Reflections on the Warpath - [An Isekai Progression Fantasy]

The vine-infested jaguar torpedoed towards Jay.

He couldn't move. Not without letting go of the relic.

He didn't need to.

Ping speared through the water like a falcon plummeting towards its prey.

During their second day training with Primordial Resurgence—in a scenario remarkably similar to this one—Jay had to find Tia while she was hiding underwater and pull her to the surface. He'd found out back then that whatever gave Ping the ability to fly didn't give her the ability to swim very well. When the shield tried to whiz around Jay like usual, she trawled through the water like it was wet cement.

But even though Ping's enchantments stopped her from being a good swimmer, they didn't do shit about momentum.

She slammed into the oncoming leviathan, swatting it away from Jay.

Jay turned back to the relic. The first daggers of oxygen deprivation stabbed at his lungs from within. He hoped Ping could buy him enough time, even underwater.

He heaved the orb further forward, this time jamming his knee beneath to stop it from rolling back. A red vine clutched onto the orb's underside, rooted to a crag in the lakebed. The same white siphons that sucked up the leopard's blood latched onto the relic's smooth surface.

Jay brought his left arm towards the vine. He willed Davad's dagger forth from his bracer and hacked at the red tendrils anchoring the relic.

The blade cut through the fragile white siphons easily. Jay pulled the relic loose and held it under his arm as the red tendril retreated into the crag.

Ping flew between Jay and the vine-infested jaguar. Jay felt her strain at even the slightest of movements, not used to moving through anything but air.

The jaguar barrelled at Ping.

She met its charge.

Powered by the vampiric vines, the jaguar easily batted Ping aside. It knocked her across the lake, clearing the battlefield for another charge at Jay.

Jay's lungs wailed within his chest, desperate to reach the surface. He kicked off the ground, propelling himself upwards.

The vines swam faster.

The coiling abomination shot forward, launching the jaguar's gaping mouth towards Jay.

Jay stretched out his left, a meagre defence against the jaguar's onslaught. It clamped its jaws around Pippin's clockwork bracer.

Jay's lips curled into a smile.

He clamped them shut, careful not to lose even a single breath.

He wriggled his arm within the jaguar's vine-ridden mouth, shifting it until his hand extended into the beast's throat. He willed the dagger forward. It sliced through the tendrils infesting the jaguar's neck.

Got you now.

Once it reached his palm, Jay pressed the button embedded within its pommel.

The writhing tendrils beside Jay's palm froze. The beast's neck caved inwards. Water rushed past Jay's ears, sucked towards his dagger and the vortex swirling around it.

Then came the release.

A shockwave obliterated the jaguar's neck from within, flinging shredded red scraps of flesh and vine into Jay's face. The explosion knocked him down to the lakebed and forced a bubble of air from behind his gritted teeth.

Luckily, the jaguar's corpse and the vines within it had tanked most of the impact. Jay's Orivian silk undershirt took care of the rest.

That still didn't mean he was in great shape.

Jay's hand tingled with adrenaline-fueled numbness. It was ground zero for the blast and Jay knew he'd pay the price for it later. His chest strained against his lungs' pleas for air, the dwindling oxygen within squeezed out by the explosive shove.

He twisted his chest and began to kick towards the surface.

But of course it couldn't be that easy.

The serpentine vines lorded over Jay like a deep-sea leviathan, seemingly unfazed by the explosion they'd just ate. Tendrils emerged from the gaping wound across the jaguar's neck. The gash stretched from its cheek to its ribcage, almost ripping the carcass in two, yet squirming tendrils flooded out of every inch like maggots from a corpse.

Hundreds of tendrils unfurled from the jaguar's corpse, like undulating eels coiling around each other.

They stretched further. Each of the tendrils split open, unleashing hundreds of their siphons into the water like a halo of parasitic white.

The siphons flailed in the water.

They each pointed at Jay.

Fuck.

Jay looked down. Vines crept out from crevasses in the lake that Jay hadn't even noticed before.

He looked left and right. More vines.

The vampiric vines unleashed a distorted growl out of the infested jaguar's ruptured throat. A rolling surge of water slammed into Jay from above, flipping him over and slamming him into the ground.

Precious oxygen escaped Jay's lungs as he crumpled onto the ground. The back of his skull whipped backwards into a jagged rock.

Jay felt his scalp split open and watched his blood seep out into the murky water. Slithering vines snaked out from below. A loud thwuck reverberated through his skull as he felt a siphon worm into the gash.

Jay flailed and thrashed against the vines.

They held strong, pulling him back to the ground.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

More joined them.

Sandpaper manacles ground against his ankles. They lashed his wrists to the stone, snatching the relic from his grip.

The vampiric leviathan loomed above Jay. The jaguar's cleft open snarl jeered at him like a sadistic grin. The tangle expanded. Each tendril opened further. The sprawl of a thousand siphons blotted out Jay's entire world.

No.

Not like this.

Jay triggered Eye of the storm. Awareness roared within his mind. He pushed it further than ever before.

Limbs? Tied up. Can't use them.

Daggers? Can't reach my ankle. Can't move my hands to use the bracer either.

Can't grapple with fucking vines.

Ping's out of commission.

Can't fucking move.

How am I supposed to escape if I can't even fucking move!

Jay forced himself out of his spiral.

Panic couldn't help him here.

I can't move.

What can I do then?

Jay scanned the impending doom above him.

His eyes remained perfectly still.

They were far too slow to keep up.

Think Jay.

Fucking think.

What is there?

White siphons, lit up from below by the relic, wriggled in the water above Jay. Inching inevitably closer. Even more crawled out from below, slithering up his sleeves, searching for arteries to burrow inside.

The fastest few had already pierced his skin.

Focus.

What else? What else? What else?

What else is there?

The zombified jaguar lorded over Jay. Writhing vines twisted within its desecrated corpse.

Its pack was probably still hunting the dinosaur.

How unfortunate that this one attempted to hunt Jay.

How was it to know its future fate? Not merely slain by electricity but forced to live on as a parasitic host. A pathetic extension of a mightier being.

Wait…

The jaguar's paw was still stained black. The scars of a battle fought and lost against Jay Lightning Leonard.

I wasn't moving then…

The electricity still sprung forth.

How?

Jay's empowered mind rocketed further back. He returned to his scrimmages with Alf.

The tree-man's thorns, brambles, and poison had countlessly tried to invade his body, yet he constantly held them off. How?

But Jay didn't just hold them off. He retaliated.

How?

He'd done it before. But that was during a fight. Things always came easier to Jay during fights, he didn't ask questions there. He fought.

But Jay wasn't fighting against the vines here. Not now. This wasn't a fight anymore; it was an execution.

I need to understand.

I need to understand how.

Jay's mind flew further back. It flew to a different time, a different place, but to another seemingly undefeatable foe.

Lightning bounced around the storm sage's undersea cavern. Permeating every atom of the stone prison where Jay had earned his stormforged body just like the tendrils crawled through every crevasse of the cave it called home.

Why?

Why am I remembering the trial?

The first siphon crawled inside his neck. Jay felt it inject itself into his muscle tissue.

It flinched.

It jerked back. Batted away by Jay's stormforged cells.

The energy inside them?

It can't be. The lightning dissipated after the trial. It was over a month ago.

So what is it then?

Jay knew he was closer.

He felt the breakthrough at his fingertips.

He felt the siphons too. Creeping ever closer.

It's not the lightning. So what is it? What about the trial by lightning do I need to remember?

Jay recalled the euphoria of power he'd experienced after the lightning had passed through him. After it had energised his cells.

He remembered the elation of pure electricity within hi-

No.

No, it wasn't electricity.

Not while it stayed within my body.

It injected energy into my cells. It elevated them.

But that's all it was.

Energy.

It wasn't electricity until it escaped again.

The realisations cascaded into Jay's mind as be floundered through his past for a solution.

His muscles spasmed with energy surging within him. The siphons still advanced, but they slowed.

Weary of the energy building within Jay's body.

When I attack… the power has to come from somewhere.

When I use my fists, it's from the wind up. When I use lightning, I unleash it from within through a punch or kick.

Shit, even when I used thunder before, I had to cause the compression before the expansion.

But what about when I fended off Alf's plants, or when I stunned the jaguar? How did I do it then?

What did I understand during those fights that I'm missing now?

Jay clung onto the euphoric sensation from the trial by lightning. As great as it was, he hadn't felt it again since he'd left the storm sage.

Why would he have?

It was power. It was strength. It was energy.

But it's not electricity.

Jay had power and strength. He had energy. He didn't train relentlessly for four weeks just to tire out after a few mere fights.

But the power was locked inside his body. Locked inside the muscles tied down by abyssal vines and invaded by siphons.

It needed to escape.

In the trial, the lightning had energised him. But it had inevitably escaped his body too. Because electricity could never be chained.

It was its nature to be free.

Whenever Jay attacked with electricity, he envisioned it as a caged beast inside him. Hounding at its bars, biting at its manacles and clawing at its chains.

But electricity could never be chained. And the only beast inside Jay was his savage urge to fight. He only thought of electricity that way because that's what he knew.

So what is it then?

Jay clenched his fists. The siphons ripped loose from the bubbling electricity beneath Jay's sk-

No.

Jay grinned at the writhing mass of tentacles that surrounded him.

That's not electricity.

Brilliant white light radiated from the lakebed. Not from the relic that had rolled away from Jay and his opponent. But from the hairline channels across Jay's entire body.

From the energy bursting at the seams within him.

Electricity…

More light crept out. Like the first fissure rising from a fault line. A trailblazer. An omen. A threat.

…is a release!

Arcing lances of incandescent electricity surged forth from within Jay, assaulting each siphon or tendril that dared approach him. A crackling, white web spewed out from his body, a corona of light that ignited everything it touched. Instantly evaporating the water that surrounded the flaming tangle of vines.

Serpentine ribbons of dazzling white streamed towards the jaguar, finishing the job that their creator started above ground. They seared the jaguar's fur ash-black, sloughing off its infested flesh and roasting the parasitic vines beneath it.

The unleashed power escaped Jay's body. Obliterating his executioners and desecrating their sundered corpses.

He released everything.

One final bubble of oxygen frothed out from his lungs.

Jay watched it meander upwards. Floating casually amid the blazing electrical inferno waging war around it. He tried to reach it, to grasp the droplet of air with his fingertips.

He couldn't even move.

Jay's arms weren't restrained any more, they simply had no energy left.

Like this?

After all that, I fucking die like this?

Somehow, Jay's muscles forced a spasm out of his airless lungs. One final laugh at the absurdity of his situation.

He'd defeated the vines, achieved a breakthrough mid-fight, and yet it was about to end like this.

How patheti-

The sands shifted.

Jay twisted his neck, spending what little energy he had to turn and look to his side.

Ping shoved past the sand beside Jay.

Burrowing beneath his body, Jay's protector refused to let him die.

Ping slid beneath Jay's motionless body, she positioned herself beneath his torso and slowly began to rise.

Jay clung onto what little consciousness he had left as he inched towards the lake's rippling surface.

Ping could barely swim. She could barely support his weight.

Yet still she fought.

The black claws of unconsciousness clawed at Jay's periphery, snatching at his eyesight. He clenched his jaw shut, even as his subconscious mind begged him to take one final breath. To fill his lungs with the sweet embrace of water. Of death.

He refused.

He felt himself rising, however slowly, and refused to give in. The world shot black as Jay no longer had the energy to fuel his eyes. He held strong. He refused to give in.

When his face brushed past the surface. An unconscious gasp wrenched his mouth open, pouring delicious oxygen down his throat. His muscles thrashed against the surface, launching spurts of water into the air. Jay almost fell back beneath the water, but Ping forced him afloat. Jay continued gasping for air, filling the cave with croaks of pain and joy.

He clutched onto his shield like a piece of driftwood and floated towards the lakeside.

After clambering out of the lake, Jay collapsed onto his back. He took another deep breath, splayed his limbs out beside him, and simply lay there.

Happy to be alive.