As the person connected to the voice showed themselves, I raised my guard and carefully backed away; I could feel that they were much more dangerous than anything I fought before.
“Hmm, Good! At the very least you’re strong enough to know the danger you’re in.” As he said this, the man unsheathed his weapon; two short battle axes, roughly the length of his forearm.
I roused my mana, preparing to create a fireball, but before my mana could create even a spark, the man charged at me.
Since I was focused on my mana, I was late to respond and the man’s shoulder dug into my chest.
I was thrown back and flew several meters before hitting the ground.
Although I avoided landing on my head by twisting around in the air, I couldn’t land on my feet; Instead, my hip slammed into the ground and I slid a few more meters before coming to a stop.
I quickly picked myself up and returned my eyes to the man.
The man, however, didn’t stand still after I was sent flying; He quickly chased after me and was about to bring his axe down on my head.
Not having any time to avoid it, I could only lean to the side to avoid my skull being split in two.
I managed to avoid being killed, but the axe still hit my shoulder.
Despite activating the ‘Immortal’s skin’ just in time, the axe still dug five centimetres deep before coming to a halt. Not having any time to pull the axe out of my shoulder, I let myself fall backwards.
The man’s second axe swung through the place I’d been just a moment ago and I could hear the man click his tongue in annoyance as I turned my fall into a roll and stood up a few meters away from him.
“I’m impressed, you actually managed to survive a hit; You’re not like those other weaklings.” Whilst wiping my blood from his axe, the man spoke; “It’s quite sad, really, we spend months on sea, and what do we find? A bunch of weaklings who only know how to use magic instead of engaging in a proper fight.”
As the man was speaking, I took the opportunity to coat my wound in mana, stopping the bleeding temporarily.
The ants that I had been fighting just a moment ago, scurried away as soon as they had spotted the man. Some of them had disappeared into the caves that led to the rest of the colony, but in my current situation, I could only hope that Mike and the others would be able to fight them off.
“What do you want?”, seeing that the man was about to attack me again, I attempted to distract him with a question as I moved my knife to my other hand. Since I got hit in the shoulder, I couldn’t move my right hand properly.
The man didn’t pause, however, and charged at me with his axe raised.
I was prepared this time and jumped to the side; whilst the man had been talking, I had time to properly rouse my mana and it was now rushing through my mana circuit, strengthening me.
Since he was rushing forward at full speed, he couldn’t change his course to follow me and could only stick out his axe in an attempt to hit me.
Since I was now being strengthened by my mana, however, I easily parried the attack and created a shallow cut on the man’s arm.
Whilst the man was off-balance, I moved away from him, creating more distance between us; If he was too close, I wouldn’t have time to form my mana into an attack.
“Don’t even try! I’ve fought enough of you bastards to know that I should stick close!” The man yelled as he chased after me.
Abandoning the idea to create a mana attack like a fireball, I instead forced the mana into my knife.
I avoided the man’s attack and, as soon as he showed an opening, used one of the two mana techniques I knew.
Mana extended out from my knife and created a blade more than a metre long.
I used ‘Void rending blade’ as I swung my knife down in a large arc.
If this attack hit, the man would surely be split in half.
Unfortunately, I had the knife equipped in my non-dominant hand since the other was injured and, thus, the attack was a tad bit slower than normal.
Although I surprised the man with the attack, he still had time to cross his axes in front of him.
Instead of hitting him on the chest, the ‘void rending blade’ hit the axes instead and only pushed the man back.
“Ugh… ”, He stumbled back a few steps before he managed to regain his balance; “Ah, goddammit.”
With an annoyed look on his face, the man threw one of the axes aside. It hit one of the cave walls and broke in two; My attack had cut through the handle almost completely.
As a lull fell in the fight, I opened my mouth to repeat my question from before: “What do you want?”
Since he had lost one of his weapons, the man was more willing to talk compared to before and actually responded; “Ha! What do I want? I just want a good fight. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”
I frowned and waved my knife, signing him to continue.
“It should be obvious, right? We cross the endless sea to finally find land, and what awaits us? A bunch of tail-less bastards eager to cut our heads off.”, The man took my hint and continued; “How’d you expect us to respond? Wait patiently for you to kill us all?”
Hearing the man’s words, I quickly realised what was happening.
After all, the man before me was a beastman.
*********
“They came some time ago; One of the fishermen spotted their ship on the horizon and since he didn’t recognize it, he told daddy about it.”, As Hestri stared into the fire, she repeated the story she told me before; “Daddy thought that maybe one of the northern families was coming to visit, so he was in a hurry to gather all the important people.”
When she paused her story to bite down on the food in front of her, Mike took the opportunity to ask Hestri a question; “Who are these northern families? Why’d your father have to gather all the important people?”
“The families that live in the north are the second most important. A lot of tasty plants grow in the north, so they have a lot of money; Daddy wanted to be good friends with them, so he called everyone to welcome them.”, She answered after swallowing her food.
“But when the boat got closer, we could see weird people on it; they didn’t have ears like ours. Instead, they had the ears and tails of all kinds of animals like kitties and doggies. There were also some weird ones; There was one person who kept changing colour! ” Hestri was quite excited at this last fact and told us like it was the most amazing thing in the world; “Daddy didn’t know who these weird people were, so he called for all the hunters and magicians in the family.”
“When they landed, all the strong people of the family were on the docks. Even Keya came; She is really strong. She’s the one who taught me magic.” She got distracted and described this ‘Keya’ to us for the following couple of minutes before getting back to the story; “Daddy wanted to be friendly with the weird people first, but they were really mean, so after just a few minutes, a fight started and daddy made me leave.”
“Mean? What did they do?” Yuuto, who was chowing down on a wolf's leg, asked.
“Well, they were just really rude. First, they just got off the boat without asking daddy first, which is really rude! Then, one of the weird people just grabbed daddy’s hand and started shaking it around! Also, they didn’t eat any of the tasty foods we gave them and just ate the meat and the fish and threw the tasty foods away! Those tasty foods are really expensive! Even I only got to eat them once a month!” Hestri got really angry thinking about those people wasting her favourite food and only when she calmed down after a couple of minutes did she continue; “Although they were really rude, daddy first thought that they just thought differently from us, just like the lizardmen; They also only eat the fish and meat when they come to visit.”
“When daddy invited them to the family’s central tree, however, things got really bad.”, getting to the main part of the story, we all unconsciously leaned closer to listen; “Weapons are a no-go when entering a family’s central tree, but when they were asked to leave their weapons on the ship, those weird people got really angry.”
“They started shouting at us and, when one of the hunters tried to calm them down, they attacked him!”, At this point. Hestri got really agitated and couldn’t keep herself from yelling.
Seeing how Hestri wouldn’t continue the story, I tossed my leftovers in the fire and stood up; “Everyone, get some sleep, I’ll take first watch.”
******
In the end, Hestri’s story could be summarised as the meeting of two species going wrong because of cultural differences.
Since they couldn’t speak the other’s language, they couldn’t communicate properly and small things such as shaking hands as a greeting were seen as rude, or potentially even as hostile.
Although they overreacted, the beastmen’s response to having to leave behind their weapons was understandable; They arrived in unfamiliar lands and had no way of knowing what the elves’ intended to do. If a fight were to break out, they’d want their weapons at hand.
With tensions being so high, it only took one wrong move for someone to respond violently.
Afterwards, relations between the species only deteriorated; the elves spread the information about the beastmen to other elven cities and since they saw them as enemies, they attacked any beastman they spotted.
In the meantime, the beastmen that survived had no way to contact home and warn them. As such, the beastmen kept sending exploration ships.
Eventually, enough beastmen to threaten an elven city survived and attacked; Signaling the start of a full-out war between the two species.
The Elves saw the Beastmen as a bunch of barbarians who were the first to attack. The Beastmen, on the other hand, only knew that when they arrived in these new lands, the Elves immediately attacked them.
When Hestri was forced to leave her home because a group of beastmen attacked it, two cities were already in the hands of the beastmen. Since we hadn’t had any contact with the elves other than Hestri, we had no way of knowing how much the war had progressed in the year after that.
Seeing that I was distracted thinking about these things, the beastman began to slowly approach me.
I quickly returned my focus to the present and summoned mana to my hand in response to the beastman’s movement.
The mana I summoned had the lightning attribute and arcs of electricity could be seen travelling across my skin.
“You’re here for revenge, then?”, The Beastman had stopped approaching me, so I asked another question.
“Ha, revenge?! No, we’re in no position to fight for revenge; We fight because you bastards will slaughter any exploration team that makes it here.”, The Beastman let out a bitter laugh and continued; “When my son grows up, he is sure to join an exploration team and come after me. I’m here to make sure you fuckers can’t get to him when he arrives.”
Hearing the man’s words, I decided to take a risk. The Beastmen only had beef with the Elves; If I handled the current situation correctly, there was still a chance for a friendly relationship between us, humans, and the beastmen.
Since the Beastman was similar to me in strength, I was hesitant to do so, but as to not repeat the mistakes the elves made, I sheathed my knife.
