Chapter 20: Tears - Part 2

ALEX

Call me a freak, but I was having the time of my life at that moment. To stand face to face with creatures like orcs? I've dreamed of something like that since I was a kid. I always wanted to see and research all kinds of monsters. To find out which ones were real and which ones were just made up.

I’ve always known that this will take time. I knew that it would be dangerous. So, I did the only thing that felt right for me. I trained to survive situations like that.

The last two remaining orcs slashed their swords in my direction. I dodged them and grabbed the weapon from the one I had just knocked down with my knee.

Even though I didn't look that strong on the outside, my body was in top shape. Thanks to magic, I could also raise my strength and speed to a level beyond that of a top athlete.

My skills with the sword were not exactly presentable, but I could tell that these orcs also relied on brute strength instead of technique when it came to fighting.

I decided to go for dodging and counter-attacking. I wasn’t keen to try out blocking one of their attacks. And so, I waited for them to go at me again. These stupid beasts would have a better chance of winning if they changed their attack pattern just once, but they tried every time to slash me from the top down.

Before going for the killing blow, I focused on damaging their arms... which worked out too well as I cut them clean off with one hit. These swords were no fluke. I am glad Kayla managed to dodge earlier, ending up with a relatively harmless injury.

By the way, where is Kayla? Since one of the orcs passed out from blood loss and the other was screaming in agony, I had time to look for her. Instead of her, I spotted this horned woman walking terribly slowly away from my position. My eyes followed her direction, only to see Kayla lying on the ground about thirty meters away from me.

I'm glad this purple girl was so focused on looking evil and dramatic. That gave me time to attack her before she reached Kayla.

"You are annoying!" she yelled as I took the first step. I ignored her and ran directly toward her, now with two orc swords in my hands. Like I said, I wasn't really good with weapons, but I also wasn't going to use both of them the way you're supposed to. Instead, I threw a sword when I felt safe to force her to dodge.

Stupid me

Not once did I think she had any justification for acting as cocky as a boss from a video game. When the sword I threw bounced off her as off a stone wall, I felt my heart stop for a moment. My body told me to run away, but my mind resisted. Of course, I had little desire to die, but I couldn't leave Kayla and Nada behind… so I continued charging at her.

I swear I saw her roll her eyes when she finally turned around and faced me. Only when I was about to swing my sword at her, I realized that there was only one option to get out of there.

I had to kill her.

But all my belief to somehow achieve this goal was destroyed when she stopped the sword with her bare hand and crushed it into tiny pieces, leaving me without any weapon.

She tried to kick me, but I dodged her attack with a step backward. I concentrated entirely on maintaining the mana flow that strengthened my physical abilities because, without it, I wouldn't be able to move fast enough to avoid attacks as fast as hers.

I'm glad I spent all those years training. Just because you can move faster and hit harder doesn't mean your eyes and brain are capable of tracking and controlling your own and your opponent's movements.

Change of objective: I want to get her away from Kayla first. Maybe Nada can help if she feels safe enough to leave the tent. But there's no guarantee that the purple girl will follow me if I start running, so I must stay active and try to distract her.

“You are much more capable than I expected. Sorry for underestimating you. What is your name?”

Did this creature want to make small talk? I was open to it. Every second that I could stop moving was bliss. I have no idea how long we've been fighting, but I feel like I just finished running a marathon.

"My name is Alex, and yours?" I realized how difficult it was for me to speak; my lungs were burning, and I started to feel dizzy.

"My name? Kajsa, I'm glad to have met you, Alex."

“Before we continue, Kajsa, I am just too curious. What exactly are you?”

“The humans call us demons, perhaps a rather general term but appropriate.”

“Thank you for the answer, I appreciate it.”

Now, I really had to survive this. I knew that demons existed. Like us witches, we suspect that they are descended from us humans, simply deviating from the regular people. But she is definitely from another world. But does that mean there are more worlds with demons, or do they come from another world from the very beginning?

Have you ever cried from excitement? Because I just felt tears welling up in my eyes and a lump forming in my throat. Nothing felt real anymore.

Despite everything, I readied myself to continue fighting. However, Kajsa and I got distracted by a massive amount of mana that radiated from the position where Kayla was still lying on the ground. It didn’t look like she was preparing any spell.

"What's that piece of paper?" Kajsa asked and started running. I had no idea what she meant, but I had to stop her before she reached Kayla. I poured more mana than before into my legs. I jumped into the path that Kajsa was running so that I bumped my body into her legs, causing us both to painfully crash onto the ground.

I raised my head and tried to determine what was happening with Kayla. First, I spotted Kajsa staring in another direction with her mouth open. I followed her gaze with my eyes and discovered Kayla holding a note in her hand, which was burning in rainbow-colored flames and emitting a form of mana I had never seen or felt before.

Whoever's magic was being cast there, it wasn't Kayla's.

MIKO

How can someone hit so hard? I was getting tired of this pain, but I knew I couldn't get angry. I had to stay focused. If I lost my composure, I would risk hitting Wace or Krystoff with my attacks.

I thought we would slowly overpower her some minutes ago, but her stamina seemed infinite.

"Give me one more minute!" Luna shouted about twenty meters away from us. At that moment, I noticed the mana she was gathering around her. I knew that we magic users could utilize the mana from the world around us to use spells. Unfortunately, our world has almost no mana in its atmosphere, so it was complicated to practice with any external mana.

Luna raised both arms and pointed at the purple figure next to me. Her pose resembled that of an archer aiming at her prey. The grass beneath her began to burn, leaving a pitch-black circle of scorched earth. Flames rose from the circle's edge, surrounding Luna, and some of them began forming into a large bow and arrow of fire in her hands.

While I was enchanted by the beauty of this magic, Wace was trying to keep our enemy occupied. Krystoff retreated and tried to act as a human wall between Luna and us, although I don't think he has a good chance of stopping our opponent if he had to.

"What's your plan?" Wace pulled back beside me and looked at me expectantly.

"What makes you think I have a plan?"

"You just stood there looking around for half a minute. I was hoping you had come up with a plan to immobilize this horned thing."

"I appreciate you believing in me, but I didn't think about a plan for a second."

"And I appreciate your honesty, you dumbass, c'mon, take your sword and try to cut her legs off."

"Wow, what a genius plan, you ugly ass curly head."

"Oh, did I hurt your feelings, little princess? Do you want me to snuggle you to sleep tonight?"

“Don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.”

If this sword had been able to cut her, she should have been sliced into many tiny pieces already. But, her skin or magic could block clean hits without leaving more than a small scratch behind. So, I had to use my secret weapon and turn the shape of my sword into the wet dream of every fourteen-year-old fan of power fantasy stories.

A huge black scythe.

I wasn't sure how strong this attack would be with all the seals holding me back, but if I couldn't hurt her, I would at least create an opening for Wace to try something.

"Whatever you pitiful humans try, you will not win this battle."

My body and mana were ready to go at any moment.

I swung my scythe into the air before me, sending me into a spinning motion. One day, I'll have to ask someone to record this attack. I hope it looks as cool as I imagine it does. Even if this attack doesn’t cut her, it will hit her with a force harder than a truck.

But who would have expected what happened next?

If my attack was a truck, she was a concrete wall several meters thick.

The abrupt end of my movement broke both my wrists, the scythe turned back into a ball of metal, and I slammed again on the ground, which, although covered with grass, felt as hard as stone.

I screamed. I screamed louder than ever before. Tears shot to my eyes when I saw my weirdly bent hands. I was in agony and frustrated. I was not used to being overpowered like this.

"Kajsa." I heard the horned woman whisper as she looked off into the distance. A moment later, the veil that surrounded us disappeared.

She started sprinting towards the dungeon gate. What was going on here? Why was she suddenly on the run? No, she wasn't fleeing. She was trying to save someone. The face she made as she spoke that name expressed sadness and concern. I'm sure she had lifted the veil without even thinking about it.

Someone was outside the dungeon. A companion of this monster was in our world. Where Kayla was. My heart was racing, but I couldn't get up. I just stared at the back of this creature that was rushing to help its friend.

In the corner of my eye, I saw something flying around in the air. It was sparks which were whirled into the air coming from Luna. Her bow glowed brighter than any fire I could remember.

I was unsure if I saw it correctly. It seemed she had created several fire sigil circles full of words in the otherworldly language known from the dungeons hovering in front of her.

The spell's sound when she released it was like a thousand explosions simultaneously. Even though I was so far away from it, I felt a gush of hot air flowing in all directions. While Krystoff jumped to the ground, afraid of the immense power of this attack, Wace just stood there and watched the fire magic blast through the air.

I was convinced that if it hit, our enemy was done for.

I never thought Luna was capable of such magic. Right now, I would say she is as strong as Lilith, which would make her one of the most powerful witches in our country.

But why was she burning? Her clothes are burning! I jumped off the ground and ran to her, but my hands were useless. Wace was aware of that, joined in, yanked my poncho off my body, and used it to snuff out the flames on her.

The burns on her skin didn’t look that bad, nothing that Kayla couldn’t heal easily. I was also sure she would have no problems fixing my hands.

"I'm going back to camp; I need to check on Kayla." And with that, I began to run. Every step hurt, and I avoided looking at my hands because now there was only one thing I should care about.

More than a hundred meters from the place where we had fought, I found the corpse of the horned woman. She had a massive hole in her torso, and the wound still made sounds like a piece of meat on a grill.

Luna´s attack was frightening and reminded me why such spells are forbidden.

Before I continued running to the gate, I caught a glimpse of her face.

She died crying.