Moments later she crashed against a tree before falling several feet down to the ground, laying there unmoving. A stream of essence entered Elijah as the man shouted in rage. Before he could attack Elijah, a wooden fist slammed into him from behind, knocking him unconscious.

“Took you long enough,” Elijah said as his minion took the man’s life.

Chapter Begin

Elijah checked his injuries first.

The stab into his arm wasn’t anything serious. The younger woman wasn’t strong enough to impale it too deep into his body.

Did she have an ability or something to increase her kicking strength? Elijah thought as he remembered how she had toppled him off.

In comparison, his thigh was hurting like hell. Elijah managed to ignore the pain during the fight but now it was making itself noticeable, sending pain through his leg at the slightest movement.

He knew that the smartest thing would be to leave the dagger in the wound to avoid more bleeding. Nonetheless, he was going to pull the dagger out.

Under normal circumstances, he would have sought immediate medical attention to ensure proper treatment, but he had no choice. Enemies were still around and he wasn’t even sure if hospitals existed in this world.

After taking his shirt off, Elijah gripped the dagger and began to pull it out gently to avoid further tissue damage. He grimaced as a sharp pain shot through his leg. After the dagger was removed Elijah used his shirt to apply pressure to the wound, to stem the bleeding.

He held his breath as he stopped applying pressure for a moment to look at the wound but was surprised when he saw that the amount of blood was lower than he had expected. It also appeared thicker and had a sticky consistency, flowing slower than before.

Elijah continued to apply pressure as he thought of his new abilities. He was able to change his hands and arms entirely. The same should work with his legs. He decided to try and willed the outermost layer of his skin around the wound to cover the damaged area. His body obeyed and Elijah saw and felt how his skin stretched forward to grow over his wound, leaving it looking as good as new.

He took a few probing steps and noticed that there was still some dull pain with each step he took. At least I can still walk normally. After repeating the same for the wound on his arm, Elijah began to loot the corpses. They didn’t have much on them apart from a few coins which he added to the others in his pouch.

Seeing that the man was about the same size as himself, Elijah also took the man’s clothes, switching his own with the man’s dark rogue attire. He replaced his bloody shirt with a black leather vest and put on a deep red hooded cloak. Seeing the ridiculously large boots, Elijah decided to keep his sneakers. He threw a glance at his minion before switching the man’s pants with his own as they had been damaged during the fight.

After that he continued to scout the forest with his minion, trying to spend some time while his regeneration filled his mana and health. He met a few more deer beasts and was ambushed by another party from the camp consisting of three people despite him wearing the same color as them. This time his minion helped him during the entire fight which made winning this battle significantly easier than the last one.

After defeating the party, Elijah retreated up into the trees for the rest of the day. The last fight emptied his reserves again, forcing him to wait another hour to refill. He also covered a new wound on his arm with another layer of wood and spent the rest of the day practicing with a bow he took from them. One of their members had a quiver that was full of arrows and after the third arrow, Elijah noticed that the quiver refilled them on its own. Neat.

While he was by no means a master archer, he was quite content with the results. His ability to manipulate wood allowed him to guide the arrows a little, enabling him to easily hit larger targets that were not too far away.

After a few more hours into the night, Elijah made his way toward the outskirts of the camp again. This time he would look for the spatial formation Drake mentioned.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

With his minion again on his back, Elijah crawled forward, approaching the camp the same way he did last time. He only took his mace with him as other weapons would hinder his movements while crawling with his minion on him.

He made his way through the wooden wall and climbed up the same hut as last time. From there he moved deeper into the camp, avoiding the few guards who were walking around.

After making sure that no one saw him, Elijah settled on a random hut and opened a hole in the roof to look inside. They are all sleeping. Three men were laying inside the hut, their snoring clearly audible to Elijah. He couldn’t spot anything that looked like a possible spatial formation. For a moment he considered going through their belongings but decided to continue moving instead.

He jumped from roof to roof, checking the insides of each building. A few more huts before I should-

Three men stared at Elijah from inside the hut.

Before he could react, a huge blast of fire shot past Elijah, narrowly missing him. He threw himself back to evade any other attacks. There was a commotion below and he heard the men shouting something to each other.

On a whim, he let his minion increase to its original size and ordered it to jump into the hut. It would work as a short distraction to buy him some time. Elijah himself began to jump from roof to roof as he heard people approaching the burning hut. The fire attracted them.

It was only a matter of time before someone noticed Elijah’s figure running above them. “On the roofs!” A burly man shouted as he locked eyes with Elijah. Several arrows whirled past him as he continued his desperate escape.

“We got him!” Four men were standing on a roof right at the edge of the camp. “Drop your weapon and surrender!” Elijah tightened the grip around his mace as more people followed from behind.

What was I thinking, infiltrating the camp like a would-be assassin and escaping undetected? I’ll be lucky if I escape. Elijah gritted his teeth and continued to run forward. His enemies readied themselves, raising their weapons to receive Elijah’s possible attacks.

The surprise on their faces was clear when Elijah slipped into an alley between the huts instead of confronting them, and continued to run towards the wooden wall. Enemies were coming from all directions now and Elijah could hear a few of them mocking him because they thought he was now with his back against the wall.

He continued to run and leaped forward as he opened a hole in the wall, slipping out of the camp. His enemies strode up in surprise and increased their efforts to catch him.

“Don’t let him escape you idiots! Get him before he reaches the forest!” Someone shouted behind Elijah as he shrunk the hole to prevent anyone from following him. Several men climbed over the wall while others began to try and increase the size of the hole to pass through it.

The wall bought Elijah a few valuable seconds in which he increased the distance between himself and his pursuers. He had already crossed half the distance to the forest before the man who detected him shot a few beams of fire at him. At the last moment, Elijah threw himself to the ground, hearing several of his pursuers crying out in pain.

He attacked his own people. Is he nuts? Elijah pushed himself up and continued his mad dash toward the forest. He regretted looking behind him as two of them nearly caught up with him.

“Stand still!” One of them shouted before his friend snorted. “As if he would listen to you, just catch him. The boss will roast him alive!”

Elijah tried to increase his pace but no matter what he did, they were slowly gaining ground on him. Desperate, Elijah thought of ways to accelerate himself. Ridiculous, but it could work.

His two enemies raised their eyebrows as Elijah raised his mace in front of him. With all his willpower, he pushed his wooden weapon away from him towards the forest while gripping it firmly with both hands.

“No way! I can’t believe it worked!” Elijah shouted as he burst into laughter. His next step carried him several feet forward as he looked at the two enemies. “Try catching me now!” He shouted while they both looked surprised.

A few seconds later Elijah arrived at a tree and climbed up as fast as he could. His pursuers followed him as he continued to move higher, passing by several branches in a matter of seconds. His enemies didn’t give up and while they couldn’t match him in speed, Elijah had a hard time escaping their view as they jumped from branch to branch.

He glanced towards the rest of his enemies and noticed that they had abandoned their pursuit, returning to the camp.

“Finally gave up?” The man who wanted him to stand still shouted from a branch below Elijah’s.

“You want my head?” Elijah shouted back. “Come and try taking it.” He raised his mace towards the man as he kept his eyes on his friend.

“Don’t go for his provocation Aiden!” Aiden shot towards Elijah as he ignored his friend’s warning.

“I will not only take your head! I’ll crush your damn bones with my own hands!”

“Stop babbling and do it!” Elijah readied himself as Aiden approached him. He enlarged his mace and smashed it into Aiden who let out a grunt before he collided with a trunk. Elijah willed the tree to sink Aiden into itself, leaving the man trapped in wood with his arms and feet.

Elijah ignored his shouts of rage as Aiden tried to free himself and focused on the last enemy.

“Who are you?” The man asked. Elijah ignored him.

“Help me, Berry!” Aiden called his friend. “I want to kill him!”

Berry ignored his friend as he regarded Elijah. “Won’t tell me your name? Are you part of Lepus?”

“Of course he is, look at his ugly-” Elijah stuffed Aiden’s mouth with wood, turning his shouts into angry grunting.

Berry only shot a glance at his friend before he raised his fists. He had no chance to react as a new minion formed from the wood under him and gripped his feet before Elijah’s mace crashed into the man’s face. A wooden arm impaled his torso and ended the fight a moment later.