Did I mention that the cave had a second exit before? If not that is on the change list for this week.
Also, if you were expecting a large battle chapter… I am sorry, it was so badly written that I ended up scrapping it to rewrite everything, which meant that, while the quality is better, there is a bit of a disconnect between this chapter and the previous one. I tried to address it as best I could and smooth it over, but it does seem a bit disjointed to me if I read straight from the previous chapter.
Write to practice and practice to learn I suppose… All I can promise is to continue to write into the future with the intent of becoming a better author, please continue to stay with me. ^^
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Chapter 15: Zugoran
“Bulshak?!”
They can curse too?
I am not sure if that was a curse. Incidentally, I think this one is male.
Funny.
The creature in front of us was identical, aside from a slight increase in bulk, to the others we had observed, but it had a rather noticeable difference between the legs. It was naked too, which left me with the question of whether these test subjects could create clothes or if their hair was grown out enough to count as clothing. This one seemed to have a loincloth of hair that almost made him decent.
As I finished my once over of the creature it also eyed me. Making sure not to make any external movements, I cast a stun spell at his mouth. Surprisingly, this one flinched just like the last one and closed both its mouth while turning away. I did not think about it before, but the flinch might actually be a survival instinct, given the fact that their skin was obviously their best defense against magic.
Speaking of which, both of my test subjects obviously had magic as they were able to track the magic I cast. Even when I did not move, this one had proven able to react to my spell.
As the stun spell hit and broke against his skin I used more internal energy to propel myself forward and kick the modified human in the stomach before he could react. Generally speaking, flinching away from a blow did not help you much, especially when you took your eyes off an opponent. My kick was not hard enough to kill or break bones – had I hit any – however, it was enough to knock the wind out of my target and let me hit its now open mouth with a stun spell.
Afterwards, I quickly ran outside to the one making the annoying racket for the last few moments. The creature was also male and immediately stopped making noise to stare at me in confusion.
Fortunately, nothing and no one had showed up to help it yet, so I had a very brief opportunity to experiment. Taking out my iron knife, I decided to see if I could cast a spell through a wound. The creature, seeing my knife, hissed aggressively, but when I sprinted at it, the thing actually tried to dodge. Fortunately, internal energy makes it almost impossible to escape from a more powerful mage and I was likely the second most powerful individual in this forest, at the minimum.
I just had to switch my knife to my other hand as I ran past him and slash at him, managing to make a small cut on his leg. Seeing the wound, it quickly focused my internal energy into my brain to speed up my mental processing capabilities. Most just tapped their energies in emergencies and applied it to their whole body, but by focusing it, I could gain more time to aim my spells more precisely.
Most mages never reached the point of mastery required to selectively slow down time, but since I almost never had the calories to achieve a circle expansion through mana expansion, I spent most of my previous life counting on my internal energy stores. Although I was only able to get 2 circle expansions before I died, I managed to dominate even 14 circle mages when it came to internal energy control.
Any non-mage that killed a mage was lucky. Any mage that killed a more powerful mage was good. I was considered one of the best.
Firing the stun spell as best I could, I aimed for the small cut. Just in case I missed however, I also prepared to fire a twisting stun spell. A modified version of the stun spell that would twist in mid-air and seek out the spot I aimed it at, but it cost around 5 times as much mana. Plus, I was used to using lower mana spells like stun, a 5 circle, what I was when I died in my previous life, could not afford to waste his mana like my new body would be able to. In fact, I would need to research some more costly mana spells just to make sure that I was not limiting my new body’s magical strength.
The stun spell managed to hit the wound, but it lost almost half its energy as it entered the modified human’s body, causing partial paralysis instead of a total knockout.
I let my perception of time return to normal and instead focused on my energies into my legs to stop my forward momentum. When I managed to do that, I noticed that the modified human was lying on the ground, yipping like it was in pain. I ignored the sounds and walked forward to blast another stun spell through its eye, rendering it unconscious.
So, small wounds work to a lesser degree, while the mouth and eyes are effective week points in its armor.
Your ability to ignore pain is scary DeMorte. You would be a complete psychopath without the Guilt.
Thank you, Bella, but for the record, a stun spell does not hurt, even if you get hit in the eye with one. I know from personal experience.
That was not a compliment, but you already knew that, right? The lack of memories ‘we’ share about your past is also scary, especially compared to the amount of access you have to mine.
Believe me Bella, you are lucky to have so little, but instead of complaining, why not come up with a good name for these things? We keep bouncing from test subject to modified humans to who knows what else.
Ending our internal conversation there, I collected a small amount of the creature’s blood in an impromptu bone tube before sealing it off and attaching it to my armor. Then I confirmed a lingering though I had about their skin by summoning a flame to cauterize the wound I made on its leg. This confirmed two things for me. First, it proved that these creatures were only resistant to direct mana attacks on their skin. If I summoned fire it would still burn them because the spell that I cast turned into fire before it hit. Rather like magic armor would intercept and stop mana, but nothing else.
Which prompted me to add magic armor to the list of things I needed to practice later.
The second thing that it confirmed was that the Nalks had rearranged my mana paths more than I realized. Kal’rek and Jalon had commented on it, but there had been no need to test elemental spells until now so I had naturally conserved my mana to conduct other experiments.
All mana pathways formed natural patterns in the body that corresponded to certain spell types and therefore made it easier to cast certain spells and harder to cast others. My pattern had lent itself to healing, but fire spells, the most common attacking spells, were harder for me to cast. I could shoot mana out of my toes if I wanted to, but cauterizing the wound had taken far more mana, calories, and effort than it should have.
For now, I picked up the- ‘Wolfman’- and hurried inside the cave again. This time though, I scratched out the runes that prevented the cave from being noticed and replaced them with the illusion of a collapsed cave. If passive runes that effected vision did not work, but the sound dampening runes did, I could safely assume that these wolfmen’s defenses also filtered out magic meant to work on their brains. Illusions that were created with magic and fixed in place should, therefore, still work on them.
After my cover was in place I quickly drew some blood from the other two unconscious wolf- wait, one was a female, is she still a wolfman?
You are the one who wanted a specific name, DeMorte, if you want something else, how about Werewolf? Although I think Leo said they mean the same thing.
Bah, never mind.
-after I finished drawing blood, I quickly checked the other entrance to the cave, although it was only an entrance for someone as small as me. The wolfmen would have a very hard time fitting, which left me with a few options:
-I could try and barrel my way out the front, depending on my internal energy (Normally I would not even consider this, but if all that was out there were more wolfmen, I could blast through them fairly easily)
-I could also squeeze out this secondary exit and try to evacuate the area before the other wolfmen arrived (Reasonable, but a bit dependent on luck and my ability to erase my tracks at speed. Especially since they would be more familiar with the area)
-I could settle in and hope that they did not find my illusion. (I was used to creating rock illusions, but I really did not like the idea of depending on luck)
-Finally, I could create some sort of distraction and then disappear. (This had the highest odds of success, but would cost me most of my food/caloric reserves)
Not that I am advocating violence, but you sounded very eager for a fight just a little while ago, but now you like the idea of running away?
Remember our cloak Bella? Besides, only fools think that battles or wars end. They have different arcs, different pauses, and different fights, but wars never end. The time between fights that we call ‘peace’ is just another preparation phase for the next fight, making running away another form of preparation and that preparation a part of the fight.
That seems so… Wait, then why you always like to sing about honor? Why do you know all those poems about it? I could have sworn that you had memories of commissioning at least a few of them.
Honor is one of the most absurd ideas that humans ever came up with, but it still helps me win battles, so I help encourage it. If that meant spending money to commission a few songs or poems to glorify ‘honor’ then so be it. Besides, those songs were catchy.
I shook my head and felt thankful that our conversations were getting faster, that one had taken only a moment, far shorter than actually talking would have taken.
Deciding to try and hoof it before I was swamped in wolfmen, I only stopped to check two things on my captured wolfmen before I grabbed my supplies.
Taking some bone from my supply and made it into the sharpest knife I could manage, I picked up the arm of the first male wolfman I met and cut off some of the hair that covered his arm. It was fairly thick, but it cut easily enough and I confirmed that even though the hair could carry mana, it was almost completely blocked our once my mana tried to follow the hair to its root.
‘Almost’ being the key word, as some mana did get through. If it was a powerful enough spell, the residual mana would likely force its way through, which was how they had mana resistance, instead of mana immunity. Well, that and the fact that their skin, which I could now finally see, had a dark grey tone that I had not noticed before. After scraping his skin lightly with my knife, I tried pushing mana into it and found that I could, although the cells seemed to resist as I cast a spell to figure out what made this thing’s skin so different. I found the answer to be borderline insane, but it did explain things.
Iron, the thing had its skin bolstered with iron. Enough of the iron was fused into the skin to actually function as iron armor.
Of all the crazy things I had thought of during and after Anton’s training, infusing enough iron into my skin had never even crossed my mind. Stones, I did not have time to think of that back then, Anton gave me a huge lecture on keeping a balance of iron and how trying to bolster or remove the amount of iron in my blood could have a variety of consequences.
Yet someone had managed to not only do it, but balanced it well enough to keep their subjects alive.
More to think about when I am far away from here, I thought to myself. Since I noticed the wolfman making noise outside of this place, it had been long enough for some to gather and start searching the area, but I was reasonably confident that the numbers would be fairly low.
Just in case though, I decided on a distraction that would help and scratched out enough of the silencing runes to cancel them, without making more noise than I had to. Then I cast an illusion destruction spell that would soon make my cave explode before disappearing.
Afterwards, I quickly and silently retreated, taking note of the new animalistic cries that resounded in the distance, before I passed by the three wolfmen, still stunned unconscious.
The first key to winning a battle was identifying the objectives, both your own and your opponent’s. I wanted to leave and come back to find these creatures again after I had more information about them. Information that I could hopefully gain from both their blood and watching how they behaved.
Their objective, however, was something of a blank to me as it could be to find their intruder or to recover their lost people or something else entirely. They could even want to find me thinking I was a lost soul who just needed a friend, but I had no way to know for sure.
Ovals, I did not even know how long they had been here, I would guess centuries based on the fact that I had not heard much about them, though I doubted it was all 3000 years or so since the Enslavement ended. Not unless they have been taking in new genetic material somehow. Given the history of the rumors of them, as best as I had been able to track, went back a few hundred years. So maybe they were deposited with enough genetic variability to last a few centuries? It would take a few thousand people, but that gene pool would be ever shrinking.
In the end though, I was guessing, at their history and intent until I could communicate with them. I sighed and mentally cursed the infernal fear of the woods that humanity had in this world. If they could have spread out into the wooded interior of the continents more quickly, this discovery might be someone else’s problem and I might actually know why these creatures were here. Or more accurately, if they wanted to be here or if the fear runes kept them here.
Making sure that the three were still knocked out I took my bone restraints off the female and snuck back to the rear of the cave, where the small crevice twisted out to the side. I had not paid too much attention to the area before, but I now realized that this cave was odd. I knew the cave was man-made, but I did not notice that just beyond my escape crevice was just beyond a cave in.
Well, I noticed it before, but I did not notice how that part of the cave had signs of tool usage. Old tool usage that I was surprised to have missed as I was used to haunting caves.
Why would anyone be mining in this area? Or was this some ancient home for the weremen, like the village had been? There was certainly no other reason that I could tell for mining in this area, I knew dirt and rock as well as most miners and there was no obvious signs of any metal or gems that I knew of. Ovals, I did not even know why I kept finding these random outcrops of rock everywhere since I had crossed the river, they looked natural enough, just random.
I did not have any more time to explore my theory though as I realized that my illusion spell was about to provide a 4 distractions in the form of 1 fake explosion (minus the noise, since that would take more mana) and 3 unconscious weremen.
Squeezing through the crevice that made up my back exit, I once again used my internal energy stores and thanked myself for building up such a large reserve. This time, I concentrated on my ears and tried to minimize any and all noise as I snaked through a small opening and heard cries of alarm that echoed down the cave.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I nodded to myself and quickly cast a silencing ward behind me. It was faster and easier than carving a rune and I designed it so that it would dissolve itself once I was far enough away. After that, I just waited, making sure that there were no noises to indicate a near-by wolfman.
After a few moments of lack of obvious noise, I applied my inner energy to my whole body and quietly peaked out of the crevice.
It was narrow enough that I had to turn sideways, making for some frantic glancing as I confirmed that I was alone, before I slipped out and powered off into the north, with the setting sun lighting the east.
As I ran, I also periodically cast spells to erase my tracks like before, but this time I was going for distance instead of convenience, so I did not pay too much attention to dispersing my mana until I was at least 2 miles away.
By the time night had fallen though, I was set up in a tree, with a new illusion spell and hidden magic trip lines that would alert me based on if they were crossed or dissolved. I also had 3 avotatoes digesting in a happy little girl’s stomach, as I analyzed the blood samples I had taken, and mentally argued with Bella about how inaccurate the term ‘wolfmen’ was for these odd humans.
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The next morning, after dealing with the consequences of sleeping in a tree, I managed to hunt an ugly rodent of unusual size. Fun fact, our ‘mana roots’ spell actually absorbs meat faster than anything else. In fact, if I could practice the spell to the degree that I had practiced my breakdown silence ward, I could almost absorb a body as fast as I could spend the energy. In the meantime, it gave me quite a few calories and some extra bone mass without having to light a fire.
Depsite wonderful absorption of calories, however, I still had to chew on some carrots to give my stomach something to digest as I carefully began making my way back to the cave from yesterday. It was unlikely that any of the wolfmen (Bella’s insisted that it was the best name for now) would be near that location now, but I was redundantly careful just in case. Even taking half of the morning to get to the place I had ran away from in less than a third of that time.
As expected, there was no one around the area except for the occasional bird, but I continued to be careful, today’s objective was to try and retrace the exodus that should have taken place once the wolfmen discovered their injured companions.
I also quickly checked the cave and found it empty except for a few crude traps near the entrance. As long as no one was hiding there or in the woods, I could continue follow their path back to wherever their nest was based. Maybe I could find some answers after that, or at the least decide if I could use these wolfmen for experimentation. Right now, their magic blocking skin was making my little hunt for experimental creatures look like it was going to fail, as my current design of magical device would be useless. However, I had to get more data before I wrote this whole adventure off as a failure, there might be something I was missing and going back through the fear runes would be annoying to say the least.
Now, I was not the best tracker, but I knew that at least one of the wolfmen would have a hard time swinging through the trees and I soon got confirmation of my theory as I saw a large group of tracks that, while they quickly thinned all seemed to point in the same direction.
At this point I had to balance speed and silence as I moved forward. It was fun to stalk something again, but the wolfmen had already proven to be able to lay down traps so I also had to watch for more of those as well as any sentries.
Fortunately, there was a useful spell that let me see the heat given off by any warm blooded animals, so I had that to help. Unfortunately, that same spell could be beaten by a bit of mud so I kept both eyes open and not get complacent.
It was almost evening before I spotted a pair of wolfman, thankfully, despite Bella’s name, their senses of hearing and smell were about average for humans, making it much safer and easier to follow on back this one around for a small period.
They did not directly lead me back to its camp at first, but instead spent some time foraging, collecting fruits to put in a very roughly made sack. As the sun began to set however, they started to quickly move through the brush off into the distance, occasionally checking around them to see if any predators were nearby.
Which was another question to annoy me, these woods held plenty of birds in parts of it, but the rodent I killed and absorbed this morning was one of the biggest creatures I had seen at the size of a large dog. In fact, these wolfmen were likely the largest things around, so what were they looking for? Me?
Fear the little girl of doom, for she has two mind and steals your salt and bones!
Board Bella?
That was another point to think about though, why bury the bodies? No known humans had done that in several millennia, yet I had yet to feel any hint of- Magic!
A wave of energy passed over me and made me shiver, that was magic alright, but not a specific spell, more like a mass of mana. A large mass of mana at that.
Frowning, I started tapping my internal energy and move forward even more carefully. There were no animal sounds around me, but there was a beating sound like drums from somewhere in front of me
I stalked forward in the twilight and mentally marked out a map both back to the cave and to where I thought the village remains should be. I wanted options if I had to run for my life.
Soon, my eyes picked up large masses of heat that represented a mass of heat that I could barely identify as a tribe or pack of wolfmen around a large heat source, maybe a bonfire. After I canceled the spell, the glow from a fire of some type became obvious as I got closer.
To my surprise, it was indeed a bonfire. Despite their hairy bodies, these wolfmen were still human enough to work with fire. In fact this whole area was different, there was no plants or forest like before, but instead a large stone building of some kind, whose purpose, even with my improved eye sight was mostly shrouded in darkness (literally, as the bonfire was making it much harder for me to see in the dimming light).
Other than that, there were also a couple hundred wolfmen who were dancing, eating, beating their drums, and generally celebrating something. A few minutes later, that something was revealed as the drums all ceased.
From the stone building, a single male wolfman emerged, covered in pitch black jewels and carrying a staff made from similar material. The material not only glittered sinisterly in the firelight, but it was also sucking in the mana around it and blowing it outward.
There was only one substance I could think of that might be capable of that. Assuming the rumors were true, the figure was likely wearing processed Zugoran.
Well then, no elves or Soul Mages here, I thought to myself. Any elves still alive would not be likely to let human, even modified ones, get their hands on such annoying things. Even as different as the stories involving the Enslavement could be, they all agreed that the Elves loved Zugoran and only gave it to humans for brief tests or to torture them. Soul Mages on the other hand, were human themselves and not likely to want to touch a metal that could bypass their magic armor to kill them instantly.
As I was analyzing the Zugoran wearing leader though, a human was brought out, a young man by the looks of it. Given the silence of the crowd, besides the fire, I was surprised that I did not hear the man scream earlier, but he turned out to be gaged.
As his gag was removed the man started begging and while I did not recognize the ascent, I recognized and understood the language. His begging did not help though, as the wolfman leader simply lowered his Zugoran staff and touched the man’s head.
After that point, the man did nothing except scream for a little while, as the magical energies tore him apart and rebuilt him.
As I was watching and trying to track the spell’s work it also hit me that this was how they took in new genetic material for their tribe and…
They were workers, not soldiers! Their bodies were naturally resistant to mana so that they could work with Zugoran! It was equal parts terrible and brilliant as I doubted that the original workers were given much of a choice in becoming these wolfmen.
That also explained why it took so long for me to find any of them, the tribe had probably been getting ready to hold this ceremony when I kidnapped one of their members, meaning, with their lost members returned, they had been more interested in living peacefully than finding me.
It was rather entertaining, the man who refused to commit violence would almost always lose and yet they did not even seem to be looking for me. Maybe they thought that they could put it off until tomorrow or something?
Still, if there was no choice in joining this little tribe I could try and pick out a weak link or dissatisfied member, someone who could speak my language - or at least write out if the transformation had adversely affected their vocal cords - and get answers to some of my questions.
In return, if I phrased it right, I could make returning them to normal via my experiments seem both reasonable and desirable. After all, assuming they were transformed against their will, I could sell it as a chance to become truly human again. Especially with some suggestions about adventurers who might view them as monsters to be hunted down.
I smiled, I was horrible at being polite and reasonable when it came to politics, but threats and coercion were something I was much more used to.
* * *
Capital of Istoría, Archí, in a back room away from the annual coronation celebration:
Istar was home at last, yet his first visit could not be to old flames or distant relatives to celebrate, no he had to get rid of this blighted dagger first.
It had taken longer than anticipated to get the dagger to its new rightful owner and Istar was sure that the man would try and skimp on his payment somehow.
Looking back to his comrade, Elysium, who was keeping watch as discretely as such a large man could, Istar mentally prepared himself again. He had done his share of dirty deals in back alleyways, but he had never been set up in such a room for his dealings.
It was brightly lit by light orbs and so spacious that, had he been in the slums, dozens of people would be sleeping in here. It was also filled with fine decorations and shows of wealth that indicated a sizable bonus for his discretion, if the noble did not have him killed that was.
It was the major disadvantage to working in the dark, no one is count on if the deal went wrong and you were double crossed.
As it the thought had summoned him, the front door opened and revealed their masked employer. He was tall, wide bodied, and completely covered in a dark cloak. Only the brightly painted mask was visible, with every millimeter of skin being covered and only the employer’s size earning him a masculine label in Istar’s head.
Well, technically, this one was the intermediary, but since the masked man was the one who made all the requests and was going to be the one paying them, he might as well be the actual employer.
“Do you have it?” The deep, warped voice annoyed Istar, but he kept his cool, magical masks that changed one’s voice were common and getting straight to business was only sometimes a bad sign so he had to pay attention.
He turned towards the employer, his full iron chainmail making little noise because of the silencing runes sown into his cloths. It would not protect him from the physical dominance that mages could invoke at their will, but it would give him an element of surprise if a mage tried to us a spell on him. “In the container, sealed to prevent its bloodlust from leaking out.”
Mentally, Istar found himself sighing in relief at the fact his voice had not shaken, but he kept a neutral face as best he could. Projecting calm was the key, even if it was a fake calm, it would put others at ease.
The employer stepped forward and made a gesture in the air that obviously changed something, although Istar had no idea what exactly, before he gestured at the container. Suddenly, Istar found himself filled with a perverse, disgusted, feeling that he could feel flowing from the container. Despite himself, Istar found iron throwing knives in both of his hands, ready to kill whoever crossed him.
Yet the employer ignored Istar and his new weapons to open the box and see the dagger. 30cm of sharp, pitch black, pure evil, metal lay inside, practically oozing a desire to kill something. Istar had no idea what the hilt was made off, he could not see it past the evil Zugoran dagger.
Istar still shivered at the mere sight of the blade. Some priestly orders said that Zugoran could devour souls and looking at it, Istar found it hard to disagree.
The employer, however, seemed to shiver for a different reason. His body language seeming to say that he was fighting off the desire to grab it. For a brief moment, Istar found himself wondering if his time had finally come to an end.
The moment passed though and the employer closed the container before making another gesture that seemed to seal off the unnatural feeling that had permeated the room. Able to breathe again, Istar noticed that Elysium had drawn both his iron sword and his normally hidden crossbow. After exchanging a brief glance with each other, they both lowered, but did not put their weapons away.
The employer took a deep breath and nodded. “Perfect.” At a snap of his fingers, a chest placed along the wall, that Istar had checked earlier and found to be magically sealed, opened, revealing several thick pouches, each with a marking of ‘40G’ on the side. “I believe that is your entire price due, with a small bonus to ‘encourage’ you to travel far away from here before you start getting drunk.” The employer’s warped voice sounded slightly annoyed, as if it would rather test the dagger on them instead of paying, but he was only the intermediary in reality, so it likely was not up to him.
Istar bowed briefly, “I hope you contact us again for future jobs.” He stated professionally, already choosing which of his planned escape routes to take out of the city.
Although his birthplace, Istar had no problems with leaving it again. He could get more money, respect, and female companionship by simply running around as an adventurer.
Quickly, moving over, Istar confirmed that the pouches were filled with gold and had half of the gold on his person by the time the employer had left the room.
He then quickly changed positions with Elysium and stood watch while his partner took his share. Soon afterwards, they slipped out the back of the obscenely large mansion and mixed with the teeming crowds.
This was one of the largest cities on the eastern continent and it seemed like all of its 750,000 people had taken to the streets for the festival.
As Elysium led the way and pushed the crowds apart, Istar wondered if any of them thought about the King’s careful plan to crown himself days after the largest harvest of the year.
I will be back here eventually, Istar swore to himself, watching the throngs of people ebb and flow through the streets. One day, when I can actually stay.