《Cores》


 Chapter 1: Hunting

    The sharp crack of the stone bullet breaking the sound barrier echoed aloud as a splash of color appeared on my target. I hadn¡¯t hit the bullseye, but the shot was grouped together with another few holes in the sheet, so at least my magic revolver wasn¡¯t firing wildly anymore.


    Magic guns, I snorted. I seriously needed to come up with something better to call my new weapons. While it got the idea across plenty well, it also managed to sound horrendously lame. Setting aside the revolver, I grabbed up my magic rifle, firing a few more shots.


    The shots this time were much closer to the bullseye, with a few making it in, and I walked over and grabbed the target, placing a new one a good deal further back on the hill. I¡¯d grown up with guns, and when magic became real, I¡¯d wanted to see if I could make one that used magic rather than gunpowder. I succeeded, but there was just something missing when I fired it. It could have been the lack of smell of burning gunpowder, or the absence of recoil, but it just felt off to me.


    A sigh leaked out of me, at least the lack of recoil let me more easily use 55 caliber bullets. Oversized things they were, about the size of a rifle cartridge, but all of it mass to be sent downrange. As large as the were however, they were necessary for what I would be hunting. I brushed my thoughts away from my mind as I focused down the sights of my rifle, looked down at the target, and squeezed down on the trigger at the end of my released breath. The bullet landed, and a splash of color appeared around the hole I¡¯d made in the target. It had landed squarely within the bullseye this time, but was further from the center than I would like. I was more comfortable with rifles than pistols, and I prided myself on my aim with them.


    I pulled back the bolt and pushed it back forwards, loading a new bullet into the chamber, and repeated my shot. This time the bullet landed squarely where I¡¯d intended it to. I repeated the actions until my magazine was empty, and set down the rifle, relaxing from the intense focus I tried to hold while shooting. I walked down the space I was using as a range, and grabbed my target, admiring the well grouped shots, before packing up all of my arsenal and starting to head back home.


    The drive back was peaceful, and I thought about my next move. I¡¯d recently finished college, but in all honesty, I didn¡¯t want to get a desk job, the thought of just working from a desk from nine to five for the next however many years until I got old and retired, just sounded like death to me, but until recently, it was the only thing I had considered doing.


    When the world changed however, a job had become viable that I had become interested in, hunting, and I was at least going to try it out. Having a boring desk job would be my backup if it didn¡¯t work out. I was soon home, and packed the gear I would need the next day to try out hunting. After I was done I got myself ready for bed, and was soon sleeping the night away.


    The blaring of my alarm clock woke me, and I contemplated the murder of the inanimate object for a moment. I slammed the snooze button a few times, but eventually got out of bed around when I had intended to, having set my alarm early due to my addiction to the lovely snooze button.


    I grabbed my bags I was bringing, and loaded up my car, it was time to try my hand at hunting. I was soon driving to a slightly less populated area, heading for the nearest gate. As far as we could tell, gates were simply portals to another world, and magic had come along with them when they mysteriously appeared. The world had been thrown into a temporary chaos with the advent of the gates and magic, but things had soon calmed down and life had gone on as normal.


    I soon arrived at the area where the gate was, and parked in the dirt parking area which had been cleared for people wanting to cross over. I shouldered all of my gear, and walked to the gate. The gates themselves were interesting, seemingly a perfect half circle around 6 feet in radius that led to another world. If you bothered to dig out the ground beneath it, you would find it was actually a perfect circle, but it was less convenient like that, and so it was left with half of it underground. It looked just like a mirror that was reflecting another world as you walked around it as I did, finding it interesting that you could walk through it from either direction. I eventually took a deep breath and stepped through, releasing it as soon as I crossed, having noticed nothing about the transition.


    Supposedly the oxygen content in the otherworld was higher, but it wasn¡¯t something I could notice at least.I looked around a bit, I was in an open area, surrounded by tents, and a few structures made of concrete or cinder blocks that had to serve some purpose. Around the entire little camp, there was a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, the bases of the poles sunk into the ground with concrete poured around them. Outside of the camp, it was surrounded by forest, making me wonder if they had cleared out the camp area of trees for the sake of the hunters and the buildings I had no clue about.


    The reason I¡¯d come to this particular gate, even though there were a few within driving distance of my apartment, was pretty simple: my application to be a hunter had been accepted and I¡¯d been assigned here because it was understaffed after a few of the hunters had died. It had scared me a bit, but the death rates among hunters were very small in actuality, or at least they had been so far. I was a bit iffy on this particular gate, as this wasn¡¯t the first time people had died, but I chalked it up to coincidence rather than anything scary.


    I finished looking around, and started to set up my own tent, putting all of my camping gear inside of it, and then started to care for the weapons I¡¯d be using for hunting here. The consisted of a magic powered bolt action rifle, along with a revolver style magic gun. I¡¯d tried to make semi-automatic weapons, but my abilities hadn¡¯t been up to the task. They were both made of granite, magically hardened to be tougher and harder than steel. The bullets were made of the same material, seeming more like miniature stakes rather than the standard bullet. I would¡¯ve really preferred to work with metal, but my mana capacity was simply too low to sculpt metal for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and the stone, when I hardened it with mana, was simply a better material than non magically sculpted metal. Mana itself was simply a common name used to describe the amount of magic you could handle. It had come around due to being a common thing in games, being used to measure how much magic you could do. Just as in games, the amount of mana you could use was limited, after you¡¯d channeled enough, your personal mana would be depleted, and you couldn¡¯t influence the world anymore; you couldn¡¯t do any more magic.


    The guns themselves were powered by magic cores I had bought with some of my savings, using the acceleration runes inscribed on both the bullets and the barrel. The barrel¡¯s runes were more extensive, and the rifle would accelerate the bullets to more than double supersonic by the time the bullets left the barrel. After that, acceleration runes on the bullets would take over, speeding up even more as they flew to their target. On the other hand, the bullets from my pistol would barely break the sound barrier, but when the mass of the bullets was quite a few times larger than your standard bullet, they could do some serious damage. I¡¯d completely ruined the steel target I¡¯d bought, even though it would bounce even steel core shots from my non-magical rifle.


    Once I¡¯d made sure that my weapons were ready, I put my pistol into my holster by my hip and left my magic rifle in the tent. I then decided to go find out what the buildings were for. The first building was simply cinderblocks, with a large metal door on one side, and had a few ATV¡¯s parked behind it. After seeing some people go in and out, I walked into the first one, pushing aside the strips of plastic at the entrance. I was greeted by a man behind a cinder block and wood counter, and another large steel door with a latch behind him, like the ones you see for walk in freezers. Lounging about the room were a few people playing on their phones. Across from the man behind the counter was a small man talking with him, so I listened to their conversation for a bit while waiting for the man behind the counter to be free for me to question.


    ¡°I¡¯m telling you, nobody gets discounts, we pick up the body, chop it up into the valuable parts, and we get 30% of the sale. If you want to chop it up yourself and find people to purchase it without us, then feel free.¡± The man behind the counter explained.


    The small man cursed , but eventually let out a short ¡°Fine¡±. As he headed out, having one of the people sitting around join him, I walked over to the counter.


    ¡°So I guess here is where we sell what we hunt?¡± I questioned the man behind the counter.


    ¡°Yup. You hunt them, then bring us to where the body is. We¡¯ll bring it back here with one of the ATVs and we¡¯ll handle the butchering of the body and selling of the parts. Just tell us if you want to keep any of the parts, especially the core,¡± the man replied with a slight southern drawl.


    I thanked him for the information, then went over to the next building, but it had a locked door, and nobody seemed to be going in or out of it, so I simply shrugged and decided to ignore it. The third building was made of wood, unlike the other two, and when I entered, I soon saw that it was a restaurant of some kind, with people lounging around tables with food and drink. I decided that I would have to come back here, as it would be preferable to be able to get food while I was in this world rather than having to go back to earth and drive twenty minutes to the nearest fast food place.


    Walking back out of the restaurant, I nearly bumped into a group entering, but was soon outside. Deciding it would be a good time to try hunting, I went back to my tent, grabbed my rifle, as I already had my oversized pistol in a holster on my leg, and started heading to the gates of the chain link fence. I soon arrived, and was greeted by two people lounging around, likely to work as guards for if a monster decided to show up. They greeted me before one of them decided that he wanted to have input on my hunting before I¡¯d started.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    ¡°You probably won¡¯t find much out there today, the monsters nearby have been driven off. You probably want to wait a few more days until more of them show up, or else you¡¯re going to have to go a few miles out, and that¡¯s a good way to get killed.¡°


    Regardless of the fact that his input hadn¡¯t been asked for, I thanked him for the advice, and decided that I would at least follow the advice about not going too far afield. I shrugged my rifle by its strap higher onto my shoulder, and ventured into the wilderness.


    I walked through the trees, which weren¡¯t much different from the ones on earth. The only real differences were in the leaf shapes, and I¡¯m sure if I looked I could find specimens from earth that looked similar. The forest was an old growth one, with practically no underbrush, and only the leaves and twigs cracked under my feet. Eventually, I got a couple miles out or so away from camp, and decided to climb a tree to get a better view, and hopefully spot a monster to hunt.


    The rest of the day was spent in the tree, after I¡¯d found one that had a comfortable spot to sit in right where the trunk split off into two different branches. The day passed in peace however, with me just eating the sandwiches I¡¯d packed into my backpack for the day. Eventually, it started to get dark, and so I decided to head back to camp. I didn¡¯t know the area well enough to navigate it in the dark, and I wasn¡¯t going to risk being the one caught by a monster in the darkness, rather than being the one doing the catching.


    I made my way back to the camp, and greeted the same guy lounging around the gate like a guard who had decided to give me input, which I suppose had been pretty accurate. I was soon at my tent, and snuggled up in my sleeping bag, leaving my rifle laying next to me.


    I woke up far too early in the morning to a loud whistling noise. I threw on some clothing as fast as I could, grabbed my weapons, and rushed outside, to see chaos. Near the gate, there were large, eight foot tall green monsters. I would have labeled them as ogres, but they were far too skinny, looking more like an oversized version of the pop culture description of a goblin.


    Everywhere I looked, there were people fighting them off, mostly at the gate, but also a couple places where the chain link fence had been knocked over, the concrete foundations ripped out of the dirt surrounding it. From some people, I saw bolts of lightning flying, or fireballs which would splash onto the monsters, melting through their flesh like hot water going through ice. Up closer to the monsters, I saw people who must be the ones who were talented at body enhancement magic using swords, spears, or occasionally more unusual weapons.


    I pulled out my rifle, and got closer to the monsters so I wouldn¡¯t risk hitting any of the melee fighters, then started putting bullets through the bodies and heads of the monsters. I soon ran out of ammo in my rifle, seeing as how I hadn¡¯t thought to bring extra with me, and switched to my pistol, firing off four of the shots it carried, before just watching nervously, saving my last two shots for an emergency. After a bit, there was the sound of a horn, and the monsters still left alive began to flee.


    Once all of the hunters started to relax, I turned my head as I heard a mage standing close to me curse.


    ¡°Fucking goblins. They¡¯re basically worthless aside from their cores. The only thing nice about them is that there¡¯s usually enough of them to make some money from the cores alone.¡±


    ¡°So those things were goblins then?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Yeah, or at least that¡¯s what we¡¯ve been calling them here. Apparently some of the other hunter groups are calling them ogres.¡±


    ¡°So how do we split the cores? Just mark the ones we killed in some way?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s usually pretty obvious which ones you killed, but for the ones where there¡¯s confusion the money is usually split between the hunters having a dispute. It¡¯s basically the honor system, but if you¡¯re shown to be claiming things you didn¡¯t take down, you¡¯ll get your license revoked and not be able to get a new one.¡±


    ¡°So do these things attack often?¡±


    ¡°We only get goblin attacks every now and then, maybe once a month. Them attacking is probably why the monsters have been cleared out nearby though, normally you can¡¯t swing a cat around without finding at least one monster.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m Lucas¡± I belatedly introduced myself as we walked to the corpses to begin sorting out our kills.


    ¡°I¡¯m Will¡±


    After our short introductions, we¡¯d arrived at the corpses, and I began finding the ones I had shot. They were easily recognizable by the relatively small holes in the goblins, far cleaner than the sliced up, burnt up, or otherwise destroyed goblins. I quickly used the little talent I had in body enhancement magic, dragging the corpses together, so I had a neat little row of the 7 goblins I had killed.


    ¡°So what do I do with them now?¡± I asked Will


    ¡°Just wait here, the people from the butchery will be coming around to gather the cores out of them, then the corpses will get dragged around a half mile from camp, where the monsters will take care of them for us. If you want to keep the cores for enhancing or whatever, just tell them¡±


    I nodded, and we was soon waiting impatiently. After a bit of silence, I decided to make some small talk with Will while we waited.


    ¡°So why are you here Will?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m actually here with my sister, she really wanted to be a hunter, and I wasn¡¯t going to let her go alone,¡± he said, pointing out a small girl with brown hair a decent distance away, who surprisingly, was one of the melee fighters. I shook my head, I needed to get out of thinking stuff like that was unexpected, strength came largely from magic now, with even people lacking in muscles able to lift 1500 pounds easily with just the assistance of magic. Being petite no longer meant you were physically weak.


    Not too long after, the people from the ¡®butchery¡¯ as Will had called it came around, and asked me if I wanted to keep any of the cores. I said yes for keeping one of them, as I would need to replace the fractions of a core powering my rifle and pistol after a few hundred more rounds. They then quickly and efficiently cut open the ribcage of the goblins, removing a purple crystalline object, the core, handing me one of them still dripping with blood, and having me sign a sheet with my name after they marked down that I had given them six cores. I instantly wiped the core off on the ground as best I could, trying to remove some of the blood.


    Cores were useful for basically everything. They were the new premiere source of power. When it had been discovered that a single core could generate enough power to power the average household for a year, they had become the new oil. With monsters never seeming to run out, the rush for cores began.


    ¡°Just come around to the butchery after a few days, we¡¯ll have sold the cores and we¡¯ll give you your money then,¡± the man who had me sign kindly explained.


    Not too long after, the ATVs came by, and started to carry out the goblin bodies for the monsters to eat.


    ¡°Hey, want to join my sister and me in having a meal at Johnsons? It¡¯s the one restaurant we have here, and somehow reasonably priced.¡± Will invited me soon after the bodies were taken.


    ¡°That sounds nice,¡± I replied, and followed him as he started heading towards the wooden building. Not long after, his sister ran up to join us, and the first thing I noticed were her deep green eyes, which matched with her brother now that I took a better look at him. The second thing I noticed however, were her pointed ears.


    Not long after her brother introduced her as Sophie, I just had to ask.


    ¡°So what¡¯s with the pointed ears?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Well I actually enhance with the goblin cores, it¡¯s what I ended up with¡± She replied. I¡¯d known that enhancing your mana with the mana stored in a core would slowly give you minor physical alterations from the monsters you were enhancing with, I¡¯d seen photos of people with animal ears, or the slit pupils that cats have, and even greenish skin, but it was my first time seeing what amounted to an elf.


    I wondered if I could get some internet fame posting photos of her, and decided to ask her about posting a photo of her online later.


    We made small talk as we went to Johnsons, and I learned a bit more about how enhancing with cores worked


    ¡°So basically, you become able to handle more mana, and get some physical characteristic from the monster, and that¡¯s it?¡±


    ¡°Well it¡¯s not really just one characteristic, I get enhanced strength from just being enhanced with the goblin cores, I can bench press like five hundred pounds without the use of magic,¡± she explained. ¡°But yes, I can handle enough mana to bench press closer to four thousand with the use of magic now.¡±


    I stared at her in shock. I¡¯d known that enhancing your mana with cores let you handle a lot more, but four thousand was close to the world record lift record using magic. I figured some hunters may be stronger than the world record without showing off, but it was still ridiculous.


    ¡°So you just enhance yourself using any core?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Nope, once you enhance yourself with a certain type of core, you can only use that type of core to keep enhancing yourself. It¡¯s why I like these goblin raids, it gives me a chance to get even stronger, even if I don¡¯t get any money out of it. I can¡¯t use a core from a syth or something, it¡¯ll just sort of slide around my mana, not flow into it.¡±


    I nodded, it meant that what core I would use to enhance myself would matter quite a bit. It would probably be a good idea to enhance my mana with something that wasn¡¯t too rare, but was quite strong. I grinned, if I could handle more mana, I could actually start to mana sculpt metal. I could make my guns even more ridiculous.


    We soon arrived at the Johnsons, and went inside to see it utterly packed, with plenty of alcohol all around. We were lucky enough to get a small table in the corner however, and Sophie claimed it while Will and I went to order food at the counter.


    The meal was simple, but delicious. I had a monster rib, literally just one gigantic rib smothered in barbeque sauce, Sophie had a steak and a baked potato, and Will, surprisingly, had just a salad.


    ¡°I¡¯m a vegetarian,¡± he said by way of explanation.


    ¡°You¡¯re a vegetarian that hunts monsters¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s for health reasons,¡± he explained.


    I shook my head, people who hunted tended to be the opposite type of people that were vegetarians, but I supposed that there was an exception for everything.


    We soon finished our meal, and the three of us decided to meet up in front of Johnsons in around an hour to go hunting again. Hopefully this time we would actually see a monster.

 Chapter 2: More Monsters

    I stopped by my tent, dropping off the goblin core there, planning on saving it until the core fragments powering my guns ran low. While waiting for some time to pass before meeting up with Sophie and Will, I load up a few magazines for my rifle into some containers on my belt made for that purpose, and put some speed loaders for my pistol into my pocket. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll need any of it, and it¡¯ll weigh me down while walking, but after running out of ammo earlier while fighting the goblins, I wasn¡¯t going to take any risks.


    Once I¡¯d loaded up, I sat around wondering how to pass the time. Eventually, I decided to play around with magic. While it would lessen the amount of mana I could control later in the day, it wasn¡¯t likely that I would need it. I walked outside, grabbed a good looking rock, and took it inside to sculpt it.


    I took the rock in my hands, turning it over a few times. Magic is all about image and talent, you need to be able to picture what you¡¯re trying to do, and you need to be lucky enough to be able to do it. Some people could throw fireballs, I got the talent of shaping materials. Along with enchanting, which everyone could do to some extent, it let me make things like my weapons.


    I focused, and the rock slowly turned softer and softer until it felt like children¡¯s clay. I pressed in on it, and it slowly compressed, slowly being shaped into an oblong shape. Once I had gotten it close enough to what I was looking for, I took out a mold from my backpack, and pressed the still soft stone into the mold. Once It was entirely inside, I used my thumbnail, enhanced with some mana, to scrape off the excess stone sticking out from the back. I then slowly released the mana keeping the stone soft, pressing a bit of mana in between the walls of the mold and the stone, keeping it from attaching.


    Turning the mold upside down, the mostly completed stone bullet fell out of the mold. The last thing to do was apply the runes, so I put a bit more mana in my thumbnail, and carefully scratched out simple arrows around the bullet. Enchanting wasn¡¯t some arcane art that required runes you had to learn. Just like all magic, it worked on image, and the most common image for movement was an arrow. I could press some mana into the rune now, but that would simply send it flying from my tent, so I simply placed it with my other bullets. The mana would be imbued into the enchantment when the hammer of my gun hit the bullet, linking the runes to the core powering my gun.


    Going out of my tent to grab another few rocks with which to repeat the process, I was distracted by the sound of an explosion, which soon repeated itself. Heading over in the direction it was coming from, I spotted a girl throwing fireballs at a large rock, but unlike the ones which had simply melted through the goblins, hers exploded with a large shockwave.


    I watched for a bit, explosions are always fun to watch, but soon my ears began to ring, and I headed back to my tent to make some more bullets. The rest of the wait was taken up by making my bullets, and I nearly missed the time to go meet up with Will and Sophie. Running over to Johnsons, I arrived a bit out of breath, to see Will and Sophie standing there, Will simply nodding, while Sophie had her eyebrows raised at my running arrival.


    I felt my cheeks warm some as I slowed down to a walk and said hi.


    ¡°So where are we going to be hunting?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much anywhere honestly. With the goblins driven off the place will be flooded with monsters,¡± Will replied.


    ¡°Define flooded¡±


    ¡°Go more than half a mile out, and we¡¯ll see something within half an hour practically guaranteed. We¡¯ll need two of us to protect our kill while one of us comes back and gets the Butchery to have someone come down for the body. Though that is only the case if we hunt something worth money, if the body isn¡¯t worth much, Sophie will just chop it open and we¡¯ll grab the core before hunting some more.¡±


    ¡°So me trying to go hunting alone yesterday was pretty stupid then.¡±


    Sophie laughed before replying. ¡°Stupid is an understatement.¡±


    I shook my head, this is what I get for not doing enough research. I¡¯d done research on the different monsters, which ones were worth money and such, but I hadn¡¯t bothered to look up the actual tactics for hunting them, something that was biting me in the butt now. I was very thankful to Will and Sophie, it seems they¡¯d be showing me the ropes for now.


    We exited the gate, the guard this time giving no commentary, and we¡¯re soon in the forest surrounding the camp.


    ¡°So what¡¯s up with the guards at the gate? The fence didn¡¯t seem to do much last night, so it doesn¡¯t seem like it would make much sense to even have them.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re more to just watch for monster attacks than anything else. They each have a whistle they¡¯ll blow if we¡¯re under attack. You should take a turn, the hunters pitch in to pay them, and you¡¯ll earn like twenty bucks an hour. It isn¡¯t much, but you also get to be the first ones to fight the monsters, and that can make you some good money.¡±


    I had wondered what the whistling sound was that woke me, and I guess I had an answer now. I dismissed the thought, looking around us, deciding that it would be best to be the one that spotted the monsters rather than getting spotted by one.


    It didn¡¯t take nearly as long as I expected to find our first monster, something that looked like a giant boar with antlers. The thing had to be at least five feet tall excluding the antlers, and is quite intimidating.


    ¡°Nice, a steel boar,¡± Will says. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°Steel boar?¡±


    ¡°Their bones can be melted down into some metal like material that¡¯s significantly stronger and lighter than steel. They get their name from that. I¡¯m sure there¡¯s an official name from some sciency folk, but that¡¯s what we call them. Their meat is also quite popular. They¡¯re worth a decent amount of money even excluding the core.¡±


    I nodded, and raised my rifle to put a bullet in the beast, when Sophie went running off to fight it. I looked on incredulously as the boar saw her and charged, only to get beheaded as Sophie dodges to the side.


    ¡°Well that was anticlimactic. Do you guys really need me?¡±


    Will shrugged. ¡°The backup never hurts, and I saw what your gun did to the goblins. We could use some ranged support if we run into a pack of enemies.¡±


    ¡°Are packs of enemies common?¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s say that most deaths are from solo hunters and leave it at that.¡±


    I nodded, but still felt sort of useless as Will says he¡¯ll be heading back to alert the butchery about the kill. Sophie and I ended up standing around, with me feeling awkward around someone I didn¡¯t know too well. I was tempted to ask for a photo of her with her ears visible to get my valuable internet points, but I was also painfully aware that it would make me look like a creep.


    ¡°So how long have you been hunting for?¡± I eventually asked to break the awkward silence.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been hunting for about a month now. It was a bit rough at first, but once you get used to it, it¡¯s quite fun.¡±


    ¡°So why go for goblins to enhance your mana? Just choosing what¡¯s available?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a lot of them attacking the camp, and you get some neat benefits.¡±


    ¡°Aside from the strength that is?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I actually have a mild infrared vision, it lets me spot animals pretty easily, though right now it isn¡¯t as good as my normal vision with the sunlight heating everything up. It¡¯s invaluable during night fights though.¡±


    I was about to ask about what the infrared vision was like when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.


    ¡°Did you see that?¡±


    Sophie was instantly alert again, and started looking around, trying to spot whatever it was I¡¯d seen. It isn¡¯t long until I get another glimpse of it, and Sophie curses.


    ¡°It¡¯s a syth¡±


    ¡°Syth?¡± I asked, keeping my eyes wide for another glimpse of the pitch black animal¡±


    ¡°Not the Star Wars kind, It¡¯s named after cat sith, a scottish mythical large black cat. Though we spell it differently than normal to help avoid the constant jokes we got on the message boards when we spelled it the normal way. They¡¯re sneaky as hell¡±


    I was about to answer when I spotted it again, up in a tree this time, and I raised my rifle towards it. The beast seemed oblivious of the danger my rifle held as I fired a bullet, and I watched as it jerked in pain, then fell from the tree.


    I lowered my rifle as it twitched a few times before falling still. It seemed I¡¯d hit something important, likely the heart from how fast it died.


    ¡°Nice shot.¡±


    ¡°Thanks. So are these things worth anything?¡±


    ¡°Well, like most monsters with claws, their claws are unnaturally dense. The military buys them up to make armor piercing ammunition. They¡¯re better than the depleted uranium they used to use.¡±


    ¡°How do you even know all this?¡±


    ¡°Hunter boards. I¡¯ll send you an invite when we get back to the base camp, it has wifi.¡±


    I nodded, a forum for hunters sounded like it would have all kinds of useful information. It wasn¡¯t long until I heard the roar of an ATV, and Will showed up walking beside it. I waved them over, and the guy on the ATV hopped off to start loading up what we¡¯ve hunted. I made sure to pitch in, using my little talent in body strengthening magic to load up the syth for the guy who came driving the ATV. I asked about him getting back, and learn that it¡¯s standard practice to have the hunters escort him back.


    We headed back to camp for a bit, signing off that we were the ones who hunted the monsters, and then went back out to do some more hunting. The rest of the day passed with us hunting another steel boar and not finding anything else.


    We got back, and I ask how much money they think we¡¯ll make.


    ¡°Well the steel boars are worth like seven hundred dollars each but the syth will only earn us around five hundred dollars, their meat isn¡¯t popular, and the only thing of worth is their claws and core.¡±


    I stared for a bit, assuming the core was the average price of two hundred dollars, just the claws were worth three hundred dollars!? That would mean, assuming one claw made one round, it would cost fifteen dollars per round, excluding manufacturing costs. That was absurdly expensive. Either way, I¡¯d be earning around¡­ I pulled out the calculator on my phone. Over four hundred dollars for a day of hunting. Then there was the approximately eight hundred for the goblin cores, I was going to be making twelve hundred dollars in one day. With some quick messing around on my phone, if I kept up this pace I¡¯d be earning almost three hundred thousand dollars a year while taking the weekends off. I sucked in my breath. Even with the risk of death that was an absurd amount of money.


    My shell shocked expression must have been quite obvious to Will and Sophie, as they got a big grin on their faces.


    ¡°Hunting pays pretty well, doesn¡¯t it?¡±


    I mutely nodded. We then started heading over to Johnsons for some food. When we opened the door, a muted worry seemed to be hanging over the room, the usual chatter replaced by silence.


    I look around, and we managed to find a seat near the back of the room. Once we¡¯re there, and we¡¯ve given our orders to Will to have him go order for us, I turned to the short guy sitting in the table next to us to ask about the mood.


    ¡°So why¡¯s everyone seem so down?¡±


    ¡°The gate closed. Most of the people are going to run out of food, the only thing left to eat is gonna be the monster meat until the gate opens back up. Everyone is here trying to get one last meal with some variation before that.¡±


    I nodded. I knew the gates sometimes closed, but they¡¯d always re-opened before, usually within the week, though the longest recorded was three weeks. It also meant the wifi would be dead, as we¡¯d lost connection to the outside. What was more troublesome though, was that I had been planning on commuting back to home tonight to pick up more food, as my stores were almost empty.


    Resigning myself to eating lots of monster meat from what we¡¯ve hunted, I waited for our order to come up as I relayed to Will and Sophie what I¡¯d learned. They seemed much less worried than I, mentioning they¡¯d brought a couple of ice chests full of food because of last time it had happened.


    We finished our meal, me shaking my head at Will¡¯s salad, and hoped he had enough vegetables that he could make it through the gate being closed without being forced to eat meat. Once we left the restaurant, we went our separate ways, and I decided to make some more bullets, so along the way to my tent I collected some nice looking rocks.


    Once there, I decided that I should probably make a knife as well, as that way I could probably just chop off the claws and cut out the core of monsters like the syth myself, saving myself having to get an ATV, and letting me hunt for longer.


    Sitting down, I got to work.

 Chapter 3: Hunted

    I made quite a few bullets, and eventually got started on what was to be my knife. The rock I started with is approximately the right size, or at least it will be after I magically compress it. I slowly attempted to mould the softened rock into the shape I¡¯m looking for, leaned back looking at it, and sighed. It isn¡¯t straight, it isn¡¯t the right shape, and it barely has an edge.


    I stared at it for a bit, and then grumbled as I attempted to shape it again. It isn¡¯t until my fourth attempt that I got something I was remotely satisfied with, and looked at it critically for a bit. I decided it¡¯s good enough for the moment, and began to work on adding the edge to it. It took a few tries, but I was soon left with a stone knife that, while not quite razor sharp, was pretty close.


    I carefully put it in my backpack after wrapping it in a spare shirt I didn¡¯t care too much about, and leaned back with a yawn. I blinked my heavy eyes a few times, looking outside to notice the sun was already down, and crawled into my sleeping bag to get some rest.


    I woke up without the sound of shouts and explosions this time, which was quite nice. I got out of bed, massaging the aches from sleeping on the ground out of my body, and ate the last of the food I¡¯d brought. I¡¯d need to start chopping up monsters for food now, at least until the gate opened up again. I wondered for a bit if I could just buy the meat from the butchery and have them take it out of the money I¡¯d get from selling the monsters, it was something I had to check out later.


    I wandered over to Johnsons, where I¡¯d be meeting up with Will and Sophie, and sat down at a table in the back to wait for them. I wasn¡¯t waiting long, and once they¡¯d arrived, we chatted for a bit before heading out to hunt some more.


    We weren¡¯t having much luck, which was odd, because we¡¯d seen plenty of monsters just the other day. I instantly started worrying about another goblin attack, but Will mentioned that there were plenty of other things it could be. Unfortunately, most of those things ended in an attack on the camp by different types of monsters. I shook my head, what did it matter if we were going to be attacked by goblins or some other monsters, it just meant that we weren¡¯t going to have any luck on our hunt today.


    We had decided to head back when we finally spotted something moving, and slowly approached until we could get a clear view. Once we could see them clearly, I became quite confused. What we had spotted weren¡¯t monsters, but humans. Unlike all of us at camp though, they wore tunics, with armor atop it rather than the unarmored appearance of the fighters at our camp. They each carried either a sword and a shield to go along with it, which was also unusual, as most of the people I¡¯d seen at camp were using two handed weapons for some reason.


    We hailed them, and as they saw us they sped up, and were soon before us. It was a group of two males and two females, and they had what seemed to be a small cart with a small boy riding on it. All of them had some characteristic of a monster as well, clearly having enhanced their mana. Two of them had animal ears, one had slit pupils, and the last one had furred arms up to her elbows. Surprisingly all of them seemed to be reminiscent of the syth, making it seem like they¡¯d all enhanced their mana with syth cores.


    The second thing I noticed about them was they they looked terribly worn and haggard. They were terribly dusty, they all had dark shadows beneath their eyes, and their steps were leaden. It was while I was paying attention to their worn state that they greeted me, and it took me a second to realize that I didn¡¯t recognize the language. I tilted my head to the side, asked if they spoke english, and simply got another response in the same language.


    I pondered what I¡¯d heard for a moment, and only became confused. I didn¡¯t recognize the language, and I¡¯d heard quite a few before. It was vaguely reminiscent of russian, but I couldn¡¯t think of any language I¡¯d heard that sounded quite like it.


    I shrugged as the man seemed to get frustrated, then let out a sigh.


    ¡°So what do you think we should do with them?¡±


    Will shrugged. ¡°Lead them back to camp I guess?¡±


    We then started to head back to camp, waving the group of unknowns along, which they understood plenty well. It took a bit, and along the way they chattered in their language I didn¡¯t recognize, so I examined the wagon they had with them. It was self propelling it seemed, but had no engine of any kind, so it had to be core powered. One of the guys was holding onto a rope, which he used to guide it along, easily guiding it around any trees in the way.


    I was starting to get a suspicion in my mind, but I wasn¡¯t going to mention it, and only mulled it over as we walked. It wasn¡¯t too long until we spotted the camp, and the relief from the people we were guiding was palpable.


    We walked them over to Johnsons, and started to ask around if anyone recognized their language. The search was fruitless however, as not a person could even identify the language, let alone speak it.


    They didn¡¯t seem to mind though, and started setting up some very old fashioned tents next to the area where most of the hunters had set theirs up.


    After seeing that the group we brought there had gotten situated, Will, Sophie and I decided that there wasn¡¯t much point in going out hunting again, at least until we figured out what was scaring off the monsters this time.


    The rest of the day I spent experimenting. I¡¯d thought about making more heavily enchanted bullets before, but I¡¯d used up the entirety of the core I¡¯d bought on making my revolver and rifle, and I wasn¡¯t willing to pay out the nose for another one, but now that I had the spare core from the goblin sitting around, and plenty of charge in my guns, I may as well try to make the different bullets I¡¯d thought of.


    The day passed quickly due to my experiments, and I¡¯d had a decent amount of success, though not all of my ideas had worked out too well. I went to sleep satisfied, excited to try out my new weapons tomorrow.


    I woke what couldn¡¯t have been more than an hour later to the shrill sound of a whistle, and then the a bunch of shouting. I got up, and slowly dressed, the night not giving me enough vision to do so quickly.


    I loaded up my bags on my belt that I refused to believe look like fanny packs, packing them with magazines for my rifle and a few speed loaders for my revolver just in case. Once I¡¯m out, I saw gigantic wolves everywhere. I¡¯m not sure why they¡¯re all around the camp rather than corralled at the gate, until I see the chain link fence basically flattened entirely on one side.


    I instantly put my rifle to my shoulder, and started shooting at the numerous targets. Interspersed among the wolves are some groups of our melee fighters, oftentimes protecting the spell casters, the people throwing fireballs and lightning around.


    A few of the wolves were obviously victims of said spell casters, burning carcasses littered here or there. In the distance, I heard the sound of explosions, likely from the fireball girl who¡¯d been practicing the other day.


    A few of the wolves I shot at drop, but it seems to take a few shots for each of them, and I was soon reloading. Luckily, the wolves seemed to be ignoring me so far, but even so, I started heading to the closest group of melee fighters to have someone stand in front of me. I stop when two of the people we¡¯d found earlier in the day came out of their tent, the other two standing in front of the child who came with them.


    At first, I¡¯m a bit worried about them; they¡¯d seemed like they were pretty tired earlier, but then they get to the first giant wolf, and killed it in a fraction of a second. The man¡¯s sword stabbing into it¡¯s neck, and being pulled out to a massive spray of blood, clearly having hit an artery. I thought it was a lucky shot at first, but when he repeats the action with another two of the giant wolves, I started being very impressed.


    A couple of the wolves tried to snap or claw at them, but they either sidestepped it with a small motion, or blocked it easily with their shields. At this point, the difference between them and our body enhancement users was becoming readily apparent. While our group struggled one fighter against one wolf, often having to dive to the side to dodge swipes and bites, these people could finish off a single wolf in seconds.


    The only one I can spot who could even remotely keep up with them is Sophie, and from what I saw she did it by abusing her massive strength, while these people seem to be using only enough strength to pierce the vital points. I watched, impressed, for a decent bit longer, until I get my focus back and went back to shooting my gun, following after the two strangers in the hopes that they would protect me if a wolf gets close.


    I continued after them, putting bullets in any of the wolves that aren¡¯t too close to people, frustrated that it takes multiple bullets to drop them. I got even more annoyed when i realize I didn¡¯t bring any of my new bullets to test out on the monsters, as they could possibly take them down in a single shot.


    I kept putting bullets into the monsters, and only had one get remotely close to me while I¡¯m doing so. Eventually, the wolves either run away or are killed off, and the camp slowly became silent aside from a few moans of pain. It¡¯s those moans that made me start to worry. As far as I know we didn¡¯t have anyone talented in healing magic at this outpost, and we were cut off from any hospitals at the moment.


    I instantly went going around trying to see what I could do, but I wasn¡¯t of any use. I had no talent in healing magic, and seemingly everyone who was injured already had people helping them, splinting wounds, keeping pressure on cuts, and in one case even sewing up a particularly nasty gash.


    My looking around found me something that makes me stop though. It¡¯s a body. There¡¯s massive cuts on his chest, and his arm seems to have been partially eaten. I stared in shock for a few moments before I started to feel sick, gagging a couple times, but not quite to the point of throwing up. There¡¯s a girl beside the body, who was bawling her eyes out, and I have to turn away. I didn¡¯t know the deceased, I didn¡¯t even recognize them, but something about the loss of human life just left me feeling a bit empty, the little excitement I¡¯d had at having beaten back the monsters fading.


    Soon, everyone started to go back to bed, but the person beside the body refused to move, and I slowly leave, sad that there¡¯s nothing I could do for her. I was soon back in my bed, but it took me some time to get to sleep, still haunted by the injured, and particularly by the scene of the girl crying over someone she clearly cared about. Eventually though, my tiredness won out and I fade into the blackness.


    I woke up in the morning, got out of bed, and saw an impressive scene. The strangers we¡¯d brought back to camp are sparring, and it¡¯s becoming clear that they weren¡¯t using their full strength when they were fighting against the wolves. I could barely keep up with their speed, and I was pretty sure that the blows they¡¯re stopping with their shields could have cut one of those wolves in half. I watch in awe, becoming increasingly aware that they¡¯re massively more skilled and powerful than our melee fighters.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I wondered if the mages from wherever they came from are as skilled compared to ours as well, but there¡¯s no way for me to tell, so I simply shrugged and tossed the thought to the back of my mind, not to be brought up until I can find more information. I watched for a while longer, then found out that the giant wolf bodies have been left where they lay for the night, so I went around finding my kills, but they¡¯re a pain to drag around, even with body enhancing magic, so I head off to the butchery to find out what I should bother harvesting.


    I was soon chatting with Joseph, the same guy who was working behind the counter last time I was at the butchery. I found out that the wolf things are usually referred to as wargs, and that their skin, bones, and especially their claws and teeth are valuable. Their claws and teeth are used to create armor piercing rounds, so I decided that I want to keep one and see how hard it is to mould with magic. If it isn¡¯t too hard I¡¯ll be able to create some very useful ammunition. Unfortunately, the fact that so much of them is valuable meant that I had to gather up the entire body. I was soon back outside and moaning about my fate as I slowly dragged the wargs I killed into a nice little section. My moaning soon faded though, as the fate of that one guy crawled back into my mind, and I dragged the rest of the corpses into one area in silence. I then cut off a claw from one of them with my newly made knife to experiment on later before I waited for the people from the butchery.


    It wasn¡¯t too long until people from the butchery came out to pick them up, and I sat there in jealousy at their superior talent in body strengthening magic as they picked the bodies up with ease to load onto the carts behind the ATVs. As usual, they had me sign off on how many monsters I hunted, and asked if I¡¯m going to want any of the cores. I tell them no, as I still have the one from the goblin to play with, and I didn¡¯t know enough to know what type of core I¡¯d like to enhance my mana with.


    I went back to my tent afterwards, excited to see if I can do something with the claw. I got back, and started pouring mana into it to shape it, and nothing changed. It just sat there. With metal, at least it would get slightly softer, even if it wouldn¡¯t get soft enough to shape easily, I could still shape it. Metals just took way too much mana to soften to that point, but with this claw, I was pouring out as much mana as I could handle just to have it show absolutely no reaction. I kept trying for a while, then gave up. It seemed I wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything with it until I could handle more mana, so not until after I¡¯ve enhanced my mana with a core or ten.


    I tossed the claw in my backpack. It may not be useful at the moment, but I¡¯d be able to use it eventually. The rest of the day, with me being unable to pass the time playing with the claw, passed slowly until I met up with Will and Sophie. We chatted a bit about the attack, and I noticed that Sophie had some pretty nasty cuts on her arm, which she got when a second warg jumped into the fight while she was handling another one. The only reason she was still alive was because Will had managed to capture its feet with the earth to restrain it long enough for her to kill the first one.


    ¡°So Will is an earth mage then?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, he usually uses it to capture enemies, burying them partially or locking their limbs down with stone shackles, though he can use earth spikes and stuff as well,¡± Sophie answered


    I nodded. Earth magic wasn¡¯t quite as destructive as fire magic, but you could use it to build up defenses quickly or capture enemies, and earth spikes could do some damage. I¡¯d even seen one of the more powerful hunters on viewtube opening up a massive crack in the earth beneath a goblin before closing it over top again when it fell into it.


    ¡°So what are you going to do if the gate doesn¡¯t open soon? You have to be running out of vegetables,¡± I said, looking towards the vegetarian at the table.


    ¡°I already told you it¡¯s for health reasons,¡± Will said. ¡°I can technically eat meat, and I get the feeling I¡¯m going to have to.¡± He sighed, and I felt a bit bad for him. Hopefully the gate would open soon and he wouldn¡¯t have to ruin his vegetarianism.


    We eventually finished chatting and headed back to our tents, me picking up a boar steak from the butchery on the way. As it turned out, they were perfectly happy to give us meat from the monsters. They¡¯d just take it out of what they owed us, and I soon got back to my tent, grabbed my flint and steel, and gathered enough wood to make a fire. I slowly roasted the meat, not happy that this was all I was going to be able to eat if the gate didn¡¯t open.


    Luckily, the steak was delicious. Unluckily, the next day the gate still wasn¡¯t open. The day passed with some successful hunting with Will and Sophie, and me finding out that the reason Sophie had seemed so annoyed about syth was because they could teleport for short distances. The next day, we woke up to even worse news. The butchery was full, and so we couldn¡¯t even go hunting. The day passed with boredom, only chatting with Will and Sophie, and was filled with boar steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I sighed. It wasn¡¯t like I didn¡¯t like the boar steaks, but having them for every meal was a bit much.


    Unfortunately the days continued to pass without the gate opening. There were two more goblin attacks, though both of them were fought back without any major injuries on our side. The next few days, the forest started to be very quiet. While it wasn¡¯t always particularly filled with monsters, before, we used to occasionally hear the howls of wargs, or the screams goblins would make as they charged, or the yowling of the syth, but it seemed all of that background noise had mysteriously disappeared.


    I got more and more twitchy through the rest of the day, nervous about what could have made everything quiet down like that. I then start to put things together. The people we¡¯d found and brought to camp had been running from something, and they were far better fighters than we were. My nervousness instantly went from twitchy to almost full blown panic attack. If we were to get attacked by something that they couldn¡¯t handle, I seriously doubted we would be able to handle it.


    I informed Will and Sophie about my worry, but they didn¡¯t seem to be quite as nervous as I did, simply believing that it was probably just a lot of goblins or something. Their lack of nervousness only seemed to exacerbate my own, and I loaded all of my experimental bullets I¡¯d made into a magazine for my rifle, and loaded up my revolver with them as well.


    I spent the rest of the day pacing in nervousness, but eventually the sun went down and I went to my tent. For far more time than I would like, I lay awake, listening to the silence, but eventually I nodded off.


    I woke to something that I really hadn¡¯t wanted to hear, the alarm whistle. I instantly got up, not having bothered to take off my clothing in case of this exact scenario. I load up my gun with a standard magazine rather than the one with experimental bullets, but keep the experimental bullets in my revolver as I ran outside to see what had set off the alarm this time.


    My exit from my tent was met by the loudest roar I had ever heard, and it didn¡¯t take me long to spot a massive figure. My face turned pale as I see it. Scales covered it almost entirely, the only portion of the beast not covered by them are the webbing in its wings. Its head alone is over a meter tall, and it has to be at least six meters long excluding its long, sinuous tail. It¡¯s front arms are attached to the wings, and end in reptilian style feet with claws as long as my forearm.


    We were under attack by a wyvern. I froze for a bit, but managed to shake it off, we needed to fight this thing. It had wings, and with magic even the heaviest things could fly, so it could probably catch up to any of us if we ran. We either needed to have some people stay behind to stall it and let the rest of us get away, or we had to take it down somehow.


    It wasn¡¯t long until I saw fireballs and lightning bolts being flung at it. I even saw earth climbing over its legs and arms, probably Will trying to restrain it. Unfortunately, all of the bombardment only seemed to annoy it, though the fireballs that would stick to it and keep burning seemed to be causing at least some damage. I raised my rifle and started adding my own firepower to the mix, but all I would see is sparks wherever one of my bullets hit. As heavy as my rounds were, they still weren¡¯t getting through the scales.


    I finished off the bullets in the magazine, and took a deep breath before replacing it with my experimental bullets. If my new toys didn¡¯t manage to hurt it, I wasn¡¯t going to be of any use, but some of my new toys were quite powerful.


    I finished reloading and started to sight down at the wyvern right when the melee fighters reached it. I sighed, I wasn¡¯t going to be able to shoot at it with people in my firing line. All I could do is watch as they charged up, and were instantly crushed. I watched in horror as the first fighter gets literally flattened into the ground by the monsters front arm, then the next one gets cut practically in half from its sharp claws. Another one got his arm bitten off, and it¡¯s then I saw Sophie still getting close to it with a determined expression on her face. I shouted at her to not fight it, but I didn¡¯t think there was any way she would hear me over the screams.


    I watched, horribly worried for her, as she swung down her sword as hard as she could onto the wyvern¡¯s arm, only for it to leave nothing more than a shallow cut that slowly dripped some blood. The wyvern roared, and I flinched, covering my ears to avoid the massively loud noise. I could only imagine how loud it must be for Sophie. She seemed disoriented from the roar, leaning to one side as the wyvern swung its arm at her. I was tempted to close my eyes until a stone wall appeared in front of her, surely Will¡¯s doing, but the wall only slowed it down a little. That was all the time Sophie needed though, as she managed to get her sword angled to stop the claws from eviscerating her. She was still sent flying, but at least she was probably still alive.


    Sophie was the last of the melee fighters up there though, and when she was knocked away the mages were free to go back to bombarding it. I raised my gun to join them when the wyvern pauses for a second, then opened its mouth and flames came spewing out in a stream towards the mages. I saw some of them burst into flames, the screaming echoed in my ears as Will walled off as many of the casters as he could from the flame. The only reason I was left alive was that I was farther away than the mages were.


    At this point I was shaking with fear as I raised my rifle again, but I looked down the sights at the monster, held my breath, and pulled the trigger. The first bullet was simple, when it hits it electrocutes anything nearby, but other than a flash of lightning, it didn¡¯t seem to do anything to the wyvern. I fired the next two, both of the same type of bullet, and with the third one it jerked and started to look around.


    It turned to me and I hope it can¡¯t breathe flames again as I fire the next type of bullet at it. This one was pretty simple as well, it simply sucks the heat out of anything it touches. This type was more effective. As they hit, I could see the scales where the shots land crack, and I was sure it froze some of the flesh under the scales, but obviously not deep enough as it started to charge at me.


    I was starting to resign myself to my fate as I went to fire the next bullet, only to pause as I see two people rush out to meet it. I soon recognized them as two of the people we¡¯d brought to our camp, and I got a slight hope in my chest. They were far more powerful than our group, and Sophie had managed to wound the beast. They probably wouldn¡¯t be able to kill it, but hopefully they could wound it enough to scare it off.


    I took my cheek from the stock of my rifle as I watched them begin to dance with the wyvern. It took swings at them, and one of them was always there to block them, sliding back a few feet each time, but stopping the monster from hitting the other as they chopped at the beast. Each time one of them hit the monster, scales chipped and small cuts appeared in its skin. It didn¡¯t seem they were doing much damage until one of them lands a cut on the spot on its neck one of my bullets had frozen.


    When the sword impacted the frozen area, the scales simply shattered under the massive force, and a deep cut, the first serious wound the beast has suffered, appeared in its neck. The beast violently swung its neck, slamming the one who injured it into its arm with a loud cracking noise. The guy simply collapses, and I worry he¡¯s dead, the girl grabbing him and dragging him away from the beast. I contribute the only way I can, I distracted it with my bullets. This time, these bullets seemed about as effective as the freezing bullets, cracking a large number of scales as they simply exploded as they impact. I pulled the trigger until I didn¡¯t hear the crack that should come from the bullet breaking the sound barrier, and tossed my gun to the side; I didn¡¯t have time to reload. I drew my revolver, and waited until it got a bit closer to start shooting. The first few shots only impacted its scales, electrocuted it to no effect, and froze it to small effect, but then an explosive bullet landed where I¡¯d been trying to land a bullet the entire time, right in its eye. It somehow managed to close its eyelid before the bullet impacted, but the explosion blew straight through it, mangling the organ. I looked into its other eye in triumph, noting the curved cross shape of its pupils. My triumph is short lived however, as it got right next to me and my last bullet simply hit it in the wing, shredding a bit of the membrane, but leaving it otherwise unharmed.


    As it reached me, I dived as hard and fast as I can to the side I blinded, using as much mana as I can with the little body enhancing magic I can use, and I managed to get out of the way, barely escaping death at it went past me, sliding a bit as it tries to turn to face me again. I was out of bullets, and out of ideas when I noticed that my knife I¡¯d made had fallen out of my backpack from my dive. I laughed in sheer terror and hopelessness, but grabbed the knife anyway, turning to face the wyvern. It was already charging me again, and I started edging towards the unblinded side to bait it, then dashed to the left, every ounce of mana I could muster being used to enhance my body¡¯s strength and speed as I moved to the side of its head and rammed the knife into the wound already present on its neck. Its head reared back in pain, and I was pulled up by the knife, landing on top of its neck. I lost my grip on the knife, but soon regained it and started sawing at the wound as it started to buck, trying to throw me off. I held on for dear life, and thought I may actually have a chance from the massive amount of blood spurting out of the wound when it rolled to the side, forcing me to jump off or get crushed.


    I got up again, heavily bruised from my earlier dive and my jump off of the wyvern as it turned back to me. This time, rather than the charging it had been doing, it slowly and methodically approached, and I feel the little hope I had left die. Its steady approach continued as I tried to edge to its blind side, but it was having none of that and simply turned along with me. It soon got in range, and I tried to dodge to the side as it extended its neck to bite off the top half of my body, knowing I can¡¯t move fast enough.


    I was resigned to my fate when I saw a speck of light in the corner of my eye which impacted the side of the wyvern¡¯s head right as it lunged. The fireball, rather than turning into liquid flame like most of them, exploded, knocking the wyvern¡¯s head to the side, and I thought back to the girl I¡¯d seen practicing their explosive fireballs.


    I didn¡¯t let the thought distract me as I stepped into the space the fireball had created, using the dregs of my mana to enhance my body as I stabbed my knife in as deep as I can into the wound and ripped it down.


    Time seemed to slow a bit as the wyvern starts turning its head towards me, but then a massive spurt of blood erupted from the neck where I cut. I was practically knocked down by the flood of the red liquid, and the wyvern only manages one last attempted snap at me, not quite reaching me, before it collapsed.


    I stood there, covered in blood, and then made a decision. I cut the beast open slowly, digging my knife between the scales to cut the skin, and had to saw at the bones to get through them. I didn¡¯t know how long it took, but the sun had reached the center of the sky, and the hunters left alive had started to gather around me before I finally reached it. I tore the core out of its body, took a deep breath, then pulled the mana into my own, enhancing it. At first it felt like a rush, I had the most energy I¡¯ve ever had, I felt so alive, and then it turned to pain. I screamed for a second, and then everything went black.

 chapter 4: Decisions

    I woke up in an unfamiliar tent, and held my head. The pain was gone, but the memory left me shuddering as I lay on my back. I slowly crawled out of the tent I didn¡¯t recognize, feeling awkward for some reason, and instantly had to shade my eyes from the sunlight. I blinked for a bit, and my eyes slowly adjusted, making clear one of the changes that came with my enhanced mana.


    I¡¯d always had twenty twenty vision, not needing glasses, but what I could now see made me feel like I¡¯d been blind my entire life. I could see individual leaves on the trees in the distance, looking down at my hand I could see the pores within it, colors seemed to be more vibrant than I remembered, and shadows didn¡¯t seem to hide things nearly so much as they used to. I breathed in the breath I¡¯d forgotten to take, and simply sat there for a while, looking around. I was totally absorbed in examining my newfound sight when Sophie came up to me.


    Looking at her, I instantly became lost in her deep green eyes. I¡¯d thought they were pretty before, but with my new vision, I was practically drowning in them, the darker striations forming a beautiful pattern within them. It took me a moment to realize that she seemed to be looking into my eyes much the way I¡¯m looking into hers. I was starting to turn a bit red from the attention when she commented.


    ¡°I like the new eyes,¡± she said with a grin.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Your eyes. You know how you pick up the characteristic from whatever you enhance with, I got my pointy ears, you got some impressive looking eyes.¡±


    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t happen to have a mirror would you?¡±


    She nodded and took a small hand mirror from a nearby tent, and I got a good look at my new eyes. Rather than my original deep brown color, they¡¯d turned a shiny copper color, with golden lines stretching out from the middle, but the most distinctive thing was that my pupil was now vaguely cross shaped like the Wyvern¡¯s. It¡¯s a curved plus symbol, thicker in the middle and thinner at the edges, extending to the edge of my iris. I looked at them for a moment, slightly unnerved by their new look, then turned back to face Sophie, who was waving her brother over. I looked towards him, and note that I can see him as clearly as if he was a foot in front of me, except he¡¯s a good twenty feet away at the moment. I blinked, it was going to take some time to get used to the new vision.


    ¡°So what other benefits did you get? Well, aside from the cool looking eyes?¡±


    ¡°The ¡®cool¡¯ eyes are letting me see way better than before.¡±


    ¡°Well that can¡¯t be it, I got more than just the infravision from the goblin cores. Try running around for a bit.¡±


    I looked at her a bit funny, what was running around for a bit going to show. Deciding to do it anyway to humor her, I slowly got up, frowning as everything seems to feel a bit off. I shrugged off the feeling and pressed down on the ground with my right leg, but something still felt off, and I started to flail my arms as I got sent further, faster, than I expected. I tried to catch myself with my left leg, but ended up slamming it into the ground rather than carefully catching myself, the foot sliding out from under me as I faceplant. I groaned a bit as I get up, and noticed Sophie holding her stomach in laughter.


    I glared at her for a bit before questioning her, annoyance creeping into my voice. ¡°Did you know this would happen?¡±


    Her giggling didn¡¯t abate as she nodded, and I simply glared at her, spurring even more laughter. I slowly got up, noticing how clumsy I felt, and wondered why exactly I felt like this. Deciding that the first thing to do would be try and get a little used to how my body now felt, I carefully started walking in circles. I¡¯d started walking, feeling like I was a small child again, when Will got to us, a resigned expression on his face as he looks at his laughing sister.


    ¡°She did that to me too you know.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow at him as I slowly and carefully walk. ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°When I enhanced my mana for the first time, she got me to try running, and I ended up doing about the same thing you did, though mine wasn¡¯t quite so dramatic.¡±


    ¡°Wait, you¡¯re enhanced? I didn¡¯t notice any characteristics though?¡±


    He mumbled something in reply, to which I give a short ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°My hair¡­¡±


    ¡°What about your hair?¡±


    ¡°It turned blue¡­ I dye it, but you can see it at the roots.¡± He tilted his head down to give me a clear view, and I can easily see the blue at the base of his hair. It¡¯s not a deep blue either, it¡¯s a shiny, sapphire blue that is horrendously bright to my new sight.


    ¡°What on earth did you kill to get hair like that?¡±


    ¡°We call them parrots. They actually look closer to a flamingo or a stork, with massive claws at the end of their legs, scarily sharp beaks, and they¡¯re painfully blue. They don¡¯t give you much of a physical boost, just enough to make you feel terribly awkward, but they really increase how much mana you can handle. They¡¯re not terribly common around here though.¡±


    ¡°So I¡¯m curious, is it common to collapse screaming in pain like I did when you first enhance your mana?¡±


    Will and Sophie both winced. ¡°No, it¡¯s normal for it to hurt a good deal, but what I saw was definitely outside that. Probably because the core you absorbed was from that odd monster.¡±


    ¡°You mean the wyvern?¡±


    ¡°Is that what it¡¯s called? Some guy was calling it a wrath something or other.¡±


    I snickered before slowly fading into a darker mood. ¡°So what happened to the people the wyvern hurt?¡±


    Sophie and Will¡¯s cheerful expressions faded quickly enough to make me think that they had just been looking for any sort of amusement to try and hide the pain. ¡°A lot of us didn¡¯t make it. Over half of the hunters died. We¡¯re still not sure what to do with the bodies, as the gate back to earth still hasn¡¯t opened.¡±


    I stood there in a somber mood for a bit before shaking my head. There wasn¡¯t anything I could do for the dead, and there were more immediate worries. ¡°Can we even continue to defend the camp with so few people?¡±


    They both shift uncomfortably for a bit before Sophie replied. ¡°Well it¡¯s not like we have much of a choice. We just need to hope that it opens soon.¡±


    ¡°And if it doesn¡¯t?¡± I snap back.


    Sophie hesitates for a moment, Will deciding to fill in for her. ¡°It will.¡±


    I shook my head, they were both acting horribly optimistic, at least in my eyes. We had no clue when the gate would open, we had been facing almost constant attacks, and I seriously doubted that something as weak as the wyvern we¡¯d faced could have forced people like the refugees we¡¯d found to flee. While just two of them hadn¡¯t been able to handle it, if they¡¯d had a group even half the size of ours, they could probably have wiped the floor with it.


    I sighed, I couldn¡¯t fault them for being optimistic. ¡°Thanks for letting me borrow your tent, and sorry for being so snappy, I¡¯m just a bit tense right now. Is your arm doing ok Sophie?¡± I asked, changing the topic from our disagreement


    ¡°Hm? Yeah, I can still fight, so it¡¯s fine,¡± she waves the bandaged arm at me as if to show it¡¯s totally fine.


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    I shook my head, of course her first thought is if she can get back to battle. I noticed her brother glaring at her a bit, and had to bite back a snicker. I could understand her brother just wanting her to stay safe, but he was going to have a hard time keeping Sophie away from the fighting.


    Looking up, the sun hadn¡¯t changed much from where it had been when I¡¯d passed out, so I decided the best thing to do for now would be head back to my tent, I really needed to change out of my blood covered clothing. ¡°So, where are my guns?¡± I ask, not seeing them around me.


    ¡°Oh, let me grab them for you real fast,¡± Will says, diving into the same small tent Sophie had grabbed the mirror from, and soon came out with my weapons, including my knife, which must have been cleaned off while I was asleep, as it wasn¡¯t completely covered in blood like it was when I¡¯d last been using it. I took my weapons gingerly, putting my revolver in its holster, grabbing my rifle by the stock, and held onto the knife awkwardly until Will came out again with my backpack to put it in.


    I put the backpack on, and then started to notice exactly how blood covered I was. It looked like I¡¯d taken a bath in the stuff: my clothes were crusty, my skin had dried bits flaking off of it, and my hair seemed to be one solid mass. I shuddered, I felt absolutely disgusting. I¡¯d have to go visit the stream nearby to clean off soon.


    Will, Sophie, and I walked in silence back to my tent. Next time they¡¯d know where to drop me off rather than lending me one of their tents. I stumbled along, tripping over my own feet constantly with my new found strength. We soon arrived, and I headed into the tent to change into my one set of spare clothing that I¡¯d brought. Once I¡¯d gotten changed, I let out a sigh, I was still absolutely disgusting, but at least my clothing was no longer crackling from dried blood.


    Coming out from my tent, leaving behind my bloody clothes inside, I came out to see Will and Sophie looking as lost as I was feeling at this point. ¡°So what the hell do we do now?¡±


    ¡°For now? Let¡¯s go get some food,¡± Will replied. I nodded, and we went off to get some more steaks from the butchery. As we cooked them up, Will looked at the steaks with a complicated expression.


    ¡°Not happy to be eating meat?¡±


    ¡°I mean, I know I really shouldn¡¯t be happy about it, but it¡¯s kind of nice having an excuse to eat some meat for once.¡±


    I nodded, I could definitely understand that. I know I wouldn¡¯t survive long on a vegetarian diet, it had always been sort of impressive to me that some people could manage it at all.


    ¡°So what¡¯s the plan? Just hope that the gate opens?¡±


    ¡°Well what else could we do?¡±


    ¡°Well the people we found out in the forest had to come from somewhere, if they could find us I¡¯m sure we could find another camp.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re saying we should run off when the gate hasn¡¯t even been closed that long? They¡¯ve always opened pretty soon after closing.¡±


    ¡°So far they have. And we don¡¯t even know what was chasing the people we found. I saw them fight, if something managed to scare off people like them, whatever it was will utterly stomp anyone staying here.¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t even know if something did chase them off, it¡¯s not like anyone here can understand them,¡± Sophie chimed in. ¡°Besides, we have no clue how long it took them to find us.¡±


    If she didn¡¯t have a point I would be glaring at her, but as is I simply frowned. I guess I just wasn¡¯t comfortable sitting around doing nothing. ¡°You¡¯re probably right. I just feel pretty helpless not doing anything¡±


    I got a small smile out of Sophie in acknowledgement, but Will just kept his plain expression. ¡°So, back to an earlier topic, how long will it take until I get used to my body again?¡± I¡¯d been pacing for a bit now, and while I felt slightly more in control, everything was still feeling off.


    ¡°Well it depends, you¡¯ll probably be walking like normal by tomorrow, but running may take a few days if you don¡¯t actively work towards getting used to it, and you¡¯ll probably be accidentally crushing things for around a month. Just make sure to not use your favorite cup until you¡¯ve gotten it under control.¡±


    ¡°Now that you¡¯re in cleaner clothes and fed, c¡¯mon, we need to figure out what to do with the body of the wyvern,¡± Will said as he motioned me to come with him. ¡°I wonder how much you could get for selling the thing, as far as I know there hasn¡¯t been another monster like it hunted, and unique monsters always sell for a lot.¡±


    ¡°This may sound a bit silly, but I actually want to try and make some kind of armor out of its scales. Whatever they were made of, they managed to bounce my bullets, and my bullets will go through a seriously thick sheet of steel. I have no clue how I¡¯d go about making it though.¡±


    ¡°Why not just make it how you make your bullets?¡± Sophie asks, and I pause. Why don¡¯t I just try and make it like my bullets, just take a bunch of the scales and fuse them together into one solid plate. The only issue would be if I was able to shape it at all. That thought reminded me, and I took out the warg claw to see if I could get any sort of reaction out of it now that I¡¯d enhanced my mana.


    I focused on it, slowly pouring mana into it like before, but don¡¯t seem to notice anything different than before I¡¯d enhanced my mana, so I simply continue to pour in more and more mana. It¡¯s at this point that I start to notice the difference. Where before the mana I could control topped out at a certain point, now I easily passed that point, the mana feeling more like a stream compared to the relative trickle I could control before. I hadn¡¯t even reached my new maximum when I noticed that the claw had softened enough to mould. I grinned, and swung my backpack around to my front to grab out my bullet mould. The change in weight however, sends me stumbling for a few steps as I overcompensate for the shift, my enhanced body causing me yet more trouble.


    I eventually got balanced enough to grab the mould and stuff the softened claw into it, shaping it to fit before pulling it out and scratching my arrow runes into it. It wasn¡¯t until I was admiring it that I realized the problem. While the bullet may have more mass than my normal bullets, it would only get the same amount of kinetic energy as my normal bullets, so it would simply fly slower with the same energy as one of my hardened stone bullets. Maybe the hardness will help, but as is, it shouldn¡¯t have any more penetrating power than the bullets I¡¯m currently using.


    I sighed, I couldn¡¯t pass more energy to the bullet with my current weapons either, the enhanced stone could only carry so much mana at once, I¡¯d need to make them out of a different material to allow more mana to flow if I wanted to make my bullets go faster. I put the new bullet aside, if the reason my bullets didn¡¯t penetrate the wyvern¡¯s scales was due to the bullets shattering, it may have some use, but most likely it would simply be a curiosity for now.


    We soon arrived at the wyvern¡¯s body, and I shuddered as I see it, this thing killed almost a dozen hunters. The only ones to survive were the ones Will protected with his earth wall and the people who hadn¡¯t joined the fight. I expected to feel a bit of rage at the monster, but it seemed all I could feel staring at it was a deep sadness biting at my heart.


    ¡°So what should we do with it?¡± Jacob, the man who ran the butchery, asks.


    ¡°I want to sell it, but first I want to collect a bunch of the scales, I want to try something.¡±


    Jacob nodded, and I stepped forward, taking out my knife, and tried to be as careful as I could while removing the scales of the wyvern. My new strength caused some issues, but largely made cutting into the wyvern significantly easier than it had been before I¡¯d enhanced my mana. I eventually peeled off enough of the scales, entirely filling up my backpack, and I gesture for Jacob and his workers to go ahead. They nodded and started dragging it over to the butchery, making me wonder how they¡¯re even going to get it in there. I knew there was a back entrance to the actual butchering part of the butchery, but I wasn¡¯t sure if it would be large enough to accommodate the wyvern. Oh well, it wasn¡¯t my problem.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna head to the stream to wash off myself and these scales before I head back to my tent and see if I can figure out what to do with them, you guys wanna come with to chat while I work?¡±


    ¡°Nah, don¡¯t want to bother you. We¡¯ll chat tomorrow, see you later,¡± Sophie says for the two of them.


    I slowly walked my way out of the camp and headed to the stream nearby. I¡¯d found out about it after running out of water to drink the other day, and I¡¯d been refilling my water bottles there, simply hoping that there weren¡¯t any parasites or anything in it. After an uneventful rinse of the scales, I gave myself along with my backpack a rinse as well, getting as much of the dried blood out of my hair as possible. Once I¡¯m, while not clean, cleaner than before, I headed back to the camp and started taking out the scales to see if I can mould them.


    At first, it seemed like I won¡¯t be able to shape them whatsoever, but at the very edge of the amount of mana I can handle, the scale slowly starts to soften and deform, so I pulled out another scale, and focused my mana on the edges of the scales, pushing them together as I soften them and press along the edge, willing it to fuse. I only managed to fuse a few inches before my mana peters out. I sighed, on one hand it looked like I would be able to make something out of the scales, but on the other hand, it¡¯s going to take me quite a while to do so.


    Whatever, I may as well work on getting used to my body while waiting until I could handle enough mana to continue. I got up, carefully so as to not fall over, and started walking in circles, slowly increasing my pacing speed until I switched to a jog, then even managed to get to a run. Once I tried to stop running though, I ran into an issue, the foot I planted to slow down pressed too hard and caused me to wipe out in the same fashion as last time. After rolling a good fifteen feet, I got up, and notice that I have a long scratch in my arm from wiping it. I grimace, it isn¡¯t a very deep cut, but it¡¯s sure to be annoying in the coming days.


    Ignoring the new pain from the bruises and cut I¡¯d acquired, I got back to jogging, not quite comfortable trying to run again. The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, jogging around, doing pushups and other exercises to get used to my current body, and fusing the scales whenever I could handle enough mana. Eventually, the sun started to go down, and I went to bed, feeling slightly more comfortable in my body.


    I woke in the morning yawning, with the sun already up. I rubbed my eyes, and threw on the clothing I took off to sleep, wishing I had cleaner clothes to wear. Deciding that I may as well continue with my armor making attempt, I worked on fusing another scale to the larger piece I¡¯ve been slowly shaping to be a cuirass. I finished, and go outside to try running again, when I looked over to see the four people and the child that we found out in the woods packing up.


    I watched them for a moment, a small idea growing in the core of my mind. At first I tried to dismiss it, thinking it¡¯s not a good idea, but the more I mulled it over the better it sounded, and eventually my mind just went ¡°fuck it, why not¡±, and I was soon packing up my own tent.


    Will and Sophie arrived as I was packing and instantly began to interrogate me.


    ¡°What are you packing for?¡±


    ¡°Well the group we found in the forest are leaving, and I¡¯m going to be leaving with them.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Sophie asked, staring at me like I¡¯m an idiot, which I very well may be for making this decision.


    ¡°I can¡¯t stand sitting here doing nothing, and they found us, it can¡¯t be too hard to find another camp to go back through. We have no idea how long the gate is going to be closed for, I¡¯d rather take the risk that¡¯s actually doing something rather than just sitting here.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a bloody idiot.¡±


    I winced. She was probably right, but I¡¯d rather be the idiot doing something. ¡°You two could always come with me.¡±


    Sophie gave me a withering stare, causing me to wilt a bit, while Will just seemed to look at me with an uncomfortable expression. I rallied my determination though, and set my face in an expression I was sure anyone would describe as stubborn. ¡°Look, if I don¡¯t find another gate to go through, I can always come back here.¡±


    ¡°And how are you going to find the way back here? There¡¯s no streets to follow or GPS.¡±


    I opened my mouth, but there¡¯s nothing for me to say to that, so I close it, the stubborn set of my face not fading a bit however. ¡°Well I guess I¡¯ll just need to find another gate then.¡±


    Sophie threw up her arms in exasperation. ¡°Fine then. I give up. Go off and get lost,¡± she frustratedly barked out before storming off, Will just sort of trailing along behind her after giving me a short ¡°Good luck.¡±


    I finished packing not too much later, spending the entire time grumbling. I hefted my pack with my small one person tent attached to the top of my backpack with straps there for that purpose, and then I was ready to go. I soon went over to the group of five that we found out in the wilds, and greeted them with a nod. The guy with feline ears looked me over, glanced at my packed bag, then nodded and dismissed me. I took a deep breath, and sat down, I was going to be getting plenty of walking soon enough.

 chapter 5: Journey

    Leaving the camp was done without any fanfare, I simply walked out with the five people I couldn¡¯t understand. I was a bit uncomfortable going along with them, as I couldn¡¯t understand anything they were saying, but on the other hand, it was far better than going searching on my own.


    The first hour passed in silence, until I decided to introduce myself. I got the attention of the girl with syth ears, who seemed to be around thirty years old, gestured towards my body to get the idea across and said my name. ¡°Lucas.¡±


    She nodded, gestured towards herself and replied ¡°Alya.¡± She then gestured to the girl with arms furred to the elbow, who seemed to be in her early twenties. ¡°Lilya.¡± Next is the guy with slit pupils, who looked like he should be just out of high school, who introduced himself in a gruff tone. ¡°Iosyo.¡± Then came the man with syth ears to match Alya, who was seemingly in his early thirties, who introduced himself with a slight inclination of his head. ¡°Dmiyo.¡± Alya then pointed to the child , introducing him as Grigyo. Interestingly, unlike the rest of the group, he didn¡¯t have any signs of having enhanced his mana. I looked over the group, noticing that they all have matching black hair and eyes, with extremely pale skin. Dmiyo was cradling his chest, and occasionally wincing in pain, so I assumed he was the one that got slammed by the wyvern the other day. None of them seemed to be particularly talkative though, so after our short round of introductions we all fell back into silence.


    It wasn¡¯t long until Grigyo started to chatter along with Alya. I couldn¡¯t understand a word they were saying, but judging by the tone, Grigyo was complaining about something, a very common habit among children. I grinned, remembering how I used to bug my parents the same way.


    We¡¯d been walking for a while, when Lilya went off to the side to a tree I didn¡¯t recognize, and climbed up it. I watched, trying not to admire the view too obviously as she shimmied up the tree, and she soon grabbed a few large pods of some kind that sort of look like gourds. They¡¯re a dark mottled green, and without my improved vision, I doubted I would be able to spot them against the backdrop of the leaves.


    She dropped them to the ground, then climbed back down, picking them up, and handed one of the gourds to each of the group, even handing one to me. I stared at it in confusion for a bit, and she points to the gourd like object, saying ¡°yabka¡±. I assumed that was the name of the gourd thing, but I was still not sure what to do with it until she took out her knife and started to peel it, then cut off a bit of the flesh and ate it, gesturing for me to copy her.


    I swung my backpack around, only losing my balance for a fraction of a second this time, and took out my knife to try it out. I skinned part of the gourd like object, then cut some flesh from it. Putting it in my mouth, I was instantly reminded of dragonfruit. While I wasn¡¯t the biggest fan, this was the first piece of food that wasn¡¯t meat I¡¯d had in a couple of days, so I finished off the fruit and stared upwards. I¡¯d probably climb up and get more if I wasn¡¯t sure I would fall down with how unused to my current body I was.


    Regardless of my current inability to climb, I memorized the look of the tree for the future. It had white bark similar to birch trees, but with swirling brown patterns within the whiteness. Looking up, I realized with my current vision I can just spot the fruits themselves, but it doesn¡¯t hurt to know what the tree looks like.


    We got back to walking, and eventually I decided to try and learn at least a little of the language they¡¯re speaking. I didn¡¯t know how long I would be with them, so it wouldn¡¯t hurt to be able to understand a word here and there.


    Pointing at a tree, I asked ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± in the most inquisitive tone I can manage. Lilya seems to get the idea though, and gave me a short answer that I assumed is their word for tree, and hopefully not the name of that particular type of tree. I continued to ask about what one thing or another is, trying to remember everything they¡¯re saying, and wishing I had a pencil and paper to record it down. I eventually grabbed some twigs from the ground, and communicated that I want to learn numbers. Luckily, Lilya doesn¡¯t seem to mind the constant questioning, giving me answers to everything I can ask.


    I was trying to get an idea of what their analogue to ¡®I¡¯ is, when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, and grabbed my gun from the strap it¡¯s hanging on, pointing it in the direction of what I could now see was a steel boar. I raised the rifle to my shoulder and hesitated for a moment. It was a pretty far shot, I would barely be able to see the boar before my eyesight was improved, but I decided to take the shot regardless.


    I pulled the trigger, and growled as I saw the dirt kick up to the right and behind the boar, which turns to us as it heard the loud crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. My second shot however, managed to hit it in the head, and it dropped to the ground. I lowered my gun, and look around to see the group looking at me in curiosity. ¡°What?¡± I say in an innocent tone, assuming they¡¯d get the idea from it.


    They chattered amongst themselves as I jogged over to the dead boar, and started cutting it open to get at the core. I soon have the core, and throw it in my backpack after wiping it on some leaves to get off some of the blood. I was going to leave the rest of the body there, as I didn¡¯t have any way to bring it wherever we¡¯re going, when I noticed Iosyo is right behind me. I jumped a little in surprise, and that got a grin out of him. I wondered how on earth he had managed to be so quiet with all the leaves on the ground while he started to cut up the carcass, cutting out all the guts, then putting a large slit in its neck before taking some rope and hanging the corpse up, I assumed to drain the blood.


    We waited for a moment, and they brought the cart over to us. After maybe an hour of letting it hang, they put it on top of the cart, Iosyo lifting the carcass as easily as I would handle a bag of groceries. I shook my head, I still wasn¡¯t used to my new body, I could probably handle the corpse myself, maybe even without body strengthening magic, though I wasn¡¯t sure quite how strong I was at this point.


    The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, Lilya putting up with my constant questions about what this or that was. By the end of it, I could name quite a few things in their language, but I still needed to figure out the grammar structure, and there was no way I was going to understand any conversations for quite some time.


    Eventually, it started to get darker, and we set up camp, eating a decent amount of the steel boar and cooked the rest. They were going to throw away the rest of the body when I decide I want to keep a few of the bones to make things with. I slowly peel the flesh away from two of the massive leg bones and tied them on top of my backpack as it¡¯s already pretty much full. I was wondering what we were going to do if a monster attacked at night, but Dmiyo sat up, grabbed an hourglass form the cart, and set it up next to him. I assumed that it was to count how long he was going to be on watch, so I simply went to bed. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I was awoken earlier than I wanted by Lilya, who said something I didn¡¯t understand, then brought me over to the hourglass, flipped it, and headed off to her own tent. I grumbled, It seems I wasn¡¯t going to get out of watch duty just because I didn¡¯t understand the language. The sun had partially risen by the time the hourglass was mostly empty, and I realized that they had been nice enough to leave me the morning shift, rather than one where I would have to wake up then go back to bed after.


    I continued watching the forest as the rest of the group woke up, and watched as they packed up the tent, then took out their weapons and squared up against each other. I¡¯d seen them sparring back at the camp, but this time with my new eyes, I could keep up with them much better. I also noticed that they¡¯re using practice weapons they took from out of the cart, which made me sigh in relief. While Lilya and Iosyo spar with each other, I saw Alya teaching Grigyo, which was absolutely adorable, until I realized that the ten year old kid was probably a better fighter than I was.


    Dmiyo seemed to notice me looking, and took out another set of practice weapons, gesturing for me to take them. I waved my hands in denial, but he pushed them towards me with raised eyebrows, clearly insisting.


    I gingerly took the practice sword and shield, holding them in a way that had to show how uncomfortable I was with them. Dmiyo laughed, came over, and corrected me in how to hold them and how to position my body. He then demonstrated a basic slash, and had me copy him. I tried to emulate the ease with which his sword moved, but everything felt terribly awkward, my mana and body being recently enhanced compounding upon the fact that I have no clue what I¡¯m doing.


    Dmiyo didn¡¯t seem to mind though, he simply continued to correct me, and I soon realized that this will probably be a very good way to get used to my new strength, so I get back to the practice with more fervor. Maybe an hour later, after I failed at slashing, failed at stabbing, and generally just failed at everything, I realized that I was smiling. At least I was enjoying my abject failure. Dmiyo then grinned, and took up his practice sword and shield facing me, and I instantly turned pale. This was not part of the plan! I very hesitantly took up my sword and shield facing him, and could only track him moving towards me due to my new eyes.


    His sword crashed into my shield, and I shout in pain, that freaking hurt! I growl, and swung my sword back at him, but he blocked it with ridiculous ease, a grin on his face. He then slowed down, his swings becoming much easier to see, and slow enough that I could block them. I let out a sigh, and relaxed, only to get hit because of the relaxation. My growl was met with a grin, and we continued the dance. I tried to swing my sword the way he had showed me, while doing my best to keep my shield between his sword and my body. I wasn¡¯t particularly successful with that, but about halfway through I realized I was starting to grin a bit.


    When he finally finished, saluting me with sword pressed horizontally over his shield and with a tilt of the head, I tried to emulate the action, and I handed back the practice weapons. Once I¡¯d handed them back, I let out a laugh, the exhilaration from the sparring coming over me. I sat down, and watched as Dmiyo then began to spar with Alya, and I noticed that he¡¯s moving at the same speed he was for the single strike at the beginning of our fight. I sighed, without my guns I¡¯m just so weak. I paused for a moment then, Dmiyo had been cradling his chest just the other day from his injuries, was he already healed somehow? When he had to stop the sparring halfway with a wince however, I realized I was just so easy to spar with he didn¡¯t bother his injuries whatsoever. I sat there in shame for a bit, but decided that I was going to continue to practice with them as long as I stayed with them until I could at least not be an utter embarrassment. While building my resolve, determined to not feel all ashamed of my skills for long, I wonder what happened to my injuries.


    Just two days ago I had bruised myself pretty badly with my falling down in my attempts to run. Twisting my arm to the side, I go to examine the cut that I¡¯d acquired in one of my falls, only to be met with only slightly pink skin where the cut had been. I ran my finger over it, wondering why exactly it was already gone. While it wouldn¡¯t have taken too long to heal, it should have at least taken a few weeks to get to this point. Dmiyo came by, and asked me something I couldn¡¯t understand, so I simply shook my head. He repeats one of the words, and when I still have no clue what he¡¯s talking about, he takes out a core, points at it, says one word, then points at my eyes, saying another.


    At this point I realized he¡¯s probably realized what¡¯s going on, he has to be trying to tell me that it has something to do with the wyvern core. I nod in acknowledgement, and get a grunt of approval while he puts away the core and gets back to packing everything up. I¡¯m not sure how he realized what I was wondering about, but figure it¡¯s due to him noticing the cut earlier.


    Once we¡¯re all ready to leave, the day passed in much the same fashion that the previous had. We found another one of those trees that has those gourd fruit, and this time I risked climbing up to knock a couple down, which I barely fit into my practically full backpack. While I walked, I eventually run out of things to ask the name of, so I took out some of the wyvern scales and continued working towards making my cuirass.


    The day passed in peace, and I managed to pick up a couple new words, but the main progress was in how used to my new body I had become with walking and jogging, and with the cuirass I¡¯ve been working on. While not close to done, I had the front portion of the cuirass about three quarters done, though it wasn¡¯t shaped to me yet. I admired my work as we set up camp again, and we¡¯re soon going back to sleep.


    The next morning, the sparring was repeated, but this time after it was over Dmiyo pointed to my guns and asked a question I couldn¡¯t understand. I showed it to them, showed them the bullets, putting a bullet into the chamber manually rather than with the magazine, and shot a tree nearby to show them how it works. I then hand it over to Dmiyo for him to examine, and he looks it over for a bit before asking something I don¡¯t understand. He then starts to pantomime for a bit, but after enough time, he managed to get across the question of if I¡¯m the one who made the guns. I nodded and made a sound of agreement, and he looked quite interested, making me wonder if he wanted me to make something.


    I took back my guns, and we¡¯re soon back to walking. I spent the rest of the day going over the vocabulary I was trying to learn of whatever the language they¡¯re speaking is and working on my cuirass. The day ended uneventfully, only having shot a couple of syth and collecting their cores, and we set up camp for the night in a nice little clearing next to a bunch of the yabka fruit trees.


    The night passed in peace, with me having the morning watch again, and morning came along with the daily practice with sword and shield. After that, the days started to blend together, practice in the morning, working on my cuirass and learning the language during the day, and getting not quite enough sleep at night due to having to get up for watch.


    The days eventually turned into weeks, and I started staying up at night worrying that we were never going to find another gate. The constant relaxed expressions of the group managed to keep me reassured enough to not panic however. After some time I finished my cuirass, only needing some leather to work as straps, and I eventually end up brain tanning part of a steel boar¡¯s hide, cutting it into strips and scraping off all the fur. My new armor was far lighter than I¡¯d expected, not even being as heavy as my backpack, and I shaped it for a few days until it was quite comfortable, even without anything like a gambeson under it.


    My excitement over finishing my armor faded over the next few days however, and I started to worry again. I¡¯d just started up my old habit of chewing on my nails in worry when we come across something the relieved me, a road. It¡¯s a simple road, closer to a dirt path, but it¡¯s easily four meters wide, and stretched to the horizon in an unerring straight line.


    Nobody shouted in joy or anything, but we all visibly sped up as we arrived at it, and grins were shared all around. That day ended not long after we found the road, and we camped on the side of it, snacking on the massive amount of extra steel boar meat we had along with some of the yabka fruit.


    Our trek continued, though it was much more comfortable walking along the road compared to through the forest, and it wasn¡¯t too long until we saw something in the distance. We approached it, and as it slowly grew in size, so did my surprise. Rather than the chain link fence and couple of buildings that had made up our camp, it had legitimate walls made of stone, and a multitude of buildings. I gasped, this clearly wasn¡¯t a camp we¡¯d made, and my thoughts about the group I¡¯d been traveling with solidified, it seemed earth wasn¡¯t the only world that had gates to this world.

 Chapter 6: The Real Monsters

    We approached the gates to the town a bit faster than we¡¯d been traveling before. As we got closer, I noted that the walls were much more intimidating than our chain link fence. though they weren¡¯t ridiculously large. I noticed that they seemed to be made of one solid block of stone rather than multiple blocks stuck together with some form of concrete, and I frowned. The only way I could think of to do that would be having people like me who were talented in shaping objects with mana.


    We soon reached the gates, and the guards let us in without any fanfare, simply looking us over before dismissing us outright. We stepped through the gates, and I was greeted by a multitude of people walking here and there. I looked around, noticing that practically everyone had enhanced their mana in some form, having everything from unusual skin tones to scales growing on their arms. I gaped around like a tourist as we walked through the town, which was suffused with the same language that the group I was with spoke.


    Interestingly, even though they spoke the same language, I couldn¡¯t spot a single person who had the black eyes and hair that the group I was with had. There were the bright colored eyes and hair from enhanced mana, but other than that the hair color was almost exclusively blonde or a light brown, and their eyes were all green or blue with the occasional grey.


    We walked through the crowd, with Alya stopping someone to ask a short question to one of the people walking around. She got a short answer, and I managed to catch the words for left and right a couple times, so I assumed we were getting directions to some place. I sat around, then followed along with the group as we slowly walked through the streets.


    We soon arrived at a moderately sized building made of the same smooth stone that made up the walls. We walked into the building, leaving the cart outside, but they grabbed out all of the cores from it beforehand. I looked around at a space that reminded me of a bank, a few people standing behind a counter, with a pretty marble looking floor, fused together into seemingly one piece like the rest of the buildings I''d seen.


    The group went up to one of the people at the counter, and handed over all of the cores to them. I was wondering what exactly the point of that was, when the cores were weighed, and then Alya was handed a bag filled with a bunch of chips of what seemed to be the same material the cores were made of. Looking at them, they had a small pattern on top of them.


    Dmiyo then gestured for me to do the same, and I went up, handing over the four cores that I''d collected on the way to this town. They were weighed, and I was handed back a bunch of the chips of what had to be cores. Looking at them, they were a bit larger than a quarter, but octagonal in shape rather than the clean circle I was used to. At this point, I realized that they were likely to be a form of currency. They were small, convenient pieces of core, which could be used in any manner of applications. It was like how our coins used to be made of something we thought to have value, like gold or silver.


    I took my money, and put it in my backpack, thanked the person with one of the few words I''d picked up, and followed my group back outside. Alya picked another random stranger to accost, and then we were off in yet another direction, though I wasn''t sure where we were going.


    We soon arrived at a place that had a cup engraved on a sign out in front of it, along with some symbols that I assumed were the written language of the place.


    We walked in to see that it was a tavern, and my instant thought was that it would likely be an inn as well, simply due to the standard fantasy trope. I shook my head, fantasy trope, what have I gotten myself into. We went up to the person behind the counter, a large man with a prominent beer belly and scale covered forearms, and the group began to converse with him for a bit before measuring out a certain number of the chips they''d gotten from trading in the cores. In return, they were handed two keys, and they then started talking with him again, gesturing towards me. I was soon measuring out around twenty of my own chips for the man. Once I was done he handed me an old fashioned skeleton key attached to a plate with a symbol on it, which I was hoping was the room number.


    Before heading up though, we sat down at one of the tables, and waved over one of the servers, an adorably small girl with mouse ears. They were soon ordering something, showing the room key to the small girl, so I showed my room key as well, then looked helplessly to Alya until she took pity on me and ordered something for me.


    We weren''t waiting long for the food to arrive, and I got a steak of some kind slathered in a bright red sauce, along with what looked like green mashed potatoes. Taking a bite of each, the green mashed potatoes tasted closer to broccoli, with a much smoother texture than normal mashed potatoes. The steak on the other hand, wasn''t covered in a spicy sauce like I''d expected, but rather had a sort of fruity flavor to the red sauce, which went surprisingly well with it, reminding me of pork and apples in a way.


    I finished off my meal with gusto, and then the group chatted while I picked up a word here and there. I thought I''d figured out the grammar system reasonably well, but I still had a lot of words to learn before I became fluent. The chat soon died off, and I followed the others to the stairs at the back of the room.


    At the top of the stairs were lots of rooms, each with a symbol I was assuming to be the number system on them. I walked around for a bit until I found the one that matched the wooden plate attached to my key, and let out a sigh of relief as it opened. Inside, the room had a bed, a wardrobe, and a desk with a chair looking over a window, all made of seamless looking wood. I was starting to believe that everything was made by people like me, who could shape things using magic, rather than having people chop things up and connect them with glue, nails, screws, and the like.


    I shrugged off my backpack, put it in the wardrobe, and undressed before hopping in bed, placing my cuirass and clothing into the wardrobe alongside my backpack. I lay in bed for a while, wondering how on earth I was going to find a way back to earth, but eventually I fell back asleep, thinking it couldn''t take to long to find my way back.


    I woke up in the morning with one major goal - getting some new clothing. I got out of bed, dressed in my horribly dirty clothing, threw on my cuirass and backpack, and trudged downstairs. I arrived to see the group I was traveling with already sitting down having breakfast. Sitting down, I waved over the serving girl, and after showing my room key, I was prompted to give it up. Handing it over, my room key was soon replaced with a breakfast of some kind of porridge with some shredded meat in it.


    Thinking that trading breakfast for the room key was a good way to get people to check out, I finished off the mild but still tasty food. We soon went outside, and I started talking to Dmiyo, saying the word for shirt and pants a few times, until he figured out that I wanted to get new ones, and he nodded, having Alya grab yet another local to ask for directions. We took a sharp turn onto a wide road, and soon I could see a multitude of shops with symbols, none of which I recognized, with writing in the same language I''d seen elsewhere beneath it.


    We stopped at one store that actually had something I recognized on its sign, a tunic and pants. Heading inside, I was met with many different types of clothing. I gaped around for a while, before we were greeted by an old lady, with the common blonde hair and blue eyes I''d seen everywhere in this city, her horizontally slit pupils making me wonder what monster she''d gotten them from. Alya instantly started talking with her, then gestured towards me, prompting her to come up to me with a measuring tape, and started to take my measurements. I stood there awkwardly, arms to the sides like the default position of a video game character, until she was satisfied, and then she went back a bit and grabbed some bolts of cloth.


    I was wondering if we should leave, as I thought it would likely take a while to get it done, when she, rather than grabbing scissors or something to cut the material, simply measured out some marks, then dragged her finger along it, cutting out a small circle, then cutting the bolt of cloth, cutting out two more pieces. She then ran her fingers up the side of the tunic, fusing it together, and used the two pieces she cut out to make simple sleeves. I was impressed. She made a sleeved tunic in less time than it took for a coffee place to make me a drink. I watched in admiration as she repeated the actions for two more tunics, then three pairs of pants and a couple boxers.


    She handed them all to me, and I stuffed them into my backpack that had been mostly empty after I used up all the scales for my cuirass. I then took out the bag of chips I had gotten, as she took out a scale and put some weights on one side. It took a majority of my chips to match the weight, which made me very surprised, but Alya seemed to think it was fair, so I dismissed it and finished measuring out what had to be around two hundred chips.


    I had just gotten my clothing in my backpack, when I was shoved into a small booth, with a cloth covering. I was confused for a bit, until I realized that this had to be a changing booth, so I was soon wriggling out of my current clothing and into the new ones I''d just gotten.


    My first thought was that they were surprisingly comfortable. I''d expected them to be rough and coarse, but they weren''t too different from modern cotton clothing. Stepping out of the changing booth, I got a nod from Alya and Lilya, while the guys were being guys and ignoring the fact that I''d changed clothing.


    Stepping out to the street, I felt a bit more relaxed blending in with the people walking around. We were soon walking back the way we''d come into the city, and arrived outside. The first thing we did was get back to sparring practice, where I was beaten into the ground as per usual. After I was done getting brutalized, I wasn''t sure if we were going hunting, or if our journey was to continue. I wasn¡¯t until we''d killed a few more monsters and started heading back to the city that I knew we were simply hunting for the day. This time, we loaded up the wagon with the bodies of a steel boar and some snake like monster that I didn''t know the name of.


    We headed back into the city, traded in our cores for more of the chips, and then stopped by a building we hadn''t been to before. Walking in, I was hit with the smell of blood, and I realized that this had to be the equivalent of the butchery, and was likely one of the reasons that our group had a small wagon in the first place. We traded in the bodies for more of the chips, and they handed me a share of them, then we went back out to hunt again.


    The day was almost over by the time we had finished our second hunt, so we headed back to town to get a meal that wasn''t the dried meat we''d been snacking on. The next few days, we went out hunting some more, and I was starting to wonder if I would have to go explore for another gate on my own when one morning there was a loud horn, making me jump in surprise.


    I was quite confused as to what the horn was, and looked to the group to see their faces filled with worry. I looked around the rest of the common room, seeing everyone match their expressions. I shook my head, I needed to find out what was going on, but I didn''t have enough fluency in the language to understand when i asked "what?" simply getting words I didn¡¯t know in response.


    The group was soon heading for the walls, and I was going with them, along with basically everyone who was wearing any form of weapon, along with a few people with a staff made of some odd extremely dark looking wood. We soon arrived at the walls, and we climbed up, standing on the six foot or so wide area on top of it.


    In the distance, all I could see was a cloud of dust rising, and I was starting to get worried that there was an absolutely massive goblin wave, or that there was some gigantic monster coming. It didn''t take too long however, until they first came over the horizon, and with my new vision, I could make them out well enough to figure out what they were.


    They weren''t the monsters I had expected, they were simply humans. They wore matching uniforms, each of them having a cuirass of some kind of metal along with a red undercoat. Once they got closer, I got a better look at their weapons. they each had what looked like a wand, along with a shield, and a sword hanging by their side, likely to be used as a backup weapon.


    Looking around, I saw serious expressions on every single person on the walls, so I turned to Alya and asked "what?" in their language.


    "Tesser," Alya said with a look of disgust. I wasn''t sure why they warranted such dislike, but I wasn''t going to argue. As they approached, I could make out more and more details about them. They seemed to be organized into groups of people who had the same mana enhancements, people with warg ears or eyes in one group, people with syth characteristics in another, and so on.


    They soon came into arrow range, and hundreds of arrows were sent flying. Iosyo said something that I could only interpret as "idiots." I looked at him in confusion, until the arrows hit something in the air, and stopped cold before falling to the ground. I watched, as a few mages, ignoring the failure of the archers, sent fireballs flying towards the Tesser, only to have them splash harmlessly on the the same thing that the arrows had hit. With the flame splashing around, I could see it was a dome shaped something that wasn''t letting anything through.


    I sucked in my breath, they had freaking forcefields. As the army continued to move towards us, I started to worry. Did I really want to be up on the wall? I wasn''t willing to shoot at some people just because they were attacking a town I was in. I took a few steps back from the wall, only to have Dmiyo sigh and gesture for me to go. I hid my head in shame, but I wasn''t willing to kill people simply over them attacking a town I was inside.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I walked back towards the inn we had stayed at, thinking about what was going to happen, worrying about my group. I knew they were strong, but I had no clue how their strength measured up to the average denizens of this world.


    I soon arrived at the inn, and knocked on the door to be let in. Luckily, the rotund owner opened it for me, and asked me something I couldn''t understand, only catching the "What." I took a random guess he was asking what was attacking, so I answered "Tesser." He sucked in his breath and his expression changed from worry to what seemed to be almost outright horror. I was starting to think that these Tesser had a very bad reputation.


    The next hour was spent waiting in worry, until I started to hear a loud banging noise, like hundreds of people banging on pots, but after a minute or so it stopped, and then I started to hear yells, and soon after, screams. I tried to drown them out, wishing I was willing to work on making something, while knowing that I should save my mana just in case.


    The sounds of battle continued, sounds of explosions, sounds of people screaming in pain, and a constant background noise of yells. Eventually, I noticed I was playing with my bullets in worry, checking that all of my magazines were full. I repeatedly made sure I''d loaded up my special bullets, as I wasn''t sure if my guns would be able to get through their shields. I shook my head, why was I worrying about my bullets getting through their shields. If the invaders made it through, I was just going to surrender.


    It had been what couldn''t have been more than thirty minutes, but what felt like hours, when I heard a massive crashing noise, and a loud cheer. I bit my lip, I hoped that wasn''t the Tesser getting through somewhere. I took in a deep breath not long after, as I started to hear yells and screams getting closer and closer to me. I tried to drown it out, but started to get more and more tense, taking my rifle and holding it not quite at the ready.


    The yells and screams had reached us, when the door was crushed inwards, and the round innkeeper instantly put his hands up, and started saying something, when the soldier with wolf ears got a sneer on his face and pointed the wand towards him. The innkeeper said something, voice trembling, and the soldier said something in an arrogant tone before saying a word and fire streamed out of the wand he was holding, the innkeepers eyes widening for half a second before he went up in flames.


    The soldier then started to turn the wand towards me when I pulled the trigger, making the soldier writhe as electricity burst from the bullet, then collapse, a clear hole in his armor. I let out a breath in a shaky manner, then raised my gun up again. I had already shot one of them, and if they noticed, they were not going to be happy about it. I shoved the gibbering little voice that kept repeating that I had killed a man into the back of my head, and took a deep, shuddering breath.


    I stood there, every second stretching to infinity as I watched the doorway, waiting for the next soldier to poke their head through it. I didn¡¯t have long to wait, even if it felt like it, as another soldier stepped through the door. He went to check on the soldier I had shot, and I took aim. I didn¡¯t let him notice me, and fired again, hitting them in the skull. I watched in an emotional numbness as his brains splattered out upon the ground.


    I stayed back from the doorway, just waiting for the next one, and this time one came through with their shield leveled, covering almost all of them. Unfortunately for the soldier, their head wasn¡¯t covered, and I was a good shot, so their fate was the same as the previous two. I took another shuddering breath, and pulled the bolt back and pushed it forwards, trying to comfort myself in the routine of shooting, something which had always calmed me down.


    I tried to convince myself to just think of them as targets, but I couldn¡¯t get the image of their blood and organs splashing from out behind thm out of my brain. I sat there, waiting until the next one, and this one rushed inside, shield in front of them. I waited for a second as they got inside, then fired the second they lowered their shield to look around. The shot painted a table in brain matter, the freezing bullet encasing their entire head in ice, the brain coming out in a slushy mixture.


    I took a deep breath, I only had six shots left, but I had plenty of magazines. The next to come through the door were two of the soldiers, one soldier covering the top, one covering their front. I sent a bullet through the gap in the shields, but only got a loud scream of pain, the first time I hadn¡¯t gotten a kill with one of my bullets. The one screaming lowered their shield however, and I got a look, their shoulder had been entirely encased in ice. I fired my next bullet, which landed squarely in the center of their chest, encasing that in ice as the other soldier raised his wand towards me.


    Pulling back the bolt this time seemed to take an eternity as he aimed at me, and the only reason I managed to get off the shot was because their wand got caught on the body of the soldier I¡¯d killed. I took a deep breath after that happened, and decided to retreat to the top of the stairs, where they wouldn¡¯t have as good of a shot towards me, but I could still cover the doorway.


    I was sitting there, waiting for someone else to come through, when I started to smell smoke. They¡¯d set the building on fire. I ran towards the back of the building, there was a window there, and I figured I could survive the drop from the second story just fine. As I reached it however, I spotted some soldiers watching the back, and one of them sent a stream of fire towards the window. I cursed, and fired back at the direction they were at, and was pleased when I heard a scream after the explosion of that enchanted bullet.


    I looked out the window again, and this time there was nobody to fling fire at me, so I dove out, rolling on the ground as I landed, as much to put out the flames licking at my brand new clothing as to alleviate the momentum of my fall. I came back up, only to see a wand pointed directly at me face. I raised my hands, sure of my fate as the man said something that would probably be very rude if I could understand it, and tightened his grip on his wand. He had just started to say the word the other soldier had said to blast the innkeeper when another soldier with a very prominent crest on his helm barked something at him.


    The man angrily yelled back, but he clearly wasn¡¯t the one in charge as he backed down, keeping his wand trained at me, but no longer allowed to kill me. The soldier in charge, who was absolutely massive, and had ears that I didn¡¯t recognize, took my rifle from me, and then started to grab my pistol when he sharply turned around. I looked where he was looking, as the group I was with came around the corner. They closed with him before he could even raise his wand. The massive man managed to use his shield long enough to get out his sword though, and then started to duel with Dmiyo, as Iosyo circled behind. Alya and Lilya simply cut down the man who¡¯d had his wand pointed at me before he could even say the trigger word for his wand. The massive man was soon taken down as well. While it looked like he could keep up with Dmiyo, he barely lasted a few seconds against Dmiyo on one side and Iosyo on the other.


    ¡°Oh thank god,¡± I said. I wasn¡¯t sure what would¡¯ve happened to me if they hadn¡¯t shown up, but I was quite happy they had. I stood up, grabbing my guns back, and reloaded to a fresh magazine for my rifle.


    My group instantly ran into the burning building I had been defending, running up the stairs and into one of the rooms, where I realized Grigyo had been hiding. I blanched, if I hadn¡¯t been there to defend the building, I don¡¯t know what would have happened to him. We went room to room, getting out everyone hiding there before the building was entirely engulfed in flames.


    We then started running around, leaving Lilya back to protect Grigyo and the others from the inn, and I began to see why the Tesser had brought out such disgust in everyone I¡¯d seen. Every building we went into, there seemed to be burning bodies, and in any building that held a girl that was even somewhat attractive, there seemed to be a couple of the soldiers laughing as they took turns with her.


    My guilt was slowly chipped away as I saw scene after scene of cruelty. Sometimes we managed to get there in time, far more often, we were too late.. For a vast majority of the time we¡¯d been running around, I hadn¡¯t fired a shot. I let my group do the killing. My life was no longer on the line, but after enough time, I started to think that I should join in dealing death. Even with the thought in my mind that I should join, I couldn¡¯t bring myself to pull the trigger. I wasn¡¯t willing to kill them from behind like we were doing, eliminating the pillagers while they were practically defenseless.


    I eventually snapped though, when I saw a soldier taking a girl that couldn¡¯t have been any older than eight. I instantly raised my gun, and put a bullet through his head, this time feeling no remorse whatsoever. I would have put more bullets through him if it wouldn¡¯t risk the girl getting hit. After that, I let go of my compunctions about putting bullets through people. Towards the end of the day, we stopped running into the Tesser soldiers, and we headed back to the walls. We soon arrived at the gates to see that had been completely blown open, the walls around where the gates used to be crumbling.


    There were hundreds of Tesser soldiers crowding around outside, but there were massive amounts of their bodies lying around the entrance, making large piles in places. The Tesser soldiers at this point were hanging back rather than charging in, and from the occasional arrow sent their way, I could see they were hiding within their forcefield. I frowned. I¡¯d wondered why we had been able to clean up the soldiers who had gotten through without the entire city being overrun. Apparently they had gotten through, and then had been cut off from continuing inside.


    The sun was starting to head down, and I was starting to relax. I was even thinking that we may be safe for the night, when I heard another of those massive explosions. Looking a distance to the right, I saw tens of the Tesser soldiers pouring through a new gap in the wall, and the people on our side trying to pick themselves up off the ground after being stunned by the explosion, only to be cut down from behind.


    I raised my gun and started to fire, killing some, but there continued to be more soldiers rushing through. A pair of people, one guy with massive muscles, and one tall lithe girl, both with wolf ears, ran to the new hole in the wall, making me wonder what on earth they thought they were doing alone. My confusion soon faded however, when they met the enemy line. Wherever they went, it was like a hot knife through butter, the enemies seeming to melt before them. The massive man would crush through them, treating their armor and shields like I could treat a soda can with his metal club, while the woman managed to dance around, always slicing into the few parts not covered by armor. They stayed in close enough that the Tesser soldiers couldn¡¯t use their wands without hitting their own men, and the soldiers were no match for the pair with just sword and shield.


    I continued to shoot, keeping my aim a good distance away from the two, as they closed on the gap in the wall, a few more people joining them as they shook off the stunning effect of the explosion. I was going to continue shooting at the soldiers on that side, when I heard a shout from my side. Soldiers had started rushing through the broken gate beside me.


    I instantly switched targets, but heard a clink after a single bullet, and ducked down to change out my magazine. My ducking down managed to save my life as a stream of fire went by right where my head had been. Sweat trickled down my neck as I did my best to swallow my fear, and I eventually managed to get my magazine changed with shaking fingers. I didn¡¯t stand all the way back up though, but knelt as I started shooting in places where I had a clear line of sight.


    Our fighters impacted the Tesser soldiers with a loud crash of weapons on shields, but the soldiers behind the front line continued to throw lances of fire in the direction of me and the other mages. I watched as one of our earth mages built up a wall to protect him, only to get ignited when he stood up to cast at them. On the other hand, I also saw one of our mages controlling a wall of water in front of him, using it as a shield as he created lances of ice out of it that would go screaming towards the enemy soldiers.


    I ended up taking cover behind the small wall that the earth mage had made, popping up for fractions of a second to shoot and then get back down behind it. Occasionally streams of fire would hit the wall, or go flying above it, and each time I had to shove the gibbering little voice in my head into the back of my thoughts. After popping up a few times, I noticed my group was part of the front line, cutting into the Tesser soldiers much more efficiently than those around them, reaffirming my thoughts that they were quite strong.


    Once the sun was almost down, the lances of fire casting dark shadows in the twilight, the Tesser soldiers fell back to their magical forcefield, and started to retreat. Wondering what had happened at the other hole in the wall, I looked over, to see the two people from earlier utterly drenched in blood, and surrounded by a practical wall of bodies. As things quieted down, I started to hear the moans of pain from all around us. Looking around, for the first time I noted that our group hadn¡¯t fared quite as well as I had thought. There were two Tesser bodies for each of ours, but there were far more Tesser soldiers than there were defenders, and if they blew another hole in the wall, or god forbid, two more, then we probably weren¡¯t going to be able to continue defending.


    I looked towards my group and the two people who had held the hole practically alone. If it weren¡¯t for them, I think that the area might have been completely overrun. We needed to get away somehow, we weren¡¯t going to be able to hold for long.


    I had gone up to my group, when the two ridiculously powerful fighters came up to our group and started to converse with Alya and Dmiyo. At first it was peaceful, but as they continued to talk, Dmiyo got more and more annoyed, eventually yelling back at them. Alya grabbed him by the arm, and started saying something quiet enough that I couldn¡¯t hear it. Dmiyo slowly calmed down, and then got a defeated look on his face before turning to face Iosyo.


    He talked with him for a bit, and Iosyo got nearly as offended as Dmiyo had, but he eventually relented after enough conversation. Dmiyo then turned to me, gesturing for me to follow Iosyo. I nodded, and we went back to the inn, which wasn¡¯t burning anymore. We fetched Lilya and Grigyo, then headed back to the wall to meet up with the rest of our group, along with the two I didn¡¯t know the name of. We arrived, and Dmiyo still seemed angry, but Alya holding onto his arm seemed to be mollifying him a bit. The two people with their wolf ears came up to us and started talking to Iosyo and Lilya.


    I stood there awkwardly, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing, until they finished talking, and soon all of us were heading to another part of the city. We grabbed what seemed to be a cart of some kind, but it had seats on it, proper suspension, and a lot of runes scribbled on it. Noticing a pair of handlebars, I realized that this was probably a medieval style car.


    I was wondering what the point of it was, when we headed to a small gate that I hadn¡¯t seen before at the back of the city, and they had Iosyo, Lilya, Grigyo, and I all load up in four of the available chairs. At this point I realized what was happening. We were getting sent off, likely to warn a larger city about what was going on, and Alya and Dmiyo were going to stay behind to help hold the city. At this point I got out of the car. I wasn¡¯t going to abandon the city, but they continued to refuse me staying. They did their best to get their point across, eventually pantomiming that I needed to be there to protect Grigyo. I was very reticent. Grigyo should be fine with just Iosyio and Lilya, but after looking back and forth between Dmiyo and Alya for a bit, I sighed, and decided I¡¯d listen to them.


    I got in the cart, feeling it sag just a bit under my weight, and sat down in one of the chairs. Alya and Dmiyo gave hugs to everyone, which made me realize I still wasn¡¯t sure what their relationships were, and soon the small gate was creaking open, and I was starting to get seriously worried about any enemies that would block the way.


    I needn¡¯t have worried though, as Alya, Dmiyo, and the two people whose names I didn¡¯t know ran out ahead of us as Iosyo drove the cart. We were quickly outpaced, and I soon started to hear shouts and screams. We kept driving, and it wasn¡¯t long until we saw what used to be a blockade on the road, that was now filled with nothing but bodies. I shuddered as we drove by. I may be a killer now, but that didn¡¯t mean I enjoyed death.


    That thought made me shudder even more. I was a killer now. I wasn¡¯t sure what I should think about that. My thoughts sank down as we drove around the bodies. I was shocked from my introspection when we got past the blockade when the cart sped up immensely. Apparently we¡¯d just been driving on a low speed before. It wasn¡¯t modern car fast, but it had to get at least forty miles per hour.


    The rest of the night passed in silence, our group getting as far away from the city as possible to discourage any pursuit. Iosyo started falling asleep at one point, and I took over driving while he got some rest. The controls were simple, push forwards on the handlebars to accelerate, pull back to slow down, and turn them to turn. I soon got the hang of it, and drove until the sun started peeking over the horizon. I was originally planning on having Lilya do some driving, but I couldn¡¯t get the scenes of what the soldiers had done, and the deaths I¡¯d caused out of my head. I sat there, driving, scared to try and go to sleep in case I¡¯d see more of my thoughts.


    It was only later that day that we arrived. The first thing I noticed were the massive walls, the second were the buildings which should be physically possible. There were floating buildings, there were buildings that were wider at the top than at the bottom by far more than should be safe, and then there were buildings as tall as skyscrapers ¡ª that were made of stone. I gaped at the view as we approached, and hadn¡¯t closed my mouth by the time we arrived at the gates.


    Rather than going in however, we stopped, and Iosyo talked to one of the guards, showing a symbol he probably got from the two people last night. One of the guards nodded, and grabbed someone who looked more important. The more important man then started to guide us. It wasn¡¯t long until we arrived at one of the floating buildings, which was chained to the ground, seemingly to keep it from floating off. I was wondering how we were going to get up, when the guard had us all step onto a stone circle in the ground. He then waved a small medallion over the center of it. In response, railings instantly grew up from the ground, and then the entire stone circle began to rise up, depositing us at the entrance to the building.


    We went inside, and I gaped. There were beautiful tapestries everywhere along the walls, the ceiling was painted in a scene of what seemed to be some holy being smiting a demon looking creature with six arms, and the ground had an absolutely beautiful marble pattern. I admired the different everyday scenes in the tapestries and the art upon the ceiling until we arrived at some large stone doors. I took a deep breath as the guard waved his medallion, and the doors began to open without a whisper of sound.

 Chapter 7: City

    With the door open, I saw a scene straight from a movie. Pillars intricately carved with scenes stood around around the outer edges, and a large curved ceiling painted with scenes portraying demons and monsters fighting with humans. I admired them for a bit until my attention was drawn to the premiere object in the room, a large throne upon which sat a woman whose age I couldn''t begin to guess. At first glance, she seemed to be in her mid thirties, but she had this ageless quality to her, and her eyes seemed to have seen entire ages pass. I shook my head, and noted everyone else start to kneel. I was maybe half a beat late in kneeling, and nearly fell over in my rush to get to one knee.


    The man who had guided us here began talking in a loud voice, I''m assuming to announce who we were. Taking the small token that Iosyo had, he brought it up to the ageless woman. I stayed on one knee, trying to resist the urge to look around, when the woman I assumed to be a queen said something, and everyone else started to stand. Yet again, I was a half beat late, taking cues from our group rather than knowing what to do myself. Standing up, I looked towards my group, worried that maybe looking directly at the queen could be construed as an insult. Seeing my group look at her with no worries alleviated that fear, and I went back to trying to figure out her age.


    My musing was disrupted as she began to talk in the most regal voice I had ever heard. I only caught a couple words as she talked, but Alya was soon responding, sounding more stiff than usual. I was simply acting as a bystander, when the queen turned to me, and I''m ashamed to admit I panicked a little.


    My miniature panic attack hopefully not showing too much on the outside, she asked me something. I just stood there awkwardly for a moment, not sure what to do. Alya came to my rescue however, saying something to the queen, likely telling her of my lacking ability to communicate. I shifted a bit from foot to foot, and simply hoped whatever Alya was saying would satisfy her. Soon, Alya turned to me, and said one of the words I knew, ¡°speak,¡± and so I decided to speak a little.


    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure you can''t understand me, so I''m not particularly sure why you''re having me do this, but I suppose I''ll do what''s asked of me,¡± adding a belated ¡°your highness¡± at the end. I doubted she¡¯d be able to understand me, but it didn''t hurt to be safe in a world of magic. The queen then nodded, and said something to the man that had guided us here. I watched, still confused, as he gestured for me to leave with him. I followed him out, stepping back on the platform that had taken us up to the floating building, and with another wave of his medallion we were headed back down. He began walking away, and I hurried to follow him. We soon arrived at a squat building made of the same seamless stone everything seemed to be made of.


    Going inside, I was greeted with a group of guards, and I started to get a bit worried. The worry grew larger as we went down the stairs, and I was greeted with what were obviously jail cells. I was considering making a break for it when we came to a certain cell, and I saw a man in shorts and a t-shirt rather than the standard tunic. I raised my eyebrows, his attire certainly seemed to be from Earth, but I wasn¡¯t sure until he spoke.


    ¡°Great, they brought another person to see me, you''d think they would have had enough of listening to me.¡±


    I grinned at hearing a familiar language before responding. ¡°Well I''ll give you one guess as to why they brought me to you.¡±


    The man popped his head up in surprise before responding. ¡°Oh thank God, finally someone I can understand. You''d think these savages would learn a more civilized language.¡± I looked at him quite confused. How were they supposed to learn the language we spoke when we hadn''t made proper contact with them. What really offended me though was that he referred to them as savages. They may not be as technologically advanced as us, but they were still people.


    ¡°Don''t call them savages. They''re humans, just like us.¡±


    ¡°Well what should I call them then?¡±


    ¡°How about we go with a nice neutral ''people¡¯ for now.¡±


    The man seemed a bit annoyed, but acquiesced. I nodded and looked to the man who had guided me here. He looked at me for a bit before taking out a key and unlocking the metal bars functioning as a door. The man who had been locked inside seemed to sag a bit in relief, and I soon introduced myself.


    ¡°I¡¯m Lucas. How did you manage to get stuck in a cell anyway?¡±


    ¡°Blake,¡± the man¡¯s expression turned dark. ¡°Our camp got overrun by an insane amount of ogres, and I was out hunting when it happened. I came back to see everyone either escaped through the gate or dead. There were way too many of the things for me to try and get through the gate, so I simply went another direction. I ran off until I managed to find this oversized town, but nobody here speaks English. I had to sleep outside, and then I was brought to here.¡±


    ¡°Ogres?¡±Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    ¡°ridiculously tall, green, humanoid, every hunting site sees them.¡±


    ¡°So goblins.¡±


    ¡°Those things can grow as large as twelve feet! There¡¯s no way you can call them goblins.¡±


    I raised my eyebrows, all the goblins who had attacked our camp had been around eight feet, but I guess if they could get that large, goblin may be a bit of a misnomer. Oh well, I was going to stick with goblin for now regardless.


    ¡°So you know how to get back to your camp then?¡±


    ¡°I wish. I don¡¯t even think I went in a straight line away from it. I could maybe give you a general direction.¡±


    I sighed, it¡¯s not like I had expected him to be able to navigate by these unknown stars, but if he¡¯d at least followed the sun he could have a slightly better direction for us. I had a better idea of how to get back to my camp than him. Shaking off the disappointment, Blake and I were soon being guided back to the floating building, where we met my group out front of it. I introduced everyone, although that was about all I could do with my mastery of the language.


    ¡°So Blake, how did you manage to survive getting through the forest? You don¡¯t have any weapons, are you a mage then?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I just throw fireballs around. Made it handy to cook the meat too. So why do you have what look like stone guns?¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re a lot better than normal guns for hunting the monsters over here. I made them for hunting the bigger monsters, though they can¡¯t get through everything.¡± I thought back to how the bullets had just bounced off of the wyvern. I needed to upgrade my weapons. Unfortunately, I needed tool to precisely measure out my progress as I made a gun, and all of my tools for that were back on Earth in my apartment. I paused for a moment, by now my apartment had to have been taken back.


    ¡°But they¡¯re rocks,¡± Blake¡¯s comment distracted me from my musing


    ¡°They¡¯re magical rocks that are tougher than steel.¡±


    Blake snorted, making my face twitch a bit in annoyance. ¡°Why use those when we can throw fire?¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t throw fire. I can make things and do a bit of body enhancement magic.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re like those idiots who use swords.¡±


    At this point I felt sure that the frown in my mind was starting to show through to the outside as I replied. ¡°Excluding the fact that I try to fight from even further back than you mages, those ¡®idiots¡¯ using swords are just as useful as the mages, if not more so.¡±


    ¡°Oh really?¡±


    I was really starting to regret helping him get out of the prison at this point. ¡°Yes really. Who do you think stops them from getting to you in the first place?¡±


    ¡°I can stop them just fine on my own.¡±


    ¡°And if there¡¯s too many to do that?¡±


    ¡°Well it¡¯s not like someone else would be able to help then.¡±


    I mentally threw my hands up in the air, and sped up a bit to walk with the rest of the group. I started to zone out everything else Blake said, giving him monosyllabic responses, and simply practiced my vocabulary with Lilya. After a bit, I started where we were going, as we were still being guided by the guard with a fancy symbol on his cuirass. While I was musing on where we could be going, we arrived at a squat, wide building, and walked inside. The guard guiding us was soon talking with a man in a very fancy looking set of armor. The man guiding us had Lilya take over the conversation after a bit, likely to repeat whatever she had told the queen. Meanwhile, Blake was asking me ¡°What are they talking about?¡± I shrugged, I caught some words, and quite a few mentions of Tesser, but I couldn¡¯t put the words together into a coherent whole.


    We were soon outside of the building, waiting for something. I soon figured out what that something was, as out of the building we had just been in, there started to be lots of chatter and clanking noises. Maybe ten minutes later, soldiers started to pour out of it, more than I had expected to fit in it, though to be fair I couldn¡¯t see exactly how long the building was. Blake and I watched in surprise as they marched out in an orderly fashion.


    They continued to stream out, heading towards the gate we had come in. When the last of them had trickled out, Iosyo and Lilya started to get in an argument over something. Their argument continued, and eventually I managed to get the idea that they were trying to get the other to stay with Grigyo, likely as both of them wanted to go with the army to find Dmiyo and Alya. At this point I realized that I should probably explain what was going on to Blake.


    ¡°Um, you may not want to stay with me for now, I¡¯m going to be caught up in a war.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?¡±


    ¡°Some people called the Tesser invaded, and my friends stayed behind to help protect the city. I¡¯m planning on going with the army here and making sure they¡¯re ok.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re fucking insane, you know that? You go have fun dying, I¡¯ll stay here. A jail cell is better than that.¡±


    I hesitated for a moment, deciding that as much of a prick as he was, I wasn¡¯t going to leave him to be stuck in jail again. Handing over some of the chips of cores, I explained to him what they were and how he could use them. At this point, Lilya had won the argument, and Iosyo had grabbed Grigyo and was about to head off, when I stopped him, and tried to get across the idea that he should help Blake for now. He seemed to get the idea, and I informed Blake that he should stay with Iosyo for now.


    We waited, as the army went into a large lot filled with carriages. When the carriages started to roll out on their own, I realized they had to be an old fashioned style of an APC, or armored personnel carrier. I watched as they streamed out of the lot and headed towards the gate as we tried to keep up. Once we arrived at the gate, we picked up our powered cart where we left it, and we were soon driving after the APC¡¯s. Maybe thirty minutes into the drive, I finally nodded off, exhausted from not having slept the night before.

 chapter 8: Tears

    Lilya woke me just as we could see the town in the distance, and I began to worry as I looked ahead. The setting sun reflected off the clouds of smoke blooming over the town, tinting everything in a dark red light, the fires we could see in the town adding to the atmosphere of destruction.


    We followed after the APCs as they entered the town, some of them stopping and disgorging their soldiers, who began to go door to door, searching for either survivors or Tesser. Lilya and I remained on the cart, following after the bulk of the APCs. Here and there, Tesser soldiers started to appear, and every so often one of the APCs would stop, letting out soldiers to fight the Tesser. I watched flames from one of the Tesser wands splash off the shield of one of the soldiers on our side, not a flicker of the liquid seeming fire licking at them.


    Thinking I should get one of those shields, we continued down the streets, but soon the Tesser resistance mounted. The first wave of Tesser was crushed under a few of the APCs, but the vehicles were soon bogged down by the large number of Tesser soldiers. The soldiers from our side were soon pouring out of the APCs to fight, and Lilya and I hopped off of the vehicle we had been traveling in. I took a few potshots at Tesser soldiers where I had a clear line of sight, but soon my view was covered by soldiers on our side, fighting in melee with the Tesser soldiers, who didn¡¯t fare too well when their wands were countered by the shields of those on our side. Lilya on the other hand, waded into the battle with gusto.


    I decided to try and get around the fighting, hoping to find Dmiyo and Alya. Slinging my rifle on my shoulder, I tightened the straps so it wouldn¡¯t get in the way as I took my revolver from the holster on my hip. After making sure that it was loaded with the last of my special bullets, I started to go door to door, checking each one to make sure that I wouldn¡¯t be suprised by a Tesser popping out from behind me.


    The houses were entirely deserted, except for the occasional charred corpse, and a good portion of the buildings were simply burning, or already burnt out husks. I didn¡¯t bother exploring those, until I heard a cry from one of them. I paused for a second, not sure I¡¯d heard anything, when I heard it again. I didn¡¯t recognize the word, but it unmistakably meant ¡®help¡¯. Putting my exploration on hold, I ran into the building I heard it from, ignoring the flames licking around it.


    Running inside, it was lit by the flickering of flames at the edges of the building, the ceiling shifting in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable, but I wasn¡¯t willing to leave someone to die without at least trying to help. Ducking down as low as I could to avoid the smoke, I followed the continued cries for help, soon finding they were coming from a wardrobe of some kind, where a beam from the ceiling had fallen in front of it.


    I instantly ran over and started to use all of my strength to drag the beam. It shifted, but so did the ceiling along with it. I stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath before going into a coughing fit from the smoke.


    Deciding to ignore the shifting of the ceiling, I took a much shallower breath this time, and gripped the beam as well as I could, squatting down before pouring as much mana as I could into body enhancement. I squeezed as hard as I could, and slowly dragged the beam towards me and away from the wardrobe, ignoring the uncomfortable shifting of the ceiling.


    Small flaming pieces of whatever the roof was made of rained down, and I did my best to ignore them, even when one landed on my arm, giving me a nasty burn. I continued to drag the beam, scraping it along the floor until I saw the wardrobe door shove open, just wide enough for the child inside to squeeze out.


    As he got out, he practically collapsed, and I grabbed him, starting to run out of clean air myself. I picked him up and carried him to the outside, where the air, while not clean, was no longer unbreathable. Coughing my lungs out, I sucked as much of the relatively clean air as I could into my chest. I looked down as I was done, to see the kid doing the same, but he seemed to have it worse than I did, lying on the ground curled up.


    Not sure what to do, I kept watch for any Tesser soldiers, until the kid finally pushed himself off the ground, standing up and saying something to me that I couldn¡¯t understand. I shrugged, and said ¡°I can¡¯t understand you, sorry,¡± before motioning to myself, saying ¡°Name Lucas¡± in their language, leveraging my very low mastery of the language.


    The kid gestured towards himself, saying ¡°Name Hail.¡± I nodded, keeping my gun out and keeping a look all around us, before gesturing for the kid to come with me as I headed back to where all the soldiers were. I didn¡¯t want to go searching door to door with a kid, and I figured I could drop him off with the soldiers before continuing.


    I soon found that the battle line had moved up significantly, our soldiers were surrounding a large group of Tesser, who in turn were surrounding a squat stone building. I watched as our soldiers pushed into the Tesser, limbs being removed, blood spraying from cut arteries, and occasionally organs splattering onto the ground as people were cut open, the swords of our soldiers seeming to ignore the Tesser armor.


    I finally got a better view of the squat stone building the Tesser were surrounding, when I saw the two people who had held the hole in the wall at the first attack. They jumped out of the stone building, cutting into the Tesser soldiers who had turned to face our group.


    Alya soon followed after them, even with a limp she managed to cut through the Tesser soldiers, though not quite as quickly as the pair. I sat there, feeling useless, unable to fire my guns for risk of hitting an ally. The battle soon ended though, the Tesser soldiers surrendering after a certain point. The Tesser soldiers were soon disarmed, and brought by some of the soldiers back towards where the APCs were.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Lilya, who had been fighitng in the front lines with the soldiers, was soon reunited with Alya, and I started to get a sinking feeling in my gut. Where was Dmiyo? My worry was soon shown to be legitimate as I saw Lilya¡¯s expression turn to one of horror. I ran up, wanting to know what was going on, and not knowing how I could comfort them. I ended up standing there awkwardly as Alya held Lilya, stroking her hair and whispering to her; even as she had her own tears in her eyes.


    I soon noted the child I¡¯d helped is hiding behind me. I found out why when a man came up to him, grabbed him by the ear, and started screaming at him. I watched in annoyance until the man went to slap the child, and I caught his arm, giving a firm ¡°No,¡± in their language. I let the man tear his arm away, and he was soon dragging the child away by an arm. I watched as the child was dragged off, looking at me mournfully. I hid my head in shame, I just couldn¡¯t bring myself to stop his family taking him away, and could only hope that their relationship wasn¡¯t normally as bad as that.


    I was soon distracted as the crying of Alya and Lilya turned to anger, and Lilya and Alya started running to the powered cart we¡¯d taken to get here. We hopped in, to see the soldiers doing the same, and we were soon all headed in the same direction ¡ª the direction opposite the big city.


    I wondered what was going on, when a few minutes later, I start to see some massive construction in the distance. As we get closer, it becomes apparent that this massive object is man made. It looked like an amalgamation of different sized boxes, some wooden, mostly those on top, while the ones on the bottom were almost entirely made of varying kinds of metal. Some parts had the red of rust, while others looked as shiny as stainless steel, and they clashed with the wooden boxes higher up on the object.


    We soon were able to see the bottom of it, and I let out a sharp breath. Along the bottom, there were tens of treads, varying in size, but clearly meant to move the chaotic object, or what I was starting to realize was a moving city. At the base of it, I could make out people being led into the moving city, chained up and surrounded by Tesser soldiers. It isn¡¯t until one of them looked back that I recognize him.


    ¡°Dmiyo!¡± I shouted, but my voice has to be lost among the sounds of the APCs and our own vehicle, or the constant rumbling noise coming from the behemoth of a moving city. Lilya and Alya looked at me though, not able to recognize Dmiyo from this distance, and Lilya somehow managed to make the vehicle we¡¯re riding in speed up even more.


    We were starting to get close, when a fireball more massive than any I¡¯ve seen before came arcing out of an opened port on the city, flying and exploding into a sea of fire onto one of the APCs. I instantly turned to Lilya, to see Alya wresting the controls away from her. She soon turned the powered cart away from the Tesser city, driving us out of range of its fireballs while Lilya screamed. The APCs followed us away from the moving city but the one hit by the fireball coasted to a stop and ceased to move.


    I sat there in a numb mood. I had thought of Dmiyo as my friend. I hadn¡¯t been able to understand much of what he¡¯d said, but he was always good natured, and he¡¯d been helping me a lot with the sparring practice without being cruel or actively trying to cause me pain. I shook my head, I had it easy. Lilya and Alya were bawling, Alya tried and failed to keep a stoic face while Lilya simply let out her emotions. I took controls of the cart and started to guide us to the town.


    What were Dmiyo and the other people taken for though? Was he taken to be a slave or something worse? I shook my head, I didn¡¯t know the answer to those questions, but for now I was going to assume they were going to keep Dmiyo alive, and I was going to find some way to get him back, for myself, for Alya, and for Lilya. I kept watch on the mobile city, until the amalgam of wood and metal started making a much louder noise, and started to crawl away from us, slowly picking up speed.


    We drove back to the town I still didn¡¯t know the name of in silence. Lilya and Alya were still crying, though their sobs had died down,.and I brought the cart to the place where we¡¯d originally picked it up. I was soon approached by the human wrecking ball of a man, along with the lithe girl who fought with him ¡ª the two people who had held the hole in the wall practically alone. He introduced himself as Sire, and the girl introduced herself as Anna, the familiar name making me wistful for home. I introduced myself, and then sat there trying to convince Sire that I didn¡¯t speak the language.


    Alya came to my rescue a few minutes later, her tear streaked face and voice that kept catching in her throat pulling at my heartstrings. Looking towards Lilya, I see the same, her body still shaking with inaudible sobs. I looked away, I couldn¡¯t bear to see this. The sun finally fully sets, and we spend a time looking for somewhere to stay, eventually finding an inn that isn¡¯t too burned out, going to bed with a large amount of people in each room, everyone searching for a covered place to spend the night.


    Morning dawned, and I had gotten maybe a few hours of fitful sleep, my eyes feeling gritty and my limbs feeling exhausted. I was honestly not sure if it was from the death I¡¯d seen, the multitude of people in the room trying to hide their sobs, or the tear streaked faces everywhere. Eventually, I end up crying a bit myself. I didn¡¯t know what was going to happen to Dmiyo, but I thought of him as a good friend, and from everyone reactions, I wasn¡¯t going to see him again unless I did something.


    Trying to convince myself that I¡¯d be able to help him eventually, I got up to see Alya and Lilya already up, which made me wonder if they¡¯d even gotten as much sleep as I had. We were soon heading out of the room, doing our best to not step on anyone. We even managed to find out where our group¡¯s powered cart is. While it didn¡¯t carry us, and didn¡¯t move nearly as fast as the one that we had taken to get to the city, it still had our stuff in it, and surprisingly, hadn¡¯t been looted.


    We were soon heading out of the town, towards the large city, likely to pick up Iosyo and Grigyo and inform them of what had happened. Unfortunately, this time we didn¡¯t have the powered car, and by the time the sun set we were only a small fraction of the way there.


    The days passed, a depressing silence being the prevailing atmosphere, and I didn¡¯t try to break it, simply musing on some way to help Dmiyo, constantly coming back to the point that I simply didn¡¯t know enough about this world. I eventually tried to get Alya to start up my language lessons again, and she obliged quickly, likely searching for anything to help distract her a bit.


    The lessons continued, and I even got her to spar with me. I dove into the lessons with gusto, trying to distract myself as much as distract Alya, and soon Lilya joined as well, another person to pick on me. We arrived at the city some number of days later, my sense of time seemingly not working correctly, all the days blending together in my haze of sadness.


    We arrived at the city, to see Iosyo, Grigyo, and Blake standing there. Iosyo and Grigyo started running towards us as soon as they saw us, but Blake just stood by the gate, not wanting to come see us apparently.


    Iosyo and Grigyo soon slowed down, then sped up to full speed, likely as they noticed that Dmiyo wasn¡¯t with us. They were soon at our cart, slightly out of breath, and Iosyo asked something. The answer he got is obviously not one he liked, and he yelled at Alya before he slowly turned from anger to grief, falling to his knees with tears leaking out from his eyes, repeating something over and over in his language.


    I tried to not look, not wanting to brand yet another heartbroken face into my psyche. Eventually, he stood back up shakily, and we headed into the city, heading straight for an inn, where everyone ordered a lot of alcohol, me included. Blake seemed to be completely oblivious of the mood as he tried to get me to talk with him, but I kept shutting him down until he got in a huff and started grumbling into his drink. He went to bed early, but the rest of us, excluding Grigyo who was too young to drink, stayed up until the inn portion of the building closed before we stumbled up the stairs to get to our rooms for some sleep.

 Chapter 9: Language

    I woke in the morning with a pounding headache, and simply lay there for a while, images of the past few days chasing each other around in my head. I''d killed, I''d seen more killed, but for some reason, the images that hurt the most were the expressions of Alya, Lilya, Iosyo and Grigyo. I didn''t know how long I lay there, unwilling to get up, when I heard a knock at the door. They shouted something I didn''t understand, and I shouted back "One second!" ignoring the fact that they wouldn¡¯t understand me. The shout made me wince with my pounding headache. I was soon dressed back up in my new clothing and armor, which felt like it should be far dirtier than it was with how much blood I''d seen.


    Opening the door, I was greeted by someone I assumed to be a maid, more because of the mop and broom she carried rather than due to her clothing. I nodded towards her, she utterly ignored me, and I headed down in the hope I hadn''t missed breakfast. I soon traded in my room key for same porridge that seemed to be the most common breakfast food, and sat down next to Blake, who was eating his meal in silence. Taking a bite, the corners of my mouth turned down. It seems I had missed breakfast. It was cold, and congealed to more of a jelly texture rather than the soupy one it was supposed to be. I finished it off regardless and sat there, wondering where everyone else was.


    I was considering going upstairs to try and find everyone else when Alya and Grigyo slowly made their way down the stairs, Alya holding her head and looking a bit green. I winced, I felt pretty bad due to how much alcohol I had the other night, but Alya clearly handled the morning after even worse than I. They came over to the table with me, sat down, and Alya waved over the serving girl to get some of the cold porridge. Alya grimaced as she put the spoon in her mouth, and Grigyo played with his food, seemingly not willing to eat.


    Soon after Lilya came down, then Iosyo, both of them seemingly unaffected from how much alcohol they''d had the night before. I glared at them for a bit until the image of Lilya''s expression after losing Dmiyo passed through my mind, my glare fading into an empty expression. The two of them seemed to enjoy their porridge about as much as the rest of us, the cold goop only there to fill the stomach.


    We all silently sat there for a bit, before I stood up, deciding I was going to drag everyone out of the city to do something distracting. Blake on the other hand, had no plans to leave.


    ¡°I¡¯m staying here,¡± he said in a haughty tone.


    ¡°With what money?¡±


    ¡°We went out hunting while you were gone. I know how to get money now, so I¡¯m not going anywhere.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯ll get back to earth how?¡± I say, giving him an expression showing how ¡®intelligent¡¯ I find his idea.


    ¡°You¡¯ll find it and come get me then.¡±


    I ground my teeth, what was he thinking acting like I was his lapdog. Regardless of if I would have told him if I found a way back to Earth, I was annoyed enough at this point to not come get him. Turning away, and dreaming of leaving him here forever, the rest of us headed out.


    We walked in silence, the only noise the squeaking of our powered cart, until I tried to start up my language lessons again with Alya. She obliged me, going over the stuff I couldn''t remember, and tryied to pantomime or point out new vocabulary. Lilya and Grigyo soon joined in, Grigyo even taking out a small drawing pad to get some words across, his art very impressive for a child. As we exited the city, the crowds started to die out, and we sped up, heading out into the forest that seemed to make up a majority of the nearby area, only slowing down as we reached a clearing.


    The practice weapons were soon taken out of the cart, Alya staring at one of the extra sets wistfully, me not knowing how to comfort her. She soon managed to shake it off, handing me a practice sword and shield. Alya was soon giving lessons to Grigyo and me, while Lilya and Iosyo went through the movements that Alya was trying to show us. I didn''t notice any improvement, but continued to practice, having Alya correct my posture, grip, or swing at various intervals.


    Soon we got on to sparring, Lilya pairing up with Iosyo while Alya took turns sparring with Grigyo and me. After getting beaten even more handily than Grigyo, we got to hunting, exploring the forest. We didn''t have any luck, probably due to how close to the city we were, but we continued to explore until late in the day we found a small stream and set up camp beside it. We all filled our water bottles, the crystal clear stream reflecting our worn expressions as we did so.


    We went to bed early, but after a few hours of tossing and turning in my bed, I got up, going outside to see a small campfire with Lilya sitting beside it. I sat down by the fire along with her, and we sat there in silence, both of us watching the flames dance, wishing we could burn away the thoughts that plagued us.


    I woke up in the morning realizing that I''d nodded off beside the fire, and I had the blanket I''d brought covering me. Feeling thankful for whoever had done that, I got up with a groan, feeling terribly uncomfortable from where a rock had decided to lodge itself into my arm, and covered in leaves. I brushed the leaves off me, and noted that everyone else was already awake and sparring, so I took a practice sword and shield from the cart and joined them.


    The days started to blend together after a bit, we would travel for a few days outside the city, hunt for a couple days, then head back to the city. The syth cores were always absorbed by one of the people in our group, and I began to feel awkward having gotten a core from a monster that I had only seen once. On the other hand, I''d gotten a pretty good strength boost, my eyesight was insanely good, and I was pretty sure I regenerated wounds much faster than normal; the burn I''d gotten from rescuing the kid had been gone within two days, so it''s not like it was a bad thing.


    We continued this for a couple weeks, and then I decided I had enough mastery of the language to start searching for gates back to earth. I had figured out the word for gate after dragging the group to the center of the city, where I had found out there was a gate to another world. The other world was quickly shown to not be earth, as it had the same amenities as the city on this side of the gate, buildings made of smooth stone or wood, with roofs seemingly made of one giant piece of bark.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    We started to head around to smaller towns, where I would find one of the guards, and I would ask if anyone spoke in a similar fashion to the english I would speak in as an example. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have any luck, and the days stretched into weeks. Every small town we visited seemingly had monster attacks every day. I¡¯d thought that the attacks on our outpost had been out of the ordinary, but it seemed now that it was only around the larger cities that monsters were scarce enough that there weren¡¯t constant attacks.


    The small towns were where a large majority of the hunters stayed. I¡¯d wondered why the large city hadn¡¯t had too many people walking around with weapons, but it made sense that they would be gravitating to the towns where you could actually hunt. None of the attacks stood out though, and time started to blend together, the attacks bleeding into each other. I slowly grew more fluent in the language, and I slowly grew better with the sword and shield I was practicing with daily.


    Eventually, I decided to make my own sword and shield, but I wasn¡¯t quite sure what material to make it out of. I was starting to regret not taking more of the wyvern¡¯s scales, but eventually I made a simple sword and shield out of steel boar bones, fusing in warg claws into the sword to add some weight to the sword.


    One attack, I even decided to test out my sword and shield in live combat. It was an attack by goblins, almost all of them short for their kind, only eight feet. I¡¯d recently found out that monsters strength was largely proportional to their size. They would eat cores of other monsters, and grow in strength and size, similar to how humans would grow stronger the more they enhanced their mana. I¡¯d found this out after in a previous fight a twelve foot tall goblin had attacked a camp, and even my explosive bullets had only ripped strips of flesh out the giant thing, only cracking its bones rather than penetrating past them. It had eventually been taken down by Alya after I¡¯d taken a few chunks from its shoulder and chest, but I reaffirmed that I needed to upgrade my guns.


    Testing out my melee weapons had been intense in a fashion I wasn¡¯t used to compared to fighting in the back with my guns. The goblins would swing their arms at me, or try to kick me, and I would get my shield in position to block, being knocked back a foot or so each time, diving back in to get a cut on their legs or stomach ¡ª the only places I could reasonably reach. The fight drove a spike of adrenaline through my body. I was faring reasonably well, until a ten foot goblin came by, its leg crashing into me like a freight train. It sent me a good two meters backwards, and made an uncomfortable cracking noise come from my forearm. Wincing, I dropped my sword, drawing my revolver from its holster, sending all six bullets flying into the beast as I stepped back.


    The electrical bullets caused it to spasm, the freezing bullets gave it the worst case of frostbite I had ever seen, and the explosive bullets fared better than they did against the twelve foot goblin, sending flesh flying, some wet, some frozen into chunks. I was letting out a breath when the thing screamed, looking to me with animalistic rage. There wasn¡¯t a hint of sapience in the being as it charged at me.


    I grabbed my sword off the ground, dropping my revolver to save the time it would take me to put it in its holster. I dove to the side as the goblin went flying by me, not wanting to block it when it had its full mass behind its charge. I rose, charging into the beast from behind as it turned to see me, lunging forward in a long thrust, my sword ripping straight through the stomach of the beast.


    It screamed again as I tried to pull my sword out and failed. I tried to hold on as the beast swung around, enhancing my body with as much mana as I could to increase my grip strength. I had to let go of the sword soon after though, as it swung behind it with its slightly too long arms. I watched carefully from a fighting crouch as it turned to me, the sword sticking out from its stomach like a giant splinter.


    I was getting ready to dive aside if it charged me again, when it fell to one knee, before slowly collapsing to the ground, the rage in its eyes not fading even as it bled to death. I shuddered, and looked around, the rest of the goblins were just now being mopped up, and Lilya joined me as I walked over to retrieve my sword.


    ¡°Big goblin,¡± she said in the language I was slowly coming to understand.


    I nodded, a motion that meant the same in both of our cultures, though people here just tilted their head down once rather than the double bob of the head I was used to. After sheathing my sword, I walked over, grabbing my pistol that had been stomped into the ground by the goblin. I checked it over, made sure it wasn¡¯t damaged, reloaded it, put it back in its holster, and gave it a pat for saving my ass.


    A week later, there was even an attack by another wyvern. This time however, the monster was significantly smaller, and far more fragile, my bullets not bouncing off the scales, though they did only penetrate a few inches. Regardless, I took the scales, covering the front of my shield with them, as they were still stronger than the Steel boar bone base it was made of.


    Absorbing the core was an even worse experience than before though. While the last time, I had simply shut down due to pain, passing out, this time it seemed to stretch along just under the threshold of passing out. The minute of pain was excruciating, every second absolute making me feel like my skin and bones had been replaced with molten lead. By the time it was over, I was a sobbing wreck, curled in the fetal position on the ground, throat raw from my screaming. I was surrounded by the nearby hunters as I became aware of more than my pain, but I shakily got up, Lilya giving a short explanation. I wasn¡¯t sure exactly why absorbing the wyvern cores caused me such pain, but at least my vision had improved yet again, though I wasn¡¯t excited to get used to my newfound strength yet again.


    Along with the monster attacks on the towns nearby, I got started on something that I wasn¡¯t too pleased with.


    ¡°This is for children¡±


    ¡°Is useful¡±


    I tried hard to get across the idea that what was happening was demeaning, but my slowly growing language skills failed me, and eventually I turned to the object of my embarrasment: a children¡¯s picture book. The written language was quite simple, but had 28 letters rather than the 26 of my native language. I had picked up the letters quickly. I¡¯d always been more of a visual learner, but when I had been started with a picture book, I thought it was too far. Was it too much to ask for a dictionary?


    Eventually, Alya¡¯s pushing got me to read it, and while I still thought it demeaning, it did end up being helpful with learning due to having simpler words to read. Even if the pictures did make me feel like my intelligence had been insulted.


    I quickly took to reading, soon finding that they didn¡¯t really have books for middle aged children, either being simplistic for learning how to read or full on textbook size. After the picture book debacle, I read through a couple of the textbook sized stories about one hero or another. Even if I could only get a general idea what was happening, I did pick up some new vocabulary from it, and I figured re-reading the material would help more so.


    The next couple of weeks spent searching for a gate to earth were fruitless, and I was starting to think that I should just take a break from the constant searching, when news came in that distracted me from my goal. I was in a small town, with small walls and nothing but an inn and a general store, more an outpost for hunters than an actual city, when it arrived.


    The county (or city-state, I wasn¡¯t yet sure) we had been hiding in, which I had found out was called Kyren, had declared war on the Tesser. My first thought was surprise they weren¡¯t already at war, but it seems they had been ignoring the raiding in dove like manner. Now though, the hawks had finally been released. One of the largest towns in the region had been attacked, and this time the country would retaliate.


    I couldn¡¯t get any more information than that, regardless of how the group tried to explain it to me, my mastery of the language not at a high enough level. I did decide instantly that I was going to attempt to join the war efforts, and the entire group agreed with me. I soon discovered that the military wasn¡¯t averse whatsoever to hunters joining the fight, having a separate division for any hunters to join. The military would even feed and transport us to any battles. We hired a maid to take care of Grigyo for a while, and we all marched off to war.

 Chapter 10: Retaliation

    My first thought in one of those APC like armored carriages, was that traveling to war was terribly boring. All of us hunters chatted amongst ourselves, but the talk soon died off, and we were left without anything to do. The only window to look out was terribly small and at the front of the carriage for the driver, making it nearly impossible to even watch the scenery. I sat there in the slightly uncomfortable silence, thinking of possibly rescuing Dmiyo, as unlikely as I believed that to be.


    Traveling continued for a while. We¡¯d camp outside at night, then head back into the APCs for the day, stopping only for lunch. At night, I could see campfires campfires stretching to the ends of my vision down the road in both directions. The days passed by, and I was starting to go a bit stir crazy from being trapped in the small vehicles, when finally there was a change. We¡¯d found the tracks to one of the mobile cities that the Tesser used. The ground was ripped up, the massive weight of the city having indented the ground, leaving a scar in the earth.


    We got out of the APC, and I saw in the distance a man in much fancier armor than the average soldier, with gold trim on his blue undercoat. He was talking with another man with not quite so fancy an outfit, gesturing emphatically. It wasn¡¯t surprising to me when I saw that the man wearing the fancier armor and clothing won the argument. They had clearly been the ones in charge of the traveling, as we all turned towards the tracks on the ground, driving along them rather than continuing in the direction we had been going.


    The traveling soon faded back into monotony. We¡¯d been on the move for a couple of days when I heard a shout from the driver. Looking out the only window, I could see one of those moving cities, the amalgamation of wood and metal looking terribly misshapen. My examination soon made me realize that the city wasn¡¯t the same on that had taken Dmiyo, so I leaned back in my seat, leaving room for everyone else to get a look.


    The carriage we were in sped up, and I assumed all the other carriages were doing the same, when I saw a bright light outside of the window, seeing a fireball fall only a few meters ahead of us. I blanched. I was trapped inside this carriage, my life dependant on luck and the skill of the driver. We started to swerve side to side, but I still heard the roaring of the flames, and I occasionally heard screams echo, likely from an APC getting hit by one of those oversized fireballs.


    It seemed to take forever for us to get close enough to the mobile city that they couldn¡¯t fire at us anymore, and I was then lost on how on earth we were going to get up onto the city. Getting out of the APC, my confusion was soon solved when a massive shimmer in the air flew through the air, impacting on the mobile city with a crunching noise. An entire building of the city was knocked inwards, and oversized harpoons lanced into the opening, stabbing into the metal walls, ropes trailing behind them. Soldiers were soon climbing the thick ropes into the mobile city. I sat there, and watched as another shimmer in the air quickly moved towards the mobile city. This time, it impacted on a forcefield, causing small flashes of light to flicker along the dome shaped shield. A few more vehicles, looking like giant cannons, rolled up beside one of the APCs, and soon the flashing lights were repeated, showing me that the shimmers were coming from the vehicles I decided to call force cannons. I watched as two more of them rolled out and began to strengthen the barrage on the forcefield.


    I wondered why the Tesser army wasn¡¯t coming out to fight as flashes of light burst out in an almost constant light show. I continued to watch, until eventually, I started to see what looked like glowing cracks in the air, and then the forcefield shattered in pure silence. The next barrage from the force cannons impacted the city with a massive crunching noise, a multitude of the metal buildings collapsing inwards. From two of them I saw spatters of blood where people had been crushed. Harpoons were soon stabbing into the openings in the city, and soldiers were climbing up the thick ropes to attack it. The fireball barrage resumed on any APCs or soldiers they could hit, but the fireballs were met with massive walls of water put up by the Kyren mages.


    Eventually, I raised my rifle as Tesser soldiers found the holes in their city, and started to take potshots at them, keeping them away from the harpoons so they couldn¡¯t cut down the soldiers climbing the ropes up to them. My blood filled game of whack-a-mole soon ended as our soldiers reached the opening, and took over the fighting. I sat back, looking at the long lines of soldiers waiting to climb into the openings, and flinched every time that loud crunching noise sounded, causing another breach in the city.


    I was starting to think that I wasn¡¯t going to get to do any fighting, when I saw a cloud of dust coming from the other side of the city. As they crested the horizon, I got a good look. They wore the familiar cuirass over red clothing, each of the soldiers holding a shield and a wand. I wasn¡¯t sure if I should grin or frown, it seemed I would be getting some more Tesser to shoot at. As they got a little closer, the frown I wore grew. Among the Tesser were lines of chained up people. They¡¯d raided another city. That did explain why there was so little resistance in the mobile city itself. I stood there as they noticed us, and the soldiers not climbing into the mobile city started to line up between the Tesser soldiers and the hunters. Deciding to get a better view and angle to shoot from, I climbed atop one of the APCs, taking my rifle and waiting for them to get close enough to shoot at.


    It wasn¡¯t too long until they did arrive, and I took a potshot at them before cursing. I¡¯d forgotten about their large scale forcefields that prevented things from getting through them. Annoyed, I watched as the front line of the Tesser soldiers stepped out of the forcefield, wands at the ready, before sending a stream of fire at the Kyren soldiers. Grinning at the fact that they¡¯d stepped out, I instantly fired again and again as quickly as I could. Heads exploded, bodies had holes punched in them, and with how large my bullets were, they nearly tore off a couple limbs.


    While reloading, I watched as the streams of fire simply splashed off the shields of the Kyren soldiers, only occasionally making it through holes in the formation. Those occasional breaches in the formation of shields led to screams ringing out, and each time I would wince in sympathy. I finished reloading as the Tesser soldiers started to stream out of the forcefield, sending blasts of fire at our soldiers as our soldiers advanced in their shield covered formation. I got off as many shots as I could before the two battle lines met, the Tesser taking up their swords as the melee was joined.


    I soon climbed off the top of the APC, grouping up with Iosyo, Alya, and Lilya. Alya spoke quickly, explaining to the group, then gave me a short ¡°Go side,¡± which I took to mean we would be flanking the Tesser soldiers. My guess was soon proved to be correct as we started running in a looping manner around the side of the battlefield. Looking around, I could see a good deal of the hunters doing the same thing. It took around ten minutes to get far enough around that we could assault the Tesser, and I stayed towards the back as we ran towards the Tesser soldiers. Unfortunately, we didn¡¯t really take them by surprise, and they were ready to face us by the time we were close to them. A couple of them stepped out to send their streams of fire at us, but a few quick shots from my rifle dissuaded them from continuing that course of action. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Taking position at the edge of the assault along with my group, I took up my sword and shield, getting into the fighting crouch I was now reasonably comfortable with. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have to do much as Alya, Iosyo, and Lilya started to carve through the Tesser lines. I found myself following after them, covering the side so they wouldn¡¯t get completely surrounded. My first real taste of melee combat was with a very young man, barely older than a boy. I hesitated before striking, and it cost me, as he stabbed out with his own sword, which bounced off my too slowly positioned shield and gave me a slice on my arm. I hissed in pain, and got my mind in the game. No matter how young they were, they were an enemy soldier for now. With my newfound focus, I went to cut at him with an overhead slice, only to have him block it with a wince and retaliate with a chop from the side. Blocking it on my shield, I went as if to stab at his head, but was blocked yet again. I was getting frustrated, neither of us seemed to be skilled enough to get around the shields we had. Out of frustration, I used all the mana I could in body strengthening and slammed my sword downwards at him, ignoring the fact that I should be saving my mana for an extended battle. He collapsed to one knee, and I had to rip my sword from his dented shield before stabbing into his open neck.


    I watched his expression of surprise as he died in horror. It was one thing killing someone from a distance with my guns, it was a completely different one seeing their expression from a foot away as the life bled from them. I swallowed my bile, turning to my next target. The fighting continued, sometimes with more of the hunters next to me, sometimes just with my group. I was constantly blocking the swords that the Tesser Soldiers used, but my shield was much more up to the task than the shields the Tesser soldiers used, not even getting dented from the constant abuse. I didn¡¯t have much luck in actually killing anyone without another hunter to aid me, or without using prodigious amounts of mana. Each time I did manage to end a life I felt a small part of me break.


    Eventually we managed to hack through enough of the Tesser that we hit the slave line. By that time my breathing was ragged, every inch of me feeling worn, and I doubted I¡¯d be able to continue using body strengthening magic for much longer. When we reached the slave line, we instantly turned to the side, staying between the slaves and the Tesser. I didn¡¯t think that the Tesser, even as slavers, would kill the slaves simply to prevent us rescuing them, but none of us were willing to take that risk.


    The battle continued, until my mana petered out completely, and after that I sat back for a bit, not skilled enough to fight anyone without the strength advantage that body strengthening magic gave me. Stepping back from the battle line, I sheathed my sword and took my revolver from its holster. I stayed up next to the battle line, firing at anyone that I could get a clean shot off at while not risking life and limb. The Tesser soldiers soon found out they needed to keep their faces covered with me shooting at them, but that left our melee fighters free to chop at their legs, sending them to the ground where they were easy pickings. The fight continued until the sun started to set, when we met up with the main line of Kyren soldiers. We¡¯d won the fight. I wondered for a bit why I hadn¡¯t seen a single Tesser soldier surrender this time, as last time plenty of them had, but shrugged off the thought quickly.


    My thoughts soon turned to wondering why the soldiers had been so weak. The hunters had carved a path through them with practically no trouble, abusing their greater physical prowess. Even I¡¯d been able to beat them one on one, and I was a significantly worse hand with a sword than the soldiers were. Simply by using my mana to strengthen myself, I¡¯d been able to crush them with pure power.


    The slaves were soon being unchained, but while a ragged cheer went up, most of them seemed too traumatized to celebrate. The soldiers were soon appropriating blankets from the supply vehicles, giving the women something to cover themselves with. My rage was burning at the sight. While the guys were left with cuts and bruises, the women were left with something far worse.


    I had to turn away, no target for my anger in sight. I was looking at the moving city, deciding if I should go climb up one of the ropes to get inside when a good portion of it lowered down, creating a ramp to the ground, Kyren soldiers coming out of the cleared out city. Deciding to check out the city to distract myself, I climbed up the ramp and started looking around. The first thought in my mind was that it was utterly chaotic. There didn¡¯t seem to be a straight road anywhere, just twisting things that went up and down levels at a whim, spitting off into tiny alleys where two people could barely squeeze by each other. Ladders were everywhere, and the roofs of the buildings also made up more pathways. I could see in the distance soldiers guiding more slaves, these ones looking even more beaten down than the recently taken ones outside. While these slaves were more often clothed, their eyes seemed to lack even the slightest spark of hope, even as they were being rescued.


    I slowly explored the twisting paths, ducking into buildings here and there. No matter how hard I looked however, I didn¡¯t find what I had been fearing to see. The entire city was utterly devoid of women and children, the only women being the slaves we had rescued. I walked around the puddles of blood, which sometimes had a body lying in them, and eventually found one of the areas that had been knocked open in our attack. From up there, I could see the dozens of APCs, along with a few vehicles I hadn¡¯t seen before. One of them had to be the harpoon launcher, as it had a large amount of harpoons in tubes, looking like a missile launcher to my modern eyes.


    I could also see quite a few supply vehicles. I¡¯d wondered where the food was coming from, but it was from these giant wagon looking things. I turned away from the hole in the wall, and slowly and awkwardly made my way back to the entrance, nearly getting lost a couple of times due to the winding nature of the paths. Exiting again, I wondered what we were going to do with the mobile city. The sun was almost all the way beneath the horizon when I found my group, and we set up camp. The military soon handed out some hardtack, dried meat, and dried fruit to eat, a meal I was getting terribly sick of.


    While wishing we were in a forest so I could go try and find some of those gourd like yabka fruit, I slowly fell asleep. I woke early in the morning, having slept surprisingly well for having seen people die just feet in front of me the other day. I shook my head to dispel the lingering images. From what I¡¯d seen they had deserved it. The entire group then started to head the direction that the people taken to be slaves had come from. The APCs, and even the mobile city drove behind us, going slowly so as not to outpace the people who had been taken from their homes.


    It took around half the day to get to the city that the people had been taken from. When we arrived, I noticed that the city was an utterly burned out wreck. Looking around, every other building seemed to have either collapsed or burned down, the entire area looking like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. I shook my head, I didn¡¯t know how long it was going to take them to rebuild their homes and lives. As we went further into the city though, I saw something that gave rise to a small sprout of hope.


    It was a massive stone construction, that hadn¡¯t been damaged whatsoever, and had a line of terribly tired looking hunters out front defending it, along with more on top of its walls. It seemed to be the keep of a castle, with crenellations and murder holes galore. I smiled, it looked like the Tesser hadn¡¯t taken the entire city. When the hunters at the gate saw the procession of captured people being brought back, people started streaming out of the large stone building, running up in the hope of finding their loved ones.


    Watching the shreds of hope ignite within those searching unfortunately only made it that much worse to see those who had their hopes extinguished, not finding the person they were looking for. I watched as some ran to their loved ones, hugging, kissing, and talking excitedly. Then there were the ones who couldn¡¯t find those they looked for. Some kept searching, following after a vain hope, while others would fall to their knees, lean heavily against a wall, sit down, or simply collapse; the last of their hope flickered out of existence.


    We stayed the the rest of the day, and then the night in the husk of a city, packing into the buildings that still had a roof. Eventually, I got to sleep, listening to some of the soldiers celebrating the victory, and others mourning the loss of their friends.

 Chapter 11: Strength

    I woke to the noise of the soldiers heading back to the APCs. Bleary eyed, I followed them to the vehicles, meeting up with my group along the way. We loaded up into one of the APCs and were soon back on the road, though I noted before we left that quite a few soldiers were left behind. I wasn¡¯t sure if they intended to help rebuild the town, defend from any possible attacks, be it from beasts or men, or if they were simply there to give the townspeople peace of mind.


    The silence within the APC weighed heavily upon me, and eventually I took out one of the three books I carried with me to read. I wanted to keep more, but the weight quickly became prohibitive, throwing off my balance in combat. I had already read through the story a few times, but each time I did I understood it a bit better, picking up a few new words. I repeatedly thanked any god or gods that existed that the Kyren used a phonetic alphabet rather than a single symbol for each word like a few languages from Earth.


    The story was a pretty cheesy one, telling a story of a mighty warrior, who went on adventures, saved damsels in distress, and killed mythical beasts. It was pretty standard fantasy fare. Or it would be if it was fiction. From what I could tell, it was an autobiography of some powerful warrior from another world, rather than being a tale of fantasy. It was an enjoyable read though, and became more so the more I read. It even talked in depth about the different monsters, along with illustrations. Apparently there were whale sized land beasts I translated as leviathans, which would be hunted for days. The hunters slowly bled the monster out until it died. Wyverns were considered basically a footnote in the book, only coming to prominence when the warrior in the story raided a den of them to steal an egg. There were other interesting monsters, a giant feathered snake that lived in the ocean, something described as many legged and armored, the illustration of it making me think very uncomfortably of a giant centipede, and even actual dragons, which are apparently very docile.


    I let myself get lost in the story for the rest of the day, and nearly finished it by the time we arrived at the campground, the magically lit interior of the APC we were riding in providing plenty of light even as the sun began to set. Getting out of the vehicle, I stretched out for a good fifteen minutes, feeling the stiffness in my body slowly fade away as I walked in circles. Someone came by from the supply group, bringing along food and water, and I munched down on the unappetizing road food as I thought of what was to come.


    The first battle had been painful in a way I hadn¡¯t expected. Fighting with sword and shield was terrifying in a way that sitting back and using my gun wasn¡¯t, but on the other hand, I couldn¡¯t just sit back with my gun with the forcefield and my allies getting in the way. My best bet would probably be doing what I had done at the end of the other day, using my revolver as close support, though it wasn¡¯t exactly nice to the ears of nearby people. The crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier was still loud, though not as bad as traditional gunpowder guns.


    I finished off the unenjoyable meal, and set up my tent next to my group. I wasn¡¯t sure where the army was going for now, but I would stick with them if it gave us a chance to rescue my friend. As I set up, I noticed Lilya, staring into the flames again, and decided that the least I could do would be sit beside her for now. Anything I said would come out empty, seeing as how I didn¡¯t think it particularly likely that we would even find Dmiyo, let alone rescue him. I thought that I may be thinking a bit too pessimistically, but it¡¯s hard to break a lifetime of habit.


    We sat there in silence a while, but eventually, I started to nod off and crawled into my tent to sleep. Morning came with the usual discomfort from having slept on the ground, but it soon faded as I got packed up and entered the APC with a sigh. I was not looking forward to the constant sitting, only breaks for mealtimes. The next few days passed in the same pattern. I read one of my books or talked with the group to learn at least a little more of the language.


    Eventually, we came upon another scar in the earth, this one seeming more entrenched than the previous one had been. It seemed to be a path that had been worn down from repeated passage. I nervously examined it while we ate our lunch beside it.


    I watched the two important people talk again during lunch, and after they¡¯d reached an agreement, lunch ended. We started to follow the path of ripped up earth, chasing after the mobile city. The trip soon faded into monotony, when one day we stopped short. We hadn¡¯t yet reached the mobile city, but we exited our vehicles anyway. The very important looking man with a gold trimmed cuirass and a blue and gold gambeson exited his vehicle.


    The man seemed to have trouble climbing up upon one of the APCs, then took a deep breath and began a speech I was only going to understand about half of. He droned on and on about something, sometimes mentioning the Tesser, other times mentioning something about fighting, and even mentioned the hunters to some nods of appreciation. I just sort of sat there as his speech rose to a crescendo and ended with the soldiers cheering. Looking around, I noticed that only a few of the hunters joined in, so i held back on joining the cheers.


    We all filed back into our mobile armored carriages, and were soon being bounced around inside as we chased after the mobile city. I caught something out of the corner of my eye appearing in the small window only an hour later. The mobile city I could see slowly grew in my view, and soon the fireballs were flying towards the APCs. The mobile city didn¡¯t even slow down, slowly grinding along.


    I held my breath as fireballs started to fall around us, then let it out as the first force cannon fired at the frankenstein of a vehicle, some of the wooden buildings on it exploding in a shower of splinters. The fireballs stopped as the forcefield went up,and the mobile city still kept trying to run away. It was far slower than the APCs we were riding in, and slower even than the force cannons which were barraging the forcefield.


    We continued the chase, a pack of wolves chasing an elephant, when the forcefield shattered in a show of light. I grinned as the force cannons started to impact the city itself, this time targeting the treads beneath it in order to cripple the giant misshapen beast. The treads shattering beneath it, the mobile city started to tilt to the side, stopping its forward motion. Harpoons then began to lance into the city as our soldiers disembarked the APCs, and then started climbing the ropes connected to those harpoons into the city. I joined the soldiers in exiting the APCs, and looked at the city, which was showing much more action than the previous one we had attacked.


    It looked as if we¡¯d knocked over an ant hill, Tesser soldiers constantly sending spells through murder holes in the city. The fireballs, lightning bolts, and more obscure spells were returned in full by our force cannons Each shot from one of them splattered the Tesser soldiers like a stepped on juice box. I took up my rifle, firing at any of the Tesser soldiers trying to cut down the ropes our soldiers were climbing. My shots continued, as did the force cannons, and splatters of blood were constantly sprayed across the amalgamation of buildings.


    From the mobile city, a ramp soon popped down, and soldiers began to spew out at us, spraying fire from their wands. A good few of our soldiers and hunters were torched before they could react, but our group soon got it together and got in melee with them, preventing the ignition of more of the Kyren soldiers. I sat back with my rifle, shooting at any soldiers who were still trying to cut down the ropes, but had to stop when our soldiers reached the top of them and started to invade the mobile city. I was confused when a firework went flying up from the city, getting a bad feeling as it exploded into a shower of sparks in the sky.


    I switched from my rifle to my revolver, and started doing my best to back up my group. This time, as I fired whenever I saw a clear opening, I noticed the Tesser soldiers emulating me, using their fire wands whenever they had a clear line of sight. Wondering at the difference in tactics between the different Tesser groups, I did my best to avoid any of the flames turning me into a pyre. The fight continued. Whenever a person in front of me would move heavily to the side in order to avoid a stream of flame, or dodging a sword blow, I would take the opening to shoot anything I could see. While a good portion of the time the Tesser soldiers had shields in the way, occasionally I painted the Tesser soldiers in the back row with blood or brain matter.


    My fingers eventually became sore from constantly loading my revolver, and my mind was happy for the distraction that my sore fingers provided. I latched onto it, being very thankful that my magic weaponry didn¡¯t generate any heat, as having my fingers both burned and sore would be miserable. The soreness couldn¡¯t distract me from the constant death for long though. In one direction, there was a Tesser soldier, a grimace on his face as he plunged his sword into a hunter. In the other, I watched a hunter wielding a massive greatsword cleave multiple Tesser soldiers in twain with a single blow, laughing as he did so.


    There I sat in the middle, a dealer of death myself, the revolver in my hand seeming to weigh a bit heavier in my hand each time I fired it. I kept repeating a mantra in my mind, the Tesser are slavers. The Tesser are rapists. The Tesser took Dmiyo from us. I did everything I could. I tried to convince myself that they deserved the death I was granting them. I didn¡¯t want to think they had a family, I didn¡¯t want to think they had lovers, children, parents. I eventually simply didn¡¯t want to think.


    I felt myself slow down through the battle, the constant mental strain causing me to be a bit too slow when a Tesser soldier slipped through the battle line, stabbing into my chest. I tried to raise my shield, but was too late, and started to think that I was getting my just rewards for the death I¡¯d brought. I blinked in surprise as the sword simply glanced off my wyvern scale cuirass, only cutting a light slice in my shoulder. I¡¯d completely forgotten about my armor, and from the soldier¡¯s expression, they hadn¡¯t expected it to stop their sword. My surprise didn¡¯t stop me from raising my revolver and putting multiple bullets into the young soldier¡¯s body as he tried to pull his sword back.


    The soldier slumped down onto my body, and I took a step back, letting the body fall, only to note that I¡¯d stepped on yet another body, one of the Kyren soldiers. I felt numb, the new streak of blood down my armor making me visually match my feelings. I continued to numbly reload my revolver, then went back to shooting when I could. For some reason I felt even less alert than before the soldier slipped through. Luckily or unluckily, no one new made it through the front line of fighters, and eventually the soldiers stopped, then let out a cry. We had won.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The soldiers had begun to celebrate, with me in their midst feeling like an outcast for not celebrating the death of hundreds, when I spotted something in the distance. It quickly approached. At first, all I could make out were clouds of dust, but soon they turned into a large number of core powered wagons. They weren¡¯t armored like the ones we had been riding in, but there were a more of them than there were our APCs. I blanched. Our soldiers were soon arrayed against the new threat, and I shouldered my rifle, ready to open fire.


    As the wagons approached, and didn¡¯t seem like they wanted to slow down, the force cannons opened fire. Whenever one of them impacted a wagon, it would utterly explode, along with the people on it, creating a small rain of stained red wood chips. I watched the localized showers of splinters as they got into firing range for me, and I targeted the drivers, taking out a couple. The ones I killed careened off to the sides, one of them hitting another of the wagons, breaking both of them, and sending the Tesser riding them flying at bone-snapping speed.


    A grin crept its way onto my face until I realized why I was grinning, but the realization didn¡¯t stop me shooting until they reached the lines of our soldiers, literally driving over anyone who didn¡¯t get out of their way before disgorging the soldiers riding in the very large wagons.


    Our battle lines ruined by the wagons driving straight through them, my guns quickly became useless unless I wanted to shoot someone on my side. Sighing, I took up sword and shield for some melee fighting. I did my best to go around to wherever needed help to pitch in, but whenever I did try to help, I¡¯d only be distracting a single enemy soldier unless I burned large amounts of mana to completely overpower them. I¡¯d noted this last time, but hadn¡¯t really thought much about it, why were these soldiers so weak? I¡¯d only enhanced my mana twice. Admittedly, it was with wyvern cores, but I was still overpowering the fighters without mana, and with mana I could rampage through them, my swings crushing their attempted defenses.


    They were more skilled than me, but that didn¡¯t matter when I was stronger, had better weaponry, and had reflexes that seemed significantly better than before I¡¯d enhanced my mana. Throughout the fighting, I tried to hide the part of my mind that kept breaking, but whenever I did I almost started to feel¡­ satisfied. It just felt right to best them in combat. Scared of that thought, I began to focus on the part of me breaking, which felt significantly worse, but helped me stay me.


    I fought on, and was running pretty low on mana, when I noted one particular enemy soldier easily cutting through the Kyren soldiers. Deciding to take him out, I pulled out my revolver, let out my breath, and pulled the trigger. I knew the bullet was accurate, but gaped as it hit not him, but what had to be a forcefield around him. I¡¯d known there were large scale forcefields, but this was my first time dealing with a personal one.


    The man apparently noticed my shot, and turned to me, breaking off from the fighting with the group to take me out. I panicked a bit, but held my ground as he approached, raising my shield to block his sword as it came whistling downwards. The impact on my shield rang with the clarity of a bell, his sword bouncing off the hardened wyvern scale coating on my shield. Unfortunately, the arm under my shield wasn¡¯t as lucky, feeling like one big bruise from a single swing.


    I would have gulped, but I didn¡¯t have the time as he swung again. I started pouring what was left of my mana into my body enhancement magic, and blocked the swing with much more comfort this time, though I still winced from it. Swinging back at him, he casually knocked my blow off course with his shield. I was terribly outmatched. I managed to block another two of his attacks, but each time I felt the bones in my arms grate together. Each swing of his, I was forced back a step or three. I was beginning to think I was just going to die when Alya came to my rescue.


    She started the fight with a casual swing that I was certain held more force than anything I could produce. Her swing caused the man with the forcefield to grunt, his easy expression fading into a serious one. I should have gone back to fighting with the other soldiers, but I simply watched entranced as they began to exchange blows. The two of them moved almost faster than my improved eyes could track, causing afterimages to appear. I frowned, he had simply been toying with me.


    The dance continued for a while, swords flickering up and down, trying to dance around the shields that always seemed to be in the way, until finally Alya¡¯s blade managed to sneak under the shield, cutting deep into the man¡¯s leg. He let out a shout of pain, and tried to overpower Alya for a bit, but was quickly knocked back as Alya retaliated with just as much power.


    She then started to dance around him, forcing him to move his wounded leg as she constantly feinted with her sword, getting him to move his shield constantly. She was planning on bleeding him out. He seemed to realize what was happening only too late, as he shouted, and barreled forwards, trying to tackle Alya. She simply sidestepped him, his cut leg slowing him down, and cut at his other leg as he passed by, sending him tumbling.


    He struggled to rise as Alya slowly approached him, said ¡°For Dmiyo¡± in the most harsh voice I¡¯d heard from her, and stabbed her sword into the back of his neck. The man reached up to grab the slick blade sticking out from his adam¡¯s apple. Alya ripped the sword out as I watched, flicked the blood off, then went back to fighting. I shuddered, I never wanted to get on her bad side.


    I got back to fighting, my stamina having replenished a bit during my short break to watch Alya¡¯s dominating performance. After a bit, I noticed that Iosyo and Lilya had joined me in going from group to group, helping anywhere we could in the chaotic melee. With the Tesser having been dropped off in the middle of our lines, there were enemies in every direction, and occasionally the three of us would get pinned down, only to get rescued in turn by someone else. The most frequent of our rescuers was Alya, making me wonder how she managed to fight and keep tabs on us at the same time.


    The battle was slowly starting to wind down, and I finally started to relax. I continued going from group to group to help, but everywhere I looked, Tesser soldier were surrendering, throwing down their weapons, and so I ended up lowering my own. I frowned at the condition my sword was in after just two battles, it wasn¡¯t cutting as well, and chips were showing throughout it. Just as we started to celebrate I saw something. I casually looked towards it, and blanched. From the same direction the previous group had come, another dust cloud was forming, and soon I could see more of the wagons carrying Tesser soldiers. There were only as many as last time, but our numbers had already been cut down significantly. We were also worn from the previous fights. As I stared, Alya came by, grabbed the three of us, and started to drag us along. She dropped us off at the edge of the battleground, then stood in front of us protectively. The Tesser soon arrived, and battle was joined once more, but this time, we were outnumbered. I continued to fight, staying on the edge of the battlefield that Alya repeatedly herded us to. Soon the battle was clearly turning against us.


    Everywhere I looked, our soldiers had started to surrender. I wasn¡¯t certain what to do, then Alya came to us, grabbed us, said a word I didn¡¯t recognize, and started dragging us out of the battlefield, towards a forest barely visible at the edge of the horizon. I protested, but fell silent as she glared at me, making me wonder what stupid idea prompted me to oppose her. Turning away from the woman whose glare somehow reminded me of my mother, I ended up running towards the tree line in a bid to not end up a slave or dead.


    Some soldiers soon noticed us however, and took chase. The first to try and send streams of fire I answered with my revolver. I turned back just long enough to get some shots off, two of them hitting my targets. With the soldiers forced to hide behind their shields as they tried to chase us, we soon started leaving them behind. I was starting to think we¡¯d get away cleanly, when I looked back to see one of their wagons fully loaded with soldiers, and driving after us. I skidded to a stop, dragging my rifle from behind my back over to my shoulder, and shot the driver. My grin didn¡¯t last long however, as someone else took the controls and continued driving towards us. I shot him, then realized that this was a losing proposition, more of the wagons were being loaded up to chase after us and the rest of the people who were scattering to avoid becoming slaves.


    I tightened the strap on my rifle, attaching it to my back once more, and got back to running, fumbling with my revolver to reload it as I ran. After far too many attempts, I got the bullets in the chambers, and closed the cylinder. The wagon I¡¯d shot at soon overtook us, stopping in front of us as soldiers started to hop out of it. We largely ignored them, and Alya beheaded one as she passed, making me think of a bottle of champagne with the cork popped out. I fired the six shots in my revolver, taking the soldiers by surprise as they were unloading. Four of the six I shot dropped, while the other two started to scream in pain as we ran past them. Lilya and Iosyo chopped through the two who tried to blockade us in an instant.


    We soon left the wagon behind again, sprinting faster than even peak human athletes before the world changed. I managed to reload again as we went, somehow not tripping. We made it to the forest at almost exactly the same time as another one of the wagons reached us. The soldiers were disembarking much more quickly than the previous group, and I attempted to send the six new bullets in my revolver at them. This time, things were different. Two of them managed to have their shields raised, and one of them hit another personal forcefield, leaving only three of them incapacitated or dead. Holstering my revolver, I drew my sword, having to slow down this time as Alya repeated her act of beheading one of the soldiers.


    I met the first soldier with as much power as I could, slamming my sword into him with all the strength of my body enhancement magic. The man yelled in pain, but kept his shield held up, even as I ripped my sword from the horrifically dented object. His answering slice was much faster than the normal soldier¡¯s I had faced, and I barely got my shield up in time to block. I grimaced, and repeated my powerful blow, but again, he put up with the pain, keeping his shield where it should be even as I dented the top of it in a good few inches. The fight turned into a game of stamina, would I run out of mana first? Or would he run out of strength in his shield arm first?


    The answer was neither. The thing to give out was his entire shield, as I eventually cleaved off a good third of it, leaving him unable to block the follow up lunge. Breathing deeply, I looked to my group to see them having as much trouble as I had, except they were each facing two of the soldiers. Feeling inadequate, I went to help Lilya first, simply reloading my revolver into one of the soldiers from the side. The other soldier instantly turned to me, shield leveled, only to have his arm severed by Lilya, and we soon cleaned up the rest of the group just as Alya finished off the man who had the personal forcefield.


    Our flight was about to continue when yet another wagon stopped directly in front of us. Looking back, I saw another three coming up, and I turned pale. Alya, noticing the same thing, grabbed Lilya, barked something at her, gave her something, then put her forehead to Lilyas, then did the same to Iosyo in a very motherlike gesture. The soldiers disembarking let us do so, then raised their weapons as Alya turned to face them. Lilya grabbed my hand as Alya charged into the formation, using her ridiculous strength to bowl over the entire group as Lilya dragged me along past Alya and into the forest. I looked back, only now realizing what was happening as Alya dove at the other wagons, killing one driver, then grabbing the steering handles to crash into the other wagons.


    Some of their soldiers leveled their flame wands at me, but I responded with my revolver, and the Tesser were soon tucked behind their shields. Lilya was soon dragging me away from the battle. I tried to hold back, but she yanked me alone, her superior strength making trying to stay a losing proposition. As I was dragged along, Alya raised hell for Iosyo, Lilya, and I to get away. While we ran, I felt a slight sprinkle of water on my face, turning forwards to see Lilya still facing away from me. I continued to follow her, in denial that we were losing yet another of our group. Alya would be able to get away. She was easily the toughest in our group, the soldiers wouldn¡¯t be able to tie her down. The thoughts like that were what I focused on, doing my best to believe them.


    The sun soon fell down, and we didn¡¯t dare make a campfire, not even setting up camp, just sleeping on the hard ground, with the sky above us. I felt that was what I deserved. I hadn¡¯t been able to help Alya. I hadn¡¯t been able to help Dmiyo. I couldn¡¯t even find the words to comfort Lilya or Iosyo. I curled up, I needed to become stronger.


    The days passed in utter silence for quite some time, none of us willing to talk, spending all of our time in silence attempting to escape. When I finally get up the nerve to break the silence for something other than necessity, it fell flat, neither Iosyo nor Lilya willing to help me learn some more of the language, and I wasn¡¯t going to press.


    We traveled for quite some time until we managed to hit a road, but it didn¡¯t seem to raise the spirits of any of us. We followed the road, eventually hitting a large town. We went to rest in an inn, and I finally had some free time to read, trying to distract myself. As I tried to go to bed, I focused on one thing, I had simply been too weak to help. Even if I¡¯d been the one to stay behind, I wouldn¡¯t have been able to stall the soldiers like Alya had. I was simply useless.

 Chapter 12: Alone

    Morning dawned in a grey fashion, clouds covering the sky to match my mood. Heading out of the room, I went down and had some¡ªthankfully warm¡ª porridge. After filling my stomach, I waited, but neither Iosyo nor Lilya came out of their room. The rest of the day was spent around town. I bought some new books, traded in the cores I¡¯d acquired for the chips, and ate some mystery meat and vegetables on skewers. Before heading back to the inn, I picked up some steel boar bones for some experiments.


    By the time I got back, Iosyo and Lilya were both out of their rooms, but they seemed to be in no mood to talk. Lilya had this lost, wistful look on her face, while Iosyo seemed to be simmering in anger. I hadn¡¯t known Alya as well as the two, and I hadn¡¯t ever figured out their relationship, though I had some suspicions.


    I sat with them for a bit, and asked what we were going to do in my slightly broken way of speaking. Lilya didn¡¯t seem to have any answer, simply shrugging, but Iosyo said


    ¡°Fight.¡±


    I shook my head, I needed to become stronger before I would be of any use. I tried to convey that to them, but got the feeling I didn¡¯t quite get it across. I sighed. Leaving them sitting at the table, I mentioned I¡¯d be back, and headed out of the city to do some experimenting.


    It didn¡¯t take long until I was far enough away from the city to do some material testing. There were two very important requirements for anything I made my guns out of. First was durability, so the bullets didn¡¯t tear apart the barrel of the gun, as that would just be asking for trouble, and second was mana conductivity. Mana conductivity was simply a measure of how much energy from a core the material could handle at once.


    If it could let more energy flow, my bullets would accelerate more, and if it let less energy flow, there probably wasn¡¯t any point in using it. There were a few different ways to test this, and I¡¯m sure there were very efficient ways to measure it in this world, but I just used a crude method. I would create small wands of the same size out of different materials, have them accelerate vertically anything I touched with them, then see which of them would send an object higher in the air.


    I¡¯d done some testing with the material the Tesser wands were made of, and they had been able to channel far more energy than the mana sculpted stone I used for my guns, but even if I added some of it to my weapons, the mana would be bottlenecked at the barrel, where all the acceleration runes were. It¡¯s not like I could make the barrel out of wood.


    The day was spent experimenting. Unfortunately, almost every material that was harder than the mana strengthened stone I used was a worse conductor of magic, and there would be no point in making tougher guns that didn¡¯t accelerate their bullets as well.


    The day ended with frustration, I needed better weapons, but had no clue how to make them as of yet. When I arrived back at the inn, I saw Lilya in the tavern portion of it utterly drunk, with Iosyo seeming a bit more sober, brooding over his own tankard of alcohol. I sighed. I may have joined them if I didn¡¯t need a clear head to do my experiments. It wasn¡¯t too late to have some of my own though, and I waved over the serving girl, asking for some alcohol of my own.


    I joined the only two left, and we sat there, Lilya drunkenly talking about stuff I could sometimes understand, while Iosyo brooded over his alcohol. I let myself fade into the pleasant buzz from the drink, but couldn¡¯t get my mind out of its ruminating. Eventually we all went to bed, Iosyo and I helping Lilya to her bed before we went to our own rooms.


    I woke the next morning in an abrupt manner, the way I always seem to do after having alcohol. Getting up with a dry, nasty tasting mouth, I went to go rinse out my mouth. I wished I had toothpaste instead of just baking soda, though I had actually found a decent toothbrush.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    After cleaning off and taking care of my bodily needs, I grabbed my things and went back out, this time to do some hunting. The day passed with me not finding anything, and I wasn¡¯t willing to go a few days out to hunt, so I went back to the same inn we¡¯d been staying at to see both Lilya and Iosyo still drinking. I sighed.


    I tried for a while to convince them to do more hunting with me, but they simply shrugged me off, turning back to their coping mechanism. I passed on having any alcohol that night, and went to bed with a faint hope of getting Iosyo and Lilya to come hunting with me. I didn¡¯t want to go hunting wyverns alone.


    The rest of the week was spent hunting and procuring different materials to use in my experiments I planned on doing. Eventually, I gathered enough different materials that I began to attempt my next goal ¡ª making grenades.


    My initial experiments didn¡¯t go well. I tried to make them of solid metal, then out of a shell of metal with a different material inside of it, but I couldn¡¯t get it to properly explode. The ones made of the same wood Tesser wands were made of exploded just fine, but the metal ones seemed to only have external explosions rather than exploding from the inside like I¡¯d intended. Without the shrapnel flying everywhere, they just didn¡¯t seem like they¡¯d be nearly as lethal.


    My next attempt was explosive cubes with thin outer shells of mana enhanced stone and metal, and I was quite hopeful, except the metal would just burst at a weak point and it turned into a jet rather than just being a proper explosion. The Stone shell had more luck, but it only shattered into a few large fragments rather than sending deadly shrapnel flying all around it.


    The next few days passed in a similar manner, filled with explosive experiments. Eventually, I gave up on making a fragmentation grenade, and went with something much simpler. My final design would simply fill the surrounding area with massive amounts of fire. Something interesting I noted, was that the trees here seemed very flame resistant, the fire that would fill the area would flicker out quite quickly once the core fragment ran out of energy.


    In response, I make a freezing version, but it seems to do no more damage to the trees, which frustrated me for some reason. Neither of my grenades get nearly as much of a kill zone as a fragmentation grenade would, but they¡¯d at least cause some serious issues for anything within a couple meters, or more in enclosed spaces.


    Once I¡¯d developed it, I was really confused as to why such designs weren¡¯t in more common use. I could see the flame wands as a reasonable replacement to guns, as there wasn¡¯t much reason to develop long range weaponry with the forcefields the Tesser used, but not having a grenade analogue seemed odd to me.


    I dismissed the thought, and made quite a few of the grenades for future use, putting them in individual cases. The ones I leave in my backpack, I take the core fragments out of so as to not risk them going off on me, but the ones I attach to my new bandolier, I make their activation almost as annoying as those push down to open caps.


    After I¡¯d gotten my grenades to a point where I was happy they wouldn¡¯t turn me into a pyre or popsicle at random intervals, I went back to the inn a bit early. Even showing up early though, I still saw Iosyo and Lilya in the same places they¡¯d been staying for the past week, Lilya drunk already, and Iosyo still simmering over a drink, though not nearly as bad as Lilya.


    I want to show them my new toy, but neither of them are willing to go out with me, and I start thinking that maybe I¡¯ll have to complete my next goal on my own. I grit my teeth, they¡¯re the only people I really know, though I suppose you could count the innkeeper at this point, and I was still very lacking in my knowledge of the language.


    I spent the next couple of days trying to get Lilya and Iosyo to go with me in my next endeavour, but had zero luck. Eventually, I got fed up with it, and went to go get my own cart, if I was going to be hunting on my own for now, then I was going to need some way to transport my kills. I eventually found a shop that was selling carts similar to the one my group had, and picked it up for less than my clothes had cost. I was seriously starting to be confused, why were clothes so expensive? This particular cart was made so that I could either ride upon it or have it follow me if I loaded it up with carcasses.


    Dismissing the confusion, I dragged my cart back to the inn, and went to bed after trying to get across to the remains of my group that I¡¯d be going out hunting. Taking their lack of reaction as agreement, I went to bed worrying about what they were going to do, reaffirming my decision of what to do.


    The next morning, I woke, ate a simple breakfast, and waited for Lilya and Iosyo to wake up so I could say goodbye, hopefully only for now. I was getting ready to leave, when Lilya came by, not yet drunk, and handed me a piece of wood with a massive amount of runes carved into it. I gave her a questioning look, when she took out what seemed to be a carbon copy of it, pressed down onto one of the runes, and spoke into it.


    Her voice echoed out of the one I was holding, and I realized that I now had the equivalent of a magical walkie talkie. I took mine up, and played with it, and once Lilya had recognized that I had figured it out, she nodded, and went back to her perch at the bar. I smiled a bit at the walkie talkie, at least I¡¯d have a way to contact them again.


    I headed out, sitting atop my cart, looking over the multitude of people as I slowly trundled out of the city.

 Chapter 13: Hunting

    Riding along in the cart soon became very boring. I no longer had anyone to talk to about learning the language, and I didn¡¯t really have anything else to do. Eventually I started playing around with enchanting, trying to make my own version of a walkie talkie, but I couldn¡¯t figure out how they had done it. Runes were based on the meaning you wrote into them, and I couldn¡¯t think of anything I could make into a pictograph that would get across the idea of wireless communication aside from a cell phone, and that would just look like a rounded rectangle.


    The rest of the day passed with me having no luck with making my own set of walkies, and I set up camp, along with a very handy tool I¡¯d bought after having it carefully explained to me by Lilya. Apparently, if anything got within what I approximated to be a forty foot radius of me, it would start blaring an alarm. Larger groups wouldn¡¯t use it, as they would sometimes go off for no reason, waking up everyone, but for people who were traveling alone like me, it was invaluable.


    It took a few days to arrive at the small little outpost I planned on hunting out of. It was where I had found the second wyvern, and I was hoping that where one had been, I would be able to find more. I got myself a room in the inn that seemed to house all of us hunters, and put my wagon in their yard, taking the key that was more like a wireless activation system than an actual key, and putting it into one of the sections of my backpack.


    The night passed in silence, and the hunting began.


    Each day, I would go out exploring, searching for wyverns, and never seeming to find any. During what was left of the day, I would read some of the many books I had stashed on my cart, practicing the language, though I was sure that my pronunciation would surely be odd due to learning from text rather than from speaking.


    Eventually, I started to stay out for two days, then three, and so forth, constantly trying to find wyverns, but to no avail. I eventually started to travel between different towns, asking around at the taverns for any information I could find on wyverns, and having very little luck. By chance, I eventually heard about a place that was supposedly filled with wyverns, a small mountain range a few weeks travel to the east. I considered for quite some time, I¡¯d become quite comfortable staying in this little outpost, but I needed to get stronger, and the only fast way I could think of was to hunt more wyverns.


    Checking that I had enough chips to pay for my travels, I hopped on my cart and departed the city. The travel was mainly along stone roads, likely made by earth mages, and all along the way I continued to read the books I¡¯d brought with me, being able to bring quite a few now that I had more than just my little backpack. I was occasionally attacked, even at night, but the alarm system Lilya had introduced me to came in handy, and I always made sure to sleep with my revolver right beside me.


    Every time I would come across a small town or outpost, I would stay for a day, making up for the rest I would lose on my travels. I made a decent amount of chips from the cores and bodies I would bring along on my cart, and by the time I finally arrived at the city I was hopefully going to be hunting out of, I could be said to be pretty rich. Buying some clothes would no longer come even close to breaking the bank.


    The city itself looked more like a fortress from the outside rather than the city it supposedly was. The walls were massive, seamless, and covered in different runes that would likely protect it from anything that would dare to attack. Walking in through the massive metal gates, something that would be unthinkable to move without the added strength from merging with cores, I saw the city proper. Everything seemed to be made of stone, with only slightly slanted roofs, each tier of the city slightly higher, and the flatter middle of the roofs were surrounded by walls.


    The city was a perfect fortress. Even if enemy soldiers managed to make it through the walls which were comparable to the great wall of china, they would be facing defenders on every roof, shooting from the high ground at all times. Contrary to the fortress like construction, the streets of the city were filled with bright colors, banners in front of tens of the street stalls which littered the wide streets. I slowly walked along, the crowded street making a constant background noise of chatter and footsteps.


    I slowly made my way along, asking one of the stall owners for directions to the nearest inn after getting some skewers, as I was still exhausted from my travels, needing some place to rest until I would start my hunting. I followed the directions to a place that seemed to be doing good business, the cart parking on the side nearly filled. I brought my cart over, parking it in one of the few empty spots, and headed into the tavern portion of the inn, a sign overhead naming the place as ¡°Flower¡¯s Inn and Tavern¡±.


    Walking inside, I was hit with a sweet smelling smoke I¡¯d never smelled before, and weaved my way through the patrons drinking various forms of alcohol and eating some sort of stew that smelled absolutely mouthwatering. I came up to the bar, which was covered in stains from spilled alcohol and food. Waving my hand at the proprietor, I asked for a room and food, and traded some chips for a key. I enjoyed the stew, which seemed to be steel boar meat, and some sort of starchy vegetable that I recognized from other times I¡¯d eaten, but still didn¡¯t know the name of.


    Heading up to my room, I was greeted with a very simple bed and desk, windows covered in shutters rather than glass, and a small rune powered lamp. Tossing my backpack to the side, I locked the door, and immediately passed out on the bed, exhausted from my travels. I woke up in the early morning, the sun just rising, and I grabbed my backpack, traded in my room key for breakfast, a tradition that seemed to be everywhere in this world, and left the inn.


    I exited the city on the opposite side I¡¯d entered it from, and in the distance, I could see mountains rising to the sky, like fingers trying to grab the heavens. I rode my cart towards them, the stone road making a clattering sound under the wheels of my cart. Occasionally, I would hop off, walking alongside my cart to stretch my legs. It wasn¡¯t until the mountains started taking up the majority of the horizon that I saw what had to be an outpost for hunters. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    The walls were large, though not as much as the city I¡¯d just come from, but unlike the city, they were crawling with people.l Some were soldiers with a bright yellow tabard over their armor, others clearly hunters from their mismatched weapons and armor. Nobody bothered stopping me as I trundled in on my cart, and I soon found the only inn at the place, simply having the word ¡°Inn¡± above it in the language they spoke here. I¡¯d found out a while ago that the term for the language would roughly translate as ¡°common¡±, which made sense considering that there were multiple worlds connected to here, and they needed a common tongue.


    Heading on in, there was none of the smoke from the last inn I¡¯d been to, and I took a seat at the bar, sitting on a rickety looking stool, which was unusual considering most furniture was clearly crafted from one piece by people who could shape it in the same way I shaped my weapons. I waited for the innkeeper to get to me, and ordered some food and alcohol, a steel boar steak that I¡¯d become rather sick of ever since the incident back at the camp I started my hunting career at. I ate it regardless, and it was actually quite good, rubbed with some sort of spicy powder.


    Once I¡¯d finished my meal, and started on my drink, I asked the innkeeper about wyverns. He made a tapping motion on the counter, and I handed over a couple chips, figuring I would get better information if I paid for it. I soon learned that the mountain range a day¡¯s travel away was completely filled with them, and that this particular outpost was actually here to deal with the wyverns that leave it. I felt a cruel grin slip onto my face as I think about the wyverns I¡¯m going to be killing in order to get strong enough to be useful in the war against the Tesser.


    The innkeeper ignores my crazy look as he turns to the other patrons, and I got a room before ordering some more drinks, wanting to drown my thoughts that had resurfaced after I¡¯d remembered my goal for coming here. I went to bed stumbling, and woke in the morning with a slight headache, thankful that hangovers affected me far less than before I¡¯d enhanced my mana with wyvern cores. Trundling out of the outpost on my cart, I headed straight to the mountains. I was going to stick on the outskirts for now, but once I grew more used to it, I was going to push as far into the mountains as I could.


    The first few days were simply day excursions, the mountains always visible as I walked through the rolling hills surrounding them. There were quite a few monsters, including some ram like animal with curling horns, but I didn¡¯t see any wyverns. After a few days of nothing, I decided to give up on staying close to the outpost and traveled closer to the mountains. My first day of traveling was quite empty, rolling along in my cart, weaving between the massive foothills of the mountains that seemed to grow ever larger the closer I got to them. There were a few of the ram like things, but after taking their core and horns, I left the rest to feed the other creatures.


    As the mountains approached, I eventually found my goal. A wyvern was sunning itself on a massive rock that jutted from the earth like the prow of a sinking ship. Getting off my cart, I took a very deep breath. I checked over my sword in its sheath, grabbed my shield from the cart, and took my rifle from it¡¯s slung position on my back to in front of me. This particular wyvern was the smallest specimen I¡¯d seen of them, but I wasn¡¯t going to take any chances. I didn¡¯t have Lilya, Iosio, and especially not Dmiyo or Alya to back me up.


    I had to blink away a couple tears at that, but my determination to get strong enough to be useful in the fight against the Tesser simply burned brighter in my chest, a flame that had gone from the white hot feeling of rage to something ice cold and sharp as a blade. My mind focused, and maybe a little broken from everything that had happened, I took aim at the lounging wyvern, which seemingly felt no threat from the small being that I am. I decided to target one of its limbs, as I didn¡¯t think I could hit it in its vulnerable eyes form this range.


    Slowly pulling down on the trigger, the crack form the sound barrier being broken was matched by a splash of ice and blood appearing on the wyvern¡¯s arm. Apparently this wyvern was weak enough for my bullets to get through its scales, which disappointed me, as it meant that its core wouldn¡¯t give me nearly so much strength as I was looking for. Pulling back the bolt, I loaded another bullet into the chamber, and fired again, targeting the same wing and arm mishmash. The wyvern finally found me, and let out a massive roar, but I simply ignored it, firing yet again. I¡¯d filled this particular clip with nothing but ice bullets, as they made the wyvern scales far more fragile. My third shot hit it right where the first bullet had, and I see another splash of blood, not enough to seriously harm it, but enough to have made it even angrier.


    With its wing wounded, it wasn¡¯t able to fly in my direction, and somehow it seemed to know that, so it simply started charging me at a ridiculous speed. With it facing me, I started to target its face and body. While I wasn¡¯t able to hit it in the eye, I left quite a few patches of ice on it, and I had a target for when it got into melee range. Firing the last bullet in my magazine, I threw my rifle onto the cart, and stepped away so the cart wouldn¡¯t be crushed. I pulled out my revolver, waited until it got a bit closer, then fired all six bullets right into its face.


    One even managed to hit less than an inch beside its eye before exploding, and the rock shrapnel shredded it, blinding it on one side. The wyvern, missing chunks of flesh from the bullets, as it wasn¡¯t nearly so tough as the first one I¡¯d faced, was soon up in my face, and I readied my sword, and used all the mana I could muster for body strengthening. It went to bite at me right away, wanting to crush the being who had dared to wound it, but it was easy enough for me to step to the side, and I slammed my sword down with all the force I could muster onto its neck where one of my ice bullets had impacted. It left a deep cut, but didn¡¯t hit anything vital as the wyvern switched tactics from trying to bite me to trying to claw me.


    The wyvern scales covering my shield held off the claws, though my arm gave a bit, even with the strength I¡¯d gained from enhancing my mana along with body strengthening magic. Swinging again into the wound I¡¯d just left, blood started to pour out. It wasn¡¯t spraying, so I had either only nicked an artery, or cut a vein, but I still jumped backwards. I started to run in circles around the wyvern, keeping out of its range and blocking all of its wild swings with my shield. Each time, I was knocked back a bit, but this one was far smaller than the first wyvern I¡¯d hunted, and not even half as strong, so while I would be knocked back a bit, my arm wasn¡¯t instantly broken from the impacts.


    As I continued circling the wyvern, staying close to the arm I¡¯d hit with a few freezing bullets, as that arm had far less power from the flash frozen muscles, I let the beast slowly bleed out from the deep wound I¡¯d left in its neck. It took far longer than I was comfortable with to bleed out, but eventually it collapsed, and I very carefully made sure it was dead, stabbing into its unwounded eye. Once I¡¯d confirmed the death of it, I got to the bloody work of taking what I needed from its body. Even though it was far smaller than the first wyvern I¡¯d hunted, it was still too large for the cart, and so I began butchering it on the spot.


    The first thing I got from it was the core, and I held onto that for enhancing my mana in a place where it would be safer. After that, I looked to my steel boar bone sword, and saw that it had been quite badly dulled. While I could always sharpen it again, if I was going to be hunting wyverns, I needed something that could cut through their scales more easily. Thinking that wyvern bone may end up being more useful, I slowly cut out a few bones from the monster, along with its claws and teeth. I also wanted to test the mana conductivity of the different parts of the wyvern. If they ended up having a good mana conductivity, I could actually upgrade my gun. Well, I could upgrade my gun when I had access to my workshop back on Earth.


    The next two days were spent traveling back to the outpost, and once there I secluded myself in my room, and took out the wyvern core.

 Chapter 14: Knockout

    Arriving back at the outpost, I went back to the room I¡¯d rented at the inn, as sleeping in my tent was simply uncomfortable. Laying down on my bed, I took out the wyvern core. I stared at it for while, before taking out a strip of leather I¡¯d bought for this purpose, and placed it between my teeth. Taking a deep breath, I started to push my mana into the core before pulling it back inwards.


    The pain started immediately, and I bit down on the strip of leather, doing my best not to scream from the burning pain suffusing my body. It seemed to go on for hours, wracking my body, but I¡¯m sure it only lasted minutes. By the time the pain was gone, I¡¯d soaked through my clothing in sweat, and I took it all off, not wanting to sleep in the soaked shirt and pants. I put my revolver under my pillow just in case, more worried about Tesser than anything else before going to sleep.


    When I woke up, my experiments began. I oh so slowly shoved my mana into the wyvern bones, slowly letting it lose its form, and shaped it into the wand shape I use to determine mana conductivity. Simply doing that took me almost an entire day, but eventually I got it to the point that it was correct, and carved in the motion runes to do some tests.


    The first thing I did was take out my wooden and stone wands, and testing them again. They both shoved the large rock I was using to test a decent distance, the wood wand made of the same material the Tesser used for their wands shoving it almost twice the distance the stone wand did.


    Taking a deep breath, I took out my wyvern bone wand, and tested it. When it finished, I let out a whoop in excitement. The wyvern bone wand had even more mana conductivity than the wood wand did! I let out a feral grin, if I could get back to Earth and use my workshop, I could make some seriously powerful guns. I felt the grin slide off of my face as I pondered that, I hadn¡¯t found any gates back to Earth in all of my wanderings, and I didn¡¯t know how long it was going to be until I could get back.


    I let out a sigh. I needed to get back to Earth to upgrade my weapons, yet my goal was here. I needed to get powerful enough to properly fight back against the Tesser. It felt like this world was simply more real than my old one. On Earth, I¡¯d studied to become a desk worker, sitting there and doing nothing for a massive portion of the day. I may have ended up marrying and having kids, your standard life on Earth, but I simply felt so much more alive here.


    I spent my days hunting for a living, and while it could be scary, at the same time, it¡¯s terribly invigorating. I decided to set a new goal, I may go back to visit Earth occasionally, if only for the food, but I¡¯d come to expect that I would spend a majority of my time here, on this world.


    Experiment over, I got back to some very monotonous work. I was going to make myself a sword out of the wyvern teeth, and back it with wyvern bone. That action took me a good few days, each day slowly shaping the bone and teeth, slowly melding them together into a seamless whole. My experience with shaping other materials saved me from having to repeat the process due to failure, and eventually I managed to get something I was satisfied with.


    Once I¡¯d finished, I let out a breath. There was one more thing I needed to do before I started a large scale genocide upon the wyverns. I needed to enchant my shield against wyvern breath. The pattern I finally decided to go with was a snowflake, as it best represented coldness in my eyes. I carefully engraved the pattern into the wyvern scales making up my shield, and when I was finished, I looked at it in satisfaction.


    It wasn¡¯t perfect, but it looked like I wanted it to. The mental image I¡¯d had of it was that of simply absorbing all heat that came towards it, and I tested it out with a simple flame wand. While it wouldn¡¯t compare to a wyvern¡¯s breath, it was a good way to confirm it worked at all. I let out a breath I hadn¡¯t known I¡¯d been holding as I saw the flame simply disappear as it hit the shield. At this point, I would simply have to hope it was powerful enough to stop a wyvern¡¯s breath as well.


    The next few months saw me going deeper and deeper into the foothills of the mountain in my hunt for wyverns. They seemed to be practically everywhere, and every time I hunted one I would load up everything valuable onto my cart and trundle on back to the outpost, getting more and more cores. I started trading in the chips I earned for wyvern cores from other hunters as well, and I could easily feel my speed, strength and senses being enhanced.


    Annoyingly, every time I would have to take a break of at least a week in order to process the core, which drove me up a wall. How long was it going to take for me to stop being uncomfortable with the strength increase that came with enhancing my mana? My eyes changed each time, growing more and more bright golden, to the point where I started to believe that they would shine in the darkness.


    The wyverns I hunted in the foothills were all quite small, and I started to wonder if I would have to make it to the mountain to start finding larger ones. Once I reached the bottom of the mountain in my forays, I ran into something odd. There was a ten mile or so area where wyverns would simply not approach. I wondered what was going on for a while, but eventually simply started to avoid that area while I was hunting, except to take my breaks there so as to not be bothered. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Each day, I would spend some of my mana condensing my sword, and adding another layer of wyvern tooth to it. The change was very gradual, but I noticed that each time I hunted a wyvern, it cut into it slightly easier. My shield got the same treatment, layers of wyvern scales condensed onto it. The change was made as much to match my growing strength as it was to enhance my weapons though.


    When I¡¯d first started hunting, the weight of my weapons had been perfect, considering how dense wyvern materials started at, but as I enhanced myself with more and more cores, they started to feel like toy weapons.


    I had gotten my wyvern hunting down to a science at this point. Lead in with freezing bullets, sending one down their throat if they try to breathe fire at me, and then use my revolver until they got right up next to me, at which point I would finish off the crippled monster with my sword.


    My only disappointment was that all of the wyverns seemed to be quite small, around half the size of the one which had attacked the camp I¡¯d started out in. I was looking forward to seeing how much of an improvement I had made with hunting.


    Each day, I made sure to spend hours on my swordsmanship before bed, but I never seemed to improve, missing the guidance from the group I had been with. Every so often, I would contact Lilya with the walkie talkie like enchanted plate, but each time, she simply sounded more and more down, and I started to worry about them.


    They seemed to have simply given up at this point. While they still hunted, they did so only to keep paying for their bar tab. Every time, I would simply be more saddened. With what had happened to Dmiyo and Alya, it was understandable, but I didn¡¯t understand why they weren¡¯t more angry. The Tesser were the ones at fault, and I was going to do my damnedest to make sure they were going to pay.


    Each time after the call, I would throw myself back to hunting in a more frenzied manner, and I ended up with quite a few wounds. Thankfully, the regeneration from my enhanced body solved the wounds in less than a week, even the more severe ones. At this point, I could practically see the wounds healing with my bare eyes.


    Eventually, I got to the point where I felt my speed, while not as fast as Dmiyo or Alya, would be able to almost keep up with their maximum speed. That only led to more hunting though, and eventually, the wyverns started to leave the area, seemingly knowing they were being hunted.


    At this point, I was simply trundling around with no clear goal. I wasn¡¯t going to go into the mountain, as entire families of wyverns lived there, and I wasn¡¯t arrogant to the point where I thought I could handle them. I was simply meandering around, not sure where to go to hunt more of them.


    This continued for a few days, until I saw something exciting. I¡¯d finally found another wyvern! It wasn¡¯t on the ground, but flying far in the air, which confirmed my thoughts that they would be able to fly, likely using magic rather than just their wings. Taking a deep breath, I pulled my rifle off of my shoulder and took aim, my magazine loaded with freezing bullets already.


    I pulled the trigger, but wasn¡¯t sure if I¡¯d hit it, so sent a few more bullets towards it for good measure. I must have it it with at least one of them, because I heard a loud roar, and it was soon swooping down towards me. I stayed calm as it slowly grew bigger in my sight, then started to panic as it didn¡¯t seem to stop growing bigger.


    This particular wyvern dwarfed even the one I¡¯d killed at the camp I¡¯d stayed in when I first arrived at this world, its head alone a good four meters tall. I turned horribly pale, and started to run. Every now and then, I would snap off a shot at it, yet it still followed me, seemingly playing with me, not moving any faster than I could. I was forced to abandon my cart, as it would have slowed me down, and I gulped at the oh so sharp teeth it would show occasionally.


    In my panic, I started to think of the place where I¡¯d seen no wyverns at all. I wasn¡¯t sure what was dissuading them from going there, but I was going to do my damnedest to find out. I thanked all the gods I could remember the name of that the wyvern seemed more intent on playing with me than killing me, as even with my body enhanced by magic, it simply remained flying above me with seemingly no effort.


    Occasionally, it would breathe fire at me, or dive down for a second to snap at me, but I would always manage to put a tree between us, or dive to the side to avoid it. Eventually I arrived at the place where the wyverns had avoided. I noticed the wyvern hesitate for a moment, flying in circles around the edge of the area, before deciding that it wanted to finish me off, and it dived towards me in a much more serious manner.


    The claws missed me by inches, letting me feel the wind on my arm from them, and continued my flight. I kept moving deeper into the area, avoiding each blow by a hair¡¯s breadth as it seemed to be more intent on trying to kill me rather than simply toy with me at this point. I continued to run, until I came across something that would have made me stop and stare if I wasn¡¯t running for my life.


    It was an idyllic little log cabin, with flower pots out front, and painted a bright white. There was a little path out the front of it to a small well, and on the porch sat a man seemingly a little over middle age, smoking on something that created psychedelic colors from a pipe.


    The man simply looked from me, to the wyvern, let out a sigh as I ran past him, and walked towards the wyvern. I shouted at him to get away, but he simply ignored me, and as the wyvern dived at me, he crouched, and jumped off the ground faster than I could follow even with my enhanced eyes towards the wyvern.


    I watched as the wyvern opened its mouth to seemingly eat the man, but he somehow managed to jump again in the air, and slammed his fist down towards the top of the wyverns head. I had no clue how he managed to generate so much force while he was in the air, but his fist sent the wyvern crashing down faster than it could dive.


    It slammed into the ground with a massive crash, and didn¡¯t move from where it had landed, a very visible dent in its skull, completely ignoring the scales that had simply written off my freezing bullets as useless.


    The man landed, then slowly made his way to the well, pulling up a bucket of water and washing off the gore that had gotten on his hands, before waving to the wyvern, saying  ¡°All yours,¡± and went back to smoke his pipe he¡¯d set to the side.