POV Change - Max

The next day...

In these past few days, I have been having a lot of fun.

With me now focusing all of my efforts to internal water magic, I have been feeling amazing. Every time that I use internal water magic and I spread it out towards my entire body, I just feel so good, like I have a endless amount of energy.

Not that I haven't felt this feeling before. It is just that I haven't been focusing on external water magic at all. So I have gotten to experience the amazing feeling of strength from my internal water magic that much more.

I have had a few moments where I started to think about if my choice was the right choice or not. Thankfully Emerald and Jason were quick to notice those mood drops, so we started to spar against each other for fun and that got my mind off of that topic pretty quickly.

Being in the thick of battle is just something that makes me really happy. Besides those moments where I 'connect' with the water element, it is the only time where I am truly able to block out all thoughts and focus on the task on hand.

Jason and Emerald aren't like this though. They fight so they can see what their limits are, and the limit when you are just training by yourself is never the same compared to when you are in the middle of a battle.

Maybe it is the half-titan part of me that loves fighting. Who knows? If I don't know myself, I doubt that I will find somebody else that will know.

So either way, right now I am checking out my mana. I sense that if I use my internal water magic to the maximum ability that I currently have I should be able to last for a good forty minutes. And that is with me spreading my mana throughout my entire body evenly.

I have gotten used to sending a lot of mana to my arms and legs though, so if I don't focus too hard on my internal water magic, I will send too much mana to my arms and legs in the middle of a fight.

Sure. that can be a good thing since it will increase the amount of strength in my arms, but it will decrease the amount of time that I can fight.

Even then I still haven't factored in the amount of mana needed to make water appear from my water crystal. That is at least a minute's worth of internal water magic if I cover my arms completely in water.

Especially if there is a fire mage like Jason that attacks. Fire magic likes to eat up my watery defense around my arms. Even if it the water also effectively protects me from Jason's fireballs.

Jumping down from the small rock platform in the big tree that is in the middle of the clearing, I do a few stretches to get rid of the small amount of tiredness that came from sitting for the last twenty minutes. I just can't sit down that long without doing something that can keep my mind and body occupied.

Looking out to the forest, I check my bearings by finding the small path that we made that heads out towards the orphanage. We did this so we won't get lost and when we leave, we leave in the correct direction.

I am sad to say that I was the reason for us making that two days ago, but never mind that small detail, and let's continue on with our lives.

"Hey, guys." Yelling out to Emerald and Jason who are doing something else on the other side of the clearing. Both of them look up to me wondering what I want from them. "I am going for a small jog. So don't worry about me being gone."

Emerald has already stopped looking at me after I said jog. And Jason just looks at me weirdly. "Just don't get lost again, okay?"

"Haha, very funny." Turning my back from them, I walk into the very small path.

If I wasn't there when Jason made this small path, I probably wouldn't even know that this path was even here. It is just that small. Plus Jason wasn't in the happiest of moods when he made it, so it will only take me two minutes before I reach the point where he gave up.

Looking at the abrupt stop that this path ends at, I question his thought process when he was making this path. Why not just put a small landmark pointing towards the orphanage?

Too bad that I can't mention that to him now or else I will have to deal with his anger. He did spend at least twenty minutes here burning bushes and other things to make this path. While Emerald cleared the path with her earth magic to make it so there isn't any big bumps in the path.

Anyways, back to thinking about other things. Why I am jogging inside the forest where there is no clear path to take instead of the clearing where I have all the space that I need?

That question is simple to answer.

It is my random thoughts that creep up on me when I am not focused entirely on one task.

Like I have mentioned before, these past few days I have had multiple mood drops where I start to think of bad things for no apparent reason. Most of the time I have Emerald and Jason to cheer me up, but I want to be by myself every once in a while.

So to prevent my thoughts from becoming random sad thoughts, why not just occupy my mind with other things so I won't be thinking about that?

The way that I thought of to do that is to go jogging in a place where I will have to be constantly thinking about where to step, what path to take, what to avoid, how to manage my internal water magic, etc.

Yesterday was the day that I ended up finding a perfect place for this, and it just so happens to only be five minutes from the clearing.

One full trip around the path that I picked yesterday for my jogging ends up taking me about twenty minutes to fully complete. I can run it in about ten minutes though.

Five minutes if I am trying to break my record, but I don't want to brag.

Standing at my starting point, just taking deep breaths to get myself ready. After about ten seconds of just breathing I start to send mana to my legs.

At almost the exact moment that my legs start to feel great from the flood of mana that is getting sent to them, I hear a snap of a branch.

Quickly dropping down into a crouch position, I look around me for what made that sound.

On the other side of the village there is a wolf den. And the wolves that spawn there get hunted down every time they spawn. It is one of the few things that provide New Haven with a source of income to sell to the various traders that pass by.

There have been cases of a wolf or two that escape the eyes of the mages that are tasked with hunting the wolves. If those wolves happen to not get caught soon afterwards, they will eventually be found wandering around the forest.

I just happened to be really unlucky to meet one of these wolves.

At least the wolf den only spawns wolves and not dire wolves like some dens do. Which means that I have a good chance of killing it if it is by itself.

All I have to do is hope that my bad luck for meeting him in the first place will turn into good luck during my fight.

In the time that I was just sitting there, thinking about all the thoughts that came into my head after the snap of the branch the wolf ended up getting a lot closer to my position. Listening closer, I hear more than one pair of paws walking towards me.

I guess my luck is even worse than I thought. There is more than one wolf here!

Grabbing my water crystal in my pants pocket, I send my mana into it to make some water appear. Looking at the water that starts to wrap around my arms, I do one last deep breath before jumping out at the wolf.

As my fist connects with one of the wolves, a weird thought comes into my head. Aren't wolves supposed to be low on the ground compared to me? Why was I able to hit it when I aimed up high at my shoulder level?

At this moment I don't even know why I aimed that high up since I thought I was going to hit a wolf.

Opening my eyes that I didn't realize that I closed during the throw of my punch, I am met with a person on the ground and five guys surrounding him. All of which are currently wide eyed and staring at the 'wolf' that I just hit.

Taking a step back, I end up attracting the stares of everyone here as I step on a couple of noisy leaves. "Sorry, I thought you guys were wolves. Haha." Scratching the back of my head at the same time.

Nothing is said from them for a couple of seconds, so I take another step back. "He just knocked out Shorty!" Yells one of them as my face starts to get an anger expression plastered on it.

Shorty is one of the few names of the group that destroyed our last hangout spot that I can remember. Pretty much there is only three names that I remember. There is Shorty, Edward and Hunter. With the last person being the one who I hate the most.

Hunter is the so called 'leader' of this group of eight, including himself. Looking at them all though, I realized that there is only five people here. They are missing three people from their group.

Moving my head down though, I forgot about Shorty, so that makes it so only two people are missing from their group. They must have been busy with something else today.

"So it seems that the half-freak has made the first move again. Why am I not surprised about this happening?" I hear Edward start to speak after no one else starts talking.

Hunter then starts to speak up before I have a chance to respond to Edward. "How did you think that we were wolves? Do you not know that the wolves den is on the other side of the village, and even then it is half a hour from the village."

"Well you see what happened is I heard you guys step on a branch and it snapped so..." Is all I said before I started to run away from them. I made sure to not forget to splash a water ball at Hunter just before I turned away though.

The reason why I ran was not that I was afraid of them. No, the reason why I ran was so I can get some backup. They have never liked us to begin with, and with what I just did, I am sure that they will want some form of revenge for Shorty.

I know that I can take Hunter by myself, and with all the sparring against Jason and Emerald that I have been having, I even feel that I can win against Edward at the same time.

Add four more random followers, or even if you replace Hunter with Shorty, I wouldn't be able to win at all.

The rankings for their level of power if it is the same as last time would go Shorty, Edward, Hunter, and the random followers of five people.

Thinking about it, it seems weird that Hunter is the boss. But I don't really feel like getting into that right now.

Behind me I hear them shouting swear words and the normal shouting phrases. "Faster you idiots! Stop running already, you won't be able to escape anyways!"

Running into the clearing, I see Jason and Emerald looking at me weirdly. They must have heard the yelling behind me. “Yeah, we have a small problem.”

All Jason does is sigh. “What happened?”

The only thing that I am able to say is a few more blank stares as I try to explain in a way that doesn't make me seem like the bad guy. If I had a few more minutes I am sure that I would find out how to word it, but Hunter and his group burst through the bushes and into the clearing before I can say anything.

"Stop already! No more running, you me fight now!" Hunter yells as his angry gets the best of him. As he looks around, he notices Jason and Emerald standing behind me. "Oh, it looks like you were just running to get back up from the two weirdoes. Fine you can all fight us right here, right now."

I understand Hunter's anger right now, but I still don't know why they took so long to reach here. They should have been able to keep up with me and should have appeared just after me in the clearing. Moving my head away from Hunter, I notice that two people are laying Shorty down.

They must have been carrying him, since he was knocked out after my full strength punch to his unprotected face.

I am glad that I didn't kill him, that would have been really bad.

Taking a deep sigh, I look at Hunter and say something that isn't directed at him, it is directed at Jason. "I heard a branch snap, and I thought it was some runaway wolves from the wolf den, so I wanted to be the first one to land a hit. It ended up being these guys and not wolves."

Not even turning back to see Jason's face, I know that he is making a face full of pity at me. It wasn't my fault okay!

Okay, maybe it was, but I didn't want it to be my fault. Isn't that good enough? It isn't? I didn't think so.

So now, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. In one hand I really want this fight to happen for revenge for our last hang out spot, but in the other hand we have the problem of me getting in trouble from the orphanage.

This case might be bad enough for me to get in trouble with the village itself because of how hard I hit Shorty.

No one is going to believe my story about how I thought that they were wolves to begin with. Everyone knows that we have it out for Hunter's group.

In the orphanage there is a rule that starts for people when they are sixteen years old until they are seventeen, which is the same year that they leave the orphanage. If someone gets into too much trouble, they won't be allowed to get a leaving gift of enough money to start off on your own.

Starting a fight with these guys and seeing it through till one side can't stand is one of those things on the 'gotten into too much trouble' category. It was fine in the last fight because they were the ones who threw the first punch or spell (can't remember).

Now though, I am the one who threw the first punch. And I am the one who made the first heavy injury. It is not looking good for poor old Max.

For some reason Edward just couldn't take it any longer, and started to summon out some fire. Making a couple small fireballs, and throwing them at me.

Why did he get so anger that he couldn't wait any longer? I don't know, but right now that isn't the thing to be thinking about.

Instead I should properly be dodging these fireballs. They aren't as fast as Jason's so they are easy to dodge for me.

Looking around as the fireballs blast behind me, I notice that everyone is pumping out their mana into their elemental crystals and moving the elements into spells or wrapping it around their arms.

I seem to be the only water mage here. Feeling kind of sad that there isn't a other single water mage, I snap out of that mind set though, as I start to focus more on the fight.

"You can't be thinking about stuff like that! You got a fight to be in!" Saying to myself in a low voice that no one else can hear.

With me already having some water around my arms, I dash forward towards Hunter, who has just finished moving his element around his arms.

I have already thrown the first move back when I knocked out Shorty, so there is no point in delaying this fight any longer.

Hunter quickly reacts to me by raising both of his arms, forcing me to hit them. Which made it so that I wasn't able to deal the most amount of damage in that punch compared to what I could have done.

Even still, I make a small smirk as that released some of my pent up anger towards him. I also made that smirk as I realised that my punch was even able to make him feel some pain after a lot of the force was blocked by the air element around his arm.

Taking a step back, making my right foot dig deep into the ground for as much support as I can get. I swing my whole body into this next punch.

At the same time I also release even more of my mana to every part of my body, making me feel like I have enough strength to beat everyone here on my own!