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It was a strange beast that looked like a griffin drawn by someone on drugs. It had a body of a lion and leather bat-like wings… there the similarities ended. The beast\'s tail was that of a scorpion and ended with a stinger that almost dripped venom. Instead of a lion\'s muzzle, the monster had features that were creepily close to a human face, but with sharp teeth of a predator.

I tried to remember if Rosha or Yvenna told me about monsters like these, and something sprang to my mind. It fit a description of a mantichora, a more chaotic version of griffins. Its venom was deadly, and the monster itself fairly powerful. With how high in the mountains it lived, though, the meetings with it were rare.

Well, wasn\'t I lucky, then? It didn\'t seem like mantichora had abilities I didn\'t have already, but EXP was still EXP. All these monsters who couldn\'t fly as well as I could, and didn\'t have ranged attacks to oppose my wind blades, were cannon fodder. What good would mantichora\'s venom do if it couldn\'t reach me? Yes, I was only immune to poisons if I ate them, with my mouth. But the mantichora was there, and I was flying up to a safe distance.

Call me practical.

I brandished my claws, expecting the monster to either fly after me or to leave me be. I wasn\'t going to let it fly, though—my hand already rose for a swing. The mantichora\'s tail moved at the same time, but I didn\'t think too much of it.

Our projectiles flew forward at the same moment. My wind blades and the needle that the mantichora shot out of its tail with a speed and precision of a bullet.

We both hit. My wind blades tore the mantichora\'s wings into shreds, and her barb stuck between the plates of my orichalcum carapace, so deep that I could barely see the end of it. I immediately felt the burning pain coming from it, and I knew I was poisoned.

With a hiss, I pulled the barb out, ignoring the drops of my flesh that were caught in it. The strength of the venom was no joke—I was already feeling the first signs of numbness in my extremities. I had to land before I crashed because I couldn\'t beat my wings.

So much for knowledge of my opponent. Well… I was itching for a good battle against an opponent that could do more than fruitlessly claw at me. One could say that my dream came true. Now I wished it didn\'t, and I wished I could slap magic armour on top of the orichalcum one. Sadly, there was an unexpected downside of having magic-dispersing carapace—it prevented Pest from putting any magic close to it. In other words, magic armour would quickly dissolve from a contact with my carapace, which made them mutually exclusive.

Carapace was stronger, anyway. But Pest was already in the progress of draining EXP for next levels of his magic abilities… And he learnt plenty of new things about magic from the books written by Willorio.

But the carapace alone wasn\'t always enough to stop a danger, like this time.

I descended to the ground and immediately had difficulties with keeping my feet steady and solid. I had to deal with the mantichora while I still could be more than a puddle of slime.

\'Pest,\' I commanded inwardly. \'Where\'s your poison neutralising spell you told me you just learnt how to do? Cast it on me, now.\'

\'Yes, Master.\'

Pest\'s voice didn\'t seem happy that I remembered about his ability… did he hoped I would die now? Ha! It would have to keep dreaming on.

Maybe I should order him to die if I died. But then, if I died, then he would be free from his contract… No, I was good as I was. But maybe I should order him to preserve my life with whatever he could. That is, if I risked giving him enough freedom to have the opportunity. Then he\'d annoy me with his voice.

Either way, the spell was going to take a minute or two, and I was sure I would be puddle by then. Meanwhile, the mantichora dealt with the shock of its wounds and charged at me like a ton of pure muscle led by hunger it was.

I could either jump aside, or send more wind blades at it—my control of my body wasn\'t enough for both at the moment. Even the diamond-clear state of trance that fell on me, together with the determination to survive and win, there were limitations to one\'s body no amount of perseverance could break through. I chose the latter.

The mantichora broke its charge to jump to the side, letting the wind blades harmlessly pass by. What\'s more, I saw it reacted not when the blades flew, but when I moved my hand to fling them. It read my movements… which wasn\'t the hardest movement to read, really. Even pigeons could jump away from rapid gestures. But the mantichora didn\'t just jump away, it jumped away from the trajectory of the blades.

It was much smarter than a griffin, too. Even with the wings that couldn\'t carry the beast into the air, it was a dangerous opponent. The only thing saving me right now was that, as far as I could see, it only had one stinger to shoot—but I also could see that it was already regrowing.

Not as fast as my claws, but faster than Pest would finish a spell.

So if I evolved my stinger far enough, I would I learnt to shoot it, too? If I picked the right branch of the development tree, that is. That was interesting.

As it stood, I had my own projectile attack, and if the mantichora wasn\'t going to let me hit it with my wind blades from a distance again, I would just have to go to it and stick these blades into its flat ugly face.