The situation was getting worse, I had given Mars all the XP gained from the fight since my progress didn't seem to be particularly steady to begin with.

The group began to frantically pack everything away as I returned to Xara and retrieved my own belongings.

"You did really well, thank you for the help."

Xara didn't seem flattered by my compliment, she was instead quite confused.

"You ARE a healer... right?"

I knew questions would follow but wanted to focus on escaping our predicament for the time being.

"Yes, I'll explain everything once we start moving on. I need to find out who's injured or not."

Soon, I had a list of people with serious injuries who I could start healing in preparation for our relocation.

Amongst E class were the youngest students in school, they lacked ability and were also deeply scared of what would happen to them.

I knew that my display of power ultimately might prove beneficial, easing the minds of the students that even E tiers could become strong under the right conditions.

We soon began our move, over fifty people travelling deeper into the forest to try and escape our pursuers.

I heard the sound of hooves and knew that the first wave of knights were coming.

Mars was released and given a command.

"Cripple their horses, kill the knights and then return to me."

He ran away at his typically monstrous speed, even faster than he had been whilst under my command the first time due to his strength improving.

I heard the sounds of fighting and knew the battle was over when the system gave me a message.

I once again gave him the XP from the knights, feeling him return to my shadow as the others marched further into the greenery.

The knights in pursuit were growing in number, eventually we were forced to all hide as best we could as knights rode past in pursuit of people behind them.

We eventually made progress, exiting the forest from the other side and arriving at a slightly mountainous region with even heavier forestry that blocked any further progress forward.

We would be forced to go along the beach if we wanted to continue, which our leader didn't seem to mind.

I knew that a long talk was coming so perhaps I wanted to take the longer route to delay that inevitability.

We had made enough progress to potentially let us escape from the knights, but none of us were satisfied with stopping for a break.

This proved a good attitude to have, when a lone knight swiftly approached the group from behind.

He had a very powerful looking horse, and a young robed figure at his back.

He looked fierce, experienced and definitely powerful.

Under normal circumstances I would've let him get close, but I chose to run towards him in order to not get the group caught up in the fight.

The robed figure seemed to cast a spell, because my legs became stiff and near useless as my body slowed to a crawl.

I panicked for a while, Role Reversal not working against their numerically superior magic.

I let Mars out and his swift approach forced the young mage to release me and target him instead, unfortunately for the mage Mars had already gotten close enough to remove one of the horses legs and bring it crashing to the ground.

The knight and mage were both forced onto the floor, where they had far less superiority in a fight.

I had closed in on them enough to attempt a grab on the mage as the greatest threat, but my instincts told me to spare him when I saw his eyes.

The boy had the expression that I had all throughout my school years, he was a victim.

The knight took the chance from my hesitation and kicked my stomach roughly, launching me into the air before charging at Mars.

My target switched in an instant, as I healed myself and rose to my feet before approaching the knight who was locked in a battle with Mars.

"Die fodder."

He noticed my voice but my hand was already on his back, I attempted to remove his organs but he was recovering before I could completely destroy them.

A regenerator.

I tried to use Degeneration against him but he tackled me and launched me back before I could, Mars was stronger but couldn't deal any lasting damage to the knight.

"I am a holy knight you ignorant child, my body recovers faster than your pathetic magic can hurt it."

Fodder seemed like an unfair label at that point, he easily defeated both me and Mars.

I had no way of burning him like with the troll, he had nothing flammable on his body.

I couldn't think, I had no time as he immediately rushed straight towards me.

He knew I could heal and was trying to apply pressure, he probably didn't want me to be able to recover before he could deal a finishing blow.

I saw his expression as he attacked me, he ENJOYED hurting me.

"I've seen your type, you're just a sadist. A bully with nothing special about them at all, you're just someone average who bullies anyone below you."

Whether he acknowledged what I said or not didn't matter, he only wanted to hurt me anyway so my words were just a nice reason for him.

Before he could get close, he was struck by a ball of fire.

The magician boy, who had stayed out the fight, had finally joined in.

The fire hurt him enough for me to get close and deteriorate his heart, I needed to keep the pressure up so I used as much power as possible to focus on destroying that spot over and over.

The fire burnt my hands, the pain was excruciating.

I felt like I was melting, but I could see as he grew weaker that my plan was working.

If I focused on destroying an important organ like the heart faster than he could heal it, he would eventually stop being able to stay conscious from no blood being pumped.

He lost conciousness, still glaring at me with complete fury.

Regenerators were a bad matchup, I needed to think of a counter but nothing came to mind.

The mage was fearful, extremely so.

He had betrayed his kingdom, if he came back alone and they found the corpse with traces of fire magic he knew he would be done for.

I checked the system message and decided once again to give Mars my XP.

I approached him without a weapon raised.

"I can help you, you can come with us. A strong magician for backup would be extremely helpful."

He didn't hesitate, nodding and following along behind me as I explained to the rest of the group before absorbing Mars back into my shadow.

Having another magician with the group wasn't something the leader would reject.

"Sure, he can come with us. We'll probably need a guide anyway, since he seems strong he can help you guard the group Rem."

I hadn't directly asked the leader his name, but I heard most of the people call him Alex so I assumed that was his name.

I found out that the mages name was Adam, he had been ordered to help that knight with our deaths.

He didn't say much beyond that but I figured that he never had much choice in helping, him being similar to myself was the important fact.

Mars was getting stronger, I couldn't see his level but he was no weaker than he had been before I conscripted him even after being weakened from that.

We had to travel around five more hours before reaching the first small town, a seaside port town called "Murk".

The town was neither prosperous nor particularly welcoming, their were obvious signs of damage and decay on the buildings and absolutely no people roaming around outside the city as we arrived.

The place was dangerous, and more importantly it was obvious that we would be there for any pursuers. We knew probably couldn't spend the night there, we would have to rest for maybe an hour at most and eat some food before moving on.

Fortunately, we had the funds due to looting the old kings fort.

I made sure to hide my crown under my hood as we entered the town, each of us splitting off into small groups to buy essentials before we would group up and eat.

I was grouped with Xara and Alex who instead of shopping, immediately started questioning me.

"How the hell did you beat so many knights? What was that shadow person? Why are you so strong?"

There weren't many easy lies, so I had to tell them a partial truth.

"My story would seem less believable if I didn't exempt certain details, but I gained that ability while in the cave and killed enough monsters to level up. The shadow person is due to the crown I'm wearing, it's bound to me which is why I can't take it off."

It was a convenient reason, but they seemed to accept it partially.

We went on to explore various shops, whilst I focused on my previously underexplored magic eye creation ability.

I checked the status window for a description of the ability.

Magic eye creation

Can fill a gem with the power of a magic eye, up to two can be implanted per person. To create a magic eye, place a magic gem against a chosen material and activate the power.

Cannot be used on the abilities owner, only other people.

Being able to use it only on comrades at first seemed like a pretty bad trade off, but being able to augment E class's power was definitely a big help both in combat and in fucking over king Alan.

My escape from the mine had left me with so called magic gems already, so I knew I would benefit from using this ability as soon as possible.

The method seemed to be combining the gems with a material and then using the ability to create a magic eye.

I gathered everything important I could and then sat in an area of town that was quite secluded, creating five magic eye gems using various materials:

Gold

Dirt

Magic crystal ground into powder

Ice

Leaves

They seemed like reasonable options for testing, and my guesses for magic eyes might work quite well.

In addition, if the ability sucked I presumed I could use reversal to make it a positive in some cases.

I used my ability and produced five different magic gems, listed in order of usefulness from least to most useful.

Gold Magic Eye User hardens into gold when struck, cannot moce whilst turned into gold. Frozen Magic Eye User is twice as resistance to cold temperatures and can become three times more resistant than this temporarily. Earth Magic Eye User can soften and control the earth, earth controlled by user is weak and is relatively useless for attacking. Crystal Magic Eye Users gaze can temporarily crystallize lower level monsters and humans. Natural Magic Eye User can command plant life, users mana will supplement lifeforce for growing the plants.

The magic eyes created seemed extremely useful, implanting them seemed to be related to the ability as well.

I figured that I would just test it out on one of the others eventually.

I returned to Alex and Xara who were looking inside a weapon shop.

"You little kids aren't gonna get weapons this great anywhere else, just keep this hush and you can even buy enchanted items with this much coin."

The shop owner was a rather fat man, he clearly wasn't the one making the weapons. He was a business brain.

Xara and Alex were buying weapons for the whole group, though I hoped they wouldn't buy me any since I already had my daggers and didn't use weapons much to begin with.

We looked really stupid walking out of a shop with various assorted weapons, three people carrying 50 plus weapons looked pretty weird so I imagine we stood out.

We went back to the rest of the group at the right time, meeting up for dinner and to move on to the next place straight after.

None of us felt safe since our enemies had teleportation at their disposal, If they knew our location they could send wave after wave at our frail group.

We had only just sat down to eat, when I noticed a similarly dressed scout to the one who had spotted us earlier.

He looked directly into my eyes as I stood up, shouting for the others to run as a spell was shot up into the air like a firework.

A bright blue signal was left in the air, marking our locations as Alex told everyone to split up and run away with the rest of the citizenry.