As she climbed out of the water, Lina looked around and saw a cave, that was surprisingly well-lit by literal mountains of glowing moss, which was growing on the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling and dowsed the cave in a warm greenish light. The cave seemed to be almost empty, the only thing inside were some stones, a few medium to large rocks, and a gently glowing gemstone, that twinkled and glistened as if it was a Christmas decoration. She had never seen something like that, but Lina felt the stone calling her, she felt it pull her towards it, and before she understood, what was happening she touched the stone and a description window popped into her mind.

Condensed magic, element: life. Absorb to gain the ability to freely use life magic. Do you want to absorb the condensed magic?

"What the fuck? Magic? Magic isn’t real. Come on Lina, you probably hit your head, in this dream, after you ran away from bandits..."

"Where did she go? We were right behind her. "

"Don’t bother trying to figure it out, neither one of you is a sharp thinker anyway. Just go looking for her, she can’t be far away and is probably just hiding somewhere around here. HEY, GIRL, you can’t hide forever, might as well make it easy for yourself and come out now, I won’t be so nice if I have to come find you! "

Lina froze, they hadn’t found her yet, but it wouldn’t be long until they would check that weird bush and when that happened, she was trapped. The only thing she could do was hide, but she couldn’t find a place, where they wouldn’t find her.

‘Do you want to absorb the condensed magic? ’

“Right, ehm, yes? “

As soon as she thought this, the gemstone exploded, bursting into radiant streams of green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, red and pink light, that began streaming into her, filling her with a warm and fuzzy feeling, that reminded her of her first kiss.

‘ You have absorbed condensed magic.’

She read the message, but it contained so much more information than was written. She felt like she could see what the universe was made of as if she had been present when it had been created. She saw Quarks and gluons, electrons and protons, she could see gravity. She could see the patterns, that made up all reality, the code, that defined the laws of physics, what was and wasn’t possible. She... she could see the cave again. The sensation faded as rapidly as it had come and left her with a feeling of loss. She wanted to see all of this stuff again. She wanted to understand. She had studied computer science, because she always thought, that it was the closest thing to magic in the real world, but now she had seen, what that really meant, and she wanted to learn that code, that programming language, of the universe.

As she thought that, she noticed, that something was different. She was back in reality, whatever that meant in her current situation, but it wasn’t the same, she could feel something, but she didn’t know what. Realization hit her, as she focused on the moss. Before, it just glowed, but now she could see some of the patterns, some of the code, she had seen in her vision. Now that she had more time, she noticed, how it constantly changed and transformed. It wasn’t just some puny computer code, it was a 3-dimensional, ever-changing structure. She was filled with excitement, it was just a small part of the whole, but if she studied this "code" for lack of a better word, maybe she could understand, even influence it?

She focused on the moss and tried to deduce some rules, but it was hopeless. It was like trying to understand the machine code for a processor, she didn’t know anything about. She just didn’t have enough samples, time, or knowledge to gain anything from it.

Frustrated, she sat down and sighed, there had to be a way to do something with that. The stone told her she could now use life magic, but she had no idea what that meant.

Truth be told, she was a bit miffed, when she read the word magic, she thought she had found something, that could help her deal with those guys, but whatever she did, nothing worked.

At first, she thought she could just imagine, what she wanted and it would happen, but that clearly wasn’t the case. She didn’t really know what life magic entailed, but she tried making roots grow from the ground like so many plant mages did in video games and nothing happened. Visualizing it didn’t help, shouting, well, quietly muttering an attack name like some anime protagonist didn’t help and making up a weird chant, asking the gods to help her didn’t help either.. She even tried “feeling” the magic around her, but other than cool, moist air, she couldn’t feel anything.

Ok, maybe something like that was too difficult and something easier would work. With that reasoning, she went back to staring at the moss, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t deduce anything from the weird symbols. It was just too complex and she didn’t have the slightest clue how to even begin unravelling it.

Shaking her head, she remembered, why she was where she was and felt her heart drop. How could she forget about the people, who wanted to kidnap her? Suddenly panicking, she searched for a spot to hide, but there was nothing, she was trapped and there was nothing she could do.

As Lina realized that, she heard a loud splash and as she turned around, saw a thick rope coming through the hole in the ceiling, and gulped.

"Hey Dad, I think I found her! “

She heard one of the hoodlums shout. Lina was suddenly very awake and tried to think of something to do, but what could she do? She couldn’t hide, she couldn’t run away and she still hadn’t figured out this stupid magic stuff.

Frantically Lina tried to come up with an idea, but her head was empty, other than scurrying to the walls of the cave and hoping to suddenly become invisible in the next few minutes, there was really nothing she could do. She had no weapon and she still didn’t know how those fractals worked and messing with something you didn’t understand would almost always result in breaking i-...

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Lina wanted to scold herself for not thinking about that earlier, but now was not the time for that. She finally had a plan.

A few minutes later, Lina observed her pursuers climb down the rope. She had made a plan, but she didn’t know if it would work.

“Please let it work.” She prayed.

When all three of them were on the rope, she knew it was time to act. Earlier she had realized, that she didn’t need to know how this magic stuff worked, she just had to mess with the rope enough to make it snap and if this stuff was anything like programming, breaking it should be very easy. With that, thought she began to work, not concentrating on any aspect o the rope's fractal code in particular, she began thinking about just changing random parts and for the first time something happened. She felt something seep out of her, not physically, but more like when you feel your focus slip after concentrating on something for too long. Slowly she saw the code change, some parts twisted, others were deleted completely and some began to vibrate. She didn’t know why those things happened, but it didn’t matter because finally, the rope snapped. The whole thing didn’t cost her a lot of this weird energy, which she instinctively knew, and the effect of just this little energy was pretty satisfying. She knew, from experience, that it wouldn’t hurt to fall in that weird water, but it sure as hell surprised them.

“Hey, are you looking for me?” She yelled as she came out of hiding.

“You really shouldn’t have done that, idiot. If you had been nice and obedient, we might not have hurt you too badly.” Grumbled the old guy angrily, as he stood up.

Not wasting even one more breath, they pulled their weapons from their sheaths. The leader had a thin, but shiny sword, that looked way too well-made for someone like that guy, while the others armed themselves with slightly dull and old-looking daggers, that nobody had taken care of. The difference in quality was apparent and even though the situation was anything but funny, Lina couldn’t help herself but think that it looked like when she had sold all of her party's equipment to buy a single legendary weapon in one of her video games.

“Come on, don’t make this harder for you than it already is. I promise I won’t be too hard on you. I will only break your legs, maybe your arms too, but nothing too bad.” Grinned the guy way too jovially, while one of the others sneered, eyes gleaming with anger.

“Yeah, come over and let us have some fu-”

He was cut off as a stone hit him. The cave didn’t have much, you could use as a weapon, but stones were not too bad, which is why Lina had used the little time she had to collect as many as she could find, which she now used to attack them. Sadly, Lina wasn’t the most athletic person, and the stones she pelted her attackers with didn’t do much. She had hoped to inflict some real damage when she hit their heads, but not only was that more difficult than she had anticipated but there really wasn’t much force behind her throws. Thankfully, it was enough to hold the guys in place, having to concentrate on shielding their heads with their arms, and together with the slippery pond ground, the knee-high water and their lacking martial prowess, Lina even managed to make them fall over, which had the added bonus of them entangling themselves with the rope.

There was one huge problem though, she ran out of stones, which was unfortunate, because soon after she stopped attacking, she knew her assault hadn’t been enough.

Without waiting any longer, the old guy lunged forward, trying to cut Lina’s legs. He didn’t even make it to her though. Due to fate, divine intervention, providence or just dumb luck, the guy’s foot was caught by the rope, causing him to trip and fall, pulling the other 2 down into the water shallow with him. And as if that wasn’t lucky enough, not having expected his embarrassing display of misfortune, the old guy actually let go of his sword, which beautifully flew through the air before sliding across the cave floor. Lina did not hesitate to try to reach the only thing that would give her a shot at defending herself before they recovered, but before she could get it into her hands one of the younger men was able to free himself from the rope and tackled Lina, who was thrown to the ground. Lina tried to stand up, but the guy kicked her right in the guts, with more force than a human should be able to exert, making Lina slide across the floor and inflicting more pain than she had ever felt. Thankfully, her adrenaline kept her awake and able to think.

“You little slut. This is going to be very painful for you.” He sneered, slowly walking toward her, playing with his dagger.

“Now tell me, how did you do that? If you knew magic, you would have fought us directly. Did you use some kind of ritual?”

Lina did not answer, as the guy came closer. The others were still trying to get rid of the rope, which they couldn’t cut with their dull dagger. Lina waited for the man to come closer. The guy obviously did not see her as a threat and wanted to make her feel scared and hopeless by dragging the situation out as long as he could. Lina was not a helpless little girl, though, right now she had the courage of the desperate. When she felt he was close enough, she jumped to her feet and punched the guy as hard as she could, right in the balls.

With nothing more than a loud thud, the man fell to the ground, his hands in his crotch. Lina seized the moment and ran toward the sword. She had never used one and was surprised at how light it was, given that it was a 1-meter-long piece of metal. It was a bit weird how beautiful it looked, given its purpose, but now was not the time to think about such things. Lina, the sword in her hands, turned around and saw the guy she had emasculated get up. It looked like he was still in pain, but he was not debilitated any more, and clearly very angry.

“Huh, I always thought a punch to the balls would do more.” Lina mused.

Fuming with rage, his dagger in a hand and trembling with fury, her ‘victim’ yelled. “Do you think you can beat all of us, little girl? Even with the sword, you won’t win. It takes more than a big knife to win a fight, even more so, when you have never used one. Did you ever kill someone? Do you think you can kill someone? And even if, could you live with that?”

The guy was clearly trying to break her fighting spirit, she knew that, but… he was kind of right. Could she kill someone? Until now, she hadn’t thought about that, but now she had a weapon, and she probably wouldn’t survive, if she didn’t kill them all.

“What is taking so long?” yelled someone.

“Take the sword and cut this damn rope.”

The two other guys still miraculously had not managed to get free, well, miraculously to Lina, in reality not even a minute had passed and given how many hours Lina had spent disentangling earbuds, she really shouldn’t be surprised. Nevertheless, they would soon manage to get free, she needed to at least deal with the first guy before that happened, if not her advantage would be lost. Lina steeled her resolve and got into a fighting position, that she had once seen in a game. She did not know anything about sword fighting, but if it worked in a game, why shouldn’t it work in a weird fantasy world, right?

“You are right, I have never killed someone, but I won’t let you get away with this!” She yelled as she lunged forward, to the surprise of everyone, herself included.

The guy could not even react before Lina thrust the sword right through his chest. It slid through meat and bones like a hot knife through butter.

Lina was shocked at how easy it had been to kill the man. A second ago he was a thread, a predator playing with his prey, but now he was dead. And there was something strange, a feeling of… accomplishment? She was disgusted at herself for feeling like that after taking another man’s life. He wasn’t a good person, not by any means, but it didn’t make her feel better nonetheless.

The sound of steps and the yelling of two enraged men threw her out of her stupor, but it was a bit too late, the older guy had already bitch-slapped her straight across the face, which made her tumble backwards a few meters, but she didn’t let go of the sword, trying with all the might she could muster to keep hold of her only defence. Without missing a beat, however, the guy took another swing at her, which made Lina reflexively close her eyes and uncoordinated like a toddler, trying to move backwards, her legs not listening to her as they should. Right as she was about to be hit though, she slipped on the damp cave floor, which made her fall straight on her butt.