Felix looked around quickly, and was startled to see some small demons popping out of a hole in the ground behind him, in-between himself and the fort. They were about 4 feet tall, humanoid with digitigrade legs, and garbed in leather, equipped with knives. He had no idea how they got there without the water mage detecting them first, but now wasn't the time to think about it, considering they were about 50 feet away from him and starting to move in his direction.
Felix stood up quickly and leapt over the trench he had started to dig, and started to run. He didn't dare to look behind him, but he could hear the pattering of the demon's feet. He blindly tossed out all the spells he could behind him, opening Pitfalls, chucking out sand Attacks, and using Fling Rock as much as he could, while running away. He heard random cursing in the demon tongue behind him, which he took to mean these measures were at least partially effective, but he didn't dare to turn around to look. He kept running.
Suddenly, there was a fluctuation in front of him that he sensed in the earth element. He dodged to the right quickly, narrowly dodging a pitfall that had opened up in front of him. He looked around, and heard a barking laughter. Suddenly, he realized the demons who had been chasing him weren't there any more. There was only one demon, who was laughing hysterically. He was about 6 feet tall, and cloaked in white. He stood in-between Felix and the fort.
Felix felt a resonance with this demon. It seemed they were both of the earth element. Felix figured out what happened pretty quickly. It seemed this demon mage was sent ahead to score some cheap harassment kills. He had a light subclass, so he made an illusion of demon scouts being behind Felix to lure him away from the defenses, and now he was planning to kill him. It explained how the demons got behind him. They didn't actually exist, it was just an illusion. He had run pretty far from the defenses already, but it didn't look like any alarm was raised or anything, and he couldn't see anyone coming to get him. The water mage watching him probably figured he made a run for it since he wouldn't have been able to see the illusion, so he just saw Felix running like a madman throwing spells behind him to escape the military. Definitely not worth his time. The military would just consider him a runaway, which was the least of their concern with the demons at their doorstep.
The demon stopped laughing and looked at him smugly, and raised his hands. He conjured an illusion of the demons who had been chasing him, and had them dance, mocking him. It seemed he was completely confident in killing Felix any time he wished. Not good.
Felix decided now was the time to be decisive. He looked past the demon, behind his shoulder, and pretended to be surprised and what he saw, causing the demon to look behind him to see what Felix saw. Felix took advantage of the moment to cast Pitfall under the demon immediately, and turn and ran. Felix heard angry demon cursing behind him, and the ground shook. Felix was slowed down, but because he was expecting this, he actually didn't fall. He took a moment to turn while the earth was shaking and used Sand attack to attack the demon mage, but the sand stopped in mid-air, with the demon mage looking at him with disdain. However, Felix didn't hesitate, and used Fling Rock behind the demon mage, causing a rock to hit him in the back of the head while he was distracted with the Sand Attack in front of him. This thoroughly enraged the demon mage, who lifted up a rather sizable boulder into midair and chucked it at Felix. Felix quickly used Mold Earth to break the boulder in two, neutralizing the attack, which caused the demon mage to look surprised. Felix didn't dwell on it, and ran, continuing west along the mountain. He heard a derisive snort behind him. Suddenly, a large earthen wall popped up in front of him, blocking his path. Felix used Mold Earth to create a hole in the wall, but behind it was... another wall. Felix did the same thing, but behind that wall was... another wall. Also, the original hole he made was patched up nearly instantly. It seemed the demon earth mage was able to make new earthen walls faster than he could break them down with Mold Earth.
Felix looked behind him. The demon mage wasn't very far away, and it looked like he was done playing with Felix, with murder in his eyes. Felix's brain raced at a mile a minute.
And suddenly, he had an idea.
Felix looked at his own feet. And he casted both Pitfall and Mold Earth simultaneously beneath him. He didn't stop, he cast them both as quickly as he could, using up mana as fast as it came to him, and he fell through the earth. He heard snarls of rage from the demon mage, and he could feel the fluctuations of the earth element as the demon mage chased after him. Obviously, the demon mage could travel through the earth too, and he was probably much more adept at it than Felix was.
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Suddenly, he detected a chasm below him. But he didn't have anywhere else to go. He didn't have enough earth spells constructed to head in any other directions. At least not quickly enough to outrun the demon mage. The demon mage seemed to detect the chasm too, and slowed down a bit. He still kept moving towards Felix though. He was clearly going to force him to fall into the chasm. Felix didn't like that idea, but what other choice did he have?
So Felix kept casting Pitfall and Mold Earth beneath him, and he kept falling. He fell and he fell, until there was only about 3 feet of earth between himself and the chasm, where he stopped. Quickly the demon mage caught up to him, illuminated by his light magic. He smirked derisively at Felix, and raised his arm, conjuring an earthen spike. It was obvious he was going to force Felix to fall, or be stabbed by the spike.
Felix grit his teeth, and he broke through the final 3 feet of earth, and heard the demon laughing above him. The earth spike whizzed by him, missing him narrowly, and then he simply continued to fall. Suddenly he heard rushing water, he felt the air around him grow moist, and he tasted water in the air. Felix straightened himself so that he was perfectly vertical, with his feet pointed downwards, and prayed that the water he was about to fall in to was deep.
He looked down and saw a vast flowing river beneath him using his Night Eye. He didn't have time to contemplate it much, since he was falling very quickly. He took a deep breath. He hit the water, which hurt a bit despite his straight posture, as he plummeted into the depths. His feet hit the bottom of the riverbed after a few seconds, but luckily he had decelerated enough that it didn't hurt him, and he pushed off of it and started swimming towards the surface. After about 15 seconds of swimming upwards, he broke the surface of the water. It was not smooth or calm at all, but neither could it be considered a raging torrent. It was a moderate speed river. Felix spluttered and gasped and did his best to stay above the surface while he swam with the current. Thankfully he had a strong body from orchard work and he was a good swimmer, but even still it wasn't easy, and he was already a bit tired from all the running he did before. Felix slowly worked his way to the edge of the river while keeping with the current, but all that awaited him was the smooth stone walls of the chasm.
He was getting more and more tired. He couldn't keep this up for much longer. His legs were beginning to grow heavy, and his arms were on fire. His lungs were pleading with him for more air, and he gulped and gasped desperately. He activated Night Eye and saw a narrow ledge ahead of him on the wall. It was only jutting out about 2 feet, and it was maybe 6 feet long, but right now it was a godsend. The river was too strong for him to have enough time to use Mold Earth to create his own ledge. He swam to the ledge and slapped his hands on to it, using Mold Earth to anchor his hand on top of the ledge to keep himself in place. He then continued to use the spell to Mold small niches into the ledge to climb out of the river, and he collapsed onto the small ledge, panting.
He had survived, somehow. He lay there gasping for air and returning to normal for a while, and then he lifted himself up, and extended out the ledge to make himself more secure. He looked around with Night Eye. There wasn't much to see, just the river, and the other side of the chasm wall, about 50 feet away. The walls of the chasm were fairly smooth, except for this one ledge. Felix looked down the stream. Not too far away from him, it seemed the water entered another cave system, but it looked like there was no empty space on top in there, or very little. It would have been extremely difficult to survive if he had gone much further. He was extremely lucky this ledge was here.
He took stock. He had lost the backpack at some point, he thought probably when he fell in the river, but he still had his coin pouch and the pouch containing the grain seeds, which had both been around his neck. Otherwise, he had nothing but the clothes on his back.
Felix sighed. The demon mage had been really sneaky, and he had fallen for his illusions due to his inexperience. There was no point crying about it now though. The demon mage figured Felix probably died in that fall, and even if he hadn't, who cared? He could probably sense the mana fluctuations on Felix and tell he was just a low grade mage anyway. So he didn't expect any issues even in the extremely unlikely event that Felix survived. As for the military, they probably figured he deserted, which wouldn't have been too surprising from their point of view. So no one would be looking for Felix. It was debatable if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
All things considered, the situation could be worse. Being stuck underground as an earth mage wasn't the worst situation he could think of. He just wished he knew more earth spells at this time. He would probably have to use Mold Earth and slowly work his way back to the surface. Thankfully, there was plenty of water for him.
Felix turned away from the river, faced the chasm wall, and started slowly using Mold Earth to carve out a tunnel at an upward angle. Considering he was underground, the earth element was dense, so he moved fairly quickly, feeling in tune with the elements around him. There was a lot of water and darkness element too, obviously, but earth was still the primary element in the area.
Even so, it would be a long climb.