Fafnir's POV

I was sitting on a thick branch of a rather old tree, happily humming while watching the mages enter the forest. The enhanced senses of my body could see even the happy and carefree expressions on the faces of the teenagers. Well, they are not all teenagers actually.

From here I could see four big groups. The loudest, biggest and the most annoying group were the teenagers wearing luxurious clothes. Safrit told me that these kids were the sons and daughters of rich merchants and nobles. The second group was a bunch of older men and woman, I guessed their age to be somewhat around thirty-five, wearing shabbier, but still decent looking clothes. These people were most likely commoners who worked their entire lives to gain entrance into the school. The third group was a band of armed soldiers wearing light blue cloaks. With a quick headcount, I learned that there were about twenty of them and then there was the last and most problematic group. This group consisted of three adults wearing dark blue robes. This group was the most problematic and the most important considering that the three of them were teachers at the school. Safrit gave me the description of the man I was looking for but because all three of the teachers always have this hood covering most of their faces I could not find out who the real target was. Well, at least I know that one of them is not the target since I'm sure that one of them is a woman.

Seeing that the merry band entered the mountain range, I gracefully hopped off the branch and started making my way back to the camp. Normally it would take at least two days to reach the camp but with my strengthened body, it only took me four hours. I could have been even faster if I had reverted to my true form or if I had flown the distance but sadly, I can't really afford to have these mages notice me before I have killed at least one of them, considering that I do not know of their strength.

The first thing I did when I entered the camp was to send messengers to the three bandits chiefs. Well since they are now working for me are they still considered bandit chiefs? I mean what would that make me? The bandit lord? The bandit king?

The head-chief? The bandit over-chief? Wait the last two did not even make any sense.

Seeing how it now was a bit past noon, the chiefs should arrive around dusk. Having nothing better to do I decide to roam the forest for a bit in my combat form. I heard that before the end of civilization people liked to walk in forests. A bit silly if you ask me. I mean who would consider walking into a place that is perfect for ambushes a recreational activity? Thinking back to what I saw this morning I chuckled, "Mages apparently."

After I walked around aimlessly for an hour, the serenity of the forest was ruined by the sound of trees snapping in half followed by a big crash. Walking to the location where I heard the sound, I ended up in a big clearing or well a big open area where all of the trees had been destroyed in what looked like a massive fight. On the edge of the clearing lay a giant bear with red fur. I crept closer to the unmoving bear and saw that his fur was not red but just stained with the blood that kept flowing out of his cylinder shaped stab wounds, well calling them stab wounds is a bit of an understatement. I mean these wounds make it look like the poor bastard got hit a dozen times by a fracking ballistae. I take another quick look at the bear and I have to correct myself, this was no giant bear but an absolutely massive one. The bear in front of me was at least a 4 meters long and looked like he had a shoulder height of 2 meters. All by all, he looked like he was about twice as big as the grizzly bears from the earth, well the ones that were not mutated by the fallout of the nuclear war caused by a shortage of food.

But the strangest thing about this bear was not his size but the fact that the thing had eight legs and two heads. It actually looked like someone took two bears and used polymerization, I mean fused them together. I quickly checked the vitals of the bear but felt nothing. Just to be safe I placed my hands or well claws on him and send some destruction magic through him, damaging its body even further but surprisingly not destroying it. Well, that confirmed it. This thing is as dead as the one bandit who dared sleep when he had guard duty. I really should stop using destruction magic to solve all my problems, it always is such a hassle to clean the corpses up. The better option is obviously to fire magic since that cleans the corpses up in one go.

I cracked my neck and quickly surveyed the area around me. And then sat down on top of the corps, while mumbling, "Now let's see if the thing that killed is going to come to claim its prize."

After a few hours, I heard something approaching in the distance. I looked up to see a normal sized deer or to be more precise a buck. The buck had quite a lot of slash wounds covering his entire body and a few patches of his fur looked like it had been burned off. Most of his wounds looked like they only recently started to heal. The beast in front of me flashed his teeth in an attempt to intimidate me. I might not know a lot about biology but aren't bucks supposed to be herbivores, because those wicked looking teeth give off the impression that this buck has developed a taste for flesh. And then there are its antlers. I mean what are those things, they look more like the oversized horns of a bull. I got a feeling that the blood they are stained in is not its own blood. Well, those horns do explain the why the bear has all those stab wounds.

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I was still wondering how he was able to take on this two headed bear who was most likely four times his size and weight. when the buck screamed and air started to surround him. He snorted, wow someone has an attitude, before charging at me with an explosive speed that was barely visible to the untrained eye. Before I can recover from the shock of seeing a buck almost teleport, I can feel one of its antlers piercing my abdomen. With a quick shake of its head, it throws me into a bunch of trees who burst into splinter the second my body makes contact with them.

I slowly crawl back up and spat out a bit of blood. I silently cursed, "This is not what I meant when I said that I wanted to know how he killed that bear.". I spotted the beast cautiously and making its way towards me while the recently created wound in my abdomen started to close itself. After a quick glance, I estimated that it is going to take my body a few hours to patch itself up. Luckily for me, this body is not actually hindered by wounds. A bit after I came to this world I learned that as longs as I have magic energy inside of me this body will not grow weaker. I would rather not say how I learned of that since it is rather embarrassing. I grinned at the now rather exhausted looking beast in front of me. That attack most likely consumed most of the stamina he had left after the fight with that bear.

It really made a mistake in trying to fight me while in such a weakened condition, well not like it could defeat me even if it was in its best condition. I mean the only reason that hit me was that I was not expecting it to be able to reach a speed like that in not even a second. Now that I know it I'm quite sure that I can dodge it and even if I'm not able to, I can just fly up in the air and rain literal fire and destruction on it, or just use the massive size and thick scales of my true form. What do you mean cowardly and dishonorable? I call that resourceful.

While the beast is circling around me, I taunt him by doing some quick stretches, can't pull a muscle right before the big ambush on those kids this night. Halfway through my stretches the beast, now visibly irritated, once again cladded itself in wind and charged at me like he did in the beginning. With a quick but powerful jump, I dodge the massive ball of muscle, hair and death and then launch myself back at it, crashing into his side with my shoulder and sending him flying.

A cocky smile formed on my lips and I taunted it. "Come on you can do better than that, while your almost instant transmission is impressive and something I really would like to learn. It is not that hard to dodge when you have such an obvious indicator like the wind gathering around you. I fought bosses in games whose attacks were less telegraphed than yours."

I lit the forest behind him on fire with a quick burst of flames to prevent the beast from escaping and said with a wicked grin, "My turn."

I fired a blast of destruction magic to its right side forcing it to jump to the left and then when it did I quickly shot a ball of fire to the spot he tried to jump to. The beast once again clads itself in air, but this time the air looks a lot weaker. He then focused the air around his feet and somehow was able to defy gravity and made a Metroid style double jump. It's only too bad that the only place he could jump to was higher into the sky. The beast now also noticed that he was trapped mid air and slowly closed his eyes when he saw my claws rapidly approaching his throat.

I muttered, "Good fight, so tell me how were you able to double jump?", while cleaning the blood off my claws on its massive corps. I grabbed it by two of its legs and placed it on my shoulders. "You know it's bad manners to not reply when someone asks you a question."

A female voice close to me snickered, "You know that talking to corpses of Nightmares makes you look stupid, not cool right?"

I drop the corps and take a battle stance while turning around towards the voice only to not see anyone around me. Well, I could not see anything around me but I could surely feel something. It was a strange sensation like there was a human-shaped blob of mana in front of me. Now that I noticed it I really wonder how I did not notice it before. Was I too distracted by the fight? Or did this concealed thing allow itself to be detected? What is this voice actually? Did the mana maybe get a conscience or did Chaos finally decided to contact me. Or maybe...

Before I could think of any crazier and even more rediculous theories a woman wearing blue robes suddenly appeared before me and said, "Sorry for sneaking up on you with that invisibility spell but you should understand that it was for my own safety."

I chuckled, "Oh and what makes you think that you are safe now?"

The woman laughed, "Well those two elder nightmares killed each other so what should I be afraid of."

I mused, "Interesting did she see me cast fire magic and is this a trap? No, if that was the case she would have simply attacked me before I noticed her. Does this means she actually thinks that I just stumbled on their corpses? I mean come on she can't be that stupid. Even if she did not see me cast fire magic, she has to have noticed these big leathery wings on my back, or maybe the two horns decorating my head. No this has to be a trap, well let's play along until she reveals what her intentions are."

I smiled and said, "I might be a treat. For all you know I could be a bandit."

The woman let out a small laugh and said, "I fear no bandits, they are but target practice to a great mage like me. But do you know what I do fear?"

I asked, "Do tell me what would scare a strong mage like yourself?"

Her gaze instantly grew serious and she said, "Strange winged fire-wielding demons."

I cracked my knuckles. "Seems like you are going to get company in the afterlife Buck."

Seeing this the woman in front of me raised her hands and created a small flame, "Luckily I have no wings, otherwise I would piss my pants everytime that I see myself in the mirror." Her tone grew sad and her voice silent as she said, "It's good to see more of our kind have survived the purge."

Seeing the flame in her hands I laugh,"Interesting, want to help me cook this thing? I'm ravenous and we could use the meal to sort this out."

She pulled down her hood down, revealing a pale but obviously human face and teased, "Wow elder nightmare meat on a first date? You sure know how to impress a woman.