The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame [Isekai - LitRPG]

Essence burned Brittsha's skin as she passed through the portal. Her tunic was able to minimize the effect, but she would still be applying the healing salve later to calm the itch. Strangely, it was thanks to this discomfort that she was aware of her time held in transit.

As the seconds stretched into minutes, the pain dulled, relegated to background sensation by the consistency of the sting. Brittsha could do nothing but wait and worry. Had something gone wrong with the teleport? Was the portal defective? She couldn't understand what would prompt the System to hold her so long.

Brittsha was just starting to regret her choice of portal when the System finally let her go. It spat her out in a foul-smelling room, and she fell flat on her face, her muscles stiff and unpleasantly tingling. She stood and stretched, examining the area. It was enormous—large enough to hold a tournament back home—and blood decorated the floor and walls.

She wrinkled her nose. Did the System have no concept of blood-borne diseases? This was an epidemic waiting to happen.

A System notification appeared, blocking out Brittsha's view of the unpleasant room.

The previous challenger was unable to defeat the monster in this trial room. The reward has been increased. Please retrieve your weapon so the trial may begin.

Brittsha glanced at her staff. It lay on the ground where she had dropped it, soaking up the blood from the floor. She grimaced, pulling a cloth out of her Inventory to clean the soiled wood. Based on the System message, the fight wouldn't start until she was ready. That was uncharacteristically considerate.

The faint heat of Essence stung Brittsha's back and she turned around, expecting to find the portal at her back.

Her blood turned to ice.

She stared into the face of a small Emurian, held in stasis by the faint glow of an Essence shield. The monster's fury practically radiated off of it, filling the space with unchecked malice. Its trunk-like legs pawed the ground as it glared down at her, held in place but not immobile. Its three-foot-long horn came to a wicked point that was sharp as a blade, with the ability to manipulate space using magic.

Brittsha retreated to the other end of the room, holding her staff ready. An Emurian?! For new initiates, was the System Insane?!

Emurians were not considered to be a huge threat to a trained warrior, but a Level 5 Emurian could level a village if the proper wards were not in place. A Level 100 Emurian—if any insane person allowed it to reach such heights—could level a city with a single blast from its horn.

The trial will begin in one minute. Please prepare yourself.

Could Brittsha run? No. If she did, then someone else would be up against this monster. Judging by the amount of blood in the room, Devon wasn't the only one to fare badly in his match. How many humans would the monster kill before they knew to stay away from this portal? How many had already died?

Brittsha put her staff away, pulling out one that was already enhanced, albeit not quite as personalized as she would like it to be. She'd picked this one up in her first year of the Academy. Runes strengthened the wood and amplified any spell the user cast, but that was about it. Still, with the thickness of the Emurian's hide, bladed weapons would be all but useless unless she could create a point of entry first.

She felt for the Miasma in the air, planning to gather it to herself for a wind attack.

She froze. There wasn't enough Miasma to cast a spell. The trial room had even less Miasma than the tutorial space! How was that possible? The Emurian alone should be pushing out enough Miasma to cast several spells per hour!

Unfortunately, Brittsha didn't have time to figure out what was causing the scarcity of Miasma. The timer hit zero and the monster was released from its cage.

The Emurian roared, rearing up on its hind legs and charging toward Brittsha, its deadly horn lowered to skewer her. Brittsha dodged at the last second, allowing the Emurian's momentum to send it straight into the wall. Its horn plunged into the wood, getting stuck at the base. The Emurian roared thrashing its body to try and free itself.

Brittsha retreated to the other side of the room, her mind racing. If she couldn't use magic, she was basically defenseless! She had several talismans in her Inventory that might be useful, but if she activated them, the Miasma contained within might react negatively with the Essence in the air.

The Emurian managed to pull its horn out of the wood, shaking its head with renewed anger. Brittsha considered morphing into an Emurian, but she quickly discounted the idea. The transformation would be too slow, and even if she did manage to complete the transformation before the Emurian skewered her, she would be unable to use the same magic with no template to go off of. Monsters were all instinct. They had no thoughts or feelings—fake life forms created with the express purpose of holding Miasma and Essence in balance until it could be dealt with.

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The Emurian charged again and Brittsha repeated the same play, jumping out of the way at the last second and retreating as soon as the Emurian's horn was stuck in the wood.

That's two failed charges, Brittsha noted, remembering the descriptions of an Emurian's attack patterns from her studies. There should be one more, then it will switch to magical ranged attacks.

The Emurian got to its feet, turning to Brittsha with murder in its eyes. She prepared to repeat the process one more time. The Emurian lowered its head, pawing the ground.

Magic gathered around the tip of its horn. By the time Brittsha realized her mistake, it was too late. A ball of white light shot across the room, hurtling toward her with terrifying speed. Brittsha tried to dodge, but the magical projectile enveloped her leg and the bottom half of her staff. Brittsha screamed as the space magic tore gashes in her skin, splattering more blood against the wall.

The Emurian wasted no time, charging her as soon as its magic landed. Brittsha barely managed to crawl away, tears streaming down her face from the fear and the pain.

The monster wasn't following the patterns? How was Brittsha supposed to beat it if she couldn't predict its movements?! That was the whole theory behind dungeons: learn the monsters attack patterns, defeat them with minimal personal damage, disperse the energy so it's easier to filter.

But she wasn't in a dungeon. There were no runes here to control the monsters. She wasn't facing a controlled System object; she was facing a runaway golem with no master to hold it in check—and it was getting angrier with each failed attempt to kill her.

"Benefactor, if I survive this, I'm going to kill you myself!" Brittsha snapped, dragging herself to her feet. She couldn't put much weight on her injured leg, so she used her staff to balance, flipping it over so the undamaged side made contact with the ground. She reflexively drew a healing rune in the air, trying to stop the bleeding at least.

The spell was weak, but it activated, closing the smaller cuts on Brittsha's leg and shrinking some of the larger ones. She grimaced. The Emurian had let some Miasma seep into the air with that blast, but not nearly enough. She needed to figure out how to force it to use more magical attacks without getting herself cut to ribbons.

She would have to risk using her talismans…

Brittsha waited for the next charge, diving out of the way. She mistimed it, her leg slamming painfully against the Emurian's hard muscles, but she managed to roll away, limping far enough to get out of the range of its hind legs. While the Emurian tried to wrench its horn free from the wall, Brittsha pulled a healing talisman from her Inventory.

First heal, then shield, she thought. Please work!

She activated the talisman…

…it exploded.

The force of the blast threw Brittsha across the room, slamming her into the opposite wall. The shock of the impact sent pain rippling through Brittsha's back and limbs. She fell to the floor in a crumpled mess, too stunned to move for several moments.

The Emurian roared in pain, caught within the blast radius of the explosion. It bucked and kicked its hind legs, trying to free itself. Brittsha watched through blurry vision as it yanked its head back with a loud crack. The Emurian tumbled backwards, its horn falling to the ground, one edge jagged where it had snapped off from the force of the monster's panic.

Brittsha blinked. This was a good thing, wasn't it? The Emurian's power source was its horn. It shouldn't be able to cast magic now. The monster paced back and forth angrily, growling in Brittsha's direction but too nervous to approach.

It's trapped, Brittsha thought. It's just a matter of time until—

The Emurian roared, but instead of rushing her like she expected, it raised the jagged stump of a horn into the air. Balls of space magic appeared throughout the room, one nearly taking Brittsha's arm off. The wobbly unstable spells hummed with uncontrolled magic, the sound growing as the Emurian put more and more of them into the air around them.

"Are you nuts?!" Brittsha yelled. "You'll kill us both!"

Even if the Emurian could understand her, it wouldn't care. It stomped its feet, trying to force the defective horn to create a focused blast.

A System prompt appeared.

Unstable magical activity has been detected in this trial room. Do you require evacuation? Your trial will be considered a failure, but you will not receive a penalty title.

"Yes!" Brittsha shouted. "Get me out of here!"

Brittsha's skin burned with Essence, but an unexpected pain in her right shoulder made her cry out. A pocket of space magic appeared, shredding her shoulder down to the bone. She screamed, falling to her hands and knees.

The teleportation light vanished.

There are too many active spells in the area for stable teleportation. Please clear the area so the System can evacuate you.

Brittsha stared at the prompt, the brief glimmer of hope dying in her chest. "Are you serious?!"

She dismissed the window, anger and desperation growing in her chest. No spells, no talismans; she was basically a sitting duck. She did the only thing she could think to do in this situation. It was a risk, but her other option was death, and she refused to fail less than twenty-four hours into her first mission.

Brittsha started to shape-shift.

It was slow—painfully so. She didn't have much to go on besides the rampaging Emurian and she wasn't even sure if she could copy something that wasn't sentient, but she stretched her senses out anyway, forcing her magic to work on what little Miasma she could squeeze out of the air.

Her magic responded, latching on to the Emurian. Her arms thickened into massive trunks. Her body grew to several times its size and her vision blurred. She could feel it, the spatial magic in the air. As her face grew longer and a horn sprouted from her forehead, she could feel the vibrations all around her.

Pain exploded on Brittsha's side as her still transforming body collided with broken space. Magic tore gashes in her half-formed skin and her blood—Emurian silver, human red and Corvi black all mixing together in her half-shifted form—splattered onto the floor beneath her.

Her side healed but another pocket of magic caught her shoulder. She gritted her teeth, forcing her tired mind to focus. She turned her senses to the Emurian in hopes of learning how to counteract the magic, or at least how to keep the unstable spells from dragging the roof down on top of them.

Blinding fear flooded Brittsha body. She roared, nearly losing hold of the shift. The monster was terrified; desperate to escape the unfamiliar environment that brought so much pain. It was angry as well. Angry at the small creatures that pestered it unendingly. Angry at the wall for breaking its horn. Angry at the flash of light that took it from its home.

The Emurian wanted to return home; to its fields, to its herd…

…to its mother.

Brittsha froze, her mind going blank at the sudden realization. It's… a baby?!