[Danger Sense] pinged. The sensation would have been weird enough normally, but having it drag me out of sleep was even worse, especially since this was my very first experience with the Skill. There was no hint of sun in the sky, the landscape lit up by nothing more than half a moon. Still the middle of the night.

  There was short grass beneath me, the area of mountain I'd chosen being far enough away from the battle against the Unbound that it had survived unscathed. The area lacked any trees to hide up, but given my jungle experiences thus far, I suspected that trees were no longer the safe haven I was used to.

  What hadn't been present when I'd gone to sleep was the snarling. Something barked to my right, followed by a crackle and a whimper. The jewel around my neck clicked quietly. Something else barked behind me. Another crackle and whimper, along with a subtle chink from my warding stone.

  With my high Processing, it took barely a second to switch from asleep to battle mode. Frankly, a second was all the time I could spare. I was surrounded by braccus raptors. Almost two dozen of the things, far more than the single group I'd encountered in the jungle. I didn't know how long the monsters had been present before [Danger Sense] woke me up, but I didn't have a spare ward, and I couldn't risk this one breaking. The jewel was already hot to the touch—I could feel it through my light armour.

  It was supposed to repel monsters, although I didn't know the exact mechanism. How then was I under attack? The instructions I'd been given when buying the thing—specifically that I couldn't just put it on in the middle of a fight and expect the monsters to leave me alone—implied that the monsters had been tracking me since before I activated it. That seemed plausible, given that I was some way from the jungle. They must have tracked me out of it and waited for me to sleep. The bestiary mentioned these raptors had surprising intelligence, but it hadn't mentioned this level of forward planning. Possibly because they hadn't had the opportunity to show it: it wasn't normal for single kids like me to traipse around in the jungle.

  The barrier was a last resort and wouldn't hold for long. Having little other choice, I sucked the entire necklace into my storage, deactivating the protection. Another of the raptors struck forward, attempting to headbutt the barrier. Since it was no longer there, that resulted in it comically falling over.

  The others hissed and tensed, then fell still and silent. Obviously things hadn't gone entirely to plan for them. If they'd waited for me to sleep, the fact that I was now awake kinda spoilt their idea. It seemed that they understood that I'd deliberately lowered the barrier, too, rather than them having broken it.

  Conversely, I was heavily outnumbered and completely surrounded, not to mention that the things were intelligent enough to have a plan in the first place. They had the advantage.

  They seemed to come to the same conclusion themselves, every one of them moving at once as they charged.

  "Lightning Shock!" I shouted, their few seconds of hesitation having given me enough time to charge it. A bolt of lightning leapt off to my right, striking a pair of raptors that were running particularly closely together. They both crumpled, snouts smashing into the ground with blood-splattering force, but there were no kill notifications. The spell wasn't strong enough to one-shot the C-rank monsters.

  Despite immobilising the pair, it didn't help end the encirclement. The monsters drew closer to each other as the noose closed, every second one of them slowing and falling back as the available space narrowed. They would arrive in seconds, and while I could perhaps squeeze off one more [Lightning Shock], what then? I'd dealt with the smaller pack in the jungle by making very sure that I didn't get surrounded. This time, any potential escape route was sealed from the start.

  ... No. Not every escape route.

  I hurriedly pulled a skill crystal out of storage—one that I hadn't been intending to use on this trip—as I leapt upward, evading the first set of snapping jaws by mere inches. The ring of raptors stared upward hungrily, now formed into three concentric rings having completely closed their noose. There was nowhere safe for me to land, and they knew it.

  I knew it too.

  And so I didn't land. "Float!"

  As I hung there in the air, in defiance of gravity, the gleeful expectation of the raptors faded into confusion, and then incredulity. They stamped and growled, but their frustration achieved nothing. They were land predators and had no means of attacking me in the air.

  Not that they needed to. At the first stage, [Float] truly lived up to its name, offering me no control whatsoever. I couldn't rise higher, nor travel sideways in an attempt to get away from the monsters. Maintaining it was also draining my Mana rather rapidly. All the raptors needed to do was wait.

  Thankfully, I did have means of attacking at range.

  "Lightning Shock!"

  Shame it required even more Mana than [Float]. I aimed bolt after bolt downward while I quickly ran through the maths. My full Mana was sufficient for thirty-six casts of [Lightning Shock]. There were twenty-one monsters. It took more than one strike to kill each one. I didn't have enough Mana to wipe out the entire pack even before I factored in [Float] draining it at a rate of five per second.

  "Lightning Shock!"

  One fell, and the others backed away a few steps, incredulity giving way to uncertainty. Alas, while these monsters were sufficiently intelligent not to have attacked me on sight back in the jungle, it seemed unlikely I'd be able to scare them away now. They'd fully committed. Things might be different if they had an alternative strategy to try, but now they knew I had some protection at night, they likely had no better ideas. They'd continue this assault until either they or I were dead.

  "Lightning Shock!"

  I still had stat points. I could boost my Mana a little. It still wouldn't be enough, though. I had five skill points, too, thanks to that level up. I could max out [Float], but it seemed unlikely it would give me sufficient manoeuvrability to escape. I could boost my physical stats and [Float], trying to reposition myself so that I wasn't surrounded, and fight rather than escape, but I wasn't sure [Float] would even permit that much, given that I currently had zero control.

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  It was a shame I hadn't read up on the Skill. It hadn't seemed important, since I wasn't intending to use the crystal, so I hadn't spent my limited time on it. Heck, I'd very nearly sold it. Damn the gods sending me here in such a rush.

  "Lightning Shock!"

  Two more fell, felled by a lucky strike that had arced between both, and the survivors went wild. They jumped, snapping at my ankles, but thankfully weren't quite able to reach.

  A side thought pointed out that perhaps my logic that the gods wouldn't send me out here on a suicide mission because there would be no point was, perhaps, na?ve. It was possible my death was the point, and the gods wanted to get rid of me before past-me came out for another visit.

  I could spend skill points on [Lightning Mage], but [Lightning Strike] had a higher Mana cost than [Lightning Shock]. Even if I could one-shot the raptors with it, it wouldn't aid my situation.

  "Lightning Shock!"

  It was time to think a little further outside the box. How many spare daggers did I have in my storage?

  The answer quickly became zero as I pulled out knife after knife and threw them at the raptors, doing a bit of extra damage in between my lightning bolts.

  I'd finally made a decent impact on their numbers, but I was still surrounded and I only had the Mana for a few more bolts. I wasn't certain I wanted to spend it; the dearth of Mana already had me feeling lethargic, and spending more would impact my physical abilities when this inevitably devolved into a ground fight, but perhaps I could take out one more.

  [Danger Sense] pinged again, and I spun in the air to see a mouthful of teeth flying uncontrolled toward my face. Down below, I saw another raptor with buckled knees, struggling to stand. One had leapt off the other in order to reach me! Damn their intelligence.

  My hands were empty, having thrown all my daggers except for my best ones, which were in my storage ring. I didn't have the time to grab them. I did have a charged [Lightning Shock] ready to go, though.

  I pointed a hand at the ballistic raptor.

  "Lightning Shock!"

  I wasn't quite fast enough, the monster biting down as I delivered a lightning bolt to its throat. The shock, and resulting muscle spasms, caused it to clamp down on my arm. Hard.

  Still, it could have been worse. It could have been my face.

  [Danger Sense] fired again, warning me of another threat from behind. Presumably another flying raptor. Without a [Lightning Shock] ready, there wouldn't be anything I could do about it, so I cancelled [Float], dropping like a stone as I brought a dagger out of storage into my good hand. There was still a dead raptor clamped onto my other, which wasn't ideal, but at least it pulled me out of the sky faster, having already been falling at the point I cancelled [Float].

  ... Which made me glad I'd cancelled the spell, actually, else it would have done even more damage to my arm.

  This was all down to a brawl, now, so I dumped everything I had into my physical Stats. I'd be getting another level or two if I survived this, anyway.

  The impact with the ground caused the dead raptor to finally release my arm, which wasn't in a good state. There were big holes in my armour, the flesh beneath deeply pierced and bleeding profusely. I needed a potion, but the other raptors weren't about to let me have the time required to drink one. After so long in the air, they hadn't been expecting me to suddenly land, so I'd caught them by surprise and hadn't fallen into a waiting field of claws and teeth, but they were already reforming their circles. I only had seconds.

  "Heal!" I cried, hoping it would be enough to stop me bleeding out. A wave of lethargy struck me, the side effect of almost completely draining my Mana, but I hung on. I couldn't stumble now.

  Thankfully, while I was injured and suffering from mana exhaustion, the surviving raptors weren't in perfect condition either. Every one had electrical burns to a greater or lesser extent. Even if [Lightning Shock] hadn't killed them, it had certainly slowed them down. They'd repositioned somewhat in order to jump at me, but with their injuries and reduced numbers, their coordination suffered, and they failed to once again close their net in time. I was able to dive between them, finally escaping the encirclement, and slicing at a knee as I passed, disabling another of their number.

  From there, things devolved into a violent brawl. The injured raptors no longer had the freedom to employ advanced tactics. I didn't have the Mana to use active Skills, with even [Stab] being off the table. I had to rely on [Dagger Mastery] and my Stats to dodge claws, evade snapping fangs, and slice at the muscular flesh. The single [Heal] hadn't fixed up my arm sufficiently to grasp a second dagger, but as long as I took care not to get fully encircled again, it didn't matter. We were all injured.

  No way was I going to die here. I refused to die here.

  Raptor after raptor fell, until, at last, none remained.

  And so I survived the night-time ambush.

  The tension left my body all at once, and I flopped over forward, face-planting into grass scorched by lightning and muddied by blood, both raptor and human. It was all I could do to roll over onto my back and get my warding stone back around my neck. I didn't even have the energy remaining to retrieve my thrown daggers.

  "Heal," I mumbled, spending the dregs of my Mana to further fix up my pierced arm. Hopefully there would be no lasting damage, and I could finish its repairs in the morning. But with the last of my Mana gone, I could no longer so much as twitch a finger. If I was attacked again this night before my Mana recovered, I was doomed.

  With everything done that I could do, my consciousness finally slipped, and I fell into a dreamless sleep.

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