Light was only just starting to break through the thick, intertwined branches of the Black Pines when I stepped out of the cabin.
The moss gave way slightly under my feet, crunching softly. The branches above creaked faintly, even though there was almost no wind.
"Today the choice is yours," Zeno said quietly.
He stood leaning against the log wall of the cabin. The old man was wrapped in a cloak and leaned on his staff. His gaze was fixed on the trees ahead. "Strength decides nothing. You decide."
I stepped forward, moving down into a shallow ravine shrouded in pale mist. My muscles were tense, but there was no panic. Everything happened slowly and deliberately.
Then the forest fell silent.
Even the faint creaking of the branches vanished.
An anomaly. I felt it before I saw it: the air temperature dropped sharply, and frost instantly crystallized on the grass ten meters away.
At first, the movement was barely noticeable. Then came a sudden lunge. From behind the trunk of a fallen tree, a vortex of gray smoke and dark, humming energy burst forth. The creature vaguely resembled a large cat or a fox, but its proportions shifted constantly. Its legs were too long, its back hunched. Its eyes were empty voids radiating cold.
It stopped, and I froze along with it. My breathing remained even, though my pulse inevitably began to climb.
"Not now," I whispered, physically keeping "Will to Live" on a short leash.
The beast closed the distance with a sudden spring.
The first strike came from the side. A shadow paw with elongated, translucent claws slammed down onto my left shoulder. I tried to move out of the line of attack, but without magical acceleration, my body was too slow.
The claws dug into the bone plate.
The plate shifted, the taut sinews absorbing part of the kinetic energy, but the rest went straight into me.
A vibration shot through my collarbone, echoed in my ribs, and traveled down my spine. I heard a crunch.
At that moment, "Will to Live" rebelled. The body's safety system wailed at the threat. I felt a deathly cold rush to my eyes.
For a fraction of a second, I almost gave up. The pain was too intense. I felt the world lose its color, graying at the edges of my vision. But I remembered Zeno's words.
"No!" I wheezed through clenched teeth.
I shoved the skill back and took a clumsy step backward, barely dodging the next attack. The beast leaped again, changing its angle right in mid-air. I tried to read it, seeing how the air compressed right before it launched itself.
A small step to the left. A slight pivot of my torso, shifting my weight to my good leg. Its claws slashed through the air a millimeter from my chest, leaving an icy burn on my skin.
"It won't kill you if you calculate it," Zeno's voice came from somewhere above, completely calm and... bored.
I understood. And I applied it.
Concentration. Breathing. The angle of my foot placement. My left arm barely obeyed, so I used only my right arm and my torso. I directed mana outward, forcing the beast to miscalculate.
It lunged at me again. At the peak of its leap, I thrust my right hand forward, sharply changing the air density across ten square centimeters.
The beast's paw slipped off this invisible "bump." Its mass carried it forward on inertia. I caught the moment and delivered a kick just below its back knee.
It slammed into the damp grass, kicking up a cloud of slate-gray smoke. But even so, it was still moving, trying to recover.
My pulse pounded in my temples. My breath escaped in ragged wheezes. The muscles in my back and thighs burned with lactic acid.
"Strength doesn't save you," Zeno said, slowly stepping out from the trees and stopping a couple of meters away. His face remained expressionless. "A person saves themselves. You control yourself."
The beast wouldn't let up. It began to circle, merging with the fog, turning into a blurred gray smudge. I exhaled and took a calm step toward the roots of a large pine tree, covering my flank.
As the beast leaped over a fallen log, preparing to strike from above, I directed a short pulse of pressure straight into its face. It jerked its head, losing its balance again, but this time it didn't fall, only throwing off its strike. Its claws tore bark away a centimeter from my ear.
"Breathe," I whispered with bloodless lips. "Just breathe."
It leaped a third time, aiming higher, at my throat.
I let it get close, feeling the air vibrate before its gaping, toothless maw. I waited until the very last fraction of a second.
When the distance closed to half a meter, I raised my right hand and released the accumulated pressure. With a pop, the air rushed inward, filling the void. The beast was sucked into this vacuum pocket, tearing its own structure apart.
Crack!
The entity collapsed into the grass in a shapeless mass and dissolved into the air within a second, leaving behind nothing but a scorched patch of moss and a sharp smell of ozone.
I remained standing. My knees trembled faintly; I had to lean against the pine trunk with my good hand. Zeno came closer, leaning on his staff, and looked at me intently.
"Feel it?" he asked quietly.
I didn't answer right away, understanding what he meant. My chest was burning, my shoulder throbbed with pain, my breathing was ragged.
"I feel it..." I exhaled.
"That is what life is, Iron. Not your calculations or your schematics. But all of this," he nodded toward me, "dirty, crooked, and painful."
"Is this how you always give support?"
"Only to those who have a chance of surviving," Zeno shrugged. "For the rest, there's no point anymore."
"Then consider me lucky."
Zeno turned back toward the path. "Don't flatter yourself. That was a warm-up."
I took a step after him, feeling my body ache. "Then you chose a strange time to start talking like a wise teacher."
Zeno grunted without even turning around.
"Can't I be a wise teacher for a bit? Besides, you chose a strange time to finally start thinking like a living human."
I said nothing.
"And remember," he added, "in the outside world, they won't give you time for these 'experiments' of yours."
"Which is exactly why I need the time to run the experiment now."
"Well, we'll see about that," the old man said, taking a step forward and heading deeper into the forest. "Let's go. A gray needle-root grows nearby. It'll take the inflammation out of your shoulder."
I followed him, feeling my body respond with pain at every step.