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

Chapter 99: When Compassion Meets Instinct



Brittsha stomped nervously, trying to process this new information at the same time as she tried to rein in the tempestuous emotions that came with being an Emurian. She was enraged by the pain in her shoulder, concerned for the calf in front of her and every other breath came with some sort of violent image of how she might enact revenge on the Benefactor for forcing her into this situation.

She took a deep breath, running through calming exercises in her head. She was not an Emurian. She would not give in to instinct.

She had to keep the trial room from collapsing first.

The Emurian calf bellowed a challenge, aware of the presence of a another Emurian in his vicinity. He was too young to be fighting over territory or females, but that didn't stop him from trying.

Brittsha bellowed back, her deep rumbling voice popping several magic bubbles in the area closest to her.

Wait. I can just smother the magic?

Brittsha drew in a breath and roared as loudly as she could. The ground shook with the sound, wood creaking under the pressure of her voice.

She wasn't sure if she literally stifled the magic, or if she simply startled the calf into ending his spells, but either way, the magic in the room promptly vanished as the calf collapsed, his head lowered in submission.

Brittsha approached the monster, sniffing curiously with her newfound senses. It was weak and tired, but it wasn't too badly hurt. The majority of the spells had been on Brittsha's side of the trial room.

A System prompt appeared, illegible with her terrible eyesight. It was no wonder Emurians were charging about all the time, their vision was all but useless.

Brittsha considered transforming back into her human form, but she wasn't sure how the calf would react. He watched her cautiously, expecting some sort of punishment for his insolence.

In the end, she didn't need to transform. As if sensing her inability to understand, the System message shifted, appearing in her minds eye instead of her physical vision.

Your opponent has lost the will to fight. Please finish the trial and return to the main tutorial area through the portal.

Trial time left: 40m 39s

Brittsha stomped her foot, scaring the calf as her instincts got the better of her. Finish the trial? Kill it? Her opponent was just a baby! How dare the System even suggest such a thing?! She would tear it to shreds! She would gouge out its eyes with her horn! She would—

Brittsha gritted her teeth, forcing down the violent thoughts. She wasn't an Emurian. She couldn't allow herself to think like one.

The overall sentiment didn't change, however. She had no intention of killing the calf. Which meant she needed to figure out what to do next.

The calf whined pitifully and Brittsha nudged it with her muzzle, concerned by its lack of movement. It was fine, wasn't it? It had looked fine…

Get up, she tried to say telepathically. You'll heal faster if you're moving.

Either the calf couldn't hear her, or it didn't understand language.

It shouldn't understand anything. Emurians were monsters; created by the System using runes and magic. They have no wants, no feelings. They don't eat. They don't sleep. They don't breed…

Except apparently, they did.

Brittsha laid down next to the calf, trying to nudge it into movement. There was something she wasn't seeing. With the rate at which monsters heal, the calf should have been back to normal by now, saving perhaps its horn.

Ten minutes passed as Brittsha groomed the calf, her worry growing. Was there an injury that Brittsha couldn't see? Maybe it was just tired from all of the magic it used…

Magic! Monsters healed by pulling in energy from the air, didn't they? But they needed a mixture of Essence and Miasma to do so. Even with all the Miasma released from the runaway spatial magic, most of it had already been used up healing Brittsha's wounds as she lay beside the calf.

She was the reason the calf wasn't healing.

Brittsha paced in front of the dying monster, her anxiety so strong that she was having trouble thinking like a Corvi. She needed to do something; needed to help the calf somehow.

Why? a treacherous inner voice asked. This is good, isn't it? You won't have to kill the calf yourself, and it isn't like the System was going to just let it live. It's a monster.

Brittsha growled. She had been expecting a monster, a soulless demon; an avatar of the System that felt no pain or fear. That isn't what she found. This was a living breathing creature; one that she had caused both pain and fear. Even as he fought to stay conscious, the calf respected her dominance, keeping its head lowered and staying as silent as possible.

She checked the System message again, her anger rising to a level that was likely unreasonable.

Your opponent has lost the will to fight. Please finish the trial and return to the main tutorial area through the portal.

Trial time left: 22m 20s

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

No, Brittsha thought angrily. I'm not doing this. You and the Benefactor and whoever else is involved with this blasted tutorial can all go straight to hell!

Before she could consider the wisdom of her plan, Brittsha transformed back into her human form—it would provide some protection from the Essence and allow her to use her hands.

The calf's eyes widened, an alarmed growl bubbling in his throat.

"Don't worry little one. I'm not going to hurt you," Brittsha said, her Emurian instincts only half faded from the recent transformation. She could still feel his fear, his desperation. "This better work."

The calf tried to stand, but his legs refused to bear his weight. He slammed back to the ground, a pained bellow vibrating in Brittsha's bones.

Brittsha had to do this before he hurt himself more—and before she lost her nerve.

She gritted her teeth, drawing the Essence rune for healing in the air. The rune glowed as Essence burned through her magical pathways. She channeled it through her body and into the rune as she forced her hand to keep moving through the discomfort. Pain blossomed in her shoulder where her partially healed injuries burst open with the pressure.

Brittsha cried out, startling the calf. He growled threateningly, pointing his horn at her, but Brittsha didn't stop the spell. She squeezed her eyes shut, pouring as much magic as she could into the rune.

This is stupid, her inner voice screamed at her. You're going to get yourself killed! And for what? A monster?!

Brittsha ignored it, pouring even more Essence into the spell. She felt like her body was on fire. Sweat poured off her brow, dripping into a puddle at her feet. She waited until she couldn't stand it any longer, then she pushed the spell towards the calf, giving it no directions. It would heal anything that seemed to be amiss. It was a quick and dirty spell, but Brittsha didn't have time for nuance.

The calf's terrified bellow tapered off into a confused whine as Brittsha's spell reached him. Her ability to read his mind was gone, but still connected to her spell as she was, she was able to see what was wrong with it.

The calf's insides had been cut to ribbons. It was a wonder it was still alive. Brittsha's spell took care of most of the damage, focusing on the organs first before moving outward. When it finally ran out of Essence, the calf was mostly back to normal, with only a few minor injuries that would heal up on their own.

Brittsha breathed out a sigh of relief, her legs giving out now that she had no reason to remain standing. She laid on the floor, breathing hard, her entire existence pain.

A shadow appeared above Brittsha, and she froze.

Right… how could she have forgotten? The calf was still a monster…

It stood above her, sniffing her with its enormous twitchy nose.

Yep, I'm going to die, was Brittsha's terrified thought. I've done something stupid and now I'm going to get stepped on by a baby monster…

The calf turned its head, peering curiously at Brittsha with its terrible eyesight.

Despite everything, Brittsha couldn't bring herself to regret saving the calf. He was adorable. The thought confounded Brittsha even as she had it. How could anyone think this monster was adorable?

She wasn't sure, but somehow she did.

The calf muzzled her chin, a worried whine rattling her bones. Brittsha laughed, raising her arms to protect her face as a glob of drool dripped from the monster's mouth.

The movement startled the calf, and he backed away, bobbing his head nervously.

Brittsha forced herself to her feet, putting her hands up to try to calm him. "It's all right," she said soothingly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The calf shook his head before settling down, taking a few steps closer to sniff Brittsha again.

"You're not going to kill me, are you?" she said, a small smile spreading on her lips. "You could have just said that. I nearly soiled myself."

The calf bumped Brittsha playfully with his nose, drawing out another laugh that devolved into a fit of coughing. The sharp taste of metal coated her mouth as she spat blood on the ground.

The calf stomped his feet anxiously, nudging her more cautiously with his head.

"I'm all right," she said. "I think…"

She was better than all right! She had used an Essence rune! She had cast a healing spell that no Corvi should have been able to survive. She felt an irrational sense of accomplishment at that.

A System prompt appeared, extinguishing Brittsha's brief moment of relief.

Please complete the trial before the timer has elapsed. If you do not complete the trial, you will be transferred back to the tutorial area to make room for the next challenger.

Time remaining: 15m 29s

This time, Brittsha's anger had nothing to do with her Emurian instincts. Kill it? Just like that? The calf wasn't doing any harm. But even if she forfeited the trial, another human would come along to finish it off in the next attempt. Brittsha didn't go through all this pain to save the Emurian for the next challenger!

The calf stomped its foot nervously, catching on to Brittsha's mood. She needed to figure out a way to get it out of the trial without killing it.

"You'll answer me if I ask questions, right?" Brittsha asked aloud, remembering how the System had responded to one of her thoughts during the orientation.

No System prompt appeared to respond to her question. The subroutines were likely automatically triggered by certain thoughts, but not exactly interactive. That added some difficulty to the situation. Brittsha absently patted the nervous calf, trying to calm it down before it decided to try and kill whatever was making her worried—it would probably get both of them killed if it tried using magic with its broken horn again.

She didn't think she would live through another Essence healing session.

Maybe there was something in her books that could help her with her current predicament. Brittsha had attended the academy for three years before she was yanked out to serve her country. What had she learned that might be helpful in this situation?

Brittsha pulled a blanket out of her Inventory and laid it out on the ground before pulling out her books—she was not going to put her precious textbooks on the blood-stained ground. Unfortunately, she still managed to smudge some of them, given the fact that she was covered head to toe in the evidence of her battle with the Emurian.

She took a deep breath, praying there was enough Miasma in the air to use her spell. It was a weaker spell than the others she had attempted, but the rune pattern was more complex. She had mastered the spell in her first year and it was the only reason she managed to keep up with her studies.

Carefully, Brittsha drew Miasma toward her and began tracing runes in the air: wait, read, wind, think, wind, remember, all, read, begin. Were she to write the spell out in a full sentence, it would be something along the lines of, 'let me read like the wind and think like the wind, and allow me to remember all that I read' with the 'wait' and 'begin' runes added as activation markers so the spell wouldn't start too early.

It was basic, but Brittsha had found that basic spells were often more predictable than ones that were unnecessarily complicated. In the end, intention was more important than the runes that were used anyway. Given enough willpower and a simple enough task, one could use magic without using any runes at all, but they helped to focus the magic and reduced the amount of Miasma needed to cast a spell.

Brittsha's spell activated, and the world seemed to slow around her. The Emurian's confused whine stretched out in her hearing, drawling to the point of fading into the background. She tuned it out, starting to flip through her books one by one. It wasn't a perfect memory spell—the effect faded with time—but as she read, memories of the last few times she read these books started coming back to her.

A headache blossomed over Brittsha's brow. She grimaced, cutting off the spell as she rubbed her temples. The spell didn't usually have side effects… she must have been more tired than she thought.

It didn't matter, though, because she had found a possible solution. It would just require a little bit of effort. There was one type of magic that relied entirely on telepathic abilities and thus, wouldn't need Miasma to complete: a beast contract.


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