Michael
The northeast of Grent was mainly covered by a spanning forest, in contrast to the western part, which had been cut back significantly at the border facing the clan lands. The forest also reached Emall and the southern parts of Duke Wallsten’s counties.
As far as Michael had heard, it was a dangerous place for normal people. There were no villages there, so the monster spawn rates were high. It was mostly used for hunting and herb collection as everything in there had slightly higher mana concentrations due to the high number of monsters.
Now Michael was standing behind Tara and Erhen as they were looking for tracks. Silas was right next to him while the knight of Grim was keeping watch.
“I heard what happened between you and Erhen on the day when I went missing,” Michael said nonchalantly.
Silas regarded him with a short glance before speaking. “I would assume you had, milord.”
“I feel like it is my responsibility as your liege to ask what this whole thing is about. You seem to be much harsher on Erhen than you are on Lance. Is there some kind of animosity which I should know about?”
“None, sir.”
Michael let out a long sigh at the short answers. “Then why is it that you pick on Erhen so often?”
“Because he needs it. The boy needs to toughen up a little,” Silas replied bluntly.
“So, you are doing this for his benefit,” Michael asked. He was actually curious and there was no blame in his voice.
“For the most part, milord,” the knight confirmed.
“Only the most part?”
“I do have a bad temper, sir,” he flatly explained which caused Michael to laugh.
“It is not that bad, most of the time. But back to Erhen, you think that Erhen needs to be pushed until he finally pushes back?”
“Don’t you? I have seen it so often before, men who were forced into service by their families. They rarely have the grit that it takes but Erhen still did it. He just needs a stronger spine. We would never fight if it was his choice,” Silas explained his thoughts.
“No. I don’t think that Erhen needs harsh treatment. I am not saying that there aren’t people that benefit from this approach, I myself am a good example but Erhen is not like me. I was afraid of fighting back because I feared being hurt. Erhen is not scared, the moment he can’t avoid a fight he is fully committed. I talked to him, and he simply doesn’t like fighting, which is why he tries to avoid it. He doesn’t like the bloody scraps with his life on the line and only pain as a reward.
“He is much more a calm hunter. So going with an aggressive approach with someone who doesn’t like direct confrontation seems unlikely to work.” Michael looked over to Erhen who was currently showing Tara a track and explaining some trick he had learned to determine the age.
“You might be right,” Silas said after following his gaze. “It is not like I got anywhere with my approach in the last years.”
“If you want to help someone you should really talk to them. Things can look one way from the outside but a whole different way from the person’s own perspective.” Michael smiled as he watched Silas think that over.
“So, what should we do to help the kid get some confidence?”
“I think he would benefit from positive reinforcement. Praise him if he does something right, listen to his opinion, and if he does something wrong, then tell him it is wrong and explain how to do it right,” Michael replied and then added with a smirk, “Also not calling him a kid and treating him more like a squad mate would probably help.”
Silas frowned and then sighed. “I was afraid it would be something like that. I am not the supportive type.”
“You don’t have to throw him a party for every achievement,” Michael laughed. “A shoulder clap or a ‘well done’ should suffice. Just don’t scream or berate him for doing something wrong, he will never defend himself, that much I can promise you.”
Silas nodded slowly.
“I do have one more question, sir.”
“What is it?”
“How the fuck did you get so smart?” Silas said and then quickly added, “Respectfully I mean. When I was your age, the only thing I could think about was girls and beating up other boys.”
Michael couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t know. I was never normal, and neither was my childhood. Some people are just anomalies, and I guess I am one of them.”
“I just wanted to say that I respect you deeply, sir. I can’t even imagine what kind of man you will become, but I am looking forward to seeing it,” Silas said. He left a speechless Michael behind and stepped up to Erhen and Tara.
Michael didn’t expect to get this from their conversation, but it was heartwarming to see the knight place his hand on Erhen’s shoulder and say something. These were the people Michael sought to build a good place for, they had their own faults, but most had a good heart.
Erhen glanced over his shoulder with a mildly confused expression toward Michael. Michael simply smiled warmly and nodded at the knight. Erhen turned back and began explaining his tracking trick to Silas as well.
The only thing left was to hope that Silas could keep up with this direction and then see them both grow.
Michael wiped his sword with a rag from the blood of the Iron Boar he had brought down. It had been a whole group of them, but they were only unevolved two skulls and not very smart ones at that.
The fight had been short, Michael had been surprised by the destructive power Erhen could put out with his bow even though it wasn’t enchanted.
I need to get this man an enchanted bow soon, Michael thought. It would be more difficult than other weaponry because the only artificers that they had were smiths, but they would make something work.
Tara had also surprised him. He had known that she was strong and at least above average in mana capacity, but he hadn’t expected her to stop a charging boar in its tracks by hurling a spear at it. The poor thing had been impaled nearly halfway through. This was even more impressive when one considered that their name ‘Iron Boar’ didn’t just come from their coloring.
Michael and the two remaining knights had then reaped a bloody toll on the beasts as they closed in, the magical weaponry of Michael and Silas carving them apart easily. A direct hit from the boars would have been dangerous even for them but the boars were single-minded and easily baited and dodged.
“We should burn these after collecting their mana cores,” Tara said and knelt next to one of the beasts.
“To prevent other monsters from feasting on the remains?” Michael guessed and Tara nodded. Even if most of a monster’s mana was stored in their core, there was still a lot in the rest which was why monster parts of higher-skulled monsters were valuable for alchemists and artificers. Of course, not all monsters had a core formed already but in general, those had such a low mana level for one of their kind that their parts weren’t very interesting.
This batch wasn’t very far in that regard. Only two of them had a core and even those were so small that they were virtually worthless.
“You are really good at this,” Michael commented to Tara while the knights gathered up the carcasses into a pile where they could be burned safely.
“And you sound surprised,” she replied. “My father taught me well and the last two years have given me a lot of experience.”
“I may be a little surprised that you learned how to fight when you were younger. I assumed you only started two years ago,” Michael admitted.
“I am my father’s heir. Our lands are valuing martial prowess so not learning how to fight would make me a laughingstock among the nobles.”
Michael nodded embarrassed; it should have been obvious but his own experience with noble education still told him that this was an exception rather than the norm.
“I always wondered. Why don’t you have any siblings?”
“Oh, that? My mother nearly died at my birth and our priest back then told my father that her chances of survival were minimal if she became pregnant again. So, my father said, ‘I have my two girls, what else could I need?’ At least that is how he tells that story. Somehow my mother always has to laugh when he does but she never told me anything different.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That must have been only a few years after father’s first wife died. From what Michael had heard his uncle and aunt were much closer to her than they had ever been with his own mother. It must have been crushing to lose her and then absolutely horrifying to have the same thing nearly happen to his aunt too.
“It must have been lonely to grow up without any siblings. I could have done without the twins, but the castle feels just so empty without them,” Michael said while falling into memories.
“It was sometimes,” Tara admitted. “But everyone always took care of me. To be honest I was quite overwhelmed oftentimes when I came to visit you guys. Even so, I would have liked to have you more often.”
“Things sadly rarely go as we want them.”
“Yeah, but I see you as a brother or at least the closest thing to it, even if you are an idiot sometimes,” Tara bounced back from the somber mood.
“Then you already understand how siblings work,” Michael smirked.
They continued their journey shortly after. Even if they took out every monster they came across, it didn’t feel like they were on a hunt but rather that Tara had a specific destination in mind.
“How much farther is it?” Michael asked as they climbed a little hill. He was already looking around to see if there were any good camping spots.
“Just a few more-,” Tara’s voice petered out as he finally reached the top of the hill and gazed down on the other side.
The view was straight out of a fairytale. A clear pond opened up between the trees, reflecting the sun in hundreds of different colors. The vegetation around the water looked more vibrant than anywhere else in the forest Michael had been, and flowers covered the shore.
“This is beautiful,” Michael said lost in thought.
“Look there,” Tara poked him, and he followed her pointing.
A large herd of deer was currently drinking on maybe a fourth of the way around the pond from them. Even though they were far away, Michael could see them clearly. It took him a moment to realize that that wasn’t because of his enhanced senses but rather because of the ridiculous size of the animals. The stags were easily as large as a horse.
“Are those monsters? That can’t be. Monsters of that size wouldn’t move in groups,” Michael said to no one in particular. If these were indeed monsters, then the whole county could be in a lot of trouble.
“They are not monsters. They are magical beings,” Tara explained, looking back and forth between Michael and the magical deer.
Magical deer? Somehow that thought seemed ridiculous to Michael even if it really shouldn’t. He had seen a dragon and some wyverns after all, and those were more fantastical than some large herbivores.
“They are really cool. They don’t mind humans very much as long as you don’t bother them and I heard they can cast a magical shield to protect themselves, haven’t seen that though,” Tara rambled on excitedly.
“A shield?” Erhen asked with a confused expression.
“Not sure how they do it, but a hunter swore that they blocked his arrows with some kind of mana shield. That story is what brought me out here,” Tara explained.
Michael frowned and focused his vision on the mana. If the pond had been glowing with the reflection light before then now it was positively radiating light.
“No wonder everything looks to be livelier here,” Michael mumbled before saying a little louder, “The pond is full to the brim with mana.”
“What? With mana you say?” Tara asked and looked over to the water with newfound excitement.
“Yes, and that is probably also why the deer are so easily found here. They have to come back to refill their mana wells, or they wouldn’t be able to exist with the current level of atmospheric mana.”
“But where does the mana in the pond come from,” Erhen wondered.
Michael couldn’t do anything but shrug. “You would have to dive down into it to find out. It is probably the same place where the deer came from.”
“What do you mean?” Tara looked at him a little puzzled.
Magical creatures were kind of an obscure path of study due to them nearly completely vanishing since the cataclysm, so it wasn’t a big surprise that Tara didn’t know exactly how they worked.
“Magical creatures are not like monsters; they can’t just appear in mana-rich areas. In the seasons of low mana, a magical creature has three things it can do. Firstly, it can go home to its plane of origin, like elementals or demons. Secondly, they can hibernate in mana refuges or deep underground where the mana is thicker. And thirdly they can starve to death.”
Michael paused for a moment and then added, “Well, technically they could take a page out of the monster book and consume over sources of mana like the deer are doing. I imagine this wouldn’t be a long-term survival strategy due to the dropping mana levels in everything.”
“So, what you are saying is that the deer must have either come from a different plane or some mana refuge,” Tara continued asking.
“It is unlikely that they are from another plane. It is quite hard to open up a pathway on purpose and if it happened on accident then you would have noticed.”
Michael had read a theory that mundane creatures could also evolve into magical beings by being exposed to high levels of mana for a very long time, but that theory was neither proven nor was the timeframe for such an evolution much longer than this mana pond could have been here.
“Come on, let’s get closer,” Tara said and began descending the hill.
“I don’t think that is a good idea, sir,” Silas interjected but was quickly brushed aside.
“Tara said they were friendly as long as we don’t threaten them so it should be fine.” Michael’s curiosity had been piqued and he would not let himself be stopped by anything from studying these creatures more closely.
They closed in and the closer they got the more Michael could appreciate the sheer size of the things. The females were smaller, maybe the size of a smaller horse but the stags were positively huge. Michael had guessed them at the size of a horse from a distance but from closer up he sightly adjusted his estimation to the size of a warhorse breed.
The antlers of the stags drew Michael's attention even more than their size. They were of a crystalline substance that reminded him of monster cores and sparkled to his mana sense.
Michael and the others were quickly noticed by the magical deer, but they didn’t scatter like Michael would have expected. The only reactions they gave the group of humans were a few curious gazes and one of the stags stepped toward them.
He was definitely one of the biggest in the herd and he walked toward them with the confidence of someone who was at the top of the food chain.
The knights tensed up as the stag came closer. The stag looked at them and stopped around twenty meters away.
“Calm down. He can feel your tension,” Tara told the knights and stepped forward.
“Milady, please not again,” the knight of Grim pleaded with her.
“Oh, come on Gerald. They are peaceful. Just stay here you are making them skittish,” Tara replied and motioned Michael to follow her.
Michael and Tara approached the stag carefully. “Always keep calm, they can read your aura so if you get agitated, they might interpret that as aggression.”
Michael nodded with a smile as Tara explained the principle of communication via mana to him.
The stag watched them with strangely sentient eyes. It might not be as smart as one of the truly sentient races, but it was not a dumb animal, of that Michael was already certain.
Tara reached the stag first and slowly reached out her hand to the animal. The animal reached out and put its head against her hand.
Michael continued to watch as the mountain of mana-infused muscles moved underneath its skin.
Magical creatures were different from mundane ones. Their whole body was infused with mana down to the smallest parts. This made all these parts stronger as if they were augmenting the whole time and they could do that on top of it. That meant that if you had two outwardly identical creatures the one that was a magical being would be stronger in any case.
The disadvantage of course was that they were dependent on mana, and the more they adapted to it, the more they needed to sustain their great power.
Ideas began to form as Michael watched Tara pet the powerful animal.
“Did you ever try riding one of them?” Michael suddenly asked.
“What? No,” Tara replied confused.
“Then let’s try,” Michael said and softly pushed Tara to the side of the stag. He simultaneously sent an echo of calmness through his mana to the animal which continued to eye them curiously.
“Michael, why would I try that?”
“What was it you said? Don’t be such a wuss. It will be fine trust me,” he said and conjured a few steps of light to allow Tara to climb up.
The stag blew some air, and Michael could feel it get a little agitated. “Calm down big boy. I am just helping her up, nothing to be concerned about.” He softly slapped the side of the stag a couple of times and felt it relax.
“You don’t even know if it will allow me to get on,” Tara argued even while climbing the steps of light.
“He knows exactly what we are doing. If he didn’t want this then he would have left already,” Michael retorted and gave her another shove.
“Milord, please don’t do this,” Erhen called over from where the knights were standing.
“Just stay there. You will frighten him,” Michael called back.
Tara finally sat down between the mighty shoulders of the stag and adjusted her position.
“Where do I even hold on to?” she asked as she let her hands follow the muscles of her mount.
“Have you never ridden a horse bareback?”
“No? Should I have?”
“Then this is gonna be interesting,” Michael smirked. “Just sit further forward and get your legs along the crease between the barrel and shoulder muscles.”
She scooted forward a bit and then looked at Michael with a less-than-confident expression.
“And now?”
“Now you hold on for dear life,” Michael laughed and clapped the stag on the butt.
The stag instantly jumped forward and Tara bearhugged its neck while screaming in panic.
“Don’t panic or you will make him nervous,” Michael called after her and only heard part of the response.
“HE IS NERVOUS?! I AM, AHHAH.”
“Milady!” Sir Gerald yelled after her as the stag charged toward the pond. The knights stopped next to Michael and watched the heir of House Grim get smaller in the distance.
“The stag is moving well,” Michael commented as he watched it begin to turn around the pond.
“Lord Rowan! How can you let the lady take such a risk?! It will be my head if something happens to her,” Sir Gerald turned at him with a red face.
“Oh, don’t worry. This is not a horse, he will not throw her off,” Michael placated the knight without turning his head.
At least I hope he won’t, he added in thought.
“What do you think? Is he as fast as a warhorse?” Michael asked.
Silas watched for a few moments and then nodded. “I would say that it could match a charging horse’s speed and it probably could go faster if it wanted to.”
The knight surely understood where Michael was going with his question.
It took a few more minutes until the stag returned and Michael could hear Tara yell, “Please stoooop!”
The stag dug in its huffs the moment that the plea had finished and came to a sudden halt. Tara got pushed further forward against his strong neck and stayed like this for a few moments even after the stag had completely stopped.
“Nice riding, cousin,” Michael commented.
“You dumb ...,” she growled but stopped herself. “Can you please help me off?”
The stag huffed in an amused way and Michael couldn’t help but also smirk.
Sir Gerald was faster than Michael at the stag’s side to help his ward off. “Please never do something like this again, milady,” he said while lifting her off.
“Am I a dreamer or do they have potential?” Michael asked Silas.
“I believe so if they can be controlled and their mana problem solved,” Silas agreed.
Hmm, something I will have to bring up to my uncle. They are in his lands, after all, Michael thought and held his open hand to the stag. If I survive Tara’s vengeance, that is. It sniffed at the monster cores he was offering and quickly devoured the extra mana with a crunching noise.