Note: Had to repost this chapter because the last one bugged out and the comments appeared above the post for some reason.
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I woke with the first light of morning. Throughout the night Sylvanas and I traded watch, letting us both get some sleep. We each stood for four hours, but despite only getting four hours of sleep I felt amazing. I leapt from my makeshift bedding and stretched my arms towards the glittering sunlight peeking through holes in the canopy above. Off to the side Sylvanas sat, legs crossed, with a look of bitter concentration on her brow.
“Having trouble?” I asked, my voice filled with vigour.
“Yes,” she replied, her eyes staying shut. “I can’t manipulate mana at all. I can sense it, but… Trying to manipulate it is like trying to grab a slippery fish with your bare hands.”
“That was an oddly specific comparison,” I said, scratching my head and pulling twigs from my bedridden hair.
“There’s some fish spittled over the fire,” Sylvanas replied, still refusing to move anything other than her mouth.
“Oh, you actually caught some food?” I asked.
“Yeah. I figured we shouldn’t use up our rations if we can help it. Who knows when we might face a serious emergency,” she replied. Then her face scrunched up and I could feel the mana around her aggregating, as if someone were trying to mound it together like snow.
“That won't work,” I replied softly.
“Screw you, I got this!” She replied, and I saw her attempt to move the bunched up mana only for it to flow away between her proverbial fingers. “Fuck!”
I started laughing. “You’re going about this all wrong, cuz, you keep trying to bunch mana up like snow or mud, but you need to be a bit more… Delicate. Try using your skills and remember the feeling they give.”
Sylvanas’s lips curled into a frown and she finally started to move again. She stretched, much the same way I had earlier, and then walked over to the fire and poured some water from her inventory over the top of it.
My breath appeared like small clouds in front of me in the morning chill. I pulled my ninja facemask up over my face, thankful for its warmth, and I continued forward. Sylvanas followed behind me about twenty paces, enough distance for me to give warning of something ahead. I constantly focused while I moved, using my skill Shadow Meld and imprinting the mana feeling to my memory. Stealth magics were vastly different from the norm, since they involved connecting your internal mana to external sources… It was almost like matching the wavelengths of sinusoidals, really.
We killed numerous monsters as we traveled, slowly ramping up the strength of our opponents over time. We started with some more alligator wolves, then a large goblin horde, and finally some newer monsters that resemble elephants with stegosaurus platings and spines. Everything my blade touched died in a single strike. Sylvanas was the same.
After murdering monsters for an entire morning, we decided to step up our game.
It didn’t take long to find a pack of the T-rex monsters. From our short time traveling, they seemed to be the apex predators of this forest, and for good reason. They were huge, their front legs weren’t exactly tiny, and their teeth were the size of machetes… Frankly, they terrified me. Admittedly, I had cowardice streaks at times. Sylvanas was usually much more brazen than me, but she was actually a six foot tall muscle-bound dude on the inside and I was just a short ugly nerd, even if I was currently in the body of a beautiful athletic assassin.
We decided to change up the usual strategy. Sylvanas highly doubted she could tank a hit from the dinosaur, so we opted to kit the beast instead by swapping aggro.
I melded into the shadows and climbed a tree, trying to keep above the beast so I could aim for its neck. I had a strange feeling that my sword could cut through its scales, thus the only hard part would be reaching a vulnerable spot. I hadn’t fully tested my body’s acrobatic limits yet, but I didn’t want to see how high I could jump without something guaranteed soft to land on.
Sylvanas walked towards the beast and threw a rock at it. I prepared to jump down and slice the monster… But something completely terrifying happened. I felt the sensation of mana coming from my cousin. The stone Sylvanas threw didn’t bounce off the dinosaur harmlessly, instead it struck the beast like a cannonball and knocked it back forty feet into a tree. The beast crumpled like a tissue paper.
“... SYLVANAS! WHAT DID YOU DO?!” I cried, jumping down from the treetop and landing softly like a cat.
“I don’t know!” She replied, looking at her hands strangely, her eyes open in shock. “I just got frustrated about the whole mana thing and just got really angry. I wanted to hurt something so I threw the rock, wanting to at least hurt the stupid dinosaur…”
“You used mana,” I replied. “Check your skills.”
She paused for a moment and looked off in the distance, no doubt using her menu screen. “I have a new skill, Emotion Casting.”
“That’s… Probably awful if it does what I think it does.” I mused, sitting down on a nearby rock while looking over at the slumped dinosaur. It clearly didn’t survive the impact.
“Shit, does this mean I can only use spells or techniques when I’m angry from now on?” Sylvanas asked, her tone calming but filled with the distinct sharpness of anger.
“I’m not sure. We can keep trying with the mana manipulation practice… Perhaps we should consider it a good thing for the time being. It means if you get into the right mindset you can create and use new skills in the least. Perhaps try to get angry and shoot out a mana blast like I did earlier…”
“You want me to just -get- angry?” Sylvanas asked, irritation in her voice.
“Come on, you’re angry at least 70% of the time. It shouldn’t be -that- hard for you,” I replied, trying to egg her on a bit to help out.
“Fuck you, I’m not angry!”
“Good good! Now channel that into your hand and try to shoot it out,” I said. Instead I was quickly bopped on the head by her fist… A fist filled to the brim with mana.
The blow was unlike anything I ever experienced. It felt like a car crashing into my skull. The world around me grew blurry as I flew. Thankfully there was the soft body of a nearby dead T-rex to break my rocketeering…
“Oh shit! Cass are you okay!” Sylvanas cried while running towards me. I stood up, my legs shaking, and I coughed a little blood. I pulled back my mask and spit out three teeth on the forest floor.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled. “You’re more broken than I am.”
“Fuck hold on, I’ll use my heal skill on you. Just stay still for a moment.”
The mana around us began to buzz like a swarm of bees. My head grew fuzzy, and the midday sunlight felt brighter than normal.
“Am I in shock?” I asked aloud, trying to rationalize what was happening. Then the sunlight grew thousands of times brighter, and I had to look away. Warmth flooded my body, as if I were some cold pipe being filled with hot water. My pains vanished like smoke on a windy morning, and clarity returned to the world around me. The feeling of being healed was almost euphoric. I even felt a grinding sensation in my mouth as my teeth regrew.
“Cass? Do you feel better? Should I heal you again?” Sylvanas asked, her tone filled with adorable panic. I reached out and rubbed her head, even if she was taller than me, and I gave her a smile.
“I’m fine, Sylvanas,” I replied. “That felt incredible. I don’t think we need to worry about the monsters in the woods anymore. They’re all much weaker than us.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She asked, her face showing concern. Unable to bear her adorableness, I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed.
“I’m fine. Now come on, we should be able to leave this forest in a few hours if we move seriously,” I said while hugging her.
“Thank God you’re okay,” she replied as she hugged me back. “I was afraid I really hurt you. Normally when I tried to give you a tap on the head, it leaves a small bruise… That was the first time I’ve ever seen you go flying like a cannonball.”
“It was because you used mana. You were angry when you did it. We’ll need to be careful, from now on, since your emotional state clearly impacts everything you do. My guess is if you’re angry your mana supplements your physical strength tremendously,” I said and then disengaged the hug. “Now, on the way, let's really put the pedal to the metal and test just how strong and fast our bodies really are at their baseline.”
We started running through the woods. I was noticeably faster, stronger, and more agile than Sylvanas… But whenever she started to get angry, her bodily performance would skyrocket. She could overtake me with ease. Clearly mana augmentation was a thing.
On a whim, I tried to lace my own mana into the muscles of my leg mid stride. This was a mistake. The sudden burst in power and speed launched me face first through seven trees, two alligator wolves, and an entire goblin horde. Everything in my wake lied dead, as if some nuclear blast had leveled it. Of course, I was also in excruciating pain… But nothing seemed broken or even bruised. Hell, I looked completely unscathed.
“Cass!” Sylvanas called out, trying to catch up.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Sylvanas, when you healed me earlier, did I have any visible wounds other than the broken teeth?” I asked.
“Uh… No. Nothing. In fact, you didn’t even have a bruise. I was just so worried, but this impact looked even harder than when I hit you.”
“... We’re cheat characters,” I muttered under my breath. “Sylvanas, I think our bodies are abnormally tough. I still felt pain from that impact, but I don’t even have a bruise on me… Should we test out and try to find our breaking points?”
“No!” Sylvanas quickly retorted. “Are you insane? I’m worried enough about you right now, I don’t want to find out just how much it takes to -actually- hurt you. What if we do find the answer and I can’t heal you right? What if you end up permanently crippled because -heals- in this world only regain vitality or something stupid? We know nothing, right now.”
“Well, what do you suggest we do, then? We can’t exactly walk around cities and such without some knowledge about our strengths and limits. If this world is anything like the ones in the popular web novels or games, we’ll have to fight off assassins and crazy political drama every day!” I replied, letting my nerdiness get a little bit better of me.
“That’s stupid! We could always just get normal jobs and not be idiots flaunting our superpowers, you know. Hell, we could probably just apply for positions in this country’s administration. If we really are broken strong it’d be easy and we could go under the radar.”
“That’s assuming this isn’t just some typical monarchy run by a stupid generic king who doesn’t understand anything about commoners,” I said with a small giggle.
“Look, I know one thing for a fact, Cass. This is real. You need to stop making assumptions based on the novels you’ve read. I’ve read a lot of those novels too, you know, and most of them are ludicrous. If there is a ‘troup’ that kills monsters, it’s the city’s garrisoned army. There won't be an ‘adventurer’s guild’ and magic is probably extremely rare and a highly guarded secret, Academies for it won't exist.”
It felt like water had been poured all over me. My enthusiasm died down and I looked at my feet for a moment. “You mean, we won't be able to become badass adventurers together then?” I replied, my voice meek.
“Aaaaah, I mean we’ll probably have to join a fucking army to be ‘adventurers’. But I’ll do it with you if you really want to,” Sylvanas replied, waving one of her hands behind her head. Her tone seemed apologetic.
I flashed a devilish grin. “Good. Then we’re going to be mages, adventurers, and great heroes together.”
“Uhhg, we could always just open up a small store somewhere and live quiet lives,” she replied, but I shook my head.
“It’s too late. You promised to join the army with me. Now let’s get to this city and find out exactly how wrong you are about this! I bet there’s an adventurer’s guild, magic academies, and crazy beast people everywhere! There’ll also be a high ranked ex-adventurer as the guildmaster who will be mysterious and totally see through our strength. Also a bunch of buff but weak guys will walk up to us and pick a fight with us like ‘why are a couple girls coming in here’ and then we’ll kick their asses and everyone’s jaws will drop…”
I ranted for the next several hours about all the cool things that were definitely going to happen when we reached the city. Sylvanas probably wasn’t even listening, but I took solace in voicing out my own hopes. After all, if God sent us to some cheapo fantasy world without an adventurer’s guild, what fun would there be in that?!
The woods began to thin out, and what was once a wall of trees turned into sparse thickets separated by mangled grass and shrubs. The monsters also began to change, growing more mammalian in design with fur and claws instead of scales. We killed them anyways. There was also a noticeable amount of undead monsters, like skeletons and zombies lumbering about. They were extremely weak, but they didn’t seem to fit into the ecosystem at all. In fact, I hadn’t seen any indication that there would be undead here… Don’t undead normally hang around barren wastelands, graveyards, and dungeons in classic fantasy stories?
I got the answer a few moments later when, at the end of the clearing Sylvanas and I walked up a soft slope and came out upon the top of a cliff. The wind howled and whipped my hair back as I looked over the nearly endless landscape. The cliffside overlooked a valley, and in that valley sat a walled city, massive in size… And it was on fire. Outside the city walls stood an army of undead monsters, ordered into messy hasty rows, and the blur or endless arrows flying back and forth obscured the finer details from my sight.
The howls of monsters, cries of pain, and explosions of the occasional magic attack quietly roared, far enough away that they sounded like muffled foreign music, keeping a strange but unique beat.
“Good lord…” Sylvanas said, her voice pensive.
“That explains the undead,” I remarked, my voice quivering with a profound sadness. We had traveled for two days through foreign lands. With a tired mind, I sat down on the cliff’s edge, letting my legs dangle over. I stood in quiet contemplation, letting the smell of smoke and ash wash over me. From my perch I could make out the ant-like soldiers of both sides clashing, the battle fierce and their weapons clanging.
From the Undead’s side I could make out a very basic command structure. The crude regiments each had a larger monster at their helm, those larger monsters receiving orders via either magic or some other invisible signaling method. Further back sat a small pyre fixed with the effigies of a man, woman, and child. The stuffed puppets were dressed in regal clothes, adorned with crowns, and seemed to burn endlessly without risk of extinguishing or losing shape.
I could pick out the leader of the undead army, a robed skeleton sitting upon a large throne of sorts near the pyre, his dressing lavish. Adorned by gold chains and a gnarled staff topped with a red ruby, the Lich (as I took to name him) pointed towards certain sections of the battlefield and, as if on command, the undead armies would move in accord.
Perhaps my biggest discovery of the whole ordeal was just how rare magic seemed to be used. I could identify maybe 10 mages on the undead side in total, and they only gathered to cast a spell once every few minutes. Each time resulted in a piddling fireball, by my standards, that amounted to little more than a flaming arrow would.
The human side was harder to dissect. With their walled city, most of the human forces stood behind safety and fired arrows in high arcs, aiming for the meat of the opposing forces whenever they drew near enough to fall in range.
The humans seemed to employ smaller infantry units that focused on mobility, even using three cavalry troops to tie up and keep the enemy distracted.
The human side had even fewer mages visible than the undead. I counted five total, and each was only capable of stopping maybe a single arrow before growing haggard and backing away to sit cross-legged and (by my assumption) meditate to restore their mana.
Sylvanas sat next to me, providing a momentary respite from my analysis. She crossed her arms and leaned her head back, as if in thought.
“The grasslands have been trampled brown,” I said, trying to break the silence. “It’s such a shame. I bet when this city was surrounded by farmland and greenery, it was beautiful.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sylvanas said, a groan in her pause. “And I don't like it.”
“They’re humans, -we’re- humans. We should help them,” I said.
“By jumping into a full scale war?! I know we’re strong, but we’re not that strong. That’s just reckless.”
“I never said anything about fighting an army now…” I replied with a devilish grin. “But I do happen to be quite skilled in assassination techniques. The enemy general there seems to be the only thing holding their army together. It’d be a real shame if someone cut off his head.”
“Yes you could probably make it to him… And possibly even kill him. But how would you get out? You’d be faced with a horde of undead unlike anything I’ve ever heard of in a video game before. Their archers are nearly blotting out the sun!”
“See, that’s why I need your help…”
“Uhhg, what’s your stupid plan?” She asked, dejection in her tone.
“Simple, I want to you to get the city to coordinate an attack when I strike,” I replied.
“And how in the hell am I supposed to accomplish that?” she asked, frustration in her tone.
“... I mean, if you just jump into one of the battles and kill a shitload of enemies, they’ll probably send you to someone important to talk to rather quickly. I figure I’ll attack at sunrise to give you enough time. If this undead army is anything like I’m expecting, I think they’ll abuse their never ending stamina to siege during the night.”
“This is stupid. This is completely dumb…" She paused then looked at my smile. "You’re going to go whether I get you help or not, aren’t you?” Her voice was quiet but filled with dejection.
“You know me so well~”
And thus started, perhaps, one of the strangest and greatest days in the history of the city of Bellwood.