Chapter 10

“Are you sure we are ready to leave?” asked my ever-present new companion, in a sultry voice.

I decided to name her Mira, after the Latin word for ‘wonder’ or ‘wonderful’, because that is what she has been to me for these past few weeks. She was able to explain to me a lot about the theory of magic as well as few nifty new spells, chief among them, a spell that allowed me to store items here in our little sanctum.

“I told you, Mira, even though I have enjoyed our time here together. I need to get some fresh air every now and then, besides if what you say is true then we won’t really be apart.” I tried to comfort her, she had become increasingly clingy as we spent more time together.

“Fine, just be careful, Master. I don’t want you to get hurt” she said, still sounding sad and unconvinced.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” I murmured as I closed my eyes and got ready to transfer myself back to the ‘real’ world.

I felt myself shifting back, but before I had time to open my eyes and take a look around. Something hit me on the chest, knocking me off my feet. I heard Mira’s panicked voice in my head “Master! Are you all right? I told you, you weren’t ready to leave yet.”

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Something just knocked me off my feet.” I told her in my head. As I was slowly getting up and rubbing my bruised backside, I muttered to myself “Ouch, that is going to leave a mark.” And took a look to see what had hit me. Lying on the ground next to me was, a dazed-looking young girl. She was maybe around eight to ten years old and very scrawny like she had missed at least a few of her daily meal. She had long raven black hair, covered dead leaves and twigs, she wore, what looked like an old burlap sack fastened to her waist by a piece of rope. She clearly wasn’t a human, as her skin was red and she had short red horns growing from her forehead, the horns slightly curved backwards and to the side. I could also see that she had a red, thin demon-like tail.

I didn’t have time to get a better look at her, before noticing a group of people wearing medieval armour, and holding weapons. At the front of this group, stood a young woman clad heavy looking plate armour while holding a sword. To her left, was a lean but fit looking man who had a bow. To her right, a large muscular man covered animal furs was carrying a massive maul. And at the back of the group was a young looking and thin man, wearing reddish-brown robes.

The group was staring at me, with a shocked expression on their faces. So I decided to greet them with an ever eloquent “Uum… Hello?”

It took the group couple of seconds before they broke out of their shock and the woman clad in heavy armour, said in a clear but uncertain sounding voice. “Who are you, how did you get here?”

I raised my hands in a calming gesture, stopping her from asking more questions. “Whoa lady, let’s take this one question at a time, shall we.” I told her “You can call me Varis, as for how I got here, technically I was already here when you guys arrived. Now before you start asking more questions, I think it only fair if I’d ask you a few as well. I introduced myself, be as kind and do the same?”

She looked a bit annoyed by my interruption of her and glanced at the dazed girl lying next to me, before answering with. “Fine, I’m Elena, this is Flint” she pointed towards the big guy in furs “That is Peter and the one in the back is called Garon.” she said gesturing at the guy who was holding the bow and the young man reddish-brown robes, she finished with “ We are adventurers.”

“Adventurers you say, now that must be an exciting life.” The fact that there were people here, who would call themselves ‘adventurer’ really piqued my interest, so I decided to take a closer look at them with my Arcane manipulation. Elena, Peter and Flint were all releasing mana like everything I have seen so far, but Garon seemed to be more like me, his mana was held in like mine.

I saw Elena fidget a little under my scrutiny of her and her party, she quickly went on with. “It can be an exciting life, we get to see and explore many unknown places, but it is also dangerous. You can never know what kind of monster you’ll run into.”

“True, true. But isn’t that, what makes life worth living? I would get bored if my life were the same monotonous thing all the time.” she gave me a nod of approval. I quickly followed with another question before she could start talking “But I digress, tell me, what are you adventurers doing here?”

I followed her gaze as she glanced towards the young girl at my feet, who seemed to be struggling to stay conscious, and saw that her mana was different to all of us. Unlike me and Elena’s group, her mana was deep red in colour, where ours was white.

Mira had told that living creatures white mana was called Life mana or Life essence, depending on who you asked. So it took me by surprise to see that hers was red. I didn’t know what this meant, but hopefully, I’d get some time to study it later.

“Our current job is to catch her and bring her back” Elena answered hesitantly with little disgust in her voice.

“I see, and what could this little girl have done, warrant a group of adventurers hunting her down?” I asked her.

“She stole something from a nobleman, which is a crime punishable by hanging,” she told me as Peter muttered under his breath “And she is clearly a demon spawn” but Elena silenced him with a stern glance before he could continue with his remark.

Now I have never been good at dealing with authorities or with following rules and regulations. That was part of the reason why I dropped out of med school. And I certainly didn’t think, hanging a little girl for stealing, was the appropriate punishment. Besides, I was always the one to root for the underdog, and she definitely looked like the underdog here, being scrawny and malnourished and wearing only rags.

So I took a step forward placing myself between Elena’s group and the child. And with a stern voice told them “You know, I could be called the current ruler of this place, and I don’t hang children for stealing. I feel like I must take her under protection.”

“But she is a demon spawn and a thief no less” she almost yelled, while getting angry. “Don’t you know what their kind have done to people.”

As she got angry, I noticed her companions starting to prepare their weapons, clearly expecting this to turn into a physical confrontation. Seeing this I prepared to cast one of my new spells, before saying “ Be that as it may, I said my piece. And I’m prepared to stand behind it.”

Elena was staring at me, while she made a quick motion with her fingers signalling her party. Seeing this made me rapidly release my spell and Peter to shoot an arrow at me. If I’d missed that signal, I would most likely have an arrow stuck in my chest right now. But instead, my new protection spell managed to activate in time, which turned my body into living flame. I was only able to hold this form for a couple of minutes since it used up a lot of my mana, but I was hoping it would last long enough.

My spell clearly took them by surprise, but to their credit, they managed to overcome the shock quickly. Clearly, the group has been fighting and training together for a long time.

I decided to go for their spellcaster first, as he posed the biggest threat to me while I was in this form. Seeing as he was currently chanting a spell, I raised my flaming hand and pointed my finger at him. My cast of Pillar of Flame was almost instantaneous since I was able to cast spells innately like a Sorcerer, thanks to my Archmage Class. As my spell finished, a narrow jet of flame flew from my fingertip hitting Garon in the shoulder, disrupting his spellcasting. He fell to the ground screaming while holding his shoulder that now had a finger-wide hole burned straight through it.

Meanwhile, Peter had managed to shoot me with another arrow, and both Elena and Flint were on my, swinging their weapons. My Living Flame spell made the attacks pass through my body, causing the attacks to rapidly burn my mana instead of damaging me. Knowing I couldn’t go on using Living Flame for much longer, I needed to end this fight quickly. I reached my hands towards Flint and Elena, trying to grab them. As my hands touched their bodies, I started to suck their mana out of their bodies using Arcane manipulation. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be, it felt like their mana didn’t want to listen to my commands as my own did, but eventually, I managed to force my will on their mana, and it started to flow out of them. Both of them let out a scream as my touch burned them and I was sucking out their mana. It only too couple of seconds, for me to drain out all their mana, which caused both of them to fall down unconscious.

With only, Peter left unharmed and Garon still in shock from having a hole burned through his shoulder. Peter turned around and started to run, but I quickly cast Pillar of Flame and burned a hole through his thigh. I walked up to him as he was lying on the ground, trying to crawl away and started draining him of his mana as well. After I was done with him, I started heading toward Garon, who at this point had gathered his composure and was casting another spell using only his left arm.

I wasn’t able to reach him before he finished his casting and I ball of water flew from his hands, hitting me squarely on the chest. The impact of the spell wasn’t too bad, so I was able to stay on my feet, but the cold water caused my Living Flame to use most of my remaining mana. I was forced to turn off my spell unless I wanted to thoroughly be drained out of mana, now back in my usual form I quickly ran to Garon and kicked him on the side of his head before he could start casting again.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself from the adrenalin rush caused by the fight. And saw the little girl stared at me with eyes wide open.