When we looked behind us we saw the Evil Rabbiter creature. Tons of them.

“I thought those were supposed to be rare?!”

“Yeah, supposedly!”

Out of options, we ran into the woods.

“Can you teach me magic?”

“Sorry, not possible. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless you’re using your blood as a substitute for mana.”

“Well, that sounds scary.”

“It isn’t scary if you don’t use it too much.”

“What will happen if I overuse it?”

“Well, you die due to blood loss.”

“Of course.”

“Okay. The first thing to do is to get a feel for your blood. Focus on your heart and feel how it pumps blood.”

I tried to get a feel for it, but all I could feel was my heart’s beat due to running.

“I don’t get it. Is there a different way?”

“There is. Do you know how you have nose blood that when the blood drops out, it feels like something warm touched your nose? Imagine this warmth leaving your body. Draw it out.”

I bit my fore finger really hard. Surprisingly the skin was really tough, so the wound was very small. I concentrated on sort of swiping it in the air with my forefinger… and it worked! But when more and more drew out of my finger, swiping it was not enough so I tried using all of my fingers, which made it feel less heavy and therefore easier to direct.

“It worked!”

“Congrats. You’re now a blood magician!”

Emiko beamed towards me with a bright smile, which looked slightly out of place considering we were still running from tons of those creatures.

“So how do I form a fireball?”

“You need to imagine it. Quite simple.”

Indeed it was quite simple to form a fireball, but to send it flying was a harder task. It was kind of like passing a baseball to someone.

And when I send the first one flying to one of those beings, I missed. Of course. So I sent another one and one of them simply spluttered all over the place. It was disgusting.

We were quite deep into the woods now. I figured out my limit was near 5 blood fireballs. I keep saying fireballs but there isn’t any fire in it. Instead, it’s blood and it’s hitting hard.

“I can’t run that long anymore. Any ideas, Melo?”

“How about climbing up a tree. Can they jump?”

“I’m not sure, but I believe they can’t jump that far.”

“Well, we can try it. If we can’t run anymore we’re in deep trouble anyway.”

To create an opening, Emiko created a firewall next to two trees, giving us a bit of time to climb a tree. I meanwhile readied myself for at least one more blood fireball.

And just when we were both on the tree, an Evil Rabiter tried to go for a bite by jumping. I denied their move by shooting the blood fireball at it. Of course, it splattered. But luckily, its remains missed us barely.

After seeing their fellow being splatter like that, it seemed like the Evil Rabiter lost motivation and one after the other left us. We however were exhausted and decided to recover our strength for a bit.