Not wanting to jump out the window that had been turned into a pincushion for arrows, I instead walked out of the room and then to the door leading outside. I did not bother hiding my presence anymore and watched as the elves killed off the bandits. I was confident after watching them that I could easily take them down without much effort. Especially with my shadow supporting me.

I cleared my throat and then said “So, it was Ven that told you about me. I’ll have to thank her.” I still had no idea who Ven was, but they did not know that.

The Elves spun to face me and loud whispers of “The Carnate.” and “It’s him” came from the group. The blond elf stepped forward and looked me over. “Reigner, right? You are more impressive than the stories tell.” He motioned around the bandit den. “I would not expect anyone below level twenty to have the ability to clear out a place like this, alone. You must have been killing them fast too, if the respawn is anything to go by.” As he talked the other elves started to slowly spread out around me.

“I could say the same about you. Your group is clearly too skilled for this floor. For what reason are you hunting me?”

“Why? For justice of course. We elves take the death of one of our own very seriously.”

I walked to the side, forcing the elves to my left to back away to keep their formation. “Justice. Interesting that you were to use that word. Justice for what? Watching your elven friend burn his group alive?”

Another elf to my right, yelled out. “You dare slander the honour of the Ashenwood Elves?”

“Silence!” The blond elf demanded.

Turning to the elf, I gave him a grin. “Ashenwood Elves? You must be young to freely give out such information. I Thank you.”

The elf sneered and knocked an arrow. “It matters not. Breathing or still, you will be coming with us.”

“You are not in command here, Lanteli. You will remain silent.” Stated the blond elf.

Now that I was closer, I could see that even though the elves all wore the same cloak their armour underneath was made up of different colours. From their garb and the way they were talking to each other made me suspect they were from different elven factions.

The Blond elf turned to me and continued talking. “Reigner, I must insist you come with us to the Elven Isle to discuss your presence here in this world.”

Wanting something solid I could duck behind at a moment’s notice, I continued walking to the side until reaching a tree. I nonchalantly leaned against it, at least that’s what I was going for. “Interesting. What does my presence here have to do with anything?”

The elves to my left were forced in an awkward position and had to either move into the forest or reposition themselves to the front of me and near the blond elf.

“All I can say is that our seers know some of your past. Anything more than that requires you to speak to the head of our order in person.” As he was talking, I noticed the other elf, Lanteli, was whispering something into a stone cube. After a moment the cube dissolved into motes of light.

The blond elf noticed his action too and yelled out, “Lanteli, you fool. What have you done?”

“Quiet, Kel. You are talking too much. I just informed Zelphar we have found the Carnate.” The elf gave a feral grin. “He will be here shortly.” As he finished talking the elf pulled his bow from his side and smoothly nocked and released an arrow towards me.

I was impressed with the grace and speed of the action performed by the elf. My wonder did not prevent me from stepping to the side and letting the arrow fly past. I returned his gesture with a prompt spearbolt to the chest.

Experience gained

“Stop!” The blond elf, Kel, yelled out, but it was already too late. My spear had slammed into the elf and pinned him to the wall of a building a short distance behind him. The other Elves yelled out and started launching arrows towards me. I stepped back around the tree to the sound of a dozen or more arrows embedding themselves into my cover and surrounding area.

They must have some skill or spell that duplicated their arrows because there were way more arrows than Elves in each volley.

I glanced down at my shadow. “Great. Not only is it raining pointy sticks sideways, that firefuck is on his way here. Think you can take out the two archers? I’ll deal with Kel.”

My copy ascended from my shadow and dashed around the tree towards the archers. He ran past them and managed to pull all their attention, leaving their backs to me.

I summoned a hammer bolt and launched it towards Kel. I only used a third of my strength as he seemed like a decent person and was also the only elf not trying to attack my shadow. He must have sensed something because he dodged out of the way of the hammerbolt and spun to face me. He had a confused look on his face that was replaced by shock as he quickly fell forwards and slammed into the ground. My shadow had caught my hammerbolt when it past him and threw it at the back of his head.

I took a second to admire the move and summoned a spearbolt while watching my shadow. He was currently engaged in melee with the two remaining elves and even though my shadow had far superior speed, the two elves were able to parry and block his attacks by working together.

My fist tightened around the spear. Damn, I really am going to have to increase my melee skills if I want my shadow to be an effective combatant.

My shadow must have had similar thoughts as he looked to me over the shoulders of the elves and yelled out, “This is your fault, just so you know!”

That proved to be enough of a distraction as one of the elves glanced back towards me giving my shadow an opening. With lightning fast movement my shadow quickly ended the distracted elf with a stab to their chest and put his full attention on the remaining combatant.

Experience gained

Level up!

3 attribute points gained

“Anything you want to tell me before your body is cremated by your fiery friend?” My shadow asked of the remaining elf.

“You are a fool if you think you can get away with slaying your betters. The full might of the elv-”

Experience gained

The elf was interrupted by the sword of my shadow cleaving his head off. He let his sword drop to the ground along with the elf’s body and gave me an apologetic smile. “Sounded like that was going to go on for a while.”

My shadow walked over to me and dusted his hands against each other. Once he got close, he poked my chest. Or tried to, his finger became incorporeal and just kind of vanished for a moment.

“You are going to start morning practice. At least one hour every day. A different weapon each day.”

I pointed to the sword he dropped by the two dead elves. “What, you don’t like swords anymore?”

My shadow sighed and turned around to face the carnage. “Variety is nice. I feel like I have been using sword almost exclusively for the past decade. Would be nice to play with other toys, you know?” He gave me a grin over his shoulder. “Besides, all that training you did would go to waste otherwise, right?”

I looked over the bodies on the ground and screwed up my face. “Crap!”

My shadow summoned a sword and prepared himself for combat. When he realised that there was nothing to fight, he turned to me. “What?”

“I forgot to cast Identify. I missed out on possible rank ups!” The elves that we killed gave so much experience I was also curious on what their levels were.

He threw the recently summoned sword to the ground. “Jerk. I thought that fire elf was here. Just identify this blond one. Kel, wasn’t it?”

I looked down at the blond elf who was currently unconscious, face down and drooling onto the dirt.

Shrugging I cast identify on the elf.

[Kel]

Health: ??? / 43%

Class: ???

Level: ???

Race: Elf

+1 to Identify Spell rank.

Figures, they were much higher level than I could identify. On the off chance the increase in rank would give me their level I cast it again only to get the same result.

“Damn, spell tells me nothing. No idea what their level could be.”

“Twenty seven, twenty four, twenty nine, and Kel is level thirty one.” I turned around at the new voice to see the red eyed and red headed elf, Zelphar, leaning against a nearby tree. I shared a glance with my shadow the same question writing on his face. How did neither of us notice him?

“Quite impressive you managed to wipe out the group. You were fortunate they were from different clans. The teamwork of a complete forming would have been impossible for you to overcome.”

Zelphar was wearing a cloak in the same colours as the downed group, only his cloak was intricately detailed. Instead of being a mix of green and brown his cloak was brown with green vines and leaves embroidered into it. The armour under his cloak consisted of reds and oranges and looked to be made from a metallic material.

“I see there are two of you now, Carnate. How interesting. I knew humans multiplied like rabbits but this is just ridiculous.” He seemed content just resting against the tree as he talked. He glanced towards the downed elves but did not seem to care to offer the survivor any assistance.

“Oh, and just for your information, identify only lets you see the level of a target if its within five levels of the spell’s rank.”

Since he was here, I could find the answer to my question straight from the source.

“Why did you kill Torva and the others?”

Zelphar looked confused for a moment before replying. “Oh, you mean those dwarves. They should be honoured to perish by my hand. Dwarves are such foul creatures, spending their lives in dirt, scrounging for scraps from the earth, only to die and be buried in dirt. Be glad that they could be purified by elven fire.” He stood up and took a step towards me. “Now I have answered your question, we can leave. I tire of this quest and have other places I wish to be.”

I glanced toward my copy. “Go figure, a racist elf. Can’t get more cliché than that.”

My shadow chuckled and launched a spearbolt from three metres away into the elf. The projectile moved so fast elf had no time to react. There was a flash and a barrier appeared around the elf causing the spearbolt to shatter into motes of light.

Zelphar looked at my shadow like he just spotted a fly. “Not just an illusion but a clone of some type.”

He turned back to me and grinned. “Apologies Carnate, but you won’t be walking away from me this time.”

I jumped a few meters back from the elf and launched my own spearbolt towards him. My shadow copied me, and we started launching spearbolt after spearbolt.

Zelphar just watched as his protective bubble destroyed everything we threw at him. I noticed after a few seconds that it was suddenly very hot. Glancing at my health showed that it was starting to tick down. The temperature had increased so much that I was starting to be damaged by it.

The elf had a small smile on his face as he talked. “Once you reach a certain level your very presence can impact your surroundings. Each level from that point increases the distance and intensity of your influence.” His grin widened showing his teeth. “Even with your impressive speed, Carnate, you will not be able to outrun my domain. You are going to suffer a slow, painful death for wasting my time. My father will have to be content with talking to your corpse.”

Domain. The ability earned after reaching level 50. Everyone in the support group before arriving here had their own. You had to be careful because if you had a conflicting domain to your team, you could end up causing damage to them. The domain was in essence an extension of yourself and if you could damage the domain, you were effectively damaging the domain holder.

I continued to throw as many spearbolts, hammerbolts, and swordbolts towards the elf but everything just shattered against his barrier. My health had started dropping by ten with every second that passed. With my current health I would only be able to survive in this heat for a bit over a minute longer.

The surrounding trees, buildings, and the dead and downed elves caught on fire. The situation felt helpless a feeling I was not accustomed to experiencing. If it was before arriving in this world, Zelphar would be a pushover. His domain, his spells would have been useless against me. I could have just walked right up to him and slapped him until he fell unconscious. The here and now though was completely different.

Learning to use mana has been an exhilarating experience and I wouldn’t ever want to go back to being without it. However, I now needed to learn how to defend against it as I was now able to be damaged by magic. Why is it that the things we love the most in the world can also cause the most damage. I felt vunerable and weak. I hated running away from monsters and the thought of having to flee makes me feel sick to my stomach. A monster, that is exactly what I would call the existence that stood in front of me. A sentient walking talking monster.

I backed up from the infernal elf and moved towards the building that held the mazer hole. The whole place was on fire now and my summoned clothes shattered a while ago. My pants and boots were my only clothing, and they too were starting to blacken or burn. Its strange that it was in that moment I remembered who Ven was, while the world burned around me. Ven was the elf that I purchased these very pants from.

I used every scrap of mana I could, launching spell after spell at the slowly approaching elf to no effect. He continued to slowly follow me as I made my way to the doorway of the wooden building.

My shadow. Not one to give up after going through his mana, picked up one of the fallen elves’ short swords and ran up and tried to stab Zelphar in the neck.

The barrier around Zelphar glowed brightly as my shadow pressed against it. The barrier turned a solid and bright orange before exploding outwards, sending my shadow flying into a wooden shack some distance away.

“You dare!” Zelphar yelled out and flung a fireball at the burning shack my shadow smashed into. The wooden shack exploded, sending flaming splinters of wood everywhere. I was wracked with a terrible pain radiating from my chest. It was so excruciating that I fell to my hands and knees, just inside the entrance of the building. My health, stamina, and mana had all reduced by 50%.

With the sudden reduction my health was now down to 380 and dropping quickly. I had no mana left and my only option was to get to the mazer hole. I stumbled forward, pushing through the pain, willing myself forward. I have never allowed myself to give up and I was not about to start now. My hand landed on a stone statue that came up to my knee as I crawled forwards. Without thinking I grabbed it and threw it as hard as I could towards the elf who was now standing at the doorway.

Zelphar must not know how to dodge as the statue connected and then bounced off his head, sending him falling to the ground.

The impact was not enough to end the elf since I did not receive any experience, but it looked like it was enough to stun him at the least. He just lay there on his back not moving.

Unsure if he was knocked out or just stunned, I still had no choice but to take the mazer hole as my health continued to plummet. I’m dead If I remained in his domain for even ten seconds more. I just did not have the time or mana to finish Zelphar off.

My body was getting weaker and weaker with every step, but I managed to get to the passageway. I pulled myself forwards into the mazer hole and collapsed when the world went silent. A glance to my health told me I was left with 126 health remaining.

I just sat there for a moment catching my breath while starting at my health. I expected it to stay or even increase but instead my health dropped another 5 points. In a panic I looked around and notice that my pants were on fire. I hopped backwards on the stony ground while ripping my pants off in a panic. As I threw them against the rough stone wall, I experienced a feeling of dejavu and felt like I had lived through this moment before. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to laugh or cry and ended up with a mixture of both. I was just happy to be alive.

I rested against the cool stone wall of the tunnel for a few minutes. Luckily my mana regeneration was fast enough that I soon had enough to cast summon campfire.

Looking at the glass campstone I couldn’t help but be thankful for the spell. It would take over a day for my health to fully recover at my natural health regeneration. The campstone provided me with 27 health, stamina, and mana per minute which allows me to regain my full health in less than an hour. To think that a spell book of fire, the element that almost killed me, changed into the spell that saved me. I’ll never be resentful of this spell again.

From what Richard and Miko said, it should be safe in here from other adventurers. I figure I will stay here until fully recovered before moving forwards.