In front of Mana was a road. The road was more like a path, completely made of dirt. The only reason it could be described as a road were the tracks of carriages on it, but only wide enough for one carriage to pass at a time. Every now and then Mana could see weeds growing out of the road, hinting that no one maintained the road for a long time.

Despite the bad quality of the road, for Mana this was a reason to be happy. She just had to follow the road and sooner or later she is bound to see some civilization. Now she just had to guess in which direction she should follow the road.

From the middle of the road she could see the sky again. She did not see anything outside from the ordinary from there, the sky was still blue and she could see only one sun. Mana didn’t know if the sun located to the North or South, she didn’t know in which hemisphere she was after all. Mana didn’t want to waste too much time on figuring out wherever she was and decided to just follow the sun.

After a few hours of walking Mana was still in the forest, but it started to get darker and the sun began to set. Now Mana was slightly panicking, she forgot to make herself a shelter and didn’t even know if she would be able to sleep at all during the night. In every moment she could get attacked again by beasts like the black rabbit and if she were to sleep while they attacked, then that would probably spell a quick end for Mana.

Even her stomach began to rumble, while she still had the rabbits from before, she realized that she didn’t know if it was a good idea to eat their meat raw. Mana had no idea how to start a fire, if she had begun to figure that out when the sun wasn’t already almost gone, then she could have figured it out by now, but it was already too dark for that.
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The sun vanished completely from the sky and it was completely dark by now. Thankfully, Mana’s Night Vision allowed her to still see a bit. She had postponed building a shelter and figuring out how to make fire the entire time and truly regretted it.

Not long after that she was able to see a bit of hope. A bit further along the road, a short distance besides it, she saw an orange light flickering. This flickering light must be a fire and had a high chance of other people with it, after all, someone must have started it.

Mana slowly approached the fire, while trying to sneak up on it. Mana didn’t know what kind of people she could find there. They could be all kinds of people, some Adventurers or if she was unlucky even Bandits. When she arrived at the fire with only two or three trees in front of her, Mana was unable to see anyone at the fire. This was not because of something that could block her vision, no, there was simply no one there.

The fire started to get dimmer and all the wood on it almost burned away. Mana picked up a few sticks around her and threw them on the fire to increase the flames again. She used another stick to impale one of the rabbits after she tried her best at skinning it and held it over the fire. After waiting a bit and seeing the rabbit beginning the char a bit, Mana took the rabbit out of the flames and decided to cut the rabbit into smaller pieces with her dagger made of ice that still hasn’t vanished.

With the rabbit being in smaller pieces and being a good bit colder again, I mean, who decided cutting it with a dagger made of ice was a good idea, Mana tasted the rabbit. Mana never had a rabbit to eat in her previous life and couldn’t compare these with each other. What did wonder her was the fact that the meat reminded her of crocodile meat, she once tasted. It wasn’t a good taste in her opinion, but she knew people that like crocodile meat, so it probably wasn’t that bad.

Not long after finishing the first rabbit she tried to prepare the second rabbit when she heard a scream in the distance. After hearing the scream Mana looked around the woods and spotted another flame which slowly started to become bigger and bigger. Seeing the flame approach Mana decided to walk to the opposite direction and hide behind a few trees only peeking around them a few times while holding down her ears with her hands, they would stand out too much otherwise.

She only heard that one scream in the beginning and hadn’t heard another scream after that. A few Minutes later she heard footsteps and three men standing besides the fire Mana used to cook her rabbit. These men clearly weren’t human and most likely beastmen like her. If she had to describe them with an animal which she knew, then she would choose hyenas for all of the men.

They were talking in a language that Mana wasn’t able to understand, making obvious that Manas Language Comprehension wouldn’t translate it for her. From time to time the three men began to cackle and one of them threw down a sack from his shoulder.

The three men seemed to not realize that another person had been there and made themselves comfortable around the fire. Mana didn’t want to approach them. She had a really bad gut feeling about them. This gut feeling didn’t take long to prove to be a good choice. One of the men started to open the sack and Mana was able to see a girl in it. The girl inside was small and looked to be around the age of 12, with long bunny ears pointing straight up and light blue hair that seemed to be slightly glowing.

The girl was completely red in the face and appeared to try her best at screaming. However a piece of cloth in her mouth muffled all her screams. The hyena men probably kidnapped her and the scream Mana heard earlier was probably from her.

Mana felt that she had to save the girl, but she knew that the men were a lot stronger than her in the physical aspect. They were also most likely a way higher level than her and the only thing which she had going for her was her magic. Luckily, the hyena men were using a fire the whole time and had their eyes adjusted to this light. Mana had more time to adjust her eyes to the darkness and could probably take that as an advantage for a surprise attack.

While thinking about a plan Mana realized she had ignored previous messages about skills leveling up and decided to see what had changed. Noticing that her training wasn’t wasted.

She was surprised at having leveled up her Ice Magic that much, but was thankful for it. She even had a new spell that was called ‘Frozen Barrage’ and using her Analysis on it showed her that it would create a dozen of smaller icicles with a cost of 25 MP. This would probably be extremely useful in attacking all three men at once. While Mana already had an Ice Dagger, she decided to get herself another one for her other hand, just to be sure. The magic circle was dim enough to not be easily noticed.

Mana waited in her cover for an opportunity to attack, hoping that at least one of the men would try to sleep. This sadly remained a hope, because the men just started kicking the girl out of nowhere. Now Mana had to step in and started using Frozen Barrage. For a whole 14 seconds Mana had to watch the girl getting beaten up by the men when the magic circle finished forming and 4 icicles launched toward each of the men.

The first of the men received three icicles towards his chest and another one on his leg, he quickly crumpled to the ground. The second man had one icicle stuck to his chest and two on his right leg, the fourth icicle missed him, he was still standing, but obviously in pain. The third man could be said to be the luckiest, he was only hit by two icicles, one on his right arm and one on his left leg.

Mana quickly rushed trough the forest and searched for another spot to hide, she still had not enough confidence in her physical strength to attack them in close combat. Running to a different location seemed to be a good choice, the third man ran towards her previous location, only to get hit by an Ice Arrow that Mana had already started preparing after she stopped running.

The man got hit in the chest and stopped moving, not even twitching on the ground. Mana had no time to notice that however as she prepared another spell to launch at the second man, who limped towards the little girl with a dagger in hand. Mana was sure, that he was going to harm her or trying to take her hostage. The magic circle luckily finished forming fast enough and launched straight towards his heart, causing him to fall to his knees and take his last breath.

After all men stopped moving Mana decided to approach each of them and see whether they were still alive. Reaching the last of them she began to see the rabbit again, which she had previously eaten, due to her emptying her stomach. She felt bad enough after killing the two rabbits, now she had taken three “human” lives. While she did that for a good reason, that didn’t change what she did.

The little girl appeared relieved after seeing the men dying. She wasn’t even flinching when Mana approached her and when Mana took out the cloth in her mouth and cut through the rope which was binding her hands together.

Mana decided to talk to her, but wasn’t able to know whether the girl understood her at all. Mana wasn’t able to understand what the little bunny eared girl said either, except for a “Thanks”. Even the small girl seemed confused at their inability to talk to each other.

Mana was pretty much done for the day and only dragged the dead men’s bodies out of sight and cooked her second rabbit over the fire. This rabbit was shared between both Mana and the little girl. She didn’t know what the girl was going to do now, but Mana was unable to keep herself awake for much longer, less out of physical exhaustion and more out of mental exhaustion, her killing other “humans” was really heavy on her mind. Before she passed out, she was able to take another glance at her new Status.