Chapter 35
For the next two hours, Liam and the others walked along the river bank, occasionally they met various animals, but they did not attack them, so the group ignored them. They had about 20 kilometers left to go to the designated place, as a pack of wolves came out of the forest, there were about 20 of them, they looked like ordinary wolves, but they were much larger in size, their fur and teeth were a strange gray color that slightly shone in the sun.
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 35 Lvl
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 29 Lvl
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 15 Lvl
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 16 Lvl
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 26 Lvl
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 15 Lvl
Race: Iron Wolf [Rare] 30 Lvl
...
Liam quickly began to draw mana from the staff, holding it in his aura, he was ready to use the skill [Adaptive Aquatic Weapon][Rare++]. Brandon and Mat stood behind their shields and extended their spears, Ariana quickly pulled the bowstring on her bow and began to aim it at the wolves. Alistair took out some bags of powder from his armor pockets, they were ready to fight.
The wolves growled softly and began to surround them, Liam hoped that this did not stop the battle. Alistair and Ariana stood with their backs to the river, so he did not think that the wolves would attack them first. Near the water, he had a very big advantage, but he did not see a way where he could defeat all the wolves without using a large amount of mana. The wolves came closer and became more aggressive, so Liam used the skill. All the nearby water rushed towards him, forming a water whirlpool. At the same time, he used the skill [Diamond Dust Manipulation], diamond dust began to fly from the bags that were attached to his armor and mixed with the water. After a few seconds, several tons of water moved around him, beautifully refracting the light.
The wolves growled as soon as he cast the spell, but did not dare to attack all at once, only a couple of wolves rushed at Benedict and Mat. They blocked the blows with their shields, but both staggered under the onslaught. The weight of the wolves was very large, together with their physical strength, Nick estimated that they were physically stronger than the orcs, which put them quite high in the hierarchy.
The next moment, Cassandra shot at the strongest wolf, the arrow hitting him in the head, killing him instantly.
Congratulations, you have defeated [Iron Wolf][Rare] Lvl 35 . You will receive less experience for winning in a group.
Liam turned off notifications, he kept pouring more mana into the water that was under his control for a strong spell, but he needed time for this. Cassandra shot another wolf again, hitting him in the back. Brandon and Mat fought the wolves, defending themselves with shields and attacking with spears, they were doing well, but in a few seconds they would be completely surrounded and suppressed. Brandon used a spell that changed the ground under the wolves' feet into liquid mud. The wolves that surrounded them quickly sank into it, thereby buying the necessary time.
It took Liam about 7 seconds to cast the spell. The water that was under his control began to gather around his head, inside you could see hundreds of ice darts with very shiny tips forming. Most of the wolves were stuck in the mud, which played into his hands. Liam shot hundreds of darts at all the wolves.
They only had a few seconds before ice needles flew at everyone. The ice needles wouldn't have been so dangerous to the iron wolves if they hadn't had diamond dust tips that were bound with ice and reinforced beyond measure. Most of his projectiles hit their mark, several wolves were killed instantly, and the vast majority were badly wounded. They whined loudly under his attack, trying to get out of the mud. He saw no point in continuing the fight, this was his victory. Over the noise around him, Liam shouted for the others to retreat.
"Let's leave before more wolves come!"
Brandon pierced the wolf's head in front of him with his spear, he waved his hand in the direction further down the river, starting to run, Liam and the others following him. The wolves did not pursue them, which made Liam very glad that he did not have to spend more mana. After running for a few minutes, they stopped to discuss everything. Liam still had a large amount of water flying around him, which was under his control. He decided that there was no need to use this skill any more, so he began to draw mana from the spell and put it into his staff, while Alistair caught his breath. After finishing this, the next thing he did was to manipulate the diamond dust to put it into the pouches on his armor. The others got tired of watching this, Ariana was the first to speak.
"Um, how much mana did you use?" Ariana asked, sounding a bit uneasy.
"Well, a lot of course, but not critical. In total, I spent about 1400 MP, if I managed to return the mana that was in the ice, I would have spent about 1200 MP." Liam answered, looking at how much diamond dust he spent.
"So, you're saying that with the amount of mana you have now, you could easily defeat all the wolves on your own?"
"Yeah, something like that. But without you, it would have taken more time and mana." He said and looked at the others. Brandon and Mat looked scared, Ariana was angry? Alistair took it calmly.
"Are you kidding me? You're a fucking monster! How can you be so strong? Why can't everyone else's spells be this strong?" Ariana screamed. Liam couldn't understand her outburst, of course he was strong.
"So what's wrong? This is normal for a mage."
"But how were you able to penetrate their fur? They have metal inclusions in them, and in my opinion they had a lot of mana, unlike your darts."
"Ah, are you worried that I spent so little mana? I didn't try to strengthen the darts much with normal magic, I created ice that was much stronger and heavier than normal, leaving diamond dust tips at the ends, thereby greatly increasing the penetrating power. I spent more mana to give the darts a big boost when shooting than to create them. Do you understand?" Liam answered, Ariana became a little calmer and answered.
"No, actually. Usually, mages add strength to the materials they manipulate by mana constructs inside it. But you mean you did it differently?" She asked, clarifying. Alistair answered for him.
"He got this ice by applying a lot of pressure on it and then freezing it quickly. It's possible that Liam also used transmutation magic to do this. So instead of just strengthening the ice with mana, Liam effectively transformed it to be stronger using less mana. If you understood, I could explain that he changes the crystal lattice of normal ice in this way. This ice is much stronger than normal ice even without a drop of mana." Aleister elaborated.
Liam started to have suspicions about his classmate.
"How do you use poison magic?" Liam asked.
"Formally, this is not poison magic, but simply transmutation. With the help of spells, I change the composition of the surrounding air by adding something poisonous to humans."
What are the chances that he is a reincarnator and uses knowledge from our world? Of course, he lived in a noble family specializing in alchemy. They may well have their own table of chemical elements. But people here are more interested in things related to mana than simple physical objects. This is worth looking into later. Too bad I don't know anything about alchemy, and [Transmutation Magic] uses spells that are completely incomprehensible to me for its effect. It is quite possible that people in this world have advanced much further than us in chemistry using [Transmutation Magic] and various skills, and I just don't know about it. Yeah... probably shouldn't immediately label him as a Reincarnator.
"Okay, you can give me some advice on that later, does 'poison water' sound strong?" Liam said and patted him on the shoulder. Alistair felt uneasy and quickly agreed.
"Certainly."
"I certainly don't want to interrupt such an interesting conversation about magic, but Liam, don't you think it was a mistake to kill all the wolves we met?" Brandon asked, causing Liam to freeze.
Bitch, bitch, bitch. How did I screw up so bad?
"Sorry, I have no excuse. But if I hadn't used magic, we would have been overwhelmed by numbers. Well, more precisely, it seemed to me that we would lose, so that's what I did." Liam tried to justify himself.
"It doesn't matter, I understand. My magic would be completely ineffective against them. They absorb blunt damage too easily, but next time, start with simple spells. Try freezing them or something. Okay, no time to waste. We need to leave this place quickly if the wolves attack us again."
Everyone agreed and they started running at a light jog at the optimal pace for Alistair. It was still about 20 km/h. An hour of such running was enough to cover a decent distance from the place where they spent the night. On the way, Brandon stopped the group.
"I think I miscalculated the distance. If we had to cover about 80 kilometers in a straight line, then we have already covered a hundred. But because the river did not go in a straight line, I lost count. We must have covered about 5-3 kilometers more than we needed to." Brandon said.
"No, everything should be fine. We're roughly in the right place." Oriana said.
"Well, I'll take your word for it. There were no further instructions from the teacher, so let's search in squares, we'll walk one square the size of a kilometer along and across and let's hope that the Troll will be merciful to us."
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Without wasting time, they turned away from the river and began to walk deeper into the forest. The forest had not changed at all, there were still deciduous trees, sometimes you could find vines and strange plants. Yesterday Liam did not notice the alchemist collecting herbs, but today he began to do so actively.
"You won't believe me, but there are actually a lot of medicinal plants here. Usually they are eaten by animals and insects, but here they are practically untouched." Alistair said.
"Well, we can confidently say that we are on the right track. And it seems to me that the vegetation here is somehow thicker."
Liam remembered the places they had passed and the places that were close to the cursed Ent, and he was indeed able to draw a parallel. The closer the plants were to the Ent, the more they withered, and vice versa, the closer the plants were to the Troll, the better they grew.
The group then looked closely at the forest in search of some kind of shelter. Liam did not know where a reasonable troll would prefer to live. Perhaps he would build himself a house of stone, or of wood. Or he would dig himself a cave, there were really many options. They spent only half an hour searching the first square and went to the next one, which was near the river. Throughout the entire territory, they did not encounter animals that were higher than the rarity [Uncommon]. Which was strange considering that they had recently fought off groups of [Rare] creatures. But this did not last long, Ariana noticed a panther in a tree very high up. She began to stutter and raise her finger up pointing at it.
"Th-e-e-r-e!"
Liam quickly noticed the panther and assessed it.
Race: Great Shadow Panther [Special] Lvl 256
"Damn. We're dead." Liam said and everyone else nodded.
They weren't fooled by the fact that the panther hadn't noticed them. Cats had very good hearing, most likely she had heard their conversation a long time ago. Liam dropped his backpack on the grass and sat down on the ground, the others did the same. He remembered what Dylan had warned him about, but he didn't think that the [Great Shadow Panther] was capable of fooling his prediction skill. They sat in silence for about five minutes and waited for the panther to eat them, but in this case, more likely for the ring to work. Apparently satisfied with their despair, the panther moved towards them through the shadows.
Liam knew that this particular type of magical beasts, rather, fell into the classification of spiritual. Beasts and people who had a strong affinity with some kind of mana could not hope to change their body into an elemental. Mean, even [Archmage] Ronan who was of the Human race attuned to fire mana could not hope to change his body into a flame elemental. This panther could move through shadows with the help of spells like humans, but she could do much more. She could literally become a shadow and be completely invulnerable to physical damage. Shadow mages specially developed magic that gives a very similar effect, but they will never achieve what this panther can. In this case, shadow mages came up with a spell that allows them to avoid physical damage and move through other people's shadows. But this only works due to movement in the spiritual plane. The panther did not use a drop of mana to get to them.
When the panther was near them, no one flinched. This gave Liam a chance to get a better look at it. It was about 5 meters long and 2 meters high, its tail was about 2.5 meters. Its fur reflected almost no color, its eyes were normal in his opinion, but the sharp pupil was very black. The panther began to walk around them looking and sniffing. It seemed very curious and was not aggressive. It walked around them a few times and even lightly hit Liam with its tail, but even such a light hit knocked all the shit out of him.
"Damn, that's going to leave a bruise." He said out loud.
The panther liked his speech, her ears trembled with pleasure and she hit Brandon, but slightly overdid it with force and he crashed into a tree. He was lucky that he invested a lot of characteristics in his physique, otherwise his ribs would have been completely broken. Brandon wheezed and rose to his feet.
"Damn beast, eat us already."
But the panther was deaf to their requests. She meowed loudly and hit Brandon with her tail again, but this time she calculated the force correctly. The blow simply pushed him back to the tree. She continued to walk around them in circles, examining them even more carefully. Stopping near Matt, she raised her paw and an absolutely black claw appeared from it. Liam was able to see it only because he could not see anything in that place. It was even more than absorbing light. Bending her paw towards Matt, she lightly touched his bare hand and ran it over it. Blood appeared and the panther inhaled its scent deeply. If the panther had a class, Liam would be sure that she was examining them like an experienced meat seller. But he could not understand what she wanted, of course, the panther had a high level of intelligence and wisdom, but this was not enough to become intelligent.
Apparently satisfied with whatever it was, the panther meowed and turned into a shadow. Liam exchanged glances with the others, they could of course try to run away, but was there any point in that? Liam didn't think so and so he stayed where he was.
"Well, we hope the rings work, otherwise we really are troupes. Do you think if she drags us into the spirit plane of shadow, will they work or not?" Liam asked. The others gulped loudly.
"I don't know, but let's hope so." Alistair replied.
The panther was gone for about 15 seconds, but it reappeared near them. This time it did not praise them in circles, but climbed a tree and began to lie on it comfortably with its tail hanging down. Liam thought that it was stupid to anger the cat, but he really wanted to check something. Catching himself thinking that he had become infected with Dylan's madness, he smiled. Liam raised his finger and pointed it at the panther. While the others looked at him in horror, the panther remained calm. Liam cast a holy spell of the 1st level "Holy Light", the light shone from his finger and harmlessly hit the panther. She examined the landing site, meowing loudly. Apparently she did not like something about this, because her tail instantly appeared near him and gave him with such force that he also crashed into the tree.
"Damn, that was much worse. You broke a few of my ribs, cat."
The panther didn't pay any attention to his chatter, and then just there and looked at him. Liam didn't regret his decision to use [Holy Magic], he needed to check it out. Now he knew for sure that the panther in physical form was invulnerable to light and holy effects, which was actually pretty obvious. He wasn't going to check how vulnerable it was to light in the spiritual form of shadow, for that the cat would definitely kill him. Lying further, they heard some noise similar to stomping. Over time, it became stronger and stronger, until an ugly Troll appeared from behind the trees. It was 6 meters tall and 3.5 meters wide, it was dark green with a very large nose, its eyes were blue like a human's, it was completely bald, its body was covered in brown growths in some places. Its build was not completely human, its legs and arms were very wide for its height. Liam examined it.
Name: Green 170 years old
Race: Forest Troll [Special] Lvl 233
Class: Forest Druid [Rare] Lvl 200
Class: Ax Adept [Rare] Lvl 200
When the Troll came closer he began to speak.
"WHAT DO THE LITTLE PEOPLE IN THE FOREST NEED?"
Liam and the others' ears were blocked by the Troll's loud voice, and his colloquial form of their language also sent shivers down their spines. Brandon decided to answer the Troll.
"We need healing herbs to cure the people."
"YOU LITTLE MAN DO NOT UNDERSTAND GREEN, HE ASKS WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOT HERE BUT IN THE FOREST?"
"We were sent here to be trained by other people."
"THE OLD MEN SENT YOU TO STUDY? BUT WHAT CAN YOU LEARN IN THE FOREST?"
"How to survive and hunt."
"OK, YOU SAY YOU NEED HEALING HERBS, BUT WHY WOULD GREENE GIVE YOU THEM INSTEAD OF EATING YOU?" Liam noticed the Troll asking with obvious interest.
"We got rid of the damn Ent in another part of the forest, so we hope you won't eat us." Brendon answered with fear, Liam understood. It's one thing to think you might be killed, but to be told you're going to be eaten is really scary.
"HM, OK HUMAN. GREEN THINK ABOUT IF YOU ARE WORTH EATING OR NOT. WHERE ARE YOUR OLD PEOPLE, WON'T THEY WANT TO SAVE YOU? GREEN THINKS YOU'RE LYING. The troll asked, rubbing his chin.
Brandon was in a delicate situation now, he didn't want to tell about the teleportation rings, but telling the troll that if he ate them, his teacher would come and start a battle with him wasn't the best decision either. He didn't know what to say and the troll started to lose patience.
"YOU TALK TO GREEN OR GREEN WILL EAT YOU."
Liam decided that there was no need to hide the rings, if it was enough to just take them off and they would stop working, there would be no point in them.
"Green, we were given rings that will save us in this case." Liam said and raised his right hand with the ring on his finger. The troll leaned down and took his hand to raise it to his eye level. He began to examine the ring, gently turning Liam with his hands. Satisfied, he put Liam back in place.
"GREENE ASKS YOU TO REMOVE THE RING." The troll said and extended his hand. Liam didn't argue and took off the ring, handing it over.
The troll brought the ring to his eyes and began to examine it as well. He tried to squeeze it with his fingers, but it did not yield to the troll's strength at all.
"GREENE CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS RING DOES. THAT'S WHY GREENE TRUSTS YOU. TAKE THE RING." He said and held out his hand, Liam took the ring and put it back on his finger.
"GREENE THINKS WHY HE SHOULD HELP YOU, OF COURSE YOU KILLED THE DAMNED ENTH, BUT GREEN WAS GOING TO DO IT HIMSELF. GREEN WON'T KILL YOU AND WON'T LET MREU DO IT. YOU DON'T DESERVE ANYTHING MORE." Said the troll.
Liam realized that the troll had named the panther Mreu, which was just right for the troll. But he didn't know what to trade with the troll, considering that he hadn't left, it was still possible to come to an agreement with him. He thought about playing a dangerous card, but he didn't dare do it.
"Perhaps Green wants something from us?" Brandon asked.
"WHAT CAN YOU GIVE GREEN? YOU ARE LITTLE PEOPLE WITHOUT ARTIFACTS, GREEN EVEN FEELS SORRY FOR YOU."
"Perhaps you need some knowledge?"
"HM, GREEN THINK ABOUT IT. WHAT HERBS DO YOU NEED? GREEN IS HONEST AND WON'T ASK FOR MUCH."
"We need a cure for the plague and herbs that heal the body." Brandon said, the troll's face changed into a strong rage. He swung his fist at the nearest tree, completely smashing it into splinters.
Ice armor of frozen air and water instantly appeared around Liam. The others were not so lucky and received a bunch of small splinters in their bodies. Inspecting the others, Liam did not see any critical damage, Alistair was very lucky as one splinter pierced him just below the eye. The troll quickly calmed down and changed his mood.
"GREENE SORRY, IT'S HARD TO BE A MONSTER, SOMETIMES GREENE'S MIND FAILS. BUT GREENE WILL HELP YOU CURE THE PLAGUE." The troll said apologetically.
Brandon felt much better at these words, but Alistair was quick to get rid of his joy.
"There is a young vampire in our camp, we hope that Green will not kill her." Alistair said. The troll looked upset, he was clearly going over his options, he sighed loudly and answered.
"GREENE WON'T KILL THE VAMPIRE. GREEN'S MORE IMPORTANT THAT IS GETTING RID OF THE PLAGUE." He replied.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the troll raised his hand in front of them and cast a [Life Magic] spell, which healed all of the damage without leaving a trace.
"LET'S GO TO GREEN'S HOUSE, WE'LL TAKE SOME HERBS JUST IN CASE." He said before turning around and walking away.
Liam looked around and did not notice the moment when the panther disappeared, there was a lot of land around them strewn with wooden fragments. Noticing that the troll was already far away, he and the others ran to catch up with him.