Chapter 18: unexpected visitors

It’s been roughly a week since I finished my house and in that time I have not been attacked anymore nor have I seen any traces of the beast, perhaps it finally left? While that would be a loss of ingredients for me, I was quite alright with that since I didn’t even know if I had a chance against whatever it was, especially not since it probably has camouflage. For today I wanted to work on creating a new potion by mixing certain herbs I found in the forest. One was a Yellow flowered plant which grew to be quite small, only about 10 centimetres high. The plant itself had a bit of a weird appearance. It was almost like it was a normal plant ripped to shreds. The leaves weren’t full on leaves but looked more like green spaghetti hanging from a thick stem. The flower was a bit more normal but it was sort of shaped like a four pointed star. The other was a big plant without any flowers and was a lot more normal. A thick stem with leaves on evert side. Once fully grown it would have large red flowers but it wouldn’t finish growing for quite a while. I needed the flower of the first plant since it had a higher than average concentration of air Mana which was a hard ingredient to come by since I couldn’t just throw some air into my potion. The other plant I needed the roots from. Later on in its life cycle the flowers would have a use but for now I needed the roots. The roots themselves had a concentration of iron which led to a specific type of earth Mana I dubbed metal Mana. A lot of the different Mana types had sub types which were close to the original type but not fully the same metal Mana being one of them, usually these subtypes also contained traces of the original but the amount varied. It was contained within every metal although each metal had a difference in quality and in quantity. The better the metal, the less earth Mana attributes were mixed with the metal Mana. The potion that I was going to create was meant to make a material hard as iron but still light. This was different from my other hardening potion in the sense that it could be splashed on everything, would be applied externally and the biggest difference was that it actually made something resemble metal as opposed to coat it with a layer of strong Mana. I wanted this because if there was anything that could disrupt Mana, it would not work on this.

I had gathered the ingredients and started creating my potion when I heard sounds in the forest. It wasn’t very clear what they were but they were loud since I could hear them even within my home. I thought it might be a couple of animals fighting so I just kept on brewing my potion. It went quite well and I was successful on mixing the Mana together on my first try. The potion was a success and luckily I had fully filled my cauldron since I didn’t need to worry about being short on ingredients since they were normal plants that grew within the forest. While I was bottling my potion I heard something within my encampment so I quickly grabbed my belt that I had made a while ago which held a bunch of pouches with some potions, a knife, some rope and some other useful things. I put a bottle of Iron Skin in a pouch and went outside, on guard for whatever threat there might be. When I got outside I could see what was happening. A man was supporting a heavily bleeding and probably unconscious woman. The woman herself was glowing in some sort of greenish light but it was very faint, almost like it was sputtering out. The man saw me and shouted something at me in the language of the city I visited earlier but I had no way to understand him. I tried telling him so but he didn’t understand me either. I didn’t want to reveal my magic yet but I felt I had no other choice. While my own safety was important, I wouldn’t just let a person die for nothing. I quickly pulled out a bottle of healing and rushed over to them to administer it. The man tried to stop me but he was very tired and weakened so he couldn’t really stop me. I gave the potion to the woman and her wounds started to close while her flickering aura stabilised. The man stopped trying to get me to back off and I quickly started writing to get his languages and although the man was clearly apprehensive he didn’t stop me.

“So who are you two and what are you doing so far into the woods?” I asked them. The man’s eyes widened for a moment before recomposing himself. “So you do speak Asyrian? Why didn’t you respond earlier?” I looked at him annoyed and thought for a moment before deciding that I might as well. “I don’t speak Asyrian. I have special… abilities which allow me to do certain things”
“Oh so you’re a demigod as well? I’m Eric and that’s my wife Syliva by the way, the both of us are also demigods as you might be able to see from her aura, why are you living here in the woods and not in the city? What was that thing you used on Sylvia, is it part of your powers just like your language learning skills?” I mentally groaned for a moment and thought that it was just my luck that the person still awake was a chatterbox. “One question at a time please but I am not familiar with the term ‘demigod’ since I was born here, my parents died a while ago and since then I have been living here on my own. And yes both of those are part of my powers” I quickly spun a lie about my origins since that should be easier than explaining why a three year old child was fully capable of living on their own after a war destroyed their village.
“So what are your and your wife’s powers? I wasn’t even aware of there being others like me with powers existing but that is useful to know I suppose, besides you still haven’t answered my first question.” The man thought for a moment but then shrugged and answered.
“My power is that I am a lot stronger and durable than the average person but my wife is the real powerhouse between the two of us. She has a supply of life force that she can use to do all sorts of things. She can mostly use it to heal or damage people and in regards to your first question please return with us to the city, the forest isn’t safe!” He said that last line panicked as if he just remembered, great, he’s not just a chatterbox but also not the fastest. “Please explain what you mean with not safe? While I am aware of multiple beasts living nearby, my current encampment provides suitable protection.”
“There’s a invistia living in these parts!” at that moment Sylvia started to wake and the man rushed to her side to help her up. I also walked up to her and checked her condition. Seeing nothing wrong with her I allowed her to get back up but told her to get up slowly and to lie back down if she felt she needed it.
“Where… where am I? Eric? What… happened?”
“It’s alright honey, we got to a demigod living here who used his powers to heal you” She looked up and me for a moment before coughing blood. I quickly grabbed a piece of cloth to clean her mouth. I muttered to myself about organ damage before speaking up “Ma’am I heard that you could heal right? It seems that you sustained internal wounds that I could not fully heal, would you be capable of healing those on your own?”
“Yes… yes I should be able to heal those on my own once I have rested a little bit thank you for your help mr..?”
“You can call me Jonathan, a pleasure to meet you.”
I led Sylvia inside and put her in my bed so she could rest before returning to Eric to talk about the monster he mentioned.
“You mentioned a creature called an invistia living in these woods? What is it and why should I leave for a single one mr. Eric?”
“Yes! It is not safe here! We were sent to hunt it since it attacked a number of people from a nearby village but it managed to overpower us, you would stand no chance against it!”
“Calm down mr. Eric, what is this for being?”
“a-alright, an invistia is a monster capable of turning itself invisible in addition to having very tough hide which can disrupt divine abilities and finally they have very strong claws. If I had to describe them… have you ever seen a bear?” I nodded and he continued. “Right they look sort of like bears but more slender and a bit smaller. They are also a lot more agile which allows them to even climb trees.” The picture Eric painted was a threatening one but I also heard of some things that could be used. While it had the ability to turn invisible, it probably had no other magic since that would’ve been mentioned. Apart from that it was a normal beast. My 2^nd level water spell could hurt it quite a lot even if the damage wasn’t as much since this spell could in theory pierce through hide with its Mana disrupting capabilities and animals hated pain since they worked more on instincts. I should be very capable of taking them on. As for the talk about divinity and demigods, I assumed that it was a mythological thing in which they saw the ability users as connected to the gods. This did make me curious, could the beings I saw during the visit to the village be actual gods? They did seem very powerful, a lot more powerful than these two, that was for sure.
“I shall take heed to your advice but for now I will stay here, you and your wife are free to stay until she has healed after which I must request you to leave, I prefer being alone.”
“Ah, I really can’t persuade you to leave? You will be in mortal danger.” I shook my head. “Alright, well then, thank you for allowing us to stay here and healing my wife.”
I gave him a nod before walking back into my house and checking up on Sylvia. She fell asleep once again so I left her alone. I grabbed the cloth I used to wipe away her blood earlier and stored it in a box. It might seem a bit weird but she had very interesting powers which would be very interesting to study. I quickly prepared a makeshift bed for me and Eric since it was getting late and showed him to it after which we both went to sleep.