.....In the Bandits camp.
Fleeing through the dangerous wildlands, Selene had no idea where she was going but she just knew she had to get away from that hellhole. With the loud mocking laughter and sounds behind her, she knew that if she was recaptured by these men that they would show her no mercy not even a quick death. Especially their leader Marcus Averilous. In her attempt to get away from his advances she had taken advantage of a rare moment that he let his guard down while she pretended to lose hope and submit to him and she escaped his clutches. Although she knew all too well that even if she submitted he would still show her no mercy once he was done with her. At best, she would have been tossed away to the rest of the bandits like a piece of meat. All of them doing what they wished to her body, no matter how brutal. At worse he would have kept her as his pet for weeks or months if you lasted that long in his care and most did not.
Marcus loved to watch people suffer and hurt. The more viscera and blood there was the better off these scenes were to that maniac. He could watch the most heinous things happen to a human being and he would look on with a cruel smile as they begged for their lives. When the poor souls accepted death as their only option, only then, would he let them die. Even then, it was usually to bleed out or die painfully of infection. She had seen Marcus order his men to flay his previous pet projects skin off little by little while she begged for her life. He did this because he was bored with her and needed a new toy to play with, nothing more. It seemed like her cries from the poor soul made the mad man want to see more and more of her skin come off. He did this while making all of his slaves watch. He always made his slaves watch.
In her village, Selene was called the town beauty with long legs and curvy shapely features with long dark black hair that grew down to her mid back. Her emerald green eyes were the only green eyes that she's ever seen in her village. Her pale smooth skin was the envy of the entire village. Everyone else's hair was a shade brown in her village. Her skin was closer to being pale due to the village that she came from being closer to the mountainous region in the northern parts of the border of the Algarian Empire, the nearby kingdom.
Now given away by her fellow villagers as a sacrifice filled Selene with hurt and dispair. She had kept her head down as long as she could and tried to look as unremarkable as possible. Every day she would muddy her face and body and she cut her hair unevenly and caked it with mud so that she would look plain and dirty. She had even stopped washing her body so that she would smell so that no one would want to touch her. Yet, this didn't stop Marcus from taking notice of her. He lined up all of the captives and seen her face and locked on her eyes her eyes and made his men strip her down and wash her from head to toe and bring her to him.
He had captured tens of captives from her border town. That same town where the villagers would give up young adults time and time again, in the hope to preserve their own lives. Most recently Selene the who's father was the town chief, was selected and her mother and father fought to stop the villagers from taking her, but they were overpowered and beaten by many of the villagers. The last vision that she had seen of her mother and father were them being beaten and held down while she was dragged away, all while the bandits laughed at the weaklings.
The 'labor', as the bandit leader called them was supposed to help build up his camp and his walls and be general slave labor for him. Yet, that was only part of what he wanted from the townspeople. No, we were also his playthings. He would mainly take young adults. Not because he was against using children or the elderly, she knew this cruel man would have no issue doing these things to anyone. He just wanted to thin out the fighting force of the town slowly before he took over the town completely. He knew that the town was not claimed by any kingdom so no soldiers would be sent for their protection and even if they were unless the taxes were affected the nobility in the nearby cities and towns and no soldiers would not be sent for salvation. No, her once peaceful town was slowly being milked dry of their resources and their lives were already forfeit, they just did not know it yet.
Selene would not die like this she resolutely told herself, she couldn't. The night she had been chosen, she was cleaned up and beaten a bit and brought into his large tent. She pretended to already be broken and didn't resist his touch. She had stolen a passed out drunk bandit's knife from off of his belt a few days earlier in one of the most terrifying moments of her nineteen years alive. She knew if she was caught it would be long death, no questions asked. She had to wait at the absolute perfect moment to strike. When Marcus turned around to grab his goblet of wine from his table, Selene grabbed the knife she tied around her upper thigh and slashed at the man's face from his chin, through both of his lips, deep into his nose and finally through his right eye and forehead. While the man was still in shock and pain, she ran to the back of the tent she slashed the cloth like material of the tent wall and ran into the forest not even looking back. While she was some distance away she could still hear the man screaming and bloody murder. Shouting for the camp to find the wench and keep her alive so that he could…and his voice trailed off due to her distance and loud panicked breaths.
That was two days ago. She had a day's head start and couldn't hear anything for most of the first day since her escape. Yet now, she could hear the bandits again and they had somehow caught up to her and she had been running all throughout the night. The sun was rising and she was beyond exhausted at this point. She had already greatly slowed down and at this point, she was just putting one foot in front of the other and only stumbling clumsily through the woods at this point, rather than running. She could now hear their whoops and mocking laughter as they finally got eyes on their prey. Her heart dropped into her feet and a massive surge of fear mixed in with adrenaline helped her forget her fatigue momentarily and pull her remaining energy to her legs.
She broking into a dead sprint once she broke out of the forest wood line. She saw a large stream that could easily be mistaken for a river, but it lacked the usual periodic rapids that most rivers have. She was going to try to make it to the other side and hopefully, that would buy her a little more time. Yet, with how fatigued she was, she knew she more likely to drown than to actually be able to swim across but even that was a better fate than being captured alive.
Just as she exited the tree line and had taken a few steps towards towards the river, a sharp pain shot through her right thigh. Screaming at the suddenness of the pain she took another step forward and the pain had been too much so she fell flat on her face. Selene rolled over on her side to see an arrow sticking out of her leg and the pain intensified every second. The laughing sounds were much closer now and she didn't need to look back to know where the arrow had come from but she did and anyways to see the men much closer than she thought. Too exhausted and terrified to do anything else. A pain filled darkness overtook her and she passed out praying to never wake again.
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Getting ready to begin the morning as he had been for the last couple of weeks. Five days earlier, Damien had figured out a way to stay clean by channeling his water magic around his body to collect dirt and grime off of his body and dropping the foreign substances on the ground away from him that was collected. He discovered fire magic by willing the heat from his body to dry himself off. It was a simple spell and it used almost no mana to cast. Who would have thought that he would have discovered fire magic through not wanting to smell like an old onion for days on end? He also found out by using divine touch on himself it would cure his fatigue, the sore muscles in his back from sleeping on hard surfaces, and also eliminate his bathroom issues due to it eliminating any foreign substances inside of his body. Who would have known magic is pretty much science with mana applied also!
Using his magic in these ways for weeks on end had ranked him up in all of his elements besides fire, a whole Tier level. Air, Water, and Earth have risen to tier 4 during this time. His air magic, Tiered up, and even has helped him apply the air element to his body making himself faster and applying wind qualities to his movements. He used the air element to propel himself up high enough with a single leap to be able to see over the entire forest. He could use the element to slow himself down for a soft landing.
His Water element Tier up has helped him be able to feel the moisture in the atmosphere much better to where when combined with air he could make mini clouds and also lower the surrounding temperature around himself. His earth element could now absorb wood elements and even feel metals in the earth like copper and iron better. He even made himself a copper dagger at first and can now make an iron dagger with his magic and will alone. Although it was fairly taxing mixing the different elements to create an element like steel, making copper and iron items with his magic was only limited to his mana core. Unlocking the fire was a game changer for all of my other elements, though. He could finally cook his meats and not have to eat fruits all of the time.
-Fire Element-
The spell caster is able to control heat around and inside of the caster. Fire magic is the most destructive out of all of the basic elements and is the only branch that unlocks spells with each tier. This may be due to the body's natural ability to produce heat. This innate ability makes fire mages some of the most powerful spellcasters around from the very beginning.
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Tier 1: Fire touch can heat up anything the spellcaster touches and create flames inside of the spellcaster's hands. At higher Tier 1 rank the spell cater can will the fire a bolt away from the caster but once the bolt is only launched in a straight line.
Tier 2: The power of the fire magic is increased and the spell caster can unleash streams of fire longer distances. The firebolt is upgraded to a fireball and the ball can damage the area around the impact with a small explosion.
Tier 3: Can combine with other elements to cause greater effects. Experiment with fire at spellcasters own risk.
This system is definitely a cheat already 3 tiers just from unlocking a new element. That may be due to my archmage status though. Arcane spells didn't start out as high but, with my sped up learning my mana bolt is already Tier four and mana shield Tier 2. For some reason, mana shield ranked up much slower. That may be due to it being a defensive spell and it may need to take impacts to get stronger. As Damien walked along the river his mind began to wonder about the systems usage and the science behind magic. He was distracted out of his revelry, well more like startled by a loud scream ahead of him that definitely sounded like a woman in trouble.
"What the Fu-!" Damien began before deciding to go check it out.
Damien began walking cautiously towards the sound. As he took a few steps towards the direction of the sound of the scream he paused. Damien watched as a dirty, sweaty, and disheveled woman dressed in what Damien could only describe as a potato sack with holes in it, stumble out of the woods with an arrow sticking out of her upper thigh and bleeding profusely. She hit the ground hard on her face, rolled over and looked at her leg with a puddle of blood beginning to pool around her leg, then she looked into the woods with fearful eyes and she passed out in pain grimacing.
A couple of minutes later 12 men ran out of the wood line behind her and surrounded the prone body. The men were all sweaty and dirty with various pieces of leather armor on. Some were shirtless with leather pieces strapped on their torso and others had full leather armor with over cloth shirt and trousers. About 6 of them carried bows strapped over their shoulder and two more carried crossbows they and all of the bowman had a quiver of arrows or bolts on their legs and backs. They all carried iron Short swords but 6 carried what Damien would describe as an iron long sword with long daggers on their hips or in their belts.
Damien could guess what was happening, but he didn't want to jump to conclusions. He was too new to this world to assume anything. For all, he knew these men could be the law or bounty hunters capturing this woman for some kind of crime that she committed. Damien was not under any pretense to assume women didn't commit crimes just like men did although much rarer on earth. It wasn't completely unheard of so he didn't rule out the possibility. Yet, Damien was quickly proven wrong the closer he got to the conversation the men were having with each other. None had even yet to notice Damien walking up to them.
"....is gonna give us plenty of coins for bringing this one back, right Jonas."
"Damn right Sorus, did you see the bosses face she cut'em up good, this wench did. The healer says he's gonna lose an eye, after that one."
"She gave us good chase this one did..." another man added.
"...we should have a bit of fun with her before boss chops this one up to bits. You know while she still pretty and what not.." someone else added.
"...well I want'er awake for this.."
All the men began with laughs and nodding with cruel smiles.
Damien was still in shock at what he was hearing and he knew he was going to intervene, yet he had never heard or seen anything like this outside of a horror movie or thriller. To actually be witness to people so inhumane was simply shocking and made Damien freeze up for a moment. It was a second too long because during his pause one of the men took out a dagger bent down and stabbed the unconscious woman in her hand and the dagger penetrated her flesh with a 'QWIPTH' sounding noise and the woman woke with a loud scream. The sound of metal piercing flesh and woke Damien out of his stupor and Damien took in a loud breath and his anger flared and his blood boiled in his veins.
One one the men facing Damien's direction looked up with a start and tapped a man next to him.
"Eh? Now, look at what we have here fellas! We have a straggler out in the middle of nowhere." All of the men turned around at that time to stare at Damien. Kinda dark to be in this part of the world ey Sorus?"
"Jonas your the smart one where are the dark people from again" Sorus responded.
"The sand people of the Centari continent, but never hear of any this far north. It is a bit strange seeing one here but no ma'ttr, we can give him a proper Algarian welcome. What do you say, boys, how 'bout it!" Jonas exclaimed with a maniacal gleam in his eye. Before Damien could respond the two crossbowmen pull a bolt for their quiver, loaded the crossbow in one motion and fired.
Damien with his mana enhanced cells in his eyes seen all of this in slow motion. He had been traveling at high speeds for so many weeks that normal actions were slower to him. He raised his mana shield with thought and push of his will.
When the bolts got within a meter of Damien the bolts hit a purple transparent barrier, paused in mid air and the bolts fell harmlessly in the grass at Damien's feet. Damien felt a tug of his mana but held the barrier in place and the slight pressure disappeared. In response to the sudden attack, Damien willed two 2 meter long stone spikes from the ground in front of him and released them along with a gust of air magic to increase the penetration at the two crossbowmen. The spikes flew forward with a loud boom breaking the sound barrier and hitting the upper torso of the two men blowing the top half of their bodies apart and going through two more of the men behind them leaving large two foot holes inside of the two men behind them and the spikes could still be heard traveling through trees.
All four of the men died and two with shocked looks left frozen on their dying bodies. Covered in blood and gore it was the remaining eight bandits turn to be stunned. The men realized they were dealing with a powerful mage and tried to turn to run, but Damien already set in his heart that none of these men were leaving this area alive.
Damien quickly raised a semicircular wall around the remaining eight men and began firing mana bolts at the men. Targeting the two on the left purple bolts flew true to their targets and the heads exploded leaving brains against the dome wall, while the other 6 began to back up cowering against the wall some of them emptying their bowels and their legs were shaking as if they were in a block of ice.
Three of the men had seen that they had no other way out, they unsheathed their blades and charged the mage hoping to get in close and hopefully end him where he stood. Damien shot another bolt at the charging men and missed as the men dodged and ducked his attack. He shot two more with each hand and again the men dodged the attacks, but one of the men was maimed and his sword arm was ripped off below the shoulder by the attack leaving only a stump. He laid on the ground grabbing the bleeding stub and was left writhing in pain and rocking side to side while screaming holding his stump.
The two other charging men continued their mad charge and got up close and began hammering at Damiens shield. The constant physical attacks to his mana shield were depleting his mana at an alarming rate and began to weaken it. Cracks began to show up looking similar to broken glass. Damien began to feel a large amount of pressure internally and fatigue began to creep in. He raised an arm and shot another bolt at the man on the left. The mana bolt impacted his chest and blew a foot hole into the man's chest but not through him completely and you could see the man's heart beating through the open wound and its last couple beats due to it working overtime to deal with the massive hemorrhaging happening to the body it occupied.
The man on the right seeing the cracks in the shield was hitting it with reckless abandonment with a wild look in his eyes. By this point, the shield shattered and the blow kept going forward to Damien's shoulder. Damien felt like he was hit by a speeding truck and he stumbled and fell to one knee. The shield breaking exhausted Damien instantly and sweat began pouring down his face and the pressure inside his body turned into a stabbing pain in his gut and he began breathing heavier.
The sword hit Damiens shoulder but stopped skin deep leaving a shallow bleeding cut. The man had a stupefied look on his face but, Damien didn't give the man a second swing and with his enormous strength he punched the man in the face, but his fist kept going forward through the back of the man's skull. The two shocked men still near the summoned wall looked at Damien like he was a demon.
Yet, even they weren't still standing by idly during this exchange of combat and pulled their bows from their shoulders and fired at Damien. The arrows barely penetrated his flesh and left small red marks and fell towards the ground. The men fired until they were out of arrows, some of the arrows left a bit deeper wounds causing Damien to bleed some.
Through his anger, he no longer feared their weapons or maybe it was due to their lack strength to wield those weapons, Damien began to walk towards the men at a casual pace. He wanted them to be terrified and have the same look that this barely conscious woman had when she fell out of the woods. He needed them to know true fear before they died. He got angrier the more he thought about it. The terrified, sweaty, wild eyed, one armed man on the ground began to beg for his life.
"We weren't gonna hurt the wench much more, honest! We was only gonn-!"
Damien cut him off by stomp through his stomach with so much force that his inside came out of each end of him and his eyeballs flew out of their sockets. Damien didn't even look at the man, his anger took over. The last two men that were left were Jonas and Sorus and they had seen this and knew that there was no escape from the mage. Jonas bent down and grabbed the woman by her hair and pulled a dagger from his belt.
"Its this wench's fault that I'm here in the first place! If I'm going to die I'm taking this bitch with me!"
As he pulled the knife up to the woman's throat. Damien looked at the men in disgust. Little did they know in Damien's eyes they were moving even slower since in his furious state. Damien had a multi colored aura surrounding him of all of the elements. The earth began to shake with fissures began to open up in the earth, the clouds began to darken and speed through the sky and water in the stream began to rush downstream and boil. Fish began to die and float to the top turning sideways. Damiens will flash he created a thin spike under the men lifting two fingers up the spikes pierced through the men's body going through their brains freezing both men where they stood and crouched. Jonas' dead hands released the woman and her head fell back to the ground. The woman had already passed out again due to blood loss. The light around his body faded away as the danger was gone and his anger began to subside.
Damien felt completely exhausted and each use of mana was filled with a large pain at this point, but he knew he still needed to heal this woman's wound or she would surely die. The woman's flesh was pale from blood loss by now and she needed immediate healing. Damien quickly removed the arrow from the woman's leg. Pushing through the pain, Damien put each hand over both wounds. He could feel the bones resetting themselves in her leg and hand and the torn and cut flesh began to knit itself together. The woman's breathing became less laborious and then back to normal. Damien didn't have enough energy to fully heal the woman so he just stabilized her condition. He slowly picked the woman's now unconscious, body walked away from the carnage, set her down and he sat next down her. He made a full dome over them big enough for them both to rest. He didn't make a door this time as it was too much effort at the moment for details and made a large hole at the top for air. He felt himself losing consciousness and quickly took out the large water bowl and a large pile of edible fruits, just in case. Fatigue finally won over and darkness overcame him once again.