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The closest to the Creators are Those Blessed By Them.

Do not be the Fool to hinder Those Blessed by Them.

They will turn Banes to Boons. They will turn Punishments to Lessons. They will turn Misfortune to Fortune.

-An excerpt found in a recovered Stone Journal at : Underrim Mountain Range, Gauslandian Ruins B-9, Archeology Site Q-2

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Anna crouched next to her friend’s body, a pair of arrows stuck into her fallen side. Emily’s breathing was shallow, but there.

“Where they escape? Must find all. Make sure job done.” The rough common tongue was spoken not far from the two. Anna held her own breath, covering Emily’s face with some soft fabric to soften any noises.

The footsteps thumped closer to the fallen log that they had taken cover under. If the tacky forest colors that their clothes were designed with had any merit for camouflage, now was the time for it to work.

“Arrows hit girls in back. Losing blood. Move on for others. No time to search.”

“I stay in case. Maybe missed a few.”

There was a sound of annoyed confirmation followed by a command in a language Anna couldn’t understand. The coordinated thumping of the footsteps began again, fading out in all directions.

A wet splat splashed on the ground nearby. Probably the unknown mercenary spitting. “I’ll find those girlies for myself, thank you very much.”

The man continued to mutter to himself about his day’s annoyance, and Anna began to lose her patience. While the thick leather and straw vest Emily always wore on expeditions prevented her from bleeding out, the arrows were apparently laced with some sort of paralyzing toxin. Depending on the type of toxin, it would either fade within the hour, or cause permanent muscle damage if it wasn’t fully neutralized. Fortunately enough, the general use antidote that Anna always carried in her belt seemed to soothe Emily’s initial shock and pain, but either the dosage wasn’t high enough or full treatment required a different herb. The expedition camp had a complete medicinal toolkit for circumstances exactly like this, but because of the straggler right above Anna…

“You know, you guys might think you’re clever hiding there, but I know you’re there.”

Anna’s blood ran cold. There was no direct line of sight from the man to her and Emily. He had probably just noticed other lazy mercenaries loitering around as well.

“The reason why I stayed behind to begin with was because I knew they missed you. If they had known you guys were here, they would have bundled you up for the slave trade like the rest of them. I wouldn’t get to have my fun.”

By the Gods of the Unknown, he isn’t speaking the Common Tongue. Anna realized in horror. He’s speaking Pzekizish.

Suddenly, the man’s ugly face swung from above. He had the classic Pzekian dark brown hair, but the placement of his eyes and nose looked wrong.

“Don’t hurt us!” Anna cried out, simultaneously tossing a small handful of powdered chalk at the upside down head.

It struck him squarely in his eyes. The material was meant to dry out damp surfaces, and judging by the immediate squinting and outburst, it was also effective at drying out moist organs.

“You wench! Ugh!” The man’s hands immediately shot to his face, clawing at the powdery material.

Anna wasted no time. She lunged at the still hanging head with her shoulder, feeling his nose crack on impact as his neck flexed backwards and he tumbled down from the log. Her legs screamed from the sudden exertion as she spun around, the man already back on his feet on top of the log, his nose spewing blood.

“You won’t get lucky again, you worthless Pzekian whore. I’ll make you watch your friend have the time of her life before I get to you. You will wish you died to the arrows.”

For all of the random items that Anna had stored among her many belt pockets, a single dagger was the only weapon she carried. It was the first and final gift from her original parents, the ones that had died as they reached Marcus’s doorstep while she was still a baby. The blade was long enough for it to easily be classified as a child’s training short sword, but the sharpness and metal were apparently far too high quality to be confused for such. Every blacksmith that appraised it had similar praises, yet were unfamiliar with the crescent moon emblazoned at the base of the blade.

She hefted the familiar weight in her hands, resisting the urge to twirl it in anxiety. The man narrowed his eyes at the weapon, drawing his own in response — a tattered longsword that was in desperate need of maintenance. He held it unsteadily in his right hand, the standard sword side.

“How many little tricks do you have in that little belt of yours, you brat. I’ve needed a new weapon for a while, but that potato peeler doesn’t even deserve to carve a pigeon’s corpse.” He paused, closing his eyes and took a deep breath. An oddly familiar action. “You won’t catch me off guard again. I possess the Evil Eyes, your soul is already mine!”

As Anna watched his eyes dart around her body, feeling his gaze examine something around her, familiar village gossip floated into her head.

Only those cursed witches and warlocks can detect their own kind with those evil sight of theirs. For all we know, they could be plotting to take over the world, and we would never know because only they can see what unnatural evils they can see.

She took the initiative, sprinting forward and startling the man, who was too busy giving her a disgusted expression to bother readying his sword. She thrusted at the shoulder of his sword arm. He managed to barely step backwards in time, her dagger barely cutting fabric.

That was fine. The movement of the dagger form that Victor drilled into the depths of her muscles accounted for this exact dodge. Anna flexed her core and turned, following her thrust with a wide horizontal slash. This time, she barely managed to catch her target. The tip of her blade sliced cleanly through his shoulder muscles. Outside of bones, Anna knew how easily her dagger could cut through meat. After all, she often used the blade to help butcher her adoptive father’s hunts.

The form continued from there. Depending on deep the shoulder slash connected, an immediate low or mid parry was necessary while recorrecting the body’s posture. Since the man seemed unprepared, she chose a low parry, successfully deflecting the counterattack.

After the parry, it was another stab, this time at the bicep of the sword arm. If the stab is successful, twist the weapon hard to ruin the muscle tissue and disable the arm. If there’s no armor and the blade’s sharp, tear the weapon away as roughly as possible to maximize damage and pain. At this point, it’s safe to assume the man is panicking, so they’ve dropped their sword out of reflex. Grab their undefended wrist and yank as hard as you can. Drive your knee into their crotch as hard as you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman, this maneuver will drop them to their knee is agony. At this point, they’re a sitting duck. The most painless method of execution is —

“Oh, Spirits of Aether, I offer you my sword arm! Fulfill your obligations of My Contract and Restrain the enemy I see!” The man screamed in desperation.

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Anna’s dagger froze before she could slam the hilt into his temple. As the man uttered in that strange tongue, which she could understand for some reason, an invisible force began to hold her limbs in place.

Ah. So this is probably what a spell feels like.

“You… you’re Mana Blessed, and you don’t even know how to use Aethersight properly.” The man spit on her face. The disgusting phlegm dripped down her nose, and she couldn’t move a muscle to wipe it away. “No wonder you weren’t intimidated by my bluff. No wonder you moved so much faster than I expected. No wonder I could find your blinding aura so easily. No wonder I was drawn here. You are the perfect catalyst for my Master’s ascension. But you are still too unrefined. Too raw.”

He slapped Anna across the face. The strike left her cheek throbbing in pain, but she still was not able to budge an inch.

“To add onto that, you’re clearly a Natural Blessed with how messily you’re manipulating your Mana. You are one in a million, the individual who is closest to becoming a living legend in hundreds of kilometers around us. Yet, you waste your potential and talents here, rotting in a rescue expedition formed by cripples and peasants.”

The man took a deep breath, then drove his fist deep into Anna’s abdomen. Despite the fact she was also wearing the thick vest, the impact still managed to drive the air from her lungs. Breathing became incredibly difficult as her chest refused to expand further to recapture the escaped oxygen, and her vision started to flicker.

But… there was something else to that strike. Anna couldn’t tell if it was her tenuous hold on her consciousness, or a flicker of something…

It gave her an idea. She tried to imagine her Mana moving to her lungs, and felt extremely needed air begin to flow in.

“Fuck! Of course you had something cheeky hiding under that ugly shirt.” The man seethed, lightly shaking his left fist. His right arm was still dangling uselessly to his side, so he turned around to pick up his fallen sword.

“Oh, Spirits of Aether, I offer you the treasures in my belt pouches! Fulfill the obligations of My Contract and Unrestrain me!”

She saw the man spin around in fear, but remained still.

“You wench! I thought you had actually pulled it off. Don’t scare me like that next time, it took me a full year to get the Spirits to respond to even the smallest of my requests!”

He began to walk closer, the sword now unsteadily held in his left arm.

“Now, don’t mind me if I take an arm for an arm. You won’t be needing it, especially after I’m done with you.”

The man’s face was even uglier than Anna had originally thought, now that it was nearly breathing on her face. Mismatched facial features aside, his unkempt facial hair was peppered by an unnatural spread of gray, blonde, and red hairs. The wrinkles on his face had dirt and filth deeply embedded into the cracks, and the sheer odor emanating off him suggested that he had not bathed in weeks, if not months. Maybe even years.

She willed her Mana into her forehead with a silent prayer that it make it stronger, slamming it against his. He staggered backwards, but only slightly. A smirk on his head told Anna that he had known about the deception — probably his Aethersight giving her intentions away.

“No, no, no. That’s the wrong way to do it. Even if you are a Natural Blessed, some things still must be taught. You won’t find a teacher for that though. I will make sure that you are properly prepared for my Master. You won’t need to know anything for that purpose.”

The brief lull in the fight gave Anna enough time to catch her breath and more seriously analyze the situation. No matter how flippant her opponent was at the start, it was now clear that he was significantly more experienced in combat and Mana. The damage that she had dealt was a complete fluke, as he had said. Of course the man would have dropped his guard when he saw two unarmed girls. She knew from personal experience that the Mana Blessed were naturally strong enough to fight off five untrained grown men, simply due to their attunement to the Mana within their bodies. Veterans, like her father and Victor were able to overpower her with techniques and experience, but even they had to pair up to give her a real challenge as she had gotten better.

It was no wonder that the village gossips constantly had Anna’s name carried by the winds. The Mana Blessed were truly unfathomable beings to them.

Suddenly, Anna noticed — the man wasn’t even bleeding from the mangled mess of his arm.

“Ah yes, you would like to know what’s happening here? It’s a basic form of Mana Control, keeping your blood inside your body so that you never bleed out.” To emphasize his point, he vigorously swung his shoulders, causing the arm to violently flop around. Only a few flecks of red flew out. “Have you never noticed that you yourself utilize this trick unconsciously? I’m sure you’ve realized how quickly your cuts stop bleeding compared to your lessers.”

The moment he stopped speaking, he lunged at her with his sword with a speed that betrayed his lazy posture. She barely managed to deflect the blade on reflexes and training alone, sending the man stumbling to her right.

Thank the Creators that Pa is a Reverse Wielder.

The two spun to face each other again, Anna taking an unexpected kick to the side as the man recovered faster than she expected. Once again, the padding of her vest dulled the impact, but the sheer force of the strike sent her skidding across the forest ground. She flipped her dagger grip, baring the long blade towards her opponent. There was no more banter from the man, as his frenzied charges continued in an attempt to overwhelm her.

The man varied his attacks. Sometimes they were from his sword — wild horizontal swings and quick thrusts with no proper form, compensated by an intense amount of power. Usually they were kicks from his legs, and occasionally he would even use his shredded arm as a whip, not caring if it sustained even more damage from being aggressively swung around.

At first, Anna attempted to strategically block the man’s kicks with her blade, allowing it to sink deeply into his shins and shoes. However, the man was completely undeterred by the wounds, and consistently sliced away at Anna’s body whenever her dagger was occupied by one of his body parts. She reprioritized her defense, focusing on dodging and parrying the more serious sword attacks, which allowed many more kicks to land. She treated these as learning pains, since through each painful unblocked hit, her earlier suspicions began to solidify. It wasn’t obvious, but she could feel the man’s gross Mana behind the blows. The lingering foreign energy made her more aware of her own Mana, as it seemed to recoil in disgust from having to interact with such a disgusting substance.

After a particularly nasty arm whip to the head that felt her reeling, Anna felt something click within her. Maybe it was the continuous accumulation of blunt force trauma across her body finally taking its toll, but her instincts told her it was time to push back. Instead of forcing Mana upwards to her eyes, she tried to feel out her Mana that had began to tingle all throughout her body.

She ducked underneath a fierce side kick and desperately explored the crackling sensations. The man’s expression had turned from wild bloodlust to genuine concern, as he immediately picked up the tempo of his attacks. The sudden speed increase caused Anna to misjudge how fast she needed to step back, and the hot sting across her left cheekbone confirmed a slashing injury. The sword glinted in the sunlight as it was turned for another horizontal swing. It was a feint — his foot landed deep in Anna’s gut for what felt like the hundredth time, and she forced all of her focus on how her Mana flickered in response to the blow.

With the wind being knocked out of her again, her blood rushed to her head and she desperately inhaled for air. She found the sensation she was looking for with the breath. The building sensation crackling under her skin pumped through her body. She could almost imagine the thick form of her Mana flowing in her veins. Just like her blood.

Of course.

“HOW. IS. THAT. POSSIBLE?” The man finally screamed out, his verbal promise of taking Anna alive totally forgotten as he lifted his sword high, pointed straight at her stomach.

She blinked once, feeling the Mana that was already heavily pumping through her face. The world blazed alive as it had earlier today, painted by a new set of sensations that she didn’t have time to properly process. This time, there was no uncomfortable pressure building up in her head. It just felt right.

She gazed at the poisonous purple Mana that was stained with a filthy green gradient in front of her. She saw the roaring intensity around his eyes, indicating the Aethersight. She saw the way his Mana bubbled along his body. Unlike hers, it was stagnant, foaming as it was called to use. She saw his Mana froth in his arms as he plunged the sword downwards.

Oh right, she was in the middle of a fight with him.

She reached with her left hand to intercept the sword, feeling her Mana coursing through it. She flexed that Mana, coating her fingers and palm as she caught the blade and snapped it with a flick of her wrist. The constant clashes with her dagger had chipped away at its poor quality, making it a simple enough process. She felt the dull blade dig through her skin, failing to cut through the muscles and joints.

The man fell forward, expecting the impact of the thrust to stop his momentum. Anna’s dagger was already pointing straight up, easily sliding through his own chest. She almost didn’t register his death gurgles as she marveled at how the dagger looked, covered in the crimson red of her Mana and her fallen opponent’s blood. The dredges of the man’s purple Mana struggled to float upwards, before coagulating into droplets that rained down. In her state of delirium, Anna could almost believe the crescent moon was drinking away at the concoction.

As quickly as it had come, the adrenaline rush fueling Anna vanished. The last thought she had before her consciousness faded was how peculiarly Mana seemed to melt from a corpse.