“Sounds pretty farfetched to me,” Damion said. Though secretly he could not help but wonder. Was Nerotath once like Earth? A world without magic, without Demonic Beasts and Realm Breaches. If that was true, then would the same thing that happened here, one day happen to Earth?
“Not as farfetched as the theory that we humans came to Nerotath through a Realm Breach.”
“That one is even more out there,” Damion admitted, though, now he thought these wild theories might be onto something. He was not sure about the researchers who came up with these theories, but Damion knew for certain humans existed in other realms.
“There are dozens of other origin theories for us, the beasts, magic. The thing about theories is that they are almost impossible to prove. So, we probably won’t ever know which ones, if any, are correct.”
The discussion of magic origin theories did not last much longer before Damion and Arica turned in for the night. However, as they fell asleep they had no idea that throughout the day they had been tracked by the Falks Guild member Damion drove off.
“You sure they’re up there, Troy?” a stout man asked Troy, who Damion and Arica would recognize as the Falks Guild member who wanted to ‘borrow’ their ground car.
There were four men hiding in the Benault Forest. They had traveled all day and most of the night, but their leader, Troy, believed they had finally caught up to the mage and young knight who ‘disrespected’ him earlier.
“What are we even here for? The boss said we needed to lay low. Why follow these two on a grudge. Peoples know we was in the area today, the Order is bound to track it back to the Guild.”
“Shut your whiney mouth Carl,” Troy snapped. “Those two brats don’t know who they messed with this morning and I’m going to teach them a lesson. Come on, it’s almost light, we want to hit them before they wake up.”
Troy started moving and the other three men reluctantly followed behind him. They did not understand why Troy was pushing to attack these two adventurers. However, he was their group leader, and they were supposed to follow his orders, even if they did not make sense.
The four men crept towards Damion and Arica’s campsite. Once they were within a few meters of Damion’s tent they began to rush toward it. Troy, let out an angry battle cry and slashed his sword through the tent. Unfortunately for him, Damion received an early warning.
*Ding*
{Warning. Hostile entity has initiated an attack on host.}
{Waking host}
*BBRRTT* *BBRRTT* *BBRRTT*
“What…” Damion mumbled as the alarm blaring in his mind woke him.
{Host is in danger. Defend yourself.}
Damion had just enough time to register the Magic System’s voice to realize the object slashing through his tent was a sword. Luckily, the attack was meant to rip open the tent so the attacker could then stab Damion and not just a blind thrust to where Damion had been sleeping.
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Grabbing his sword, Damion rolled out of the open tent flap and crashed into where Arica was still asleep. Him crashing into her stirred her from her sleep and she quickly realized something was wrong.
“Whoever you are, this is not going to end well for you,” Damion shouted while getting to his feet.
In the early morning light, Damion could make out four figures moving towards him from the ruins of his tent. The largest one was a few steps ahead of the others and Damion recognized him as the Falks Guild member they had encountered yesterday morning.
Given that they had already attacked him, Damion did not feel they deserved a second warning. Damion had no idea if they were attacking because of yesterday, or if this man knew Damion was the one who fingered the Falks Guild for banditry. Whatever the case was, Damion began channeling mana into his sword.
Before he could fully charge his blade the lead man slashed his sword at Damion. Thankfully, Ms. Teft had drilled sword fighting into Damion for the last few years and he was able to parry the stronger man’s blow.
The man clearly was not expecting a young man like Damion to be able to block him and as the two began exchanging blows the man realized he might have underestimated the kid. The man disengaged from Damion with a shove and began channeling his mana into his blade intent to strike at Damion.
However, Damion was faster and channeled his mana into a quick fire slash that forced the man to roll away, breaking his concentration.
“Quick, get the woman,” Troy yelled as he rolled away from Damion’s fire slash.
“Easier said than done, boss,” Carl shouted back.
The trio of men had tried to surround Arica, but she moved too fast for them. It was almost like she was there one moment and somewhere else the next. They had never seen anyone move as fast as she did, and they were quickly tiring themselves out trying to grab hold of her.
When Arica managed to put some distance between her and her three attackers she pulled a pair of artifacts from her personal spatial storage. The artifacts were bracelets, and she quickly fastened one to each wrist before channeling her mana into them.
Even though she was a mage and several ranks higher than Damion, her channeling speed was not much faster than his. What was different, was the power of her magic. In the time it took Damion to charge his most powerful attack with his sword, Arica had charged both bracelets and unleashed two lightning bolts at the trio of attackers.
Despite trying to block the magic with their weapons, two of the men were hit directly in their chests. The two who were struck by Arica’s lightning collapsed on the ground. The third, seeing his advantage go from three to one to a one on one with a powerful mage, dropped his weapon and raised his hands in surrender.
Meanwhile, Damion and Troy had resumed exchanging strikes with their swords. After his first failed attempt to channel a magic attack into his blade, Troy realized he was not going to be able to out channel the young man and realized his only hope was to be a better swordsman. That, however, was not proving to be easy.
Either because of Damion’s training, or because he had gotten a full night’s rest while Troy and his men had been traveling on foot all day to catch up to Damion and Arica, Damion was wearing Troy down.
Each blow their swords exchanged caused Troy’s arms to ache a little bit more. His strength seemed to be draining out of him bit by bit, while Damion appeared to be bursting with energy.
After a heavy overhand blow that forced Troy to his knees in his block, Damion leapt back a few steps and channeled his mana into his blade as quickly as he could to power the attack glyph. Troy seemed to realize what was happening, but before he could surrender, Damion shot out his pillar of fire attack.
The column of fire engulfed Troy, burning him alive. The burst of fire magic lasted a full three seconds. In the first second Troy started to let out a scream, but the fire quickly seared his throat, silencing him. When Damion stopped his attack he leapt forward and with a precise slash took Troy’s head off before the man could collapse on the ground.
When his fight was over Damion looked over and saw two corpses near Arica and a third man kneeling on the ground in surrender.