《Pearl of  cold (Old version)》


 Chapter 1: 4 Major events on one day?

    ¡°For fucks sake¡± I mumbled.


    I tried to set up the computer as the last part of finally moving out.


    I was 21. It was about high time that I¡¯ve finally did it. At least that was how I felt about it.


    A few hours before,  this apartment had simultaneously been very barren and a mess, ass there had been boxes, with my stuff in, all over the place. I had used the last hour getting everything in the right places.


    I gave up trying to get the cables from my computer to reach the plug.  Instead I pushed everything a little to the left and tried again. It worked!


    (me) ¡°Can¡¯t believe I dint do that before¡±


    I sighted and leaned back in¡­ my comfy chair. I hadn¡¯t acquired a sofa yet.


    Have to get one in the near future  - i thought to myself.


    You might think : How did you use ¡°a few hours¡± on moving in when you don''t even have a sofa?


    Well... you see: I dint just do that the last few hours, which by the way is a broad term for the entire day


    . I just wanted to move in, play the new video game i bought [Demon Retribution), and then party and get drunk somewhere later in the night!


    But no0Oo0o, for some reason the universe decided to let everything happen on this day.


    At least it was good things. My thoughts returned to the start of the day.


    I woke up to see that it had snowed in the night.


    Now that might not be an unusual thing, if it wasn¡¯t because it was in the middle of the summer! I decided to play around in the snow with my siblings, Martin and Mathilde, they were twins and 16 years old. It was in the middle of the summer, so the snow quickly melted away.


    Is it unusual for a 21 y.o to play around in the snow? Well i don''t know, but i had my fun, besides: it was in the summer and i was about to move out.


    I later looked it up on the news:


    It turned out that the snow was due to ¡°The largest mana storm in years ¡±, a rather rare event that could cause all sorts of things. This one had caused the thermal energy to drop in on cloud level of the atmosphere. We were lucky the storm din''t happen on the ground level or else everybody would have frozen to death. That realization actually scared me a little. The government had deployed a few professional magicians to investigate it further.


    Mana storms is, as you might expect, the result of moving mana, creating such a high density that some of it transcends into the physical plain and creates various results depending on the mana type. Theoretically this can happen on any scale, even interplanetary. it''s said that such an mana storm was the reason for the latest mass extinction 47 million years ago. Luckily such events are quite rare.


    Speaking of rare events:  2 hours later, when I was about to move everything into my new home, my mom called me.


    She had won a 2 week holiday to some sort of hotel at a beach, in a tropical country called Balmas, including a bunch of money to spent. The price included the entire family! Sweet!


    She asked if I wanted to stay or go with them. Hell yes I wanted to go with them! I would take 2 weeks in a tropical country over 2 weeks in a department  any day. Still had to pay rent tho.. Dammit!


    The Plane would already leave in tomorrow. Normally i would be highly alarmed that i had just won a holiday i had to take on the next day, but you won¡¯t believe the problems this country had with postal service¡¯s the last few months, so I wasn¡¯t.


    I should consider us lucky that we even got the memo in time.


    The next ridiculous low-chance thing that happened, was when my brother called me and informed me that my sister suddenly had her aura collapse, which was a good thing, since it was the only way to awaken your magical potential without outside help. This essentially meant that she afterwards would be able to manipulate mana and perform magic just like everybody else. Almost everybody whose potential wasn¡¯t forcefully awakened experienced their aura collapse sooner or later in their life. I¡¯ve experienced mine when I was 11, and martin, my little brother, got it when he was 6.


    When I¡¯ve heard the new about her magical awakening I immediately stopped what I was doing and began to drive to her school where it was happening. I was excited on her behalf! To still not have experienced your magic awakening at 16 years was an anomaly. It had bugged her for years to not be able perform magic like her classmates, unfortunately we couldn¡¯t forcefully awaken her before she was 18, because of the laws of this country. To forcefully awaken had¡­ a few drawbacks and risks. But now she was about to awaken! So cool! Awakenings don¡¯t usually last too long, so I would properly not be able to witness it.


    Mana exists all over the universe, in basically endless amounts.


    It''s very interactive with spiritual beings, a.k.a. Some beast and all Humanoids. a.k.a. Humans, orcs, elfs, etc.. It has a natural flow towards spiritual beings and their aura. The aura usually matches and follows the shapes of our body. Until the awakening it is slowly entering the aura at all time . It is however unable to escape once it has entered. This causes it to slowly build up pressure outwards.


    Depending on the absorption rate of the mana, and the amount of spiritual force the aura can withstand, the aura temporarily collapses and all the excess mana will flow out of the body resulting in what''s know as an Aura collaps. Afterwards the mana absorption rate increases tremendously for the person experiencing it, and that person will then be able to manipulate mana and send it out of their aura and force it into the physical plain.


    5 minutes after I left I parked my car on the park place by the school


    It was probably over by now. A shame, an aura collapse had the same random results as a mana storm. it is a fun and cheap way of determining the persons affinities, a.k.a those mana properties the person would have a easier time manipulating than others.


    I began moving towards the football field on the other side of the school. Today was the last-school day for the kids. I smiled as I remembered mine years ago.


    There was surprisingly few people around..


    (Girl) ¡°Come jakob you got to see this!¡±


    A 3-grader half-orc girl was pulling another kid towards where I was going.


    (boy) ¡°But I still haven¡¯t picked up all the candy¡±


    The boy complained.


    (Girl) ¡°who cares about candy? This is to cool!¡±


    The half-orc said, as she kept pulling the boy, her orc strength won and the boy had no choice but to follow.


    The scene slightly amused me.


    I wonder what the commotion is about


    I crossed a corner and got my answer. There was a huge crowd of people blocking the sight, but I could hear a sound similar to a flamethrower/explosion, and see fire, ice and light and air


    fluctuating outwards, from a center I couldn¡¯t see.


    (Me) ¡°You got to be kidding me, it can¡¯t be¡±


    That couldn¡¯t be my sister, could it? Aura collapses simply din''t happen on such a scale.


    A feeling of awe and worry about her began to rise in my chest.


    I ran forwards past the other people and was immediately meet with a wall of heat that almost made me want to go back in the crowd again. It was true then, my sister had the most epic aura collapse ever. Around her was mostly fire and lights in all color being made around and shoot out of her, occasionally there would be lightning, ice or floating dirt around her. The grass around her was burned in a 10 meter radius, and there was a crater slowly being created beneath her. Blows of wind and heat hit my face.


    Surprisingly she wasn¡¯t hovering a meter above the earth in a strange position as you might would expect and imagine, but was simply sitting down and trying to remain as calm as possible. Her clothes wasn¡¯t burned to a crisp, maybe it was because the aura of persons experiencing their awakening would temporally increase. When she saw me she smiled and waved at me, resulting in flames soaring up in the sky, when she saw the result of her waving she immediately retook the position she had before and tried not to move to much again, resulting in flames/ice/light/whatever to burst out in our direction reaching dangerously close. Seeing her wink made me less worried and I winked back, at least her life din''t seam in danger.. only potentially everybody around her.


    I quickly found my brother: He was talking with a reporter, standing by a camera team.


    The news is already here?  man.. that''s quick. I was thinking, and approached them.


    (Martin) ¡°Oh hey brother, you finally arrived¡±


    (Me)¡°yeahh..Holy shit, how long has she been at it?¡±


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it I still had a hard time believing what I saw.


    Martin look at his watch:


    ¡°About 8 minutes and¡­ 35 seconds, give or take 2 seconds.  I started counting as soon as it began¡±


    My brother was huge nerd, of course he would know how long it had lasted.


    (Me) ¡°sh*t that''s close to the world record isn''t it? Holy F*** she can carry a lot of mana, doesn''t this mean that she could potentially become one of greatest magicians in the world?¡±


    it wasn¡¯t as much as a  question as it was a statement.


    (Martin)¡°Normally I would say yes, but since it¡¯s our dumb sister probably not¡±


    Martin joked. I punched his shoulder and laughed.


    The reporter, who had been quiet during our conversation until now, began to speak.


    ¡°Citizens I was just informed that the longest recorded mana leakage up until now has lasted for 8 minutes and 45 seconds. According to her brother, Martin kelnen, Mathilde kelnens aura collaps should have lasted 9 minutes by now making it the new world record and it is still rising! She is 16 years old, that''s 6 years older than the average  which in itself is unusual but not world record. There is currently 2 local certified mages working on controlling the wild mana¡±


    I looked towards Mathilde, there was indeed to mages, trying to uphold a barrier. Wonder where they had been before?


    The reporter turned towards me, as well as the camera, and I immediately tried to look clever or something.


    (Reporter) ¡°I understand you are the older brother to Mathilde, how you  feel about your sister showing such potential¡±


    (Me) ¡°uhm¡­ I¡¯m very happy for her, she always wanted to be able to perform magic, and it seems like she is finally able to.¡±


    Words were exchanged back and forth for the next minute or so, before the mana leakage finally rapidly began to decrease in magnitude until there was only some fire and some lighting crackling around her, until that stopped too.  It had lasted 10 minutes and 12 seconds.


    What happened next was interesting to experience but would properly be boring to read. In short what happened was that my parents appeared to. Mathilde was further interviewed, and everybody was basically excited out their sh*t. The holiday wasn¡¯t postponed, but Mathilde agreed to meet up to a talk-show afterwards. The day wasn¡¯t specified. Then everybody just went to their home. From what I understood Martin already wanted to teach her a simple light spell that consisted of letting a chosen body part, in this case her hand, to emit light. The only simpler spell would be to just emit random mana like when she had her aura collapse or maybe a [Heat emission] spell. it really depended on the person, but a general rule was that [Emission] spells were the simplest to perform. I could cast a few [Emission] spells too, including [Light Emission].


    I have to admit I¡¯m little jealous of her mana reserves, but I¡¯m fine. I myself got above average mana reserves, It¡¯s not enough for me to ever be something more than a mediocre amateur magician, but it is enough for me to have an advantage on the magic parts of swordsmanship and self-defense that I¡¯ve been doing. I am quite skilled at extending my aura onto my blade, hardening my skin, and applying [outwards force].


    I feel that it is time to teach you more about how mana works:


    The good things about those techniques I just mentioned is that it doesn¡¯t consume mana, as the mana never needs to leave the aura to work. The amount of mana helps and proportional with you talent, but it¡¯s really about technique and practice. It¡¯s harder practicing hardening you skin and applying outwards force when you have a high mana recovery rate, it has something to do with the mana entering messing with the mana you¡¯re  manipulating inside you aura. Luckily I got extremely low mana recovery, which would definitely suck if I wanted to become a magician, but lucky in this case.


    To apply [Outwards force] is a technique that involves making the mana inside you apply outwards force, it¡¯s that simply, but more advanced to learn than light emission. What force you ask? Well Newton of course! Let¡¯s take an example: you know how the gravity of earth, at the surface, pulls everything towards itself with about 9.82 Newton pr. Kg?  Well now you do. If I were to lift an object that weight about 2 kilos I would need to apply an upwards force of about 19.64 Newton. If I was to apply let¡¯s say¡­ 10 Newton with my mana, then I would only need to lift the remaining 9.64 Newton with my body, making the object seam lighter and me stronger. I haven¡¯t really measured how many Newton¡¯s I¡¯m able to apply, but the technique is quite fun to use!  If you have enough outwards force you create a wind around yourself, as it pushes back the wind too. There is also the counterpart [Inwards force] witch lets you push yourself instead of the surroundings. I can do that as well. It can also make you jump higher and faster. In professional sports that is of course illegal.


    Oh and btw: yes I can apply outwards force to my sword, but it would only be useful if it was actually a club, believe it or not, but pushing things away from your sword isn¡¯t very effective if you want to cut something. At least not for me, I¡¯m not precise enough to only let it apply to the edge of the sword. Hmm maybe it would be useful in case my sword would get stuck in the flesh or bone of the person I¡¯m attacking, it would remove resistance and I could easily remove the sword to then take another swing¡­. Wait¡­What am I thinking!? I was living in a modern world! Not in some monster infested fantasy world! As if I would ever need to do that. My swordsmanship would probably never get out of the dojo.


    My brother got almost zero mana reserves, if he used up all of his mana he would probably be able light a cigarette or something, but nothing more. A shame, he is really clever. He does however have a very high mana recovery, so at least he would be able light as many cigarettes he wants in a row, unfortunately he doesn¡¯t smoke. The mana recovery also means that he would never be able to be good at any of those aura techniques I¡¯m capable of. I know that you should never say never, but it would be like telling a person with a shit voice that they could become a great singer: sure they could get decent if they started practicing hard right now, but who honestly believes that?


    It is of course possible to actively increase the maximum amount of mana reserves. It is also possible to meditate in order to recover mana faster. Doing this for a long time will also increase the passive mana regeneration.


    I only meditate if I for some reason have lost some of my mana, since I would otherwise have to wait at least half a year to recover it. I mostly try to avoid meditating as I don¡¯t want to permanently increase my mana recovery. That would only mess with my aura techniques. I think there actually is a way to decrease the mana recovery, but I don¡¯t know how.


    Magicians meditate all the time. For some reason I can¡¯t imagine my sister meditate, she is simply to wild. I don¡¯t think that she would ever need to anyway. Her recovery got to be very high.


    How do I know that? Well I just told you about the collapse! It doesn¡¯t matter that she collected mana in 6 more years than most other people before she ¡°exploded¡± Even considering that, the amount of mana she released was extreme, which meant that she had to suck up mana her entire life with a tremendous rate. The only reason that I have low mana recovery despite having above average mana reserves is because.. uhh, I¡¯m a exception . Sounds goofy but that is how it is, it has something to do with my aura. The doctors said that is a rare one in a million aura syndrome or something like that, and it is isn¡¯t in my family, so the chance of Mathilde having the same is extremely low.  Ugh learning about magic is like learning about grammar, nothing but endless exceptions to endless rules. At least it¡¯s the reason I¡¯m one in a million!. Yay!


    Back to the present, were I was sitting exhausted in my chair. I got up and went to make myself some pasta. I dint want anything fancy, to experience 4 minor to mayor life events could make anyone tired. I ate my paste, while I noticed that it was kind of lonely to eat alone, but it dint bug me, besides I had to get used to it. It would happen more often in the future. I took a cola, cause why not? And then I spent about an hour on the computer .Checking up on stuff, reading a little, watching some mindless YouTube videos, and stuff. Afterwards I took bath, shaved and went straight to bed. Despite that I was very tired I had a hard time falling asleep. I couldn¡¯t help myself from grinning a little when I thought about the day I had, it was very hectic, but god it made me feel alive! It was a god day.


    And tomorrow I already had to go to holiday.

 Chapter 2: Leaving home

    I woke up - only to immediately hit my on head on the slant wall at my bed.


    (me) ¡°Auch¡±


    I rubbed my forehead, where some unwanted pain had appeared. So that was why I din''t move everything to the left yesterday. Now I would had to solve this problem instead.


    (me) ¡°Moving out is hard ¡°- I concluded.


    I stumbled out of my bed, and proceeded to the kitchen where I tiredly started brewing some coffee.


    1.5 spoons should be enough¡­Yesterday had really made me tired.


    I turned on the radio:


    (Radio, Girl voice)¡° oO0oOH! You¡¯re are my sugar to my heart! You make it beat! Beat! yeah! you make it beat! Oh sugar,sugar, you make it beat, cause. you. are. so. swee..¡±


    I turned the radio off again it was  way too early  in the morning too listen to that crap. Guess no radio this time.


    I looked up on the clock: 9:13.


    I still had about 45 minutes until my family would come and pick me up. We agreed that they would do that, since there was no point in driving 2 cars to the airport.


    I wondered if I should use my new freedom of living alone to buy a steak to eat to breakfast¡­


    hmm..


    I decided I was too lazy to actually do it, and settled on some regular boring cereal instead.


    The last 20 minutes was used to practice my [Outwards force] and [Hardening] techniques. It wasn¡¯t something I did every morning or something like that. It was just because my sister had suddenly turned into some sort of magic monster, and it motivated me to practice.  I couldn¡¯t just fall behind! On my [Outwards force] technique I was concentrating on making my mana constantly flow outwards only to retract once it hit the edge of my aura, afterwards it would begin to flow towards the edge of my aura again. The trick was to let the aura flow as fast as possible, while changing the properties of the mana in the correct manner.  The smaller the distance you had to make the particle flow back before you could it make it flow outwards again, the better.


    I had some fun with letting a pebble bounce of my skin like it was a trampoline.  If I really tried I could make it hit the roof. Although it made me little dizzy.


    My phone vibrated, it was an SMS:


    ¡°We R waiting outside J¡±


    Holy crap! It¡¯s already time? Man! Time can fly fast!


    I hurried up and took my package and left my apartment. They were waiting for me on the park place on the opposite side of the street.


    (Mathilde,) ¡°Ooyy Matt! You got to see this!


    I couldn¡¯t quite get the Light emission spell to work, but check this out!¡±


    She lifted her hands up. The hand instantly lit up in bright flames, her hand gloving in all sorts of colors. The flames were reaching a few meters above us.


    (me) ¡°woah mann, that¡¯s cool!,¡±


    I laughed.


    (Martin)¡° I¡¯ve tried to explain to her how to only emit light, but she keeps sending flames out too. She is not yet able to identify the properties of mana that emits light, and then make all of her mana leaving her have that property. It¡¯s the basic when dealing with spells¡±


    (Mathilde) ¡°Oh shut up martin I know that already. I just need to get used to mana. I only had it for less than 24 hours. You had 10 years to practice.¡±


    I could see that this was going to be one of their countless siblings fight. How could twins be so different!?


    Considering that she really only became able to manipulate mana less than 24 hours ago, she had made quite a bit of progress already. It¡¯s not as easy as it sounds to manipulate mana! It requires practice to be good at, just like everything else.


    I got in the car, and we began to drive towards the airport. Mathilde attempted the practice her light emission spell again, but we quickly found out that it was far too dangerous, as her control of the amount of mana spent on the spell, was limited. I almost got my hair on fire! I could however swear that this time it seemed that there was more light than fire.


    We arrived at the airport. The car swung into a free parking spot, and we got out of the car.


    (Mathilde) ¡°Okay, guys you might want to see this¡±


    we were heading towards the entrance. She pointed towards something. My mana sense could vaguely fell something.


    I looked in the direction she pointed. A human man in his fifties was descending from the sky. He was wearing a black Smoking set. The glider (the one you would wear at parties, not when gliding in the air) was Cyan . He had a cape, that likewise was Cyan, he somehow manged to pull it off.  It was something most high-end magicians decided to wear. Don¡¯t know why. Think it has something to do with history and tradition. He also had a staff in one of his hands; a  cyan gem was glowing at the top of it. I do know why he had a staff. Those could be used to amplify certain properties of mana, or help as the key component in a few spells. This one probably helped him levitate.  After he landed he proceeded to take a little bag from his pocket and showed the entire staff in it. He brushed some dust of his clothes, and proceeded to the airport. He had a very dignified look.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    (Me)" seriously? was that just an spacial enlargement enchantment on that purse?"


    Spacial distortion spells and enchantments were somewhat advanced spells, but that wasn''t the impressive part of it. you could with some money easily find some boxes with about 2  times the space. The impressive part was that the staff was as least 20 times longer than the purse it was put in, and there was no visible crystals on the purse or other items that would enhance the enchantment.


    (Martin) ¡°That guy is definitely a very skilled magician, eyy Mathilde after we arrive home from the holiday you might be lucky and let a guy like that be your magic teacher¡±


    (Mathilde) "Because he can put a staff in a purse? Yeah definitely if he wants his pupil to surpass him! I¡¯m going to be the greatest magician the world has ever seen!¡±


    It seemed like her awakening had given her a dangerous amount of self-confidence. Well I couldn¡¯t disagree with her, but why did she have to be that dense?


    I delivered my package, let them scan my metal or magic items such as my phone, and a souvenir-charm that would let me see the 2 miles-tower that I once visited in a holiday. High-elf architecture and engineering is truly impressive.


    I looked around in the border-shop, watching all the different foreign people is an interesting sight. I could spot a wood-elf family, 10 meter to the left there was some rich looking snake-person talking to his phone, and lastly there was a large orc clearly interesting in buying some of the cheap tax-free liquor. Maybe I should buy some too when I got home¡­


    Snake-people are a little different from the dragonians and argonians. They have the lower body of a snake, a snake head, and then they are of course covered in scales.


    I couldn¡¯t distinguish dragonians from argonians, but apparently they were as different as human and elves.


    The next hour or so was relatively uneventful. We set camp somewhere in a corner. I ate some noodles, and practiced some aura techniques , Mathildes awakening still gave plenty of fuel for my motivation! as I watched how my brother somehow kept beating my sister in chess in less than 6 moves. I noticed that there were a few persons who appeared to recognize us, especially my sister. Must been duo too the news. There was even a little boy who ran up to her and asked for an autograph!


    (Mathilde) ¡°Sure. Why not? I am after all that awesome¡±


    full of herself she gave the boy her autograph.


    (Boy) ¡°When I grow up I¡¯m going to going to be a great magician, just like you!¡±


    The boy sounded way to excited.


    (Mathilde ¡°Yeah. sure you are, now go back to you parents¡±.


    (Martin) ¡°Just because you got a high amount of mana and mana regeneration doesn¡¯t mean you¡¯re a great magician. It also requires that you¡¯re able to cast a decent amount of advanced spells. ¡°-


    Martin mumbled, as if too correct the boy, but the boy didn¡¯t hear it.


    The time finally came where we could get on board the airplane. As we entered we were all given a magic-suppression ring that, together with the runic circles integrated somewhere within the walls of the plane, made sure that we wouldn¡¯t be able to perform spells while under flight. The ring could not be removed. It was duo to security reasons.


    I got in my seat (21-B). Coincidentally the wizard I had seen at the parking spot was sitting next to me.


    The plane began to accelerate and I got that familiar tickly felling in my stomach as it began to ascend. I was now leaving home. Little did I know that I wouldn¡¯t come back for a very long time.

 Chapter 3: Arrival

    (Me) ¡±so where are you headed?¡±


    The cyan mage besides me look confused for a second, before realizing that he was the only person I could possible talk too. Apparently he had been deep in his thoughts.


    (Cyan mage) ¡±oh, I¡¯m heading for Balmas, there is a mage academy I plan to visit. ¡±


    (me) ¡±wait... Does that academy happen to be named Omo?¡±


    (C. mage) ¡±how did you know?¡±


    The mage looked surprised


    I searched in my package and found a brochure and handed it to him. It contained information on the hotel I was staying in, as well as the nearby points-of interests, one of them being the old mage academy named Omo.


    (me) ¡°I¡¯m staying in this hotel, and I noticed there was an academy being nearby.¡±


    (C.mage) ¡±what a coincidence!  It¡¯s truly a small world we live in; we might even run into each other. ¡±


    (Me) ¡±yeah.. Guess it .. Im Matt by the way¡±


    (C. Mage)  ¡°you can call me Djonson¡±


    We exchanged a quick, but firm, handshake.


    (Me)¡± Soooo Djonson .. Care for a card game?¡±


    As we chatted I found out that there would be a yearly one-week Market/festival event in the nearby city, and Omo would let its areas be public during that time. That sounded like fun! It Seems like I was lucky with the timing of the holiday.


    Djonson dint know how long he would stay at the academy, apparently he had some business with the rector at the academy before he could move onward. He didn¡¯t know how long time it would take, but he would leave as soon as possible. He said it was some mage business, so I guess it had something to do with developing a spell, or whatever mages do for a living. Even in the modern days mage had a reputation for being secretive, although it generally wasn¡¯t as justified as before.


    When I asked about his family, he seemed rather vague and evasive, so I choose to not pursue it further.  He did however said that he looked forward to seeing his niece again, he appeared to be rather fond of her.


    Oh, and by the way: We played a game called ¡°Casino¡± and he won 3/5 times, but only because he got lucky!


    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________


    Some days later, at an unknown time¡­


    Somewhere within one of Omos grand corridors, Djonson was unwillingly kneeling, desperately trying to stay conscious as the mana exhaustion was taking its toll on him. A runic entrapment circle was quickly magically being created around him. The symbols were  glowing in a dim Crimson red, faintly enlightening the dark corridor. What appeared to be the silhouette of the academies rector was standing just outside the circle of light.


    (Silhouette ) ¡°you know; to be able to locate this place, purely because of me reactivating the ley-line connection is quite an accomplishment, I must admit I was quite impressed, even worried, when you showed up¡±


    (Djonson)  ¡°it¡¯s easy when you know what you¡¯re looking for, especially when a mana-storm is created as a side effect.¡°


    (Silhouette) ¡°I can imagine, unfortunately you won¡¯t live long enough to use that information for anything¡±


    (Djonson) ¡°Don¡¯t underestimate me¡­¡±


    He was performing a complicated series of hand moves, and a attack spell quickly began to form between his hands¡±


    (Silhouette, coldly)¡°Oh, I¡¯m not underestimating you¡­¡±


    He raised his hand, normal people wouldn¡¯t be able to see it, but what he did could only be described as a ¡°shattering¡± the mana around him, brutally and unnaturally disrupting it with what appeared to be dark lightning erupting from his hand. Djonson screamed out in pain as his spell, canceled midway, blew up between his hands. The silhouette continued:


    ¡°¡­it¡¯s actually quite the opposite¡­ I overestimated you¡±


    Djonsons eye widened as he recognized the spell.


    ¡°That spell.. It¡¯s you.. I dint recognize you in that body, just how wicked has your powers grown to be able to possess such a powerful man?¡±


    (Silhouette) ¡°Apparently more than you, my dear friend. Who would have thought that our reunion would be so anticlimactic? It¡¯s truly pitiful¡±


    Showing no sign of said pity; the man raised his arm to finish the job.


    (Djonson)" It¡¯s not over yet.¡±


    With the very last of his powers he grasped a scroll from his pocket, and teared it apart:


    ¡°LAZARUS¡±


    He disappeared from the place.


    A black vortex of energy hit the place where Djonson had been just a moment before, and dug dozens of meters down before it finally stopped.


    The man, who appeared to be the rector of the academy, but wasn¡¯t, stood silent for a few moments:


    ¡°Seems like he was right,  I did underestimate him. Typical for him to always have a trick up his sleeves¡­¡±


    He dispersed the runic circle, and created a simple illusion to cover up the damages. In a mage academy it was bound to be detected sooner rather than later, but he had other worries at the moment. He slowly turned around, and walked back to where he came from, to resume his acting as the rector of the academy.  His movements and appearance were calm and dignified, but in reality he was burning up with anger over what just had happened.


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! -----_______________


    Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away, at some unknown and unpopulated place, what remained of Djonson was laying down. Due to lack of mana he had sacrificed large bits of his body, aura, and spirit to fuel the Lazarus spell. As he felt his consciousness drift away he could only hope that somebody would find the knowledge-shard he had left behind, as he wouldn¡¯t wake up before the Lazarus spell had restored him, and that would most likely take a very long time.


    _______________


    4 days after arriving at Balmas:


    I was having a blast! The hotel had turned out to be just as luxurious as I had imagined, good breakfast, pool, mini-bar, and so on. The main thing wasn¡¯t even the hotel. Just outside there was a miles long tropical beach! I had already used quite some time at it, there was some springboards and water-slides set up.


    Too the ¡°left¡± of the beach there was a jungle just full of plant and animal life I had never seen before, including a small oval transparent yellow fruit, growing on some bushes. They had a nice sweet/sour taste.


    To the ¡°right¡± of the beach there was a city, it began as a nice cozy town, but if you moved a little further in it quickly became comparable to a capital city. I had already tried a little taste of the night life, and planned to fully try it later. Located at the edge of the city, there was the castle-like academy building of Omo.


    The different people, food, plant life, and architecture was altogether the best thing about the holiday, it really gave the feeling of being far away which was one of the things I enjoyed the most.


    I had bought a small book containing guides to a few aura techniques, as well as tips and trick on how to improve or vary them. It was quite interesting! I definitely wanted to go back into it again.


    Similar to me, Mathilde had also bought a small book. It was a spell book containing some beginner spells and training guides; she had decided to only look in it when she had mastered the light emission spell, and she worked hard at reaching that point! 3 days after we had arrived she had almost reached that point. She could now more efficiently decide whatever she had to use the mana on light, fire or heat emission. Duo to the same amount of mana being used more efficiently the spells now seemed more powerful than before, compared to when it was all being used at the same.


    She could now decide whatever or not to make her hand appear as a second sun, release a tower of fire, or slowly make the water boil around her hand. There was only a few flames flickering when she was casting the light spell.


    Her magnitude of power naturally forced her to practice outside, which of course drew a lot of attention, but even if she didn¡¯t practice I still saw a few persons who commented her mana pool. It was most likely some of the students and teachers of the academy, such people were bond to have a heightened sense for mana, and was thus able to approximate her amount of mana. The problem was solved with the magic suppression ring from the airplane! It still worked a little outside the plane, and it was only impossible to take it off within the airplane. With it she was able to ¡°disguise¡± herself as a person with a somewhat smaller mana pool, at least compared to that before.


    I was currently browsing the market near, and within, Omo.  I had an advantage that I didn¡¯t have in my previous visits to other marketplaces: Tons of money! Remember how we, along with the holiday cost, had won some money? Well aside from a small budget it was split evenly between the family members and there was still a decent amount left for me! There were quite a few things being sold, most of them where different magic related things, such as scrolls for various purposes, Spell books, Mana shards, and mana potions. The other potions, such as the generic Health and stamina potions were significantly more expensive. I guess it is much easier to create a potion that simply infuses you with mana, rather than making a potion that activates and speed up the complex biologic progress of healing a body, WHILE the potion optimally, instead of the body, provides the energy and nutrients needed for such a progress. I decided to buy a few mana and health potions. Health potions were something everybody had in their own little private Pharmacy at home.


    There was a few ¡°fun¡± things such as glasses that would let you see the world trough a filter, one of them would literally let me see the world as if it was an anime, even those small emotes thing showed up. When I saw the shop owner had a pulsing vein emote in front of her anime face I quickly realized I had spent too much time at her shop without buying anything, so I decided to put the glasses back and move on, without buying anything of course. Those things were fun, but it wasn¡¯t something I needed. Did that make me a douche bag?


    20 minutes later I encountered ¡°it¡±. There it was, somehow yet not bought, laying right there.


    I could just feel it call to me, what a beauty! It looked so freaking awesome!


    (me)  ¡±wow!, I definitely ¡°need¡± this! ¡±

 Chapter 4: The tournament, part 1

    I stared at the sword.


    It was laying unsheathed on a pillow, the sheath, a.k.a. the scabbard, was next to the sword as well. I couldn¡¯t exactly determine what sort of sword it was, but the first word that popped into my name was Nodachi, a somewhat longer version of the katana, handle included. Although: It wasn¡¯t as curvy as other Nodachis, the guard had a different style, and the blade wasn¡¯t as thin.


    Embedded between the blade and the hilt there was a blue crystal, showing that it was, or could be, enchanted with greater enchantments.


    All in all it had a solid feeling to it.


    I wanted it. Badly.


    I think it is the same feeling a child get when it suddenly sees a toy for the first time, that they just want, or when a person suddenly sees their soul mate, excluding the ¡°I want to have sex¡± part , you want it so badly you need it, you don¡¯t know why, and you know it isn¡¯t necessary logical, but somehow you feel willing to walk a thousand miles to get it.


    I noticed a sign next to it:


    <table><tbody><tr><td>Possible award for winning the Amateur Tag-Team Combat Tournament</td></tr></tbody></table>


    ¡­.F*ck. Seriously? I couldn¡¯t just buy it?


    I looked up. Besides sword there was a number of other items, about 12 or so, such as some wands in varies seizes, some spell books,  weapons, and a few other things I couldn¡¯t determine what was, but they dint seem combat related .They were all nicely displayed, with a sign next to it, stating that it was a possible award for winning, as well as a description of the item.


    I made a quick scan for a poster, or something similar that could show me how to join the tournament.


    There it was. Let¡¯s see...


    It seemed to be a normal combat tag-team tournament, and it required at least 3 members per team. Participation fee was 10 silver pr. Team, reasonable. The awards for wining was:


    First place: 3 Optional items (And the right to choose first)


    Second place: 2 Optional items (And the right to choose second)


    Third place: 1 Optional item (And the right to choose last)


    Those were some generous awards.


    ¡­ and the death line for joining was in half a hour.


    I sighted, grabbed my Phone and began to call the only two people I could imagine having a tag-team tournament with right now: My siblings.


    __________


    ---When they showed up they seemed surprisingly willing to join in. Mathilde did it because she wanted to try out her spells, and win one of the spell books. Martin wanted because, well I honestly don¡¯t know, I can¡¯t even tell why I wanted him on my team, he had virtual no fighting experience or potential, I just couldn¡¯t imagine this without him. Teaming with a stranger or my one of my parents, somehow just grossed me out, especially the parent part.


    Before we decided to enlist in the tournament we took a closer look at the rules.


    The rules are as follows:


    Rule 0:


    This is an AMATEUR tournament, do you have any history of participating in professional combat you are not allowed to participate.


    Rule 1:


    It''s and elimination style tournament.


    Each team will send out a combatant to face the other teams in a 1v1 duel. The first team who defeats 3 of the opponent¡¯s combatant wins, and advances in the tournament.


    Rule 2:


    If you get out of bonds, gets knocked out, is rendered immobile, surrenders, get artificially injured to death, or if the judge deems it: you lose the duel and the winner can then choose to take on the next opponent or let the next from the team fight.


    Rule 3:


    You are allowed to cast or use any of the spells and aura techniques listed. If you want to use any other spell or technique you have to show it to a judge before the tournament in order to get permission. To vary the spell is allowed to a certain degree, but if the judge thinks you are using something you aren¡¯t allowed to use, he can decide whatever or not he should let the opponent win the duel or simply disqualify the team.


    Rule 4:


    You are, despite of the circle of protection, not allowed to attempt to severally harm the opponent after defeat. Does the judge believe that you are no-longer in control of yourself (duo to anger, not magic control) he¡¯s allowed to disqualify you.


    Rule 5:


    Any item you take into the duel has to be allowed by the judge.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Rule 6:


    Keep up good sportsmanship, and have fun!


    Mathilde and I both jokingly agreed that the last rule was so misplaced it literally hurt our eyes, and was in-fact a bunch of hippie-kindergarten bullshit. Secretively we booth knew it was there to remind us that the tournament was, for all intends and purposes, for entertaining and held little to no danger.


    We decided to enlist in the tournament.


    ¡°What would you like to call your team?¡± The woman asked, pencil ready to write.


    I looked at my siblings, shit I hadn¡¯t thought about that.


    (Me) ¡°uhh, what about: Three heroes? ¡°


    (Mathilde) ¡±way to dorky, what about: The SLAUGHTERS?¡±


    (Me and Martin) ¡°NO!¡±


    Martin continued: ¡°what about Triple M? we all starts with a M¡±


    (Mathilde)¡± Thanks captain obvious, it isn¡¯t like I noticed our parents terrible naming skills years ago, and no. No! we are NOT going to call ourselves triple M"


    Some other were waiting for us to decide, and the woman got impatient:


    (woman) ¡°Team name, now¡±


    Okay got to think fast, how about..


    (Me) ¡°uhm., we will call ourselves ,,ehh. Triple M slaughter heroes?¡±


    (woman)¡±got it, now move on¡±


    On the way out, Martin repeatedly beat my shoulders, while Mathilde laughed so hard she could barely walk.


    You. Fucking. Failed. Me. Brain.


    Afterwards we immediately began to prepare and plan for tournament. After all: we had to somehow win with a team consisting of one that couldn¡¯t fight, another one that just had learned magic, and a rusty swordsman.


    <hr />


    24 -hours later we were standing nervously at one end of, one of several others, arenas. Each arena was circle shaped, with regular grass as the ¡°floor¡±, surrounding the arena there was 3 stone layers of runic circles that, when activated, pretty much ensured that you wouldn¡¯t die unless a meteorite where to strike you.


    Around us there were about 16 other teams of 3 or more people, making a total of about 60 people.


    A medium sized tribune surrounded the scene.


    There were a feeling of anticipation and excitement in the air; to me it was an old familiar  felling I remembered from the tournaments in swordsmanship long ago. The setting was similar to now.  Suddenly I could no longer remember why I had ever stopped, I looked forward to face my first opponent and try out my old hopefully-not forgotten skills in a more ¡°real¡± fight.


    in less than 5 minutes we would face our first team.


    The commentator began to speak:


    ¡°Ladies and gentlemen!  I¡¯m happy to declare this years annual amateur tag-team combat tournament for started! In front of us we have 16 teams, 55! brave participants who are ready to fight! And prove their worth in the ring! But only 1 can be the winner, and be able to claim 3 of the prices set aside especially for them, and I must say: This year there is some real gems among them, literally too!


    I¡¯m Paulos Renn and I will be you commentator! As you are well aware, we will start with 8 battles at once! Don¡¯t say I can¡¯t multitask!  I will now ask each team to let their combatant  enter the ring!¡±


    We had agreed to let the weakest link go out first: Martin, then Mathilde, and at last me.


    Martin stepped into the ring; he was wearing what seemed like a white designless armguard, and had a similar looking dagger in his right hand.


    (Commentator)¡± As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, some of the combatants wield white shields or weapons. Those are the arena weapons! They won¡¯t be able hurt the opponent, but the pain is still there! With those they can defeat or temporarily cripple the opponent, as if it was a real weapon!  But you all probably already know that from professional tournaments!


    Anyway: start the runic circles! ¡°


    The three layers of runic circles around the arena began to rotate.


    ¡°I will have the honor of declaring the start of the first duels, are you ready? Here we go! 3. 2. 1. Begin!


    Martin raised his dagger and faced the first opponent.


    <hr />


    FUN FACT:


    yes, the currency of this world is copper, silver and gold coins. However: in this modern world they don''t actually use copper, silver, and gold coins, instead they use, coins made of cheap alloys, notes, and credit cards. The name is duo to historical reasons.


    This is of course only true for the region this story currently unfolds in. it is a big world with a lot of different currencies, the biggest is however the previously mentioned currency. again: for historical reasons.

 Chapter 5: The tournament, part 2

    Pov-change 3rd person.


    The opponent team-name was Elfish Wish.


    Martin quickly analyzed the situation. The person in front of him was a wood-elf ¨C light body weight, engaging in a brawl could be possible. Was standing with his left side turned towards him ¨C he was most likely a right hander. Held a sword in his right hand, his grip on it looked weak. There was nothing in his left hand. ¨C He was inexperienced with a sword; the only reason to why he chooses to have it was because he wasn¡¯t confident in whatever spells he planned to use his left hand for-.  Casual clothes ¨C even higher chance of being inexperienced.


    Martin smirkek, he knew that he wasn¡¯t any better than his opponent, but he had feared he wouldn¡¯t stand a chance against anyone. It turned out he might just have a chance of winning !


    The wood-elf rushed towards the human boy in front of him. Hand stretched out. Just a little closer¡­ there! The palm of his hand lit up in a bright light, right in front of the boys head! Now he would take a swing with his sword and quickly end the fight! Why din''t they use this trick in the professional combat duel he had once seen? He had to admit, he was kind of smart to come up with it.


    Martin was unaffected by the light. He had expected it, but he somehow still couldn¡¯t believe the guy would actually think it would work!


    He used his arm-guard to block the sword, stepped to the right and with the Adrenalin rushing he attempted to stab the man in the side. The dagger sunk into his arm.


    The man cried out in pain.


    Martin quickly retrieved his dagger and the combatants took a few steps back. No actual damage had been done, but a blue area was glowing where he had hit. The stab still had effects similar to a real stab.


    The elf was more focused on his arm than the opponent. Martin took the chance and jumped towards the guy. The man raised his arm, once again tried to blind martin, and once again he was unaffected. He stabbed the man, as they were falling down.


    The dagger went right through the heart! Martin had won!


    A sudden pain hit martin. In a sitting position he looked down; oh god! The sword had impaled his stomach area, why hadn¡¯t he noticed it?


    (Judge) ¡°The winner is Martin! Martin, do you wish to continue?¡±


    Wait.. so this din''nt count as lethal damage? Martin breathed heavily, oh god, oh god! He was impaled. He knew it wasn¡¯t real, but it still felt like it. He mustered himself:


    (Martin) ¡°no (breath) no thanks.. I, I will pass¡±


    Matt rushed in to remove the sword from his little brother, and help him stand. Martin made it clear he wanted to walk himself. Still in shock and breathing deeply he left the arena, he barely noticed the commentator shortly mentioning him wining the duel. Matt understood him; he had tried out dueling in a arena a few times.


    You have to get used to that the damage isn¡¯t real. It is something you quickly learned thou.


    As Martin passed Mathilde he still remembered to give her some advice:


    (Martin) ¡°Those idiots don¡¯t know that using light-blocking lenses is common sense in combat. Your [Light Emission] will work wonders ¡±


    Buying the lenses was a part of preparing for the tournament.


    (Judge)¡± you can begin the next duel in 3, 2, 1, begin!¡±


    The runic circles, which had stopped rotating, began to rotate again.


    Mathilde now stood in the arena, at her hips there was hanging a white arena-axe and dagger, and then some rope, but she dint grasp any of the items. She knew she didn''t need them.


    In front of her there was another wood elf, He had a long sword in his hands, but otherwise he appeared the same as the one before, except: Maybe a little cuter?  Still looked like a loser thou.


    She dint even bother using light, instead she raised her hands and unleashed a overwhelming amount of fire.


    When she had been practicing her spells, she noticed that her [Fire emission] didn¡¯t emit as much heat as normal fire, most of the heat originated from a separate [Heat emission]. It had confused her a lot, but it turned out sending actually dangerous flames was a little more complicated.


    The opponent didn¡¯t know that, instead he accidentally stepped out of bonds as he tried to evade the fire. The duel had barely started, truly a bunch of losers.


    (Judge)¡± out of bonds! The winner is Mathilde. Mathilde do you wish to continue the duel?¡±


    Mathilde looked at the last guy. He looked basically the same as the two others. She really wanted to fight¡­  but that guy just seemed too weak, and Matt probably wanted a easy win too..


    She decided it was not worth fighting against him.


    (Mathide) ¡°Nah, it¡¯s my brothers turn now, I will let him take care of the guy.¡±


    (Judge)¡± if that is your choice. I will now ask team Elfish wish and team Triple M ehm.. Slaughter Heroes?..  to send in their final combatant. The winner of this duel will advance in the tournament¡±


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    On the way out of the arena Mathilde fist bumped her brother.


    ¡°You got this bro¡±


    <hr />


    --My fist hit my sisters.


    ¡°Heck yeah I do, it will be over before they even realize it started¡±


    The judge signaled the start, and the runic circles began to spin once again.


    The wood-elf was nervously wielding a two-hander, just like me. It seemed that he had realized he dint stand many chances. He charged towards me. I simply took a fighting stance, with the tip of my sword pointed towards his chest. He quickly stopped, and moved to the side. My sword simply followed him. He kept his distance. Neither did he how to move past my sword, nor did he dare to attempt it.


    I realized he wasn¡¯t going to attack me like this.


    I let my sword down:


    (me) ¡°listen up, i..¡±


    He dashed forward. The dude actually fell for it!


    While I parried the sword, I took a step to the left and slammed my knee into his stomach. As he was leaning forwards I hit his head with the hilt of my sword before I took another step away from him while I swung the sword down. A bright blue circle appeared around the elf¡¯s neck, had it been real life I would have decapitated his head. It counted as a lethal wound. Victory was mine.


    (Judge)¡±The winner is Matt! team Triple M Slaughter Heroes advances in the tournament. Thank you for participating Elfish Wish¡±


    (Me) ¡°oh yeah! Did you guys see that? Those win moves for the win!¡±


    (Mathilde)¡±Dude, they got rekt so hard, they don¡¯t even realize it¡±


    (Me)¡±Speaking of them, where did they go? I need to say good fight, or something


    (Martin)¡±They are walking there, they began leaving this place as soon as possible, they seem a little but-hurt, but that might just be my imagination¡±


    (Mathilde)¡± wait what really? Hahah! No it wasn¡¯t, they totally just got mad. EHH DID YOU HEAR THAT? YOU MAD!?¡±


    They ignored the taunt, but another team chuckled a little.


    (Martin) ¡°jess, sis, don¡¯t say that out loud..


    Wait.. Another team finished faster than us? I took a quick look at them:


    It was a very varying group:


    A snake woman, a human, and a dragonian wielding a one-handed sword, and a dagger.. Attached to the end of his tail..uhmm something told me THAT would be troublesome to fight against.


    The dragonian noticed my stare and raised his hand to greet me. I raised my hand to in response.


    He approached me:


    (Dragonian)¡±Those are some efficient moves you got¡±


    (Me)¡±yes I have once practiced martial arts, those guys appeared to barely know what it is¡±


    (Dragonian)¡±My team got some weakling to fight against the first round too; apparently there are some people who believe they can win a combat tournament with no prior experience just because it got the amateur tag on. Those people usually loses the first round, so you won¡¯t meet any of them later on¡±


    (Me)¡±hah, well I guess I have to step up my game then.  Oh and: well done I must say, I dint thought anyone would win faster than my team¡±


    (Argonian)¡±Oh my team just barely won ahead of yours, and by the way: We weren¡¯t the first team to win¡±


    He pointed a few arenas away from us. There was sitting a regular white human woman, a dark elf male, and what appeared to be their son: A half-dark-elf with blonde hair and a dark-grayish face. I saw a glimpse of some clear blue eyes. I swear I could feel a sting from his stare.


    The argonian continued:


    ¡±They say the half-elf beat every member of the group, predicted to win, within seconds. ¡°


    (Me)¡±..Seriously? That sounds scary..Anyway, I hope we get to duel¡±


    (Argonian) ¡± With the system randomizing our opponents you never know, but I hope so too. My team name is Two scales and a hair.¡±


    (Me)¡±My team name is Triple..uhm..Know what? Stay around until we meet in the arena, then you will know it¡± ¨C I wasn¡¯t going to tell him I accidentally named my team Triple M Slaughter Heroes.


    We laughed a little and then we decided to go back to our teams.


    We had some time before we had to face the next team, so I decided to take a drink, and Martin wanted to test something out with Mathildes [Light Emission].


    (me) ¡°One down. Three more to go¡±


    I mumbled, and took a sip.

 Chapter 6: The tournament, part 3

    +


    Pov change, 3rd-person


    The next team was named BHK, apparently those were the initials of the three members of the group: Bogmir, Hefenhaldt, and Krummir.


    Martin was already standing ready in the arena, prepared to fight the next opponent.


    His opponent was, as you might expect from the names, a dwarf.


    Martin had a hard time seeing him, duo to the experiment with his sisters [Light emission]. His vision mostly consisted of the afterimage of her hand, the spot made it so that he could barely see the dwarf. He could however clearly distinguish him having a giant two-handed war-hammer in his hands, and him having a giant red beard. His name was Bogmir.


    Martin tried to hide his obvious weakness. Unfortunately he wasn¡¯t a very good actor.


    The dwarf laughed:


    ¡°oy kid! I ain¡¯t got all day. Dint yo say yo was ready just a min ago?¡±


    For some reason Martin didn¡¯t like being called a kid. He was 16 years, and.. 156 days old. He knew he wouldn¡¯t finish maturing before about  5 years, but society classified his age as a teenager. Whuops, he was getting side-tracked. Hm maybe he could stall some time.


    ¡°wait a sec. uhm made a small misjudgment involving some testing prior to this match¡±


    Okay that might give him some time. Let see.. Dwarf had a low center of mass. Tipping him over would be hard. Humans was comparable much higher which meant he had to watch out for his legs in order to not simply be tackled.


    The dwarf lost patience:


    ¡°if yo ain¡¯t gon start, I will¡±


    He dashed forward and swung his heavy hammer towards Martin. Martin tried to jump away but was, as he feared, hit in the legs and landed hard on the ground.  He just managed to block the next swing, but was send meters back and lost his dagger. It landed dangerously close to the head.


    The dwarf had reinforced the hammer slam with his aura! It was similar to, if not the same as, Matts [Outwards force] technique. Martin dint have much time to come up with a counter, maybe if he grabbed the hammer?


    The dwarf dint leave him time to think it through, and made a solid swing from his hip. Duo to Martins low position, it hit him in the chest and send him flying back. The runic circles slowed down his speed as he was flung outside the arena.


    Martin coughed, why was it he participated in this again? It was surely not because he enjoyed taking a beating.


    (judge)¡±Out of bond! Bogmir wins this duel!. Bogmir do you wish to continue or withdraw? ¡°


    (Bogmir) ¡°ill continuo. Think I would be able to take on some human kids, oh and oy kid!  Yo okey?¡±


    (Martin)¡± (gasp) I¡¯m fine, just lost some air, you got some solid strikes¡±


    Bogmir just chuckled and turned around to face his next opponent.


    ¡°what can I say? I aint a poshover¡±


    ---________


    Mathilde was already standing ready with her axe in the hand. Seeing Bogmir defeating her brother, so easily, made her angry, it really motivated her to fight him.


    (Bogmir)¡± yo his sister? Yo gon be defeated so easily to?¡±


    (Mathilde)¡± Doubt it, I have been in a lot more fights than him¡±


    The runic circles began to spin. Mathilde lit her hands aflame in order to intimidate him. The dwarf took a step back as he faintly could determine her enormous mana pool. he opened his mouth to speak:


    Mathilde wasn¡¯t as patiently as her brother.


    She swung the axe down towards the dwarf. It barely scraped his beard and lodged into the earth beneath him. The hammer hit her square in the chest and she was flung backwards just like her brother¡­ but stopped after a meter. The rope around  her was attached to the axe, which was stuck in the ground like an anchor, preventing her from being flung out of bonds.


    ¡°Gotta say, seems like my brothers smart-ass ideas actually got some real use¡± She grinned.


    She jumped back to avoid the hammer. The dwarf was now wide open; Mathilde used the opportunity to attempt to kick him. You could catch a quick glimpse of her bare foot, hidden under her long pants, before it hit the dwarf right in the stomach. The reason to why it was bare was then revealed: The foot shortly busted out in flames and light, the dwarf was then flung meters back. Mathilde had used her new, jet imperfect, spell: [Force emission]


    In the 24 hours the team had to prepare, Mathilde obviously didn¡¯t have time to develop a bunch of deadly spells, nor did she time to learn any aura techniques, so they came up with combining some of the principles of Matts [Outwards force] with Mathildes [Emission] spells. The result was [Force emission].


    It had the same effects as [Outwards force], except that it was stronger and used mana, a lot of mana, considering that a large part of it went into simply wasting it on a bunch of other mana types. She was only able to exert about 5-10% of the full potential, the more she used, the more she wasted. It was to the extent that she had to be aware of how much she used, even with her large mana pool.


    The dwarf was still standing, despite of being pushed meters back. He raised his head, ready to continue the fight but was instead meet with a bright light.


    Normal bright light wouldn¡¯t be able to blind him, duo to him wearing light-blocking lenses, but the lenses wasn¡¯t all-powerful in blocking light, so it was still possible to blind him if the light was bright enough, and it was.


    Martin had confirmed it himself earlier.


    Mathilde was funneling as much mana she could into [Light emission]. The dwarf wasn¡¯t the only affected, the spectators and other persons unluckily enough to be on the wrong side of Mathildes hand was as well, even more so because they weren¡¯t wearing lenses. A little over 200 people  cried out in pain.


    It was something only one with a mana supply comparable to Mathilde would be able to do.


    Some mages began creating a light-blocking shield around the arena, but the damage was already done.


    The commentator, who had commentated the entire time, noticed it.


    ¡°Auch, that one is going to leave some spots in front of the eyes. First I would like to apologize to anyone affected by the light: we DID NOT anticipate anyone displaying such a powerful [Light emission] spell today. Doing so is however well still within the rules.¡±


    While the commentator spoke the fight continued. Mathilde kept on kicking and punching the dwarf, pushing him further back. The dwarf tried to counter it with his [Outwards force], but it only helped a little.


    The commentator was still doing his thing:


    ¡°The girl in arena 3, Mathilde kelnen, is the record holder of the longest recorded Aura collabse in history, she is currently using a very crude version of a force spell, I can confirm that most of the used is wasted, this simply further confirms her large mana pool  that I¡¯m sure many of you, experienced with magic, feel. I must say: it might even be bigger than the rector of this academy. This girl has without a doubt one of the largest mana pools in the world. ¡°


    While he spook Mathilde managed to make the dwarf lose his hammer. She was now almost mindlessly kicking and punching the dwarf, who luckily did a brave job defending himself.  Some might say she was in some kind of ¡°blood lust¡± .


    (Judge)¡± Out of bonds! The winner is Mathilde!, Mathilde do you wish to continue or withdraw?¡±


    It took a few more punches before Mathilde heard what the judge had said; heavily breathing she took a few steps back. The dwarf lowered his guard, somehow still unharmed.


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    (Dwarf)¡±damm girl, what did I do to make yo so angry?..¡±


    She didn¡¯t respond, instead she used a few more seconds to calm down, she was now feeling exhausted. She then answered the judge:


    ¡°Bring the next one in, I stay¡±


    The judge considered for a short moment if it was for the best that he forcefully withdrew Mathilde, but decided that it wasn¡¯t necessary:


    ¡°The I will ask Team BHK to send in their next combatant¡±


    __________


    The next was Hefenhaldt, surprisingly he was a human.


    The runic circles started spinning.


    She started off with an eye-hurting [Light emission]. This time it dint work, instead a spell could be seen around the man¡¯s eyes. it blocked the light.


    (Mathilde)¡±Fine, if that is how it is¡±


    A [Force emission ] reinforced punch would do! It hit squarely in the palms of the man¡¯s hand, but had insignificant effect. The man was conjuring some kind of ward to block of the force.


    What? The punch dint work? Then she would just have to punch somewhere else!


    Blocked. Another punch! Blocked again. This man was getting on her nerves. She unleashed a rain of reinforced kicks and punches, but somehow the man kept blocking them. God he was annoying!


    The fight began to be drawn out brawl; occasionally one of them would tackle the other, but the other would always recover. Hefenhaldt could conduct electricity trough his hands, but then he couldn¡¯t block the constant [Force emission] that Mathilde kept using. The fight was very equal: while Hefenhaldt could counter Mathilde main means of attack and generally seemed a little more experience in martial arts, Mathilde attacked with a unheard of ferocity and brutality, and she knew just enough tricks from the countless school fights she¡¯s been part of to keep up with him.


    The brothers of her was slightly scared by the scene:


    (Matt) ¡± eahm Martin? Remind me that I should never piss of Mathilde again¡±


    (Martin)¡± it¡¯s already on my DO-NOT list¡±


    Hefenhaldt hit Mathilde right in the stomach area. The electricity paralyzed her for just enough time for him to push her out of the arena.


    Mathilde breathed a little before she light up in a smile:


    ¡°Well that was fun¡±


    (Judge)¡±Out of bonds! Hefenhaldt wins, Hefenhaldt do you wish to continuo or withdraw?¡±


    Hefenhaldt was pale in the face, and could barely stand, it was a clear sign of mana exhaustion. Blocking her punches had taken the tool on him:


    ¡°No thanks, I withdraw¡± he said before he fainted.


    ___________


    pov-change 1st person(Matt)


    Now it was my turn to fight.  My opponent was Krummir; if you had to describe him I would say that he was Bogmirs identical twin, same hammer to. The only difference I could see was that his beard was black and not red/orange, but then again: I wasn¡¯t used to see dwarfs, so they all looked the same to me.


    The fight started:


    I blocked a swing from the dwarf, was pushed back. I could instantly feel that the difficulty had risen. I followed up with a strike from above, but that was blocked as well. A few blows were exchanged.


    Something bugged me: I dint use my full potential! It had been such a long time since I had been in a real fight (The wood-elf from before didn¡¯t count as a ¡°real fight¡±).


    I realized the horror: so this was what it felt like to be ¡°rusty¡± I knew I was better than this, but I just couldn¡¯t get into it.


    A solid hammer-swing hit my upper body and I was send flying back. Oh no! I would get out of bonds! My body reacted automatically: I slammed the sword into the ground, and put my feet on the ground and applied [Inwards force] to stop my movement. I moved about a meter further back before I stopped: my foot was just inches away from the perimeter.


    With my right hand on the sword and the left hand on the ground I looked up. Almost like melting ice I could feel my psyche change: A strange mix of calmness, awareness, and Adrenalin-like felling hit me. My control of my aura techniques rose as well. That slam had awakened something in me! I could feel that I still wasn¡¯t as good as when I had been at my peak, but I was back into it again!


    My grip of the sword tightened: and I made a reinforced jump towards the dwarf. The dwarf blocked but was pushed away a few meters. My sword hit his hammer a few time, but this time it was clear that my [outwards force] was stronger than his.


    I put all my power into one swing: My sword pushed away the dwarfs hammer.


    Another swing: a bright blue line showed up on the chest of the dwarf.


    And another: The sword pierced his hear.


    I retracted my sword.


    (Judge)¡± Matt wins the duel! Team Triple M Slaughter Heroes advances in the tournament! Thank you for participating team BHK¡±


    I offered my hand to the dwarf.


    ¡± Nice fight Krummir¡±


    The dwarf took it and stood up.


    ¡°Damm straight it was, yo know: for a moment I thought I had won. I din¡¯t know yo had it in you! Where did that sudden power burst come from?¡±


    (Me)¡±Oh I just remembered something, what are you going to do now?¡±


    (Krummir)¡±Well watch the rest of the tournament of course! Afterwards I think I will go into the pub and grab me some beers with my pals, yo can join me if you want!¡±


    (Me)¡±Haha, I might just do it¡±


    __________


    and now we had to wait again.


    My mind wandered as I looked at the spectators:


    Most of them were wood-elves, then there was some argonians (or was it dragonians?),  the rest was a mix of the different races. The variety of races was actually larger than my home country, but that might be because this place attracts a decent amount of tourists.


    The population of my home country was about 60% humans and 35% orcs. It was  one of the few countries who didn''t have problems with racism towards orcs.


    The orcs had taken the blame of bringing the khajiit race to extinction about 850 years ago. In reality it wasn¡¯t only the orcs to blame, any historians could see that the High-elf Empire, and part-vise the Dragonian tribes, had a part of the blame as well. Not to mention: The khajiits themselves attacked the orcs first, when they were driven away by the high-elves and their racial prejudice.


    It was an internet joke that orcs made it impossible for any real furriers to exist. The reptilian races of course made a counter joke that it was still entirely possible, duo to the ¡°monkey¡± races they called the elves, humans, dwarfs and orcs.


    The commentator interrupted my chains of thoughts:


    ¡°Ladies and gentleman! 16 teams started in this tournament! 12 of those teams are already eliminated! Leaving only 4 teams left! But fear not! We are still only half-way there! I will now say the remaining team names out loud, as well as who they are going up against! The winners of those fights will then meet in an epic finally! Here we go: Team Triple M Slaughter Heroes is going up against¡­.¡±

 Chapter 7: The tournament, part 4

    ¡°Team Triple M Slaughter Heroes is going up against¡­.


    ¡­Two scales and a hair!


    That leaves team ¡°Orc strength¡± up against team ¡°Simple¡±


    It seemed like ¡°Two scales and a Hair¡± had won up to now, strange for some reason I had expected to meet them in the finals, but apparently not.


    We began walking towards our assigned arena. I noticed it was slightly bigger than the one before. They were making it more difficult to get out of bonds, uh?


    (Commentator)¡± This time the teams will fight one at a time! Team Triple M Slaughter Heroes and Team two scales and a hair will begin!¡±


    While the Commentator kept on doing his thing my siblings and I prepared to meet our next opponents. It was the same as usual: Martin went first and then it was Mathilde and at last it would be me.


    <hr />


    Pov:  3rd-person


    Martin Stepped into the arena.


    In front of him was standing a male who was what appeared to be the ¡°African¡± type of human, not ¡°European¡± type like Martin.


    When he had been younger he had for a short moment honestly believed  they were a race of their own duo to their darker skin color, just like he had believed that wood-elf, dark-elf¡¯s and High-elf¡¯s, were separate races as well. Now he just felt like punching himself in the face for being that stupid.


    The man had no weapons equipped  ¨C He was most likely a mage.


    The circles started spinning again.


    Martin acted fast this time: He threw his dagger towards the guy; maybe he could do something before he activated a spell. He had attached a fishing-line to the dagger, this way he could easily retract it.


    The man grabbed the dagger with his hand, and then proceeded to rip of the Fishing line.


    Martins head went blank for a moment: The guy had grabbed the knife, and then ripped a fishing-line apart, which all in all required strength, reaction speed, and a sure way of not getting hurt by it¡­


    All of Martins inner alarms instantly turned on. This wasn¡¯t a mage! It was a Martial artist, an Aura cultivator!


    His realization came too late, before he knew it the guy had unnaturally quickly approached him and had him locked down in a position he couldn¡¯t move from. Damn it! A miscalculation! A misjudgment! Had he guessed the guy was a cultivator he would have a different approach! How stupid could he be?  Ugh.


    Martin kept on struggling for a while and made a few silent curses before he relaxed and muttered:


    ¡°Fine, I got it. I surrender¡±


    (Judge) ¡±David wins! David do you wish to proceed or forfeit?¡±


    David let go of Martin:


    ¡°I wish to proceed¡±


    Martin thoughts raced. David could potentially be a problem for Mathilde, and if he didn¡¯t come up with a solution for Mathilde to use, he doubted that she would come up with something. Facing three persons would be too much for Matt.


    Could the guy counter her [Light Emission]? Possibly not, but that wasn¡¯t a solution.


    Maybe if she used [Force emission] to shoot the dagger at him? Again: It was possible it would work, but that would require luck, and David would be aware of the dagger.


    Then what about [Heat emission] and [Fire emission]?  No. If David used the same grip he had used on him just a moment ago Mathilde wouldn¡¯t be able to touch him with any part of the body, duo to her clothes blocking her from touching him¡­


    That might be it!


    (Martin, to himself)¡± I¡¯m going to hell for suggesting this¡±


    He rushed towards his sister who was already about to enter arena.


    (Martin) ¡°No! Mathilde don¡¯t enter, I got something! Judge! We are going to use the 5 minutes prepare time we have the right to¡±


    David and the judge seemed a little confused, what was there to discuss?, but his siblings instantly knew something was up.  The judge approved of it with a simple ¡°very well¡±. He was a man  of few words.


    (Martin)¡± Okay, this might sound stupid but I need you to...¡±


    He began to explain his strategy, at first they were against it, but then they were cool with it, at least Mathilde, Matt had his troubles accepting the plan.


    <hr />


    5-minuttes later she was standing in the arena again, ready with her weapons in the hand.


    ¡­ Only in her underwear, which was plain and black by the way.


    Mathilde was unaffected by it. What did she care? Either it was people she dint care about who saw her, or people that wouldn¡¯t judge. Besides: her body wasn¡¯t too bad! It was quite standard: it wasn¡¯t overflowing with fat, nor was it skinny, and she had remembered to shave her leg, so that wasn¡¯t a problem either. He body dint quite hit the Hour-glass figure, but it was well within the beauty standards!


    (judge) ¡°Are you sure this is what you choose to do?¡±


    (Mathilde)¡±Yeah of course, else I wouldn¡¯t be doing it idiot. Or would you like that I took some more off?¡±


    (Judge)¡± uhhm¡­..         no¡­. showing you private parts is not allowed in this tournament. If you are ready I will proceed to start the duel: ready? 3¡­2¡­1.. Go!¡±


    The runic circles started spinning again, only this time there was a mage who conjured a light blocking spell. They didn¡¯t want the same thing happening last time to repeat itself.


    Mathilde started off by sending a bunch of flames towards the guy. He backed off, but quickly sensed they weren¡¯t dangerous.  He moved trough them. A blinding light meet his eye he quickly closed them and blocked of the light with his hand. He had to assign some of his aura to block the light.


    Then there was a few minutes were he slowly pushed her back, he couldn¡¯t get a good grip of her. She always evaded or pushed of his fists with her [Force emission], until:


    With a quick sweep with his legs he managed to tackle her! He forced her into a position where he halfway sat on her back, a knee holding her into position. He held her right arm in an awkward angel, making it hard for her to move.


    The judge began to count down, immobilizing for more than 10 seconds was a condition for winning.


    ¡°10¡­9..¡±


    Mathilde remained calm.


    [Heat emission].


    ¡°8..7..¡±


    It began slowly, giving David time to notice the heat she gave of, and adjusting the aura to counter it. It was as Martin had predicted; that man knew of an unusual amount of different aura techniques.


    ¡°6..¡±


    Then she turned it max-up. Having little to no time to react David panicked and used all of his recourses to withstand the heat.


    ¡°5..¡±


    A mistake.[ Light emission]!, [Force emission]!


    A blinding light filled his eyes, before he was pushed away from the force.


    He stumbled around, blind. Mathilde leaped towards him. Her right hand hit him right in the chest. Flames and light erupted where she hit. She moved a few more steps before she stopped, stretched out her hand, and tossed him outside the arena.


    The judge starred dumfound at the turn-around. There was a few seconds silence before he said something:


    ¡°Out of bonds. Mathilde wins this duel, Mathilde do you wish to continue or withdraw?¡±


    (Mathilde) ¡°I¡¯ll continue¡±


    (Judge)¡±very well, I will then ask Team Two scales and a hair to send in their next combatant¡±


    <hr />


    A snake woman entered the arena. Her scales had a red/brown muster; the upper part of her snake-head was bright red while the underside was light-brown. He clothes were some kind of golden/brown color, and seemed way too classy for combat. She had 2 swords in her hands.


    Mathilde, still in hear underwear, readied her weapons.


    The snake woman was...Standing?... patiently in front of her. A random comment revealed her name to be Sasha.


    The fight started.


    Sasha began with stretching her swords out to the side and pointing the tips towards Mathilde.


    To the left! Under the sword!


    Sasha avoided most of it by hitting Mathilde arms with her sword. Fortunately it wasn¡¯t a serious  ¡°wound¡±.


    She leashed towards Mathilde again, and once again she managed to wound her, but this time Mathilde managed to hit her left hand with [Force emission]. Her sword was flung out of her hand. Sasha hissed and retreated a few meters, the force had numbed her hands.


    Mathilde didn¡¯t follow up. Two bright blue markings could be seen on her right arms, the swords had influenced some serious artificial wounds.


    [Light emission]. Sasha was for some reason unaffected by the light. She couldn¡¯t figure out as to why, but she knew that it was a huge disadvantage. She was after all only stupid if compared to her brother.


    Fair enough, she still had her dagger and axe. She engaged once again in combat. Sasha managed to defend herself; they clashed a few times, only: The sword spit out fire! Mathilde retreated, some of her body was covered in a blue transparent shimmer, as substitute for actual burn damage.


    Was it some sort aura technique? Matt and Martin could easily determine that it wasn¡¯t, to emit flames without emitting mana required a tremendous amount of control, a control that you wouldn¡¯t find on a person struggling to defeat a mediocre girl with a recently required high mana reserve. Mathilde didn¡¯t know that, yet she somehow knew that it was a spell.


    Mathilde was standing cautiously away from the snake-woman, trying to understand the new sensation she felt. It felt like the energies inside her body¡­ Only outside! It felt similar to her [Flame emission] and [Heat emission] only it wasn¡¯t a mix, and it was a little different. It had a more powerful felling to it, but it didn¡¯t have anything to do with the amount of mana, it was simply more potent.


    She had awakened her mana sense, also called the third eye.


    Could she do the same? She tried to replicate the felling.


    Failure, she send out some flames and heat, and the fire felt thicker somehow, but it was nowhere close to what the snake woman had done. A person wouldn¡¯t suddenly be able to do something that required skill just because someone else showed them; it could only give an idea on how to do it. The same rule could be applied to learning magic.


    That fire sword was a problem; she had to get rid of it. She tightened her grip on her axe in her right hand.


    Another attack. It was as if Mathildes senses suddenly speeded up:


    Sasha swung the sword towards Mathildes right side.


    Flames began to emit from the sword.


    Mathildes axe passed by the sword, the flames began hurting her arm.


    The axe wouldn¡¯t hit Sasha, but Mathildes hand was nearing the wrist of the snake woman. She let go of the axe.


    The tip of the sword pierced the shoulder. Intense pain! The flames! The heat! Just a little more time...


    Her hand hit the wrist, the hilt of the axe was still in the way but that wasn¡¯t a problem. [Force emission]


    The speed of the world turned back to normal. The axe and remaining sword was flung out of the arena. Sasha cried out in pain, her second wrist had taken damage as well.


    (Sasha)¡±Bitcchhhss¡±


    Mathilde laughed, although a little restrained. Her entire right arm was blue, transparent and hung like a lump of meat by her shoulders, signifying that had it been real life Mathilde probably never would be able to use her right arm again, at least not by natural means. It was a good thing she didn¡¯t actually lose blood, or else the match would have been over by now.


    She managed to ignore the pain:


    (Mathilde) ¡°(heavy breathing) I guess I win, I still got my magic left¡±


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    She let her remaining hand on fire.


    Rage filled up Sasha, who did that pale naked human girl think she was!?


    ¡°Don¡¯t think I can¡¯t do such tricks myself!¡±


    She moved her left hand around in a sphere; inside that sphere a attack spell was slowly being created. Her hand had recovered from the numbness.


    Mathilde could with her newfound mana-sense determine that it was some sort of fire spell, except this time it involved some sort of ¡°gooey¡± mana that held the other mana in shape.


    She was still trying to cope with the pain, but that wasn¡¯t the only reason she dint just attack, she was after all not the person to be stopped by a little¡­a lot of¡­pain.


    No, that wasn¡¯t it. She was confused: initially her arm had felt numb, now it felt...cold, but in a nice way. It was kind of like dipping the arm in cool water on an extremely hot day. She could slowly fell her senses returning to the arm.


    Incoming [Fire ball]! By pure reflex she blocked it with her right hand! And she send out some mana. The [Fire ball] hit but it did no damage since her right arm already counted as ¡°damaged¡±. Mathildes mana had also somehow left an air of cold.


    The stadium was silent for a moment before there was an  ¡°OHHH¡± and it returned to be just as noisy as ever. The commentator shifted his attention completely and started rambling on about her:


    (Commentator) ¡°Amazing! Dueler Mathilde kelnen just moved her right arm! It should have been impossible duo to it being market! But..¡± ¨C And so he continued.


    Sasha just hissed and started making another [Fire ball]. She was clearly pissed off, and her emotions were reflected in the fireball spell. It caused it to be more potent and violent.


    Mathilde looked at her right arm. She could now feel fell the mana flowing inside her arm.


    Ice mana.


    It wasn¡¯t her mana. At least it dint fell like it...Her ordinary mana felt warm, like fire, light, constantly moving, overflowing, and like her, but compared to the Ice mana it felt weak, very weak. The ice mana on the other hand felt strong, cold, dark, and heavy. It moved slowly trough her veins. There was only a very little of it, but it felt many  times more potent and powerful.


    She tried to use some of the mana. It was hard to use so she could really only use it as it was:


    [Frost breath]


    A beam of cold wind, snow and ice particles was send out of her hands. It had a dark-blue hue to it. She had pointed it downward, were the particles hit the ground they grew to different sized ice shards.


    (Mathilde) ¡°Awesome¡±


    Sasha had finished her [Fire ball] spell. This time it was a lot larger and more  potent than the last one. Mathilde wasn¡¯t concerned thou, as it came flying towards her se aggressively send out a steam of [Frost breath].


    The spells clashed but the fire spell easily succumb to the Frost spell and dispersed as it hit the ice particles. The particles expanded in size and continued their path towards Sasha. A few of them simply flew past her, but some of them also hit her. Most of them bounced hard of her, one of them hit her left shoulder and shattered. Two were sharp and lodged themselves into her arm and upper tail respectively.


    The Snake woman cried out in pain. For a few moments Mathilde felt a sense of victory. That was some action!  Maybe the ice mana didn¡¯t fell like her regular mana, but screw that, It kicked ass! It was until then she realized what she was looking at¡­


    The shards landed outside of the arena.


    Sasha¡¯s shoulder was dislocated.


    She was covered in bruises from the hit, there was a high possibility that some of them had resulted in some broken ribs.


    Blood dripped from her.


    The runic circles hadn¡¯t been able to render the ice mana harmless.


    The wounds were real.


    (Mathilde)¡±¡­shiiiiiiiiit¡±


    The runic circles stopped rotating. One of Sasha¡¯s teammates, the argonian, rushed in and removed the ice shards embedded in her body, which was probably for the best, cause the shards were slowly shrinking while emitting an enormous amount of cold. Those who had landed on the ground were already creating a mist around them and the grass was frozen over.


    Some medical people ran over to her with some healings potion.


    A felling of guilt rose in Mathildes stomach. This wasn¡¯t what she had intended. She knew that she was in deep trouble.


    (judge)¡±Mathilde you have been using magic bypassing the effects of the runes, and thereby inflicted damage to your opponent. We understand that it is a special chase and unintentional but you should have informed us of it. I¡¯m afraid I have to disqualify you from the tournament¡±


    (Mathilde) ¡°.. dude WHAT?! You can¡¯t just disqualify our team! It¡¯s yours fault for not having a prober enchantment¡±


    (Judge)¡±I¡¯m not disqualifying your team, I¡¯m disqualifying you. Team Triple M Slaughter heroes will have to fight without you from now. ¡°


    Mathilde didn¡¯t pursue it further; she knew that she could not hope for a better outcome. She looked towards Sasha. The bruises¡¯ and wounds were almost healed, and the dislocated shoulder was almost fixed, but the broken ribs and frost damage wasn¡¯t something that could be fixed as quickly. Well, with skilled magicians all over the place she would probably be ready to fight when it was her turn again.


    She tried to reach out for her ice mana again.  She couldn¡¯t find it. Deep down she knew that it was there somewhere ¡°behind¡± her regular swirling and overflowing mana, but no matter how hard she tried it always was right outside her grasp. Like a  very faint and distant rainbow. She made a short growling sound of dislike, turned around and walked out of the circle.


    (Mathilde)¡± Just go in Matt, I¡¯m going to go put some clothes on¡±


    She definitely wanted to brag about her ice mana later, but right now she was just frustrated.


    <hr />


    pov-change, 1st-person, Matt.


    I entered the arena. The trouble from before was solved and almost everybody was ready.


    I had vaguely noticed that Mathildes Aura/presence had somehow changed during the fight, but I had dismissed it as my Imagination. That was of course until she suddenly decided to spray out ice mana. It goes without saying that I was rather surprised when that happened. From what I could see it was a somewhat advanced type of mana she had used, not something beginners would be able to create.


    I tightened my grip of my sword; the argonian had entered the arena as well. He took a position with his sword ready, there would have been an opening to his left side, but the dagger attached to the tips of tail was floating ominously covering it. Is it normal for an Argonian to have such control over their tail?


    Everything had sorted itself out. The signal for starting was given.


    The Argonian didn¡¯t move.


    I circled around him, trying to find an opening. It was no use. Guess there was nothing to do but to try. I had a longer sword; it should give me an advantage.


    The swords clashed!


    A dagger from the side! I took a step back and avoided it. The process repeated itself a few times. Then he began attacking me. He was fast! I had no choice but to be on the defenses. Slash after Slash a dagger or sword would come at me, and when I blocked it the counterpart would too. When I took a step back he would take an even faster step towards me.


    I simply wasn¡¯t fast enough.


    I swept his feet away. He landed on the ground. Sword right at his chest! He had already moved away again. He attacked me. I used all of my energy into the counter swing. [Outwards force]. He blocked it, but staggered backwards. He had lost his balance. A swing to his right!


    (Argonian) [Force blast]


    Most of the movement of my sword stopped midair, the rest was blocked by his bare fist, the one with the sword in.


    For a moment none of us moved. He had used an aura technique outside his body?


    His tail flew towards me. [Hardening skin]! All focused in one area. Wait, he moved his remaining hand too. I managed to block the dagger with my bare skin, but there was almost no force in it anyway. Instead it was in his hand and it bore right true my chest. His hand was sharp. My heart would have been destroyed.


    (Judge) ¡±Fatal injure, Djaske win this round! Two scales and a hair advances to the finals. Team triple M Slaughter heroes can still compete for the third place¡±


    The felling of losing was a painfull. Having come so far only to lose was disappointing, but I could accept it. Losing to that guy was no shame to me. I reached out my hands to shake and he took it. A short pause emerged as we exhausted stood in front of each other; somehow I was more exhausted than him. I used the opportunity.


    (Me)¡±How are you so fast? What kind of aura technique are you using?¡±


    (Argonian/Djaske )¡±I¡¯m not, I¡¯m using the Ki energy in the body. I see you are using a Ki-less battle style¡±


    (me)¡± yeah, I do¡±


    (Djaske)¡±Don¡¯t do that, using Ki in combat is much more efficient . Using Ki-less styles really only exists for the traditions and its far too specialized. ¡°


    (me)¡±well, I¡¯ve never used Ki before..¡±


    (Djaske) ¡±shouldn¡¯t be a problem, you are already using you ordinary mana. Try making it boost your natural movements, but then don¡¯t and use Ki instead. It will make sense after you¡¯ve tried for a while¡±


    (Me) ¡±.uh ok I get it awesome, thanks!¡±


    I didn¡¯t get it at all, but hey: if I tried I might.


    <hr />


    pov-change 3rd-person.


    ¡°The Rector¡± of the school was only loosely following the tournament. He had hoped that there might be some who knew how to fight properly, but no one of them proved the ¡°Amateur¡± tag wrong. Sure, that one argonian might be above commoner strength but not worth anything. Trained warriors could easily be acquired if needed and he wouldn¡¯t be a shining star among them.


    A felling of disgust rose up in the man. The weakness of the people made him feel bad. No matter how strong they believed themselves to be, they always ended up disappointing him in some way.


    That one girl was interesting thou. To think she had absorbed the properties of the pearl was quite remarkable. He had to study that trait of her. She even showed outstanding potential. With some manipulation she could be an outstanding pawn. That was of course provided he could figure how she had copied the power, without sacrificing her in the process.


    Well, sacrifices had to be made; he couldn¡¯t be bothered by it.


    He turned around and faced a Dragonian woman. She had large blade on her back. It was clearly a powerful weapon.


    (The ¡°Rektor¡±) ¡±Has the preparations been made Karisha? ¡°


    (Karisha) ¡± Yes, your mages has finished the summoning circles. The sacrificial creatures has been prepared as well¡±


    (The ¡°Rector¡±) ¡±Excellent I will have a look at it myself. I Assume you understand your role as well?¡±


    (Karisha) ¡°Yes, we¡¯ve practiced [Soul Transfer] before. I¡¯m ready to do it. For the dragonian people!¡±


    (The ¡°Rector¡±) ¡±Yes, for the Dragonians.  The artifact inside will be the deciding factor against the orcsish warlords.


    (Karisha) ¡±When the times come it will serve them well. This cooperating will benefit the both of us. ¡°


    (The ¡°Rektor¡±) ¡°It will¡±


    Karisha turned around and moved towards the summoning chambers. She felt joy, this would be the decisive blow towards those dam orcs!


    The dark mage, role-playing as the rector, felt joy as well. His third eye could see the traces of his corrupting spell inside her. Nobody else could sense it, not even herself


    Her mental fortitude was strong, but he had finally broken the first barrier to her mind.


    She would prove to be an invaluable pawn.

 Chapter 8: Karisha

    Author Note:


    Hope you dont mind taking a break from the tournament! ( im getting sick of it :P )


    "Accidentally" wrote a chapter word of content about the dragonian Karisha!


    Dont worry, this is not a "filler" it is entirely part of this story


    i can guarantee  that the next chapter will be the final part of the tournament


    enjoy :)


    <hr />


    Karisha was laying down in the middle of a runic circle.


    To her right and left was placed 20 centimeter long crystal shards hanging in the air, they light was dimly fluctuating to the sound coming out of the non-magic speaker and the dark mage standing just outside the circle. It was a ¡°humming¡± sound.


    Further back there was an identical circle with a creature in the middle; it too had two crystals hovering to its sides.  It was too dim to determine what it was.


    The dark mage kept his humming and mana perfectly in sync with each other and the sound from the speaker, a pre-recording he had made specifically for this event. It all amplified each other and the crystals and runes were reacting accordingly.


    To move the soul of a person into another body was a highly complicated procedure, and it required some ¡°shaking¡± to achieve, thus the reason for the fluctuating ¡°Humming¡±. The mana filled up the room and moved accordingly.


    It was therefore important that the area, in which the ritual would be performed, was cleansed from unimportant mana. That was the reason for the non-magical speaker, a rarity to find.


    The Mage was quite happy for the device, without it he would had needed the help from singing bowls and at least 5 more persons, depending on their skill.


    He kept on humming; the ritual was closing to an end.


    Too Karisha it was a very weird felling. Her consciousness was in sync with the ritual, one moment it was fading into darkness, the other it was soaring into the light at an alarming rate. She couldn¡¯t determine if she lost conscious at any point, and if: exactly when she did.


    It wasn¡¯t a pleasant experience, but it couldn¡¯t be called an entirely unpleasant either.


    Suddenly she had a falling experience, the world started moving.


    Blink


    The floor started tipping!


    Blink


    It moved the other way now! Wait,were these her limps?


    Blink


    they were, she was hanging from the roof, she was falling!


    Blink


    She landed the body of the creature, what was left and right? Up and down?


    Blink


    Inside her own body, yet it was so distant and large, her soul couldn¡¯t fill it out. A mental arm was stretched out inside her, yet she couldn¡¯t reach the edge of her body. As she fell into herself, it all twisted around


    Blink


    The creatures body.  Everything was shrinking! Wait, it was expanding!


    Blink


    Still the body of the creature, the floors from all the sides rushed beneath her. The fluctuation of her consciousness stopped. She came up on all fours.


    She resisted the urge to puke on floor. A headache had appeared, but it was already getting better.


    She looked around.


    Everything looked different.


    Her field off vision was larger. The floor was closer to her. The world was filled with colors...


    She realized she was looking at mana with her physical eyes.


    She looked towards her body, her eyes could now also so in the dark so she could clearly observe her body despite the dim light. A string of connected her current body to her Dragonian body.


    (Dark mage) ¡±How are you felling?¡±


    He grasped a little crystal, tightened his grasp around it, it began to shine bright.  The he ¡°placed¡± it above and behind one of his should, and left it hanging there.


    Karisha, in her new body, looked confused at him. How was she supposed to answer? She opened her mouth but only a growling sound come out from it.


    The dark mage laughed


    (Dark mage) ¡°you don¡¯t need to answer that, follow me I want to see how successful the soul transfer was.  It will be confirmed with a few simple tests. ¡°


    He turned around, she followed him, as they were walking down the hallway he explained the situation to her once again.


    (Dark Mage) ¡°as you know, this is only a partial soul transfer, you can return to you own body at any time you would fell like it, and vice versa. That rule should even apply when you have gone thru the portal. It will enable us to communicate.  I¡¯d suggest you try doing it , when I have confirmed how well integrated to the body you are.


    Your body is currently that of a female Drake youngling, it originated from the southern parts of the Steel mountains.¡±


    Karisha kept walking beside him, and was listening.  She was 1.5 meter in high, and covered in scales. Spikes ran along her spine and onto the tail.  Her Drake body was young, but it was already growing some fearsome fangs.


    (Dark mage) ¡±The reason too that is because of the genes. Dragonians, drakes, and dragons shares the same ancestral genes. This particularly drake is a crossbreed of a drake with latent humanoidian genes and a drake with latent dragonic genes. My soul transfer will, once you grow stronger, let you be able to little by little add your dragonian aura, mana, and arcane genes on top off your current body.


    All in all, it results in a magnificent synergy. The potential for growth and¡­ evolution.. . is limitless in your new body.


    The beast was specifically handpicked for you, it is a perfect match¡±


    He opened a door to an outside yard, the private garden of the rector. Karisha was amazed by the arcane energies in the place. It could easily be called a sacred spot. The mage entered and she followed, but stopped up for a moment. The colors of the mage didn¡¯t quite match that of this place, it was too dark. Shouldn¡¯t it match?


    The mage turned around.


    (Dark mage) ¡°This is a Zen-garden for this academy, only the  greatest magicians of this place and outside is allowed to meditate at here, with the exception of you of course. I hope they will forgive me for using it, but i need a place with both privacy and sand¡±


    The Drake loosened up, so that was why the energies of this place was different from the man in front of her. Others used this place as well.


    What followed was a series of simple tests.


    First was a check to see if she still had maintained he cognitive functions. It contained a series of logical questions and puzzles. She also had to remember and think like a typical dragonian. It was solved using the sand as writing material.


    Next was a physical test in which she asked to do certain motoric tasks like running around or moving a specific claw. At first she had trouble with some of them, but she quickly gained control of her body.


    The next test was weird, this time she had to think like a Drake not a Dragonian. She had to do tasks like curling up in the right manner in order to sleep, sneak, and look at some certain pictures of drakes and humanoids. That  part felt a little too intimate for her to think off, but she could to her surprise conclude that some feelings were simply bound to the body, not the mind. Thankfully the mage kept it all in a professional manner.


    The last part of that test was a meal!


    ..only it a meal for a Drake.


    She was presented with a bowl of cooked meat, and a bowl of raw meat.


    (Dark mage) ¡°This is merely a test to see if your mind corresponds to the digestive system of your body. Can you be so kind to smell to both of these dishes and point to the one you would prefer eating?¡±


    She sniffed at them. Normally she loved cooked meat, but now it didn¡¯t appeal to her. It just didn¡¯t give her the appetite.  The meat on the other hand..Smelled delicious! The blood, the rawness, she just wanted to take a big juicy bite off it.


    She pointed a claw towards the meatball


    (Dark mage)¡±good, that is within my expectations.  just to make sure: can you please taste both of these dishes?


    She took a bite of the cooked meat, it could be eaten, it was just that nothing within her wanted to eat it.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    The raw meat was just as she had predicted, juicy and delicious. She realized she felt famished; there was deep hunger within her. She started taking bigger bites.


    (Dark mage) ¡°Oh, I see you are hungry. I¡¯m sorry the possibility slipped my mind. I guess it is quite some time since that Drake body had something to eat¡±


    Then was the last test: arcane control a.k.a. Mana control. That test was performed on a training ground.


    The Drakes had a high amount of ki , also popularly called arcane stamina. When she started to use it she could feel the power inside her. The difference it made when she leapt and sprinted was huge.


    Her claws could, with some stamina, shatter the wooden puppet like it was nothing. She was unsure if she had even felt any resistance at all.


    Drakes didn¡¯t only have stamina, they had mana as well. She could spit fire!


    [Dragon breath]


    Yellow fire erupted from her mouth. It was filled with lightning.  It hit a wooden puppet. The air sparkled with electricity and a few sparks flew between some metal screws.


    The attack was not very powerful. Karisha realized she probably had to think of that move deferentially. She named it [Electro flame breath]. It could not be called a true dragon¡¯s breath.


    (Dark mage) ¡±up until now you seem to have a good grasp of the arcane control, there is however one thing I would like to add a comment¡±


    She looked towards him, was she missing something?


    (Dark mage)¡± in terms of arcane control you have an advantage over other drakes, your intelligence.


    Studies shows that drakes rarely expands their arcane control beyond their breath and stamina, and those few who does only manages increase the strength and use it at places like claws, spikes and end of the tail.


    Try to send out mana from your shoulder, if possible: could you alter it a little?¡±


    Karisha felt stupid for a moment, she had been overtaken by her instincts!


    She concentrated, the shoulder was a tricky place, the mana natural flowed towards places like her mouth and claws, but it was harder other places. It was like trying to write with her secondary hand.


    A little yellow flame began to linger at her shoulder.


    She tried to change it, but couldn¡¯t.


    She could however with breath:


    [Negative electro flame]


    A third puppet was hit.


    The screws from the puppet hit with the [Electro flame breath], and the air around, discharged into the hit puppet. Not only that: parts of the puppet dissolved into dust, even a few natural flames could be seen.


    Her attack had removed electrons from the puppet. Now that they were removed the molecules dissolved into atoms and others were made to fill up the electronic shells.


    Even the mage was impressed by the feat.


    (Dark mage) ¡±I think that should be sufficient.  Your control is beyond that of a normal drake. There is only one last part of the arcane test. Could you attack me please?¡±


    Karisha hesitated, was he sure of that? Well. Then again: she trusted him, and he was asking for it¡­


    Powerful leap towards him!


    He raised a hand: [Black vortex push].


    Her momentum was stopped. She landed on all four, ready to make another jump.


    (Black mage) [Weakening]


    She suddenly felt all her arcane energy being drained, it shrank into almost nothing. Her legs collapsed under her weight. She had trouble breathing


    The mage walked towards her until he stood in front of her. She could barely lift her head.


    He moved his foot forwards. [Black vortex push]


    Her body was flung across the yard. It smashed a few puppets before she hit the back end, and collapsed


    The mage simply  dusted of some unseeable dust from his clothes and continued to speak in the same tone as always.


    (Mage dark)¡± This last part is a lesson. A Drake is a poor man¡¯s Dragon. It got stamina, it got arcane breath, and even some degree off arcane defense, which is why you even survived this, but compared to a dragon it¡¯s lacking in every aspect. I want you to know that you by no means are invincible, keep that in mind and get stronger. The reason you got this body is after all not because of its initial strength but because of the potential.


    When you are ready, I want you to immediately return to your original body, so that we can have a verbal communication, it should feel natural too you¡±


    <hr />


    Karisha walked out of the room. Too be back in her dragonian body felt somewhat weird. Being a drake had actually been somewhat fun to her.


    Except that returning to her original body had been just as disorienting as the first time, the only difference was that had only been one ¡°Blink¡±


    She knew that there were some cultures and people who would dislike taking the body of a beast, it was too downgrading to them, but to her it wasn¡¯t a problem.


    Maybe it was because Dragonians had some degree of ancestral proud, or was it because she was on friendly terms with the argonian beast culture, that actually promoted the idea of connecting too beasts?


    Maybe it was, but there were one more reason.


    A vivid of picture of a burning village flashed up in her mind.


    A large orc pushed her aside as he rampaged through the village. She tried to stop him but her petite child body failed her. As she felt the heat from the flames she could only watch as the slaughtering happened, her vision blurred from her tears, and ears filled with the sound of her screaming.


    She almost stumbled from remembering it.


    Tears filled her eyes once again, only this time they had a glow of anger, hate, and desire for revenge.  She stood still for a few moments, her whole body trembled.''


    She resisted urge to simply grab the sword on her back and start destroying everything around her until something forced her to stop.


    Instead she angrily kicked a random black crystal lying around; it flew violently through a window, shattering the glass to pieces. Seeing the destruction made her somewhat calmer.


    Why was she having these ¡°visions¡± now? She didn¡¯t know why, but lately they had been starting to appear more frequently. It hurt, but she didn¡¯t mind. They served as an excellent reminder for her mission. A mission she was willing to suffer any kind of pain for to achieve, be it physical or mental.


    Get stronger.


    Find the artifact.


    Make the orcs suffer like she had.


    <hr />


    There was a quick verbal briefing between her and the rector of the academy.


    It was short and it basically confirmed the tests from before and her willingness for the mission.


    It also revealed some other technicalities about the creatures send in besides of her.


    <hr />


    The time had finally come.


    It was time to enter the portal and the otherwise enclosed area behind it.


    Karisha was back in her Drake body.


    In front of her was a broken down wall. Behind the rubble was a large vortex of light swirling endlessly into a center which couldn¡¯t be seen duo to the apparent distance. Sometimes scenes could faintly be distinguished in the swirls, but they always changed. Cold could be felt from the portal.


    The spikes on her back shivered, a short growl emerged from her. The thought of walking into that phoneme in front of her was intimidating.


    She had no real idea of the place she would end in.


    The mage was behind her.


    (Dark mage)¡± I have already sent in some scouting wisps and crocodilians to confirm the safety. My mental connection reveals that none of them are death, so it is safe. Enter¡±


    She decided that there was no point in dragging it out. She bended her legs.


    And Jumped!


    She could feel a pull from the portal.  She was dragged towards the center.


    For a split second she could feel her body swirl too, and become part of the stream, before she lost conscious.

 Chapter 9: The tournament, part 5. The finale

    Ki, aka arcane stamina and health. Molded by runic enzymes in the body it wasthe mana ofthe body. Powerful beasts roamed earth because of it. Warriors couldharness the awesomepower it contained, and go down in history as a one-man army or even a dragon slayer. I could technically take a step towards greatness as soon as I unlocked it.


    There was only one problem:


    I failed at it!


    The situation was quite ridiculous to me.


    Trying to use my mana to make my limbs move and then not, wasn''t really doing it for me. When I tried it out on my arms I would instinctively use my muscles to counteract the force, and when I didn¡¯tthey appeared to move spontaneous and clumsy around like a rag-doll.


    It only made me look like an idiot.


    I was sitting as a spectator watching finale of the amateur tag-team-tournament. It was Team "Simple"against Team "Two scales and a hair"


    I would fight against Team "Orc strength" once this was over.


    The fight had started with the half-dark-elf-half-human going up against the aura cultivator. It was probably for the best for Team "Two scales and a hair" because it turned out the half-elf had a strong psychicability.


    An ability based on psychic mana.The mana of the mind.


    It was some sort of [Mental Attack], that would force the opponent to faint.


    The aura cultivator, that Martin and Mathilde had faced before, had some sort of resistance to it. He had clearly suffered, and had trouble standing up, but fortunately the Half-elf had no real combat skills, so he was defeated with some trouble.


    The fight had advanced since then, and now it was the argonian Djaske up against the father, the dark-elf. The Dark-elf was wielding an arm guard, and a one-handed sword.


    Djaske had his usual speed, and expertise. In fact: it made me wonder if he had even been serious the fight before.


    The dark elf was skilled to, he wasn''t as fast,but he used a variety of spells to make it balance out.


    [Green flame coating], [Spear of destruction], [Flaming shield], [Dash of fire], etc..


    Christ, he had a lot of spells ready, was he really an amateur?


    An old man beside me noticed what I was doing.


    (Old wood-elf male) "you seem to be trying something young man, what could it be?"


    Shit, a talkative old person, even when growing older those types hadn''t been my favorite kind. Well guess I had to be polite.


    (me) " I¡¯mtrying to figure thiskithing out. The problem is that I just can¡¯t get this to work"


    (Old man) "I saw you fighting, are you really telling me you don''t comprehend it yet?"


    ugh, did people have torubit in? okay world, I got it: I suck at it.


    (me)" sight* yeahhh...."


    (Old man) "thought so, you are making the mistake of trying to use your ordinary mana to accomplice it. that won''t work"


    (Me) "Why not? a ki user told me that it was the way to go"


    (Old man) " If that is so then he''s either very special, or not a very good teacher. you see, even if ittechnically is mana, it¡¯s not what you popularly would call mana. Besides thinking about it as one thing would be like thinking of all kinds of food as meat, it''s simply not true"


    (Me)"...what do you mean? it¡¯s not just a way of strengthening your body?"


    (Old man) " No. No that is a simplification, it would be more accurate to call it a broad term for arcane health, arcane stamina, arcane strength and so on."


    (me)" Then if it¡¯s all arcane, what would be wrong in having a starting point in mana?"


    (Old man) "You are not getting it. That''s the wrong way of thinking. you must think that it got other roots. It originates from the body, and is replenished by eating.In old times, it was anecessarilymeans for survival, but because everything has become easy and harmless in modern timesvery few people got the need for it and thus never develop it.


    We starred at each other for awkwardly long time, i was waiting for him to continue.


    It never happened.


    (Me) "I don''t intend to be rude, but I feel there is some sort conclusion that I¡¯m missing out on"


    The tone of the conversation had slowly shifted to be annoying, i couldn''t figure out how and why, but I could feel that the old man felt the same. But it was he who had started the conversation!


    (Old man) "young man, I¡¯m telling you that you have to have a reason. Like being in a life-threatening situation, panicking, or just pushing your training that far. What is your God-dam REASON!?"


    (Me)"I''m trying to get better at fighting, are you telling me that isn''t ENOUGHT OF A REASON?!"


    (old man) " APPARENTLY IT''SNOT!"


    (Me) "Know what?! FINE!"


    Having said that I turned my back towards him. He did the same to me. How-da-fuck, had the conversation ended up like this? Already now i could in hindsight see that it was incredible childish, but apparently, we had a very bad social chemistry.


    For the moment that was at least that was what I thought.


    <hr>


    pow-change, 1stperson, Martin


    Clearly something was wrong about this situation.


    An uneasiness was spreading.


    The first signs had been how the fight down there had begun to be more intense, and so had the spectator¡¯s cheers. They were in fact beginning to sound aggressive.


    For a while I had dismissed it as the natural result of the final coming to an end.


    Until the conversation between my brother and the old man startedgoing south. It was highlyalarming.


    I noticed that similar conversations started around place. Two spectators started fighting. People began yelling and become violent.


    It wasn''t a mass panic, more like a mass anger.


    This was getting dangerous. Really dangerous.


    (Mathilde)" Oh hey Martin! I got the ice mana to work!"


    I turned around, was she affected as well? It would decrease my chances of surviving.


    She was happily spraying gust of cold out. No growing shards this time? I took of note of quickly she was mastering the mana, but pushed it to the back of my head. There were other concerns now.


    I had an idea on how her ice mana worked compared to her ordinary mana, and if that idea was true then I knew a cause for this situation.


    (Martin) "Quick Mathilde, is there something wrong with your ordinary mana?"


    (Mathilde) " what? of course not........wait¡­ there is somethingwrong. It makes me angry?"


    (Martin) "BLOK IT! look around"


    she looked around and noticed the changed mood in the people. Her faced darkened. She had come to same conclusion as i had:


    Mind-affecting mana had appeared.


    I looked around, some people didn¡¯t seem as affected, they probably had strong minds like me. I took a breath, I guess I had to usethatability:


    I looked towards the Half-Elf.


    [Mind connection]


    (Martin) "have younoticed it?


    (Half-Elf) "yeah, it¡¯s affecting my dad. My mom, the black dude, and Djaske are fine"


    (Martin) "good, so you can tell who''s affected?


    (Half-Elf) "yes, I can feel about 400 minds and only about 20 is unaffected, oh wait never mind it¡¯s 21, that girl got some cleansing skills"


    (Martin)"Thanks, I trust you can handle it."


    The [Mental connection] was lifted. Okay nowI had a better scale of the situation.


    The thing to do now was too get out of here.


    I looked at my brother. He hadn''t muttered a word until now. His fist was shakingwith anger. He turned against the old man, about to punch him.


    oh crap. [Clear mind connection]


    <hr>


    pow-change, 1st-person ,Matt.


    Ijust wasn''t having it. Who did he think he was? treating melike I knew nothing?


    I turned around, this guy had to pay!


    [Clear mind connection]


    My mind suddenly became clear again, why had I been angry?


    My fist stopped midair.


    (Martin)"sorry this is a bad way to introduce me as a psychic, but you are affected by some sort of mind manipulation. We must get out of here, this is dangerous! you need to compose yourself. once Idisconnect, you will feel theaffect again, so youneedto keep your cool"


    He was psychic!?


    [Clear mind connection]was disconnected. Martin went pale, he clearly had a migraine from using the ability.


    My mind instantly went aflame again. I wanted to punchhim for not telling me about his psychic abilities. I did however remember what he had just said.


    I took a few breaths. composing myself. The affect wasn''t removed, but now i had control over it.


    (Me) "Think I got it now, let¡¯s move"


    The most natural to do would be to meet up with the others who weren''t affected by the rage, but unfortunately, we had a very bad position.


    We sat in the far corner of the semi-stadium. Meaning that one direction meant going thru a crowd of enraged people, who now was straight up mindlessly fighting.


    Another direction meant going thru fewer, but much more dangerous group of participants of the tournament.


    The only real plausibledirection was an nearby exit, only a few people was in the way.


    A random person attacked me from the side.


    I violently placed a fist in his face, and began kicking him.


    (Martin) "Matt! get it together! follow us!"


    Oh, right.


    I followed him. We pushed those few people aside that was in our way. Me and Mathilde made sure that no one attacked our little group successfully. i holdmy anger in bay.


    It was a weird felling to forcible be angry. it could be compared to being drunk:


    you know that you are drunk, and you know its duo to alcohol, but even though you know the reason for it you can''t change the fact that you are drunk, you can only deal with it in the moment.


    We finally left the stadium.


    screams could be heard in the distance. i could see people fighting, and some cars were burning.


    Really world? really? The effect absolutely had to expand beyond the stadium? There was one place we could go...


    (Martin) The main building of the Academy Omo is our only real option, it won''t contain as many people."


    Damn it, Martin beat me to it. Okay, control the rage...


    We were about to move when a voice from behind interruptedus.


    (Voice) "so you are the ones we have to fight against, are you running?"


    The voice came from a overly muscular orc, it was easy to guess he was from team "Orc strenght"


    I mean, like really, was he a bodybuilder or something? Those muscles were beyond that of normal orcs.


    (Matt) "yeah, what do you care?"


    (Orc) "I don''t like cowards who runs, from the battle, FACE ME"


    CONTROL the rage... CONTROL IT, but i knew that even if i did, it wouldn''t matter. The orc was just as influenced as i was, if not more, and he was looking for a fight. There was only one outcome of this.


    With a load roar, he ran towards me, he grabbed a bat from the stands.


    Oh yeah? So that was how it was? I grabbed a bat to, and with a similar roar i rantowards him.I could play that game too.


    The bats smashed together, his splintered and mine, of course boosted with my aura, smashed against his chest, and splintered as well. He smashed a leg into me, and i collidedwith the ground. I narrowly avoided a fist to my face. He aimed for another attack.


    [Frost breath]


    Mathilde threw her magic towards him. The snowflakes hit him, and expanded, but since they had lost momentum the moment they had hit,the shards,that grew when hit,were largely noneffective.


    It was however very aggravating to him. He forgot about me and began movingtowards her.


    A large dangerous personwas about to harm my sister.


    Needless to say, I didn''t like the idea.


    She stumbled back, but the orc hit her anyway.


    My head went blank...


    <hr>


    When I "woke up" the face off the orc was all bloodied. I was repeatedly punching him. My vision was red, but not because of the blood.I could feel pain and bruises but i ignored it and kept beating him, even though he had lost consciousa long time ago. I didn''t care, i just had to get it out. I could faintly hear the sound of my brother yelling to stop, it somehow made me conscious again, how barely it might be.


    (Martin) "Stop Matt! you have defeated him!"


    (Matt) "I DON''T CARE"


    (Martin)" yes you do! this isn''t you"


    I stopped.


    I slowly stood up, and turned my head towards him.


    He took a step back when he saw the madness in my eyes.


    That''s right, fear me, who he did he think was telling me to stop like that? like he had control? like he was better than me!?


    I took step towards him. The step was so hard it left a mark in the concrete, i channeled most of the mana i could into my fist, preparing to throw a deadly punch.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Mathilde stepped in front me.The fist from before had apparently not done her any serious harm. Her hands had a blue hue, and cold was emitting from them.


    Stupid thing to do, she had to pay for standing in my way!


    My eyes meet her. There was a resolution in them


    It didn¡¯t originate from anger, or anything personal against me. It was merely a resolution to protect her brother¡­


    ¡­from me.


    My movement stopped. Shame filled me. I think they could see it, because they visible relaxed.


    My mind was still ablaze though. My breathing increased in rate and I already felt I was about to lose control. I couldn''t let that happen nearby my siblings again.


    I looked towards my brother, I hoped he would understand my silent plea. Fast.


    [Clear Mind Connection]


    The burning stopped, relief flushed over me. I instantly began running away.


    (Martin) "I can''t hold this up for long"


    (Me)" Just do it as long you can, I will get as far away from you as possible"


    I was glad we understood each other.


    (Martin)"I¡¯m sorry, but I can''t hold this up much longer"


    (Me)"Thanks, and I¡¯m sorry to "


    I sat down in a meditative position. It was in the middle of the marketplace, yet it was strangely empty.


    [Clear mind connection] was cut.


    The world went aflame again, and I returned to whathad nowbecome suffering to me.


    <hr>


    pov-change 1st-person Mathilde.


    (Martin) "Don''t follow him, danger".


    Then he fainted.


    First Matt suddenly became calm again, then he ran away, andthenMartin just faintedin front of me. What the fuck had justhappened? Was he responsible for this?


    If this was the situation, then I guess I just had to carry him to Omo! Then I would get Matt, he shouldn''t think that I would let him run away like that.


    I grabbed my brother and tried to find a good way of carrying him, but after a few awkward tries I gave up.Still needed those muscles.


    Okay, I begandragginghim then.


    I had almost reached the entrance of Omos main building when I saw another orc appear.


    He looked to be just as a muscle-head as the guy before. Had that guy been born in a gym? It looked like he had never heard of the concept called moderate work-out.


    ...annnnnd he spotted my thru half of the market place.


    (Me)" Arhh COM''ON!"


    Sight* Guess I had until he reached me, to stop him.


    [Frost breath]


    Okay, now I justhad to figure out how to throw ice-shards without freaking hitting something first.


    Let¡¯s see... if I changed a little of this¡­ No that wasn''t it. that only made them grow larger.


    What about this?


    A shard appeared!


    ¡­aaannd landed on the ground.


    I tried again, all with varying results.Some absolutely not childfriendlywords came from my mouth. I didn¡¯t have the time!


    The orc had reached me.


    Fast! I had to usesomethingI had figured out:


    [Ice wall]


    Instead creating separate shards, the fused together. I sprayed out a wall.


    The orc straight up destroyed it.


    [Cold spray]


    No shards this time, just cold.


    He started to shiver, until: [Boosted body heat], he stopped shivering.


    Why wasn''t it working? I was sure that the ice-mana had been much more effective before. Later Martin told me that some of the ice-mana probably was used to subdue my infested ordinary mana from influencing me. Of course, I didn¡¯t know that now.


    I tried out [ice coating], it created the fusing crystals right on my skin. I figured out I could form a shield. I even figured out how to use it as stepping block, and propulsion beneath my feet, but it didn¡¯t matter. The fight was going nowhere. If you can could call it a fight that is, all i did was dodge, block, and making him feel cold.


    A while later¡­


    (Other orc voice) "Uuuarrghhh!"


    A third orc! just as bumped as the two others. He was about 100 meters away.


    A fist hit me in the stomach. I had forgotten to watch my fight.


    I crashed into a stand. A sharp pain emerged from my side.


    I raised a bloody arm: [Frost breath]: but only a few pathetic "snowflakes" appeared.


    He walked towards me. I had exhausted all my resources, including my most of my mana.I couldn''t do anything about it.


    Another fist was raised.


    Was this how it would end? Just after I had become a mage? Then what would happen to Martin? and Matt? I started laughing, blood emerged. The gods hadreally pulled out their middle-finger this time.


    <hr>


    pov-change 1st, person Matt.


    I ran as fast as I could. Jumped.


    [force propulsion], a use of my [force] technique. it was crude but worked. I covered the last few meters airborne before I hit the orcs head with my shoes. [outwards force]. His face smashed against the ground.


    Auch. He would have a mean headache when he woke up, and then some. Not that I felt regret, but I suspected that the state I was in had something to with it.


    At least I had savedMathilde.


    She was all bloodiedup, had trouble breathing, internal wound, and at least two broken ribs...


    (Mathilde) "Ey man, what¡¯s up with the last second safe? could have *cough* come a little sooner ya''know"


    (Me) "Sorry about that, here let me give you give this"


    I placed the bag I had stolen on the ground, and searched among the equallystolen items.


    I took out a healing potion.


    (Me) "Drink this, there is more in the bag"


    (Mathilde) "Thanks, nice sword"


    Typical her. Acting like everything was fine when it wasn''t


    (Me) "yeah, I found it randomly laying around, and I thought:hey I might need this, sooo.."


    Coincidentally it was the sword that had made me want to compete in the tournament.


    (Mathilde)" glurp* glurp* ahhhhh! That hit the spot. Oh, and there is a third orc by the way "


    There was? I turned around. indeed, there was. another meathead.


    The key-difference was that he had a weapon. A one-handed Warhammer covered in iron, and with a red handle. The sides of the hammer had some ornaments with the center being a small red crystal, strongly signifying that it was enchanted with something.


    He had noticed us too.


    Once again it was clear that a fight was unavoidable.


    In reality i just jerked at the hilt and nothing happened, the blade stayed sheathed. I took the sword of my shoulders, and took a closer look. Had i overseen some sort of locking mechanism?


    I noticed some runes where the hilt and scabbard meet. when I tried to unsheathe the sword, they would glow faintly, and it would shut even tighter.


    What was this?? Considering the situation this really wasn''t the time! I gave it a few more violently tries, but eventually I gave up. Figured it was no use, besides: the orc was getting close. Guess I just had to use it as a club then.


    At least I had come up with something new that might would help:


    [Curse boost] Black flames erupted from my aura. I could fell the power rise in me.


    When I was left with the ordeal of somehow overcoming the curse, I had three challenges ahead of me:


    -Reduce the effect of the curse.


    - Reduce the intake of the curse.


    - Find a way to make it leave me


    The first had been the hardest. once I had a grasp of it, it was clear that it wasn''t mana belonging to me. The difference was that I couldn''t directly control it in any way, like suddenly having a third arm controlled by another person. It was very stubborn to work with, but by using my own to push it, I managed to at least isolate it in me and reduce it significantly. Once I had this part done, it was much easier to figure out the rest.


    The second challenge had been surprisingly easy. I already had low mana-regeneration, I just somehow flipped a switch that made it go to zero. I knew it was unusual, but it wasn''t the time to consider the meaning of it.


    Then there was the third challenge: Making it leave me.


    I couldn''t simply push it out of my aura, not without opening my aura and get contaminated with more of the curse. In my attempts, however, I stumbled over a rather curios technique.


    With a little trickery involving my techniques, I found out how to force out the curse out in a way that made it appear as black flames. It had the neat effect of boosting said aura techniques.The drawbacks were that it was a very slow way of making the curse leave me, and while I had it active I could feel parts of its effects.


    Anyway, things happened and now I ended up with having to fight that person in front of me.


    With the black flames surrounding me I leapt towards him. The sword was swung in a huge arc towards him.


    With a jerk, he slammed the hammerhead on the blade. A short burst of light emerged from the crystals on the hammer. At the end of the hammerhead a gust of wind appeared, it flew to a wooden stand a few meters away.


    The stand became heavily damaged. Good thing I wasn''t standing in the way.


    The hammer flew towards me. Rather than blocking it I made a back step. Another gust of wind appeared. Trying to avoid it I was hit in the side. I stumbled a meter back.


    He tried again but this time I was prepared: [boosted outwards force]. The weapons clashed, I was barely able to hold the hammer back. An opening! using the gab that had appeared I took a step forward and slammed the sheathed sword with full force into his stomach.


    He took half a step back, grunted in pain, but other than that he was discouragingly unaffected by it. I suspected that he had unlocked his ki, otherwise I could see no other explanation to his durability. Using my aura techniques, I avoided his next attack. Black flames surrounded me.


    The fight continued. To keep up with him I needed to reinforce my every action with my boosted aura techniques¡¯.


    Even so it was clear that the only thing i was fighting against was brute force. He had no actual skill, so avoiding the hammer and constant blasts of wind was relatively easy, considering.


    There was plenty of openings I could use, only problem was that my attacks never had enough of an effect. I never got the opportunity to follow up on my attacks, so the result was very frustrating stalemate.


    At some point, I noticed that I had almost no traces of the curse left in me. The black flames died out. Originally that had been my intention, but now I really needed it.


    I placed a foot on his chest and set off, creating some distance us. Being in the middle of the fight I had little to no time to think the situation thru, so I decided to use my own mana as a substitute for the curse:


    Bright white, green, and blue flames erupted from me, yellow sparks could be seen too. The flames where thicker and more potent than before.


    I attacked him again. The sword swept away his hammer and hit him hard. He stumbled back a few meters visible in pain, it had an effect! This time I followed up and pushed him back step for step.


    The was however one inherent and fatal flaw with using my own mana:


    I was spending it, and since I was using it for my aura techniques I needed to consume more and more at a faster and faster rate to keep up my power. I had been aware that this would happen, I had just not thought that it would happen so fast!


    Desperately I putted all into one last move:


    [Final Burnout]


    The flames shun even brighter, and sparks filled my vision as I hit him. He flew back in a spiral of arcane flames. A tiny stand was smashed, and a crack appeared on the wall he had hit.


    My vision darkened. The mental stress of using such a huge amount of mana at once almost made me faint.


    I still grinned. Naturally winning gave me a sense of victory and relief.


    With a roar the orc got on his feet. He was heavily bruised. A wound from his head covered one of his eyes in blood.


    With his remaining eye, he spotted me and started rapidly humping towards me.


    My face instantly changed to that of utterly despise and resentment. I had just beaten him! Why did he have to stand up again? How did the world expect me to beat him now!?¡§


    I HAD USED EVERYTHING I GOT!!!


    A feeling of anger rose in my chest. Not that fake anger from before, I had after all got rid of the curse, but a real genuine anger, and with also followed a mixed felling of desperation and determination I had never felt before.


    It was at that moment:


    The crystal on my sword glimpsed for second. The scabbard opened on the side, which made it possible to unsheathe the 1.2 meters long blade.


    A felling of power came from the blade as it enchantments made it feel lighter and began to amplify what little of my mana that was surrounding it. it was by a useless amount; a point was however proven:


    The sword wasn¡¯t a toy. It was a real weapon, and meant to be it.


    Even though the orc began closing in again I remained calm. I knew one thing:


    I could fight the guy.


    I ran towards him. My running speed was faster than usual. We dealt a few blows. I noticed that I was almost as strong as when I used the non-boosted techniques¡¯, but passively and constantly! I was clearly losing the blows; my objective was however only to find an opportunity to end the fight.


    There! go under the hammer. Move behind him! I aimed for the back of his knees:


    cut.a clean hit. With abumbhe collapsed on the ground. Shakenly he tried to get up. He fell again.


    This fight had really taken it¡¯s time. The adrenalin was still rushing in me, so I didn¡¯t feel the exhaustion.


    I sheathed my sword. Using one hand to lean on it, I squatted in front him:


    (Me) "Too bad, you are not winning today bastard. Guess I will take this as my winning price"


    I wiggled the sword.


    I stood up. With a firm swing I took the hammer and threw it out of it his reach, turned around and began walking away.


    Angry protests could be heard behind me, but he was going nowhere.


    So, this was what having unlockedkifelt like? weird, it didn¡¯t really feel different from before. I Thought it would at least be a little like mana, maybe that''s where I had been wrong. I had been able to depend on my aura techniques¡¯; therefore, I hadn¡¯t need it before. Well it only took me emptying my mana reserves to unlock it.

 Chapter 10: The quest given

    The ¡°Rector¡± was pleased with the situation.


    The curse-bomb would not only provide valuable humanoid bodies and knowledge, it would also give him the perfect uninterrupted work-area.


    He sat down in meditating position. Crystals around him lit up and ..his?..body sunk together as if strings had been cut of a doll.


    Another place an old female wood-elf body suddenly gained life.


    Roleplaying as a councilman would ensure that the government and others wouldn¡¯t bother him, but merely set a perimeter around Omo.


    <hr>


    ¡±You said it yourself, the mana-potion can¡¯t restore your ice-mana. How do you expect to be of any help if you can¡¯t use your spell?¡± Martin asked. He and his sister was sitting in a entrence too Omo


    ¡± Who cares!? I got to do SOMETHING!¡± She replied


    ¡°Auch, my head¡­listen, you are injured , he is a two meter tall bodybuilder on steroids¡­probarly literaly...hey wait! ¡±


    Mathilde was already leaving.


    Matt stepped into the entrance.


    Mathilde showed a releived expresion


    ¡±Thank god, did you kill him? Took you so long I thought I had to handle him myse¡­¡±


    ¡± yeah, no of course not...I don''t think it''s safe here, so can we just move somewhere more safe first?¡±


    HE moved right past them and further into the building. They followed him. -Martin took the stolen bag of potions with him.


    Taking some twists and turns they created some distance between them and the outside. They finally decided to rest in a closed of yard. Now that they understood the curse, they could feel that the density of it was low in the area. It most likely had something to do with the plants growing there.


    They sat down and rested.


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe this just happened¡± Matt spoke out loud


    ¡°yeah man, I thought I was a goner for second there¡±


    Mathilde agreed with him.


    They both had one of those nervous, yet genuine laughs, you get after surviving something like that.


    Matt decided to drink some of the mana potions left, just in case he would need it again, because as Martin pointed out, Mathilde had no more mana to use, and he himself could hardly do anything with his [Mind connection].


    Afterwards they decided too simply rest and wait it out.


    Simply ¡°resting¡± was kind of boring thou.


    They played a little card.


    Then Matt tested how strong unlocking his ki had made him. Turned out he was approximately half a time stronger with it. He didn¡¯t test out how fast or durable he had become, but those were areas that should had improved too, at least slightly.


    It was then Mathilde decided to check out the yard they were in. There was row of plants, most of them had some more peculiar felling mana. While decorative, it also had a clear educational purpose. An example of this was a row of the same type of plant, but they had different kinds of mana imbedded in their soil.


    It was then she found something:


    ¡°Hey, guys! Look at this shard!¡±


    She pointed at a black shard. It was laying almost hidden behind a bush beneath a broken window. It was surrounded by regular glass shards.


    ¡°Careful, it¡äs probably magical¡± Matt warned her.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ¡°exactly, let¡¯s check it out.¡±


    She took a grip of the crystal. It gave of a hiss sound and shrunk in size. Her eyes flickered.


    Matt took a step forward. F*ck, what was that?


    The hiss sound stopped. She looked up. Her face had a dark expression on it, one the brothers had never seen before.


    ¡°what is it?¡±


    She handed Matt the crystal. he touched it.


    His head was immediately filled with images and information:


    While there was no words spoken, or specifikaly images shown, this was the generel impresion he got from the information stream:


    <hr>


    Black vortex of death. Evil mage. Evil mage corrupting the world around him, A shadow of him could be seen over war scenes of conflicts that had recently appeared. The shadow moved to buildings representing organizations of military and political influence, bringing inner chaos and incompetence, the power from the buildings could be felt disappearing until they fell apart.


    A Portal to light and fondness showing up. A dark hand searchingly reaching through it until it grasped a brilliant light. The light changed to darkness and fire. the scene changed to the evil mage holding a war-torn planet in his hand. What little light there was back disappeared. The hand increased in evil arcane strength until the planet crumpled between it.


    The portals location. Sharp and clear. Mantra:


    prevent, prevent, prevent, bring this to the queen:


    iy12%%&%12qqwedf?c¡ä¡ä¡ä¡ä1---?+¡ä-¡ä-¡ä¡ä


    aa0fwerw + + + a && 8 o89


    )( /ym10,.e0u28ey-,.-.,--.-.,-,


    <hr>


    Matt immediately gave the crystal too Martin.


    As Martin touched it, his eyes too flickered as he got the information, he was left with a very morbid expression.


    ¡°This is a very dire situation¡± He concluded.


    His siblings sat down beside him.


    ¡°So, to make sure: we all got a vision of an evil mage trying to cause wars for some sort of reason, and a message to go through something and deliver something to prevent this from happening?¡± Mathilde asked.


    ¡°Yeah¡± Her brothers confirmed.


    ¡°And the thing we have to deliver is the crystal, and what we have to go through is a portal in that direction¡± Matt pointed at a door.


    ¡°The information is planted in our mind, we just have think about it¡± He explained further, when Mathilde showed a confused expression.


    ¡±To specify; the thing we have to deliver is the encrypted message at the end of the information stream. But never mind that, what¡¯s important is what we do next¡± Martin said. His face was troubled.


    They began discussing the situation and their options.


    ¡°So, we can choose to go through the portal, or go back into the city with the cursed mana, it¡¯s by the way reasonable to assume it¡¯s caused by the dark figure¡± Martin began.


    ¡°It is.... going out to warn people could however be dangerous, I don¡¯t think I can handle a city worth of angry people¡± Matt pondered.


    They discussed a little further, but their options were clear. Going outside was too high of a risk, even for Matt, so the only real options they had, were to go through the portal. Contacting someone with phone was not an option, seemed like the curse was doing something with the connection.


    ¡°Geese, why do we keep discussing this? We just go through the portal and done! It¡¯s not like we have other options¡± Mathilde complained, got up and began walking.


    The brothers were about to protest, but realized she was right. Matt took the Knowledge shard into his backpack.


    Surprisingly there was no guard on the way, the portal was behind a recently broken-down wall.


    They stopped up. Looking at an endless swirling.


    Martin said something first:


    ¡°This is madness, there is clearly no way back, we haven¡¯t thought this throughoutly¡±


    Mathilde¡¯s resolution didn¡¯t waver. She grabbed him by the arm.


    ¡°We already talked about this, just go already!¡±


    She dragged him towards the portal. Martin resisted, but stumbled and was dragged along.


    ¡°No wai..¡±


    Matt didn¡¯t have time to interfere before they were sucked in by the portal.


    Separating really didn¡¯t seem like a good idea.


    For a short moment he stood in front of the portal. He sighted, who was he kidding, of course he was going through, he had the Knowledge shard. Besides: he wasn¡¯t sure if he would be able to live with himself, if this was the last he would see of his siblings.


    He took a step back, and with a jump he entered the stream. A felling of high speed was the last he felt before he lost consciousness.

 Chapter 11: In a place unknown.

    Matt slowly regained consciousness.


    The last thing he remembered going through that portal because of his siblings going in before him.


    His body felt beat up and sore. As if he just had made a hard landing.


    ¡°Auch, not doing that again¡±


    Did he break anything? He made a quick checkup. No broken arms, legs felt good, chest okay, seemed fine for the moment, just some bruises.


    His state of mind was still affected from resent event.


    Where was he anyway? He looked around:


    Pale blue and yellow shimmering ores dimly lit up wet karst cave formations. The ores looked fluid and part of the formations. A blue ore made its way down a stalacite and contiouned on the stalagmite beneath. Drips could be heard from droplets falling from the surfaces of the cave landing on stalagmites, floor, or on one of the ponds of water.


    An expansive cave unfolded before him.


    There was no sign of Martin or Mathilde.


    Matt got up. Where were they?


    So, the shard had told him to deliver it to ¡°The queen¡±, and it had given him the clear knowledge that going through the portal would lead him to her.


    Unless that queen preferred to live in caves, this was clearly not the case. It made him wonder, had the crystal just been a prank?


    No, it had given him a clear felling of being genuine, and not in a way that felt fake, it came from having an insight into the mind of whoever made it. It was the reason he had trusted it so blindly in the first place.


    Maybe that had been a mistake.


    Now that he remembered it, the portal had shown many different scenes. Assuming he would end up near his siblings had obviously been naive, for all he knew they could had ended up on completely random and unrelated places.


    A felling of foreboding and anxiety fell over him.


    He quickly asserted what he had. Besides the was the clothes he was standing in there was his phone and the sword on his back. There was also the backpack with the health and mana potions. He had but the pocket book containing aura techniques and the knowledge shard in it too.


    Matt realized he had forgotten to share the potions those with his siblings. He hoped they were okay. His own situation was, however, currently the only one he could adress.


    Now he was stuck in a cave, separated from his siblings, and ¨C his stomach growled ¨C no food.


    Getting out of the cave, and secure some food, had to be his first concern.


    He began moving.


    <hr>


    An hour later he still hadn¡¯t gotten any closer to finding a way out.


    Earlier he had the impression that the cave was large, but he hadn¡¯t expected it to be of those unheard proportions it presented to be.


    An endless amount of closely packed karst cave formations stretched as far as the eye could see, created by the equally endless amount of dripping. It gave off an eerie and surprisingly loud back-ground noise.


    Granted, duo to how close the formation where, the line of sight was never very far, but no matter how many drapperies, coloums, and other things he passed by, there was always some more.


    Another indicator of the size had showed itself when he tried to yell out his sibling¡¯s names, just in case they had ended up nearby. The only feedback he got was an echoing that lasted well over a minute. Hearing their names being endlessly repeated form somewhere behind the formations creeped him out. He didn¡¯t attempt to do it again.


    The problem was however the complete lack of direction it gave. Dou to the nature of the formations it was impossible to, in the long run, hold a straight line. Matt truly realized this when he encountered a place he had been before, despite that he the moment before could had sworn that he had wandered in a straight line.


    It was at this point he began reevaluating the situation.


    He had to find a way of direction if he wanted to progress. He couldn¡¯t think of any way to determine anything unless¡­ his hand moved to his phone¡­A compass! Of course!


    He activated the compass on the phone. It worked.


    His finger then moved towards the folder of downloaded songs. Should he put on some earphones and listen to some songs?


    Doing so would reduce the battery time left, which now was about 3.5 hours, but there was the prospect of helping him uphold his mental fortitude. Constantly hearing your own footsteps echo back as you walked wasn¡¯t a pleasant thing at all.


    Matt realized that, given the situation, it probably was better to priorities his mental state.


    He pressed on a playlist and started moving again.


    Like hell he was going to be done in by freaking cave.


    <hr>


    Matt decided to drink something. The ponds of water were safe to drink, right? It tasted safe enough.


    There was however still no food.


    Food or not, rest was needed. With nothing else to do he had wanderet undtil he was so tired that he was sure he wouldn''t waste time trying to sleep.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    This was a somewhat dry place. Apart from the body of water of course.


    He checked the charge of the phone: 16%. He sighted and took out the dual battery. With no electrical charger nearby to charge the electrical bit, he had to charge it with mana.


    A few pictograms showed how to use it.


    He placed his fingers and began circulation his mana into it. Some runes began converting it to electricity. It took a while for the battery to be fueled and converting, but was good in survival situations. Matt was aware this was one.


    It had already been 6 hours, and he had been hungry from the start. Humans had shown to last over 60 days without food so it hadn¡¯t begun to worry him too much. The hunger, combined with the thereby inevitable effekt on his mind, had however begun to show on his mood.


    As such he figured he had too endure that until he found some food.


    One thing that was important was to keep occupied, or was it? He wasn¡¯t quite sure. Couldn¡¯t be a bad thing. A thought crossed his mind; the handbook!


    He began reading it, it was indeed very light read:


    Aura techniques refers to the use of mana without it¡¯s consumption. While this is may seem to break some laws of Arcane physics, this is not true. In most cases it will either merely work as a mediator or catalyst, otherwise it will cause a counter effekt. The user should always beware of these costs and thereby affiliated risks. Any use is at the own risk.


    The typical ¡°we aren¡¯t responsible if you somehow manage to fuck things up¡±. Matt already know how aura techniques worked. His [Force] was partvise using ki, and [Hardening] used some sort of distribution principal. Extending the aura had the same spiritual basis as all mana manipulating, which was honestly still a very unexplored area of science.


    He kept on reading:


    These are simple aura techniques you learn and praktise, with experience you can expand upon them yourself:


    [Hardening]


    [Heat allocation]


    [Force]


    [Sharpening]


    [Arcane protection]


    He noted that he already knew [Hardening] and multiple variants of [Force]. Just to make sure, he read up on the techniques, but they really only taught the very basic principle of the skills. Made sense, he had seen brick-thick books on just one of them.


    He didn¡¯t find interest in the [Heat allocation]. [Sharpening] was certainly something he wanted to learn, for obvious reasons.


    He didn¡¯t start reading it however. There was something else that had caught his attention. He scrolled through the pages until he landed on the section covering the [Arcane protection] technique.


    Hadn¡¯t he used something like that back when he fought that orc? When he annuled the intake of the curse and used [Boost]? Now that he was reminded of it, it really had been a strange occurrence. Puzzled he began reading.


    The basic idea was that you had to put as many of the mana types you had, as you could, out to the very edge in a thin dense layer, much like a wall, and that was essentially it.


    Doing so efficiently would prevent mana types with the same ¡°frequency¡± as your own from entering. One mana type could cover several of those.


    It gave more questions than it answered.


    There was countless differences to what Matt had done earlier.


    First of all: He wasn¡¯t even using his mana, ¡°Flipping the switch¡± certainly gave him an impression of pushing ¡°something¡± too the edge of his aura, but the only reason he knew that impression wasn¡¯t just a figment of his imagination was because of the very real effect off blocking all incoming mana. . .


    . . . And most outcoming mana, which shouldn¡¯t be a problem if it was his own mana since it would just conform to his wishes and make way.


    There was also the problem of focus. Just keeping it together was something beginners had to fully focus on. His protektion just stayed there.


    What was more: While most people¡¯s mana type covered a large portion of the general used spectrum of mana types, having a mana type of the same frequency you tried to block didn¡¯t necessarily mean you would be successful in blocking that spell. There was so many more factors to consider.


    Yet he blocked it all without even knowing how, there hadn¡¯t even been a budge.


    Matts head was hurting, well not literally, that would be extreme, but nevertheless it was a mystery he couldn¡¯t solve, especially not when he was as tired as he was now.


    Still waiting for the battery to finish charging up he used some of his techniques on his other hand, sometimes moving it around with those white, blue and green flames covering it.


    Having no mana regeneration had a surprisingly significant boost to his aura techniques in itself.


    Speaking of [Boost], using that technique turned out too actually require ¡°Flipping the switch¡±, it had something to do with the way it had to be forced out. Not that it was a problem.


    Matt noticed that he had charged the battery. He put it back in the phone. The indicator now said 96%. Good enough.


    He decied to not think to much about it


    His mind was kind of hazy from being tired.


    He quickly found a horizontal spot, and made sure it actually was dry. He placed the sword at his side and decided to use his backpack as a make-do pillow. The hard karst-stone had to do for a mattress.


    ¡°guess I¡¯m skipping dinner for now¡± he mumbled for himself before drifting into sleep.


    Just before he fell asleep, he thought that he probably had to find a proper name for ¡°flipping the switch¡±, it was to advanced just to call it [Arcane protektion]

 Chapter 12: Above and below

    [Fairy skin]


    [Fairy skin] was the name that surfaced into Matts mind. It was what he would name his strange variant of [Arcane protection]


    It wasn¡¯t a very masculine name, nor a name that arguable fitted with the technique, but in his dreamy mind he had decided on it. It came from his deep dreams, the sort that people don¡¯t remember.


    He was not yet awake, nor was he asleep.


    His consciousness merely rested in between. Allured by the felling of comforting rest and unconcern he stayed there, not wanting to wake up and with the situation that he knew lured behind the veil called ¡°Waking up¡±


    Suddenly the ground started shacking. Disrupting his comfort.


    Matt decided to ignore it, stubbornly insisting on just 5 more minutes.


    The ground kept on shaking.


    Matt was brought out of the drowsiness. With a resolution, very opposite of what intentions he earlier had had in ¡°Sleepy land¡±, he opened his eyes and resolutely got on his feet.


    Shaked by the earthquake he took on his backpack and sword.


    The rumbeling contiuned.


    Surrounded by the liquid looking karst stones he stood there trying to keep balance, wondering if he had to be wary of falling stalactites, but the old formations mostly held, only some of the smaller and thin hanging icicles, gave into the quake and fell.


    For a short while the sound of dripping was seemingly replaced by the sound of the falling icicles. Aside from the natural sound of the earthquake.


    The quake went silent.


    Now completely awake Matt stood there dumbfounded. Then with a ¡°Hmm¡± he resumed what he had done yesterday and started walking north.


    The strangenes of the earthquake barely corssed his mind.


    It turned out [Hardening and [sharpening] in many ways were two sides of the same coin. Both were dealing with the redistribution of force. Compacting and spreading it.


    This made it easier for Matt to grasp it as he, during his walk, practiced [Sharpening] with one of the icicles from before.


    Not that it was easy either, as there were just as many things they didn¡¯t have in common.


    He found that most of it relied on cladding the object with aura, leading it into a pointy or sharp end. Conveniently this also had the advantage of distributing the stress of the edge and onto the rest of the object and thus not tear on it.


    Then there was some trickery such as not letting the side of aura part of the blade have influence on the edge and the actual blade, or in this case: icicle.


    As he fiddled with this he realized this had two types of challenges: Sharpening a sharp object, and sharpening a dull object.


    One was too make the already sharp object sharper.


    The other was to create a blade that extended long enough away from the object to make a cutting edge, which was trick. Was the object too dull there was the simple challenge of being able to even extend the aura the required amount.


    Obviously more advanced variations would have several ways to overcome those obstacles.


    Right now, however, he was just working on getting the hang of the basics.


    A few hours went by with him just venturing deeper into the endless cave.


    It was as he was walking in the caves that he noticed something in the rear of his eyesight.


    Matt made a sudden turn in that direction, nothing.


    Could it had been his imagination? No, surely there was more steps down the stair of madness before you would start hallucinating, and he was feeling fine for now.


    His hand moved towards his sword. Now he could feel a presence near some light.


    The light moved behind some hangs before cutting a corner and revealing itself:


    Matt loosened up , false alarm.


    ¡°Oh, hi buddy, are you lost too?¡±


    It was just a wisp.


    It swirled a few times around. Then it just floated patiently a few meters in front of him.


    Most wisps survived by feeding on the mana of the recently death, but other than that they were mostly harmless.


    ¡°Sorry, I¡¯m not death yet¡±


    Almost as if it understood him, of which it didn¡¯t, it dimmed a little in light level.


    Matt laughed a little.


    ¡°I guess I¡¯m not the only, felling a bit famished here ¡°


    It seemed frei¡­


    It¡¯s light level increased, it flew straight towards him! He narrowly avoided before it retreated again. It gave off some electric sparks.


    ¡°What did you do that for!?¡±


    It was not friendly, definitely not friendly. He drew his sword, but it wouldn¡¯t be of much use in such a confined space.


    It began attacking him again. He blocked it with his sword.


    Like a swirling ball, not willing to let go, it kept pushing before it once again retreated a little.


    Using his razor-sharp reflexes, he had when dueling, he swung the sword after it. [Sharpening]


    He felt the enchantments of the sword: The internal mana of the crystal replicated what he did, effectively doubling the [Sharpening]. Knowing that [Sharpening] was a technique that relied more on quality than quantity, it made him unsure on how exactly that helped.


    The wisp barely avoided it, the blade passing by just beneath it.


    Arcane lightning moved towards him. He did not have time to react.


    The lightning-formed mana hit him.


    [Fairy skin]. Most of it just dissipated into ambient mana on contact, only giving of a miniscule amount of actual lightning.


    The wisp hit his face, the hungry creature tried suck out his mana. It was only meet by a cold impenetrable wall.


    Two hands took a hold of it and removed it from Matts face.


    Haven given up on using the sword, he fought hard not let go of it, it was desperately trying to escape.


    The creature struggled to understand the situation it was in. Ordinarily it should be able to slip through his fingers. Most of its body was made of mana, and should thus be able to phase through physical matter its actual body was the size of a hazelnut at most.


    Now, however, its arcane body was meet by something impenetrable and immoveable.


    It desperately pulled away. Matt stumbled forward and fell, surprised by the sudden movement, but held on to it.


    [Boosted force] His hands lit up in white, green and blue flames as he moved the wisp closer to his chest. It made a high-pitched sound, spewing out useless [arcane lightning] in protest.


    Matt decided to try something he hadn¡¯t done before. He moved as much of his remaining mana he could towards his fingers: [Boosted sharpening], the edge now spew out mana in a sharp edge, increasing the cutting force.


    And thus, by simply moving his hands together, he cut the wisp to pieces.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    The mana from the wisp spread out and turned into ambient mana, leaving only some gooey exoplasma.


    Matt sat there for a few seconds, waiting for the adrenalin to settle little. Okay that wasn¡¯t too bad, he thought. His life hadn¡¯t actually been in danger he realized, so maybe using his last mana had been to rash of a decision?


    He started to smear out the exoplasma from his hand, it was kind of a disgusting dense combination of mana and matter. An idea struck him.


    He collected the smeared out exoplasma again and added it into a side pocket of his bag. Maybe there was some use of it later.


    Right now he took a mediating position, he didn¡¯t know what other encounters he might stumble upon and he wanted to be prepared for that.


    He took on his headphones and his phone, and started searching in his albums. He was sure he had downloaded that track somewhere...


    Ah, there it was: binaural beats for Meditation 11-14 Hz, increased focus and mana intake.


    Nice.


    He putted the track on and started meditating.


    <hr>


    Martin felt the portal tearing on his psyche, but he somehow held onto his conciseness.


    For a moment he had the frightening experience of felling his entire body be turned into particles, then he saw it reassemble and land hard on grassy ground, next to his sister.


    A moment went in silence as he realized he was having an out of body experience.


    The moment ended. His psyche returned to the body. He opened his eyes, another headache was quickly retreating. He had had a lot of those lately. No, correction, it was only two, that didn¡¯t qualify as a lot.


    The sun was shining on him, from a clear blue sky. It was relatively low on the sky, most of the warm, humid, temperature came, however, from the surrounding air around him, and not the sun.


    The sun was different positioned on sky from where he came from, the portal had indeed covered a huge distance.


    More importantly, unless the queen lived on meadow, this wasn¡¯t where the queen was.


    The meadow was filled with rocky formations, and surrounded by a forest, a mountain range could be seen in the distance, covering it in a half-circle.


    The Meadow were higher than the surrounding forest, making it more like a very flat and long hill.


    Mathilde moved.


    ¡°auchh, that felt like a hard landing¡±


    ¡°That portal was something of a crazy trip, wasn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°Falling unconscious and waking up felling beat up? Yeah¡­crazy¡­. ¡±


    ¡°So, you didn¡¯t experience¡­never mind. Problem is, we didn¡¯t end up where we were supposed to.¡±


    Mathilde got up and looked around.


    ¡°Nope, not unless the queen prefers living in the meadow¡±


    ¡°Exactly my thoughts¡±


    Mathilde jumped around, trying to remove the beat up felling she had.


    ¡°So, what do we do now?¡± she asked.


    ¡°well... we find a high place so that we can better locate were we are in the world, and then we need to look out for Matt, however we do that¡±


    ¡°Awesome! Let¡¯s climb the rock over there! I¡¯m just goanna call him¡±


    She started moving through the high grass towards a rock formation, she took out her phone. Entered the pin code and clicked on contacts, then on ¡°mah other-brother¡± then on call.


    and again.


    and again.


    With a disappointed groan, she placed the phone back in her pocked.


    ¡°Dammit, No connection¡± she murmured.


    ¡°No, neither is there internet coverage, but your thoughts are right, let me try the GPS¡±


    Martin activated the ¡°Atlas¡± function on his phone, too his rejoice the GPS worked. Then he saw where they were. Then he stopped up. A chill went down his spin.


    ¡°This... can¡¯t be...¡±


    He stared in disbelief on his phone. Was this really correct?


    Mathilde stopped detecting that her brother hadn¡¯t moved.


    ¡°Alright what are you so dramatic about?¡± she asked, walking back to him.


    ¡±It¡­ eeh¡­appears that we are in the south end of... the void region¡±


    The void region. Following the revolution of society, the planet quickly became charted. No longer was the world a large unknown and unexplored place, you could spin a Globus and see a map outline of everything, and with the inventions of airplanes, and more advanced portals, you could almost literally go anywhere you wished too.


    Except for the void region. A small continental sized black mass outlined by a mountain range, surrounding most of the void.


    ¡°Void¡± might be a misleading word, but it was the public impression of the area. It was more accurately an area covered by huge magic ward, or shield. Nothing escaped the void, and the only thing that entered it was light.


    Nobody could see inside of it, thus it appeared like a black mysterious void on the planet.


    There had been serious attempts at breaking through the barrier, powerful spells, digging, drop ins from above, nothing worked. The only conclusion was that nobody could enter it.


    And now they were inside of it.


    There was a moment of silence.


    Mathilde said something first.


    ¡°No way¡­ how awesome is that!¡±


    ¡°Mathilde, while interesting, this is for once not something to be happy about¡± Martins voice shaked, the situations implications for his future frightened him.


    Mathilde turned around and moved towards the rock again.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be such a downer!¡± she yelled back at him


    ¡°This just became an adventure!¡±


    She began climbing the rock formation.


    ¡°This most certainly wasn¡¯t planned¡±


    ¡°The best adventures aren¡¯t planned, that¡¯s what makes them adventures¡±


    ¡°it¡¯s not an adventure this is serious, and potential life-threatening¡±


    They had now climbed half-way.


    ¡°Dammit martin, I already told you not to be a downer¡­¡±


    ¡°How can you be so positive?¡±


    ¡°how can you be so negative?¡± She had reached the flat, and grassy top of the formation. Martin followed her, saying nothing. Mathilde continued.


    ¡°It¡¯s just, sometimes being happy is a better alternative¡± Her voice crackled, she couldn¡¯t keep away the situations reality anymore. Her breathing became deep, trying to control herself and not freak out.


    Would she see her brother again? Her parents? Did they even survive the curse? And how would she survive? Finding food and not get eaten by animals?


    Martin stood silently beside her, he had already thought the same things.


    He stared across the landscape, the formation was just high enough to so see above most of the lower positioned trees.


    In his back was the mountain range, too his sides, in the distance he saw something akin to natural walls, appearing to have been made from earthquakes or some unnatural phenomenon. They stretched ahead of him until they almost meet, literally.


    Martin squeezed his eyes, there was something there at the end. After the forest Was that¡­


    ¡°hey look, isn¡¯t that a city?¡±


    He pointed, to show her.


    Mathilde looked, and yes there at the very horizon was something akin to a city.


    ¡°I think it is, like, with walls, and a tower and such?¡±


    ¡°yes, I think¡±


    ¡°so, I guess, we now know where we are headed? ¡°


    ¡°yes, towards the city¡±


    They climbed down the rock formation again.

 Chapter 13: Wildlife

    "Nice, think I got most of the curse out now¡±


    Mathilde spewed rainbow colored flames.


    Luckily, going through the portal had given her access to her ordinary mana. Now that she could identify the curse, she could force it out of her.


    It had been about two hours of walking, they were now over halfway to the treeline.


    She was still working on her basic control of the magic.


    Martin, who had observed her ridiculous high use of mana felt it was time to say something new.


    ¡°you got quite good at sending out light-flames, why not try something else, like heat flames?¡±


    ¡°ehh? oh yeah, that could be possible...¡±


    ¡°Obviosly, arcane flames is just another way of releasing mana, you should know that¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not stupid, I learned that when I learned [Force emission]¡±


    The [Force emission] she had learned had more to do with manifesting the mana as particles, and let them push the surrounding, rather than what they would do when consumed.


    Martin just sighted,


    ¡°all I¡¯m saying is that you should practice more broadly¡±


    ¡°How come you¡¯re not practicing something?¡±


    The question took martin by surprise.


    ¡°uhh, because... it¡¯s unpleasant, my [mind connection] gives me a headache, and using mana with the small mana pool I got isn¡¯t very nice either. It isn¡¯t as easy for me, as it is for you¡±


    Mathilde gave him an irritated look. Hardly believing the words he spoke.


    ¡°Oh yeah!? That¡¯s your excuse?¡±


    ¡°it¡¯s not a lie¡­¡±


    His words decreased in volume, he realized now how bad it sounded.


    ¡°Well then what about me and homework? Eh? Should I had stopped doing them just because it¡¯s easier to you than me? You had eleven more years than me too practice those things and you telling me you didn¡¯t practice because it was unpleasant?!¡±


    ¡°it sounds bad when you put it that way¡­¡±


    Mathilde was vildly upset.


    ¡°Dude, MATH is unpleasant, I did it anyway. You got no excuse, you could had gotten so skilled had you practiced¡±


    ¡°it doesn¡¯t change the fact that you should train in other ways¡±


    ¡°Know what?! NO! I¡¯m not going to do anything before you start doing something, otherwise it¡¯s just not fair¡±


    Martin felt that he had to come with a comeback. After some moments in silence, however, he realized that she was right. He made an arbitrary ¡°hmpf¡± sound.


    ¡°Fine¡± He agreed


    ¡°But then you have to okay with me randomly connecting to your mind¡±


    Mathilde instantly lightened up.


    ¡°Cool, then let¡¯s get too it¡±


    She began emitting flames again, only this time she attempted to do it with heat instead of light.


    Martin grimaced in pain as he began using his [Mind connection].


    <hr>


    Matts legs shook, his head hurt and his stomach was a hard knot. He almost felt like throwing up. He felt weak.


    It had been a few hours since he had completed the mediation and resumed his wandering.


    He felt on his knees, shaking. He stood up again and stumbled some steps further, breathing heavily.


    He knew that a human could survive a considerable long time without food, he had however not considered the unpleasant periods that would occur when he factored in the fact that he had to walk most of the time.


    Thinking about it, he found that he should had had the reaction yesterday, as he could only assume he had something like a calorie-shock, his body had used too much energy without refueling.


    His tank was empty, like a car trying to drive on fumes.


    Maybe the reason for it taking so long was because of his unlocked ki? Letting him drive a little longer pr. liter?


    He took another step, pushing him just a little longer. He knew he should rest. There was a reserve tank he would shift too. The car would start using his fat as fuel.


    No hewould use it as fuel. He cursed his sugar-low brain playing tricks on him.


    He refused to rest. He didn¡¯t care that it was one of those bad decisions people did when they had low blood-sugar.


    [Force push]


    Aided by his aura techniques he literally pushed himself to take the next steps.


    He grinned, fuel or not, he was more than a car and would do without it. The situation somehow both filled him with dread and some sort of machoistic pleasure of not giving up in to the situation


    He was a cyclist creating his own tailwind, a marathoner not stopping despite hardships.


    When he crossed the finish line the audience would cheer on him.


    Not that it was a race, nor was there any audience, but he saw no reason to use willpower on correcting his semi-disillusioned mind. It was not like he had the capacity to focus on anything besides taking the next step anyway.


    His [Force push] and his newfound iron resolution helped him walk a good deal longer.


    After a while he no longer focused on walking, he felt like a observer watching his hazy mind and body automatically taking the next step, checking the compass, [Force Push] himself that extra meter, pulling himself past formations and narrowly avoiding falling into the ponds.


    The experience was surrealistic, minutes took an eternity to pass by, yet each hour passed by in mere moments.


    He did not have the energy to look up.


    He nearly stepped into another pond, and was about to take another step away from it.


    Then a fish appeared. It was a typical 20 centimeter sized boring grey fish.


    Matt just dizzily stared at it, barely thinking. He didn¡¯t even feel hunger at the time being, he just observed and understood what it meant.


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    Had he energy left he would had laughed like maniac for making it. Instead he laughed quietly, his lips curled up in a just as manic grin.


    With the last of his energy he got on his knees and reached out with a hand, dipping it in the pond.


    Reaching the finish line, the audience exploding in cheers.


    Then he passed out.


    <hr>


    The twins reached the woods.


    The edge was densely packed with bushes and trees. The ground was filled with ferns and mushrooms. The high trees had all sorts of creepers growing on them, some blooming with huge pink beautiful flowers.


    Some of the bushes were the same as those from Balmas, growing in the forest near the academy Omo. They had the same yellow berries growing on them.


    Mathilde happily took another step towards the bushes.


    ¡°Nice, I was beginning to feel famished¡±


    As she approached it, the woods instantly exploded with movement as hundreds of unseen small creatures fled from her presence.


    It made her stop for a second.


    A squirrel sized fairy-dragon clinget to the side of a tree, and made ¡°Sceerrp¡± sound at Mathilde and Martin. It then opened its almost butterfly like wings and revealing, in stark contrast to its Mud-green body, an absolute stunning bright red color-pattern on the underside of its wings. Then it flew away too.


    Compared to the other animals it had a strong and beautiful magical aura.


    A moment passed, then Mathilde reached out and began eating the berries.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never seen a fairy-dragon in the wild before, looks different from the one in the zoo¡± She commented.


    ¡°Naturally it¡¯s another sub-species of fairy dragons¡± Martin said. His face was pale from practicing the [Mind connection]. He too began to eat the berries.


    The two siblings then started going through the forest. They quickly found some fruits to replace the berries growing at the edge. Water didn¡¯t prove a problem either, as there was plenty of small rivers and bodies of water spread throughout the lush wilderness.


    If possible, the forest felt almost more alive than it began with. The underground just crawled with life, all larger animals made way when they felt Mathilde¡¯s presence. An anteater panicked and almost tripped into the anthill, made from green ants, it was eating from, when it detected them.


    The most powerful presence they felt was continued to be the occasional fairy-dragons, sometimes rivaled by a wisp or two.


    Still, they didn¡¯t feel entirely safe. All it took was for them to walk wrongly in on one of the boars of the forest, or encounter a predator that didn¡¯t feel intimidated by Mathildes mana pool. Just because they couldn¡¯t feel them didn¡¯t mean they weren¡¯t there.


    Whatever the predators existed or not, they didn¡¯t encounter any.


    Martin used [Mind connection] on Mathilde.


    ¡°I think It¡¯s time to make camp for the night, the sun is setting and we need to make a fire and shelter¡±


    ¡°if you think so¡± Mathilde responded in her mind.


    They found a place in which the leaf-roof wasn''t as dense, and they could se more of the sky.


    A stream passed by next to them.


    Mathilde started collecting stones for a fire place, meanwhile Martin started using a fallen over tree and twigs to make a shelter for the night. The space would be just large enough for two persons to sleep.


    When he was done he looked towards the fire place. Mathilde had collected a good amount of wood.


    She now sat in front of the readied fire place with a concentrated look on her face. She held some twigs above her left hand. Arcane flames reached meters above it. This time they didn¡¯t glow as brightly, instead they gave off more heat.


    The twigs started smoking and embers started to show.


    She made a dissatisfied sound and threw the twigs into the fire-place, then she took another hand-full and tried again.


    She wanted them to combust in glorious flames! Not barely glowing like the pathetic results from before.


    The arcane flames she made danced irradicably as she, with no luck, tried to make them do what she wanted to do.


    Martin guessed what that was.


    ¡°till you have learned to make the flames smaller, and not larger, you could try to use this trick¡±


    He showed her some hand movements while he continued talking.


    ¡°you see, with this movement you start an initial spin¡­ and if you hold the other hand like this, in a tube form, make sure you have a high density of rotating mana there but don¡¯t use it, then push the flames through it, you should be able to produce better flames¡±


    She just stared at him.


    ¡°Dude.. that sounds so wrong.¡±


    ¡°Dammit, I don¡¯t care, just try it¡±


    ¡°Okay¡±


    After a few attempts, all stopped by Martin¡¯s correction before she could even finish it, she did it.


    A hand movement, then a hand position, then magic. Violent spiraling flames shot out of her hands in a downwards angel.


    A blast of wind hit their faces, the earth around the fireplace was scorched by the splashing arcane flames, some twigs were broken by the sheer physical force the arcane flames had.


    The flames still would had reached as far as before. This time, however, they stayed in a much denser shape.


    Not only that, Mathilde was astonished by how much more mana she could put into the flames.


    The power-difference from before was clear.


    The wood had instantly turned on fire.


    ¡°Awesome!¡± she yelled. Then she started bombarding the fire place with more of the spell.


    Martin just had nervous twitches around one of his eyes. He almost regretted teaching he something that dangerous.


    The night passed by.


    Mathilde complained about the wisps constantly flying around her, and her mana pool, but otherwise it passed by eventless.


    Then a rumbling began, like a distant earthquake.


    They woke up. Mathilde with a annoyed sound. She mumbled something about the wisps ruining her night sleep.


    They got up.


    Then she felt something.


    At first, she wasn¡¯t sure what it was, it felt like her ice-mana which confused her. Then she realized it.


    There was an enormous flow of mana beneath the ground¡­


    ¡­and it was coming their way!