Chapter 6: war

It’s been a couple months since I learned of the war to come and since then the village has underwent changes. Every man age 12 and up has been training to be able to fight as opposed to only the men age 15 and up. I am decently certain that I recently had my 4^th birthday although that Is not a thing that is celebrated here so I’m not completely certain. Due to everyone preparing for war, there were less people keeping an eye on me which meant that I could train more. In this recent months I have made good progress when it comes to combat spells. My earth spike only costs me 53 Mana points for a single cast now and I can aim it with perfect accuracy. It has also started to become denser and have a bit more force behind it. I also figured out that with a small modification I can make it go any speed I want. I learnt this by making it go 200 kilometres an hour, having it hit a tree and piercing it quite a bit before falling apart due to the force, then me promptly fainting due to overexertion. I still trained with it and I can now cast it without fainting although it does dry my Mana pool up nearly completely. I hoped to not have to use it since it’d making my chances of escaping quite low but it might work. On top of that my Mana pool has increased drastically these last months since I took a bit more risk and emptied more of my Mana pool at once causing me to currently have a grand total of 549 points of Mana. I went over the plan once again in my head. I would stealthily assist the hunters once the enemy came by sending out an earth spike here and then before surveying the battlefield and if it was clear we stood no chance, flee. The women and children would already be evacuated but I was certain I could slip out. As for my father, I’d do my best to assist him but I can’t save him from an inevitable demise and I was not dying again. Anything but death. While assisting may seem risky and illogical, it’d be optimal if the village could survive and it would be a valuable opportunity to test out my magic. I wasn’t a fan of the idea of killing but in a prehistoric world, I had no choice but to be prepared to kill if necessary.

The next day started normal enough, I woke up, ate breakfast and was thinking of what to train today but I never got to that point because I heard shouting outside and the bell was rung. The enemy was coming. The hunters grabbed their bows and spears, the women gathered the children and together with two hunters, started leaving. Before everything could be completed however the enemy already showed up and what I saw shocked me greatly.

One of the enemy soldiers, dressed in scaled, metal, armour, was going incredibly fast. He was running at least 100 kilometres an hour and it was nearly impossible to follow him with human eyes. Some of the hunters tried to fire arrows at him but he effortlessly dodged them while his face was carrying a smile. He was clearly enjoying the slaughter he was committing. Every time he moved a hunter would be cleaved in two due to the sheer speed and force behind his blade.

The places the speedster wasn’t fighting, the regular army was and they too outclassed the hunters of the village. They were well armed  with most of them carrying a spear in one hand, a shield in the other and a sword for backup. They weren’t wearing any armour but instead opted for something that resembled a loincloth. They reminded me of the Egyptians with the way they looked. The hunters were doing better than I expected and while there were more hunters than soldiers dying, the soldiers were also going down at a noticeable rate.

I assisted as much as I can and I ran around the bushes, using my small stature to my advantage, and every time I spotted an opening, I shot an earthen spike. As I was running around the bushes I saw a soldier lunge forward to stab a brown haired hunter with his spear and as I started writing, the spear hit the hunter straight in the chest and blood sprayed out. Knowing that emotions would not help here, I kept writing and quickly fired off an earth spike at the soldier that just killed one of my fellow villagers. The spike hit him in the side, creating a fatal wound. The soldier collapsed and I kept on moving.

As a ghost I made my way across the battlefield, killing any soldier that I could pick off. The writing time of my magic was a problem but there was little I could do about it currently. More worrying was the speedster that was killing hunters left and right. I didn’t see my father but in the current situation I had little hope for him. My Mana was getting low and I could not use my super spike because of that. As I crawled through some bushes I felt myself crawling into a pool of blood. Disturbed at first I quickly wanted to crawl out of it but then I realised, the blood contained Mana. Not a lot of it but these were non super powered individuals. Realising that I could try to use this to cast a spell without spending as much Mana, I quickly gathered a stick, then experimented a bit with some magic before settling on trying to channel my intent as clearly as possible. I dipped my finger in blood and started to write with it, not paying attention to this body’s stomach churning. ‘make this stick hollow but have it narrow towards its end, have it fill the hollow part with blood within a one kilometre radius, this pen shall be used to write magic, it will facilitate this, and will only write when I wish it to write.’ A decent chunk of my Mana disappeared but it wasn’t nearly as much as without the blood.

I started writing out with my newly made pen an earth spike with a couple of modifications ‘transform this dirt into a solid spike, 15 centimetres long and 6 centimetres wide, then have it fly for 30 metres in the direction I am pointing at a speed of 200 kilometres before exploding upon a hit’ before I could finish it however I saw the sick bastard looking my way before a smile appeared upon his face. At super speeds he charged at me and I felt fear but he was too late. I was done writing and my spike flew out. He tried to dodge but he slipped on the blood and it hit him square in the chest before exploding like a frag grenade, creating a crater where his chest once was. The bang of the blast was heard by most of the fighters and all looked on in shock as they saw their trump card lay dead. They couldn’t see me because I was still in the bushes and I used that to my advantage to retreat a bit. The pen had helped a lot but I was still completely drained. While the death of the speedster stopped the fighting for a bit and although the morale of the soldiers was lowered, tey still crushed the hunters with renewed vigour. As was apparently the plan, the hunters slowly started to retreat and one by one they disappeared into the forest. While watching I also saw my dad and I was happy to know that he was safe, even though I had decided to leave them and I would probably never see him again. I needed my time to learn magic.

I had recovered a little bit and was about to leave when I saw a robed individual, one of the aliens, enter the battlefield and before thinking twice, I hurried out of there as fast as I could while still being stealthy. A simple ‘my footsteps are completely silent’ made it so I could run just a smidge faster although it did drain me once again. I ran towards an open area in the forest that was about 3 hours out but I knew the path well so I could be quite hasty without being seen by anything. The area I was going to was a place I had prepared exactly for this situation. It had a small hut and some basic necessities I stole from the warehouse in the village. I still needed flowing water there but there was a river close by so it wouldn’t be the death of me. I entered the clearing and saw my hut. It was a simple hut made out of wood which I had scavenged from various places. While I was no genius at building things, the hut was quite stable and I didn’t think it would collapse on my head anytime soon. Next to the hut was a shack for storing things, also made out of wood. The clearing itself was nothing special, just big enough for the hut, the shack and a decent bit of space. Entering my hut I went to the bed and both physically and mentally exhausted, I collapsed.