How long he had been convulsing in pain on the floor, El did not know. But it must have been a while since Alice started to crawl with her bad foot toward him to try to shake him and bring him around from screaming senselessly so much.

And then, just as suddenly as it came, the drumming stopped, and El breathed deeply not sure what had just happened.

“What was that? Are you okay?” Alice asked, seeing how he was trying to compose himself.

“Yes. I’m fine now. You didn’t hear that, did you?”

“Hear what?”

“Just as I thought. I’ll explain later,” he said and stopped Alice from asking him a ton of more questions.

He turned his senses on, feeling things around, and before even peaking outside, he knew the beasts had left.

“They are gone,” he announced, then took the rope that was wrapped around his waist and tied it around Alicia’s leg, right under her knee.

“Let’s hope their saliva is not deadly,” he muttered, suddenly a trace of fear in his voice as he leaned over and picked Alice up, asking her to grab the sword with her free hand.

“Who knows, we may still need it tonight.”

Then he opened the door of the cabin and started to carry Alice up the road toward Holgar’s place. There was still complete silence around, and not until he reached the tavern did he hear people talk.

“Everyone alive here?” he asked, noticing a lot of blood, and five of the beasts spread dead and dying. Two of them were filled with arrows, one was missing a head, and one had all its guts out.

Trim stood there with his hands all bloodied, a cleaver in his hand and a long leather apron not looking any better. Next to him was Holgar, cleaning the blood of a long iron spear he seemed to be very familiar with. Two hunters stood behind, and the shadow man with the hood still on his face walked back inside the tavern, a long sword still covered in blood in his right hand.

“What are those creatures?” Trim asked, pointing at the beasts.

“I do not know. And before I can get any answers out of them, Alice is hurt here, so do you have a healer in this village?”

“We’ve already sent for Goxna. She will come. Give her an hour.”

“I’m not sure Alice has that long,” El said.

“Bring her inside,” Holgar asked and ran to clear the space for her. “And let’s take her upstairs, to a proper bed there.”

“There is another girl hurt, two homes away from her. Even worse than Alice. The beast had torn into her hand. You need to bring her here. I’m not a healer, but I can help. At least I hope I can,” El told them and sent them running down the road.

“Do you have a sharp knife?” Ed asked after they took Alice upstairs and placed her in the first bed they found there.

“Yes,” Trim said and a second later offered his blade to him.

“I need boiled water and a bunch of clean cloth. And light too,” Ed said and Holgar called his wife to light all the candles around while he went to fetch the rest.

Ed then sliced the laces of Alice’s boot, waiting for Holgar to bring him clean cloth before taking it off. When he did, Alice shrieked in pain and blood poured out of the cuts.

“Yeah, I know it hurts, but the worst may be over,” Ed said.

“How does it look?” she asked.

“If it was not for the good leather, you would not have a foot anymore,” Ed said. “And if their blood was not poisoned, you may actually live.”

By the time he attended her cuts, stopping the bleeding by freezing the opening with the use of Mana and wrapping it all up, keeping it cool, they brought the girl with a bad hand and El tried to do the same for her.

“I’m not sure if you will be able to keep your hand. Those wounds are deep. The beast had torn your muscles.”

“Please, please, help me…” she begged in pain, ready to faint any moment.

“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not a healer,” El said and worked on cleaning her hand and stopping the bleeding. The cuts were too deep so he could not freeze them, so he fired up the knife and cauterized her wounds as she screamed in agony before passing out.

“She lost a lot of blood,” he said as he finished wrapping her hand. “I’m not sure she is going to make it. I hope the healer will come here fast. A good healer can help a lot better than I can.”

“I think you’ve done a better job than any of us could,” Holgar’s wife said as she took blood-soaked cloth from Ed.

El dropped his body. “How many dead?” he asked Trim who appeared to check on the girls.

“We found three people dead so far. But, we still have not visited all the homes.”

“Yeah. Those beasts were jumpers. Like cougars, going for the throats. It will be lucky if there are only three people dead.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Have you ever seen beasts like that?” Trim suddenly asked as he turned to leave again.

El just shook his head in denial. “And I guess you have not either.”

“I’ve seen a lot of monsters. But not this kind. Not ever before.”

“Yeah. I want to look into them. Cut them up. So, do you think I can borrow your knife for a bit longer?”

“That is fine. I have another good blade.”

“Oh, and yeah,” El said and grabbed the sword they carried with them. “Thank you for your sword. It proved very useful tonight.”

“Glad to hear that. It was my father’s. And it saw me through hell for four years, you know.”

“It’s a good blade. Hope you did not mind.”

“No. That’s what it’s meant to do.”

El thought about going and dissecting one of the beasts right away. But, it was dark and he was suddenly lacking the will to get up from the chair.

Besides, there was something he needed to figure out first.

What the hell happened to me there in the end? What kind of power was it that knocked me clean out?

He closed his eyes, letting the rest come to him, composing himself. Maybe it was not directed toward me. Maybe it was just meant for the beasts, to get them to abandon the place and return to wherever place they came from. And where did they come from? If locals had never seen them before, could it be something that Vermal and his minions had just cooked up?

Hard to say. Will need to look for answers when night clears. Will need my strength back.

Before drifting off to sleep that suddenly was on top of his eyelids, weighing them down heavily, he decided to look up his system.

[Name: El Semundo Seventh Ol373g38AA9

Origin: Human 90 percent

Elvish 8 percent

Zoyan 2 percent

Planet: Olinia Prima

Level: 20

Accolades: Olive Branch, Staff Carvers Notch

Attributes

Standings

Balances

Abilities

Specials

Analytics

Options]

He first went into Standings and selected Health.

[Life Force: 180/200

General Health Condition: 19/20]

So, his health was hardly affected by the drumming, no matter how painful it was. That was a big relief, and El instantly felt better.

Then he wanted to know his Balances, and the system flashed his current numbers.

[Energy Supply: 1200 / 2000

Mana Supply: 40 /100]

He did feel a lot of mana leave his body in the lighting that killed one of the beasts, but 60 units for just one blast seemed way excessive.

Maybe that’s how things work on this planet, he thought, understanding why he was feeling so unsettled. I need to look into that further. But now… give me my Abilities, please.

[Abilities:

Insight: Basic, Mark 1

Mana Generation: Basic, Mark 4

Enhanced Hearing: Advanced, Mark 3

Sound Manipulation: Advanced, Mark 5]

He pondered about it for a while and then said, “System if I ever get hit by the same sound that knocked me out earlier, could you alert me and block it for me?”

[Sound Manipulation option: Alert and Blockage Activated]

“Hopefully that will do the trick. Although I’m not yet even sure what it was. Nobody else seemed to be affected by it. And from Alice's facial expression, I doubted she even heard it. Must have been transmitted to the beasts and to me in the same manner, maybe just amplified in my case somehow. Not sure yet. Need to figure it out. That was horrible. If it happens to me during the battle, the enemy will see it as a weakness and will exploit it. And I can’t fail again. Okay, so what are my specials, still the same?”

[Specials:

Language Options

Planetary bacterial and Virus Vaccination]

That seemed all in order, so he went to the Options. He had shut down all the Warning options. During the last battle, they just flashed too much in front of his eyes, providing an unwanted distraction. But now, he reactivated them again, so he could have the system pass him a warning any time something escaped his attention.

Suddenly he felt very stupid. He was just so concerned about his own things, that he did not even consider checking on Alice. She drifted off to sleep, but he had no clue if she was okay or not.

“That was so idiotic… and selfish,” he said and instantly called up her system as he touched her hand gently.

{Name: Alice Freedman Er232f23AA2

Origin: Human 100 percent

Planet: Earth

Level: 0

Accolades: none

Attributes

Standings

Balances

Abilities

Specials

Analytics

Options}

He went straight to her Health and looked at her stats there,

{Life Force: 7/10

General Health Condition: 4/10}

Her Balances did not look any better.

{Energy: 4/16

Mana: not available}

And then, he looked at Analytics

{Health increasing at a projected rate of 1 percent every 60 minutes.

Expected Time of full recovery: Within 48 hours}

That was the best news of the evening. That meant whatever infection got into her, her system with pre-set antibodies would deal with it. Nothing unknown. It was all good.

Feeling a world better, he realized his mouth was completely dry, and that if he wanted to recover fully, he was going to need to drink a lot of liquid.

He headed downstairs and found the main room filled with people, but there was a nervous silence there with only one voice speaking.

“In the darkness, you could almost see nothing, just his sword flashing killing those beasts, like lighting. He must have killed at least a dozen of them, all by himself. With the lightning,” someone said.

“Like a Paladin… from the tales of Old. Came to save us,” an old woman added.

El sighed, cleared his throat so everyone saw him, and then as they all turned their eyes on him, he just said, “I’m not Paladin. I did what I could to help, but I’m no Paladin.”

“Yet, killing the monsters you did,” Trim said.

“And made the mess of your cabin. Sorry to say, you will need a new window.”

“Homes we can rebuild. Lives lost we cannot,” Trim said, not taking his eyes off him.

As El found a cup that did not smell bad, he let Holgar’s daughter pour him ale. Fermented beer was by far the safest thing to drink there.

“Do you know Holgar what these are?” one of the villagers asked as El drank his beer.

“You’ve been to war. You’ve seen stuff.”

“I have not seen anything like that. Seen plenty what dungeons spawn and threw at us, but nothing… like this.”

“Something new…” Trim said. “Yet, it dies just like anything else. Put a blade to it, and it will be done.”

El opened his mouth to tell them that this was probably just a start, that most likely worse things were to come in the future, and that this was only a scouting party. But why scare them? Why drive fear inside their hearts? They already looked rather lost.

"You still want to say that the world is not ending, stranger?" the shadow man asked him as he passed him by.

El sighed. "The world is always ending. It's the job of people who can fight and stand up to the evil to keep that from happening."

The shadow man had nothing to say to that. He snorted and was ready to spit out, right there in front of El's feet, but then he just turned around and walked with a full mug back to his far corner table.