The sound of it kicking off the ground filled my ears, I braced myself for the impact but it never came. Worst of all, I didn't hear its footsteps anymore.
'Its testing to see if I can still see it when it's hiding.'
Earlier it must have left stealth because it thought I would be able to sense where it was anyway, since I had done exactly that. Only now it seemed to realise my senses might not be quite as good as it initially thought.
'Bad news for me, that's for sure.'
There are ways to shift the odds back into my favour a little, first of all I would need to limit where it could actually attack from, luckily I had almost a perfect spot for such a thing.
The creature was clearly land based so if I walked on the edge of the cliff, it wouldn't be able to attack me from that side. Taking that idea one step further I could stand next to the river as well, making it so if it stepped into the river I could hear its footsteps again and know where it is.
'In fact, why don't I just stand in the river?'
Once again I sprinted. I had no clue how prepared the thing was to chase after me but I had no way to find out and no real way to control it, or to do so without significant cost. Sure I could find out exactly where it was if I let it get some free hits on me.
For a moment I tried to assess my own situation but that was a bit harder than it should be. For one it was night and I couldn't see how much blood I had lost nor how severe my injuries were. Sure I could estimate it off the pain I felt but I didn't actually feel much pain at all from my injuries anymore.
I wasn't sure if they had healed because of my immortality or if adrenaline was making me unable to feel it.
It felt like an eternity had passed before I finally heard the water splash beneath me as my legs sank into the knee deep water. While time didn't slow down with your life on the line you sure did feel every damn second.
I had secured a spot where I could roughly hear where the creature was approaching from, if it chose to approach at all that is.
I stopped in the river once I was confident enough I could react to any noise that approached. A few seconds later I did in fact hear a noise but it wasn't one of splashing water. The creature was breathing, panting even.
No wonder when it hid I didn't hear anything at all, it could hold its breath. That wasn't a common ability in the animal kingdom. Normally being able to long your breath for more than just a couple seconds only appears in species which are adapted to dive into water.
Was this some kind of water based species? Or was it descended from one and kept the breath holding skill in order to ambush prey more effectively. Either way it made sense why it knew to try drown me and why it was even hunting near a river in the first place, a species like this would of course still live next to water and would use water in their hunts.
What that also meant was that I was now in a spot it had even more advantages in. Worse yet I couldn't even leave since I needed it to be able to hear them approach.
'It just keeps getting better and better.'
I decided to calmly start walking to the cliff edge. It would once again reduce the number of angles it could attack from and on top of that it would be immensely dangerous to fight literally right on the edge of a cliff.
I hoped it would see that it would be too dangerous for it to continue the hunt and simply flee. Sadly from the slowly approaching breathing sound it seemed it was far more reckless than I thought.
'Why is it so intent on hunting me? I understand its the demon realm but why does everything stop at nothing in order to kill humans?'
The creature's deep breaths slowly turned more and more relaxed. That could only mean that it was now ready to attack again.
I focused on the mana surrounding me, making sure to search for mana which was moving in any weird manor. Doing so would let me understand a bit more about where the thing was and I was indeed able to understand where it was based on this shimmer in mana.
It was far from easy though, if seeing with mana made things akin to blurry blobs then this was like trying to find a hot object by looking for the haze above it that the heat creates.
Luckily it seemed I wouldn't need to do anything like that. It seemed that they had run out of patience and directly ran towards me before making a loud splash in the water I could only assume was it having pounced at me.
I ducked down in response, sure it had the possibility of the creature pushing me down into the water again but it also had the chance to have them simply fly off the cliff edge. That was a risk I was willing to try at this point. At this point I was honestly getting desperate. While my stamina seemed to be endless my mental focus definitely wasn't.
I was enjoying youth, being able to focus so strongly for so long was intoxicating but I knew that I still had limits and those limits would creep up before I realised it.
After a few long, painful seconds I heard splashes and steps right next to the cliff edge.
'Of course it wouldn't be stupid enough to have it go fast enough that it would plummet off the edge.'
A moment later I was the one charging this time. This was possibly the only chance I had to solidly finish the fight. I was confident I could push it off the edge without giving it any chance to dodge.
Though now it was the reverse situation, I now was at risk of being pulled down along with it. I had to weigh if taking this chance was worth the risk of falling off the cliff and dying along with it.
I didn't hesitate for even a split second, there was no room. I was already charging so I decided to completely commit. All I had to do was make sure It wasn't able to grab and pull me down alongside it.
I didn't know exactly where it was but I knew where it should be. Right before I was at the point I expected to make contact I crouched down as if to target its legs to push down. In response it jumped to avoid it naturally. I had expected this obviously.
Right as I heard it kick off the ground I also jumped. Slamming right into its side and hitting it with enough force to hopefully send it off the cliff side. I also had the advantage of the fact I didn't currently have my clothes on. It would thereby have much less to grab me with and pull me down along with it. For a moment joy and relief filled my mind from my accomplishment, from my survival.
A moment later I felt its paw grip my hair at the last second and pull me off the cliff alongside it.
My stomach dropped as I felt the weightlessness of falling.
I knew I was dead already. With my soul I could sense the side of the cliff draw further and further from me. It was now blurry but quickly turned into a haze as it continued to get further and further and therefore harder and harder to sense.
I hadn't expected to die on the first night in this new world. I wasn't even all that sad, not too long ago I had already come to peace with death even if I thought I would survive with the return spell.
I was beginning to really start feeling the wind. I knew that it was going to feel powerful put this was unlike any wind I had felt before.
'Well at least I ticked off sky diving from my bucket list.'
I didn't know why I found that joke so funny, it was kind of terrible but I laughed anyway. Some little joy right before I died.
I held my breath and let my mind go clear, accepting my death.
...
...
My body forced me to breathe, I had expected to hit the ground far sooner and now I was still here struggling to breathe against the insane wind speeds.
'Alright, how tall is this damn cliff?'
I must have been falling for almost half a minute by now, and on top of that this place had higher gravity than earth.
I felt the need to swallow and pop my ears as they were starting to hurt.
What made this experience worse was that I couldn't see how far the ground was. My soul sense didn't reach far enough and there was no light down there. Best I had were the far away pulsing crystals of the sky islands but those were so far they didn't serve as any reference point for how far I had fallen, nor how long it would take to hit the ground.
The anticipation was absolutely killing me.
'Well no, I guess it's the ground that's about to kill me.'
The joke wasn't funny to me this time.
'Why is this so boring?'
At the exact moment I had that though I suddenly was able to sense the ground, before I could even react to it I was already about to land.
"Fu-"