Corpses and Strays

My mundane flesh is numb, while the arcane runs through me like a fistful of razorblades carving deep into my soul. I’m still walking, though I’m not quite sure how, perhaps I got a Skill for it at some point.

“Is there such thing as a ‘walking’ skill?” I ask, messing with the small flames popping from my fingertip.

“Sure,” Eshya replies with a shrug, throwing an armful of alien guts onto the corpse pile, “Skills can be developed for nearly anything. Magic too.”

“Wait, really? Anything” I ask.

“A Skill is just the support device recording your actions and allowing you to repeat them over again.” She explains, “With practice you can get it to make a Skill from pretty much anything. Though it’s more useful for some things more than others.”

I carefully pick up a scythe arm that was torn from one of the flying invaders. The mana friction from just touching it hurts, and makes it difficult to move, but I persist.

“So, a Skill for ‘walking’?”

“Common among those who are given support devices while young.”

“Lifting heavy things?”

“You can develop Skills for lifting technique, and for enhancing your strength with mana. The better Skills would be a blend of the two.”

“Nose picking Skill?”

“I mean… I’ve never heard of it before, but sure. Why not.” She shrugs.

“So, everyone’s Skills are unique?”

“Yes,” She says, dragging most of a corpse with her as we walk back to the corpse piles, “And, with practice you can further develop Skills, improving them as you need.”

“Huh, here I gave Chip such a hard time.” I say, stepping around the red mud pit that used to be a mulcher.

“Chip?”

“The brain chip, the support device.” I explain.

“You named it?”

“Sure. Why not?” I’m about to throw the limb into the pile when a furred townsperson stops me, taking the limb to another pile.

“These parts are useful,” He explains, “Parts that are mana dense, or can be used in crafting should be taken over here.”

“Will do,” I reply.

He nods appreciatively before digging through the corpses and carving out parts that he thinks useful.

The battle has ended and only the beasts in sight are dead, dying, or tied up and caged. Their blood and guts are strewn across the town turned battlefield, joined with the blood and guts of fallen warriors and townsfolk.

Red controls the skies, her and her fliers diving down on the beasts that still roam the streets, catching some, slaughtering others. There’s a measure of cheer from her warriors, their playful banter only occasionally brought low when they try to talk to someone and turn to find empty air.

The guardsmen have retaken the walls, they wonder back and forth with their gaze stuck on the world outside. If another attack comes, we’ll have warning at least.

Beasts that have escaped capture and still wander the streets are the responsibility of the townsfolk to hunt. A task they are well prepared for.

There’s no one crying, yet.

No one drops their weapons, yet.

Not while there is still work to be done.

Before much longer, we’ve finished cleaning the remains that were scattered around the training field. Vii has proven herself the most useful of us, pulling bodies and parts from atop the roofs.

The last students that remain with us slump to the ground and I want so much to join them, but now that everything has calmed, I realize why Red had us fight out here.

We were well outmatched.

We had nothing but training weapons.

We didn’t belong in this fight.

But neither did the children running around with spears twice their height.

While we were never welcomed here, the glares and ire that is directed at the students around us is not something that will burn out. I’m not sure Red can protect us if the entire town wants us dead.

So, instead of resting my tired feet, I turn to my friends.

“What next?” I ask, sucking in mana and using the pain of it to inspire myself onwards.

“Find more corpses?” Vii asks.

“Track down any last beasts?” Eshya suggests.

“Whatever needs to be done.” Nel says, seeming the most unaffected of all of us. I suspect that years of perfect customer service has given her some sort of Skill to keep from looking as tired as she really is.

“We need to keep helping them.” I say, “They’ve got the wounded well in hand, so either we’re moving bodies or looking for beasts.”

“They’re already organised,” Nel says, “We should be careful not to get in their way as we try to help.”

“That’s a good point,” I sigh, “For now let’s check the student barracks. Make sure there aren’t any beasts hidden inside.”

I instantly regret this choice as we gather more glares from the townsfolk misunderstanding our intentions. But either way, the barracks still needs checking.

Inside stinks worse than I remember, but still, it’s almost a relief from the smell of blood, guts, and corpses that fill the outside air. A good half of the students that survived are cowering in their bunks, or in far corners away from the door.

“Any beasts sneak in here?” I ask.

There’s no clear reply, some of the students are whispering to themselves manically, others have glazed eyes as they stare into nowhere, others still are curled up with blankets covering their heads as they shiver and thrash about.

It should be a sight deserving of pity, but either I don’t have the energy to care, or I’ve just grown too callous.

“Should we do something to get them out helping?” Nel asks.

I take a hesitant moment to look over them again. The pitiful, sentient creatures traumatised by horror after horror. Most of my friends back on Earth would be the same if they’d ended up here in my place.

“Leave them.” I say turning my back and heading out the door.

If I was actually powerful, I might do something different. Maybe then I could care. Maybe then I’d help them to get therapy and return to the safety of civilisation. If I was actually powerful I wouldn’t have to spend all my time worrying about my own life instead.

“Are there any beasts inside?” Asks a gruff, grey haired dog-like man that approaches the moment we leave the barracks.

Chip once more tries to give some approximation of a proper species name, which I promptly bury. I really don’t care right now.

“No beasts,” I say, “Do you mind us tagging along with you, we’d like to help out.”

“Don’t slow us down, don’t get in the way, and do everything you’re told. If you can do that, then follow along.” He replies, meeting our eyes one by one, looking for something in us.

Whatever he sees in us he doesn’t seem to want to share, he moves past us to look into the barracks for himself.

“They’re all fracted.” He mutters, spitting on the ground before leading the formation to the next building.

“Fracted?” I ask, feeling the translation a little off.

“Broken,” one of the furred men says, walking by my side. “Name’s Fuegal.

“You don’t have fracted where you come from? People who can’t live properly, sometimes it’s a baby born with a bad leg that doesn’t heal, sometimes it’s just a fracted head, sometimes people just get old.”

He says this all rather casually without ever looking at me, his gaze fixed on each shadow we pass, the eaves under the roofs, and the hollows of every doorway. The spear he wields always at the ready.

“Oh, that’s what you’re talking about.” I grit my teeth and smile politely even though no one’s looking. Every townsperson I’ve seen so far since this battle was started is armed. I assumed that was because the weak, elderly, and infirm were all hidden away somewhere, but now I’m not so sure.

“Everyone has to fight,” I say feeling increasingly unsettled.

“Exactly,” He nods along, “The only people we should protect are those whose weakness is passing. The wounded, and the children.”

“It’s okay to talk?” I asked, looking around for any enemies they might have somehow missed.

“Stirs up the beasts,” He says with a laugh, “It’s not bad, everyone’s just a little too tense for good conversation.”

We head inside of a barracks and start moving through the building, pulling up beds, checking corners, and watching the ceiling. It’s all that much more frightening knowing that a beast could leap out and tear us apart any moment.

“Okay, so what’s with the soldiers here? They’re a rebel army fighting against the Unified States, or something?”

“You don’t know?” He asks, “It’s not really a single ‘rebel army’. It’s more a chaotic alliance formed against the Unified States, and everything else out here trying to kill us, like those insects from today.

“I don’t really know all that much about them either, I guess. They’re strong, and they help people like us, and that’s all that really matters. They came out here a decade back, offered to support us if we joined, and it’s been good times since.”

“These are good times?” I can’t hold myself back, “How fucked were you before?”

“Badly.” He says, rather grim, “The beasts, our neighbours, we were always on the edge of getting wiped out. Now, we send some of our talented young warriors out to learn and grow, and they use our town as a base, protecting us.

“Together we’ll keep growing and spread across this world. Claim it for our children.” He says.

“That we will.”

“For our children.”

“And their children after.”

They’re in strangely good cheer as we move through town, poking through the beds, closets, and chests. We routinely cross with other teams, sometimes corpse collectors that we direct to the places we’ve secured, sometimes other combat teams that warn us of the beasts they’ve encountered.

When we reach the slums our progress slows considerably, the grounds here are wet with waste and are covered in the scattered tracks of the beasts that have come before us. Rather than trying to track them, we sweep through building by building, skipping no corners.

The homes are more cluttered and take more time to search, which is just another added bother.

“Is it really okay to be poking around in people’s stuff?” Vii asks.

“It’s fine,” Fuegal says, “Just don’t take anything, and try not to damage anything either.”

We carefully move through the homes and businesses for long hours, it should be tiring work, but somehow I feel as if I’m recovering instead of wearing myself out.

More magic bullshit, probably.

Shoving around the furniture and checking every corner, I freeze when I hear movement from a wardrobe on the other side of the room. I wave to the others in a panic, while preparing to blast a handful of flames at whatever beast hides within.

I keep the mana flow quick and tight around my hand, ready to push it into a bursting vortex the moment those doors open. Eshya moves ahead of us standing beside the suspicious wardrobe as Nel heads back to grab Fuegal and the others. Vii stands beside me, and from her stance she’s readying a magic of her own.

“Ready,” Fuegal says as he rushes into the room, his spear up and ready, “Open it.”

Eshya moves quick, pulling open the closet doors in a rush and stepping away.

It’s not a beast.

It’s not a child.

It’s not Narnia.

It’s a student. A goat girl.

I can’t recall her from our group, but the quiet weeping, and terrified quivering, makes it clear that she’s one of the students that ran away.

“Get the fuck out of here.” Fuegal says, checking her for anything stolen before shoving her out of the door, “The beasts are gone, get to the training field.”

All the townsfolk glare at her as she escapes and runs the direction of the training field. I’m worried at what waits for her there, but whatever it is, I can’t save her.

As much as I pity her, I do get why the locals hate her so much.

The people who lived in this home went out to fight. They could have been injured, they could be dead. She was safe, stolen away in their home, as they were fighting to protect everyone within the walls.

Why should she be safe, as they fight and die?

I still don’t like it.

I fucking hate it, in fact.

These people live such a desperate lifestyle that they can’t afford compassion. Fuegal all but admitted that they rid themselves of children born deformed, and I’m sure that’s just the beginning of the horrors that these people consider normal.

“The scum that grows in the Unified States,” Fuegal says, with a sad sigh, “This shouldn’t be. I’m sure if she’d been raised here, she would be strong and healthy, but instead… She’s fracted.”

“It’s sad to think that the Unified States were once so strong.” An older man says, “Now, it’s all just a sad corpse of what it once was.”

We continue on to sweep the building, then the next, and the next.

I almost feel recovered from the battle, most of the aching in my body just fading away and the warmth of mana inside me the strongest it’s ever been.

~Mana Form: Grade 1

Current goal: Develop your mana form.

Current mana density: 56 units

For some reason the mana around me has been getting more and more difficult to pull in, while in exchange I don’t need to have ‘mana skin’ active anymore to keep the mana friction at bay.

“A few quick questions,” I say asking Nel, “Does mana do something to help me recover? And also, why is mana getting more difficult to absorb?”

“You’ve reached that point already?” Nel asks, “Yes, strong mana density strengthens your body and mind. It’s good that you’re feeling the effects of it already.

“As to your second question, when your internal mana pressure reaches an equilibrium with the atmospheric mana, it becomes more difficult to pull the mana in. Eventually the mana you can draw from the air will be miniscule.”

“Really? How do I get more mana then?”

“Eat mana dense food, mana potions, pills, or other supplements.” Eshya says.

“Wait, if I’m that far along, does this mean I can start using real weapons now?” I ask, giddily reaching for a spear that’s been left resting at the side of the room.

“No, you don’t.” Vii says, waving one of her wings in front of me.

“Wait, why?”

“It’s dangerous.” She replies, “These things are not stable weapons.”

“Yeah, you should be careful.” Fuegal says, noticing what we’re up to, “You need to get the right Skills to touch these, otherwise the mana in them will fuck you up.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah,” Vii says nodding, “They’re cheap and dirty, but probably effective.”

“Just how mama makes ‘em.” Fuegal says, “but, yeah, don’t touch them until you get the right mana manipulation Skills.”

“You think Red will teach us those Skills?” Nel asks.

“I hope so.” I say, keeping close eye on their weapons, “Trying to kill monsters with blunt sticks is a little much.”

“It’s good for the spirit.” Fuegal says.

“Sure, if your spirit would rather be free from your flesh.

The search continues through the slums, and the day starts to drag on.

“Wait up.” The leader says, as we come across a building that has collapsed. A mincer has cut through the pillars holding the building up.

“We’ll split up,” The leader of our gang says, “Fuegal, you lead the group that stays. Dig through the ruins for any beasts, but be careful.”

“You can trust me,” he says, nodding confidently.

“I’ll be back with support when it can be spared. If you finish your search before then head to the training fields to get directions.” He says before leaving with over a half of the group, leaving us with only three of the original townsfolk warriors.

Fuegal turns to face us, as we now outnumber his people, we’re suddenly a critical part of his manpower.

“Tread carefully and call for support if you come across a beast. We survive by supporting each other, learn quickly and don’t die.”

“Right. Advice to live by.” I reply.

He directs us through the ruins of the building. It’s made easy with how ramshackle the building was, no thick pillars, or brick walls to tear apart. We work together to shift the larger sections of the wall, but most of it we just shift over into the streets.

“Beast!” Vii shouts, sending wind attacks down into the ruins.

Fuegal and his people rush over to support as we look to see what sort of beast it is.

It’s another shelled beast like the one we fought before, but this time it’s half the size and more rabbit-like than dog-like. The flesh I see from between the shell segments looks bloody, and it seems covered in injuries. It was probably inside the building when it collapsed.

Though the injuries don’t seem to affect its strength as it still bounds at us as energetic as anything. Fuegal and his people form up and slowly tread through the ruins as they face it.

The beast is fast though, it bounds to the side, circling around them and instead charges at Eshya, Nel, and I. Vii’s wind strikes bounce off of its shell, stumbling it only a little.

As Fuegal turns to try and flank the beast, Eshya rushes forwards to face it. Her wooden sword clatters loudly against the beast’s shell and throws it aside, sending it rolling in the dirt.

She grunts for the effort and takes a few steps back to steady herself.

The creature quickly returns to its feet, facing us with a loud hiss. New limbs crawl out from within the shell to steady it on the unstable ground. These new limbs look something like vines, leafy and thorned, they dig into the ground.

“What the fuck is that?”

“It doesn’t matter. We just have to kill it.” Eshya replies, readying herself. I grind my teeth, waiting for an opportunity for me to step in. Nel is beside me, her wooden spear raised, ready as I am.

Fuegal charges it from behind and it rushes at us to try and escape.

Eshya charges it, her wooden blade clatters against the armoured beast, but this time it doesn’t get thrown from the hit.

At the moment her sword struck, a vine-like limb wraps around it, clutching tight and pulling Eshya off of her balance.

Unable to recover in time, the beast wraps it’s vine like limbs around her. She stumbles back and falls to the ground, and the creature crawls atop her, its limbs constricting.

“Eshya!” I shout, racing ahead and stirring the mana in my arm to try for the one attack in my arsenal.

Nel runs ahead and beats me to the hit, her wooden spear stabbing into the side of the main body. Still, it doesn’t shift from its spot, holding too tightly to Eshya to be thrown off of her.

Vii swoops in from above, her sharp talons extended. The beast spins up to face her, and she has far too much momentum to stop in time as it snaps upwards.

She screams as the jaws close around her ankle, crunching loudly. It pulls her down using Eshya’s weight, wrapping more of its vines around her too.

By the time I reach them, they’re both tied up and struggling. I can hear their bones cracking under the force of the vine’s constriction, I can’t wait any longer. I’m not waiting to see if this goes the way of hentai.

“Get your filthy, fucking tentacles off of them!”

As I close in, more vines reach out to grab me too, but I don’t mind. Once I’m done they won’t be a problem.

I shove my hand into a gap where the shell is broke and grab tight to the squirming flesh within.

I summon a whirlwind of mana, just like what I use for ‘mana shield’, but this time when the vortex forms, it pops, violently releasing all of the mana outwards. There’s some shift in the state of the mana as it bursts, into roaring flames.

A bright flash of light consumes me, as I release my first real spell.

I feel drained as I suddenly lose the greater portion of my mana, my skin prickles with mana friction, and my hand starts to melt from the heat released by the spell.

I see from up close as the beasts rotting eyes are rolled from their socket by a small vine, as the creature squeals and blisters from within. Loose jaws open to reveal purpled flesh and a fire that bursts out from within.

Nels hard hands wrap around me, pulling me back as my own hand burns and the beast cooks.

Eshya and Vii are immediately released as the vines whip about violently. They roll, and crawl away, looking back at the burning form of the beast.

Fuegal rushes in and thrusts his spear into the burning flesh, his friends joining in, until it the beast finally stops moving.

“Kyra?!” Nel calls my name, putting out the flames that crawl up my arm. “Are you okay? Breath slowly.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just a few burns,” I look down to my charred hand, “Oh, bad burns. Very bad burns.”

“How’s your mana? Are you feeling chills? Mana shock hits quickly.” She says, forcing her hand under my clothes to press against my chest right under my breasts.

“Woah, woah,” I try to back up, but she holds me still as mana floods in from her hand.

“What are you doing?”

She pauses, looking me over again, checking my temperature.

“You’re not in mana shock?” She asks.

“No? What’s mana shock?”

“You can’t use that much mana at once. Your body won’t be able to adjust.”

“Well, that’s not happening to me.” I shrug, “Now, Vii! Eshya! You two better not be dead!”

“We’re alive, Vii’s hurt pretty bad though.”

“Fuck.” I mutter, trying to push myself up, and sliding.

Sliding on the flesh of my burned hand.

“Fuuuck…” it takes a few more moments for the pain to hit, and I lock my jaw closed to try and hold back a scream.

Nel wraps her arms around me and lifts me up.

“Don’t move, I’ve got you.” She says, “Vii?”

“Get them to the healer, he should be in the training fields by now.” Fuegal says to one of his men while maintaining his calm, “Make sure they get treated.”

He nods, lifting up a screaming Vii.

Both her wings and legs have been shattered and even her torso seems twisted.

“You’ll both be okay, the healer here is talented. Just don’t die before you get there.” Fuegal says, cheerfully waving us goodbye.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~Mana Form: Grade 1

Current goal: Develop your mana form.

Current mana density: 12 units

~Fire Magic: Grade 1

Current goal: Develop a Skill for fire manipulation.

-Skill: Flame burst

~Defensive Techniques: Grade 1

Current goal: Develop a Skill for reactive mana skin.

-Skills: Mana skin

~Combat Techniques: Grade 1

Current goal: Develop a Skill for mana infusion.

-Skills: Mana shield.