Chapter 35

Eva Lemuria

The next day I left the inn and looked for a cheap market to buy supplies. I have more than enough money for almost anything at this point, but the best supplies for adventures are actually always the cheapest. I was tempted to go have an expensive meal before I leave, but I decided against it and just went to the bottom of the tower before I began to start walking out of the city. I was tempted to spend more time in the city but I would rather make my way towards the dwarven capital. I had listened to the conversation all around me my entire time I was here and it seems like no one really knows about anything outside of their own city. It will probably take me awhile to make my way all the way to the dwarven capital, but it will be worth it if I can gather good information. I will probably stop in each town and village I pass so that I have a higher chance of being spotted by a shadow guard.

While walking I hear a noise come from some bushes and see some tattered looking dwarves with weapons come out of the bushes. They all look dirty and worn out, but there's also a hungry crazed look in their eyes. I guess every kingdom has its problems that lead to bandits and the dwarves is a food problem. The bandits all have quality weapons but are all basically skin and bones. Well, they have a little bit of my pity but that's pretty much it.

“Miss please make this easy and leave all your possessions here. Leave the bag, the big hunk of metal on your back, and that snack on your shoulder!” Bandit

“Squawk!” Munin

“Hahahahaha. Munin you're a snack? Hahahaha. Maybe I should let you take care of this? Munin can you go prove you're not a snack?”

“Squawk!” Munin

Munin pecks my head a couple of times and then turns her head away from me to ignore me. I shift forward and reappear with my hand in the bandit that was talking chest. He can only look down before I shift to the rest of them killing them all instantly. As I unshift I look where I was expecting to see Munin on the floor, but I don't see her where I was expecting her to fall. Instead, I feel a poke on the side of my head and I look over to see Munin is still on my shoulder. I am completely shocked because no one can shift with me. I have tried it before with some thugs but their entire bodies inside and out were completely charred. I shift again while watching my shoulder and notice that Munin isn't shifting with me, but instead shifts on her own a second after I do. I grab her and bring her to my face.

“Why didn't you tell me you could shift?”

“Squawk.”Munin

“This entire time we could have been traveling so much faster, but you didn't even show me. You could have also been fighting yourself. Did you see what I did with my hand there? Now you go do it to that bandit that's hiding in the tree there.”

I point towards a random tree and the leaves shake and an archer falls out and begins to run away in fear. Munin looks at her and then me, but when she sees my stern eyes she instantly flies towards the bandit and right before she reaches the archer she shifts and shoots right through the bandit's guts. The bandit falls down while holding her stomach and I just shake my head and walk over to stab the bandit in the head with my dagger.

“Munin you need to learn how to aim. Its good you can finally do some work, but it's not good to torcher your enemies like this unless they really piss you off. Go for the head, throat, or heart. Do you understand?”

Munin looks over the places I point at and then where she hit and lowers her head. I go over and pet her head before I pick her up and place her on my shoulder. It seems she learned so that is good, but it's annoying that she could use my lightning shift this entire time. I don't know how she learned it since I have barely used it since she was born. The point is that this entire time she could have been fighting too and we could have been moving faster if she fights too and shifts with me. I look back at her with a glare and she turns her head away. I focus back on the road and keep walking for a while. Until I get bored of walking and just shift up. I could just shoot in a random direction, but I decide it's better to follow the road until I reach the capital.

2 Weeks 

I fly next to the roads for days while occasionally stopping at villages or towns as I make my way towards the dwarven capital. It was a relatively peaceful journey after the first day with the bandit encounter. I haven't had to fight at all and the few beast that came to attack us while we were walking on the road were killed by Munin because I made her. She has basically become a living spell that kills her enemies almost instantly. I feel very proud of her strength but I haven't found a way to classify her strength yet. She is supposed to be a normal crow without any usable mana, but now she can use my lighting shift. Its even black like my own so I know the cause is definitely the experiments I did with her before she was born.

I hear a roar in the distance and figure its probably a high-rank mana beast. I could probably easily keep walking, but I kind of want to see if Munin can pierce its defenses so I change our direction. I walk towards the roaring and noises of destruction while keeping my presence low. What I see is a small army of dwarven soldiers fighting two giant bears. One has flames running along its black body while the other has lightning. It took me a moment to search through my memories until I realized that they are a 3rd tier flame destruction grizzly and a lightning destruction grizzly. They both come from the same lower tier species, but their evaluations took different paths and judging by their strength they must be about to evolve to the 2nd tier which is why the dwarves came here to exterminate them. Once a mana beast reaches the 2nd tier they become a unique existence. They may be similar to others but each one is completely unique on its own evolutionary path.

I decide to watch the battle so I can analyze the fighting strength of these two beasts and the dwarves as well. I won't do something like stealing their kill even if they're not adventures themselves because I can imagine they will definitely make trouble for me. I keep watching the battle and realize how bad the situation really is because the two mana beasts are working together. They clearly must have always been together from the way they cooperate together so easily. They may look like they're fighting each other and the battle is a three-way fight but the two grizzlies attacks completely miss each other. They are perfectly timed so that the attacks miss each other and only hit the dwarves. It doesn't seem like the dwarves have even noticed this at all and just keep trying to pit the beast against each other. The question is wether I should tell them, help them, or ignore them. I guess for now I will just warn them so they can still fight the grizzlies and weaken themselves so I can take all the spoils later if I have too. I look around and spot a dwarf in the back with nicer armor than the rest and a sword twice his size filled with enchantments.

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“Hay! They are working together! This isn't a territory dispute it's a trap. They only pretend to work together. You won't be able to get them to fight each other.”

“Who are ya? What are you doing here? Are you a spy from the humans?” Dwarven Leader

He points his oversized sword at me and completely takes all of his focus off the fight. I don't think they will win this battle with this guy as a leader. He completely ignored the danger and faces me. He also completely ignores what I actually said to him, and he's pointing his weapon at me instead.

“Are you and Idiot? Did you not hear what I said at all? Are you just going to keep letting those soldiers die or will you actually think about this battle you're fighting? I don't care if you die because I can just take all the spoils afterward. So go. Go and let those mana beast claw and chew your body.”

“Shut up you damn human spy. You're probably here to kill us after we beat these beasts and then take their cores for yourself. But what can a cripple like you do? I’ll end you now so you can't do anything later!” Dwarven Leader

I was going to simply walk away and watch the fight, but it seems this dwarf has issues with humans. He no longer even tried to speak with me as he lunged forward and brought his sword down. I shifted to the side and watched as his sword cut through the ground and forest creating a nasty scar on the ground. If he's this strong why was he just watching the battle before? I appear to his side and throw a lightning fist at him. He uses the side of his blade to block it and then pushes me away. He quickly moves his head to the side and a black bolt of lighting flies past him and lands on my shoulder. Munin seems to have become really good at coordinating with me even though I have been making her do all the fighting. I look around and see that this battlefield is becoming a complete mess and since it has reached this point I should just kill everyone here to leave no witnesses. I take my right arm out of the harness and grab my halberd as I unbind it. The dwarven leader looks completely shocked and before he can react I quickly charge at him. I swing my halberd at him and he blocks with his sword again except this time he loses his footing and flies back. His face looks completely shocked and he mutters “Monster” over and over. Its quite, but I can hear him. He's not necessarily wrong, but I still don't want to hear that from him. I charge at him and swing my halberd straight down on him with a flame edge. He brings his sword up to block and my attack pushes him to his knees while burning him in a fiery explosion.

“Ahhhhhhh!” The leader screams from his burns and I throw a distraction edge right at him. And he has no time to block as he explodes into charred pieces and bits of armor flies around. It's a little disgusting even for me. I don't know why, but he didn't even have a mana shield. He only had enchanted armor, but it doesn't seem to have done much to block my destruction edge. It seems my attack created a big enough commotion that I attracted everyone's attention from the other battle. The dwarves all look my way and even the grizzlies look over before they continue attacking the dwarves.

“Leader is down?” “Who is that?” “Why is there a human here?” “We cant win without the leader! He was supposed to attack when we created an opening for him!” “Everyone runaway while we can. We cant beat the bears and this human.” “She killed leader though! Are we not going to get revenge?”

The dwarves all fall into chaos and all move secretary. Before they were working together in small teams, but now some are running, some are still fighting, some are talking and freaking out, while some are charging at me with bloodthirsty eyes. I grab my halberd and then point at the running dwarves with my free hand and Munin shoots right at them while I charge towards the dwarves coming at me. I swing a lighting scythe at them and cut almost all of them in half at once. I don't know what these dwarves expect from their armor if it cant even stop any of my attacks. I stab my spear end into one of the dwarves eyes and then I kick one of the dwarves with a destruction step and his chest and armor caves in. I leave my halberd in one of the dwarves as I rush the others I concentrate a lighting edge on my right arm and swing my hand creating a five lighting edges from my claw like hand. And I grab another dwarf by their head and stab my right hand into their chest before I light them on fire and throw them at the last of the attacking dwarves who are frozen in fear. As soon as their mission is blocked by their dead comrade I throw a powerful destruction fist at them and they all die almost instantly in an explosion.

I look over all the dwarves that were attacking me and confirm they are dead before I look up and see Munin fly through the head of the last dwarf that was running away. She then immediately appears on my shoulder with her chest poufed out asking to be praised so I pat her head. I look back over and see the dwarves are starting to slowly lose their battle with the grizzlies. This battle could be what pushes the grizzlies to evolve into the second tier if they win and survive. Their wont be much of a physical change for them, but their mental capacity will go one of either two ways. The first would be a more human like intellect where they can interact better with each other and learn how to survive in more efficient ways like finding a mana beast village that's rumored to exist. The second path is a more primal instinct evolution where they will become stronger and more battle focused. They will probably become like battle maniacs and rampage through the forest until they're either killed or evolve again to a 1st tier. There so close to the dwarven capital that if they go down the second path they will definitely be killed in their rampages.

At this point, it seems like the dwarves have no chance of winning and are fighting a losing battle, but they know they cant run because either the grizzlies will kill them or I will. So they decide to fight with honor against the grizzlies and I will respect that by not stabbing the ones fighting in the back. I grab my halberd out of the dead dwarf and then make my way to a boulder that I sit on and watch the fight. While watching the raging battle of the dwarfs toughing suicide attack after suicide attack at the grizzlies Munin has been poking my right hand while sitting on my lap. I’ve been petting her with my left hand, but I switch to my right and she nuzzles right into it and I cant help but smile under my mask. There's a good chance she doesn't understand why I hate and hide this arm, but she doesn't seem to care as it's the hand that first held her.

I watch as the last of the dwarves all charge the last of their mana and run at the two grizzlies. The grizzlies seem to sense the danger as they cross their arms in defense and block the destructive attacks from the dwarves. After the attacks land the grizzlies are covered in wounds and are severely weekend, but now nothing is stopping them from slaughtering the rest of the dwarves. One dwarf looks at me and his face is filled with anger, sadness, and determination.

“Please defeat them to avenge my brother and sisters! Please!” Dwarf

“……….No.”

His face looks shocked and pained as he lets his guard down only to be instantly killed by the paw of the flame destruction grizzly. He was the last one and the only one of those dwarves I don't respect for fighting to the last breath. He knew I was an unsympathetic enemy considering I killed his comrades who were all running away. He begged me to kill his enemies when I probably won't even have to fight them at all depending on what evolutionary path the Grizzlies will follow. Judging by their teamwork I can already guess they are smart enough not to fight me though.

The grizzlies look at me after finishing off that last dwarf and I just calmly meet their gaze. The growl at me and I just continue looking at them calmly. One of them takes a step forward and I immediately release all of my mana pressure and the boulder I am sitting on begins to shake and crack and the ground around my starts to crack as well and the entire forest clearing we are in is being pressed by my pressure. Its like there's a dark haze around me slowly spreading out. It doesn't really have any affect except intimidation. The bears immediately perk up and their fur stands up as they look at me. Just from this pressure they should know that at most this fight will end with some injuries for me and more for them. They slowly back up into the forest and disappear into the trees. I reel in my pressure and then stand up as I put Munin on my shoulder. I hide my arm and sheath my halberd. I look over the entire clearing and then release waves of flames from my feet. The flames start to slowly consume everything around me. The bodies and even armor are consumed by my black flames. Once my flames disappear all that's left is ashes and molten metal. I just look at the destruction and move on. My next stop will be the dwarven capital to find information and hopefully avoid trouble.