It took the werewolf a matter of seconds to finish eating the troll. After only a few seconds, the majority of the troll’s body had been consumed. Once the werewolf was done, it rose to its full height and looked down at Karen. Her heart seemed to stop as she stared up at the towering predator that had so easily mutilated the troll, she couldn’t manage to put a scratch on.
The werewolf next did something peculiar beyond words. It took out a shirt and began to wipe its hands. Karen was curious at first but when she recognized the shirt as the one Ryuji was wearing that morning, it was like her mind shut down entirely. Ryuji was dead? He had to be! There was no way he could have won against something like this and it came from the same direction he was in. For what felt like an eternity, her heart just froze and shattered into ever smaller pieces.
At that point, Karen was ready to welcome the promised death from the ravenous giant wolf next to her. It reached down and she watched in numb acceptance of her fate as a bite-sized morsel. Strangely, its finger nestled beneath her chin, and lifted her face to look at it. Ah, it wanted to look at her as it tore her throat out. Then the words it spoke registered in her disjointed brain and she was hauled gently to her feet. “Karen! Are you okay? Please be okay, I can’t lose you!”
She blinked a few times and even though the voice was that of a mountain-sized wolf monster, she recognized it. “Ryuji? Is… Are… I um. Are you really Ryuji?”
He nodded with a grin that seemed to be designed to inspire nightmares. “I’m so sorry! I really wanted to tell you but… I just couldn’t find the right way to say, hey, I hope you don’t mind dating way outside your species, and oh, do you have a dog brush?”
She looked at him rather strangely but then a pissed-off and yet pleading voice got his attention. Kyarako was holding a blade away with all her strength using both her steel claws but more goblins were approaching from the side. “Hey, I don’t mean to ruin the mood but… If you two are finished flirting, we could really use your help here!”
The goblins seemed to be paying more attention to him than to the fight they were in but they still outnumbered the other two women very badly. Ryuji let go of Karen and she managed to stay upright while wincing in pain by using her spear as a cane. Ryuji turned to the goblins and they all seemed to turn to look back at him. Then he sucked in a breath and let loose the loudest, meanest, most terrifying roar that he could manage.
At first, there was silence from the entire forest. Every bird, beast, and especially goblin was quiet and in deathly fear for their lives. Then, almost as one, they broke and ran. It would be more apt to say that they scattered. Like roaches when the light switch is flipped on, they fled in every direction, filled to the brim with abject primordial terror. It was the kind of terror that only happens when you know in the most primitive parts of your brain that a huge and utterly lethal incarnation of evisceration is right behind you.
Ryuji shrugged as the women removed their hands from their ears. “Will that do?”
Miyako was getting over her stunned state and was leaning into enraged. She was trying to find words to put together but in her growing rage, she was failing. She just pointed in the direction that the goblins had largely fled in. Ryuji shrugged again and bounded off, transforming in mid-spring into a huge wolf. The hunt was on again!
The moment Ryuji was done killing the last of the fleeing goblins he returned. Once back, he discovered Karen still suffering from an extreme cramp in her leg. It was one so bad that the muscle could be seen jumping beneath the skin. He tried to remember his biology course and specifically, what a cramping muscle needed.
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First, there was magnesium, then he would need iron, and finally, he would need vitamin B6. He checked and was gratified to find a primitive mortar and pestle in the cave. He ground up some seeds and sprinkled in a bit of red rust he managed to siphon magically out of the dirt. After that, he cast a minor water spell to get the mix turned into a paste that he kept grinding finer.
Ryuji then used dirt to draw up the pattern he thought might work for the spell. a few minutes later, he was ready and began pulling the chemicals he wanted to focus on from the paste. The resulting rod of goo he used to cast a second-level dual water and earth-type spell. the spell infused those four key items into Karen’s leg and it relented immediately!
Everyone burst out in excited chatter. For one, he was supposed to be out of mana and that should take days to recharge. Two, he was using healing which was supposed to be exclusive to priests but Ryuji waved it off saying all he did was give her muscle what it was missing. That didn’t go unchallenged but they relented. And lastly, did he really just create a brand-new spell, in the wilderness? He broke their stride by topping that. He told them it was also the only time he had ever cast a dual elemental spell! but he asked that they keep all of that a secret.
A bit later, Ryuji had gathered all of the goblin corpses back at the cave. After bathing in a tributary of the river, he redressed and rejoined the others as an elf. The women set about taking the ears of all the goblin bodies. They had already retrieved the dead goblins from the cave and come to a nasty conclusion. This was a warband and this cave was their forward operating base. They pointed out that despite there being quite a few females, there were no whelps.
Ryuji was just as glad for the lack of young in the kill count. He did take the staves and garments from the dead shaman women and came across a small carved stone of some magic purpose. The women then began pulling the teeth from some of the goblins and lamented not being able to carry all of them. Ryuji asked why and was told that goblins make decent fertilizer once burned and powdered. He told them that he’s pretty sure that he can carry all of the goblins together and let them ride him but they decline saying it won’t get any more gold and the farmers can come get them if they want them.
On the way back to the city, Ryuji began teaching Miyako how to channel mana into her weapons and also some of the basics of summoning magic. Summoning magic works very much like caster magic with a couple of exceptions. The circles and geometric patterns inside them work the same but summoners have to write their wording on the curving sections of the circles between the geometric patterns not the straight lines of them.
Also, summoners have to use powdered bone, shell, or some other hard part of the animal they are summoning or they can use blood or urine from it. The more intrinsic to the animal the item is the greater its affinity to the animal in question. Urine and dung are the weakest as they are disposed of waste from that creature while bone can’t be gotten from the creature without causing its death so it has the strongest connection to the creature in question.
The lower-tier summons are all weaker animals with less willpower. A level one spell only summons the animal with no bindings since there isn’t space to write in the glyphs to bind the creature. Since the animal isn’t bound, it’s free to attack the summoner so most level-one summons are friendly creatures or they are summoned a fair distance from the summoner as a distraction.
Miyako was so ecstatic that she was finally learning magic she could barely contain herself. She asked him if he could teach her and he told her that he probably could if she wanted. She got so excited that she jumped up, hugged him, and kissed him on the mouth before she realized what she’d done. Kyarako yelled no fair and jumped onto the dazed Ryuji the very next moment and kissed him too. Karen cried out in dismay but then took a closer look at the two blushing women. Adopting a stern face, she looked them both in the eye before speaking. “When we get back to the city we need to talk. If we’re all going to be dating Ryuji, we’ve got to set some ground rules, Agreed?” The other women agreed and Ryuji just walked along in stunned silence. He really WAS turning into an anime protagonist!