Chapter 2: Feelings Of Battle

As she finishes speaking, she raises her hand and slowly vanishes from existence, her final words echoing through my skull as the blinding light becomes even more so, seemingly permeating through my very eyes before there was nothing, and my vision returned, my eyes greeted with a dense woodland, the smell of greenery and the crisp autumn air suffusing through my nostrils. I stand in the center of a stone road leading from north to south if the sun here is like the sun on Earth. The road is something akin to what the Romans might have created, seemingly similar in construction from what I recall looking at the differences in roads over Earth’s history on the internet one time.

I look down at myself, realizing that I’m in totally different clothes than what I was wearing both during the supposed car accident and conversing with the Goddess. I now wear what looks to be a well tailored, rather ornate set of scarlet red robes with large rubies embedded across it, and a look at my status screen tells me that these robes are enchanted heavily with various seemingly powerful resistances to each of the elements, as well as physical resistances. Nothing actually to do with magic, but it seems like the goddess was really not beating around the bush when it came to protecting me on my journey. I inspect further, looking at the arcane script that’s been woven into the fabric, wrapping ethereally around the entirety of the robes in ways that don’t conform to the ordinary bounds of physics. My innate sense and understanding of the arcane script given to me as a result of the Archmage class kicks in seemingly automatically upon reading the inscriptions as they continue to envelop the robes. Suddenly, my status window opens showing me what these enchantments truly are.

Status:

Item: Scarlet Robes of Divine Protection

Effects:

50% Cold Resistance

50% Fire Resistance

50% Earth Resistance

50% Light Resistance

50% Dark Resistance

75% Physical Resistance

I stare with a deadpan face at just what kind of god blessed piece of clothing this is. I smile brightly for a moment before my smile slowly creaks into a frown, stopping and considering what it is that all of this protection is going to be needed for. I recall fantasy stories from Earth and how giant monsters are fought heroically by the main character and his party of adventuring friends.

Then something clicks, the Goddess emphasized pretty heavily in our brief interaction that the people of this world, whether it be dwarf, elf, human, or otherwise are real people with real lives. I grimace as my mind constructs all of the horrific scenarios that could take place at the hands of not monsters, but humans, recalling that no beast could construct such malice as humans. My face begins running for my chest as it drops down into a deep frown before I shake my head and slap myself moderately hard on the cheek in order to snap myself out of the spiral I’ve found myself in.

“Jesus, I’ve been here for 5 minutes and I’m already so cynical.” I spit out at myself.

I-I suppose I should start walking, though I’m not exactly sure which way I should actually go if I want to make it to a city. I figure I should probably head south, or at least what I think is south, in order to avoid perhaps getting into an even colder environment.

As I contemplate the directions, a man’s guttural scream rips through the woods and the sound of metal slamming into metal rings my ears. Immediately, my heart drops into my stomach, my eyes frozen in the direction of the scream in a state of near pure terror.

“A fight?” I sheepishly whisper to myself, my face locked towards the direction of the sound, my face seeming as if stricken by the gaze of Medusa herself, a state of utter seriousness as to the gravity of the situation enveloping my mind.

I stand still, listening as the very apparent battle rages, clangs and clinks ringing louder and louder.

I feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins and I unfreeze and begin a sprint towards the sounds, very quickly getting eyes on what’s happening.

There are 12 people in a small clearing of what appears to be a side road with a tipped over cart, 8 of them are dressed in various kinds of iron looking armor, leather, and seemingly whatever else as there doesn’t appear to be any kind of uniformity to their garb. Probably bandits of some sort I think. The other 4 are what looks to be a merchant of some sort if his professional green outfit and cap and currently obvious lack of weapon is to be believed, and 3 guards whose armor is complete and uniform from head to toe in steel plate.

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I make my decision to help quickly upon making my judgment calls despite the desperate cries of my body, immediately raising both of my hands and calling upon my innate understanding of the spell fire bolt, I can feel the mana within my body as it seems my mind and body know exactly what to do, circulating the mana from within my chest through to both of my hands and creating two rebar shaped bolts of fire before launching them like science project rockets from my hands.

KLANG! BOOM! My bolts of fire connect on two of the bandits, slamming through their armor before exploding, instantly killing them and two others unfortunate enough to get pelted by the shrapnel from the fragments of the exploding armor of their comrades, sending massive chunks of steel at speeds fast enough to tear through limbs leaving horrific mangled bodies.

“Holy shit!” I scream with great adrenaline and anxiety, my face paling having seen two people be liquidized and two more getting hit by what might as well be the shrapnel from a massively oversized grenade.

One of the other 4 turns around and sees what happened, yelling to his comrades they need to run immediately or die. The other 3 quickly attempt to break contact with the guards with two being successful and the other being slain as he made an attempt to run. The remaining three sprint as fast as possible towards the edge of the clearing into the woods, however, I swiftly shot two more bolts of fire, the projectiles missing, but exploding upon impact with the dirt sending two flying and slamming into trees with audible destruction of bones and rattled breathing, the remaining one escaping into the woods.

I stare for what feels like an eternity at the scene in front of me, taking in every single detail, the piles of steaming flesh and viscera, the mangled corpses of those hit by the fragments of the armor upon exploding, and hearing the still audible dying gasps of the two who likely suffered crippling internal damage as a result of slamming into the trees. My staring is only stopped when one of the men in the caravan yells.

“Thanks for the help mage, that was very impressive magic, it really saved our asses!” One of the guards yells with a gravelly and aged voice.

I slowly walk towards them as my feet begin to feel heavier, before stopping roughly 3 feet in front of the four men.

“Don’t mention it.” I say with a sly smile, pushing through as much faux bravado as I can muster given my rising anxiety over what’s just occurred, looking at him, then towards the merchant himself who is now but feet away from me.

“Thank you so much sir, I don’t know what we would have done without you.” He drops to his knees with tears filling his eyes, his voice quivering as he forces out speech in a slurred and sobbing manner.

“We probably would have died Vetman, there was no way we were going to be able to make up that number deficit in combat.” The same gravelly voice comes again from one of the guards.

“You’re right, truly, you’re right. I’m sorry sir, but I really don’t have much I can give you right now. This trip was our return after a delivery, but those stupid bandits wouldn’t listen to me and insisted that I was hiding the goods somewhere. Now our cart is flipped over too, returning now is going to be a pain.” He winces visibly as the words roll off of his tongue and he staggers back to his feet to face me directly.

“I didn’t do it for a reward anyhow, Mr. Vetman is it? Let’s see if we can’t get your cart flipped back over, a ride back to a town will suffice as far as payment is concerned.” I say, mustering once more as much faux bravado as possible, hoping they don’t notice my now pearly white skin and reddening face. I then take what feel like thousand pound steps in order to face the cart, raising my hands up once again and calling upon my innate understanding of telekinesis, channeling the mana through my fingers and creating an invisible thread of mana connecting to the cart, and slowly raising it back upright.

I look back to him, “Will those conditions work for you sir? Or are there negotiations to be had?” My voice strains now growing weak enough such that it is barely audible and I try to smile but only muster an ugly quivering of lip movement, before forcing myself up the step in the back of the cart and slamming down into one of the bench chairs within.

Shortly after I slammed down onto the bench, the three guards hop in the back with me and remove their helmets allowing me to glean their faces. One of them is a relatively young man who seemingly couldn’t possibly be older than 30 years of age. He has very average light features, and light brown hair. The other is a similar story, in fact it seems like they might be brothers with just how alike they look. I raise an eyebrow at that and look towards the one who spoke earlier with the gravelly and aged voice. He looks to be a late middle aged man with a large warped nose, unkempt beard, and dark almost black hair with gray highlights running throughout.

His brows furrow as his dark brown eyes laser focus into mine and he speaks, “I really have to thank you for doing what you did there, it’s as I said earlier, if you hadn’t intervened every single one of us would have been slaughtered over cargo that didn’t even bloody exist.”

I hold my gaze with him and consider his words as my mind recalls the events that just unfolded, my adrenaline crashing as I ponder, images of the bandits being liquified and shrapnel and the smell of burning flesh reappearing to my senses as if reliving what just occurred. I.. killed people, and not just that, I killed them violently and horrifically. It doesn’t feel right to inlay those scenes with a thanks, even if what I had done was just and righteous.

I feel my body vibrating, numbness seeping into every limb, finger, and toe. I feel the eruption of emotions that is coming over me and my eyes begin to well and produce almost even streams down my evermore reddening cheeks. I mourn in my heart, a pit forming in my stomach and seemingly swallowing the rest of my body. I never understood the true implications of what it would actually feel like to take a life. My gaze with the man breaks and gasps for air leave my mouth as my eyes pour out tears and my nose oozes vibrating snot onto my face, falling out of the seat onto the floor of the cart in front of the gruff man, getting into the fetal position as I try to wait out what is now very apparently a panic attack. I close my eyes praying for respite only to continue my convulsing before slipping into unconsciousness.