Michael

Trees surrounded Michael as he walked through the underbrush filled with goblin corpses and rivers of blood. There were hundreds if not thousands of them, but Michael was calm.

“Find the source,” a rumbling voice shook the air around him as he continued up the mountainside. He wasn't sure why he was doing this, but it felt like the peak was the place he needed to be.

He walked past the goblin camp that they had cleared, and soldiers patrolled the bramble and newly erected fortifications. Blood covered the wooden spikes and unrecognizable corpses filled the moats.

It didn't take him long to leave the lower region behind and find his way into the middle region.

Wolves stalked him from the shadows and large frames were visible in the distance, but he paid them no mind. He wasn't here for them, and they couldn't do anything to him, the voice wouldn't let them.

“At the peak, you will find answers!”

Answers? To what questions, he asked himself, but his mind was slow and difficult to keep focused, so he continued ascending the mountain without wasting more thoughts on the why.

The pine forest of the middle region began to grow lighter until he stepped out of the tree line and into the upper region.

Only a few trees survived up here, but those that did were huge, the ground was mostly covered in rock and only the hardiest of grasses. Large rams roamed this area in herds, hunted by the harpies and wyverns that ruled this region of the mountains.

The harpies watched him with curious eyes, sitting on an ancient tree like a flock of strange birds but he couldn’t make out their exact forms. He looked up and noticed a wyvern cycling above him, he still didn't feel like he was in any danger even when a roar split the silence.

“Come.” The voice lured him further up the rocky surface until he stood in front of a cave entrance. The walls were glowing as the light behind Michael fell on the mineral-rich rock.

He knew that something was in there and that he needed to enter to find it, but his legs didn't move. He tried to force himself to go forward but, in this world, he wasn't in control.

Michael awoke in his bed, not violently like he was used to after these kinds of dreams, but calm and collected.

He stared at the roof of the tent for a few minutes while he thought about what he had seen. This was not the first time he had this dream; it had followed him the last weeks every night already.

“Why are we here,” he said quietly to himself. “The answer is in that cave, and I will find it.”

He swung himself out of bed and began dressing himself. His hands had healed well over the last four weeks, but they were still sluggish and would take some more time to completely recover.

The cold morning breeze greeted him together with Erhen as he left his tent a few minutes later. It was still early but the camp was already quite busy. They had moved closer to the forest two weeks before to reduce the travel time of the units now that most of the goblins in the area had been wiped out by their efforts and the relentless hunts of the starving monsters and ogres of the middle region.

Michael sat down next to the small fire in front of his tent and picked up a pot to start making some breakfast, he turned his hand in an awkward position while lifting the pot though and pain flared up causing him to drop it with a metallic noise.

“Milord, please let me,” Erhen said and quickly picked up the pot. Michael waved him away with badly hidden frustration and started making a light stew.

These last weeks have been incredibly boring. He couldn't have magical or martial training, couldn't write for longer than a few minutes, reading was hard because books didn't take well to the environment, and Geron didn't let him leave the camp much. He had even suggested that Michael return to Reen which Michael had vehemently refused.

The only thing he could do consistently without much pain now was play games, help in the strategy tent, and talk to people, it was dreadful.

You only realize the importance of hands after having them unusable, he thought and smirked as his bad mood began to fade. It was his own fault so there was no reason to be sour about it.

Michael continued working carefully with Erhen's help until Eydis came out of her tent. Contrary to Michael's injuries, hers had been completely healed already for over a week. With the constant attention of a trained healer and her own augmenting, she had managed to heal two or three times faster than a normal person should.

The burn marks had also mostly vanished, but she had a large burn scar between her chest and neck which she presented with pride. Scars were a sign of survival and strength in her culture and were considered attractive even for women.

Michael's wounds would not heal as quickly, he needed to take it slow and make sure that they heal as cleanly as possible to maximize his chances of regaining full function.

The other knights joined them shortly after, he was starting to see the wear and tear on their clothing and equipment. Michael had insisted that they continued to participate in the campaign even if he couldn't and they had given it their all. With the fights having shifted mostly into the middle region, they had to push themselves more than before which strained their weaker equipment.

“Who is going to stay with Lord Rowan today,” Lance asked between two bites and looked at Sir Zeke.

“You all are,” Michael interjected before the current leader of his guard could answer.

Five surprised faces turned to the young count, but he didn't explain it much further.

- A while later in the command tent –

“You want to go where,” Geron asked with an unsatisfied frown.

“I am going to the upper region to investigate,” Michael calmly replied.

The tent was filled with his guard, retainers, and the knights but notably no member of the adventurer's guild. Expressions of confusion, resignation, and opposition were prevalent on most of the present faces.

“But why? What are you looking for,” Sola asked with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“We all know that mana gets stronger the father you go underground, and it should become weaker while ascending a mountain but for some reason that isn't the case in our part of the Ereic Mountains. So, I am going to go up there to investigate and find the source of this anomaly.”

“Can't this wait until we have cleared out the middle region? The monsters are already starving and have started fighting the ogres for their resources. If we wait just a little bit longer and continue pushing them into each other then we can have both groups ready to fall in a matter of a week or two. After that we would have much more manpower and space to explore the upper region,” Geron explained.

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Michael knew all of this; he had been basically living in the strategy tent for weeks now.

They had eradicated most of the goblins pretty quickly at the start of the campaign, now were mostly repelling hunting parties coming to the lower region looking for food and forcing ogres or monsters to venture into the territory of other ogres or mostly dire wolves to get them to fight each other.

This was a slower approach than just walking in and trying to take it by force, but it was worth the lives it would save.

“We can't wait,” Michael said and held eye contact with his knight commander. “We are not the only ones that will have an easier time getting to the upper region and we are certainly not the only ones that might be interested in what is causing this anomaly.”

Whispered words were shared between some of the present and Kiran spoke up after sitting silently in a corner for everything before, “You think there is something valuable up there?”

“I don't know about valuable but if whatever is up there is emitting enough mana to fuel huge parts of a mountain range with more mana than the world core can then I would say it is something we should at least be the first to reach and evaluate.”

“You are going to go yourself, no matter what we say right,” Sola asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Definitely. The boredom here is going to kill me before anything out there can,” he returned in an amused voice.

“That still leaves the problem of how we will get there. We will have to travel through a warzone with starving beasts and after that, we are in an open field with wyverns and harpies,” Silas noted. “I am not sure how we square up against a wyvern. These things are mini dragons.”

The present knights especially began to quietly discuss this, while some were more cautious, others boasted that they would kill a wyvern by themselves.

“We will just have to avoid them,” Michael said but he had a strange feeling of security when thinking about the winged beasts.

Geron sighed, knowing quite well that they couldn't do anything, and said, “Very well then, I will come with you. We are just waiting mostly right now anyway, and you will need all the help you can get.”

The rest of the knights that were here, which were nearly all in this camp because of the early hour, agreed and also offered their assistance.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm but if we want to go unnoticed then we will have to keep the group small. I am only going to take my guard, Sola, Kiran, and Geron. The rest of you will have to hold the fort here so that we don't have any breakthroughs.”

Even though disappointed the knights nodded and after a short period of giving out orders, all those who wouldn't join the mission left.

“It seems I have been forcefully recruited to this,” Kiran said with a smirk.

“What? You don't want to come,” Michael asked with a similar tone, but the mage waved off. “I am probably the most interested person in this magical anomaly.”

Michael then turned to Geron. “You are sure that things will be fine here with both of us gone?”

“I wouldn't be too concerned with that. The adventurers are organizing themselves, the guard is in place, and the knights have their own hierarchy. I am more concerned about our part. You will be tempted to use your magic up there if we get into trouble and if you do you might finally destroy your hands and I don't really want to risk that,” Geron replied in a last attempt to convince his liege to rethink this.

“Well, in that case, you just have to prevent situations that will tempt me,” Michael retorted with a smile.

They were trudging through the forest just two hours later. With their small group and the nature of the camp they came from, it wasn't hard to quickly get ready for their mission and get supplies.

The weather was much better this time, so they made good way into the forest. They passed by a small camp of guards that greeted them, their wooden spikes had blood on them, and a couple of wolves lay in the moat. It reminded him of his dream but at least he didn't see mountains of goblins and blood rivers.

The further they ascended the thicker the mana got, it was not as obvious as in the dungeon and the change was only slight. He actually wasn't quite sure if it was just because of the change in scenery from the mixed forest to pine forest or if he really noticed a change.

Their conversations died down with the change in scenery and everyone locked their mana down as well as possible. They could certainly fight their way through the middle region, but it was just much easier not to.

It was obviously a realm of beasts; the trees were covered in wounds made by claws and the ground was pressed flat by the roaming bands of wolves and other creatures. Michael couldn't hear a single animal anywhere, no birds, small mammals, or bigger game, everything had been already consumed.

This is a little bit like a dungeon, Michael thought, well, except for the ogres living here.

It made the whole situation with the higher mana levels even weirder when one considered that there was developed life constantly draining it. Even if ogres weren't considered much more civilized than goblins, they should reduce the atmospheric mana quite substantially. Michael was tempted to trail off into theories but decided to focus on his surroundings.

This part was rather clear, it was often used as a staging ground for their displacement pushes to get the monsters and ogres to fight each other, so it was regularly cleared of anything hostile. They were still tense though, because monsters spawned anew regularly but their ascend was fortuitously free of monsters. And so, they left the pine forest and emerged into the rocky upper region. It looked familiar to Michael; this was the place he had emerged from in his dream.

“Alright, this wasn't so bad. What are we looking for exactly,” Geron asked while looking around.

“We are gonna have to follow the mana, go there where it is highest, and then we should find the source,” Kiran answered, Michael felt the mage's mana expand as he tried to find the right direction. There were little to no monsters in this region as far as their information went, the harpies and wyverns hunted them all down as soon as they left the safety of the pine trees, so it should be safe to use mana on a larger scale.

“Follow me, I can feel the way,” Michael lied and went ahead.

Sola looked at Kiran with a questioning look, but the old man simply shrugged and followed Michael.

They ascended the path Michael had taken in his dream and he was silently glad that no one questioned why he knew where to go or where exactly they were heading.

The climb got harder and harder the further they came with gravel slipping under their soles, large boulders blocking their path, and their equipment weighing them down.

The knights were mostly armed with spears to increase their range against the flying threats, but Erhen and Silas were carrying bows. These were the strongest bows you could make without magic; a normal human would probably not even be able to draw them, but an augmenter could use an even stronger one if trained for it. As always it was their lack of craftsmanship that hampered the effectiveness of their augmenters.

Michael came to a halt when he found the tree where he had seen the harpies in his dream, but it was empty. He looked up into the sky as well and tried to make out anything but there too was nothing.

Inspecting the tree more closely it was quickly clear that it was larger than any he had seen before but it looked dead, the bark had a grayish coloring, and the branches were devoid of leaves. As he looked closer a single figure landed on one of the branches without so much as a whisper.

It was a strange creature; it had the legs and wings of a bird, but the torso of a human woman, and its head was that of a human with a beak instead of a mouth and nose. Her chest was covered in feathers, but Michael wasn't sure if they were hers or a piece of clothing.

Her black eyes met Michael's for a moment before he was grabbed by the shoulder and pulled back into the ranks of knights, out of the corner of his eyes he could see bows being readied and mana flaring up.

The creature tilted her head and inspected them for ten whole seconds until it opened its beak and screeched loudly. Two arrows pierced her just a moment later, passing right through her chest and shattering on the bark of the tree behind.

“Move, move,” Geron bellowed and lifted Michael off his feet.

The young lord let it happen, knowing fully well that they could move faster with the knight carrying him.

The group scrambled to get away from the tree and find some kind of cover but soon after more bird-like calls began to follow them.

Michael looked up the best he could from his position and saw at least five harpies on their trail.

“To the rocks, we can find cover from aerial attacks there!”

Michael cursed a little as he was shaken when Geron jumped over a bolder in between the rocks and then came to a sudden halt.

He took a look around after Geron had put him down and sharply pulled in some air.

They were surrounded by at least fifty if not more harpies, who were sitting on the rocks all around them like some kind of strange flock of birds. The image from his dream came to mind but this time he could see them clearly.

The harpies were all of different colors, some bore brown feathers others brighter or darker variants but all in all they looked very similar to the first one they had seen.

“This is not ideal,” Silas grumbled.

“We probably shouldn't have murdered the first one we met instantly. I think we made them mad,” Sola commented a little tense.

Six to one were not that bad of odds for a mage and augmenter group but fighting against such a large flock of flying enemies on such rugged terrain could prove dangerous for their lack of experience in this kind of terrain.

“We can't draw this out too much or we will get more unwanted attention,” Zeke said, “I say shock tactic, scare them off with a show of power.”

“Sounds good,” Geron agreed but a distant but still loud roar stopped anyone from moving.

Michael had heard it before, and his gaze instantly went to the sky where two small dots started to become bigger and bigger.