Limits

After a while, I noticed a group of bears heading towards us. All of them were black and numbered 10 while there was one more at the front. Its fur was silver in colour and it was a bit smaller than the black bears. I thought 'I never saw a silver bear before. This may be troublesome'. I said to Shelly "No time to sit around anymore. We need to leave. If they chase us, we will fight". Shelly nodded and we ran away.

We ran fo couple of minutes. When I looked back and saw nothing behind us, I stopped to inspect for any sounds and heard rustling and heavy thumps from the direction that we just came from. I said to Shelly "They are after us. We will need to fight them. I'm a bit worried about the silver one, we never encountered it and so we don't know its skills. We have to be careful". Shelly nodded and prepared for the fight. When I saw the group of bears approaching I said "I will take out as many black bears as I can and leave the rest to you. I need to take care of the silver one".

Shelly agreed while I thought 'I have a bad feeling about this'. I ran forward and threw about a dozen of daggers at the black bears. I needed to take care of as many as I could in order to challenge the silver bear in relative peace.

My daggers flew through the air and hit 2 out of 3 bears. The 3rd black bear survived because of the silver bear. It actually deflected those daggers. 'I knew this will be troublesome' I thought. Shelly didn't just stand either and launched the attack. Its speed increased more and more as it tried to ram into the black bears.

But the silver bear was having none of that and intercepted Shelly. The speed that the silver bear displayed was not much worse to that of Shelly's charge. When Shelly rammed into the silver bear it created a large noise "BAM!". The attack that could easily kill a black bear was stopped and Shelly flew back from the recoil. Shelly struggled to get up and I could see many cracks on its shell.

I shouted to Shelly "Fall back! I will block them" and ran straight for the silver bear. I now knew that its defences and speed surpassed the black bears by far. I ran and threw as many daggers as I could in order to kill as many black bears as I could. Although the silver bear intercepted some of the attacks, it could not be in couple of places at the same time and another 3 black bears perished.

The silver bear roared loudly "RAAAWWR!" and sped towards me. The distance between us was not great and the silver bear's speed reached speeds similar to that of Shelly, if I were to be rammed or even grazed by its attack, it would surely end badly for me. I calculated the path and speed of the silver bear and jumped right before it reached me with its attack.

The silver bear whizzed past me and its attack barely missed. I turned around and threw just one dagger but with all my strength not caring about skills. The dagger arrived and barely hit the silver bear but the effects were minor. It did break its defences and drew some blood but that kind of wound was nothing to the silver bear and didn't hinder its movements or strength.

The silver bear stopped and turned around to attack again. I thought 'It's defences are very strong. It is also very fast and has more strength than normal bears. Close combat is very risky at my level. If I just had a skill that could work against such opponents' but I had no such skills. Stealth would give me nothing here as this bear could find us probably because its sense of smell was much better than the black bear's, besides its speed was far too great and I wouldn't be able to hide. My daggers that were thrown with my full strength did very little damage and because of the added power, my aim suffered. Poison was a good solution but I had none on me and I had no time to create one now.

'I have no way to deal with this bear. I can try close combat as it is my last option. Running will be difficult at this point' I thought to myself. The bear attacked once more and I tried to evade again. The silver bear threw a punch at me this time and I could feel the wind as the bear's paw passed next to my face.

I could only try and engage in close combat, which I did. I tried slashing my daggers at the bear with my full strength and managed to create very light wounds, nothing that could be threatening. The silver bear got even more aggressive due to its constant misses and roared again. I noticed that the black bears were trying to surround Shelly who had loads of problem dealing with them. It was all due to the recoil it received when ramming into the silver bear.

I shouted to Shelly "Run! leave now!" but Shelly wouldn't listen and still tried to fight the black bears. I tried to throw couple of daggers at the black bears but the silver one always obstructed me as if aware of what I wanted to do. Even if I threw a dagger the silver bear would block it. 'This situation is hopeless, we need to run' I thought and screamed at Shelly "RUN! NOW!" while I headed towards the place where Shelly was struggling with the black bears.

The silver bear was having none of that and ran after me while trying to intercept me and prevent me from reaching Shelly. I ran at my full speed and while I was getting closer, I threw my daggers like mad. The black bears, without the protection of the silver bear started to die very quickly. I could hear more angry roars behind me but I didn't look back. I shouted again "Shelly RUN!" but Shelly couldn't move much. It received too much damage and it was in a poor state. I raced towards Shelly and swept it up into my arms.

I could feel and hear whistling of the wind behind my back. I knew that an attack was coming, I jumped forwards and "BAAAM" the silver bear behind me struck the place that I was at just a second ago. I didn't wait for it to deliver another attack and simply ran forwards. The bear roared and persisted to follow me. I ran at my full speed and evaded the silver bears attacks that arrived once in a while. I was getting tired out by all of that running and due to my bag weighting quite a bit as well as Shelly who was rather small when compared to things like a wolf or bear but it actually weighed as much as 15 kilograms.

I couldn't reach in to my bag in order to get some Vital Liquid while running and holding Shelly, I couldn't stop either. After the silver bear attacked once more, I took a look back and saw that the silver bear was tired as well. I guessed it was all due to those attacks it did. If I could last longer than the bear, I would be able to escape.

I ran like crazy for another 30 minutes and was already gasping for breath. The attacks from the silver bear behind me got less frequent. I turned around and noticed that the silver bear was now breathing very heavily as well but still persisted to catch us. If my observation was correct we would run out of strength at similar time. This would mean it was now all in the hands of my willpower versus the willpower of the bear. If I fall first due to exhaustion, we are done for but if the bear goes down first then we will live.

After another 10 minutes of running my legs gave up suddenly. I thought 'We are screwed' as I fell to the ground. I couldn't pick myself up anymore. I was totally exhausted and I could feel huge hunger starting to burn inside of me. The amount of energy I spent on running and fighting was my limit, I could go no further.

I turned around and noticed that the silver bear was still standing but it was now walking not running. It walked very slowly but still walked and was getting closer to us. I then noticed Shelly standing up and walking in front of me. I quickly realised what Shelly wanted to do. It wanted to defend me. I said "Just run. You don't need to do that" but it stood there like a stone statue. I crawled a bit closer to Shelly and took out the Vital Liquid then poured it on top of its shell. I took out another one and also poured it on top of Shelly's shell. I drank the 3rd one and tried to recover as much as I could.

When the bear saw this, it was not pleased and persisted to walk towards us with even faster pace. I had to place all our hopes on Shelly. If Shelly could buy us some time then I would recover a bit. The bear on the other hand would probably fall due to the exhaustion. It was all or nothing.