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Hermit in the woods
Running through the woods (Chapter 1)

Running through the woods (Chapter 1)

“Just one more ingredient and… FUUUUCK!!!” A faint burst of mana rippled through the building, barely noticeable, but strong enough for the beaker holding my precious fluid to start to bubble and pop. Pressing a button, a trap door under me opened just as the vile started to crack.

I am going to feed the cock of whoever just used mana to himself while his entire goddam fuckin family watches! A decade of work! A fucking decade, ruined cause some dipshit couldn’t read! And people ask me while I had socializing, it’s because every motherfucker is a stupid bitch who has less brain cells than a carrot! While ranting about the stupidness of the universe and everyone in it, the mixture inside the container started to catch fire, glasswork cracking, before exploding into a deafening boom. Eviscerating the reinforced wooden floor and turning the mana infused metal underneath to molten slag.

Now, let’s see who decided to be a fucking prick today. I focus my power and my view suddenly expands to a young man running through the woods, being chased by three men and a woman all in black. ‘I see, I see, so it was those pricks who decided they want to become red smear. Now all I need to do is get my timing just right…’

. . .

I ran through the woods ducking behind a fallen log. I tried calming myself and slowing my breathing. Hopefully, I lost them, this area of the forest seemed oddly stale, the mana density was almost non existent, giving the air a suffocating feeling.

I didn’t even get time to catch my breath before a faint burst of mana reached me, even though it was dampened through this area I knew they found me. Getting up, I was suddenly knocked over by a sonic wave and blasted a brief wave of scorching heat. Not wasting any time, I got up again and sprinted in the opposite direction of the explosion, pumping the last dregs of my mana into my legs giving me a short-lived wave of speed.

It wasn’t enough, looking back I could see my followers catching up and my mana was running dangerously low. Just as I had that thought, my mana sputtered out, causing my legs to drop out from under me. My hunters caught up, slowing down and staring down with blood thirst smiles.

With a swift motion, the tall women grabbed her sword and sliced it down towards my shoulder. I closed my eyes, whispering a prayer to Quince. No pain came and I slowly opened my eyes, a tall old man, maybe in his sixties, held out a sword of dull steel, blocking the shining blue one from chopping my arm off. The man gave me a wink before turning back to the attacker with a carefree smile.

“He is ours by order of the king, Step aside!” The woman said pointing at me while freeing her sword from there clash.

As she said this the man face scrunched up his face in annoyance. “I just remembered you little fuckers destroyed a decade of work. Do none of you know how to read, like seriously, there is a massive sign right out the front of my territory that reads DO NOT USE MANA. Yet you retards still manage to mess up the simplest of tasks. Do you guys think that sign was there for no reason? Or do your tiny dicks get erect when you act like little shits? And who speaks like that, ‘he is ours be the order of the king’ my arse” As he was ranting the man started to walk in circles swinging his sword wildly in all directions.

My three adversaries looked at each other shrugged and charged at the man. I looked over wide-eyed as the man had yet to turn his back when the first sword started flying down. Stunned, I found my voice to late, and as the first syllables started to leave my mouth the old man tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground avoiding the sword coming for his head, as he tripped, he started to tumble down the small slope, avoiding the next two swords and a bolt of fire coming for him. As he rolled down, he dropped his swords pointing up somehow and one of the men ran straight into it. Causing him to stumble forwarded with a wound in he abdomen and release his grip on his sword, sending it flying through the air only to rebound off the back of his comrades head, handle first and land right next to the old man, sheathed into ground, just as he stopped rolling. The old man quickly got up and grabbed the sword and turning around to face my now injured assailants.

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“Sorry about that guys, I’m really clumsy sometimes, now where was I. Oh yea, LEARN TO NOT BE IDIOTIC TWATS!” While man continued ranting - me and everyone else - looked on with mouths agape, well not the man leaking blood everywhere. The woman got over her shock first and pointed her hand at her adverserie, firing a flame bolt. It flew straight at him and splashed harmlessly over his face. What the hell is this dude, you can’t just do that!? It’s a goddam fireball not a ball of water.

I started to crawl back away from the now three assailants as they started firing ever more powerful pieces of magic at the man. He didn’t even react as he kept ranting about the stupidity of humans. The women stopped firing and growled deep in her throat when she realized her fireball spewing was doing nothing. She took a step back and started concentrating on a spot in the air. Her two subordinates stood in front of her and continued shooting every magic spell in the book at the man.

Who in the godly name of Quince is this man? He is not even reacting to dozens of spells coming straight at him. These mages weren’t even weak, they were the king’s special forces and could pulverize me with a single spell.

I continued backing away as the women was casting the last few lines of her spell. She now had a glowing orb floating in between her palms, the orb glowing white and radiating heat so strong even I could feel it 30 metres away. I looked back at the old man and he just continued ranting; this guy had a lot of pent up aggression. Yea, I’m not interfering in that, as I started to turn and run a cry came up from the man who got hit in the head with the sword earlier and he stumbled back into the woman with the extremely volatile spell floating above her palms.

The look on her face would have been almost comical if weren’t for the spell boundary becoming unstable and a lash of mana shooting out of the ball, going straight through her head, leaving a perfectly symmetrical singed hole in its wake. Heat started burning my back as I madly sprinted forward and ducked for cover behind the first tree I saw. A deafening boom hit me soon followed by a eruption of heat before the world descended into darkness.

. . .

I opened my eyes only to immediately shut them again against the bright light, I groaned and turned my head to the side, to see an old dude tinkering with something. He had a curling moustache and … wait haven’t I seen him before?

“Well looks who’s up, you know it’s very rude to trespass onto someone’s property? Kids these days have no respect,” his voice seemed to trigger something in my memories, wasn’t there some sort of blast and…

“We need to go, I was being chased and, ahh they were, and wait, where am I? And why does my everything hurt?” As I spoke more and more things came back to me. There was a fight and he won?

“Well my youngling, as I said you ran onto my property, brought these very rude mages with you, if you can even call them mages, anyway it’s all taken care of. There is only one problem now, what do I do with you?” He looked up from the object he was tinkering with for the first time and stared straight at me, no straight through me, it was unnerving and it felt like his gaze was looking at my very soul. A shiver passed through me as I as I avoided eye contact

“I, ahh, hope you’ll let me go, it was just a misunderstanding you see, I, umm, didn’t know, that, umm, you ahh lived here,” I said nervously as I felt his eyes continue to bore into me, while my eyes looked at everything but his. The room was sparsely furnished only having a desk he was tinkering at and the bed I was lying on, no paintings or other décor. But even though the place looked empty there were subtle signs it was not as poor as it looked, the desk was made out of fine wood and well made, the bed I was lying on was by far the comfiest thing I had ever set my eyes on, let alone slept on, and the lights were not simple candles either, they were what looked like mana lights and not cheap ones either. They were, however, suspiciously brighter above where I was sleeping.

As I continued inspecting the room the moustached man continued staring at me, making me feel more and more unnerved, just as I was about to lose it, he finally spoke. “You know what, fuck it, let’s do this! It’s not like I got anything better to do anyway.

“Uhm, do wh-hat”

“You’re going to become my apprentice, now all I need to do is find an entertaining way to do this…”

“WAIT WHAT!?”

“Plus, there is also the matter of your punishment, you did indirectly ruin an extremely expensive and time consuming potion.” He said this while looking up at the ceiling and twirling his moustache, completely ignoring my squawks of outrage.

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