shoots self

At once, the sound distorted and stuttered, warping as I Accelerated. The first of the glass shards, razor sharp and as long as my hand, slowed in its approach and seemed to gleam in the midday light as it sluggishly approached. Bai Hu rose around me, taking a step out of my body until only the tail around my ankle connected us and then turned to face me. Without a moment’s hesitation, a Magic Missile appeared in his hand and flashed through the short distance between us, hitting me in the upper arm—and even through my Adamant skin and all my defenses, I felt it drive a clean hole straight through my arm, my HP dropping a fair bit as it went.

Good, I thought, paying no real attention to the blade that found its place in my throat a moment later, shattering against it. I took a moment to gauge both the damage I’d taken from the Missile and the miniscule amount the glass shard had chipped away, double checking my math.

Then I cut the power to the Adamant Serpent’s Skin and tore my way out of the shell of my flesh. For a moment, I felt, well, skinless, but all it took was a quick healing to erase the sensation. A moment later, the next storm of shards followed in the wake of my testing attack, ripping through my flesh like bullets and scrapping hard against my bones. I felt pieces of myself fall away, kilograms of my body being shorn from my frame, but I ignored that, too.

Amazing what one can get used to, given time—though the fact that I had gotten used to this probably said something about me. I liked to think it would be about my ability to endure pain, persevere for the sake of others, or something similarly heroic, but given all the things I’d done and intended to do, one could probably make an argument that I was crazy, or at least that I reacted differently enough from the norm to seem that way.

Especially since I didn’t think it was enough anymore. I pushed my Acceleration to give myself more relative time to work with and shifted my power, curling my fingers—Bai Hu’s fingers—around another Magic Missile and firing it point blank at the exact same spot as before.

This time, I felt my arm explode right beneath the shoulder, the attack tearing it away despite my Physical Resistances. I kept myself from stumbling in the face of the attack, healing myself as the swirling storm of glass shards added more wounds to my body, and waited for my other arm to be blown off. I didn’t keep myself waiting long—I had too much self-respect to do such a thing—and was quickly in need of another healing.

The process repeated five more times, the attacks carefully hitting different parts of my body to allow me to observe the results. After testing it on each of my legs in turn, I blew a trio of careful holes through my chest, targeting them precisely. Mentally noting the results, I nodded to myself, nodded back simply because I could, and fell into a rhythm. Glass shards swirled through the air, tearing at me viciously, but Bai Hu’s attacks were far fiercer as he shot me through with Magic Missile after Magic Missile, the attacks coming exactly as fast as I could heal them, which was quite quickly at my current speed.

It took a bit of getting used to. My Magic Missile was an attack with Defense Penetration and I’d been grinding it for some time now. Once there’d been a time when I’d have been pleased to level a skill from zero to ten in a day, but I was a fair bit faster now then I was then and had MP to burn besides. The skill had improved quickly and its power had risen with it, enough so that I needed to control precisely how I used it—but for the same reason, directing the attacks upon myself caused enormous amounts of damage and gave me a great deal to heal.