Flicking its head, the giant snake tossed the limp body it had stuck on its horn to the side, letting it drop to the ground with a sickening thump. Vin stared at the elite monster that had somehow risen from the grave, his eyes darting to the three fresh victims it had already claimed. To his shock, he also spotted what looked like the deflated and shrunken charred corpse of the snake tangled in the grass from his spell only a few feet from the monster. It only took him a second to realize what must have happened.

  “The bastard shed its skin?!” Vin exclaimed, confirming that the snake was in fact the same monster he’d thought Lieutenant Myers had taken down before. A quick look around him showed Myers backing up a beaten and bloodied Spur at the other end of Section C as the colonel went toe to toe with what looked like a bipedal tiger made of stone. Realizing he wouldn’t be getting bailed out again anytime soon, Vin grit his teeth, trying to come up with a solution.

  Even if he couldn’t sense the exact amount of mana inside himself, his throbbing headache made it quite clear that he barely had enough mana left for a standard Entangle spell at this point in the battle, let alone an empowered one. Alka was still busy with their enchanted sword on the other side of camp, so he still didn’t have a weapon capable of cutting through the snake’s scales either. Shia had long since gone to help Shredder with the defense of Section D, and he hadn’t seen Scule or Reginald since the start of the battle, so he couldn’t count on any assistance from his companions.

  Think, Vin, think! He racked his brain, trying to think of something, anything, that would work against the giant monster as it continued its killing spree. He’d never realized just how limited his current spell selection was, even with his ability to alter runic structures on the fly, and he swore then and there he’d focus on improving his magical arsenal if he survived this battle.

  I could what, adjust my Renewal spell and try to give the snake cancer or something? That might kill it in ten years, but doesn’t do me any good right now! Use Concealment to sneak up on it? That’s not how that spell works, and even if I could, I can’t actually hurt it. No, the only thing that did anything was trying to restrain it, but even with mana empowering the spell, the grass just isn’t strong enough to hold the snake for more than a few seconds. I need something that won’t snap under the monster’s incredible strength. Something durable. Something like…

  Vin paused, his eyes landing on what might very well be the answer to their problems.

  “Oh, I hope this idea isn’t as stupid as I’m starting to think it is.”

  Not giving himself a moment to talk himself out of his desperate idea, Vin sprinted forward, darting past the surprised line of defenders and running directly toward the massive snake. Even the monster seemed momentarily taken aback by his sudden charge, but it didn’t remain surprised for long. Letting out its strange hiss-roar hybrid, the snake’s head shot forward as the monster attempted to impale him on its horn like it had so many others. Yet right before he was skewered, Vin used the final dregs of his mana to fire off an empowered version of the new spell he’d learned during his run back to camp.

  “Light!” He screamed, burning through all his remaining mana to unleash a concentrated beam of light that would put any spotlight to shame directly into the snake’s eyes. The spell only lasted a split second before his mana sputtered out, but it was enough to blind the snake, causing it to reflexively flinch away and its head to miss him by the slimmest of margins before slamming into the ground a few feet to Vin’s left. Not wasting this chance, Vin continued his mad dash, thanking his past self for investing a few points in dexterity as he ran for the only thing he thought would be durable enough to help him restrain the monster.

  With only seconds before the snake would be on him again, Vin reached his target and quickly grabbed the snake’s own discarded skin, yanking it free from the bits of grass still wrapped around it.

  Thankfully, the large snake skin seemed to have shriveled up drastically after being discarded, making it far easier for Vin to rip free from the grass than he’d been expecting, even with only one working hand. And unlike regular snake skin, despite having been blown up twice and hacked at with weapons, the empty skin was still in pristine condition, if a little blackened, meaning it would hopefully be strong enough to carry out Vin’s insane plan.

  The snake skin felt strangely smooth to the touch and he grabbed as much of it as he could carry, trying all the while not to think about that same texture inevitably crushing him into the ground when the snake next attacked. Thankfully, he should have at least a few seconds-

  Some silent, unknown alarm screamed in the back of Vin’s head, and he somehow knew without a shadow of a doubt that death was coming from directly above him.

  With no time to think, Vin instinctively trusted this strange feeling of dread and threw himself to the side, barely dodging the snake’s muscular tail as it slammed down hard where he’d been standing a split second earlier, causing the very ground to shake from the force of the impact. Realizing how close he’d just come to being flattened, Vin shuddered, sending a second silent prayer of thanks to his past self for picking up the Threat Detection passive.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Even if he still had his divine boon active for the day, he didn’t know how much that would help him against something like being crushed to death, and he wasn’t in any rush to find out.

  Gripping the snakeskin in hand, Vin watched as the snake yanked its horn out of the ground and turned to stare at him, blinking the last of the dots from its eyes. He wasn’t sure if the snake recognized him as the one that had held it in place while Myers blasted it, but the monster’s slitted eyes seemed to radiate hatred as it stared at him. Ignoring the yelling, jeering defenders trying to draw its attention, the snake seemed to tune out the rest of the world, its focus entirely on Vin.

  Great plan genius. You barely managed to get the snakeskin, and now you’re going to die clutching it like a security blanket. If there’s some sort of afterlife, I’m going to give the Gods a serious piece of my mind about all this.

  For a few tense seconds, neither Vin nor the snake moved. Vin because he had absolutely no idea how to go about getting the snakeskin around the snake without getting impaled or crushed, while the snake just seemed to enjoy basking in his despair. Just as Vin began accepting his inevitable demise, he spotted a blur of motion erupt from the ground less than a dozen feet from the elite monster.

  Like miniature guardian angels, Scule and Reginald flew out of a nearby hole in the ground directly at the giant snake, utilizing their incredible speed to close the gap in the blink of an eye. Before the snake could even register what was happening, the duo reached their target, and Reginald slowed down just enough for Scule to lean over and plunge both of his daggers into the monster’s lower body. Each of the tiny blades stabbed straight through the snake’s fresh skin like needles as they sank deep into the muscle underneath.

  Vin wouldn’t have thought the giant monster would even notice the two tiny pricks from Scule’s daggers, but to his surprise the snake reacted immediately. The moment Scule’s attack landed the snake let out a roaring hiss unlike anything Vin had heard before, and it reflexively swung its tail toward the rat and his rider. Vin watched in horror as the muscular tail shot toward Reginald, but the little rat impressed him once again.

  Without any direction from Scule, Reginald leapt up off the ground, landing briefly on the side of the snake before kicking off for additional height, barely managing to clear the tail that swept through the space they’d been standing in just moments before. The snake’s tail ended up missing the duo by barely a hair, instead slamming into its own body and eliciting a fresh roar of anger from the monster.

  The second Reginald landed on the ground, the rat sprinted over to Vin, pausing for just a moment.

  “That was the most potent muscle relaxant I had!” Scule shouted, carefully watching the snake to ensure it wasn’t about to try and crush them again while Reginald tried to catch his breath, still panting heavily from his brief sprint. Thankfully, the snake seemed to be busy reacting to the poison, as rather than attempting to crush them, it was slowly swaying back and forth, seemingly struggling to keep its eyes open.

  Scule looked at the still upright snake and clicked his tongue, frowning. “That much poison would be enough to kill a regular person five times over, but I don’t know how effective it will be on something like that. This is why I don’t like fighting monsters!”

  “Well I appreciate the help. I’m pretty certain you just saved my life,” Vin admitted, a sense of hope rekindling within his chest as he watched the snake struggle to stay awake and upright. His grip on the snakeskin tightened as he realized his half-baked plan might actually work now. Hell, he might even live through this battle after all.

  “Great!” Scule said, grinning up at him. “Try and remember that when you hear about what I stole from your camp!” Before Vin could say anything, his companions took off once again, darting down another nearby hole and vanishing from sight.

  “Damn it Scule,” Vin muttered, unable to hide his grin as he steeled himself for what came next. He never would have expected a kleptomaniac the size of a cell phone would make such a useful companion, but he supposed this new world was filled with all sorts of surprises. Besides, no Scule means no Reginald, and I’m already growing pretty fond of that little rat.

  The snake finally seemed to have adjusted somewhat to the poison, as despite the heavy swaying, the monster was once more focused on him. Slowly slithering forward, it reared its head back for its next attack. This time however, thanks to Scule’s poison slowing down the monster, when the snake’s head shot forward in an attempt to impale Vin on the end of its horn, Vin was ready.

  Using the snakeskin like a matador would a cape, Vin twisted to the side, narrowly avoiding the piercing strike before leaping up onto the back of the snake’s neck. Cursing his missing hand yet again, Vin shifted the handful of snakeskin he currently held to his mouth and bit down, leaning forward and grabbing the other end before the monster could remove its horn from the dirt. Yanking his makeshift rope tight around the snake’s neck, Vin pulled the snakeskin taut and held on with all his might as the snake reacted to the sudden strangulation.

  Immediately, the snake tore its horn from the earth and lifted its head up into the air as it thrashed from side to side in a desperate attempt to dislodge Vin from his impromptu seat upon its neck. Clamping his legs together and holding on with every fiber of his being, Vin continued pulling on his makeshift garrote; one end gripped tightly in his right hand and the other clenched between his bleeding teeth.

  The pain in his mouth was like nothing he’d ever experienced, and his head was being thrown around like a dog on a chew toy as the snake flung him about, but he knew if he ended up letting go he’d never get a chance like this again. While he wasn’t all that confident in his strength, thanks to Scule’s poison weakening the snake and the durability of the monster’s own skin he was pulling on, this was a battle of endurance more than anything.

  And Vin had endurance in spades.

  Screaming around the snakeskin in his mouth, Vin held on as the monster continued to buck under him. The snake tried everything it could to get him to let go, but Vin refused to release either end of his improvised rope. As the monster gradually grew weaker from a lack of oxygen, its movements finally slowed, and then halted.

  Just as Vin was beginning to wonder if it was finally over, the snake jerked into motion. Raising its body up as high as it was able, the monster whipped itself violently backwards, directly at the ground with the full intention of crushing Vin under its enormous weight.

  Vin had just enough time to scream around the bloodied snakeskin before he was smashed into the ground with a few metric tons of monster directly on top of him.