The next day, they came.

Lucius was busy carving things out of wood when movement in the forest caught his eyes. It wasn't the movement of an animal-- it was from something more intelligent. It was quieter, but it didn't stop Lucius from getting cautious. He ducked behind his house and peeked around. They emerged from the forest.

It was a group of five. They were dressed in black clothes and didn't seem heavily armed, but it was obvious where they came from. They had the same crest as the knights that attacked the wolf-people.

Lucius quietly ran to find Balos. He found him and Luna crouched on top of the house, peering at the people.

"They are from Voxis Kingdom!" Balos hissed. He gripped the sword on his back without making a single noise. It seemed impossible that someone his size could be so stealthy, but he managed it.

"Is Voxis Kingdom the people that attacked the wolf-people?" Lucius asked for confirmation. Balos nodded.

"They seem to be a scouting party. Usually, kingdoms send them out before a war or battle happens. That is not good," Balos said, discomfort in his voice. Luna looked equally troubled.

"We need to stop them before they finish. I don't want to kill them, but that is the only way," Luna said.

"But if they don't return to Voxis Kingdom, won't someone get suspicious?" Lucius asked.

"Yes, they would. But it is the only way we can get the upper hand in a war," Balos said.

Lucius became as troubled as Balos.

"Now is the time to act," Luna said. They crept off the roof and sprinted to intercept them.

"Lucius, get the one in the back. Remember all of the techniques I taught you, and remember to stay calm. Don't panic. Luna and I will take care of the rest," Balos ordered. They broke off as Lucius sprinted through a different route.

Almost immediately, there was the sound of yelling. Lucius guessed that Balos and Luna surprised them.

Lucius broke into the clearing where the fighting was taking place. He didn't bother looking at Balos or Luna-- he knew that they would be fine. Instead, he caught the attention of the scout in the back.

"Hey kid, do you want to die?" he asked, but he didn't seem that intimidating. In fact, he seemed a bit in panic.

Lucius didn't answer his question. Instead, he did a small couch and rested his right hand on the hilt of his sword and his left on the sheath.

The scout yanked his sword from his back and lunged, but Lucius struck first.

He was still much slower than Balos, but he could still attack with ferocious speed. He pulled the katana out of his belt and did three rapid slashes. The scout was only able to block one of the slashes while the other two cut him. However, he was wearing armor and the slashes were weak in strength.

They exchanged blows, but compared to Lucius, the scout was much slower. He was able to block the strikes quickly and retaliate. After each set of attacks, he always returned his sword to his sheath. Balos told him it was to reset the stance, making each set of blows faster and stronger.

They were at a standstill. Lucius couldn't slash hard enough to cut the scouts armor since he was focused on speed, and the scout was too slow to hit Lucius. After about a minute of exchanging blows, Lucius decided to change things up a bit.

He did things that weren't included in the things in Quickdraw. He began to flow from stance to stance, adding things that he normally wouldn't do. Once, he saw Balos and Luna out of the corner of his eye, watching him. They seemed to already finish their fights.

Lucius rolled on the ground and slashed in a wide arc, making the scout jump back. Then, he got to his feet and jumped at the scout and feinted a slash. The scout raised his blade to block, but at the same moment, Lucius rolled to the side and slammed his fist into the scout's stomach as hard as he could.

He fell to the ground and shrank into a ball, where he trembled.

"Keep him alive?" Lucius asked hopefully. He really didn't want to kill anyone, especially if they were helpless. Killing them in battle is one thing, but this was different.

Thankfully, Balos nodded. "Don't kill him. I need to, talk to him."

Lucius shuddered at the thought of this. "O-okay, do what you want with him. I'm going back," Lucius said and went back to the house and sat down.

He wasn't sure if he was supposed to happy, sad, scared, or proud. Sure, he did some pretty amazing things when he was fighting the scout, but it just felt wrong. Being more of a pacifist seemed to be more appealing to him, but he knew that he had to fight at some times. To protect, to explore, to...avenge.

The word popped into his mind with no real intention, but it seemed to make his whole body shake. Avenge what?

Eventually, Lucius figured that thinking too much would kill him. Instead, he went into the forest and brought random things back.

He wanted to create the necessities, like rope, string, and more useful tools. Lucius has been pretty primitive at this point, so he wanted to make more advanced things to improve his life.

The first thing that came to mind was a cell phone, but there was no way that Lucius would be able to do that. He wasn't even sure that it was possible to make something like that from the things in this world. So he started on something simple-- electricity.

When he asked Luna about lights and stuff that would normally be powered by electricity, she told him that things like that were powered by magic. Things imbued with magic seemed to function like electricity without the hassle of cords and such. But according to Luna, it could get uncontrollable. Sometimes, a defect magic-item could explode upon use with enough power to demolish Lucius's house. Electricity was much better to handle.

Lucius wanted to make a windmill. Easy to build and a clean source of power. However, Lucius couldn't really figure out how to build one since he had no way to make a dynamo. He had to play around with more things to see if he could replicate the effect.

So in the real world, he hopped onto his laptop and searched up how a dynamo worked. He needed copper wire and magnets, two things that might now exist in the other world. So he scrapped the idea of a windmill and took to his own experiments.

Back in the other world, Lucius looked through the shelves of his house. He found several different types of crystals.

There were two crystals that Lucius found that might help him. One of them was called Mana Crystal. It absorbed another crystal and when it is spun, it creates the same effect as the absorbed crystal. The faster it's spun, the stronger the effect.

He combined it with a Lightning Crystal, which promptly got absorbed. It just looked like the two crystals came together and became one.

Lucius used the Mana Crystal so he could control the output of electricity. If he used a pure Lightning Crystal, it would roast Lucius along with his house. Not worth doing for something that might not even work.

Then, he suspended the jewel on something that resembled a cooking split, but instead of meat, Lucius used sap to glue the jewel to the split. When he rotated the jewel slowly, nothing happened, but the faster he spun it, he started to see small tendrils of electricity come out. Perfect.

Then he needed something conductive. He couldn't just use the electricity as it was to power anything.

So Lucius got some metal and shared long strips off with his katana. With the heated edge of the sword, he could shear many, many things.

After he cut three long stripes, he braided them together to form some sort of cord, acting as a wire. He tried connecting it to the Mana Crystal, but he couldn't find a way to concentrate the electricity to the cord.

That's where the second crystal came in.

It was the rarest crystal that Lucius found. He only had three of them, while he had an abundance of the others. He made sure to triple check he was doing things correctly-- he didn't feel like wasting one.

It was called the It was called an AE Crystal, which stands for Absorb and Expel. One-half of the perfectly shaped crystal was colorless white, while the other was pitch black.

The crystals effects were odd in many ways. One-- it was oddly specific. Luna told Lucius that the crystal would pull liquids and magic in from the black side like a magnet and expel whatever it absorbed back the white side in a thin stream. Lucius had many doubts, but he hoped that it would work with electricity too. If it didn't, well, Lucius would be back in square one.

Lucius glued the AE Crystal to a stick, stuck it in the ground so it was a hair away from the Mana Crystal, then watched.

The result almost burned his house down. When he slowly spun the Mana Crystal, nothing happened. The current was definitely going into the AE Crystal, but nothing was coming out the other end. He even stuck his tongue out where the power should've come out. Nothing, not even the slightest of tingles.

Frustrated, Lucius gave the crank his hardest and prepared to quit at the same time. The Mana Crystal discharged a bunch of tendrils of power, which were sucked into the AE Crystal.

Then it all came out. A massive bolt of thunder streaked out of the AE Crystal and lit one of the walls of Lucius's house on fire, instantly charring it and lighting it ablaze. Thankfully, it seemed to be discharged in all in one shot.

Lucius grabbed his bucket and ran for water. He was able to quickly put the fire out, but it scared the daylights out of him. After the initial shock faded away, Lucius pumped his fist. It had worked!

Then he tested it even further. He put the metal wire where the electricity came out and put a very old and dry woodchip on the other end. When he spun the Mana Crystal, the current flowed into the wire and lit the wood on fire.

Pleased, Lucius sat back.

This could not only be used as a generator, but also as a weapon. That firepower! I might need to put some research into this... Lucius excitedly thought. I could make something like a taser, but I want something that could do some real firepower...

Lucius pondered the idea a little bit, then went inside and got some fur and ink.

He had work to do.