I felt as though I had just barely sunk into the ocean before I got summoned again. Or would it be for the first time?

My submergence in that horrifically beautiful ocean had granted me new knowledge. I now knew what those scavengers I was killing were for example.

They were called humans and they could be both soldiers and knights, sometimes they could even be mages.

These weren’t different species though, rather they were castes that a human could belong to.

The humans I had killed were bandits, a caste of aggressive and weak humans. They preyed on the weak while leaving the strong alone. So my original thinking was right. They were scavengers.

Though, they were also soldiers since they fought for the Rovers.

Which was a civilization.

I couldn’t quite understand what a civilisation was, it seemed to be similar to a school of fish except they build things and fight each other over resources.

And the reason why I killed them was because my creator served this other civilisation called the Arthian Empire

Yet this influx of knowledge still left many things unanswered.

Like what it was these two civilizations were fighting over, or what exactly it was a mage did. All I vaguely knew was that they created something out of nothing.

Though, I suppose it didn’t truly matter, for I innately knew that I would learn more with time.

And perhaps even evolve.

Though how to evolve or what it would entail was beyond me for now.

And I could no longer waste my time pondering these things, for my form was beginning to become corporal.

The summoning was almost complete.

I had to be ready for anything.

When the nightmarish realm started to fade and be replaced by reality though, I saw there was nothing that I could do.

I was completely surrounded by a horde of humans.

There had to be over a hundred of them, maybe even two hundred.

Each one of them wore long hoods that covered their heads and shoulders from the abusive sun.

None of them wore cloaks, instead they were relying on long sleeve tunics crafted out of hunks of tough leather and rough fabric to keep the sun off their arms

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Their pants were likewise crafted out of scraps of leather stitched on top of the ragged fabric to provide some manner of defence against all manner of attacks.

But what really attracted my attention was the weapons they had.

Unlike the Rover bandits who had swords, these humans had pikes and spears.

Arguably swords were my arch nemesis but with so many humans pointing pikes and spears at me, there was no conceivable way I could attack.

I still would have though, but my creator had yet to give the order.

They just stood there, amongst the humans. talking to a few of them who I could faintly feel waves of energy pulsate from.

A few of these humans wore brass ornaments, which dangled on their exposed wrists and seemed to absorb the heat away from their wearer's skin.

Those ornaments had the same sort of aura as the nightmare realm.

A sort of conflicting array of impossibilities made possible.

Some of the other humans wielded staffs of solid wood. The aura from these staffs was less than what I could feel from the brass ornaments but it was still present nonetheless.

A few humans also radiated power from their rings. At first, I even thought that maybe it was their hands.

What really radiated power though was the weapons of the four strong humans that surrounded me. One on each side.

The one in front of me was rather short. Standing a good head below their peers. They were far more protected however, with a solid iron helmet masking their face and protecting their entire head.

They could actually see quite decently as well since they had a few strips of the metal removed and replaced with a yellow fabric positioned where their eyes would be.

My tactic of throwing sand wouldn't work against this human sadly. This method of wrapping the fabric around their heads was probably what the Rovers had done back when I was first summoned as well.

Back then I was still underdeveloped. I had thought that humans were a species of starfish since that species had five limbs that were positioned rather similarly to humans.

I was wrong though and as the ocean had revealed to me, humans were more similar to hermit crabs since they wore a protective outer layer instead of just relying on their nature defences.

And just like hermit crabs, they had differing levels of protection.

The strong human for example, boasted a defence that would prove impossible for me to drill through as their torso was covered in a single massive plate of iron.

The craftsmanship, while shoddy, didn’t really take away any of the protective benefits the armour offered. The only real downside was the weight.

The human’s arms were also well protected but at the expense of flexibility, having maybe half the range of motion that most humans tended to have. the poorly made plates were sticking to each other like a dying centipede, constricting their movement and for minimal benefit.

Arms were just like tentacles, just worse. But that didn’t change the fact they weren't vital. The strong human should just keep the helmet and chest plate and rid of the arm protection.

The armour on their legs hardly mattered since it didn’t seem to hinder their manoeuvrability that badly. It probably made their footwork more complicated but they could afford to take a few hits.

But, even with this formidable protection, I could still kill them quite easily. I would just need to hit them, really, really hard.

All they needed to do though, was hit me back just once.

Well, maybe not. It would be a bit ridiculous if I died in just one hit.

But still, their weapon was a cruel battle axe which pulsated with intense murderous rage so I would prefer to avoid getting struck by it.

The aura coming from it felt like it belonged more in that fever dream nightmare realm that I had found myself in rather than in the hands of a mortal.