I couldn't really ignore the pain from my shoulder as the arrow stuck in it was making things more than a little bit harder for me. But there wasn't much I could do any more as I knew the elves would not let us any more time to recuperate. Be that as it may both Malkova and I were about to be in a literal fight for our lives, but while she looked a little unsettled there was just the calmness in my mind that quite frankly scared the shit out of me.

I've cared a lot within the last day, so much so that the intimidating factor a trio of battle hardened dark elves; could bring to the table was completely lost. I think and I honestly believe that I I can kill one, then I can definitely kill three.

"KINGSLAYER! Surrender! Or DIE!"

I actually found the entire thing comical; we were soldiers from earth.sven though it seems I'm the one they want, neither Malkova not I would have a better fate than the one the bloody elves has been offering us for the last few decades....death. so if death is the only option, I would do it on my own terms.

My transition from having my rifle pointed to the ground to pointing it at the elves was smoother than anything I've ever done before. The feeling of power I currently had was downright intoxicating, and to say I didn't want more of it would have been a lie. I squeezed the trigger, and immediately the blasted Mana shield popped into existence in front of me. It was annoying, but I had experience with this shield, so I had a method to take care of it.

"Wind Drag!"

How they knew that I was responsible for the death of their crown prince eludes me, I wasn't so sure they hadn't watched the entire fight, though if they did watch it then they would have intervened. But they did not, leaving me to think that perhaps, some sort of aura or energy of sorts was clinging to me. After all the prince himself did say they would hunt me; but right now all im hoping for is that they didn't have a chance to observe the right.

One of the dark elves was dragged forwards, his Mana shield winking out of existence as I put four bullets into his body. There was a sound of metal hitting metal as the dark elf crashed to the ground in front of me, with the bullets I shot at him completely deformed from the impact falling off his body.

It shocked me to say the least, but I was a soldier and we were trained to be ready for everything as I took two steps forward and pushed off the ground. The elf was on his knees, his how pointed at my midsection while my form was over his head. There was a shimmer of man's under my feet that seemed to want to take a shape, but it was still somewhat Illusory. However my speed seemed to increase as I brought my foot crashing down on the elf's face, his arrow skimming over my right shoulder as I slammed his head into the ground with more force than I thought myself possible.

[Lion Stomp!]

You could say this was the killing move of my [Lion Fist] martial art. It didn't kill the elf though, 8 half expected his head to burst open like a watermelon, but nothing like that happened as there was a crack on the ground below his head. I rolled forwards as a howling smoking skull flew over my head and into the body of the next elf in line, as two arrows found my chest forcing me to cry out. The elf that got the scary looking skull into his body froze as black veins seemed to snake through his or rather her pale grey skin. She was defenseless, and even if I had two arrows in me I couldn't let this chance pass away as my momentum brought me to her front, the barrel of the assault rifle found it's way under her jaw as I squeezed.

*Ta!Ta!*

The spray of blood was reassuring, because it meant this elf was out of the equation. I held the body of the elf close to me as she went limp, using her as a shield to take five arrows in rapid succession from the final elf. I kept moving forward as Malkova focused on the first elf who was now regaining sse after being dazed from my stomping his head into the ground.

The final elf held an arrow in place for 3 seconds longer and then let it go. The arrows flew with a blaze of flames and with such speed that I couldn't follow, carving a hole through his comrade's and my body. I shook and stumbled forwards, falling in a heap onto the elf's feet, right on the dead body of his dead comrade. My chest felt hot, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up and cry at the pain I was feeling, but I only had a few seconds to find a way to turn this around or both Malkova and I were as dead as dead could be.

[Wind Blast!] [Morph: Wolf]

The blast of wind was shot from my back this time, I honestly didn't think it was possible to do so from any other part of my body but my hands, but it work and the elf was pushed backwards as my body got covered in a bright light. I felt myself shrink rapidly as by body changed until the ground was even lower than it was before. I shot forwards, paws pounding in the brown earth and I scaled the body of the shocked and off balance elf. He was moving, which mean this was my chance and he couldn't deploy his mana shield.

[Lion Strike] [Lion Claw]

There have been studies into all of the classes available to humans and the skills. The druid skill [Morph] has been a matter of contention for a lot of people. You could not use skills or rather you couldn't use spells when in that form. Even your mana is incredibly hard to circulate when you have transformed into an animal, however some physical skills work with it. Especially animal based martial arts, and sometimes it is quite amplified.

I don't know if it's possible for druids to turn into lions, but this skill took on a whole other form when I used them one after the other. My body was covered with a deep golden and greenish blue aura that propelled my speed forwards when I used [Lion Strike.] It drove us both back until Elf's back impacted hard against the bark of a tree, but before he could get his feet under him, my class had flashed with [Lion Claw] not just gouging and ripping his neck into ribbons, but also shredding the tree behind him, spreading chips and splinters of wood into the air.

The elf had widened eyes as he stared at me with shock, his throat exposed got the open air and spilling his life's blood onto the unforgiving forest floor. It seemed as if he wanted to say something, and I'm pretty sure he did but, there were no words, nothing at all. I turned around to notice Malkova with her hands on the head of the final elf, a stream of grey smoke pouring out of his mouth, eyes, ears and nose and going into Malkova's body as she had on a sinister and somewhat happy smile. I watched feeling a little horrified as she took the doc's soul into her body, a streak of white suddenly appearing in one corner of her hair, giving her an even more exotic look.

"I must say Samson... You look more cute in this form that your human one. You should stay like this forever." Malkova said as she let go of the elf, his body dried up and dessicated like he was some ancient corpse rediscovered by archeologist's.

I didn't pay attention to her and went to where I had transformed, my uniform bloodied and left behind. I morphed into a wolf cub, or at least an adolescent wolf cub. If I was too small it would have been damn impossible to deal with the elf. But I was still Injured as I reversed the transformation, ignoring the system prompts as I chose to focus on saving my life before it was too late.

"Light Heal!"

"Light Heal"

It wasn't safe here, but between me and Malkova, no one was in any shape to start moving, at least not for a few minutes. I laid back on the ground looking up to the canopy of trees above my head. I felt like this was a lot, in just 24 hours I've killed more things.... People than I ever thought I would. For all of my blunder in officer academy I knew I was just going to end up a medic, I avoided any such studies but I took the spells, and then I backed it up with my wind spells as an excuse to not let myself be defenseless.

I fought the hardest during training because I didn't want to seem like a coward to everyone else... I didn't want to seem like a coward to myself. I couldn't save my parents so I wanted to try and save others... But that wasn't the truth. I was scared, I was scared of the elves, of what they did to me. The trauma they left me with... Well I didn't think I could ever be able to face them. They scared me and haunted my nightmares and left me a quivering mess for my uncle to pick up and clean up after, fucked me up for years and took away whatever semblance of a childhood I could get in a war torn universe. And now here I was, having killed three of them in the span of just and hour, and I realize... They're just elves, they're mortal, they bleed, and they did.... They're just elves.

"Seriously Samson are you crying? Seriously? You're even more of a wimp than I thought."

I had no answer for her as I placed my hand over my eyes and let the tears flow freely, I'm sure we were still being monitored, but I couldn't stop. I hurt so much and I've lived my life afraid and now that I've faced my fear I feel like it's all been for nothing, that I've been afraid of people, beings that I could triumph over, and I am not even at the height of my potential, just starting to become strong. I flinched as Malkova lifted me up, gave me a hard slap and then pulled me into a crushing hug.

"I almost thought you weren't human Michaels. You don't skip class, you don't hang out with the rest of us unless you don't have a choice. You train to hard and fight even harder, but even then you couldn't let go of the pain that was driving you, hell you couldn't even channel it into the anger you felt, the fear we all knew you felt. We've heard you at night Samson, the nightmares, the shakes when images and videos of elves are shown. But you're human, we all are, and that's what makes us better than these long eared bastards. Why we can't fear them, why they should fear us. Unlike them Samson we are not driven by divine decree neither do we live by cold hard logic. We fight, we live and we are winning because we do so with all of our hearts and our emotions. Some of us are monsters, creatures warped by pain and hatred and can do horrific things on the battlefield and off of it even to each other, but that's why we will win this war, that is why you were able to beat them. Because we do not fear our pain, our hate, our hopes and our love. We do not bury them beneath cold logic, we embrace them and let them power us. So do not be ashamed to cry, it's your gods given right as a human dammit! So cry!"

And so I did, and she too. We cried, at some point I felt it was weird but we gave ourselves five minutes. Five minutes to feel sorry for ourselves and our hopeless situation and the had shit our home has had to deal with ever since those bloody elves came into our lives. And then it was over, we were still in hostile territory, and we needed to find shelter or the other cadets.

"Light Heal"

"Light Heal"

I got to work trying to take care of both our injuries. By the time my mana had bottomed out we were both without significant injuries. That is holes in our bodies or any broken or fractured bones. However there were bruises and aches in our muscles and exhaustion slowly setting in. But we've been trained for worse, so we could deal with it.

"Malkova I need to know two things. If you have any idea which direction the base is in, and if there's any way we can communicate with the Apollo?" I asked as I got back into my fatigues. We were almost out of ammo for our guns, Malkova had been a little bit trigger happy when we're running and she was in my arms. I didn't even know she had shot that much as I was so focused on getting away.

"Well who put you in charge? I'm the officer here aren't I?" She asked me with an annoyed look on her face. I gulped, insubordination against an officer was grounds for a court marshal and dishonorable discharge, and Malkova was pretty enough to do such a thing, forget we just cried in each other's arms a few minutes ago, there was no reality in existence where that ever happened.

"I'm just kidding, you're free to take command, I'm not so hung up on this officer shit anyways. But my radios were fried when we were attacked, even the spare short range I keep was busted. I think an Emp was released, whoever attacked us, expected us to survive and made sure they wiped out communications to ensure we can't phone home like ET. I take it your radio is a bust too?" Malkova asked as I nodded in response.

"We need to find the base, but we're stuck in this direction with no idea which direction it is. Not to mention there are probably other survivors from the drop in the forest, a lot of things are not making sense but finding the base should be our first priority." I said to Malkova as I went about looting the bows and arrows of the dead elves.

"I agree with that assessment, but what the hell are you doing with those.?" She asked, her annoyed tone getting even more deeper.

"We're almost out of ammo, and this is all that would be available to us to defend ourselves apart from my battle-blade. I'd rather we not remain defenseless should we have to deal with elves again. But for now let's find shelter and get away from the scene of the crime in case other elves are close. I'm sure we both got system prompts we have to look through." Malkova nodded her head in agreement as I picked a random direction, moving away from our Current location and the free with a trio of dead dark elf bodies at it's root.