The question scholars and experts are also asked, is “how do I know what I can do, where my limits are?”

  The answer given is quite simple. Test yourself, push your expectations, expand your mind and assumptions. Those with rigid thinking will find themselves quite able to determine specific bounds wherein their powers and abilities lie.

  For those with more vision, you will find your limits vague and ever expanding.

  

  Willow

  Rat Keep, Sheerna

  

  The rat king screamed, bellowed, shrieked, and exploded. The sight of blood, bone, and viscera flying out in every direction was shocking to say the least. Faster than she could blink, the creepy king became meat paste. Then things got worse.

  Every scrap of the king’s former body began writhing and twisting. Willow, along with Ravvy and Luzzi frantically started trying to slap away the bits clinging to them. Luzzi had it the worst, with large chunks seemingly intertwined with her fur. Urgh, I hope it doesn’t mat up. That’ll be hell to get out.

  The flailing strips of meat went from weird floppy chunks of meat, to various sized red rats. Long strips of skin became deformed long thin rodents. Blobs of bone and blood congealed into jello-like approximations. And patches of fur and teeth wriggled into position to form a disturbing imitation of an unhinged taxidermist’s most disturbing work.

  Barely managing to hold down her bile, Willow picked up her frantic flicking-away pace. With a yelp, then another, she was rudely informed that her efforts were mostly in vain. Her back, thighs, and shoulders were all being ruthlessly torn into by the unnatural creatures’ teeth and claws. Even the seemingly goopy ones were easily able to cause her pain and frustration.

  Desperately, Willow entered her moment of focus. Only to continue being harmed by the pests clinging to her. They hadn’t even slowed down. With a shout of fury, she pushed a large chunk of her discipline mana through her skin along with a little pack of instruction mana. She shoved her intent into the makeshift spell, ‘rats fall off!’

  It did nothing. Similar to her many, many, attempts to use her mana to help her climb that damn mountain what seemed like a lifetime ago, it just failed. She was clearly doing something wrong, or her mana just didn’t want to be used that way. Not wanting to waste all the mana she’d expended, despite knowing she could recharge at least one aspect of mana to full with a moment of stillness, she changed gears. Instead of trying to affect the rats directly, she reused the same technique she’d found earlier. Wrapping the discipline around her body and sent a command to her own body instead, ‘skin, don’t break.’

  This time, it worked. The mana sank into her eagerly, ready to fulfill her command. The slowly climbing number of lacerations on her body stopped ticking upward. No longer distracted by the shockingly painful experience of being bitten by many differently sized pseudo-rats, Willow glanced around the battlefield.

  Her allies were helping each-other. Ravvy was glowing with his bright white light, the various rats burning and sizzling as he brought his hand toward each one scampering around Luzzi’s far. Meanwhile, Luzzi was rapidly creating distractions to occupy the thousands of vicious things doing their best to find and eat them. Oh shoot, part of a party. Right!

  Quickly taking the few steps necessary to regroup with her allies, she took a deep breath and channeled all of her emotions through her ability to refill her discipline. Topped off, she quickly entered her moment of focus and tapped each of her companions with a imperative command to be free again. To their credit, neither Luzzi nor Ravvy needed any explanation. They immediately understood what she’d done, having just had a similar thing happen mere moments ago.

  This time, Willow was feeling even more strain. Despite no longer trying to channel her emotions into mana while maintaining her moment, it was clear the previous cost hadn’t disappeared just because she stopped. Her body trembled slightly with an effort she could feel in her bones, despite knowing it was all in her mind. Ignoring it, she grit her teeth and pushed through, giving her allies the time they needed to regroup and plan.

  “Willow, how long?” Ravvy snapped sharply.

  She replied even before he’d finished asking, “Seconds.”

  “Luzzi, keep doing those illusions but focus on scent. I don’t think these things are using sight, I burned one of their eyes out and it kept coming. They’re either using smell, sound, or tremor. Since they’re rats, my guess is smell.”

  Speaking quickly, Ravvy was also quickly running his hands around Willow’s body to burn off all of her unwelcome passengers. She knelt, twisted and extended as needed to let him reach everywhere without complaint. Despite his diminutive size, Ravvy was quick and efficient. His glowing hands extended significantly from the edges of his palm and fingers, making his glowing hand close to double a human’s in size.

  Relieved to be free of the gross - dangerous, it’s cuz they’re dangerous - fleshy attackers, Willow nodded in thanks but kept her mouth shut and listened. Partially because it seemed Ravvy was taking control of the situation; mostly because she thought she might just scream if she opened her mouth. Every moment felt like a greater weight being added to a bar she was holding above her. I guess I found a new thing to practice. She grit through the horrendous effort.

  “Willow, when you drop this can you put it back up again?”

  “I can’t free you if I do.” She was entirely certain, she wouldn’t be doing this again today. If she tried, she’d probably end up out of commission immediately.

  “Anything else you can do to help us?”

  “Yes, I think so. I think I can make your skin resist being cut.”

  “Good enough. Do that, then just start hitting them. Luzzi will try and corral all of them into coming at us from one direction. Let it go.”

  Gasping in relief, Willow obliged Ravvy’s order. She hadn’t noticed while she’d had the ability active, but it looked as though a lot of the blood-rat-things had ran straight into her ability’s area of effect. Watching the color flash back into the area, at least a hundred of the creepy things flopped and twisted in piles. They’d all been frozen mid motion toward them as soon as they hit the perimeter.

  Ravvy took full advantage. Balls of radiant light flashed from his palm and consumed one disorganized mass after another. Meanwhile, the remaining things followed and snapped at nothing. Presumably, Luzzi created scent-only illusions to draw them where they wanted them.

  Tapping each of her companions, she sent a imperative command identical to what she’d put on herself, ‘skin, don’t break.’ She felt as if the instruction was grudgingly accepted. There was a sense of warning feedback, as if the skin itself was telling her to watch how bossy she was being. Uppity skin.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Having managed to free themselves of the creatures which had latched on at the beginning due to the surprising nature of the attack, the battle became all but a foregone conclusion. Willow handled anything which managed to slip by Ravvy’s wide-range orbs of bright light and Luzzi corralled the dumb creatures in such a way that they wouldn’t be surrounded again.

  The entire thing probably took no more than a minute, yet that was still too slow. Just as they finished the last bloody chunk rushing at them, the barn-style door which lead into the throne room was violently thrown off its track. Dozens of rat-men rushed in within seconds.

  “Retreat!” Ravvy called sharply. All three turned and sprinted toward the far wall.

  Willow shouted as they ran, “We’re in the attic! Should we break the floor?!”

  Shaking her head, Luzzi glared, “Don’t go even further off the story’s path!” Oh. Crawdaddy puss, she’s angry at me.

  “Willow, break down that wall!” Ravvy ordered.

  Seeing as there was only wall nearby, Willow surged past her two companions and rushed the far wall. Leaping, she pulled back her fist and flung it forward with full force. At the moment of impact, she sent an imperative command through her fist, ‘explode outward!’

  Pain. Blood. Landing with an instinctive roll, Willow was back on her feet before she realized she’d fallen. Her body was throbbing. Again, the pain felt like it was coming from her bones. From the very depths of her being.

  Grudgingly, she called out, “I’m almost out of juice. My body feels like it’ll break if I use my mana too much more.” It left a foul taste in her mouth to admit that, after being the literal cause of this current unpleasant situation.

  They were rushing through the medieval style rat-man city. Willow didn’t see a single rat-woman, just men. Either that, or they look identical to humans. Eyes flicking around the city as she ran, Willow was once again struck with the impossibility of this. Other than having a wooden ceiling, which when she glanced up looked far higher than before, there was nothing to suggest this was all taking place in an attic. They hadn’t ran into a single wall, support joist, or even seen any random fluffs of insulation.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Willow swore she saw Jemin watching and giggling in her cat-girl form. When she snapped her eyes in that direction, though, there was nothing. Stupid cat gave me PTSD.

  Ignoring the feeling of being watched, and mocked, she ran on. Their sprint lead to a tall stonework wall. Despite being as tall as she’d previously thought the ceiling was, the wall didn’t reach it. It didn’t even come close. The crossbeams of the ceiling appeared to be kilometers up now. If she didn’t still hear harsh screeches, hisses, and squeaks chasing them down, Willow would have spun around to check what the ceiling behind looked like. Is the entire thing changing retroactively, or is it just changing as we move onward?

  Suddenly, Willow stopped. The boisterous noise of their pursuers was entirely gone, silenced as if their audio track had been cut off. Spinning around, she found herself alone. Luzzi and Ravavka had both disappeared, as had all of the rat-man soldiers. What on God’s green Earth is going on?!

  She was now standing in the middle of a cobbled street, despite not remembering the transition from wood planks to stone and dirt. There was no wood wall or ceiling to be seen, in fact the road she stood on was illuminated by the warm Earth-like sun sitting in the middle of the sky on the horizon.

  “Adventurer! Adventurer! Thank goodness you’re here!” Called a high pitched voice.

  Turning again, Willow saw a child rushing up to her. He was holding a piece of paper and swinging it wildly in front of himself, “We need help! The rat king keeps stealing food from the bakery!”

  Dumbly, Willow accepted the paper from the boy and looked at it. It was a wanted paper, depicting an illustration of a debonair version of the rat king she’d met not ten minutes before. What is this fever dream?!

  

  Madrick

  Pashaka

  

  A quick dodge, followed by a lightning fast lunge with his rapier ran the thousandth ogre through. It fell, just as all the others had. Frustratingly, it failed to supply even a sniff of potentia. Worse, his inner war wasn’t fueled by the conflict at all. It felt insubstantial, meaningless.

  The waves of enemies had been coming strong for at least two days now, yet there was no hint of an end. In similar combat wave rifts he’d delved, Madrick had either been granted raw potentia per enemy slain, or between waves. Beyond that, his inner war had always benefited. Mana should be generated in conflict, not slowly lost.

  Today, he’d been forced to stop using his stronger spells and abilities, concerned he would actually run out of mana. Something which should be impossible for him, his path was fueled by conflict. Yet, here he was. It had been a thousand years, at least, since he had even thought of his mana as a resource with a limit while engaged in battle. In day-to-day life, it was something he managed carefully. While engaging in the glory of dominating his foes? Never.

  There was something wrong with this rift. It had ascended, yes, but that shouldn’t make it act like an illusion. Rifts were still real, they- “Fuck.”

  He groaned and began to weave his war, fury, indomitablity and strategy manas into a complex mesh of a spell. Ignoring ogres as they arrived and began roaring, throwing stones, and swinging weapons at him, Madrick let his body move in the dance of battle by instinct. Not a single opponent landed a strike.

  Several minutes passed as Madrick wove through his opponents, following an unheard music as the drums of combat pounded its thrilling rhythm for Madrick, and Madrick alone. Finally, the exceedingly complex spell weave was complete. The spell was one he rarely had reason to use, but he made a point to practice it at least once a year. He spoke the built-in activation phrase, greater break illusion.

  The world around him shattered. Rather than a desolate field of endless plains within which only mindless ogres rampaged, he was trussed up and laying on his back. Arms twisted behind his back, he could feel the hard wood of the carriage as it bumped and cracked beneath him. Flexing, he attempted to break what felt like simple iron. He failed.

  Narrowing his eyes, Madrick began pulling the same three mana aspects he’d just used, only to find nothing. There was no sense of his mana, not a single hint that it existed at all. It felt as though he was once again a simple human, back on Earth. In fact, the smells were similar. Fresh pine mixed with tar, and the harsh brine of the sea.

  A head poked into view above him. Sera. His sister. His sister who he had not seen since his execution, so many thousand years ago he knew not the count. His sister whose face he did not remember. Yet, he knew this to be her.

  “How…?” He asked, his voice breaking and choking as he felt bile rise. It was only then that he heard his body’s complaints. He had been badly beaten and broken. His throat was parched, while his stomach informed him it had been weeks since his last meal.

  Sera sighed and patted his head, “T’ll be over soon brother mine. The war council has agreed to your execution, y’see. Y’did more bad’n good this time. Nd’no one’s apt to forgive. Y’knew the price o’ blood to pay afore y’set out.”

  Forcing his protesting core muscles to pull him into a sit-up, Madrick shoved his broken body back with his feet. His back struck the side of the wall of the crowded carriage. Across from him, Sera sat unbound with a sad smile on her face.

  “Y’ve always been so strong. N’yuh use that strength for none but y’self.” Shaking her head, beads clattered as her mess of unwashed braided locks swayed. “Y’coulda made one hell’a chieft’n, had yuh just been patient. Had yuh just listened’ah bit.”

  “This isn’t real.” Madrick spoke firmly, ignoring the tearing the words caused his throat. It was all an illusion, he was certain of it.

  With another deep sigh, Sera sat back and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she leaned forward and stared into his eyes. “Brother mine, hold yuh head high afore they chop’t off.”

  The carriage suddenly jerked to a halt and shouts and calls came from outside. Light streamed in through the door as it was pulled open. Rough hands reached in and grabbed chains. Belatedly, Madrick realized they were connected to his ankles. He forced his teeth together to stop the undignified shout of shock which tried to escape as he was dragged bodily toward the doorway.

  Without ceremony or care, the two burly men whose faces seemed somewhat familiar yet blurred and uncertain, carried him between them. Each of the men held him under one arm pit, his previously mighty body was so emaciated that he could be handled like an unruly child.

  The beautiful, cloudless, sky made mockery of Madrick’s plight. A ray of sunlight struck the gleaming axe which the figure in black held over his shoulder. When his ‘escorts’ dropped him, Madrick managed to catch himself on his feet. He stood, holding his head high as Sera had asked.

  His knees struck the hard-packed earth, forced down by a harsh strike to the back of his legs. His neck struck the block of wood before him, courtesy of a hard kick to his back. The axe fell.

  Stupid illusions, if I respawn because of this I swear-

  “Are yuh sure this’s the right thing t’do, brother mine?” Sera asked as she paced in front of him.

  Glancing around, Madrick found himself sitting on a simple stool in a large tent. A tent made of thick leather, with metal rivets every thumb-length to prevent enemy archers from firing on him from afar as he slept.

  As he recognized his sister, so he recognized the scene itself. This was his final campaign on Earth, one which he’d failed due to pride and an eager sense of glory. With a sigh, Madrick relaxed.

  This one isn’t an illusion, then. It’s a relay scenario. They were rare and generally couldn’t be failed, per say. If one died during such a scenario, as he had, they would restart. Beyond that, passing a certain point in the story would count as a “victory” and rewards would be granted based on how well the rift thought he did.

  And this rift is giving me the opportunity to fix one of my greatest mistakes during the tutorial. Excellent.

  “Sera, I’ve had a change of heart. Let that silly nobleman in, I’d like to hear their thoughts.”