The walk back to the campus was once again uneventful. After talking to the girls, Levi was disappointed that there were no monsters. He was much more engaged as they walked to back along the dirt pathway toward the city of Arcross. Piper was excited to have the chatty Levi back. They all told stories to each other and laughed; they bonded like a proper team. About 2 kilometers away from one of the small villages, Levi stopped walking.
“What is it?” Piper asked.
“I see smoke,” Levi said. “I think the town was attacked. Dameion,” the black hole manifested. “Go scout and report back.” The void entity took off with extreme speed toward the village. Levi put on his battle gear and pulled out his staff. He conjured four orbs of chaos to orbit around him. Anna and Piper followed the lead of Levi and got battle ready. Piper nodded and took off to scout and set up potential traps.
Dameion came back and looked at Vapor.
“Dameion said that the town has been raided by barbarians, there are 10 total barbarians, and all the village folk are alive but hostages,” Vapor said. Levi nodded and started sprinting. Anna right behind him.
“All right,” the barbarian leader said. “We’ve been kind to yews fer a few days naw, and not a one of yous told us what happened to our friends.” He was talking to the hostages all lined up, chained, naked, and bruised. “I’m losin my patience ya hear. So, if one of yous don’t speak up, Imma have my way with one of ya’s, do I make myself clear?”
None of the villagers said anything because they genuinely didn’t know what happened. They were all returning from the frog angel monster and then attacked by the barbarians. The next thing they knew, they were being bound, gagged, stripped, and used. A lot of them accepted their fate and were ready to die at the hands of magic users. They were a small town; they never had a magic user come from their parts, and no one ever made enough money.
“Well, is none of yews gooina talk?” the leader asked.
“I will,” Levi said.
“Would ya lookie here, we got some big spooky heroes!” the leader mocked. “Go on outta here lil boy, this don’t concern yew.”
“I, sadly, think it does,” Levi said. “I think you’re lookin for me. You had three friends go missing about a week ago or so?”
“That’s right, what’s it to ya?”
“You should take a lesson from them,” Levi said. “Learn from their mistakes, leave these people alone. Leave us alone and we’ll let you live.”
“Levi,” Anna hissed. “We absolutely cannot let these monsters live.”
The barbarians all laughed, “Look here boy, there are ten of us and two of yew, yew think you can win?”
“Yes,” Levi said without any hesitation.
“We’ll gut you and have our way with your pretty little friend as we make her watch your dead corpse,” another barbarian said.
“One more chance, life or death?” Levi said rage filling his aura.
“We ain’t leaving,” the leader said.
Levi smirked. Twenty-five drones and Anza appeared out of Levi. Vapor released a steam cloud over their positions, and the battle began. The two crystal wisps defused from Levi’s eyes. He instructed them to free use lightning only magic and swarm. They shifted into battle mode and started to split into smaller pieces.
Out of the steam cloud a barbarian with a battle axe started swinging wildly at Levi. Levi had his staff and was adeptly dodging and avoiding. His opponent, although not a magic user, was well-trained with his axe. The barbarian swung down with full force toward Levi’s head. Levi lifted his staff over his head to stop the blow. Because the barbarian was not a magic user its stats were normal; Levi was much stronger than the attacker. Another disadvantage of being normal and fighting a magic user is a drop in perception. Had the barbarian been a magic user he would have noticed the alpha mimic behind him. He had not until four tentacles plunged into his back out through his body.
Piper had seen the terrible scenes at the village before the party had arrived. She went around setting many trap rituals, they were of various affects. She wasn’t sure if the barbarians were all magic users or not. She felt it too risky to push her aura to test. She set up two rituals to reduce mana and others to explode in sticky goliath-spider webs. As Piper was setting her final ritual in place, she heard Levi talking to the barbarians. Going to check on the prisoners, there were a couple of the barbarians keeping watch. Her signal to fight was when there was a smoke screen or steam cloud from Vapor.
Once she saw it, she acted. Creating a ritual to bolster her strength, Piper pulled out her sword and went after the two barbarians guarding the hostages. The two barbarians were 1-star, warrior class. Which meant their speed was only slightly stronger than normals, slightly. Piper’s speed was that of a three-star rogue. She threw two kunai knives at one guard. It landed in the head and the heart. Before the guard could fall the other guard had been stabbed and had her neck sliced in two by Piper.
“Oops,” Piper said. “Forgot how strong this spell is.” She created another ritual for the hostages to all be invisible. Once that was completed, all the villagers were hidden from everyone but Piper since it was her ritual. She guided the group out of the town to wait out the end of the battle. “I wish there was a way to communicate with Levi,” Piper said. Dameion appeared out of thin air, half scarring Piper to death. “Dameion, you scared the hell out of me.” It lowered slowly.
“Never mind that, go tell Levi to send some drones to protect the villagers here five will do,” Dameion flashed a bit brighter and took off toward Levi.
Anna knew that keeping these barbarians alive was bad news; they had to put them down. Anna was shocked that Levi even offered to let them go. Letting them go was dangerous for everyone in this area. Thankfully, they had too much pride. She waited for the signal from Vapor to attack. She had been quietly chanting spells to get ready while waiting. Finally, the steam cloud rose as a distraction. Anna finished her incantation, “Winds of the blizzard.”
From behind Anna dark gray clouds formed and ice, snow, and water came shooting out of the cloud with velocity. Anna had taken out two of the barbarians right away with that attack. Their bodies were littered with holes, it was like being shot by a split shot shotgun. Blood was seeping out of the lethal wounds. She looked over to see Anza had killed one and Levi did as well with his orbs of chaos. She herself conjured a couple of orbs of ice and started adding them to her small orbit. Seeing a barbarian try to flee, she sent the ball after it and it went straight through its body, leaving an orb-shaped hole in its body.
Piper felt that one of her traps had worked. She looked and saw the spider traps had caught two more barbarians. She went over to the webs and cut the heads off the barbarians clean and swift. Her strength was still bolstered so it didn’t take too much effort. She went to find Levi so they could regroup. The leader was a three-star. As she approached Levi, she saw him standing over the 3-star leader. The leader looked like he was having a low mana attack while being hit with lightning bolts. His body was no longer moving voluntarily as Willow and Crystal had used their electric powers on the leader, shocking him to death, leaving his body to twitch occasionally.
Levi was confronted by the leader. He was a big man, a clear magic user; Levi assumed 3-star just by the size alone. He didn’t appear to have any magic spells, just good old-fashioned hard work to get him to the rank he was. The barbarian sneered and pulled out a large battle axe.
“I’m goin to enjoy this,” the barbarian said. He charged Levi; his speed was fast but not as fast as Piper, Levi’s training partner. Levi was able to dodge the attacks effectively while also getting in a few jabs with his staff, which was glowing with strength runes... The two went back and forth for some time. They were moving so fast and blocking each other’s attacks it looked like a well-choreographed fight scene in a movie. Levi noticed that his attacks with his staff were not doing any damage. He conjured orbs of chaos to attack the barbarian; strangely, they bounced off harmlessly.
“Magic shield armor,” Levi said. “Nice,”
“You can only kill me with a sharp weapon boy and you ain’t got that.”
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“Maybe not,” Levi said. “But I have tricks.” As if appearing out of nowhere, four black holes started orbiting around the barbarian leader. The orbit was getting faster the more mana was being drained. Blue mana started to manifest into the black holes as Dameion drained the mana from the enemy. The barbarian fell to his knees, clutching his head, screaming in pain.
“Willow and Crystal, y’all mind?” The two wisps flew over to the barbarian and began electrocuting the leader. The leader first screamed as the jolts of electricity were coursing through his body. Shortly the screaming died and all that remained was the smell of burnt flesh. As his body was scored with marks from the electric shocks.
Levi was holding his nose, “goodnight that smells terrible. Good job you two.”
“How are the hostages?” Piper asked walking up to Levi.
“Good, team Ember is patrolling right now,” Levi replied. “Any big damage?”
“Nope, just low mana, that is being recovered now that I am in your aura… what’s the range?”
“Uhh, passively, 5-meter diameter, I think.”
“Did we kill them all,” Anna asked. She was holding her head as well. Her body language changed as she entered Levi’s aura and felt the rejuvenating feeling of her mana restoration.
“NO!” Another barbarian screamed. This one was a women at least 3 meters tall. She wore bronze armor, a bronze chest plate, a bronze plate skirt, and a helmet. She had a spear that was nearly the size of Levi.
“So, I guess that was not the boss that you killed,” Piper whispered.
“I sense enhancement magic,” Anna said.
“Well,” Piper said. “What’s the plan?”
“Piper, we’ll have to rely on you.” Levi said. “The boss had some sort of protection magic that only allowed stabbing to affect it.”
“Or your wisps,” Piper said.
“Anna how’s your mana?” Levi asked.
“Low, I won’t be much help. It’ll be just you two.”
“Go check on the rescued folks, then, we’ll handle it,” Levi instructed.
“Will do, good luck,” Anna ran off to check in on the rescued villagers.
“Vapor, set create a cloud of steam to cover Piper. Dameion try to drain her mana, give what you can to Piper. Anza go with Piper and attack with her. It’ll be good with stabbing.”
Piper did what Levi said and waited for the cloud of steam that Vapor made. She ran around the giant barbarian, who started to charge Levi. Levi stood his ground for a while as the barbarian got closer. He drew a trap ritual circle in the ground 5 meters ahead of him. As soon as the giant barbarian stepped on the ritual circle, chaotic energy surrounded her and slowed her pace down. The ritual was meant to slow down the speed of the being who stepped on the circle.
As the barbarian was so focused on Levi it didn’t notice Piper and Anza slash at her heels. Blood started to flow from her heels. Now even more so she was unable to move. Levi saw the mana draining orbs surround but there was no effect, a white shield shimmered with every attempt. Levi called Dameion back and rethought his strategy. The wisps were ineffective as well, not even the lightning. They kept swarming around to add layers of distraction. Levi released several more drones and instructed them to attack.
The barbarian was able to stab several of the drones killing them but there were simply too many. Before long the barbarian was grunting in pain as it had many tentacles stabbing her. They were in her shoulders, core, legs, neck, with the ritual and the heels she couldn’t move, couldn’t dodge, she couldn’t do anything but accept her fate, which was death. Blood pouring out of the many spikes Anza, being the bigger of the mimics sent a final spike into the heart of the barbarian. With a wet squelch the barbarian shrank to normal sized and died.
This was the first time Levi had lost drones in a battle. He wasn’t sure if he could resummon or what the rules were. He walked over to Piper he was sitting down exhausted.
“How are you?” Piper asked.
“I’m good,” Levi said. “Mana is low but I’m good.”
“How are you okay?”
“I didn’t really do anything my familiars and you did,” Levi said. “This battle heavily favored me.”
“If you say so,” Piper said.
“How are you?”
“I’m good, help me up.” The two walked over to the forest line where the rest of the villagers and Anna was. They were all understandably afraid. Anna was talking to one who was presumed to be the leader of the village. Levi elected to let the girls handle the villagers. He went scouting the area for more threats or anything that could help him.
He walked over the various dead bodies. It was a grim scene. “Vapor,” Levi asked.
“Yes,” she responded.
“Is Necromancy a thing in this world?” Levi asked.
“It is. However, the goddess of death has outlawed the practice,” Vapor.
“People don’t always listen to gods, especially ones that they do not worship,” Levi responded.
“Just so,” Vapor said.
“Willow and Crystal,” Levi said. “Burn any dead bodies to see that are barbarians.” He summoned five drones. “Search the houses to find any dead or injured of the villagers in the houses. If you find any let me know and I’ll help them out.”
“I will help search too,” Vapor said.
“Bet, Dameion, go join. Anza, you and a couple more team members, go find some food. These folks need to eat. Gather as many waterskins as you can. I’ll fill them with my magic water.”
Anza nodded and took off with two drones. Levi dug a hole in the ground and started to grab some flat stones. He conjured some orbs of water to clean the stones. Laying the flat stones over the holes he added he called Crystal back and had it set the area under the stones on fire. With a fire going and the stones warming up, Levi pulled out some meat from the giant moose monster from the ice valley he had stripped a few days ago. Levi learned that his inventory neatly wrapped and preserved any form of raw meat. Placing the meat on the stones, it started to sizzle. The smell of death and rot was slowly being replaced with grilled meat.
Levi wished he knew some healing ritual magic that would be helpful. Unfortunately, as soon as he placed the meat on the makeshift grill, he did not. He started creating a vegetable stew in case anyone didn’t want to eat meat. While stirring the stew, Anza and the two embers came back with several dead animals. Levi marveled that there were animals like the ones on his old world. Pigs, cows, and sheep, but there were also pigs with wings, cows with eight legs, and sheep with three heads.
There were various other magical creatures as well. The moose monster was a moose about 3 meters tall and long. It was a thick body, not as muscular as moose from Earth were. It had razor-sharp spikes that it walked on. It also breathed ice. The moose creatures had antlers and fur, that much was the same but much more dangerous. It was interesting that to get the meat off a creature or monster, he had to butcher it instead of getting it as loot. While he still received loot from the monster.
Levi assumed that was because he wasn’t actually in a video game; this was just how he viewed the world. Levi had shown Anza how to butcher meat, so he left that task to her. Vapor and Dameion returned to report that they had found no survivors but a few dead bodies children. Who did not survive the torture. Levi nodded sadly and told them to go inform Piper and ask the villagers what they wanted to do with the bodies.
Levi had finished cooking the dinner and had portioned out several healthy portions of food and water. He had set aside some shots of healing potion in case anyone desperately needed healing. Piper and Anna brought back the villagers. Everyone gawked at the massive display of food, water, and potions that Levi and his familiars created.
“I know this can’t replace everything that happened,” Levi said to the crowd. “But this is for you. You’ve been through a lot; having to cook your own food after a traumatic event would be tough. So, there is plenty of food and water, and there are some health potion shots for those who really need it. Enjoy.” Levi gave a small bow and walked away toward the back to Anna and Piper.
“That was incredibly kind, Levi,” Piper said.
“Yes,” Anna said. She was speechless. Piper and Anna looked at each other. Who was this man? Levi was an awkward guy, slightly weird, but they had never seen this side of him before. This was one of the most compassionate things she had ever seen. If there was any doubt that Levi was evil, they were squashed in this moment. Piper looked at Levi, who was sitting and leaning against Anza, who was happily eating a giant snow hare, and saw tears falling down his face.
She didn’t say a word. Piper sat down next to him and pulled him in close. She consoled him as he had silent sobs. Anna sat down as well—one of the drones that was with her laid down and gave her a space to lean on. The team sat watching the villagers happily eat a meal together as their spirits started to rise. The leader walked over with some plates of food to offer to the group.
“You shed tears for us?” She asked. “You have done enough; do not spare tears for our dead. Thank you, summoner.”
“I’m Levi,” Levi said. “Y’all faced grim days.”
“Aye,” she said. “I’m Gertrude. You have allowed our recovery to be much quicker. As a town, we have decided to gather all our money and get a magic essence. Try to get a magic user, one like you, summoner.”
“You want a summoner?” he asked.
“If there is a chance that they can summon amazing familiars like yours, that is worth it. They could summon defenses as well. We have enough money. May I send the chosen young man to accompany you to Arcross to purchase the essence and conduct the ritual?”
“Of course!” Levi said, his spirits lifted.
“Thank you. His name is Victor. He’s only 16, but he has the most potential of all of us; he stood up to the barbarians when they first came. When do you all plan to leave?”
“In a few hours,” Anna said. “We need to rest, and we’ll patrol the area in case there are more.”
“Very well,” Gertrude said. “Before you depart, please find me.” They all agreed as the leader left the plates and went back to her villagers. The party sat looking at each other and began eating the food with groans of satisfaction at the delicious food.