Darkness' Touch

Chapter 30: Long night

"...ugh"

Avy groaned in pain. Her senses finally came back and she was able to feel how disgustingly painful her self-inflicted wound was. Tears were forming in the corner of her eyes as she squeezed her arm tightly to prevent the blood from coming out until she decides what to do.

'Can I do it? Ares didn't say my magic is not nullified, but I don't know how to use the darkness to attack.'

She's not yet familiar with her power, she was hesitant if she could execute it successfully because if she doesn't, she would be dead meat no less than a minute later.

'It should work. It has to.'

She whispered words of encouragement to herself while still watching out for the bear. Once again, she breathed in and focused on her mind and imagination to do all the work. She has watched fantasy series on television back when she was still living in her old world, and Lucy never stopped bugging her about reading fantasy books until she was sick enough to know what will happen next. She's also confident about her visualizing skills. She just needs to fight and kill something for the first time in her whole existence.

How hard can it be?

Just a couple of seconds later, the blood coming from her arm eventually mimicked the image of a sword and a shield big enough to cover half of her upper body. It seems like blood manipulation lets the blood expand so that the ability user would be able to use it for a considerable amount of time without being drained empty of blood and die.

"H-ha! I-It worked-"

*ROARR!!!!*

Avy's little celebration was interrupted when the bear roared out loud, causing her to falter slightly. She clenched the grip of her crimson sword tightly and exhaled. Making sure Kill was out of the bear's sight, she ran to her left which the big animal immediately followed. Using the environment to her advantage, she went through trees with gaps not large enough for the bear to fit in. It made it way angrier than it already was and clawed the trunks of the trees violently that the smaller ones almost split in half.

Avy picked up a big rock the size of her fist and as if using her bleeding arm as a faucet, she coated it with blood and prayed for her success.

"Burn." She whispered to it and with all the strength that she got, pitched it to the bear.

It hit the bear's face before igniting the color of red, flames quickly spread on the feral bear's fur on his head. The animal cried loudly in agony as it tried to put it out by running into the closest thing to him. A big tree. Luckily, the rain wasn't able to kill the fire that easily. It wasn't just a normal one after all.

Avy took this chance to launch another fatal attack. She quickly ran towards the bear who had its back turned towards her and made sure to grip the sword as hard as she can. She let go of the shield and combined it with the sword to make it bigger and longer.

*stab*

It was a success. She managed to stab the bear.

But it wasn't enough to put an end to its life.

Feeling the pain on its body, the bear violently went amok and hit Avy with its arm in the process, sending her flying.

"Aahhck!!"

It all happened so fast. All she felt was the numbing pain of her back hitting the rough and hard surface of a tree before falling on the ground.

What.... just happened?

She couldn't breathe. Her whole body hurts. Her ears are ringing. Her head was spinning. It hurts. It hurts.

"Urgkhhh." she felt a gush of warm liquid coming out of her mouth, the rain still hasn't stopped yet and her body was being washed clean by the water from the sky. She wanted to sleep. Just lie down.