Three days later.
Splash!
A splashing sound echoed as Alice struck the ground and activated her ability.
"Water Field!"
A wave of water rippled from her fist and covered a decent area in a circular radius around her. She felt the increasing effects stagnate on her current use of the ability, meaning she had completed it—the final ability she would be making, for now at least.
After deactivating the ability, Alice closed her eyes and brought forward the memories of all the abilities she'd made already.
For her lightning moves, she had:
Thunder Surge: This ability allowed her to coat her body in lightning to enhance her physical abilities, especially her speed.
Snake Eyes: This allowed her to enhance her vision and processing speed using lighting. While activated, she sees everything in slow motion.
Snake Lightning: This allowed her to shoot a snake-shaped bolt of lightning, which restrains foes or chains between them.
Shock Venom: Through striking her foe with this ability, she can infect them with a venom-like electricity that slowly spreads and paralizes them. The more strikes landed, the quicker and stronger the effects will be.
Next were her wind moves:
Gale Step: By condensing the air under her feet and pushing herself off, she can boost her speed or achieve air travel.
Weightless: This utilized the air to lessen the weight of herself or an object.
Wind Burst: By infusing the power of wind into an ability, she can boost its power and effectiveness.
Last were her recently finished water moves:
Waterbreathing: By combining both wind and water, she can temporarily breathe underwater.
Water Prison: Allows her to trap foes in a bubble of water.
Water Field: Create a field of water.
And that was all the abilities she had managed to come up with and complete in the past four days.
'This should be more than enough for now. I need to master these abilities first before creating more.'
Alice was someone who valued quality over quantity. While she did create more than she planned to due to her excitement, it was always the plan to stop and train her abilities before even considering creating more.
Rustle. Rustle.
Turning her head to the bush, she tilted her head in confusion. Then, two rats came out. Immediately, Alice's expression changed to one of horror, and she instinctively shot a bolt of lightning at them, killing them and burning their bodies to a crisp.
'Are they dead?'
Rustle.
Her face dropped.
"ANOTHER ONE?!?"
The third one to walk out was different, much different. For starters, it was half as big as her, while she was nowhere near big; that size for a rat was extremely abnormal. It also looked monstrous.
GGrrrr!
The rat growled at her and bared its teeth, making its already monstrous face worse.
"Eeeek!"
Alice flinched and backed away, shivers running down her body as she did.
"Go away!"
Bzzt!
Bang!
She shot another bolt of electricity at the creature, causing a plume of dust to burst into the air.
"Did I get it?"
Once the dust cleared, the charred ground was revealed, but the large rat was nowhere to be found.
"What? When did I get so strong?"
Then she rubbed under her nose.
"Heh, I'm magnificent."
Pat. Pat. Pat.
The sound of footsteps sounded behind her, along with the squeaking of a rat.
"What?!"
She just barely dodged out of the way of the charging rat, causing it to crash into a tree, cracking and splintering.
'Holy shit, that almost got me. I guess it's too much to say I'd vaporize it."
Taking a fighting stance, her fear dissipated, replaced with a subtle excitement. A bead of sweat ran down her cheek, and a crooked smile revealed itself.
'Thankfully, I was a fairly skilled fighter in my past life. Even if it were fencing, I should have some hand-to-hand skills.'
'Thunder Surge!'
Lightning condensed around her body in a unified manner, filling her with energy. Jumping up and down due to the energy, she locked eyes with the now charging rat and shouted with an excited smile.
"You chose the wrong time to fight me, you monster rat!"
The rat lunged at her, flashing its claws and raring its maw to bite her.
'Snake Eyes!'
The rat, and the world around Alice, slowed down. Luckily, Alice herself could move at what seemed like a normal pace due to her speed.
"Shock Venom."
Covering her hand with electricity, she punched the rat in its side and deactivated her Snake Eyes ability.
'Shit, I really am not used to real battle.'
Blinking many times, Alice rubbed her eye due to them getting dry. This was something she realized before, too: the more she used Snake Eyes, the drier her eyes got. That was not the real problem; however, using three abilities at the same time, she felt her chi draining rapidly.
Even with her increased chi capacity due to her Merlin's constitution, the rate at which her chi was draining was worrying. She likely will not run out for a while with the amount she has, but she needed to manage her usage, or she'd run out in the middle of battle.
"Sigh… Practice makes perfect, I guess."
After being hit, the rat flew back a slight distance and hit the ground. It quickly stood up and turned to her, ready to lunge again.
"What's wrong? Feeling a bit stiff?"
The smugness was apparent in her voice, if the smirk on her face didn't give her away. At the same time, she deactivated Thunder Surge as well, due to its constant chi drain.
The rat shook its body and brought it close together like a spring, readying itself for a big lunge.
"Oh no you don't!"
"Snake Lightning!"
Punching towards the rat, a snake-shaped lightning bolt flew from her fist and struck the charging rat, wrapping around it and trapping it.
"Can't dodge now."
'Gale Step!'
Using Gale Step, Alice lunged toward the trapped rat with lightning charged on her fist.
BANG!
Electricity sparked on her hand, which had cleanly struck the rat's body.
"Game over."
She smirked.
***
With Aries, who was in the park's forest.
Aries stared at the three monster rats before him with a blank expression.
"..."
Then… All three of the rats lunged at him, claws bared.