At this point, Alex would have been well and truly lost, if not for his hud. The map it was slowly creating as he walked helping him identify his overall direction, stopping him from wandering around in circles.

His battle with the spider creature had been five hours ago now, according to his clock - if he could trust it. If nothing else, the long walk had given him loads of time to think about his situation. All of the wounds he had sustained before his death had well and truly disappeared, scars and all.

But for whatever reason, one scar, both mental and physical, one that he had purposely kept with him as a reminder, stayed. His left arm, at one point completely severed, had stayed as such - still made out of metal.

Alex could have replaced it with a biological replacement, but he had specifically asked for the bionic. It was a way to remind himself of his failure - his failure to save his friend, and his arm; both lost to the same monster.

His bionic arm still remained, in stark contrast to the rest of his fleshy body.

While Alex didn’t know why it had stayed, he wasn’t going to complain - it would continue its purpose of reminding him, and he’d be comforted by that fact.

Another thing that Alex had done over his long walk was to check over his armour - seeing what functioned and what didn’t. As far as he was able to tell, his armour was in mint condition.

Of course, this could be attributed to the nanomachines constantly on the ready to repair any damage - but that’d leave an automated log of what had been fixed. And no matter where he looked, he couldn't find his repair history.

So, as far as he could tell, it had been brought back to its best state. An odd circumstance to be sure. But as with most odd things that had happened to him in the last couple hours, the monster things included, he couldn’t bring himself to ponder too much about it.

As he contemplated this fact, he opened and closed the guiding flaps for his thrusters, which had proved their functionality when he had to scale a small cliff a few hours back.

He had come quite accustomed to those weird spider things, their attacks very much ineffective on his armour, and he had classed them as a low-level threat. From what he had gathered, he was most likely in their territory - an unfavourable situation if he were, to be honest.

To pass time, Alex was seeing if he could figure out if this was another world or not. This world definitely wasn’t normal - proved by the giant car sized spider beasts. Unless he was in Australia?

Chuckling to himself at his joke, he nearly failed to notice the enormous figure flying high above him, casting a huge shadow. Looking up, he saw what seemed to be...a dragon? Staring in awe, he noticed its relatively small size compared to dragons in most media, and the lack of front legs.

A wyvern, he thought, as he watched the beast fly over-head. Yup. This is Australia. But as he looked up, it was then he noticed the trails of black smoke quite some distance away.

“Whatever that thing set ablaze down there is probably the best marker to follow. Maybe I’ll even find something… or someone,” Alex grunted to himself.

Setting off at a sustainable jog, Alex began his travel towards the ever-thickening black smoke.

When Alex began to pick up distant shouting in the direction of the smoke, he forced himself into a sprint - not using his thrusters for fear of setting the dry forest foliage ablaze.

He passed many creatures he had not seen before, as he moved into an area of the forest with more reasonably sized trees. If he had to guess, he had most likely left the arachnids’ territory, and had moved into what would most likely be sapient territory.

Of course, that was a guess, but it seemed logical to him.

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Feyrith Beiberos was tired. It felt so wrong for her mana pool to be so low and empty, but she had had to use all of it to ward off the wyvern that had attacked their convoy.

The burnt husks of wagons littered the dirt path, their occupants inside them in the same condition. The smell of melted flesh made her gag, the foul smell unescapable, permeating the air. To think the charred corpses littered around used to be living breathing people, people she had known befriended…

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Being the only sufficiently advanced battle mage in their group, a spell-sword at that, she felt as though she was to blame for so many deaths. Her dirtied auburn hair fell over her large maple eyes as she hung her head in sadness.

With a light sniff, she attempted to compose herself. Pushing her messy hair behind her pointed ears to keep it in place, she straightened her back and took a deep breath; her gambeson feeling highly constrictive even with it being tailored to her form, most likely from stress.

Usually, she would be hoping that it was because of her chest growing bigger, but as of now, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Once again looking around, she wasn’t surprised to see a pack of Ravager Wolves surrounding her and the few remaining survivors - the enticing smell of charred Elves bringing the furred beasts straight to them. At this point she couldn’t bring herself to care; her tears of dismay having dried out ages ago, their once wet trails leaving visible lines on her ash-covered face.

She knew for a fact she wouldn’t have enough mana to hold them off, especially if she were to use highly mana-demanding body enhancement magic, her preferred school. She and the other survivors rallied themselves, fear-ridden but ready to fight to the last - no point dying on your knees, after all.

It was at this point that she made what she expected to be her final prayers. She prayed to her chosen deity, Folen - praying with all she had left that the goddess would deem them worthy of her protection.

Unsheathing her battered yet unbroken shortsword, Feyrith pushed what little mana she could muster into its enchantments, setting it aglow with shimmering silver light.

Unleashing a battle cry, Feyrith, along with the few alive, challenged the wolves, their souls ready to take life.

The wolves answered their challenge, unleashing deep howls filled with bloodlust before charging towards them.

Two wolves made a beeline for Feyrith, drooling in anticipation for what they thought to be an easy meal. But once they had gotten within range, the elf twisted right, swiping at the closest wolf - her short sword leaving a deep slash above its front left knee. The maneuver forced the beast to eat shit, and it slammed face-first into the dirt.

She rolled to the side as the second wolf lunged, its large body flying over her. With little time to manoeuvre, she sloppily swung at her approaching adversary, the beast's limited intelligence allowing it to sidestep her strike.

With little else to do in her worn-out state, Feyrith slammed her enchanted sword into the ground, screaming in frustration. As the sword penetrated the hard dirt, a small yet powerful silvery shockwave exploded outwards, throwing the now whimpering hound into a tree, cracking the bark on impact.

With wobbly legs, she slowly walked towards the downed wolf, its spine contorted in an unnatural way. In an act of mercy, Feyrith jammed her sword into its eye, killing it and ending its suffering.

Unbeknownst to her, the wolf she had injured prior was once again on its feet, rage burning in its eyes. Charging towards her to the best of its ability, only slowed slightly from its injury, Fey barely had enough time to look behind before it was upon her.

Its vice-like jaw locked onto her left arm as she attempted to block, her own blood spraying over her as she screamed, the wolfs’ teeth tearing away at her flesh and bone.

This is it, she thought, resignation pushing its way into her mind. From what little she was able to see out of her blurry eyes, her companions had fled, using her as a distraction to make their escape.

She was angry but understood their reasoning. There’s just...too many of them. Too...many...her vision going blurry, she tried to block out the pain, and hoped it would end soon.

It wasn’t even a second later that she felt the Ravager wolf's movements stop completely. Its jaw went slack, only held there by her own muscle tissue.

Slowly opening her eyes, everything seemed to have slowed to a crawl. Maybe five metres up, gliding across the air towards her, was what could only be described as an angel of war. Their midnight-dark armour was nothing like what any mortal would be capable of producing, and they were holding some strange metal object in their hands - a wand?

If only to hammer in her guess, their glowing wings of beautiful blue light gracefully brought it to the ground. Landing with unmatched grace, the figure walked towards her - removing the monster’s jaw carefully and quickly.

Before she could even speak, they jabbed a tiny needle into her arm, making her wince. But only moments later, she noticed she no longer felt pain from her brutalised arm. In fact, she noticed the bleeding had stopped, and she could see her flesh physically putting itself back together.

She had heard of healing spells that could do much the same, but they usually involved the healer performing a long-winded chant or prayer. But never in her life had she heard of a magic needle that could do the same.

Forcing her eyes away from the phenomenon, Feyrith looked back up at her saviour, who, currently, had their hand outstretched. Understanding the gesture, she gave them her uninjured hand, and was mildly surprised to see them suddenly lift her to her feet without an ounce of effort.

Finally getting a good look at her saviour, she could tell it was most definitely male - but she couldn’t tell their race. The man in front of her was around the height of a high elf, who were known to flaunt their height.

However, the man was way too broad to be a high elf. But he definitely wasn’t a dwarf - being twice the height of them. That meant the only natural race left was orcs...and he was too lithe to be one of those brutes. That only left demons and angels. Had she really been saved by…?

No - a demon wouldn’t save her.

Besides, he was too far out of their territory and he had no visible tail. That meant...

“Are you an angel…?” Feyrith whispered.