Perhaps I should have seen this coming, but I’d never in a million years thought that the elves would follow us into a dungeon that they have never conquered in centuries. The whispering woods have been the new Frontline or at least a new Frontline in the war between the elves and the Terran Coalition, however before that the elves, especially the wood elves have been trying their best to map and conquer the forest for themselves. However they have not been as lucky and from my stint as a wolf amongst them (literally) I learnt the Durkenholm dungeon was one such place that has never been conquered by the elves. But here they were with murder in their eyes, looking for the person responsible for the death of a dark elf prince; me.

[Wind Blast]

A concussive blast of wind was released from my hand, it was near instantaneously, blasting a few caught off elven soldiers backwards. But not him, not Rodal, it was almost as if he expected it as a transparent shield of pure mana rose up around him. This was one of the elves flag ship ability, the [Mana Shield] spell, and one that has been quite elusive for humans to own and master. But just because we were unable to utilize the spell it didn’t mean we had no way to beat the damn thing. As soon as the wind Blast spell ran it’s course a bolt of lightning followed right behind it, slamming into Rodal’s chest. While it didn’t hurt him, it phased him enough for the rest of my cohorts to react, grabbing whatever was left of our firearms.

Rodal was not stupid, no matter how durable he was, with enough pressure and enough power, especially when boosted by a skill, a bullet would happily find it’s way through his skull. His shield was up once again, defending him against the hail of bullets that came for him, but even if he was quite masterful with it’s application, the same could not be said for the rest of the elves that came with him, as three of them developed holes in their bodies in seconds, while the rest went on the attack.

There was a rumble as the earth burst open and a surge of massive roots and vines headed in our direction. Kaixuan slapped his hands together creating a seal that stopped the surge, but it only held for a second before one of the roots went through, spearing Laurent through the shoulder as he cried out in pain and rage. Amina pushed her hands forwards utilizing her miracle as sand and a ball of fire hidden within a small dust storm flew forwards, slamming into the attacking elves, but mostly just impacting the mana shields of almost all of them.

[Light Heal]

I quickly threw the spell as Laurent keeping my guard up in front of the recent development. “We have to get out of here! We can’t beat them! At least not in such a small space!” Malkova called out before proceeding to run towards the back of the dungeon core room, ignoring everything else as she made to escape through the ladder that led upwards and hopefully outside of this dungeon, that had saved and yet inexplicably changed us all. Unsurprisingly her brother was right on her heels, those two caring about no one else but themselves, but in the end she was right, none of us could face the elves right now.

“Kimberly any help?” I called out even as I spread my hands outwards and used [Entangle] causing roots to pop out of the ground and out of my battle tool; a spider themed gauntlet with capabilities to create steel like silk and create a sort of biological emp. And right now, it was that emp that helped buy us a few moments as even Rodal was unable to defend against the [Entangle] skill. I turned around to run, bringing up the rear and going past the grotesque dwarf with a dungeon core embedded in his chest, encased in a massive test tube with a head bloated to massive proportions, for a second, just before I moved past him, I could have sworn I saw his eyes move.

A monster core came flying over my shoulder, and at the same time an arrow went through it, burning a blazing hot hole through me, causing liquid fire to spread across my entire body in an instant, forcing my entire muscles to lock up and my body crashing to the ground with a loud thump. I was just at the base of the ladder right behind Kaixuan when the core exploded, blasting me forwards with my paralyzed body slamming into Kaixuan’s legs and bringing us both to the ground. Whatever they just used to shoot me with, it had completely locked up my muscles whilst causing me to go through extreme agony, it was like a magically induced stroke, it absolutely did not feel good.

[Light Hea-]

“Arghhh!”

White hot pain lanced through me, an attempt to use my healing spell had caused agony unlike anything I have ever felt before in my life. Not even with all of my adventures and near death experiences have I been through pain like this, and that was saying something as I have had a run in with boiling acid, but be that as it may, this pain was stopping me from moving or even utilizing my skills to heal myself. I felt hands on my legs as Kaixuan grabbed a hold of me and dragged me over his shoulder before jumping up and grabbing the very top of the ladder, took three more steps before disappearing through a hole of extreme blackness that hung on the ceiling of the dungeon core room, with the ladder disappearing right into it.

There was a whoosh, and cold before a weird sense of vertigo assaulted me as I found my world turned sideways, inside out and flipped in a variety of different ways before we got deposited onto a patch of green grass that smelt heavily of ash and soot. My muscles were still locked up, but two more arms lifted me up, Kaixuan and the recently resurrected Tobias lifted me up as we made our way towards a copse of trees that hid the small clearing we had showed up in. I strained my neck to look behind me, fighting through the pain with tears in my eye to notice that we had just come out of a rock that was frankly speaking, not large enough to spit even a person’s head out. But the intricacies of portals and teleportation currently went over my head, and it didn’t mean much to me, at least not until Rodal showed up.

His face was a mask if pure amusement, I could see it there, flickering at the edges, a madness that most would never catch wind of. But it was like an abyss, monstrous in it’s own right, but with an appetite for destruction heading it’s way, Rodal was hunting us… hunting me. And from the look of things, he’s enjoying himself.

“You can run but you can’t hide King slayer. The arrow I just shot you with is reacting to the mark within you, a mark that marks you for hunting and judgment. It marks you for a death without honor! And one quite befitting of a vile murderer like yourself. It will cause you endless pain, and make you weak, the paralysis will pass, yes! but not the pain, never the pain. No skill, spell or miracle as you blasted vermin’s call it will be available to you. You will run, you will hurt, but I’ll find you, and then I’ll kill you.”

Well that’s comforting, it explained a lot about what was currently going on, but at the same time it still didn’t explain anything, as it was just elven magic of a sort I did not understand, and neither did I want to at the moment, every damn thing hurts. And if it’s being used to track me, it would definitely lead Rodal and the remaining elves to the others. But at the moment I would not say anything about it, we just had to focus on getting away from Rodal and the elves hot on our trail right now. A few minutes to breathe would go a long way.

“I’ll find you human! Not even death can save you, all it would do is put an end to the pain! But the mark of the kingslayer! Will follow you for a generation! And we won’t stop coming after you until you’ve paid in full the blood debt you owe us. So run little human! Run!”

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I looked up at Kaixuan still struggling to run ahead with me, it even looked like he was just a little bit injured from the explosion back in the dungeon core room. The others were ahead of us, and even if it looked like we were making good pace, these were elves we’re talking about, they’ll catch up eventually. “Kaixuan you have to leave me behind, the elves..”

“Like hell I’m leaving you behind, doesn’t matter what’s behind or ahead of us, dragons or elves. We’re not leaving you behind, we owe you our lives as it is, plus from the shit show happening right now, you’re responsible for the death of a major elven player, the Terran Coalition will fuck us all up should we choose to leave you behind to save our own asses. We’re not elves, we’re humans! And we do not leave a man behind!”

I didn’t feel touched or moved, in retrospect I thought he was being stupid, and the rest of them barring Malkova and her idiot brother seemed to agree with his bloody assessment. But it didn’t matter, as I was useless to everyone else around, not unless. My eyes widened as Andrej abruptly turned around and pointed a hand gun in my face, for a brief moment my heart suddenly stopped as everyone else yelled out in shock and surprise, but they could not react in time, not even me as Andrej pulled the trigger, the ensuing bang being the only precursor to the darkness that swallowed me.