for a brief second before dropping its head onto the ground.

A quick death.

I walk back to the fire, smother it out, and lay down.

Call me stupid, call me naive, call me weak-hearted. I don’t care. This is my decision.

I end up laying there until fatigue forces my eyes to close for the night.