Chapter 2:

Ugh, my head feels like it’s about to split open, where am I? Trying to open my eyes, wait, what, WHAT?

I can’t open my eyes. Reaching out with my hands to my eyes, wait, where are my hands, I can’t feel them!!!

Actually, I couldn’t feel anything, not my hands, not my nose, not anything. But there was this feeling, the only feeling, it felt like I was leaking some kind of strength. The headache was only increasing. My thoughts became unclear, then, I went out again.

……….

Slowly, my senses came back. My head was still hurting, but the pain was more manageable.

“Where am I?” This time I could see, thankfully. Looking around, I was in my family’s house. It was dark outside and no one was around me. My thoughts were still turbid, so without giving them much thought, I went back to sleep.

……….

“Wake up Haitham.”

“No, no, Helena. Not now, we can’t get married now.”

“I SAID WAKE UP.”

“What? Where am I? Oh, It’s you, Teressa. What do you want?”

“Father asked me to check on you, it’s already afternoon.”

My head was still throbbing, but it should abate soon. “Tell Father I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sitting up was a bit hard. My legs felt weak under me, and my vision was spinning. It seemed that yesterday I was left sleeping on the couch on the ground level, father probably thought I was sick, or Uncle could have told him that. It seems my clothes were still on from yesterday, and I reeked.

“I should get a quick shower, I smelled like a dead animal.” After grabbing a towel, I went to fill out a bucket from our spring. Using a small bucket to distribute the water from the bigger one on my body, I rinsed my whole body. The water was cold, but I liked it that way, it felt refreshing. Now I was clean, and my head stopped hurting.

Walking home with only a towel on, I checked my progress, I was lean, but my muscles were strong from farm work and training. I should gain more weight, my uncle has always emphasized that weight equals power, but any extra weight was bad as it slowed one down.

Entering home, I went to get new clothes and dropped my old ones in the basket. Getting dressed, I quickly went out to find Father. Looking around the farm, I quickly spotted him.

“Hey Dad, you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, how are you feeling now? What got you sick so badly and so suddenly?”

“Don’t worry, I’m all good now. It was probably from training so much.” I gave a quick excuse, not knowing what uncle might have said.

“Oh, is that so? Then, tone down your training. I expect you to be back in good health quickly. Our harvest season is close, I want all the working hands I can get.”

And here I thought he was worried about me. “No worries. I’ll go check on Uncle Ghandour, he might be worried.”

My father just gave me a quick nod, then went back to his work.

……….

Following the trail to Uncle’s house, my thoughts were occupied with what had happened yesterday. I remember Uncle telling me about side effects, was that the reason for my blackout? Also, I don’t feel any change, did my innate ability not awaken? Or worse, I didn’t have one from the start. There is only one way to find out.

……….

Reaching out to the door nob, I opened the door and entered, taking a quick glance, I found Uncle in the kitchen.

“Uncle, what happened? I suddenly blacked out, and the next moment I found myself in my home.”

“Welcome Haitham. and to answer your question you don’t have to worry, it’s just mana exhaustion.”

“Mana exhaustion? What is mana, am I going to be in trouble?”

“No, don’t worry, you're perfectly fine. Sit down, let me get you some water to drink.”

I sat down while Uncle got me a dried clay bowl full with water. “Here you go.” I drank the water in a hurry, wanting to know what had happened.

“Listen up, it’s quite complicated. When you drank the refined Lio, it awakened your ability. Personally, it was my second time seeing an ability awakened, the first time was my awakening, so I thought that it would go the same as mine, and I was wrong.”

I interjected before he could continue, “What about the man who gave you the Lio, Armoun I think, didn’t he know that something might go wrong?”

Sighing Uncle said, “No, he didn’t. He gave you the excess Lio that remained after upgrading his ability to the second rank. We didn’t even know if the amount was enough to awaken your ability, but after using my ability, we decided that it might work, so we gave it a shot.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about the risks involved?! And what happened at the awakening?” I yelled, mad at Uncle’s silence.

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“Calm down, there are no risks. If the amount of Lio is not enough for you to awaken, then you wouldn’t have awoken. You simply would have needed to drink more later. About what happened at the awakening, you suddenly turned into a puddle of transparent liquid.”

“WHAT??? What transparent liquid? Have you gone mad?” I knew it was disrespectful to call your uncle mad, but the situation got to my head. It was just so, so… Bizarre.

“Yes, you heard me right. Your ability allows you to turn into a transparent liquid.”

I just stared ahead not knowing what to say.

“And when you transformed, you were using your mana to maintain that form, when it got depleted you turned back to your human… form unconscious. Mana depletion might lead to losing consciousness, and many other symptoms, some symptoms are way worse. You got off easy.” He said as if he had some personal experience with mana depletion.

“Sorry for the outburst but this stuff… all this stuff is just new.” I apologized for calling Uncle mad.

“Don’t worry son. The most important thing now is to get you used to your new abilities, so that you don’t end up in trouble.”

“Yes, Uncle!” I said, excited to find out more about my innate ability.

……….

After talking with Uncle for half an hour, he decided to teach me how to use my newly gained powers. We went to the backyard, our usual training spot.

“Listen carefully,” Uncle said with his teaching tone, “every innate ability is unique, there are no two abilities that are the same. I learned how to activate my ability by accident, it took me a few days to learn how, but it might be different for you.”

“How did you learn how to use it?”

Uncle seemed reluctant to answer, but nonetheless did, “Let’s say that there was this girl I wanted to marry, and I was thinking of our future when my ability activated.”

“What future were you thinking of Uncle?”

“It doesn’t matter, let us get back to the matter at hand.” Uncle said flabbergasted.

“Okay, so how do I activate my ability?”

Uncle continued, happy at the change of the subject. “Good question. No one can say for sure. Abilities are treasured secrets that not many share. So you will have to pave your own path, but I believe that under hardship you will find the right way, so from now on you will be joining me in the hunt in the forest.

“What about my training? Are we going to stop it?”

“No, you will continue to train in the evening, but on the night of every 7th day we will go out to hunt.”

“Why night, can’t we do it in the morning.”

“In a normal hunt, we would be going out in the morning, but in your case, I want you to hunt predators, not prey.”

It seemed that my peaceful days were over.

……….

Uncle didn’t let me get this day off. I trained like usual, for an hour I did bodyweight practice, another hour for bow practice, and finally, the last hour went to spear practice. Today uncle made me use a bigger bow, saying that I should get used to it. The bigger bowstring was insanely hard to draw but I managed on my second attempt to draw it fully, still, I couldn’t hold the bowstring for more than three heartbeats.

After training, I didn’t feel that tired, usually the trek back home would seem impossibly hard, but now it was a breeze. Maybe the refined Lio improved my stamina, I should ask Uncle tomorrow.

The farmlands stretched far as I walked. I was walking back home when I heard bellowing noises coming from Uncle Samai’s barn. Running there I saw a guard dog barking at something inside the barn. The dog was clearly intimidated. I approached to see what was inside when a horrible smell assaulted my nostrils, I gagged but managed not to throw up. Looking inside I was horrified to see half a dozen small green creatures around a beheaded still bleeding cow.

Goblins!!!

This was my first time seeing these wretched creatures. I wanted to run immediately, but my training for the last year gave me some confidence. Maybe I was a fool, but still, I think I can manage to scare them, as goblins scare easily.

Stepping inside the barn I looked around for a weapon. I spotted a hand fork to my left when the low squeaky sounds the goblins were making stopped.

My heart stopped for a beat at what I saw, the six goblins all had stopped butchering the cow and were looking at me now. Their eyes were shining Like that of a cat at nighttime. I immediately regretted not running when I had the chance.

‘F*ck. I’m so dead.’

My hands were shaking as the six goblins rushed me at the same time, they were holding pointy sticks, some might call them spears. My hesitation didn’t last long as I took action. Running towards the incoming goblins I faced the first one, reaching out with my hand fork, I impaled it as I had the longer reach. The hand fork wasn't sharp but with both of us running it dug deep into the goblin.

“Die.” I roared, but then the second goblin had already reached me, he looked scared but still attacked. Guessing that my hand fork was probably stuck, I jumped back evading the second goblin’s attack narrowly. Upon failing the attack the goblin overextended, which made it fall forward. Exploiting the opportunity, I reached with my hands and yanked the spear from the falling goblins hand. Hitting the ground head-first the goblin tried to stand quickly, but I handed it back its spear by running it through its eye. ‘Thanks for the spear’.

Unfortunately, my luck seemed to have run out. I was trying to see where the rest of the goblins went when I saw the incoming attacks, it seemed that the surviving goblins had caught up and were attacking me simultaneously, four spears shot at me, and at that moment I knew I was screwed.

I didn’t run as it was futile. I just shut my eyelids hard hoping to lessen the pain, but the pain never came.

Opening my eyes and hoping for the best, the first thing that I saw was the shocked expressions on the goblin's faces. Following their line of sight led to my abdomen, the place where they should have impaled me. Looking down I also became shocked, instead of blood my abdomen had transformed into a transparent look-through liquid. I could see four spears entering into the liquid and going all the way to the back. I also could feel the quick strength drain, what was it called again… mana drain?

“What the Heck is going on?” I voiced my first sentence since the start of the battle.

looking back up, it seemed the goblins had dropped their spears and started running. Probably thinking that I was some kind of monster. ‘Maybe I was.’ Acting quickly as I didn’t know how long this effect would last, I pulled the first spear out of my abdomen. I scowled as I waited for the pain, but I didn’t feel anything. Encouraged I managed to get the rest out of my abdomen.

Now that the danger was dealt with I took in my surroundings, the dog was barking at the escaping Goblins, ‘It would have helped if he gave me a hand, maybe a paw?’ I laughed at my silly joke. The cattle were scared, but thankfully only one cow got killed, it could have been worse.

“Who is there?” I heard a man shouting from a distance.

‘It probably Uncle’s Samai’s voice.’ It seemed help finally came. ‘Am I forgetting something?’

“Oh, shit.” Looking down I could see that my abdomen still hadn’t transformed back.

“What should I do? I don’t know how to stop my ability.”

Thinking fast I lowered my hand to my abdomen. I touched the transparent liquid and it felt smooth to the touch, it was also cool. Gathering my courage I made my hand go through the liquid, it faced some resistance, but nonetheless went through. When my hand was inside I started moving it, it felt like I was moving my hand through… honey. With each movement, the drain on my mana increased. It seemed to need mana to keep its shape.

“I said who’s there? Who dares enter my Farm?”

I had no time, so I decided the only way to stop the transformation was to deplete the leftover mana by moving my hand frantically inside my abdomen. When I was starting to feel dizzy from the mana drain, I took my hand out, now I only had a prickle of mana left, and when it was spent everything went blank.

And that was how I lost consciousness a second time in two days.