《Zell》 Chapter 1: Night fall, Peaceful dream and Breakfast threat Hello! Useless author here! I''m currently trying to rewrite everything, meaning that all the content in the chapters will soon* be completely changed, my desire to bang my head against a wall will increase and the synopsis will certainly get a little face-lift aswel. So if you had previously read the chapters or about to do it, just forget. Thanks for the attention. *take note that the meaning of the word ''soon'' is extremely relative, could be a month, three months, half a year...Dependent on my ability to write something of acceptable quality which is extremely uncertain. Chapter 1: Night fall, Peaceful dream and Breakfast threat In a cave deep underground, a hooded figure was forming complex runes on a transparent orb floating over his desk, one of the only furniture of the dark room beside the bed and the turned off lantern hung on the ceiling. After a moment of drawing, with a smirk plastered on the lower part of his face he released a small ball of light from his finger, making it slowly float toward the orb. Once at 5 centimeters of the artifact, the ball disappeared in the orb like a star being aspired in a black hole. Being charged by the light, the rune on the orb begun to shine and spin lightly, showing that the item was working and bathing the room in a blue light. Proud of his work, the hooded man tapped on the artifact impatiently and after a short waiting time, a deep and calm voice originating from the sphere echoed in the small room. "Eins, give your report" "Ofcourse my master! The base is set up correctly, we have taken control of most of the local bandits and all is happening like we expected. The test subjects we released are giving promising results and we will be ready to engage the second tests session soon enough!" responded ecstatically the hooded figure "Perfect, my dear disciple, i will let you do as you please but beware as to not attract unwanted attention, we are not strong enough to face directly our enemies, yet..." "As you wish my lord! I will begin the next phase in the following week and the results will certainly please you!" "So be it. Farewell Eins and don''t disappoint my expectations" "Farewell my liege! Kukuh....KAH KAH KAH!" Once the conversation finished, the light in the artifact dimmed leaving the mysterious man in the darkness of his room, laughing like a possessed --at the same time-- The night was a bright night of late spring, the kind of night you spend outside, enjoying the fresh air and the light of the purple moon on your skin. The breeze was cool but the temperature was pleasant as the afternoon heat began to slowly spread from the ground and the nocturnal animals were singing a gentle tune to the moon, enhancing even more the ambiance. It''s in this set up that two children seated on a bench in front of a little wooden cabin were skygazing The first one, a girl with brown wavy hair, after taking a sip from her hot tea, pointed at a specific part of the nightsky. The second one, a boy with feline ears, followed the finger of his friend until he saw what attracted her attention before shooting exitedly "A shooting star! Quick Elik! A piece of paper!" "Here you go" responded the smiling girl already equipped with two sheets and a piece of charcoal. ... After rapidly scribbling their wishes on the papers, they then threw them in the little lantern between them which produced a flame powerful enough to light their faces and their vicinity. Looking at the innocent piece of paper being eaten by the little flame they said "ygwoizs ail qezwyz " in chorus before seating back on the bench, the eyes fixed on the comet lighting the sky. Even after the papers were completely consumed they continued their nocturnal activity while thinking about their wishes for a little longer before going to bed. If someone with a good hearing was with them, they would have heard a faint ''make him come back'' escaping the lips of the little girl, faint enough to disappear in the breeze Little they knew that this wasn''t a shooting star but a bright, falling, human shaped object ----------- *SWOOSH!!!* "SHIIIIIIIIIIT!!" Fuck my luck and fuck you Landar! If i see you again i will beat your godly ass to a pulp! Seriously, why in the world did you have to release me in the sky?! If was ten meters i would not have said anything but I''m so high that i became a fucking comet! It''s super hot in here, so hot that my vest is beginning to burn! I got it only fives days ago! Seriously! I want a pay back and a raise of salary, and a risk prime, and being able to take a retreat, and a new vest, and huh...and...what do i want again? ... yeah! that''s it, i want a fucking parachute toooooooooo! .... *sigh* Let''s see positively I actually am falling like a rock from the sky toward who know where, what can i do that won''t remind me of my unavoidable fate? I know! First let''s exteriorise my accumulated frustration with the therapy of the bestial cry. This thing never miss to relax me "AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!" Perfect, like this i''m a shouting star... Pfffrtt...hahaha Sorry sorry~ i just had to do it Bad joke to distract my stupid self: check More seriously, what can you do when you''re in the sky? Beside bad jokes i mean. ... It''s obvious ! Skygazing! Hum, let''s put it in a somewhat good way... Ahem Well, the sky is bright, somewhat. It must be because of the almost rose light that come from the purple moon and the non-existant clouds to obstruct its divine light to bath everything. In a way it''s kind of breathtaking, seeing the whole picture of a big purple moon in a stars punctured sky. If i was not going to die, i would certainly be lying on the grass and enjoying the view with a fresh beer in hand. Really fantasy-like, huh... I would bet that there is couples outside and that they are looking at the same thing as me while being lovey dovey... .... Fuck you couples! You''re cuddling and doing dirty things while I''m going to die! .... Oops i came back to the purposely avoided subject... ... Fuck. Now that I impregnated myself with the night sky and that I reminded myself of my dreadful fate... I feel the urge to... Take a look at the floor... Should i? Shouldn''t i? If it''s just a little glance it won''t be a problem, right? Fuck it, if i have to die, i will do it bravely and face death! I begun to majesticly flap my arms to slowly rotate my body because if i''m to careless in this process i might spin and i don''t really want to become a spining missile and puke my stomach content in the process. "Gnn!" New discovery! It''s hard to turn in mid-air when you''re not used to it! Turn Turn Just a little bit more That''s it! Ow I have made a huge mistake... And i wanna puke... Because it won''t be pretty... This asshole didn''t even make it so that I would have landed on something soft! It would have killed you to make me fall on something like a sand dam or a really mossy surface one meter thick?! The only thing that I could see was a sea of tree with some light sources, maybe villages or towns. We don''t care about villages ! What scare me isn''t what i an see, it was rather what was under the vegetal cover, the hard floor... Images of human mash are already filling my head. BRRRRRR.... *sigh* Judging from my speed it looks like I will land in less than 10 seconds. Maybe I should do a decompt and make it look like something positive. Like, you know, the new year''s eve, Christmas and stuff. ... Hum, Forget the decompt thing, my death is not really a happy event that I would celebrate like Christmas. Now that I think about it I didn''t liked this celebration either. Oh! looks like it''s too late anyway. Just the time to protect this handsome face of mine~ and *BLAAAAAAAM!!! * ------- Michael, part 1: ''innocent childhood''. *Twack twack twack * Sounds of stick hitting wood ran across a place that looked like a training ground surrounded by trees "You have to strengthen your stance Michael, here, do it like this" spoke a middle aged man in training attire who was holding a child with blond hair in position "yes father! " responded the young boy hitting the dummy with a tired expression, a tiredness certainly caused by all the morning drilling on the innocent scarecrow. *Thack thack thack* "?ice, now that you are in a good stance, will your magic power on your sword, imagine that your blade is engulfed in a blue energy" *zzzzzZZZZZZzzzzz* The wooden sword begun to emit a gentle vibe of blue and vibrate as Michael pour his magical power in it. "Good, you have mastered it quite easily, that''s my son for sure! Now, hit the dummy and release the stored energy on impact " "Okay! " *Twack* *SWOOOSH* *tud* The dummy was cleanly cut diagonally and the shredded part flew five meters away *pant pant pant* In front of what remains of the dummy Michael felt to his knees, completely sucked dry from using so much magic power and from his intensive training at his young age of ten. "Nice done son, with this you mastered the basic of elementary magic, sword fight and the mix of it. Papa is proud of you! Now that you finished your morning practice, go wash yourself and put on decent clothes we have some shopping to do." "Aye father..." responded Michael while he dragged his tired body out of the training ground sluggishly "Hurry up, I was going to reward you with some sweets but if you''re to late we will not have the time to buy them" Light quickly ran back in Michael''s dead eyes as he dashed in the direction of the big mansion next to their training ground with newly recovered vigor. "So easy" smiled the father before himself heading toward a fresh morning shower. ------------ That dream... A dream about Michael''s childhood? That''s a rare and really peaceful one. And this sensation around me, so soft. Mmh it''s like if i was on a cloud~ ... Eh? A cloud? Where the fuck am i? Wasn''t i supposed to fall in a forest? Opening curiously my eyes to scan my surrounding, i was pleasantly surprised by the fact that i wasn''t in the wild but covered in bandages smelling herbs and seated in a bed belonging to an average sized room painted in white with wood furnitures, the bed, a bucket of water over a table with two chairs, a big chest next to the door and a wardrobe. The whole room being illuminated by the morning sun''s light passing through a small window at the right of my bed. So i got brought back, uh? that''s good but what about my condition? I wouldn''t be surprised if i had something fractured, or worst, after such a fall... I carefully moved each and every articulation of my body to assess of my health condition and apparently everything was fine. My legs were like usual, my arms that should have been torn apart are still here, my head isn''t a bloody mess, my ribs hopefully are at their places and the most important thing for a young man was fresh and healthy on this beautiful morning. That''s nice Landar, if you can hear these thoughts, i don''t hate you as much as before! Phew~ Being alive and unhurt is good in itself but why am i here again? ... ...I can''t remember at all... ... Damnit! Landar didn''t say anything about my duties! Think myself! think! I was doing my exam and suddendly a thick fog came out of nowhere plunging the whole classroom in panic. A second later i was in a richly decorated library with a man a elemental who named himself as Landar Ifdesy Zophy. we discussed about my life and others things around some tea and cookies, they were delicious by the way. Then he said that he needed someone like me to do some jobs here and he showed me a contract which promised things like ''a quotidian allowance'', ''Landar the elemental king may sometimes reward you with his services'' (it sounded kinda gay though) and ''once signature of the contract, a wish shall be granted''. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Having a wish granted was all i needed so i was kinda convinced by this lecherous job. But when we were going to settle our talk about the obligation coming with the work an alarm like sound resounded in the whole room and i just had the time to sign before being dropped in a breach which formed itself under me without being informed of anything else. I could only hear a woman shouting something like ''SURPRISE! da-ru-lin-ge~'' before being thrown in the nightsky ... Nope~ Even if i review everything there is not a single clue about what i should do from now on beside wait for instructions. I suppose that i should first thanks the people who brought me in this comfy bed then gather some informations about this place. Yeah sounds good. Simple goals are the best after all~ Pushing the thin sheet covering me away, i got up energetically, i survived an entrance in the atmosphere after all why would i be grumpy? And headed toward the door but refrained myself because i felt something wrong. What with this strange sensation around my... oh... Where the fuck are my clothes? In underwear and covered in bandage, i rummaged around the room to find something to put on. My first choice was to go toward the wardrobe, a logical choice. Inside i found the clothes i had yesterday, a black shirt with long sleeves, my jeans trouser, a pair of black basket style shoes with my white socks and my vest. I sighed when i saw the state of my vest... The still newly bought attire was in a sorry state, nearling bringing a tear in the corner of my eye. There was burning marks here and there, the two sleeves were half torn plus holes and dirt were everywhere on the cloth. *Sigh* I hope that i can take it back to its original state soon enough... After pulling out my bandage, washing my body, i''m still covered with a disgusting green pomade smelling like cut grass afterall, and after putting everything on minus the vest that i cleanly folded and placed back in the wardrobe. *BRRRRZzzzzRttt* A strange vibration sound came out of the chest next to the door. What in a medieval world could produce such a sound? Curious, i opened the wooden box and found that the origin of the sound was my schoolbag, something inside my schoolbag more accurately. After sighing in relief and opening the bag in the box with the characteristical *zwiiiit* i checked the content of the sack consisting mostly of school stuff and the things i generally used in my student job, it was removal man if you are curious. A pen, a eraser mounted pencil, a note block, a calculator, a cutter and two rolls of duct tape, when i had emptied all of those the only thing left in the bottom of the sac was a black rectangular object, my phone. The thing was in alarm clock mode and doing its job normally. Deactivating the alarm, i pocketed it after taking a brief look at the main screen. 7:04AM and ''no service available'' was what was displayed among the now useless apps. Still early uh? Meh, let''s see if there is someone awake. After two steps, I opened the door and arrived in a empty corridor, around me were five other room''s entrance, two at my left, two at my right and one in front of me. There was not a sound in the whole house, everything was pure silence. Everything except the ruckus made outside by the birds and the loud snoring coming from one of the doorframe at my right. I decided to advance toward that room, walking slowly and stealthily as to not wake up my potential savior and i stopped on my track when i passed the entrance of the room which looked like a witch den. Inside was a big pot giving off strong cauldron vibes over a turned off fire pit, dryed herbs and flowers hanged from the ceiling saturing the air with their spice sent, there was two shelf filled with old books along with flacons of unknown contents together with hooks nailed in the wall acting as support for strange tools, a furniture looking like a couch was right next to the door and a desk on which was lying a bunch of unordered sheets of paper, a quill, a ink flask, a roll of bandage as well as a sleeping woman on a chair. The woman was wearing a darkish robe with pouches and vial holders around her waist, her long hair were the same colors as her robe, pitch black and from here i could see little pointy ears protubering from the side of her head but couldn''t see her face with this point of view. Judging from the existance of this room, she must be an apothecary of some sort and the person who treated me as well. It''s not good to sleep on a chair, your sleep will be of lesser quality and your back as well as your neck will hurt, you know? *sigh* I made my way toward her, as stealthy as before and lifted her to bring her snoring figure toward the couch. After all, it might be because she had to patch me up that she had to fall asleep in this position. Doing it in the greatest silence and being extremely careful as to not wake her, i posed her on the matelassed surface. From here i could finally see her face, she looked young but her sleeping expression still gave off an air of maturity and experience, giving her a strange vibe. I picked a sheet which was rolled in ball in a corner of the room and covered her with it then i left this workshop. Once i exited the room, i went in straight line into the other one in front of me and arrived in a dinning room linked to a little kitchen. The dinning room was furnished with a long table surrounded by ten confortable chairs and a windowed cabinet in which i could perceive plates. The kitchen was littler in size compared to the dinning room, there was a simple counter which the lower parts were made of cabinets, in the middle of the counter was a hole, certainly to put a basin of water to wash the aliments before cooking them, shelfs were nailed in the wall containing ingredients and spice, a stove using wood as combustible was against a stone wall at some fifty centimeter of another door, most probably the reserve. *grumble* Hungry...but there is not a soul awake beside me. Should i do as i wish, intrude in their reserve and use their ware to make something? It don''t sound right to do it that way through... *grumble* the belly have spoken! Fuck it. i will see if i can do something en masse and give it as thanks for the cares given to me. Doing like if i was at home, i opened the reserve''s door and thought about what i could prepare for breakfast with the things displayed around me. Noticing the bread, the bottle of milk, the butter and the eggs(it looked bigger than chicken eggs but i won''t be picky) among the rest in the cold and dark room, i suddenly felt the need to cook some french toasts, it was a long time since the lasts i ate afterall. I returned to the kitchen and took the necessary to cook. I plugged my earphone, launched a relaxing tune and lighted the stove. Waiting for it to turn at good temperature, i wetted the piece of bread that i previously sliced in the milk then in the whipped eggs before stacking them on two plates from the windowed cabinet in the dining room. When the stove was hot enough, i put the butter to melt on the thing looking like a pan i found under the counter and when it was well spread i begun to fry the breads slices. I prepared around twenty french toast before extinguishing the stove and putting the two plates containing the breakfast on the table in the dining room. These thing should hold for one to two day so this amount should be alright. However there was something wrong with my french toast... It feel like i forgot something... Strange, I''m sure that i have everything, the bread, the butter, the whipped eggs, the milk and the... sugar! Ofcouse! And to think i nearly missed it! Let''s look for something sweet to spread on the toasts! I went back toward the shelfs on the wall containing the spices but couldn''t find anything looking or tasting like sugar. Unfortunately tasting every spice wasn''t my smartest move because there was in a pot, a white past looking like icing, curious i took a little lump of it. After smelling its sweet fragrance, i plunged it in my mouth and then... Instant regret! Heard about horseradish? That was the taste of this shit! Gaaaah Got fucking damnit! My nose! It will fall! Someone could please have the empathy to put me down?! Argh! But not losing hope, after my sinuses finished to be uncorked, i returned in the reserve and used this occasion to put the ingredients i didn''t use to their respective places. There, after five minutes of searching and rummaging i finally found something looking like jam. Happy, i left the reserve and went straight in the dining room to finish the preparations but apparently i wasn''t the only one awake anymore. Certainly because of the music in my ears i didn''t heard the noise produced by the little feet belonging to the little girl who was curiously preying at the french toast. She was older than ten, had long wavy brown hair, emerald eyes, possessed deer features such as long deer ears at the side of her head and a little deer tail swaying with interest protubering from her light green one piece robe and was so much absorbed by the two plates in front of her to notice my entrance in the room. With a mischievous smile, i stopped the music, unplugged my earphones, silently moved behind her and said "There are here to be eaten so don''t hesitate to help yourself" "Woah!" As expected she was surprised, so surprised that she almost fell from the chair she was using as footing to look at the dishes but i grabbed her with one arm while putting my index on her mouth with the other, saying "Sssshhhhh she is still sleeping" and pointed toward the workshop. With her eyes she showed me that she understood and i let go of her mouth before putting the opened jam jar on the table next to the french toasts. "You can take one nature but it will be tastier if you put this on it, where are the thing used to spread the jam?" "In the lower part of this cabinet" With her little hand she pointed at the place where i took the plates, was there something like that inside? "Here? thanks." Apparently there was knives, forks and spoons but i didn''t saw them. Meh, let''s say that i was distracted. "Are you the man we found last night?" She asked when i turned back toward the table with a plain wooden spatule "Yes it''s me. So you are the one who found me, uh? and i suppose that the woman soundly asleep overhere is the one who patched me up" I responded meanwhile i coated the toast with the jam which smelled like a sweeter variant of cranberry "Nnh" "You can have the first one as thanks then, here" With a smile i presented her the improvised french toast. She hesitated a moment but under my insistent gaze she quickly choose to put a piece of the toast in her mouth, a choice that she didn''t regretted because directly after she blushed slightly while muttering a long "Mmmmhhh" of delish It didn''t took long before the whole toast disappeared in her mouth, making her smile in content. "That''s wonderful! I have to give some to Mya!" And without warning she snatched the one i just finished to prepare before rushing toward the workshop... Understanding what she was going to do, I followed suit to stop her. "Wait wait wait wait wait! Don''t wake her up!" But it was to late, she already was moving the piece of bread under the nose of the woman, saying "Mya! Mya! Eh oh! Mya! Wake up!" *sniff* *sniff* Just after the girl finished her incantation the woman''s nose twitched, her eyes suddenly darted open and she jumped like a beast on the toast. "Swe-sweet! Elik what was that?!" After savagely slaughtering the toast, the woman turned toward the little girl with star in the eyes. "He prepared it" The little girl simply responded before pointing her index at me, like a beastmaster marking the future victim of his mad pets. Only with that word the woman rushed toward me and pulled me by the collar, closing even further the distance between us. Our noses nearly touching each other, i could feel her ragged beastly breath on my face as well as see her hunger filled eyes staring deep inside of me, Probing my very soul. It''s in this position that, in the most scary tone i ever heard, she muttered "Where is the rest?" *Gulp* ------ if you find any mistakes report them please, i hate mistakes. :yayaya: Chapter 2: Presentation, Mature child and Racism Hello! Useless author here! I''m currently trying to rewrite everything, meaning that all the content in the chapters will soon* be completely changed, my desire to bang my head against a wall will increase and the synopsis will certainly get a little face-lift aswel. So if you had previously read the chapters or about to do it, just forget. Thanks for the attention. *take note that the meaning of the word ''soon'' is extremely relative, could be a month, three months, half a year...Dependent on my ability to write something of acceptable quality which is extremely uncertain. Chapter 2: Presentation, Mature child and Racism. "Phew~, those fronch tost were truly delicious. I''m completely full now." Said the woman with pointy ears in front of me. "Really Tasty~, to bad they are not any room left" echoed seated the little girl next to her. We actually were seated at the table in the dining room, the two girls were sprawled on their chairs with a smile of content and a inflated belly in front of me. "It''s frENch tOAst and ofcouse you must be completely full! you two ate everything! I only had one because i risked my hand to grab one!" I nearly lost it by the way! It was one of the most frightening experience in my life! I couldn''t do anything, they just kept assaulting the plate again and again. They even asked for more! Thus i had to prepare a second serving and push another thirty pieces of bread toward their unfathomable and brutal digestion. "Don''t be like that Zell~" "I''m how i want to be, you starving hyena!" "What''s a hyena?" "Tch, don''t matter" Fun fact about those two, they are ventriloquist. Even with their mouth overflowing with food we could have something close to a discussion if you omitted the noisy *munch*, *baffre*, *nom* and *gulp* coming from their delicate mouths. Seriously how can a beautiful woman and a cute child be so barbaric when it comes to food? Ahem I''m losing myself. Like i said we were able to somehow discuss and introduce each other, the woman i put in the couch is named Mya, she is a kind of apothecary and the girl who started the slaughter is Elik, Mya''s apprentice. Both of them live in this house at the edge of the CaelCirk town in the Hexas forest. Just for the little story, at first they were in the central part of the town but because of an accident; some vapors which weren''t that healthy to breath leaked from her workshop and nearly fifty person lost consciousness, thus the town chief forcefully relocalised them here, there shop and ingredient storage didn''t move through. The expression on Mya''s face suddenly changed and she straightened her pose on the chair before speaking like if she thought about something important "Oh! I just remembered! How is that possible that you can move Zell?" What with this question?! "Eh?" "Well you know, when Elik, Moss and Lythe brought you here last night, you had multiply fractured arms and your legs broken with some other minors injuries here and there on your body. I just put everything back in place before painting you all over with anesthetic as well as cicatrising pomade and rolling you in bandage. Thus you should still be in your bed recovering." I wut?! This Landar asshole!!! I could have died, you fucking psycho!!! Don''t throw people in the air like that! "Are you alright mister Zell? you have a strange expression" Elik tugged my sleeve while looking interrogatively toward me. Finally noticing that i was still in the middle of a discussion i stopped my inner cursing and responded with a humble and serious tone after clearing my throat and making my bloodthirsty expression vanish "Hum, don''t worry I''m okay. As for why I''m out of the bed and as good as new, let''s say that I''m a fast healing person. Yeah~ fast healing... Ahem, Now that we are at it, i wanted to thank you. even though you aren''t for much in my recovery, you still gave some care as well as a bed to a stranger like me, I''m really grateful toward you and if i can do anything to pay back your generosity, i will do it willingly." "Ho ho~. if you want to thank the people who helped you, you should first thank Elik, that''s her who convinced Moss and Lythe to bring you here. And i don''t need any thanks after being able to eat such a tasty breakfast, if you really want to give me a gift, give the recipe of those wonderful things to Elik, like that she will be able to make them next time~" "Is that so? you don''t need anything else?" "Yes, don''t worry about something like that. *Yawn* Arah? Looks like I''m still a bit sleepy...i will go back to sleep then, Elik i leave the rest to you-*TacTacTac*" She got up and walked toward the corridor but when she neared the doorframe while waving her hand, the head of a man with dog ears appeared behind the window and he knocked lightly on the glass to get our attention before shouting a muffled "Baba Mya! Please we need you! Monsters attacked the morning patrol and we need you two treat the injured!" Recognising him, Mya rushed toward the window with an unwilling expression and opened it while saying "No no no no! *Clack* Not today! Why is it always me who get to heal smelly guards?! Why aren''t the healing magic user doing it?!" "They already are trying to heal them but they can''t keep up with the number of injured! Please! it''s the chief who sent me, he even offered to pay you twice the usual price!" Mya''s eyes suddenly got a golden shade, to the point that i nearly heard a *kashing* like sound coming from her. "Twi-twice the price.... Where are they!?" She jumped through the window and grabed the surprised man by the shoulders "Woah! Calm down Baba, they are at the north-west gate''s baracks" "Thanks... Hey! Don''t call me baba! It make me look old!" Vexed, she grabbed him by the ears and pulled him with her along the road. "Awawawa don''t pull the ear! I am not a child anymore!" But realising something, she stopped and turned toward the two of us who were curiously looking at the scene from the window. "Shut up and endure! Elik, you will have to do the morning shopping without me, and Zell, be a good boy and accompany her today, if you follow her you might be able to meet and thanks properly the two persons who dragged you here last night. Well then see ya!" And like that she walked while singing toward the center of the town, pulling a man who begun to have tears gathering around his eyes "Money money money!" ... "..." "..." After a long time of awkward silence, Elik and i slowly faced each other before i asked "Does she like money to this extend?" Her expression was as dead serious as mine. "Money and everything sweet are what make her move the most..." Am i the only one finding it wrong to hear something like that coming from a child''s mouth? "Must be hard on you" "You don''t even imagine" "Oh and sorry about earlier, when i scarred you" "Don''t mind it, i got my revenge anyway~" When she said that a mischievous smile replaced her serious face and i came to a realisation. "That''s why you brought her back to life!? You are frightening for a little girl!" Her smile grew even wider and she responded "I will take that as a compliment. Can we go to the market soon? There is a lot to buy and transport" She really insisted on the ''transport'' word. Wait... "You know that i should still be crippled?" "But you walk just right, where is the problem?" No there definitely is a problem with your way of thinking. "Are you sure that you two didn''t swap body? You''re far to mature and Mya is... what she is" "What are you talking about? I''m just a child~" What with this threatening tone?! "*sigh* Yes, you are. We go when you want, I''m ready." "Let me just take a basket and we can depart" Doing a small detour in the kitchen to grab her basket, i followed her toward the exit of the house, which made us pass by the other side of the corridor and a room looking like a living room. Once in front of the door i asked "You didn''t forget to take money?" "No, don''t worry" As to assure me that she had the necessary, she opened the small bag hanging at her side, took a little purse from it and showed it to me while she slightly agitated it, producing an enjoying *clingcling* like sound. "Then lead the way miss" Rassured, I opened the door while making an exaggerated bow and inviting her to step forward. Taking my invitation with a smile, she went in the street with me following suit. Letting her lead the way, i stared absentmindedly at the vicinity but still cautiously tried to keep the same pace as the one her small legs could muster. The city was, as expected, medieval looking however there was a subtlety, most of the things here were made of natural element such as wood, dirt and little bit of stone here and there, you could even see some trees growing on the houses and between the white pavements composing the street. Branches and vines were invading the walls, giving green shades to the brown of the bark, puncturing the surfaces with flowers of various colors as well as making the monotonous walls look more ''fairy-like'' with all the insect flocking around. A thin leaf canopy was bridging the roofs. Creating an outdoor veranda substitute If you don''t think to much about the pavement you would feel like if you were marching inside of a huge tree. Even if it was a city, build like a city and made to be a city it didn''t have the depressing and oppressive vibe the pure stone and wood made medieval city or even the modern city from earth usually give. Everything was so lively and close to nature... The air here is so pure and perfumed by all those flower blooming all around, judging from the shade of green covering everything and the appearance of the flowers it should be spring right now. It''s beautiful, like in my dreams... Valak, Michael and Gabriel thanks you all for enabling such a thing to happen to me, heck i feel so happy that i don''t even ressent Landar anymore. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. *sigh* Marvelous... Ow, i think i got carried away, sorry. Ahem, now about the direct location of Mya''s house, it was like she explained, at the edge of the town, in a street next to the main one connecting the center and city''s doors. Those doors were easily noticeable from here as they were made of two wooden panels six meters in height and three meters long reinforced with metal frame shaped like vine as to not clash with the ten meters high stone wall covered of thick a thick layer of vines and trees, on this side atleast. Quite the fortification, isn''t it? The use of such a huge protection is justified because their city is the nearest of the dangerous part of the Hexas forest afterall. What dangerous part, you ask? It''s true that i hadn''t explained the geography of this place. To put it simply, the Hexas forest is a relatively big forest bording the Scion mountains with most of its surface belonging to the Lerass country, a country ruled by a beastmen council mostly constitued of the chiefs of the most influental clans. This forest can be distinguished in two distinct layers and several specific biomes in each layers, easily recognisable by the sort of plants that you can find and the level of mortality of what lurk between the plants. For the layers there is the ''external'' part, it is the part that take the most space of forest and where this city is located, in the ''common'' forest biome. Ofcouse there are monsters, like everywhere on this world, but only a minority is dangerous and only half of this minority attack without provocation, the two more explicit exemples of agressives monsters should be the clawers and the karoulgars. The clawers are monster which look like raptors but like the names induct it possess really long claws (three the length of a dagger and another one the length of a saber on each ''hands''), however the most dangerous things about them isn''t their claws. It''s the fact that they always move in group of five or more to hunt and that they rely on a ''pack'' system. If one of them find a prey that its hunting group can''t take on on their territory, it will call the whole pack to hunt it down, taking into account that packs are made of atleast fifty individuals and an overgrown clawer acting as an alpha, whatever big enough to constitute a meal wander in their territory have little to no chance to survive. As for the karoulgars, there are five meters long bears with panthera like morphology, extremely agile and smart they will lead you into dead end or wait to be in your blind spot to attack you in a blink of an eye. As for the vegetation, everything is pretty common, trees that look like trees, flowers that looks like flowers, etc, just like i like it in a ''common'' forest biome. If you forget the clawers, karoulgars and the other predator living in the other biomes, You can say that in overall it''s a big peaceful forest. However it''s not the case. There is the other layer aka the monster den aka the death forest aka shityourpants jungle, the ''central part''. It''s where everything become fucked up. a whole bunch of nasty shit lurk in there, like crusts, Imagine a T-rex, make it a quadrupete, put more pointy thing here and there and BAM you have a super predator of 6000 kilograms running faster than a horse which possess a fus roh dah like shout. There are fifty meters long serpents able to become invisible in the vegetation and paralyse with their eyes, the real name are bothersome to say so let''s call them Basilisks There is the Kirels, it''s akin to squirrels but alienised, can climb on everything and collect skull like a squirrel would collect nuts, they spat acid too by the way. Ofcouse there are more, i only quoted the first coming to my mind however i don''t really feel like giving a monstrology lesson right now, But don''t think that monsters are the only things that want your hide in this damned place. The forest itself want to kill you! Carnivorous plants everywhere, strolling trees transforming your direct geography into a moving maze, vines able to trap you and transform you into cocoons to spread threir spores, zombification mushroom, spikes grass that would make Vlad the impaler kill for having only one strand of those and every damn killing plants you can imagine. And guess what? This jungle''s edge is just five kilometers north from here! But apparently everything is fine because nobody looks scared or anything, if i had to say something about the town''s ambiance is that it''s rather joyful and festive. There even is people decorating their facades with green wing patterned flags. "Say Elik, why is everyone like this?" "You mean why everyone is in good mood and hanging flags together with green decoration?" "Yeah" "It will be Imperos festival soon, so everyone is pretty exited about it thus some early birds take out their decorations right now " "Imperos festival?" "You don''t know about it?" "Nope" "It''s supposed to be relatively known around here though. Not helping it, i will explain as we walk. Imperos is the guardian of the Hexas forest, a superior air elemental ruling this place. He live secluded in the very center of this forest and don''t interact much with the exterior. Long ago he erected a barrier which stopped the dangerous monsters to wander out of their territories and pacified the whole wildlife present under his influence, bringing a make-shift order in the forest and enabling the construction of little city like this one. But during the great war a century ago, the barrier vanished for an unknown reason and the monsters wrecked havoc everywhere before the barrier came back as quickly as it disappeared. Some people thought it happened because Imperos was disappointed of our lack of gratitude toward him and gave us a warning. Thus they created this festival to thank him of his hardwork and don''t enrage him" It could be logic but there is a misconception somewhere... Guardians don''t act how they want on their territories, there should be legislations and laws between them that stop them from acting rashly and doing things like opening the doors of their jurassic park to get a celebration in their honour once a year. There must have been another reason... Meh, don''t know. "That''s quite the story-Wait, Why did you link our hands?" Unbeknown to me, Elik holded my hand and pulled me like if i was a clumsy child through the crowd which was beginning to thick since earlier. "We have arrived at the market, there is a lot of people around us so i hold your hand to prevent you from getting lost in the crowd. You should be grateful." She responded with a big bright smile. Do you enjoy holding the hand of someone you just met? But what she said was true, i was too occupied thinking to notice that we had arrived on a big place with a wide variety of stalls and people shouting around things like "rainbow bellish fished this morning!" or "selling juicy delir meat, very cheap!" Seriously why didn''t i notice anything when i am thinking?! Wait... "Why are you acting like you are the most adult of us?! Beside..." i looked around me and noticed that people were eyeing me with suspicious gaze and keeping a safe distance between me and them. Some were even whispering between them and looking at me with disgust. Madam why are you putting your hand on the eyes of your baby? "...It''s not like i could easily go unnoticed with all those people looking at me like that. By the way, why are they acting this way? Is there something wrong with me?" I asked interrogatively meanwhile pointing at my face In my own standart i find myself rather common so it don''t have anything to do with my face. I wear something relatively plain even if you don''t usually find jeans and modern quality shirts in this place, however there are people more excentricly clothed than me, like the old woman with bunny ears wearing something too tight for her age trying to seduce a young seller to get a better price.... madam, why don''t you put your hand in front of your child''s eyes for something like that? Elik responded in a half sigh, rubbing her big eyes with two fingers from her free hand "That''s because you are human, even thought the war ended long ago, the fear of the human''s imperialism is still here. And the fact that not many humans come in the vicinity don''t really help ease this fear thus they get really nervous around you because they are influenced by bad rumours circulating about humans." We can all agreed that it''s not a speech that a ten years should do, right? "You know that you spout too much sense for a brat your age?" "Yeah, i know... Oh! hello miss Melsy!" Just when i was going to ask where she got to be so knowledgeable and mature in her thinking mechanics, we arrived at a stall selling vegetables and spice owned by a strong woman with used brown hair giving a ''gentle motherly'' vibe, effect amplified by her big smile and light wrinkles beginning to form on her front and in the corner of her eyes. "Hello Elik, how are y- who-who is this thing with you?!" Scratch the ''gentle'' part in the ''gentle motherly'' "He is someone-" "Don''t care about who he is! he will make the customers flee, ask it to go away!" I can hear you and I''m someone sensible! Be a bit more subtle please! Being a bit red of shame or was it from anger? Elik turned my way and asked in a apologetic tone "It''s not against you or anything but Zell could you-" Understanding where we were going, i cutted her in her sentence "Go away and leave a little girl on her own in the middle of a crowded place? Where is the ''i am going to hold your hand but it is not because i want it but because you would be lost without me pulling you around''?" I responded by mimicking her high pitched voice before continuing with a sigh on a more serious tone " i understand. I will take a little stroll around the market. If you need to find me, follow the stares~" And after saying that i turned toward the other side of the place while raising my hand in a ''see ya'' motion to the little girl and the old hag in my back. ------ if you find any mistakes don''t hesitate to correct them in the comment, thanks for reading me [th_084_.gif] Chapter 3: Shopping, Stroll in the forest and Burly bears Hello! Useless author here! I''m currently trying to rewrite everything, meaning that all the content in the chapters will soon* be completely changed, my desire to bang my head against a wall will increase and the synopsis will certainly get a little face-lift aswel. So if you had previously read the chapters or about to do it, just forget. Thanks for the attention. *take note that the meaning of the word ''soon'' is extremely relative, could be a month, three months, half a year...Dependent on my ability to write something of acceptable quality which is extremely uncertain. Chapter 3: Shopping, Stroll in the forest and Burly bears. "Could you..." "Go away and leave a little girl on her own in the middle of a crowded place? Where is the ''i am going to hold your hand but it is not because i want it but because you would be lost without me pulling you around''?" I responded by mimicking her high pitched voice and continued with a sigh on a more serious tone " I understand. I will take a little stroll around the market. If you need to find me, follow the stares" And after saying that i turned toward the other side of the place while raising my hand in a ''see ya'' motion to the little girl at my back Now on my own, I first went toward the fountain i previously noticed in the center of the market and took a sip from the crystal-clear water flowing from the modest work of art that was that fountain, quenching the thirst slowly appearing in my throat. Hmm~ Nice taste, without a spec of pollution and refreshing. As expected from the water flowing directly from the glaciers of the Scion Mountains. A water so clear that you can see your own reflexion on its calm surface. Wait...This man in the water... It''s me? Stangely, it was as if i became a bit more handsome. I don''t know, it''s like my features were more clear, firm and manly. the few spots i had on my skin were nowhere to be seen and my blue eyes as my brown hair were more bright and dazzling, it looked like the shades flowed. Is that what happen when you come from a poorly mana concentrated place to a richly one? It''s super effective! No need for cosmetics anymore, takes mana shots! All of this is good but I can see one problem though... My hair are in a complete mess! I look like Einstein! Fix! Fix! Fix! I quickly fixed my haircut under the stare of the crowd looking at me like at a circus animal, yeah i''m human get over it already!, using some of the crystal clear water and once satisfied with my look i then continued to journey through the stalls. There was a big diversity of products from cheese to carpet passing by all the localy cultivated fruits and veggies, monster and other games spoils, souvenirs and even some rare magic items but nothing was to my interest. There was that fox man who didn''t read the mood or simply didn''t understood my origins and still tried to sell me a ''magic'' musical box playing a calm tune, unfortunately the music box couldn''t compete with my phone which its earphones already found their way in my ears. I had a hard time restraining myself from shoving it into his loose mouth while shouting "Science bitch!" to put an end to the unstoping flow of word escaping his throat but i chose a more pacific solution. The Rascism! Simply by pointing at my ears he lost his colors and stayed frozen in his pose. Not willing to get into trouble i took it as if our discussion ended and continued my stroll without other interruption. Atleast until a woman wearing thin clothes next to an oddly coloured tent intercepted me, saying that she was willing to read my fate for free but once she begun to barbling about the end of the world i left and ignored her to continue my morning stroll under the heavy strares in quest of something interesting. Ten minutes and countless death stare later, i found that interesting thing! I knew that a town this near of a monster den couldn''t not possess something like that! A weapon dealer! There, at the edge of the place where the north-west main street made junction with the center of the city that a store build with stone bricks and devoid of any superflu vegetation was proudly showing a signboard with the picture of shield stacked over a sword! It was with star in the eyes that i pushed the heavy wooden door open to enter the weapon racks filled room where a big burly man with bear ears was lustring a warhammer behind the counter, staying focused on his work he didn''t even lifted an eye to look at the person entering his shop. I shrugged it thinking that if he don''t look at me, he won''t kick me out because I''m human and looked at the weapon displayed with the same eyes as a child in the a toy shop. There was around fifty weapons on display, most of them being in the heavy category, badass axes, badass sledgehammers, badass greatswords, badass halbards, badass owner, nearly everything could get the adjectif ''badass'' only judging by the size and pattern of the weapons on the racks. Most of them had the same kind of drawing, engravings and were made of the same blueish grey alloy, most probably meaning that they were crafted by the same blacksmith also judging from the quality of his work this guy know what he do with his hands. I stayed a good while appraising the exposed articles. Too bad that I''m not that efficient with badass category weapon... *sigh* that''s really too bad. I can only leave if there isn''t anything for me here... But i really like the tribal design of these weapon and they look to be of first quality too... ...Fuck it, i will ask "Mister the owner, do you perhaps have something a little bit lighter, like swords or daggers?" Using the most respectful tone i could muster, i asked the old man behind the counter if he, by chance, had something else than heavy weaponry but he only raised one eye toward me, probably judging my strength, before chuckling a bit. "Something that could fit a pussy like you? Ha! Good one boy! We don''t serve people who didn''t proved their strength! you have to be worthy of wielding Uril''s fine work! Come back when you will be able to kill a sluth without dying like a slime shit." Dude you aren''t a npc in a rpg, stop giving subjugation quests when i ask you what you have in stock... Meh, i don''t have anything else to do anyway so why not play along? "What if i could actually beat one?" I asked with a wide grin in the prospect of something interesting i could finally do. "Don''t joke around and go back home, boy..." His tone wasn''t a joking one anymore and grew threatening, but so was mine, serious atleast. As for threatening, how could a one meter eighty five young man look threatening in front of a one meter ninety five man who look to have be given steroid since childhood? "If i bring you a sluth, will you show me your best wares?" Immediately after i asked that he finally looked at me right in the eyes and begun to laugh, a deep and very manly laughter. "Gahahaha you got balls boy, not much would react like you while hearing the word ''sluth''. It''s either that you are really confident or completely ignorant but so be it. You can bring me the thing here or at Uril''s forge and i will show you something that might fit you, if you survive that is. And now go the fuck out, i will get a bad reputation if the folks see me speaking to a human" "Still this racism huh? Meh, don''t care. see ya old man!" I turned toward the door waving my hand like i did to Elik, finally having what i wanted, a pastime. It''s not funny to be in thrown into a fantasy world without anything to do afterall. "See ya- hey you brat! I''m not ol-" And i closed the door, cutting him in the middle of his rebuke Hmmm~ that''s nice to finally have an objective~ Just have to find a kill an overgrown black sloth killing machine able to turn invisible in the forest and tore iron appart with its red claws, only part of his body it is unable to hide... Easy~ If my memory is right, some of its parts can be processed into tonics. Steed tonic, if you know what i mean. The old man wasn''t that old though, maybe in his early thirty... Well, other''s erection disorders aren''t my business. Now where to go? *growl* Oh...I forgot that i was hungry... I could only save on french toast from the hyenas onslaught afterall. Seriously do things in harmony with your look, if you look like a delicate woman, be a delicate woman, if you look like a cute child, be dumb and don''t question the mob psychology, if you are a big burly man, sell weapon with an uninteressed expression. if you look weak and pathetic, be weak and pathetic. if you are someone who crossed between planes of existence by using the power of a being close to god to fix the shits that happen in its world, go slay something dangerous and save the day... wait that''s my situatio-*growl* Yeah! i know already stomach! So stop cutting me when i introspect while walking on a place filled with xenophobic beastmen staring at me like at some sort of boogeyman going to enslave them! I suffer as much as you so shut up and let me find something to eat! Thus my next destination was clearly designated. Toward food! Smelling around, i tried to find a food stall but quickly came to two understandings when i finally found one selling white bun dish. ....People hate me and i don''t have a penny in the pocket.... This bastard, why didn''t he atleast sent me here with some money. You don''t send people out of their world without money! *sigh* The only thing i can do now is trying to find Elik in this huma.. beastman maze. Let''s first go toward the fountain, with its central position she might be able to notice me with all those heavy stares plundering my back constantly. Yeah sounds good~ With this thought in mind i came back to the fountain by passing through another section of the market, this part was dedicated to clothes and accessories. Ofcouse nothing was to my taste, i don''t have the gender to wear butterfly brooch or green vine patterned extra tight robes afterall. Still the future festival brought a lot of people, after checking my phone it only was past 8.30 am and the passage between the stalls were already crowded enough to make me slalom my way through, a chance that they try to keep their distance from me. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Seriously guys, stop acting like that. It begins to become really awkward for me. As i was nearing the fountain, i felt a light pull at my sleeve, looking downward to get a glimpse of the person calling me, my eyes met another pairs of emerald eyes "Good, i was looking for you" "Me too, i finished buying everything for today so we can bring the basket back home before going at Moss place, let''s go" She said as she showed me her basket completely full of ingredients. Looks like their medicine sells well and they aren''t in need of anything...so envious. To think that i had to work twenty hours a weekend to pay for my rent, schoolarship and daily necessities. But it''s all over now, if Landar stick to his words that is. I took the presented basket which must have been heavy for her small frame and once i had everything in hand Elik linked our hand and dragged me, again, through the crowd toward where we came from. Could you please consider the possibility of me being a capable and responsible adult? please? I stealthily tried to free my hand but the moment i was beginning to pull she turned my way with a really dark expression giving a ''i''m having fun so don''t ruin it, faggot'', scary! Because my last action was not well taken the atmosphere turned akward thus i tried to open the dialogue with the strange sulking organism to improve the mood. "Moss...Mya mentioned this name before, saying that he helped dragging me but who is he?" "He is a friend of us and he works as a lumberjack outside the city. Each morning if we don''t need to work we go at his place to discuss and have some tea, when Mya don''t give me too much work, i sometimes come back in the evening like it was the case yesterday." Judging from the smile which replaced her frown my diplomatic tactic somehow worked. Because you never change a winning team let''s continue with this modus operandi. "And the other one, Lythe was it?" When she heard me say ''Lythe'' her expression became a bit more complicated, let me guess critical failure at my dice roll of charisma? "He is my childhood friend, we were together at Moss cabin when we found you but i wouldn''t advise you to meet him" "Why is that?" "He is a Feliv..." Ouch! A Feliv! it''s right that Humans and Feliv aren''t the best mix as to why i say that. Earlier, I mentioned the ruling system of this country right? Well the Felivs are one of the dominant clan, they ''own'' some part of this forest and a bit some more territory outside. If they only were a bunch of snob nobles it wouldn''t be a problem but they aren''t like that. They are a military clan composed of racist battle junkies at the monstuous strengh who hates humans. They hate human to the point that they hold a kind of convention to speak about their hate, demonstrate their strength on human shaped pinata and show their artistic side with paintings and sculptures themed on human slaughter. Truly an entertainment for the whole family... Ahem. In short they are an influent anti-human faction in this country. Hearing her response i raised a hairbrow and spoke with admiration. "And you were able to convince a Feliv to help a human? Not bad" "It really was pain, you know? He couldn''t stop complaining and saying things like "if my sister learn of this she will kill me", "are you sure it''s safe? He could have diseases or be dangerous" or "i will get banned from my clan if i touch him" but i still got my way with him, you should praise me for that!" She can be surprisingly childish when time comes, beside with our hands linked and the the way she act we look like siblings coming back home. I never had the occasion to do something like that with my sister who is still on earth. It''s refreshing though. Don''t hearing me respond she pulled my arm and spoke with a half pleading half angry tone, pouting slightly "Hey! Praise me!" Like seriously? the old man was acting like in a rpg and now this girl is acting like a tsundere in a third-rate dating simulator, Landar are you sure that you dropped me in the good world? ... Well you have to make the best of things thus i lightly patted the upper part of her head saying "Yeah, Yeah good girl" making her blush slightly and produce a "guehehehehehe" creepy laughter. Wait... ...This strange laugh remind me of someone, i know but i can''t pinpoint who... how unnerving ----------- We quickly came back at their home and put everything in the reserve before exiting once again but this time to walk toward the outside of the city, in the forest. After we passed the guards keeping the door who looked intently at me while strengthening their grip on their weapons, ready to cut me in half if i ever breathed wrongly, Elik explained me more accurately where we must go to reach our destination. Moss place was at some twenty minutes on foot east of the city. Apparently there was sixty lumberjacks working in this area. For a city this big I''m even surprised that they don''t need more hands but if you think about the fact that we are in mid-spring it''s normal few people would use firewood to warm themselves with such an enjoying weather, thus only the woodcutter needed by the carpenters are actually working. To get there we had to follow a wide and well maintained road passing through the forest. It was relatively frequented because we crossed three carriages filled with long logs pulled by tamed malboons, herbivorous quadruped mammals the size of a horse looking like whales with elephant feet that you can meet in savage state in the forest, some peddler with their caravan and an unit of the city scout, like you could expect from them they were really cautious of me, like really, to the point that if Elik hadn''t stepped in to explain the circumstances they were going to hunt me like an animal. Making me realize that I will need to buy a cloak and hide my face if i want to somehow to live here. Elik explained to me that this road linked CaelCirk and Mendel, two of the top fives cities ruling over the external part of the forest. That''s why there is a lot of activity and why the road is so well maintained. Along the stroll i tried multiple times to free my hand that Elik had held since we got out of the house but she wouldn''t let go of me no matter what thus i accepted my fate. If you forget the xenophobics faggots trying to kill me each fifty meters, it was a pleasant stroll. It was so peaceful that i nearly forgot that some five kilometers north there was hell on earth. I don''t know why but i feel like i will have to go there for Landar some day. BBBrrrrrr~ After following Elik''s lead during twenty five minutes, because her little leg didn''t allowed her to walk more quickly, we finally arrived at a wooden cabin with a fair amount of wood piled around it. The cabin was big enough to have three rooms inside and had a little garden like structure near the entrance where was seated a muscular man with scars all over his face seemingly enjoying a cup of tea at the table in the middle of the garden thing. Elik finally let go of my hand and waved at the huge figure of the man while shouting "Moss! eh oh!" before she rushing toward him Me? I was still trying to close my agape mouth which opened herself at the view of this overly manly man showing so much refinement and calm in his drinking posture.... Pretty please! act like you should dammit! The gap is just too big! The man look like he could smash a head like a cranberry with the palm of his hand! He have a face that say ''beware dangerously violent'' with all of his scars and his half torn left bear ear! How in the world could someone like that be so much out of context!? Oh wait! Burly and bear ears? Is he perhaps a relative of the weapon store owner? "What are you doing dozing off like that? Come take a seat with us!" Elik doesn''t seeing me reacting came back and dragged my intoughts self closer to the table as well as closer to THE man. "Greetings lad" Once i was close enough Moss greeted me politely with his grave voice and extended his hand toward me. Here we are more in the context, if he had a high pitched voice i don''t know what would have happened. "Ah-eh yes! Good morning mister Moss i presume? It''s a pleasure to meet you. I''m Zell, the man you rescued yesterday." Because i was still thinking about how he looked i was slightly surprised when i realised that he waited for my reaction, i still shook hand with him by reflex and clumsily introduced myself meanwhile i tried to come back to reality. "Pleased to meet you too Zell but i must admit that you surpised me, looking as fine as you are after being diagnosed as crippled Gahahaha! You have quite the vitality, don''t you?" Even the laugh is the same! I would bet my hand that these guys are siblings! "Yeah, i heal fast" When i said that, i saw his face grew red. Did i say something to anger him?! I don''t want to fight against a muscle mountain like him! "Gahahahaha! He heal fast he says! Gahahahaha! Elik did you hear him, healing fast! gahahahaha!" Ow... it''s safe! He only find me funny! Phew~ "Guhehehe He said the same thing this morning when i found him cooking us a breakfast as apology for the trouble guhehehe" continued a slightly chuckling Elik That was the moment when Moss couldn''t take it anymore, bright red and the corner of his mouth twitching he bursting in the biggest laughter i ever heard "Bbbbreakfast gahahahaha! He was near the death door twelve hours ago and he- and he cooked breakfast to thanks you prffffft BWAHAHAHAHAHA! I''M BEGINNING TO LIKE YOU MATE!" ARGH ! THIS LAUGH! IT''S SO DAMN LOUSY THAT I HAVE TO SHOUT IN MY MIND IF I WANT TO HEAR MY THOUGHTS! AND GUESS WHAT? IT''S FUCKING CONTAGIOUS! AND I''M INFECTED! HALP! SOMEONE SEND ME HALP! "GAHAHAHAHAHA!" "Haha..ha..hahahaha!" "Guehehehehehe!" We laughed like that for a good while. Seriously what''s wrong with the people around me ? ------ I NEED YOU :1more: to find the mistakes i left behind because i still hate them! Don''t hesitate to scout them and give me a report in the comments! Chapter 4: Sample, Not so happy tree friends and A flying log? Hello! Useless author here! I''m currently trying to rewrite everything, meaning that all the content in the chapters will soon* be completely changed, my desire to bang my head against a wall will increase and the synopsis will certainly get a little face-lift aswel. So if you had previously read the chapters or about to do it, just forget. Thanks for the attention. *take note that the meaning of the word ''soon'' is extremely relative, could be a month, three months, half a year...Dependent on my ability to write something of acceptable quality which is extremely uncertain. Chapter 4: Samples, Not so happy tree friends and A flying log? After we could finally settle down from our localised outbreak of hilarity, we discussed lightly around the tea tasting like camomile Moss served us and the little biscuit he made as assortments. Despite his look and his occupation he sure can receive guest. still out of context though. We continued to do some small talk for one good hour during the one i learned that Elik got a lot of henchman like duty from Mya and was rather disatisfied to say the least, Mya over working a child is bad! That Moss was once a guard, and a good one if you believe his stories, however he prefer to live in the forest, away from the sound and the crowd of the city, even if he is not against spending some time downtown to take a stroll or simply visit his family. When he said that he had family living in the city, i questioned him about the weapon dealer and their resemblances. He directly asked back if i was challenged to kill a sluth. That''s how I learnt that the man owning the weapon shop was his brother Nell, He always challenge his new customers, it''s his own way of doing business so he explain. And by the way the weapons on sales were made by their father, Uril, the best blacksmith in the vicinity. Apparently i was right about the monster''s components use but not about the receiver of the steed tonic, from what i understood it''s their father''s birthday soon and each year they would give him a pack of such tonics for his exclusive use in case of ''emergency'', if you know what i mean. I also leaned what they expected of the Imperos festival, for Moss it''s the biggest eater contest and Elik it''s the finale representation with something akin to fireworks that and others not so interesting matters. Oddly they never asked me why i, a human, was here, in a beastman country or even why i was thrown into such a state. Now that i think about it the three persons i met today never asked anything about me. Suspicious~ Even if I find them suspicious and even if it only has been this much time since I know them, i can''t stop myself to think that they are attaching. When the mood finally allowed it, I brought the matter about me repaying my debt toward him on the table but after appraising me the same way his brother did earlier he said that he didn''t need anything beside a sluth or some more hand to cut the wood because the quantity of woodcutter is decreasing drastically. Then i asked him why but he responded while shrugging his shoulders "Because of the increase of monster and bandit attacks these pussies are hiding behind their wall. Ah! it''s not my case! I''m not afraid of monsters or of some trash too lazy to find a honest job like those bandits!" Strangely i could easily believe the fact that he wasn''t afraid of anything. I mean look at him! In front of something like him It''s the monster that is going to wet its pants! Hearing him braging and me slightly laughing at the idea of a monster running back while crying for its mother, Elik asked in a joking tone if it was fine if he was wasting his time chatting with us in place of actually working. At that He stopped in the middle of his sentence where he was going to boast about his guard days and looked at the sun''s position. "You are right. It should be good enough now. Elik i will let you set everything up and Zell if you want to give me a hand it''s now, follow me" What with this sudden change of mood? He then went toward his cabin, signaling me to follow him with a wave of his big hand. Curious and because Elik shooed me to follow him i got up from my chair and entered the house with him. Then we arrived in the first room, a kitchen... probably. It''s a bit hard to really know if its a kitchen or a weapon storage. What was in favor of the kitchen was the presence of typical kitchen furniture, the biscuit and the tea preparation leftovers as to what was in favor of the weapon storage, it was the huge amount of bladed or blunt ustensils around the room, they certainly weren''t destined to be used in any cooking process because who the fuck would need a fucking sledgehammer in a kitchen ?! Okay maybe to hammer the meat, a big piece of meat, but what about the halberd? Leaving me in full introspection, Moss advanced without much care and took a big two handed axe with a blade aroud forty centimeter wide made of a blueish gray alloy, like the ones i saw back at the weapon dealer, from a rack on the wall before glancing toward me, probably waiting for some kind of reaction from me. "Hum.. okay, what are those weapons and what do i have to do?" "My father call them his ''samples'', they are some of his tentatives on creating using a new technique, alloy composition, shape or model. When he feel like it he will make one and ask me to try it, you just have to pick the one you prefer the most because we will ''test'' them soon enough" he explained Hum, it makes sense. "Eh...so your father craft the weapons, you try them and your brother sell them? That''s a nice family business you got here." I looked at the exposed weapons while muttering that but once again i didn''t find anything being in my range of mastery. Even between the twenty weapons in the room i didn''t have any way of being able to wield them without ridiculing myself. No matter how i think about it there is no way that i could use two to three meters long weapons without cleaving myself off something afterall. If its a halberd i might be able to do something good but i still prefer ask for a sword. swords are good, swords are justice, eat swords. "Say, do you have something more longsword-like? I''m not into the hammers and axes" Hearing my question, He adopted a thinking pose with his fist against his chin until a bulb lightened above his head and he hitted his hand with his fist in a ''eureka'' fashion. "Wait a minute, I might have something like that!" He said just before rushing inside the room at the left of the entrance door, is that a bedroom? After a brief moment during the one i heard searching sound coming from there he came back with a sword made of the same alloy as the rest long of one meter twenty in a wooden case. I know that i ask a lot of question but what do you do with a sword in your bedroom when you have racks to put it on? "Here, it''s a new tentative that i didn''t tested yet, it felt too light for me thus i left it be for now. My father, having a thing for heavier weaponry, recently tried to produce some lighter one in the optic of extending his field of expertise. this sword is the result, one meter of blade made of Alken alloy which components were extracted from the Scion reachs at the west. It''s sharp as well as possess a good durability however because it''s a first try it might be a bit unbalanced or possess some flaws so I will be counting on you to give me your feeling about its performance after we have finished. Take it then follow me." Sounds awesome! After extending my hand to grab the weapon, i inspected it in the detail meanwhile i followed Moss outside. The sword weighed something like one kilogramme and felt relatively good in the hand, its design was rather plain, it''s logic to not care to much about the details for a first try afterall. As for the sharpness of the edge- Ouch! It went into my skin like in a lump of butter! Argh! it''s bleeding! Quick let''s stop the bleeding by sucking it! Hum *slurp*, now that i think about cutting through things why does a woodcutter ask me to help him with a sword? "Since earlier you had spoken about trying the weapons but are you not a lumberjack? Obviously You aren''t going to use weapon as woodcutting tools, right?" I asked with my cutted index in mouth once we were outside in front of a seated Elik a bit exhausted and sweaty but bearing a proud smile while drinking her tea. Something happened in the three minutes we went in? "Don''t worry you will soon understand, Elik is everything set up?" "Yep, they will be here in less than two minutes" "What will come?!" "How much?" "Can someone answer me?!" "*sigh* each day more of them keep on appearing, thus it will be a like yesterday, just another little challenge~." "Around five then?" "five what?!" "Bingo~" "Don''t let me in the blank!" "Nice job princess" "It wasn''t much, it''s you guys who will do the most of the work afterall" "That''s it! i give up!" No matter how much i agitated my arms or raised my voice to get them to notice me they just kept on ignoring me, dejected i decided sat next to Elik and pout while crunching some cookies to fill my stomach still half empty even after all the tea and cookies i previously chugged but a low-pitched growl stopped me in my tracks "Grrrrrrrrooooooooooooo!" "Oops miscalculation of mine, it was more like ten seconds~" "Can''t help it, Zell let''s go!" He suddenly grabbed me by the collar and dragged me along with him toward the edge of the clearing. "Wait! Explain me fiiiiiiiiiiirst!!!" "Good luck~!" -------- "GRRRRoooooOOOoooo!" The growl was stronger after we had advanced enough through the layer of tree and i could perceive movement in the shadows surrounding us, certainly fleeing little animals. Me? i was still being dragged by Moss like a old sack, a living and displeased old sack... "Okay, what the fucking flaming fuck is fucking happening?!" "Shhhhh, dont make too much noise...they will target you." "What will target me?" "Treants..." "...treants? what do you mean by treants? the monster that use people as fertiliser? that''s why you gave me a sword?! You know i should still be in my bed right now AND you want someone who should be crippled to fights fucking TREANTS?!" He is no lumberjack! Killing trees able to gut someone isn''t anything akin to woodcutting! It''s just bland monster hunting! "Like you care, you are tough enough to heal a cut from my father sword in twenty seconds, what are you afraid of? Beside under your funny look and behaviors I can see your way of standing, how you look at stranger like if they were potential enemies and how you are someone used to fight as well as seeing fights. Treants won''t be dangerous for someone like you." I healed? what? .... Holy shit! the cut on my finger isn''t here anymore! body! stop doing strange things without my conscent! it creep me out! Beside "You aren''t even sure of what you say! all of this is some mere speculations of yours." "Maybe you are right, but I will continue to do like i always did when i was guard, by trusting my instinct. And my instinct tell me that you aren''t someone bad an that you you can be trusted thus i trust you and bring you in my morning session of woodcutting" "*sigh* to act like that... you never were betrayed before, right?" it''s dangerous to only live by your instinct, you know? "Nope, my instinct always made me guess someone''s nature thus i beated them to a pulp before they could betray me. We will discuss relationship''s alchemy later, now it''s time to focus, they are coming..." "GUROOOOOO!" Just when he put me on my legs while ordering me to focus a huge humanoid leaped from the trees shadows and stood in front of us. The humanoid was three meter high, completely made of wood, it''s torso was a stout log with thick bark drawing irregular pattern giving a ruguous feeling to it, from the human-shaped torso extended a head, one arm and two leg each made of vegetal waste and in its molded skull head bore a hole in which a little green light was dancing restlessly and was the source of the deep growl. It wasn''t a joke.... Fuck A treant, a lump of dead wood having gathered too much of the ambiant mana and thereby was brought to life to mindlessly attack any other mana sources at proximity to consume them and grow stronger. Often hunted for their magic wood, great magic conductors and sources, the fluorescent moss growing on them possesing analgesic properties and their leafs as luxury spices. Sometimes if you are lucky you can even get a magic core useful in a lot of field making it a pricy material. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. *ting*! Ooooooooh i understand now! Elik was sweaty because she came here to empty her magic power to gather the treants that Moss will use as test subjects for his father''s weapon and once hunted down they gather their respective components while sharing the earning of what they don''t personally need and everybody win from this. Smart, really smart! But it means that the treant should be cleanly killed. Tch. "I suppose that you need the component" No fire magic then, to bad, not like light magic could do anything to them too "That''s right also, that one is mine" said the confident Moss as he stepped toward the wooden geant in a relaxed battle stance with his badass axe in hand. I like where this is going! Go kill them all while i look at the entertainment. "Come at me!" "GRRRROOOOO" "Aaaaaah!" Both shouting a battle cry, The monster and the man... bearman, both charging at each other, both decidind to have the hide... or bark of the other, both ready to end the other life with its arm condensed into a deadly whip for the first and with his huge battle axe brandished for the second. An epic fight was bound to happen so.... Why did the treant went past Moss and continued to charge at meeeeeeeeeee!? "Aaaah! Bad Groot! Sit!" Seeing the two hundreds kilogrammes launched at full speed toward me, i did what was the most logic thing to do. Run far away. A chance that they are reputed to be relatively slow. *slam* "I said sit! You goddamn overgrown fern!" Taking me as target, the treant slammed his body against the tree which was at my previous location while flailing his whip arm around to grab my retreating figure before i could take cover behind a tree, a chance that I''m nimble when i retreat. God fucking dammit! What have i done AGAIN !? "Zell it look like it fell in love with you! Keep doing what you did to distract it! I will try to bring it down quickly" I don''t want it to like me! it''s because i became handsomer right!? Stop! I''m not into plants! even though i don''t hate planturous women *whip* *crash* Nice, the treant which felt in love with me like to use whip... why do i always attract freaks? Even with the threatening Moss moving toward its back the thing continued to attack me with his whip, half shredding the tree protecting me in his onslaught "Fuck fuck fuck fuck!" *whip* *blam* It passed at five centimeter of me !!! "Too close!" *whip* *clack* *blam* It''s making the trees fall on me!!! stop cutting my escape routes! It''s unfair! "MOSS! Will you attack it one day or you just want to see how long i can survive!?" I shouted impatiently at the bearman sluggishly making his way toward the blindspot of the thing "Coming! It''s hard for me to don''t get the collateral damages so shut up and evade!" Nooooooo, I''m just going to stand still and get killed. "That''s what I''m doing!" "Continue then!" Like seriously!? it''s not your life which is at stake here! "You begin to piss me-GROOOOO! *whack* bwaaaaaaaaak! *blam*" Unbeknown to me something suddenly appeared in my peripherical vision, I then took a hit out of nowhere in the stomach and flew far from my previous location because in my argument with Moss i forgot what they previously said. "GURRRRROOOOOOO!" there are five of them... Because of my stupid mistake I flew at a good distance from the first treant and crashed agaist a tree lying in my trajectory. biting my lip in the process as well as letting go of the sword which planted itself into a stump two meters away. Damn it hurt.... Seriously don''t hit in the stomach after i pigged this much tea and cookies, i will puke guh... *CLACK* What is this sound...oh come on! *Blam* My impact with the tree teared off a big branch and made it fall on the back of my head making me kiss the floor as i was going to get up. A rpg, a galge and now a cartoon ?! Really?! "That''s it... I''m pissed!" After i wiped with my sleeve the blood that leaked out of my mouth, brought my back in his former state with a loud *crack*, crouched down to pick the sword i let go and assumed a fighting stance in front of the two new opponents coming out of cover of the trees. "GOOOOOOO!" Not taking well the fact that i survived a direct punch of its, altleast i guess, it''s not like i could read the expression of a piece of wood, the treant who previously attacked me transformed its arm into a club with a *cracklack* and charged me with the same demarch as a gorilla. "Not twice fucker! Mana edge! ORAAA!" I too mindlessly charged after applying a thin layer of blue energy on my blade to further sharpen it and strenghtening its blueish taint, ofcourse my reach being shorter that the one of my foe i first had to dodge the heavy vertical swipe of its club before his weak point got in my striking range. Weak point easily determinable by a simple gaming rule: What is shiny is important! "take that FUCKER!" Thus i used his lowered arm as foothold and propulsed myself to thrust the meter long blade through the light floating in its skull, killing it on the spot. Easy~ *thud* *blam* Using my movement and the geant''s shoulder to increase my momentum enough to allow me to lightly land behind the now lifeless creature''s back, I was directly in front of the second opponent which looked more smart than his degenerated brethen because he was circling around me, studying me. It might be an older one, that''s good, treants components are like alcohol, the older the expensiver. Choosing to not directly attack me even with its obvious physical superiority the living log enracined it''s feet to gather mana from the soil, making the light in its skull grow like a devouring flame. "Oh no you don''t!" Not wanting the thing to shoot a laser from his orbits or use some nature magic i rushed toward the old treant, its legs articulations more accurately. i''m not joking, it''s possible to shoot laser beam if you have enough magic, no need to tell you that it could hurt pretty bad. But the moment i was in range to attack the two legs i was suddenly stopped in my motion and fell flat on the floor, again. Remember my comment about the cartoon? "Eh? Why can''t i move?...oh... you are quite viscious for a piece of wood, you know that?" It trapped me. its feet weren''t plunged in the floor to gather mana but to extends its roots to hold me in place before stricking me! And i fell for it! "Gurohrohrohroh" Assuming that it was able to laugh, it mocked me before condensing the branch of its arm in the shape of a wooden sword *cracklack* "*gulp* no good!" "Grroooooo!" Now fully confident in its victory against an immobilised I, it swung horizontally its bladed arm to cut me in half As if someone like me would get killed like that. "Just kidding! Sword wave!" Unfornately for it i hadn''t drawn all my cards yet as still on the floor i parried its attack by swinging my weapon in a wide arc. In this motion the blue hue around my sword separated from it and crashed against the wooden blade, destabilising and pushing it back with enough strength to let me the time to shred the thick roots entraving my feet and take a safe distance from it. Tch. Its sword is just a bit dented inward and not cleanly severed like i expected. You don''t make it easier for me you know? "GROOOOOOO!" Certainly not used to get hit and even more injured, as far a piece of wood can be injured or feel pain, the treant got infuriated and after pushing a loud howl, it charged me while hacking like a mad ma...woodman. Hard to kill and short tempered, aren''t we? Its movements being completely imprevisible, i did as i could to avoid the hits and was back at taking cover behind trees which unlike the treant weren''t able to move around thus were mercilessly slaughtered, waiting for the good opening. No i''m not coward, I just act strategically. "GGRRRRROOOOOO" *swoosh* *crack* *blablablam!* "Miss" it still missed me but it cut two tree in one swipe. not bad. *swoosh* *crack* *blablablablablam!!!* "Try again!" incredible! it got four trees in one go! NEW RECORD! It went like that for five good minutes, around fifty trees where killed during these five minutes.Please help us to stop the deforestation, join Green Peace. And to think that there are people who are believing that treants are forest''s protectors. just mindless rotten stick if you want my opinion. My efforts somehow paid and it lost me when i slipped behind its back and stealthily hid in a lucky bush when he trashed my last cover, if it had a face it would show a dumbfounded expression judging from his way of circling around my last known location. Why bothering myself to kill it cleanly when i could simply burn it or cut it in dice, you ask? Simply because this thing is a walking gold vault, because Moss didn''t specified anything about the parts that interested them and because if i kill it without damaging the components too much my debt toward Elik, Mya and Moss should be cleared quicklier, enabling me to quit these people the moment i will need it the most without leaving any bad aftertaste. They are too much friendly, it would become dangerous if i stay around them for too long. "grrooo?" Chance! Profiting of the fact that it bend to look after my possible dead body under a tree log while doing a stupid interrogative growl, i rushed toward its exposed back and climbed up to its shoulders, my weapon already clad in the familiar blue hue as well as positioned to penetrate the hardened wooden shell encompassing its weak point but i didn''t had enough time to take action. The wood geant, feeling my weigh on its back suddenly raised its upper body, pushing me out of balance. However after doing my best to not fall i was somehow able to overlap the treant with my legs locked around its head base. Ready for a rodeo... I''m so fucked... Understanding what was happening, It first tried to grab me but i evaded his free hand by moving toward place of its anatomy he didn''t knew of and because it was too stupid to change back its sword into a functional arm it could''t get me, as i moved like a cockroach on its body. Randomly swiping its arms being fruitless, it then tried another way to get me. its genius idea was to ram its body in the trees surrounding us. Pure genius... "Stop! *blam* that won''t work! *bonk* you will hurt yourself instead!" Meanwhile the big boy was trying to kill me, i was doing my best to stay still on it and put the sword in a way that will make it... *slam* *shring* "Gorororo......" "Told you, dumbass" ...penetrate its head at the next impact. Older but not smarter by much, huh? *bodom* Climbing down from the geant which died still against a tree lucky enough to not be cut down like its brethen, i looked around for Moss. Treant aren''t that dangerous after all, you just have to know where to hit, be able to dodge and being a bit smarter than them~ *bodom* Where the fuck is Moss? *bodom* It''s impossible that i was thrown too far away and only suffer from a light back pain so he should still be somewhere close, right? *bodom* "GRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Wow! That''s a big shout! "Zell! Get down!" Getting down? Why? Oh... Is that a tree!? Shit! *blam* *blam* *dogon* A huge log was flying toward me and i had just enough time to jump flat behind the lucky tree before the projectile crashed near my location, rotating slightly upon impact and finishing its course against a rock lying there. What AGAIN !? ------ Like always help me eradicate the insidious mistakes which took over the land that this chapter is by reporting them in the comment! oh by the way, thank you for reading me! Chapter 5: Administrative work to its finest, Pyrotechnics and Forced labor Hello! Useless author here! I''m currently trying to rewrite everything, meaning that all the content in the chapters will soon* be completely changed, my desire to bang my head against a wall will increase and the synopsis will certainly get a little face-lift aswel. So if you had previously read the chapters or about to do it, just forget. Thanks for the attention. *take note that the meaning of the word ''soon'' is extremely relative, could be a month, three months, half a year...Dependent on my ability to write something of acceptable quality which is extremely uncertain. Chapter 5: Administrative work to its finest, Pyrotechnics and Forced labor -Country of Oppalk, Ifeaf City- Hundreds of kilometers away, in a big but simply furnished study overflowing with documents, scrolls and bookshelves filled on the verge of crumbling was an elderly man reading through a pile of papers. That man was the definition of the veteran warrior long past his date. He possessed an old yet muscular body, harsh features like the ones who saw enough hopeless situation for five life times, piercing gray eyes which certainly were used to staring contest with death, a manly square jaw decorated by a clumsily sculpted white beard as white as his pure white short hair. That was the look of the man intently mumbling over the reports invading his desk. *Knock* *Knock* "Director Malrialdis?" "..." Focused on his task he didn''t reacted at the genderless voice calling him from the wooden door at the other end of the room and continued his tedious task. If one was paying close attention to his face, they would see that his expression turned grimmier with each page he read through, no need to be a genius to understand that the content of those page weren''t good news. *KNOCK* *KNOCK* "HEY OLD FART OPEN UP!!!" Five minutes after the first knock another one, more violent, resounded from the heavy wooden door reinforced with metal frames followed by another voice calling him, a more strong willed and especially impatient voice belonging to a woman. But the old man didn''t minded it and left the persons behind the door, waiting. "No you can''t do that!" "YOU WANT HIM TO MAKE US WAIT LONGER?!" "No, i have my matter to attend as well but you still can''t act like that!" Apparently the impatient one didn''t received well the fact of being ignored by the man and was arguing with the calm one about what they should do. For minutes they made a ruckus on the other side of the door with the violent one voicing her discontent while the genderless one kept on repeating that she couldn''t act like she wanted to, until... "HELL I CAN! LOOK!" *BLAM* Impatient finally lost her last glimpse of patience and kicked the door open. However the kick possessed too much strength thus the innocent and especially heavy door left its frame en flew across the room to fall at the feet of the old man''s desk with a loud *dong!* causing him to slowly raise his face from his work and emotionlessly assess the situation like if it was a daily occurence. "See? it worked wonder. Hello old man!" The first person to enter was wearing with a satisfied smile. That person was ofcourse the owner of the foot which destroyed the door. She was a rather tall young woman with a height of one meter ninety, tanned skin, dark hair falling on her shoulders and wearing light clothes like the ones of the belly dancer from middle east, exposing most of her skin. With her well develloped breast and neat features she could be called feminine if not for her overly muscular body. "*Sigh* Good morning director Malrialdis, we came to give you our report." Following behind the woman was the owner of the genderless voice who entered the room after bowing respectfully. In total contrast to his comrade, this person was wearing a full plate armor richly decorated with a knight helmet completely enclosing his face as well as his body, hiding his features and inducing the strange sounding of his voice. The only things he had in common with the woman was his height. After sighing in front of the lost of another door, the fifth in half a month, Director Malrialdis calmly joined his hands over his reading material before greeting them "Good morning to both of you too. I can see that you are impatient to finish this shore of a report then let''s not waste anymore time, I''m listening." Nodding while hitting his armored chest the knight begin to report without waiting. "*KLANG* As you wish! The subjugation of the goblin nest threatening the village of Lemis was a success. Like our information told us, they were at a staggering number of one hundred fifty two however we still were able to prevent any citisen casualities. The only lost were some crops field destroyed before our venue. They had a surprisingly well organised structure despite their low intellect, raising the difficulty of the mission but we still overpowered them by sheer force before freeing their prisoners and now their nest as well as their lives are no more. Over" "Good, I''m relieved that you didn''t ran into any singularity but why is there only Leila accompanying you, El? Where are Melody and Demyhl?" After that the names of their two teammates were pronouced Leila begun to chuckle while putting her hand on her mouth as to not make it too loud and even El, if one was to pay close attention to his shaking shoulders, would understand that he had a hard time suppressing his laughter as well. It''s only after some second necessary to calm down that El responded while Leila was already half crouched, holding her exposed belly and emitting unlady like groaning. "Ahem sorry about our behaviors....Melody must be in her bed sleeping like because she used a lot of mana to destroy the whole structure as for Demyhl...kuhkuhkuh...my apologies it escaped my throat, hum. Demyhl must be in her bath most probably trying to get rid of the stench sticking to her since that goblin burst open after being hit by one of Melody''s spell, covering her with its guts" "YAHAHAHAHA! My side! I still remember her face at that time Hahahaha! It''s killing me! Make it stop hahaha!" Not able to hold it any longer Leila finally fell on the floor with her face filled with tears and laughing like crazy. Even the shaking of the calm El somewhat increased upon remembrance of the scene. "Mmyes it''s funny. I''m sorry to kill your mood but you will soon have to get them out of their quarters and head for another mission" Hearing this El and Leila both stopped laughing and stared at the old man before voicing their opposition. "What?!" "But sir we just came from a tediou-" Malrialdis knew that it wouldn''t please them so he made a calming gesture with his hands and said "Sshh, calm yourself i know that it wasn''t an easy task and that you need rest but you are the only team capable enough to succeed this mission" Not really pleased to be in a ''capable'' team or even calmed by the serious face of the director, Leila directly rebuked him "What about our post-mission days off?!" "This is too urgent to be delayed but i''m willing to give you one whole week of holiday upon completion of this mission" The proposition was somewhat attractive for El as they didn''t get more than one or two days of rest between their missions but it still wasn''t enough for Leila. "One whole week isn''t enough! *SLAM*" Once again playing the impatient, she neared the old man''s desk and slammed both her fist on the poor furniture, bending it slightly. Malrialdis heaved a exagerated sigh of exasperation before finally asking her price. "*sigh* what do you want then?" Locking her redish brown eyes with his own cold gray, she responded in one go and without any hesitation. "Two weeks" "Impossible, your team can''t be out of service this long! ten days" Only to be rebuked by the old man. But unyeilding, Leila exherced more strength on the poor desk making scrinch in despair under her inhuman strength before continuing the haggling. "Twelves days" Feeling that it was the right time as she wouldn''t let go without fighting, Malrialdis played his trump card. "Ten days and a reservation for four at Emilio''s high grade restaurant, i won''t go higher" Hearing the name ''Emilio'', El literally jumped from where he stood and ruthlessly pushed Leila to take her place in front of Malrialdis before asking in a deeply interested tone, so interested that his eyes shined through the little holes of his armor to the point the old man had to blink to keep eye contact. "The whole service?" He nodded "The whole service" Hearing the proposal even Leila was surprised. "The whole services?!" "Adjuged! What, why and where?" The huge pression from the exchange suddenly disapeared when El agreed, letting the old man release a relieved sigh. "Strange monster activity, find the cause of these activity, if possible get rid of the cause and external part of the Hexas forest. All the additional details you would need are in this file. Good luck." He finished his last sentenced after handing a one centimeter thick file to the armored person who directly pushed it through a slid of their armor before beginning to drag Leila who was already voicing some sort of complaints "We will depart tonight" Was the last thing El said before they both left, one being dragged by the other. Leaving the old man alone in his study with a destroyed door and his bend desk. Knowing he wouldn''t be bothered in a while now, he fished the book with a rose cover titled ''the fire of love'' seating on his lap before gently placing it on his desk and resuming his reading with a concerned expression. ------ -Back to the Hexas forest- After making sure that there was only one projectile, i looked at the place where i stood just three seconds ago and wow! The log was so heavily projected that it tore through the earth and the trees on its way before finishing its course on a rock chilling there. In a way it could have turned uglier if it wasn''t for Moss call there would be a mashed body added to the picture. I should get him something as a thanks latter on. I got up and made my way toward the thing that nearly killed me because even if I''m sure that it''s made of wood its shape looked strange to me. And my gut feeling was right. There was a mistake on the merchandise... It wasn''t a big log but a huge treant five meters high!!! Well it should have been five meter high because right now it was so much beated down that it lost its head, an arm and one of his leg plus a part of another one. Damn. What kind of nature''s error could do something like that to a treant this big... and the huge gash on its torso! It must have been a hell of a claw to inflict such clean and long injury, so clean it looked like it was made by a well sharpened long bladed weapon wielded by the someone possessing the strength of ten men. ... It''s impossible that it was Moss doing, right? "Hey Zell! Are you alright?" Speaking of the devil...i mean bear. Carrying a bit of worry in his voice Moss quickly joined me near the body. "Yeah but it was a close call, one second later and i would have become a redberry mash. But let''s not talk about it here it''s dangerous" i pointed at the state of the treant "There is a monster able to beat the living light out of a treant like that lurking around we should-" But he cut me in the middle of my sentence with his trademark laugh. "GAHAHAHA! Don''t worry lad. GAHAHAHAHA! You have the monster in front of you and it don''t bite. GAHAHAHA" ... He did that?! What''s wrong with this man''s strength?! Is that normal to be able to trash this easily something like that?! Beside he nearly killed me ! No gift for you then! "How?!" At my incredulous question he responded in a tone implying ''i did nothing special'' with a simple shrug of his shoulders. "I just attacked until it died" YOU DON''T SAY? Why the fuck did i bothered myself keeping them whole when you can just destroy them like that?! "Why?! You just had to cut the head!" He once again shrugged and responded on the same tone as before while pointing at the dead body at our feet "Why, you ask? That''s why, look" *Krakaclack* "GRRRRRROOOOOOOO!" "Holy shit... what the fuck is that?!" It''s regrowing! The dead treant is regrowing its limbs while convulsing! Even the head is growing back! Cheat! A monster is cheating here! "Don''t know, i kept cutting the head but it would regrow back in seconds. After the tenth time i lost my cool and just tried to inflict the most damage possible but even that didn''t work. What a bother.*chop*" And on these word he swung his axe toward the monster''s head, Cleanly cutting it off and making the body stop its disgusting convulsions. "See?" He said with a complete poker face when he turned back toward me. Dude! don''t kill something before looking at me emotionlessly like that, it''s scary as hell! you look like a psycho! "What are you dazing off about?" "Ah eh? Nothing, nothing. So how do we kill this thing?" "Don''t know, dismembering don''t work, decapitation either and even if you smash it like that it would keep healing back. the only solution i can think of would be to burn it but i didn''t took the necessary with me." It sound like a waste to destroy it as it is literally a enchanted wood factory but letting something this big alive without anyway to restrain it sound more dangerous than productive. "If it only is burning something this size, i can help." At my response Moss squinted his eyes while looking at me. "You have something able to set fire to a five meters treant on you? You are well prepared" "No need for tools when you can use magic" Wow! Stop squinting your eyes like that they will pop out! What did i say which could make him react like that? "You? A mage?" Eh? you are surprised at me being a mage when you sent a treant flying out of a fit of anger? "Surprising?" "Well yeah, mages tend to forget a bit too much about forging their bodies afterall and seeing how you held your sword, the way you dodged and how well you stand after being punched by a treant, i have all the right to think that you aren''t physically weak, right?" Put like that... it''s true that i have a more melee fighter body type but look can deceive, you know? Beside if you want to be a good mage you need to have a well toned body for the simple reason that you body condition have a strong influence on your magic effectiveness, don''t we say ''Mens sana in corpore sano'', literally a healthy mind in a healthy body? This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. "Those mage didn''t really understood how magic works, that''s all" "So what''s your grade ~oh powerful mage understanding the secret of the arcanes" "Arcanes aren''t that interesting to study but to answer you i should be something like adept grade? Meh, don''t know because it have been a long time since i used any magic afterall" Who in a world like Earth would purposely show off that he could make a whole building explode by though? i would get arrested and dissected the same day. Nearly happened to me...BRRR i shiver just at the thought. Well after that tragic event i tried to keep low profile thus i didn''t practiced much. "So young and already this advanced in magic, it''s not surprising that Elik like that with you, like her you must some kind of ge-" "GRRRROOOOO" *Krackaclack* Cutting him in the middle of his question, the treant''s head once again grew back with this disgusting convulsing an clacking "Wait a second *chop* *thud* Here we can talk again" Because the head cut him in his sentence, Moss literally cut it as pay back and now two wooden heads where kissing each others on the floor. Drop the ''i''m just cutting the weed'' expression already! it spooks me! "i wouldn''t call myself a genius, let''s just say that i fell on good ''teachers''." In a way, considering Gabriel, Michael an Valdar as my teachers isn''t wrong. "Do you come from an academy?" "An academy?" Like the school for young nobles in the human Empire, Argarth? Do i look like a noble? "Yeah, you know those prestigious organisations scouting talented young ones to train and educate them." Oh that''s new. Okay, maybe not that new but i only know things from before the end of the great war some hundred years ago so it''s normal that my informations on governemental and institutional matters is lacking. Should go to a library one day. "No never heard of something like that, it was more a kind of ''house teaching'' than something else but we will talk about my dark past later, it''s already growing back." "It really is bothersome, huh?" "That''s why i''m gonna burn it, stand back a bit more, would be a shame if you also got cremated" I''m not joking here, if i can make a whole building crumble with my best spell on Earth, a place with hardly any mana left, i don''t know how a normal spell would react in a place filled with mana like this forest, it''s to the limit of suffocating here compared to Earth. "GAHAHAHA! you would have to explain yourself to Mya and Elik and believe me when i say that you don''t want to see them angry at you" He said it jokingly at first before becoming more and more serious until his tone became dreadful. I already saw one taking her revenge while using the other''s desire for sweet things and nearly shat my pants, no way that i could possibly anger them willingly. "Thanks for the advice. Nothing else to add? No then let''s begin gently, ''firebolt''!" In the magic categorisation we have seven grades Apprentice Novice Adept Expert Master King And motherfucking Emperor Just so you know about the level disparities, an apprentice can create a fireball the size a baby fist as for a emperor... remember the dinosaurs? See the comet which squached them like mere insects? Yep that one. That''s basically the power of an emperor magic however that''s not something anyone can do, heck even master magics need atleast ten experts, pretty much the roof top rank for normal humans, to be unleashed. It raise the question: "why the fuck is there the rank over expert?" Well Billy, it''s simple. Everybody and everything isn''t necessarely human. Some races, intelligent races like monster races, have a better magic affinity than the rest. Thus they can use powerfuler magic and reach higher peaks than humans. Beside this fact, they use this ranking for monsters and dangerous organisations too, explaining the existence of the empreror rank equivalent to a world class threat, even if right now there isn''t anything of this level roaming around now, in the past there was. Another question? "Why did he react like that?" Well, when you take into account that magic''s aptitude appears in an individual at twelve, that they need on average three years of training before being able to learn how to formulate an apprentice spell without exploding themself and that you will have train your capacity to manipulate mana if you want to produce more powerful spells, you will quickly understand that most people arriving at expert rank are already reaching the forties. Thus i can admit that being adept at eighteen might be a bit surprising but what can i say? I had good ''teachers''. Coming back at the improvised cremation. After my short chant, a fireball the size of tennis ball circled around my left hand that i extended toward the opened stomach of the beast. Producing an explosion upon impact with one or two fire tongue escaping from the hole. The apprentice spell only dryed the inside of the treant and slightly charred it where the fire tongues passed. It looks weak and all but it''s still a simple way to test out how my magic was influenced by this change of environment..... And it was much powerful than it should have been! First, what about this size?! it was supposed to be a baby fist! Not a baby ogre fist! Second, the fuck with this explosion!? Not any apprentice spell should explode! it only begin to explode when you arrive into the novice section! and i insist on the ''begin'' because it will only be a little *bang* like the cheap firecracker you get at christmas or new year eve! the only spell worthy of being said to produce an explosion in novice rank should be the ''fireball'' spell, just a mightier version of firebolt but it''s much more costy to cast one! Third, it fucking charred the inside?! It should be used to kill small rodents or birds without damaging them too much, used on something bigger it will more likely do damages because it''s a projectile not because it''s hot! It''s too powerful! "So that''s the power of the novice level ''fireball''? it looks pretty dangerous to be on the other end of this spell without a good protection." My inner rambling being unknown to Moss, he still voiced his admiration in front of this display of magic. "No.... It was a simple apprentice firebolt..." "What?!" Let''s calm down and see the good point, now that it''s dry it won''t be that hard to burn it, yeah, i should just use a as simple spell as firebolt to finish. Yeah no reason to freak out because my magic is boosted to this extend... "Next ''wisp''!" If firebolt is a magic used to kill small things, wisp is more on the utilitary side of the strength. it''s just a cute little ember used to light fire in your fireplace, oven, etc. But with the boost it look more like a ''normal'' firebolt... I should continue to light fire the old way, without magic. Flying while lightly zigzaging toward the treant, the wisp gently landed inside the hole i previously dried up and begun its pyromaniacal work by setting all its surrounding in fire. It only took some seconds for the well fed fire to grow healthily and increase in size until it was as big as the breach without stopping its work of destruction Pfiou~ i though it would explode again but it''s not the case! i will be able to use ovens and light fire without worrying! "GRRROOOOOO!" *Kriiishhhhh* But as to kill the mood a darkish aura surrounded the dead treant and quickly smothered the fire. ... What with this murky black disgusting aura?! But more importantly... i can''t slowly burn it down?! Maybe with something more powerful? "...''fireball''..." Half-certain of the results, i still threw a good old fashioned fireball OF DOOM SEVENTY CENTIMETER WIDE !!! But as if it felt the huge, i don''t really know the value but something this big should possess an obscene power level, quantity of mana coming its way, the black thing once again showed itself and forming a disgusting black tentacle, it slapped upward the fireball, completely redirecting its trajectory. ... *BOOOM* ... sigh Looks like i will have to burn it the hard way... Resigning myself, i clenched the sword in my right hand and advanced toward the monster sprawled over the rock, climbing on its massive leg as to be the closer possible of the center of its huge torso, i then stabbed the sword deep inside of it until i felt the hard surface of the rock, so deeply that only the tip of the hilt was still in contact with the outside. No reaction? No? Okay then it should do the trick. Grabbing the hilt with both hand i turned toward Moss before saying "Take one or two step back, I don''t know how powerful it will be" "O-okay." He simply nodded and went next the treant i mounted earlier some twenty meters away. Should be safe but just to be sure. "''Ignifugate''!" A thin white layer suddenly appeared and encased my whole body, leaving me with an oily appearence and a gross cold sensation spreading on my body. Disgusting but necessary "Here is the main course! Eat this ''fire pillar''!" Pushing more and more mana into the sword, flames begin to form an condense around the blade, spinning like mini fire tornado and eating away everything around them but it was only the preparation phase... I quickly took some distance as the sword was dangerously pulsating while the murky aura was beginning to appear, attracted by the close magic signature and once i arrived next to Moss who looked at me interrogatively, i simply shouted "''release''!" after facing toward the hilt. The keyword formulated, all the mana i previously gathered in the sword was released in one go. Creating a violent torrent of fire going upward. From here i couldn''t really say how high it went but i''m sure that it easily exceeded the ten meters. With a heat of this intensity as well as such raging flames going crazy on everything it could, the extremities of the treant''s body quickly turned into ashes. "GRRRROOOO!" But that''s without counting the murky black aura trying to counter my flames by regrowing what was turned into ash and shielding the rest of the body however... It''s useless! You only slow down the unavoidable! No matter how many fire tongues born from the sword the dark aura extiguished, three other would appear to eat the wooden body and the dark aura covering it the next second. Unable to regrow as quickly as it was consumed, the dark thing understood that if it continued to protect something this big it would soon be completely annihilated thus it crawled in a point of the body around the left shoulder, focusing its defence against the fire there and transforming the piece of wood into its last citadel. Quickly burning down the treant''s wood rich in mana, adding more fuel to the spell and strenghtening it, it didn''t took long to the flames, completely buffed, to assault the dark citadel in an all out siege. The clash between the two energies wasn''t tender and little explosions were produced at each swipe of a flame thongue on the dark rempart however the dark aura, showing that it wasn''t a push over, extended its tentacles in counter attack against the consuming of the fire pillar, eating the flames as to regain what it was losing but it was all futile. Because of the increase in surface due to the extensions of the dark tentacles, the fire had more place to burn at thus increasing the destruction rate of the dark citadel''s defences. Noticing that its defence had only few seconds left, the black thingy tried to flee upward from the little piece of wood, sole remain of the once huge treant. Once again it was a poor decision. Certainly not knowing the heat distribution in a flame, the little gathering of black smoke flew higher in the column now nearing the twelve meters. The more it advanced toward the sky the quicklier it was being consumed and when it reached around the four fifth of the fire pillar''s height, the smoke completely disappeared in a weak *pshhh...*. Having nothing else to burn, the fire pillar slowly disappeared into the nothingness it came from leaving a completely black charred surface seven meter wide around the pile of ash that was the treant. That was awesome! "Looks like it worked~" I said with a content tone, the spell wasn''t overbuffed like the low leveled one thus there wasn''t any problem of hazardous explosion or ignition of the whole forest so, yeah, i can be content. However Moss wasn''t in the same mood as me, he looked like he periodically passed through a mix of fear, stupor, surprise and amazement while glaring at me "Is there something on my face?" I nonchalantly asked. "What was that?!" "adept rank ''fire pillar'' why?" "Something like that? Adept rank? Are you sure that it isn''t a higher ranked one?" "No it''s definitely adept rank, if it was the expert rank counterpart of ''fire pillar'', ''Hellish column'' we would be dead" "Is that so? Pretty impressive...." "Yeah i know but it was just enough to overpower this strange dark aura. speaking of which what do you usually do when you encounter a monster with a troublesome ability like that?" If there are more of those things, the people crossing the forest might be in danger as not everybody can produce a fire pillar out of sheer will. "Usually you give a report to the city with some proofs to give weigh to your words." "In this case our proofs just went up in smoke so we can''t give any sort of report." "Yep, but i have another way to warn the autority, don''t worry." Pausing a moment he looked at the sun, probably guessing the time we spent ''''timbering'''' "Hum...enough chatting, it''s late and we still have four treant''s corpse to get back to my cabin." "What?! you want me to drag those things on two hundreds meters?!" "See another way to retrieve them?" "Can''t you rent a malboon carrier?" "the carriage won''t be able to advance through the forest" It''s......undeniable "...Okay you win" "Happy that you understand. I will take those two, they are the farthest. you take the two others." And like that he led the way while dragging the two lifeless bodies by their rooted feet, leaving trail of upturned dirt on his wake I won''t comment the fact that he is pulling a weigh of five thousand kilograms through a root filled forest with a slight slope. "Aye aye sir..." Body strenghtening is so broken. ------------ Chapter 6: Bad luck Brion, Magic and Forced training? Hello! Useless author here! I''m currently trying to rewrite everything, meaning that all the content in the chapters will soon* be completely changed, my desire to bang my head against a wall will increase and the synopsis will certainly get a little face-lift aswel. So if you had previously read the chapters or about to do it, just forget. Thanks for the attention. *take note that the meaning of the word ''soon'' is extremely relative, could be a month, three months, half a year...Dependent on my ability to write something of acceptable quality which is extremely uncertain. Chapter 6: Bad luck Brion, Magic and Forced training? In a cave deep underground, in the Scion mountains separating the free country of Opalk from Lerass, two hooded men were discussing in a fairly wide room, glancing at a tree shaped black crystal emiting a purple light from the ten or so branches. The light wasn''t warm at all but rather cold and drepressing, tainting the whole room in a inhospitable hue. "How is the corrupted tree?" Asked the first man without moving his proud eyes from the strange tree. "Reacting like it should and slowly but surely growing with each monster it corrupts, master Eins." Responded the hooded young man at his side after fliping through a bloc of notes. "Did the corruption spread to any lerassian?" "Nothing in our recorded data is indicating such behaviors." "Good grief, Any problems with the control over the monsters?" "Yes, unfortunately there are some specimens which were able to fight against the corruption, enabling them to keep a glimpse of free will however the orders previously implanted are still in action." "How many of these?" "Three cases recorded master." "Where?" "A xozedezn and a crust in the central part as well as a treant less than five kilometers south from the guardian''s barrier. Apparently it confirms that the corruption need more time to totally spread in more powerful individuals." "I can understand the xozedezn and the crust, but how was the treant able to resist the corruption?" "It seems it was an especially strong treant subspecie who killed a whole group of our corrupted karougals, pushing the corruption within them to begin a change of host but because of the treant''s abnormal strength and organism the corruption wasn''t able to fully dominate its will and they somehow...merged." "Mmh...merging with the corruption...interesting discovery...But strong or not this thing is too close of the civilisation, give it the order to go in the a less populated area and continue the research of the shrines. i don''t want to risk it being defeated and drawing attention toward us, the locals are already on guards it would get dangerous if they knew about our little experiences." "Even if i am certain that the treant won''t be defeated this easily because it possess a powerful regenerative ability further enhanced by the corruption making it nearly immortal as one would need a really powerful magic to properly kill it, your wishes are my orders master Eins, i will try to give it the instructions. Wait a second please." After bowing toward his master, he calmly walked toward an altar at the foot of the crystallised tree where was floating a palm sized orb covered in purple runes and begun to move his hands around it, lightly tapping the surface once in a while before turning his face back at his master, a jubilant smile plastered on his hooded face. "Master, it seems that the corrupted treant found a ''direct link'' and it is currently in fighting state against the entities blocking the way!" The jubilation of the disciple contaminated the master and he as well begun to show an happy expression while laughing loudly. "Kah kah kah! It looks like our god is with us! To find a ''direct link'' in one day, we truly are blessed!" "Do i still ask it to retreat?" "No, no, absolutely not! Change the order from ''retreat'' to ''corrupt the link before retreating''. It would be a shame if we were to let such a chance slip out of our hands" Nodding at his master''s instruction the hooded young man refocused on the orb... "Understood master, I''m encoding the ord....how?!" Before freezing in his motion after reading the information displayed by the artifact. Unable to understand his disciple''s reaction the older man neared him and begun to snap his fingers in front of the dead fish eyed disciple. "Disciple? What''s happening?" "The treant''s signal is disappearing!" Quickly coming back to himself, the disciple responded in one go. "..." Creating an akward silence between them as the master was still processing the information and the disciple was too scared of what would happen if he was to open his mouth. "Kah kah kah! That''s a good one disciple! If we lost the signal it would mean that the corruption itself was subdued and for such an event to happen it would mean that a powerful purification magic was used but there isn''t anybody able to do this in this part of the forest kah kah kah! You jester kah kah kah you need a raise for pulling jokes like that kah kah kah! what''s your name disciple?" Unable to take the information for something else than a joke, Eins was thrown in a state of advanced hilarity, laughing his ass off on the floor. However, unlike the master, the disciple was rather serious and pointed at a bunch of leaves of the crystalline tree, slowly shattering. "My name is Brion. But Master you should look at this as well..." Still on the floor the older man tried to look at what Brion was showing through his teary eyes and this time it was his turn to freeze on the spot when he saw the state of the tree... "MOVE!" The coin finally falling, Eins jumped up before ruthlessly grabbing the disciple''s collar and throwing him toward the mob of hooded figures which begun to gather after hearing the characteristic laugh of their hierarchical superior. "I''m sorry masteeeeeer!" *BLAM* "Aaah... It''s Brion''s turn this time." "Master Eins always turn violent in stress periods..." "To think that the last time was three days ago..." "Yeah i heard about it, is there any news of the two who got involved?" "Apparently they won''t be able to walk before a long time" "Shut up disciples! i need to focus!" He didn''t spared a glance at the mass of disciple gossiping and looking at him with various expressions, completely focused on the manipulation of the orb. "By Sammael, he was saying the truth a powerful magic is trying to purify it..." *BLAM* Reaching the peak of his frustration, the eyes getting a bit teary after looking at what was displayed in front of him he slammed his fist on the top of the altar before closing his eyes, trying to calm himself and resuming his operations on the spheric artefact "Calm yourself Eins, it will be fine, let''s first engage the defence mode to see if it go through... Save the historic.... Even though our informants said that there wasn''t anyone able to use such a level of magic in the south, paid too much for their work, they will hear about me... SHIT it''s going through! those assholes, destroying months of research.... If i get my hand on you fuckers, whoever you are..." After mumbling some incomprehensible things, his anger resurfaced and he had to once again do a slight pause to breath out the bulging wrath parasiting his thoughts. "Fu...Fu...Calm down...then i have to record the magic signatures in the area..." Lifting an eye to look at the state of the tree, his face turned grim when he saw that the the whole branch was going to shater in seconds "SHIT! Do it quickly or else it might disappear..." A vein begun to pop on his covered face as he was whispering a vast amount of curse and having a hard time registering the flow of informations coming from the orb which was spinning quicklier each second between his shaking hands. "Oh come on! Something of this level should be easy to... YES! YES!GOT YOU BASTARD! " the moment the whole branch was finally crumbling with a glass shatering sound, he moved his arm with his fist closed in a succes motion, seemingly having found what he wanted. "KAH KAH KAH! One kilometer east of CaelCirk! If any of you ever set another foot too far of your city i will have you hunted down!" Overjoiced and not even thinking about the huge lost he suffered, he extirped a dark pebble from his pocket that he immediately approached of the orbs, transfering some of the runic writing from the artefact to the darkish stone before finally facing the twenty hooded figures surrounding him. "Disciples! I need volunteers to send new orders to the agents near CaelCirck right now! The order is: ''Find today''s traffic record, put each of the people on this list under surveillance and sent a searching party to go as soon as possible at the last coodinate of the corruption to investigate what happened.'' And you there! duplicate this memory pebble and bring them to our corrupted hunters! There will be big games to track down! Phew~, now that this incident is settled and that we will soon receive our distinguished guests i''m off planning our next course of action in my room, i expect favorable results from all of you.Bye bye~" He joyfully said as he passed the pebble to one of the hooded men while walking toward the exit of the large cave. However he stopped midway in his tracks when his eyes fell on the two unconscious disciples laying on the floor next to the door. dirtying the floor as one was apparently bleeding and the other slightly spasming, spreading even further the little pool of blood formed around them. "Oh and before i forget, is there someone kind enough to bring those two to the infirmery? I don''t want any dead bodies to pollute this room. if you have to die, atleast do it in the proper place." -------- After i fetched the sword which ,contrary to my expectation, hadn''t melted or even slightly bended in front of the extreme heat of the fire pillar but had just turned two shades darker, hope it will wash out. It''s quite the quality, i wonder what they put in their ''alken alloy''... We quickly reached the place where Moss fought the two other treants after passing by the ravaged way left by the fight between the ''immortal'' treant and the Moss. For the forest to be this devasted, it must have been a awesome fight. i''m kinda salty to have missed the show... On the other hand i got to try out some spells and even produce such a powerful brazier so it''s okay i guess. Beside the few unlucky trees which were obliterated by the whip treant, the place was unexpectedly clean as if he waited for me to get thrown away before getting a bit serious by expertly decapiting them without causing any destruction to the background. Frankly speaking rather than a battlefield it looked more like a execution spot. This asshole... Able to get them this easily but he still took his time and left me eating a straight in the stomach without batting an eye. That punch was powerful you know? Because of this my shirt is good for the trash bin as there is a big tear where it connected and even now i can feel a strange sensation in my stomach. As if there was a drill making his way through my fragile anatomy, i hope it won''t let a too big mark... Once there, Moss picked some thick vines growing on the trees around us before effortlessly piling and tying up the three treants corpses, leaving the smaller and lighter one for me to drag, the only one of the five that i had yet to see, i didn''t missed a lot though as it was like the sword treant but two heads smaller. Not taking offense in the fact that stronger monster are more willing to hunt me down i begun to make a simple yet sturdy knot using the vegetal rope, tying the legs and arms together, like that they wouldn''t hinder my pace by hitching with the roots and branches in the way by paying attention to leave some slack to pull. If i remember correctly those vines are called ''cordel'' and are used in the craft of bowstring. Raw they may look like a weak cable but once you boil them in a certain mixture after pealing the skin it become incredibly elastic and sturdy and even in their natural state they can easily crush their support and stand still when the climatic condition allow it, earning them the nickname ''Rogue''s ropes'' as they are used by bandits and other ill-willed individual ambushing people in the forest. Even though i knew this thing weighed around the two quintals i still pulled with all my strength, taking a firm hold onto the vine while imagining my arms, back, shoulders and legs being strenghtened. At first it didn''t moved but once i was focused enough on each of my limbs, the heavy gravitational strength gluing it to the floor felt less powerful and i was able to advance toward Moss who had begun to walk after making sure that i was up to my task with an expectant smile. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. I already hear you shouting ''Bullshit! No human should be able to do something like pull two hundreds kilograms!'' and you are right. In a way it''s logical for a human to not be naturally able to drag something this heavy on his own. Ofcourse there is a non-natural way of achieving such a feat and this way is what Moss spent his time doing while fighting or moving the pile of treant close to weighing the ton. this way is the physical enhancement. it''s one of the discipline belonging to ''Magic'' which is, like you should already have understood, the field of study principally centered around mana and its uses. It''s even one of the simplest one to practice, far easier to understand than the weakest magics such as wisp or firebolt for the simple reason that there isn''t a thing to understand, you just have to ''feel''. Usually when you do magic you need three things. A mana supply high enough to fuel the magic. A good affinity with what you want to produce. A chant. And optionally some imagination. Exemple: the firebolt, a basic magic. It asks a certain amount of mana to be successfully summoned, if you don''t have or if you aren''t able to manipulate this amount it will fail after producing a weak *poof*. Then comes the affinity, i don''t think i would need to explain this parameter as it is rather explicit. Basically if you don''t have affinity toward a type of magic it will need more mana to produce it and it will be harder to focus on the spell, the opposite is true as well. It can be trained by the way, but it''s rather staining so few people actively practice their affinities other than their main one. If you have enough fuel and the affinity the next step is the chant, most of the time they are just a mass of random words excessively long and hard to pronounce. It''s kinda hard to visualise like that so here is the chant for firebolt. Hold your seat because here come the thing :''plythu ibafarshan uhsed ekess svent wer eaks unleas dout lirited vur pimiful vers ekess svent sia irlymi, firebolt'' Fucking long and desperately complicated to learn. And guess what? It''s only a novice rank chant! Obviously the higher you go in the ranking, the longer becomes the chant. In fact that''s one of the biggest reason why there isn''t a lot of people studying magic, why common mages are physically weak as they have to spent 16 hours a day the noze in book filled with formula and why it''s so long to raise in rank. There is a way to shorten the chant to the bare minimum though, that''s where the imagination come into action. Because the true meaning of the chant is to make you unconsciously picture yourself how the magic will looks and how it will act, if you simply imagine consciously your magic''s looks and properties, the chant will become obsolete. People saw as genius because they can shorten, even if it is slightly, their chant length are just people with a bit of imagination, something hard to cultivate in a world like this one and even harder to apply as there is a strong believe in the magical institutions and other fields needing mana manipulation that a chant is an absolute necessity to summon a magic. In a way they aren''t completely wrong, chants are of an capital importance, at the beginning of the learning atleast. If not for them how would you be able to get the feel and understand the mechanics behind magic, the true basis needed to be able to learn how magic works? Well I won''t continue on this subject as it would take hours to completely develope everything and directly make the transition toward the physical enhancement. Like i said to do most magics you need to have enough mana, a good affinity and a chant, however that''s not the case for physical enhancement. You only need to have enough mana and a body trained enough to support your enhancement. Why aren''t there any chant? Simple, to make your arm move, do you have to ask him gently while enumerating what each muscles should do at each instants or you can just do it instinctively without knowing the mechanics of your arm''s musculature? Obviously you do it instinctively, the same principle apply to body enhancement. As it is directly linked to your brain you can unconsciously use it in case of need, impulsively at first and at will after a bit of training. Easy, right? I''m of the same opinion, it was really handy for someone like me who had to work as removal man and transporter. Thinking about it remind me of that time when Hans, my senior, asked me to move a fridge from the first floor to the sixth one of a building without elevator as hazing. The face he made when i actually did it, it was as if his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets, truely a piece of art. "pffrrt..." Just reviewing the events in my head was enough to make me chuckle slightly and bring a stupid smile on my face drawing the attention of Moss who was pulling his own burden next to me while being deep in his thoughts until now. "Thinking of something funny?" "Yeah, i was remembering an old acquaintance of mine that i won''t meet in while...hum Moss? Isn''t the cabin in the other direction?" "It''s only now you notice that we aren''t directly going to the cabin?" "I''m kinda dense when i''m in my own thoughts but coming back to the subject, where are we going to put those things then? I hope it''s not too far, they weigh their weight afterall." I said as i pointed at the four treants behind us using my chin as my two hand were occuped. "If my sense of direction is right, further south there is a storage that i and some acquaintances often use. As i don''t want to slaughter thiefs each day it''s there i stock the things with good market values and the various herbs i sometime fetch during my morning training and no, it''s not far, i usually do it in ten minutes" "By morning training do you mean using Elik''s magical power to attract things that you will then oblitarate?" "Yes, why that question?" Is he conscious that treant are generally hunted separately by parties of experimented fighter and not in bulk? These things are atleast at the apprentice level, they aren''t to be taken as lightly as a morning warming! ... I have just realised that said like that it looks like novice, apprentice and adept rank things are weak but that''s just the way the ranking system was made. If you believe in the story behind its creation, the people who made this ranking were all individuals with monstruous strength, able to blow armies as if they were simple wisps of straw. So it can be logic that a mere treant able to squash twenty normal fighters effortlessly was little to no threat to them. Just saying. In front of such casuality i could only sigh in... actually i don''t even know how i should feel that''s how little this man''s strength makes sense. "Nothing in particular, just to make some discussion." Moss begun to scratch lightly his chin, making a face that was expressing great hesitation before finally meeting my eyes and asking "I see...if you just want to make some discussion why not speak about what happened to you last night?" Oh oh! Here comes the questions! It was beginning to get strange that everyone just accepted my entrance as if it was commonly seen. "It''s only after hunting wooden killing machines that you ask such question?" At my remark he just shrugged his shoulder before responding "There are things that should be discussed away from childrens" ... The fuck with that reason?! "So that''s the reason behind Mya''s and your lack of questioning about my origins, Elik''s presence?" "There is that and the fact that the princess was rather adamant about not asking you too much questions as to avoid scaring you and making you flee right away. She rarely showed so much interest in someone thus Mya and i got along with her request but i must confess that i''m rather interested after seeing your entrance and your potential thus take my chance now that she isn''t around, if you really cooked them a delicious breakfast you already know the fear that these two can make a man feel." In his eyes i could see a drop of compassion mixed in a sea of primal fear directed at those two girl upon rememberance of experiences he already went through. No need to be mentalist to understand that they were numerous and especially unpleasing. I perceived a little tinge in my heart at the idea of the poor Moss being predated by Mya, strangely he didn''t looked as impressive as before anymore and i instantly felt closer to this man thanks to the shared dreadful experience. "Even if both of us have experienced the real meaning of terror i won''t be able to satisfy your curiosity as even i don''t know why or how i got into this situation, i was just thrown in the sky without any warning and fell toward what i though as my death." "Said like that it looks like you have a horrible luck." "The expression ''horrible luck'' is the true definition of my life, you saw what happened with the treants, right?" "You mean their strong attirance toward you? It''s true that they were rather fixed on you, even after you got blown away they would continue to move toward you without minding me." "Yeah, i''m the kind of person who always slip on things on the floor, get into impossible situations, receive the lost projectiles in the head and attract ill-intended beings. So getting set as target by a bunch of monsters is rather normal for me." "Now that you make me think of it... Not all treants were moving toward you, it was the case of those four but not the strange one. Unlike the others, that one really wanted to get my skin. Speaking of which, do you know anything about what this black thing was?" "Not a clue, it could be a lot of things. Maybe dark magic? Or a strange parasitic thing coming from the center of the forest? This place is so fucked up that it wouldn''t even surprise me." He put his hand back on his chin and resumed his scratching session, deep in thought before answering my proposition. "Even if i don''t know a thing in dark arts, both could make sense to me. Better investigate it...Look we have arrived" He said as we stopped at the edge of another clearing connected to a road, around three time bigger than the one containing Moss cabin and where a two story tall building made of gray bricks and taking the whole two third of the place was taking the sun. "It''s big... and are you sure it''s a good idea to make me come around because, you know, i''m human and stuff" "Everyone say it the first time they see it and don''t worry about that, there is hardly anyone at this hour and they aren''t judging upon the race but upon the acts don''t cause a ruckus and there won''t be any regretable incidents, follow me." He said as he waved me to follow him at the building''s side opposite to the road from his free hand. That man... "Alright then, If you get problems i''m not responsible of anything." I could only sigh in mild-exhasperation in front of his casuality. "GAHAHAH! It''s impossible to have problems when you have a weapon crafted by my father. you can put it here, someone will get it inside for us later." Laughing and praising his father handicraft he stopped in front of a door big enough to let one relatively large malboon carriage pass and begun to toss his treants in a clean line, not wasting any time i followed his example and gently placed my small treants in the corner. "So are we done?" I asked as our spoil was delivered and there wasn''t any reason to stay here more than this "Yep, now we get back and begun the real training" "Good for you" I responded with a relaxed smile as i will soon be able to refresh my throat with Moss tea and fill my belly with his cookies while lazing around. However my smile died prematuraly when i met Moss fired up eyes. "Ofcourse you will participate!" Wait what?! training with this monster!? No no no no i pass! "What?! Wait!gufu-" But before i could refuse he grabed me by the collar of my shirt and begun to drag me toward his cabin. "It had been a long time since i got such a good material to train. You really thought that i would let you go like that, don''t you? GAHAHAHA!" I tryed to free myself but in front of his abnormal grip i couldn''t do anything beside save my breath and wait for death. ... ... Somebody, help me!