The mountains have remained my home for two months now. I still haven't explored all of the area, as it's particularly tedious to travel, but I've been managing somehow.

After committing the personal crime of eating all the food I stole at once, I was forced to hunt and scavenge immediately after that entire town raid situation. This led to a lot of mishaps. Early on, because I did not know the terrain, my magic sense wasn't accurate, and I hurt my damaged leg again. The limp that was starting to become less noticeable showed itself once more and I had to deal with it all over again. I also tried, and mostly failed, to consume the local fauna and flora. The fish here are bigger than my head, the wolves are too smart to fall for my bait, and most of the plants here freeze my mana for a few hours or outright paralyze my body upon consumption. I spent a week laying still in the most uncomfortable position because I ate the wrong plant. It took all my effort to use my mana to clear it from my system. I was buried under a pile of snow as an extra punishment.

A lot of the monsters in this area produce snowstorms when threatened too. Heck, there's a plant that does the same if you trip on its roots. I'm constantly bombarded with intense weather conditions because of that. What a wild place.

Sleeping spots are also rough because there are monsters in the trees here. Some weird, lanky, monkey thing it seems. I've never seen any of those in my past lives, but I imagine it must look like a freak combination of an orangutan and a yeti. I tried eating one after a territorial dispute and it tasted absolutely revolting. Even still I indulged in my spoils for the sake of sating my hunger. I ended up throwing up multiple times that day. Damn those things.

I'm cold, I'm hungry, and I'm tired, but dammit I might've found a solution. I've been climbing all the slopes I can, with various levels of success, looking for a suitable cave to house myself in. This particularly steep incline that I'm scaling at the moment is giving me hope. My magic senses have detected a sizable cave at the top of this place. There's almost sure to be a monster nest in there, but if I can kill whatever lives there, I'll be able to make this place my home.

This climb really is cumbersome though. I've been using my bear claws to dig into the side of the mountain, and occasionally magic wires to catch myself if I slip. The slope is rough and slippery, and with no visuals, it's hard to retrace my climbing path when I do fall.

What should have taken 30 minutes takes an hour, but I'm finally able to catch my breath as I roll over to the flat ground on the top. I send out a succession of mana pulses to figure out the structure of this cave. The entrance is wide and tall, and the cave gets smaller and smaller the further one goes in, seemingly spiraling downwards into the cliffside I just climbed up.

What's even more interesting is that I can sense a lot of mana coming from this cave. And from all different directions. They're all static sources, which leads me to believe that this is a cave filled with mana charged crystals. Essentially a magic cave. If I were a noble, this would be a jackpot.

Well, I am a noble, but no one needs to know that this time around.

Regardless, these caves are usually turned into mines and siphoned from until they bleed dry, without any proper nurture. Most territories take everything not realizing that they can keep a mana crystal mine long term by letting it rest and sending a mage to overcharge a crystal or two.

In my case, as a girl on her own, this has little use to me and only provides me trouble. Caves like these attract stronger monsters and allow them to magically evolve into things they shouldn't be, which means whatever lives in here is gonna be a pain in the ass to kill. If it's a cave with history, some monsters will interact with the crystals and trade their old bodies for bejeweled ones, and their bones and blood for liquidized mana. Strong monster slayers will shatter the beasts’ bodies and drink their mana-charged blood in victory. It's a reliable way to increase the amount of mana in one's body, but bejeweled monsters are rare.

I'm questioning whether it's worth it to try and clear this cave of monsters, but I end up stepping inside anyways. Slowly I start feeling my surroundings with my trusty stick, who I've now named Scipio, by the way.

…This thing has been with me for a while. He's a great friend and tool to use in battle. People always name things when they are alone anyways, and it's a viable strategy to keep them right in the head. I'm just following that notion as part of a continued effort to permanently distance myself from society.

I was surprised Scipio had lasted this long, but then I realized that every time I fought I would unconsciously channel mana into him. Already I think of Scipio as a precious extension of myself, it seems. The bone tools I carved from the bear have been useful enough, but I got a dagger stolen by one of those tree monkeys, and the axe broke on some animated rock monster. I'm not close enough with the remaining dagger to name it.

By now I've felt around the majority of this cave entrance, and the thing that has kept me from moving further is a giant, brambly nest. A dragon's nest? No, too small for that. Wyverns nest in packs, so that wouldn't fit either. The only other thing I could think of is a griffin. I guess I need to check the eggs to be sure, if there are any.

I have to climb into the nest, which does take some effort, this thing is giant. I climb down into the middle and stumble my way into an egg. It's cold, and very smooth to the touch. With my magic sense I can tell that the egg is not at all close to hatching, inside it's just a pool of mana. Yep, definitely griffin eggs. Griffins develop inside the egg after the egg is laid, and dragons develop in the egg before the laying process. If this were a dragon, the mana inside the egg would be more solid and flowing through mana channels.

So my opponent is a griffin then? I've never fought one before, but I'm a bit worried about battling in the air. If I fall I can somewhat cushion my blows through layered mana barriers, but that's not entirely foolproof.

Plus, I can't particularly fly well. At all. I could probably mimic flight by blasting mana out of my hands and feet, but that drains mana fast, and even then, my magic sense isn't strong enough yet to feel the mana in the air. I'd be flying in darkness.

Hm. My instinct tells me to observe for a few days and find its weaknesses, but I know I can't afford to do that. There's a high chance that my plan will fall through, if that town raid was any indication. The monsters in this mountain range are dangerous, and if it's a griffin, then it'll have a commendable amount of intelligence to support that.

It's better to just go wild. The adrenaline will quicken my thinking when I need it most.

I exit the cave and gingerly scale down the cliff to lower ground. I can't afford to fight the griffin in a rocky place like this, so I'll prepare bait and see what I can do from there. If I recall the Duke's teachings from a former life correctly, griffins of all species love the smell of burning flesh. Apparently, they too prefer their food cooked. Most griffins don't have access to any sort of fire attack, and I'm near 100% sure that one housing itself in the North is deprived of that luxury.

There are some catches though. Griffins want the smell to be fresh, and they'll only usually appear for sapient creatures. There's no else to use as bait, and I'm sure as hell not gonna use myself, so that means I'm going to need a damn yeti-tree-monkey-thing. Those bastards. This will be their retribution. If I'm lucky the griffin will eat the bait and then throw up as well, assuming it's even affected by whatever enzyme that meat has.

It takes me two hours to finally procure a pile of those monkey things. I fell off the trees more times than I want to admit in the process. Dragging ten of them, I throw them in the middle of what I believe to be a rather sizable clearing, and then raise my hand towards their still corpses.

I extend my mana outside of my body from my hand, and start to heat it up, eventually breaking it off before I burn myself. I feel a rush of warmth and the crackling of fire fills my ears. Sniffing the air, it's most definitely giving off a putrid smell. If the griffin is up to snuff, it'll be here soon. Time to set up my trap.

When I raided the town, the process of lining the perimeter with my mana made me realize that I could stretch my mana thin. Because of that, over these couple of months I've tested how thin and far I can stretch it, and it can cover a whole valley if I really push myself.

I've decided to put my tests to use by laying a net of thin mana over the clearing where I laid the corpse pile. This'll let me tune in to the griffin’s mana channels more accurately, and if I'm lucky, I could sharpen them to give multiple lacerations to the griffin's body immediately.

I perch myself in the branches of a tree at the edge of a clearing and heighten my mana senses. Deep breaths. This'll be a tough fight.

It doesn't even take five minutes before I hear the screeches of the griffin as it lands. The pure wind force of its wings almost knocks me out of the tree I'm in, and the fire is immediately extinguished.

I feel its mana channels through my mana net… this thing is huge! It's double, maybe even triple the size of an elephant. And the screeching is nonstop, I'm already getting a headache. Isn't it supposed to be eating? How is it making so much noise?

I sharpen my mana net only to hear three screeches in a horrific harmony. They're deafening. Raspy, piercing cries that have a terrifying beauty to them. Oh shit. It's a Cerberus Griffin. I had no idea there were Northern varieties. Cerberus Griffins have three heads on one body, and tend to have a keener sense of mana.

The left head sees mana, the right head collects mana, and the middle head uses mana to perform magic. A normal griffin uses one head for all three functions, which makes it slower and less efficient. The specialization of a Cerberus Griffin means it's faster at attacking.

I clutch Scipio in preparation of my next move. Before I can even think of what to do next my entire head is enveloped by a talon and I feel the rest of my body get limply dragged into the air. I don't have a barrier on myself yet, and the tight grip of the talon is keeping me from working my way out. I'd probably fall to my doom if I freed myself anyways.

Alright, time to egg on this griffin through frantic and purposeful struggling. I flail my arms and wack Scipio into the body of the beast to determine which talon is grabbing me. The front right leg is grabbing me, it seems. The opposite leg from where I need to be.

Griffins are smart, and I'm sure the reason this one is so big is because it knows what parts of its body it needs to protect. The left head is my target, and it's keeping me away from that. I don't even need to cut the head off, I just need to blind it or knock it out.

The griffin takes me higher and higher into the air, the wind is attacking my body wildly in the process. Alright, that's enough of that. How's about I return your talon attack with some bear claws? I lock Scipio in between my legs as I slide my arms into the bear sleeves. My mana connects and I icily scratch the griffin's leg. In surprise it lets out a purr of confusion and I use its slightly loosened grip to wiggle my head and pry it out.

The griffin had a lock on my head… but now I'm holding on for dear life. It's hard to breathe up here. It's beyond freezing, and the air is thin. The wind fills my breaths and causes me to cough. I can feel my hair flapping wildly, and the hood of my cloak has no chance to stay on.

I feel Scipio slipping between my legs, so I use mana to stiffen and lock my legs further. There's no way I'm losing you here, buddy. The griffin finally considers my freedom a threat as I start to climb to the left side of its body through its underside. The bearing of the wings are too dangerous, so I concluded under was the way to go.

Methodically, I stab my bear sleeves into it, and swing and stab. Then lock. Then swing and stab again. The lock once more. It would have been much easier to crawl, but Scipio is a passenger right now. The longer reach of arms allows me to swing like those yeti-monkeys. I suppose those things were somewhat useful after all.

The griffin screeches and flies haphazardly on purpose, but I keep my grip. The wind is more bearable under here at its torso. How fortunate.

Right as I'm about to emerge from the underside and start scaling the left side of the beast, the griffin screeches and swoops low unexpectedly. It's more than a swoop, this thing is dive-bombing, that windforce is so strong!

I put up five, no, six barriers, all layered at once. Is it going to squish me? Run me through treetops? Slam against a cliff to throw me off? I can't tell because the natural mana channels of the mountain range are too plentiful, and I have no idea how far we flew. Shit!

We get really low and the griffin flies upside down as my body gets battered by tree branches. My barriers dissipate soon enough, and I'm greeted with mouthfuls of leaves and wood. My body is whacked by tree trunks and we definitely killed something as collateral damage, because I'm tasting blood that isn't mine. I'll have to rinse my mouth thoroughly later.

The griffin corkscrews in its flight and flies near vertical at superfast speeds back into the air… only to corkscrew yet again and divebomb straight towards the ground this time. I need to do something before that nonsense happens again, but what the heck am I supposed to do?!

Think…. What are your options…?

Bear claws and arms are holding on for dear life, which means I can't grab the bone dagger either. Biting it won't work, the pelt is too tough. Heating my mana in my hands would burn my cloak and body and likely make me lose my grip. So that leaves my legs… which are holding Scipio.

Wait. Scipio? Could he work? He's resting between my thighs right now, in a horizontal position. If I curve my legs back, could I reposition Scipio and use him as a wand and blast this thing with a surprise attack? I've always seen Scipio as a trusty stick.

Maybe he's more useful as a complex weapon?

I wait until we get close to the ground, and I feel the tense flex of the griffin readying to change direction. Now! Legs curve, and Scipio is pointed into the chest of the monster as I channel a healthy amount of mana to my thighs, Scipio takes it all and out comes a mana blast, similar to the one I greeted the Elderfrost Bear with. Though, this one is smaller and more concentrated.

I get pushed off from the attack, Scipio flying with me. I hear the various noises of the griffin as it tumbles into the snow. Alright. Nice. We're grounded now, though I'm struggling to stand. My legs took the brunt of my own blast. Better than being flattened, but not ideal.

The griffin wastes no time and lunges in my direction, seemingly aiming to pin my under its talons again, but I sloppily roll out of the way in time.

I feel a shift in the air’s mana. It's about to use magic, but what type, and how? Griffins are known to tear through men with single swipes, even castles have fallen to an angry griffin. It must be some sort of slashing or strengthening technique. Perhaps a layered combo of both?

Either way, it's time to run, damaged legs be damned. For the first time in a while, I apply a magical brace to each leg, channel even more to increase my running speed, and I dash. There are trees nearby. That'll serve as cover. Each step I take a simultaneously send out a new mana pulse that circles up to ten feet around me. I'm running and dodging through the trees as I feel them by me. It's not at all a smart strategy, but there's a screeching bird lion thing on my tail that's slicing through the trees behind me.

I'm going to have to find a way to slow this thing down, but I'll need to fully understand my situation before I make my move. As I keep running away, I separate the long strands of my hair into tendrils by channeling mana into them. My flowing hair now has seven thick strands, floating oddly as I run. Each of the seven has a purpose. The middle three are attuned to the three heads of the griffin. I can feel their individual headspaces through those tendrils by the accumulated mana in their craniums. The left one has its eyes on me, the right one is using breath techniques to gather mana, and the middle head is blowing out a stream of mana. It seems the griffin has coated itself in a wind barrier that slices anything it flies through.

The far left and far right tendrils of my hair are focused on the front talons of the griffin. I can sense lingering mana in them, I need a further warning if I need to change direction due to a magical attack from the griffin’s talons, like a wind sickle. That leaves the remaining two tendrils of my hair to account for anything unexpected.

I am sweating in my focus. Seven streams of mana into my hairs constantly sensing any danger, and then frequent mana pulses from my feet as I channel even more mana to run away and dodge the natural obstacles in my way. The griffin pursues me with an alternating mix of low flying and odd galloping.

I can't keep this up, but now I've got every base covered. I slide under a wind sickle from the griffin as my hair tingles, and then take a sharp left as the griffin charges in. I ignore the beasts tumbles and screeches and keep pushing through. 

Alright, I need to target the left head. Right now my free left tendril of hair should be able to zap it with some mana. Using a mana-charged Scipio as a pole vault, I launch myself into the air and use that tendril to blast the left head. The griffin stutters in its approach, and I sense the wind barrier weakening. The force from my tendril blast pushes me to a tree, which I quickly kick off of. The remains of the wind barrier slice my skin as I brandish Scipio and stick him right above the left head’s beak.

Scipio do your thing, boy.

The left head explodes in a bloody splatter caused by my mana. Scipio remains wedged into the remains of the left head's neck, as the griffin yells out and starts to roll around in pain. Hm. You'd think these things had evolved to have separate pain receptors for each head. The other two heads are crying out for the left one. How odd.

Unfortunately, I get caught up in that rolling around, and am thrown hard into a tree. Both the griffin and I are recuperating. Though for me, I'm just coughing my lungs out. That sequence took a lot out of me, but now the griffin is half the bird lion it thought it was. Well, two-thirds is more accurate.

I lean Scipio against the tree near me and create mana sickles of my own. The griffin seems to be kneeling on the ground, breathing heavily. One of its wings is caught in a tree from its tantrum. I'll free it.

Its wings come off with a simple toss of my sickles, and the beast lays even lower now. I don't give it a chance to gallop at me again. I cast another mana net, stretching the limits of my mana. The net covers the monster, and I sharpen it to new levels. Each level, the net closes in tighter. Lacerations become slashes, become gashes, become amputations. The screeching of the beast falls on deaf ears, and muteness that will show no mercy for tomorrow's meal.

Eventually the griffin is a bleeding lump with two heads left. It's only now that the yeti-monkey meat causes the griffin to throw up. A bit too late to be helpful. I let my bear claws finish the job, and finally I get some quiet. I lay down in the bloody snow by the griffin's body. Habitually, another snow angel is created.

Hm.

Well, I think I suffered more internal wounds this time. My ribs feel cracked, and my legs are beyond sore. My damaged one will be screaming at me in the morning. There's loads of small scratches on me, whether it be from trees or rocks or wind. I think I'll take tonight to rest here and then make my way to the near tomorrow.

I say tonight, but it's still early afternoon. I suppose I can spend the rest of my day tending to myself. Maybe take a bath, it's been a few days since I had one. I swipe my hair out of my face. It was somehow useful today. Adrenaline does wonders.

Speaking of adrenaline, it's escaped from my body now, and I nearly completely collapse because of it. I crawl my way back to Scipio and hug him close. While my mana regenerates, I'll just sort out my thoughts and move from there.

“You did well. A Northern Cerberus Griffin is no easy prey.”

A voice?!

Where did it come from?! Who was that?! It was deep, and sultry, like the voice of a man wise beyond his years. Scipio that wasn't you, was it? The voice almost sounds familiar. Did I imagine a voice for my weapon already?

I tap Scipio a few times. Nothing. Am I hallucinating as a sign of delirium?

“That wasn't your stick, gremlin. It was me.”

I freeze. There's a man nearby. I can't sense him at all, which means he has expert control over his mana channels, and that also indicates he has the ability to silence his sound.

This is bad. This is very, very bad.

“Do you not even address the person speaking to you? I've known gremlins far slimier than you, and they've at least had the decency to look me in the eye.”

What do I even say? I haven't spoken in this life at all, and I can't even see you.

“Hmph. Unfortunate. I like to know something about my opponents before they die. It makes the fights have an impact.”

That statement and the creaking of metal make me realize something terrible.

I know this man. I very much know who he is.

“You should be honored. You'll die by the hand of Duke Leander Pyralis Sincavage, ruler of these lands. Brandish your stick, gremlin.”

This man is my father. The last person I wanted to meet in this life. Wonderful.