*-Rudeus-*

It's been another year and I was now six years old. Aside from the occasional increase in power or an improvement of relationships not much has changed. Well there is one big difference.

I watched as an arrow flew through the air and stuck into a target just a little to far left from the bullseye. Sara grunted as she knocked another arrow and aimed at another target.

Due to the monsters becoming more common and much stronger, Sara's village had been getting attacked more and more, and each time casualties only increased. Philip and I went and talked to the village leader, and not wanting to see more of his people get hurt, he agreed to have them all move to the Fittoa region.

All the families stuck together, but the entirety of the village ended up being more spread out around the region. And it just so happens that Sara and her family were some of the ones stationed in Buena.

Sara has been learning how to use a bow from both Laws and her dad. Laws was better than both of them, but he was usually busy helping with monsters in the forest.

The other Godkin and I offered to help, but Paul being Paul said that he couldn't have kids running around in the forest no matter how strong they may be. I'm pretty sure it might be a matter of pride. Kuroi was still allowed to help though.

I've been busy scouting with the Doru to try and find the reason for the sudden increase in monsters. The result? Almost nothing we could work with.

The only thing I found was traces of Hitogami's mana. It was weird though. I found two different traces, but they were identical to eachother meaning that they both came from Hitogami, but the Hitogamis were different.

Could there be two Hitogamis? Orsted said he broke one and sealed it away, and those statues I saw would've been replicas if not for one being broken. But what about the third guy?

I'll have to think more on this later. For now I'm gonna focus on the topic at hand. With more village members came a need for more food, and since there just so happened to be a mage that could cause an entire field of wheat to be planted, watered, and ready to harvest in less than an hour I've had my hands full for a while.

Raising the wheat fields has helped me grow my life magic skills by a large amount. I had a finer control and didn't have to think of it as much as I used too. Now using life magic was as second nature as space magic to me.

Not only could I use this opportunity to increase my control over my life magic, but by using my space eyes to harvest the fields I was also able to hone my control on space magic as well.

Right now was one of my break days. The people said that mages needed rest to recover mana, but I could hold so much with my condensed mana technique that I could harvest the fields for a week with no break and I'd barely get through half my mana pool.

But if they wanted me to rest I wouldn't complain, but resting didn't mean no teaching.

I sat lazily on my floating new magic staff as if it were a trapeze swing and watched over my students. Sylphie, Phoebe, and Aurora were sculpting with earth magic, and from the way they kept peaking at me and the pose their figurines were making it was pretty obvious who their reference model was. I'm flattered and all, but why did Phoebe have to make the clothes removable? She's gonna corrupt my cinnamon rolls.

Cyrus was practicing his spells. He'd cycle through each one silently and when he messed up on one he'd start all over. Our deal was that whenever one of them could cast every beginner and intermediate level spell in A Textbook to Magic silently, consecutively, and not mess up then I'd teach them Advanced level spells.

Phoebe had made the jump to intermediate and was secretly learning advanced level spells during our private lessons. Something that she's been trying to get me to let Sylphie join us in. We didn't do anything naughty during these lessons, but they were one of the few times we could be real close without anyone looking over our shoulder.

And lastly was Sara. I had set up some targets for everyone to practice their aim. The others used it for their spells, but Sara used it for her archery. She planned to go adventuring once she got older. Some younger adventures were helping protect Sara's village whenever we relocated everyone, and they agreed to come with us. They decided to hang out and help with our monster problem until they got back on the road, which would be whenever Sara turns 12. Her parents agreed with it so long as she wrote letters to them every now and again to show she was okay.

The adventurers names were Suzanne, Timothy, and Mimir. Suzanne was a nice lady with tan skin who tied her hair into a braid that lead to a ponytail. Timothy seemed to be the leader and had long blonde hair that he let fall however it went. Suzanne was constantly bugging him about keeping up with it.

Mimir was a big help around the village. He knew intermediate level healing magic and beginner level detoxification magic, so he helped us a lot at the clinic.

The group decided that once Sara is old enough they'll sign her up to be an adventurer and they'll officially form a party together. They already came up with a name. Counter Arrow.

Sara came up with it and quite frankly, I think it's awesome.

Sara shot another arrow and it flew and hit directly in the center of the bullseye.

"Nice!"

I gave Sara a thumbs up as she looked back at the tree.

"O-oh really? Well if you say so."

I felt a familiar sensation of something tapping my head as Cyrus invited me to a Kumu call.

'How come she's so nice to you, Phoebe, and Sylphie, but so cold to me? It's not fair.'

'That, little brother, is the magic of a tsundere. Phoebe and I probably get special treatment cause we're the ones who saved her and her village before, but I've got no idea why she likes Sylphie so much. Though it's hard not to like Sylphie.'

'Yeah. That's true.'

Cyrus ended the call. I looked back at Sara as she fired another arrow into the bullseye, another smile creeped onto her lips as she did.

"Hey Sara. You wanna learn magic?"

"Magic? I mean I never tried, and if I'm focusing on my bow then I won't really have the time or focus needed for incantations."

"But what if I could teach you magic without using incantations? Like everyone else here is doing."

Sara looked around and focused on Cyrus who was silently cycling through the intermediate fire spells.

I'm pretty sure she was so focused on her own training that she wasn't even paying attention to the others. She only joined us up here last week, but you'd think she would've noticed with how much we use magic.

"If you learnt some silent wind spells I'm sure you'd be able to add some extra 'Oomph' to your arrows. You could even redirect them in the air if a target dodges. Oh! Or if your in the middle of battle and your bow is damaged you could use wind magic to fire your arrows. If you learnt earth magic you could even learn how to make your own. And if you learn fire-"

"Thorn! I think she gets the idea. Careful Sara, if you don't cut him off when he gets like that he'll nerd out for hours."

I looked back down to Sara who was looking at me with stars in her eyes.

"Yes! I'd love to learn magic!"

She flinched and straightened herself out. She cupped her hands behind her back and looked to the side shyly.

"I mean. If you'll teach me."

"Of course. I'm the one who offered to teach you. Gimme a second, I'm gonna go get something from the house."

Sitting on my magic staff sideways I flew away like a witch on a broomstick. I got to my house and went inside. No one was home. Paul and Zenith were both in Roa and Lilia had chosen (read: mom forced her to) take today off to spend time with Kuroi and Pin. I went upstairs and grabbed our magic textbook.

Once I got back to the tree everyone was still doing their own thing. Cyrus had made it to the intermediate earth spells meaning he was almost done with his cycle.

"Alright so a quick rundown on how magic works."

I patted beside me on my staff and Sara gingerly got on it beside me.

I read out to her the important information. What magic is, how mana makes magic, the order of operations, and so on so forth.

"So we'll start with the four easiest spells: Waterball, Fireball, Windball, and Stone Bullet. With this we'll be able to see which areas you perform better in."

We started with Waterball and made our way through stone bullet. Out of the four spells the only spell she got on her first try was Windball. Waterball took her three tries, fireball took five tries, and stone bullet took two tries.

Thankfully the spell only consumed mana when it was actually cast. After the first three spells Sara was almost out of mana so I gave her a mana potion and had her sit h for a bit.

Mana potions were something I learnt I could make recently, and the only reason I could was because I had a near infinite amount of mana.

Basically by compressing enough raw mana into my hand small droplets of liquid mana would form on my figures and would drip like a faucet. By collecting this mana in a small glass bottle I made I could store the mana for later use. If a magician had depleted enough mana, whenever they drank the potion not only would their mana pool be filled again, but their mana pool would increase in size. It wasn't anything drastic but it would allow them to cast two or three more intermediate level spells then they could before.

When we told Roxy about it she said it sounded similar to mana potions made by the magicians guild, but like with most stuff I do fully filling up someone's mana pool and increasing the size of their mana pool was unheard of. At most a mana potion would give a magician enough mana to cast one or two more beginner level spells. Some people just preferred to carry around magic crystals since they basically did the same thing, and were cheaper than the mana potions.

Once she successfully cast all four spells we concluded that she excelled in wind and earth magic, was okay with water magic, and wasn't that good with fire magic.

Now we were getting her to silently cast the spells. For now we focused on Windball and Stone Bullet. She managed to silently cast Windball within the hour, and we were getting ready to be done for the day when she successfully cast Stone Bullet silently.

Instead of verbally praising her as before I decided to use my secret technique. I pat her on her head. She blushed ferociously, but didn't say or do anything to get me to stop.

After that I flew her and Sylphie on my staff to get them both home. Sylphie sat in front of me as I held her to make sure she didn't fall. Behind me Sara held onto my chest as she watched the ground move under us.

Once they were home I met up with Lilia, Phoebe, Cyrus, and Aurora for dinner. The four of us kids had a sleep over in my room as we all brainstormed magic ideas to practice tomorrow. And by that I mean I made a list of things to practice while I helped in the clinic tomorrow. Zenith and Paul would be getting home late tonight, and a monster extermination was scheduled to be taking place early in the morning.

Paul had been training the guardsmen around town to better increase their performance against the monsters. We could've had a North King to help teach the North God style, but he was still traumatized. Just seeing the sky was enough for the guy to have a panic attack. Talk about falling from grace. Am I right? Gods I'm hilarious. I'll tell that one to Kuroi later, I'm sure he'd get a kick out of it.

Anyways, most of the guards have been able to get to intermediate level in sword or water god styles. Paul had already been training them before the monster's increase, but now he was really doubling down on them.

I'd be helping at the clinic since anytime a monster extermination happened like this there were always a lot of injured soldiers. Thankfully out of all of the issues and attacks there were only five casualties. They were a pair of merchants who hadn't been informed of the monster outbreak and were driving their carts at night. Since they hadn't heard of the outbreak the party they hired was B-Rank. The three B-rank adventurers didn't stand a chance against the five terminate boars and sixteen assault wolves in the dark. Kuroi found the monsters eating the food stored in the carts as well as the half eaten corpses of the merchants while he was making some deliveries. I'm not saying that casualties are a good thing. I'm just saying that it's good the number isn't higher.

Since then we made sure that news of the monster outbreak was well spread so that people would hire stronger parties for protection if they went on the road.

For now I just made sure to get everyone's lessons outlined for my absence tomorrow.

*-Sara-*

The monsters had gotten worse, and slowly but surely our forces weren't enough to hold the monsters at bay forever. We sent another request to the capitol for help. I just prayed the the people who helped us before would save us again. And save us they did.

The boy, Rudeus, came with another man and talked to our leader. Our leader then talked to the village council and it was decided that we would move away to the Fittoa region until the monsters were defeated. My family ended up in the same village as Rudeus and his friends, and some of the adventurers who helped us came with us too.

Rudeus was so cool. One of his friends described him as a knight in shining armor, and I couldn't agree more. He showed up right when me and my family were about to die and saved all three of us. And now when things got worse he found a way to just move all of the villagers to another region until the problem was solved.

Once we were through the 'portal' we got a head count and just flew around as he waved his hand and made houses grow out of the ground.

Really he was something else. Making half a village's worth of houses in minutes, and then he uses magic to harvest fields of wheat over and over again for hours on end. I've been told the legend of Perugius more times than I can count, but I still can't believe how strong magic can be.

Then one day he comes over with a man named Laws. Laws was one of Rudeus's friend's dad and apparently he also used a bow. Rudeus brought him over so he could help us improve our archery skills. Laws would come over and give pointers to me and my dad when he had some free time. He was better at using a bow than we were, but he said I was something of a prodigy and was catching up to him really fast.

A couple weeks later Rudeus invited me to come practice my skills with his friends. He brought me over to a tree on a big hill over looking all of Buena village. There I met Phoebe again and learned that not only was she actually a princess, but she was also Rudeus's fiancé. I guess Rudeus calling her Highness wasn't a joke after all. It should've obvious, her dress was so fancy.

Rudeus introduced me to Sylphie, Laws's daughter, and his two little siblings, Aurora and Cyrus.

Something I didn't realize was that when I talk to people I can apparently come off as cold or rude. My mom used to say I acted a lot like my grandma, but I didn't like that cause I hated my grandma. She was always so mean. She'd pop me on my arm or head when I did something she didn't like, which was basically anything I did.

I didn't know I did the same until I said something rude and Sylphie started tearing up. Thankfully Sylphie forgave me when I apologized and she and Phoebe were both helping me get better. I really didn't want to be like my grandma. Maybe if I'm better than her as a kid when I'm old like her I'll have less wrinkles.

I got pretty scared when I saw Sylphie tear up. Earlier on when we just moved here, a bunch of kids from my village hanged up on Sylphie and started calling her a demon. The beating that Rudeus gave them was... harsh. Phoebe said I had nothing to worry about since it was an accident, but I still felt bad about it.

Something Sylphie, Phoebe, and I all bonded over was an interest in Rudeus. Something told me they liked him in a different sense than I did. I made a comment on it once, but all Phoebe said was to give it some time.

I looked up to him the same way the kids in my village used to look up to Perugius. Like a legendary hero. I wanted to be more like him, so to do that I started trying to smile like he does. He smiles all the time. I've never seen him not smile. Sylphie says that one time when they first met she was being bullied, he stopped smiling for a few seconds and beat up some bullies, but when he beat up the kids when I saw him he smiled the whole time.

Phoebe said there was one other time. Apparently during that time he was super angry, but when we asked what it was she said she'd tell us later. Something about us needing to be older before hearing that kind of stuff.

Just yesterday Rudeus taught me magic. He even taught me how to skip the incantation. He's got all these smarts and all this power and your telling me he's two years younger than I am? How?!

Even Timothy can't do chantless magic. Rudeus tried teaching him, but he couldn't do it. He was a bit sad, but Rudeus is teaching him water and earth magic since Timothy can't use fire spells in the forest. If he used anything above a beginner level spell he could set fire to the trees. He's had to stay in the village as backup in case a monster gets out and gets to close to the village.

Right now I was sitting in my front yard practicing my Windball and Earth Bullet. I could cast more than I could yesterday, but whenever I got light headed I drank one of the potions Rudeus gave me. I only had three so I made sure to practice good. I watched him make these yesterday. He held his hand out and the light blue liquid came out of his hand. Was it like sweat? No! It can't be sweat, sweat is nasty, and if anything this is super sweet and tastes good.

"You doing okay Sara? You're looking a little red."

Suzanne walked our gate and put her hand on my head.

"I'm fine!"

"Oh I bet I know what it is. She's probably thinking about Rudy."

Phoebe peaked out from behind Suzanne with a cheeky grin on her face.

"A-am not. W-why would I be thinking of R-Rudeus?! I'm practicing magic right now!"

"Sara."

"Hm?"

"You're a horrible liar."

"Uuuuugh."

Phoebe brought me and Sylphie over to our practice tree. On the way there she told us about how Rudeus wouldn't be here today since he'd be helping at the clinic. Apparently he's the best healer in town. Of course he is. He's Rudeus.

"He's working so hard. Does he ever take breaks?"

"Yeah. Like he was taking a break yesterday remember?"

"That wasn't taking a break. He was teaching us stuff all day!"

"It's a break to Rudy. If Rudy has fun then it's okay!"

"If you say so."

*-Rudeus-*

I should've rested more on my break day.

"Thank you Mister Rudeus!"

"Just be careful and be sure to stay away from the fields."

A child whose name I couldn't remember hopped into her mother's arms as the mom handed me a large copper piece.

"That's the sixth customer we've had and it hasn't even reached midday."

"I've never had so many customers come in this quick. I'm glad to have the two of you here. It's a big help."

Mom thanked both me and Mimir. Already six people had come in for healing. Three adults, one teenager, and two kids. Whatever the monsters were doing it was making the animals restless and drove them into a frenzy. In their panic they've been hurting their caretakers.

The only non animal related injury we had was the girl that just left. She tripped and sprained her ankle while playing tag with her friend. They had ran towards the fields and tripped on a wild snake. She's just lucky she didn't get bit.

"Its a pleasure Miss Zenith. I'm just happy to be of use."

Mom was about to reply when one of the men Paul went out with came in with another soldier on his back.

"Quick bring him back here."

Mom led the man towards the back and motioned for me to follow.

We had been doing things on a rotation system, that way we can rest between healings, but if Mom was calling me back then she must think that it could be bad.

I followed them to the healing room and Mom helped the man lay the injured one on the table.

She removed his shirt and let us look at his injury. He had a large scratch wound across his whole chest. Blood was pouring down his chest as he struggled to breath. Mom nodded to me and I put my hands over the wound. I started to silently use Shine Healing. I added my life eyes eyes for good measure.

It took about five minutes but I had him all patched up by the end. He didn't even have a scar.

"Thank you so much sir Rudeus."

The man reached into his pouch and handed me 4 large coppers.

"This is more than you owe."

"Really? There's no way that was just an intermediate level spell. Hell, I don't even have a scar! My wife is always complimenting my smooth chest. Consider it me paying for the lack of scarring."

"Uh. Sure thing."

Is that really something you should brag about to a child.

The two men left to go back to the forest.

"That was Shine Healing wasn't it?"

"Yes ma'am. I also boosted the effects with my magic eyes. I wanted to heal him quickly since he was losing blood really fast."

Mom smiled and patted my head.

"That's my boy! Though now that we have someone who can cast it I suppose we do need to set a price for advanced level spells."

"Isn't 4 large coppers really cheap though? Roxy said healers were super rare and that they usually get paid a bunch of money to join parties."

"Good eye, but I set the prices so low for three reasons. One, I want to help the people of this village as much as I can, it's my duty as the wife of the village knight. Two, I can't just heal for free, so I have to charge them for the service, and that leads us to the third point. If I charged these people the regular rates for a healer they won't be able to afford it. How many families here aside from ours could pay 5 small silvers for a beginner level healing spell, and still be able to put food on their families plates? Especially with these monster outbreaks. For now I think that 4 large coppers is plenty for an advanced level spell."

"Yes ma'am!"

"As always Miss Zenith is considerate of others."

"Thank you Mimir, and please just call me Zenith."

Things were quiet for about an hour. Once it hit midday Cyrus and Yoko showed up with lunches made by Lilia. They were amazing as always.

Cyrus was very skittish and stayed close to either me or Yoko as he sat at the clinic with us while we ate. It's been a struggle helping him get over his fear of going outside. For the longest time he only stayed at our house, and would only leave if I carried him and jumped to either the Boreas house or Phoebe's house. Even then just being out of the house was enough for his eyes to constantly scan around him and track even the smallest movement.

He says that it's extremely embarrassing, but still clings to me or my friends when we go to the tree. He's still skittish like this, but he's at least getting around town. Even if that's done by clinging to our resident fox demon.

Speaking of Yoko, that was the story we were going with. Whenever anyone in the village asks who they are they'd claim they were half demon half beast folk. The disguise they wore around town was a face that could be both masculine or feminine depending on how you looked at it. They had deathly pale skin matched with piercing blue eyes. Their hair was long but was kept held back in a messy bun. They wear a purple kimono with matching attire. They had a set of white fox ears poking out of their golden blond hair, and behind them was a set of nine fox tails.

People got confused anytime Yoko corrected them and said that they were a "they," and not a "he" or "she." When they asked about it they unfused into two teenagers. One male one female. Both faces hidden behind fox masks.

Yo wore a cyan kimono and had short dirty blond hair. He had small muscles around his arms, but you shouldn't judge his strength by his looks. He is much stronger than he looks.

Ko wore a golden kimono. It hugged her snuggly as to show off her figure. Her hair flowed down her back and was almost as golden as her kimono. Everywhere she walked flowers would bloom.

Yoko claimed that they were the last of their species and that their tribe was killed hundreds of years ago. People were oddly accepting of both them and their story.

Whenever they wanted they could also grow more animalistic features and take the form of a humanoid fox with nine tails. This was their "demon form" as they called it. Their form when they are a human with fox ears and tails is their "beast-folk form." They said they can switch between the two because of their special blood.

Cyrus and Yoko left after we finished lunch.

After that we had another 14 customers come in. 9 of those were regular citizens. The other 5 were soldiers coming for healing.

Once we finished those there was a small gap where we didn't have anyone come in. Then the hunting party returned.

Returned an hour before dinner.

When they said they'd be hunting until night.

...

Shit.

All the soldiers that entered were heavily injured, but they weren't the worst. Not by far.

There were too many so Mom had Mimir and I take all the chairs into the back. Then I increased the size of the room with space magic, and used earth magic to make slabs of stone for everyone to lie down on. It wouldn't be comfortable, but efficiency was the aim of the game here.

We prioritized the patients by how heavy their injuries were. Meaning that I got first pickings. After laying everyone down it was obvious who I'd be spending time on.

"Paul!"

Zenith and I both ran over to Paul's "bed." He was terrible and quite frankly, shouldn't be alive.

He had scratch marks deep enough that you could see his organs through them. Bruises were painting his body purple, and he was hardly breathing. His right arm was sitting beside him. Not attached.

"He... held them... off."

Laws was the one beside him.

I held my hands out and pulled on my strings to start healing. I reached to the corner of the room and called my staff to me. I activated both my life and soul eyes. I needed to make sure whatever I did didn't negatively affect him. I was briefly distracted by a slight glimmer in front of me.

Peaking up I saw a small flame lit in a spot I had seen about 4 years ago. Mom was pregnant.

"I've got him mom."

Zenith looked at me. She already had tears running down her cheeks.

"I'm not letting him die."

"B-but..."

"He's gonna live. I swear it."

It took everything to smile at Zenith. To be fully honest, I don't trust in my healing abilities to be strong enough. But damn it I'm going to try. I have to, for Momma.

"I trust you."

As soon as Mom moved away I put a ring of silence around me and Paul. I held my staff above Paul and it slowly spun in a circle as green light appeared around us. I started using Shine Healing and I boosted it with my life eyes, staff, and Yoko's spirit. Paul's eyes slowly shifted to me.

"Oi, can you hear me?"

"R.. ud... y."

"Can you hear me Paul."

The wounds on Paul's chest and stomach were closing.

Not fast enough.

"I... hear you."

"Listen, no matter what you can't die. You know one of the things I actually do admire about you? You're stubborn. When you set your head on something there's barely anything that can change your mind. So you better pull every stubborn bone in your body. Mom's pregnant. Again. And I'm not about to make her a single mother, so focus on me and keep your breathing steady."

Paul kept looking at me as tears slowly formed in his eyes.

"I'm... gonna die. Aren't I?"

"I said I'm not letting that happen! You're gonna live you hear me! Live damn it!"

The wound on Paul's chest was healed halfway. His stomach's wound had barely closed.

"Why... aren't you... smiling? Gonna miss... me that-"

"Stop! Stop talking. I told her you'd live so don't you dare make me a liar!"

"Crying... isn't... a good... look. For you."

"I... I'm not crying. I'm healing you. Healing you so Momma isn't left alone."

"She won't be... alone... she's got you."

A tear fell on Paul's hand.

"Stop it! Stop sounding like your gonna die. Your supposed to be stubborn so don't go like this! Live god damn you!"

The chest wound stopped closing. It was as if it was stuck. Fuck.

Phoebe, Yoko. I need you both here. Now! Please!

*-Zenith-*

Their wounds were all closing up. A giant green and golden light was bathing the entire room and all of the patients wounds were closing.

"Woah. What's going on?"

Mimir looked around confused.

"I can make a guess. It's Rudy! Isn't he... just... Rudy?"

Looking back towards Rudy and Paul I could see Rudeus's staff spinning so fast it was a blur above Paul's bed. What looked like Yoko's ghost was hovering behind Rudeus with a golden light coming out of its outstretched hands. Rudeus's glasses had fallen and his eyes were shining a blinding golden light. And he was crying.

Paul's wounds were barely closing and he just sadly smiled at Rudeus.

Rudy wasn't smiling. He was crying. He was screaming.

"Rudeus!"

I ran to Rudy but was stopped by a purple barrier. I tried pushing my way through, but I couldn't get passed it. I didn't even move when I heard the door burst open.

Phoebe got through the barrier as if it wasn't there. She was quickly followed by Yoko. Rudy spoke to them quickly, but I couldn't hear because of the barrier. They both nodded and started working on something together. It was like a ball of stars. They would both occasionally put in what I could only assume to be their magic.

Rudeus kept the healing magic up with hands he pulled out from behind his back. He stopped healing with his front right hand. It crumpled and reshaped into vine looking appendages that worked into Paul's system. One went in and surrounded his heart and the others shifted his organs to where they were supposed to go. Two more surrounded his lungs.

From the way they were moving it looked like they were working his organs for him. After ten minutes cracks started appearing near Rudeus's eyes. Another ten minutes and those cracks spread around his face like a broken doll. The ball that Phoebe and Yoko were working on was now the shape of an apple. Both were sweating.

An hour later and Rudeus has drank 4 of his mana potion, Yoko drank 2, and Phoebe drank 7. Paul was getting worse. His skin was pale and the only thing keeping him alive was Rudeus's pumping his heart and working his lungs. Whenever Rudeus started healing him something had stopped Paul's bleeding.

By now all the patients had been healed. Now we were all anxiously waiting as they tried to save Paul. When the door burst open again barely anyone looked. I only looked away when a hand was put on my shoulder.

Kuroi was battered, bruised, and cut all over. But in this aura he was healing.

"He's got... Thorn, Phoebe, and Yoko... helping him. He'll live."

"His condition isn't getting better. I want to believe you, but it doesn't seem possible."

Kuroi covered me in his wing as more time passed. No one left. We all waited and watched as Paul was healed.

I lost track of time, but eventually Phoebe and Yoko backed away from the orb they made. It was much larger now. It was now 7 feet in diameter.

Rudeus took a deep breath, grabbing Paul, and then shoved his body into the sphere. He backed away and then grabbed Paul's arm and did the same.

Rudeus fell back and the barrier disappeared.

"Rudy!"

I forward and knelt down. He shakily smiled and brought his hand up.

"He's... gonna live... I need... sleep."

Rudy fell into me and fell asleep.

I looked over and both Yoko and Phoebe had cracks on them like Thorn did. As they drank more mana potions those cracks disappeared.

"He'll really be okay?"

"Yeah. He's gonna have a magic body like Thorn and I now, so he's also gonna be stronger. Hopefully he uses that strength to not end up like this again. Even if he does though one or two of these mana potions will fix him right up."

True to their words not even ten minutes later the sphere fell apart and Paul fell to the floor. All in one piece. Laws, Yoko, Kuroi, and I all went back to my house. Laws carried Paul on his back as he was still very unsteady, Yoko carried Phoebe, and I carried Rudy. Aurora and Sylphie were both worried about Rudy when they saw he was unconscious, but I assured them that he'd be okay. Paul was quick to get off of Laws's back and into a chair. Sylphie and Rose both held onto Laws in a family hug for a while.

When they heard that the hunting party was back they planned to wait on Laws, but after 3 hours they came to wait here. Pin was here as well. Rudy held that healing spell for 4 hours. It now made sense why it was so dark out. It was night.

I'm just glad my family is safe.

"Mmm. So heavy."

I looked down and Rudy was weakly smiling in my arms.

"I feel like a rock."

"You certainly don't weigh as much as one. You were right. He's safe."

"Hehe. Yeah. Congrats Momma."

"Why are you congratulating me? You should be the one being congratulated."

"Nah, not that. I mean the pregnancy. Congrats."

""Huh?!""

We all gasped and looked at Rudeus for an explanation, but he was already asleep again.

This has been a long day.

After laying Rudeus in his bed I went back downstairs. Laws and his family had gone back home already, so it was just Phoebe, Aurora, Cyrus, Pin, Lilia, Kuroi, and Paul downstairs.

"Now you two need to go rest. It's way past your bedtime."

""Yes ma'am.""

Both Cyrus and Aurora went upstairs.

As soon as I sat beside him Paul grabbed me into a hug.

"Another baby! Let's go!"

I happily wrapped Paul into a hug of my own.

"And you're alive! I was so scared."

I could feel my eyes watering as I held Paul tighter.

"Yeah. I was scared for a bit when Rudy wasn't smiling, but I shouldn't have doubted him. He's certainly more reliable than me! Guess he got that from you."

"Thorn has always been reliable. He's also stubborn. No matter what happens he does everything he can to get the outcome he wants, and since it's Thorn, that outcome is usually not what he wants, but what others want."

"Thorn will be Thorn."

"I don't want to bring it up, but we can't ignore it." I sat up straight in my chair. "What injured the two of you so bad? I can't imagine it was a terminate boar or assault wolf."

Kuroi reached into his coat and pulled out a thick slab of a crystal. It was shaped like a sheet of paper, but was 2 inches thick.

"It was some kind of mutated terminate boar. It's skin was made of this. It's a magic crystal. Paul and I fought it to let the others escape, and after Paul was injured and dragged away I fought it alone. This is the only bit of damage I could do to the thing."

"It's skin was made of magic crystal? It sounds like a Crystaline monster."

"A what?"

Kuroi and Phoebe looked at me. I picked up the slab of crystal. It felt light as a feather.

"Crystaline monsters are monsters whose magic crystals grow so large that it mutates the creature. Their called Crystaline monsters because you can see parts on their body where small spikes stab through the skin, but for it to fully cover a creature like you said is unprecedented. The strongest Crystaline monster on record, according to the Adventures' Guild, was a basilisk on the demon continent. It's mana crystal had grown to form a layer of crystal over its fangs and eyes. It took 5 A-rank parties and 3 S-Rank parties as well as the help of various outside sources to band together to take it down. Most of those parties had to be called in from outside the continent. If this is covering the whole monster..."

I didn't need to finish my sentence. We knew how strong Kuroi was, and if this was all he could do we were gonna need help.

"If the rest of the Godkin and I fight it I think we can win."

"Kuroi! My Rudy can't-"

"I say that for two reasons. Hear me out first. One, Thorn is stronger than I am. He undermines himself and makes it look like we're close, but the gap between us is huge. If worse comes to worse we have him completely destroy the forest with the hundreds of ways he could wipe it off a map, and then we use life magic to heal the forest. I can't use it myself, but I can help them fly around so they don't waste mana on flying around. Two, all of us have a way of attacking from range. Even Raion, and he mainly uses a sword. It's a magic sword, but it's still a sword. We just need to stay out of its range and we'll be fine."

"But Crystaline monsters can use magic. On record they've been noted to use a variety of spells including Advanced rank spells. What if this one can use something stronger?"

"Like I said. We stay out of its range. With Thorn's crows and Doru we can snipe the monster from the safely of the village. It wouldn't even know where we were attacking from. Look I don't think we have much time. That thing managed to get past both Laws and I and nearly wiped everyone out in one shot. It knew we were there. We were its prey. If it could hunt us that easily when we were actively searching for monsters how well will it do when we're stuck in our homes?"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Zenith."

"You can stay safe? You promise."

Kuroi got up, put his hand over his heart, and bowed.

"I swear it on my life."

"Alright."

I hated it. I didn't want Rudy to go out and fight, but... I couldn't help but think of what would happen if that thing attacked during the winter. What if our guard was down? I saw what it did to Paul. I don't know what I'd do if that happened to Rudy.

*-Rudeus-*

I held my staff in my left hands and a small bag in my back right hand. I kept my front right hand free in case I needed to use it in an emergency. Yoko stood beside me in his demon form.

Phoebe was creating some extra Kumu that floated around her. She was holding Yuki as a scythe.

Kuroi was holding a Warhammer. He made it last night since the Crystaline would be extra resistant to slash attacks.

Pin stood beside Kuroi as she did some stretches.

Raion did some practice swings with Kajakut as Eris watched us with sparkling eyes.

"Be careful okay? Please don't come back like Paul did."

Mom reached done and hugged me.

"I'll be fine Momma. I've got this!"

I smiled wide and gave mom a thumbs up. She gave me a sigh and back off.

"Thorn. Here I finished it last week. I was saving it for later, but like everything I seem to make, I've gotta give it to you early to make sure nothing bad happens to you."

Phoebe came up and handed me an apple shaped orb. It was a mixture of a bunch of different colors. Once I grabbed it it melted and surrounded my body. It matched my figure and puffed out into a clown outfit.

"You remade the Kumu armor?"

"Yep. Now it's the evolved Akumu armor. With Yoko's help I was able to upgrade the all the Akumu that make up the armor."

Phoebe looked proud as she explained what it was.

"It's way more comfortable than before. I can feel how strong it is too."

Paul fell out of the sky and landed on his feet in front of the gate.

"Alright. All the villagers have been told to stay in their homes. Let me tell ya. This "magic body" is awesome. I could jump from house to house!"

Paul seemed to be happy with his new body. He better, Phoebe, Yoko, and I drained our mana pools multiple times to keep him alive long enough to get him in it.

We said our goodbyes and seated off towards the forest. Before we even got out the gate I sent out a bunch of crows and Doru to watch through my glasses.

We made it to the outside of the forest and my searches were coming up with nothing. As in actually nothing.

"I'm not seeing anything. Not a single animal or monster. Something's wrong."

We all put are guards up and walked into the forest. We walked through the forest and kept our ears open. There wasn't anything making sound except our own footsteps. We wandered around for an hour. Nothing happened. Another hour, nothing happened. Another hour, nothing happened.

We decided to take a break. We'd been wandering for three hours and while we kept our guard up we needed rest. Phoebe, Pin, and I were able to fully recover ourselves by drinking mana potions. Raion and Kuroi both ate lunches prepared by Lilia. I set up crows and Doru around us. Phoebe also set some Kumu on a rotation around us.

"How come you just have to drink a single potion, but we need to eat? How's that fair?"

"Magic bodies baby. I offered to make you one."

"Yeah yeah. Honestly gotta give my props to Lilia. This food is better than most of the chefs at the Boreas house."

"Her cooking's the best."

"Oh you might be biased. Little lover bird."

"Whatd you just- you know what just finish your food."

"I'm almost do-"

Raion went flying through the trees before he could finish his sentence. Standing behind him was a towering Terminate Boar. It was atleast 19 feet tall. It's skin was glistening as light touched it. It brought its hand back from its punch and rested it at its side.

Kuroi pulled his hammer back and jumped forward.

"Its him! Don't hold back!"

We had so many things looking for this thing! How'd it sneak up on us?!

Kuroi slammed his hammer into the monster as it brought its arms up to defend itself.

I brought my hand up and slammed it down. The Terminate Boar was raised up and then slammed into the ground. I held it down as Phoebe and Kuroi jumped towards it and made attacks with their weapons. Kuroi's attack made large cracks spread across its skin, but Phoebe's attack barely scratched it.

I started struggling to hold it as it started to slowly get up.

"Oi tall, bright, and ugly! Don't you know sneak attacks are for cowards!"

A red blur shot past me and I sensed a bunch of focused gravity magic fly by as Raion swung at the Boar with his sword. It jammed into the beasts chest and caused more cracks to spread along its chest. Raion tore Kajakut out of its chest and a large hole was carved into the Boar's chest.

The Boar started making some kind of wheezing sound. It was like someone trying to laugh but they were out of breath. Out of the hole a giant hand grabbed onto the skin of the Boar. A regular Terminate Boar jumped forward and tried to climb out. The Crystaline grabbed the Termainate Boar by the head and twisted until it popped off. It tossed the head and body back into the hole and started walking towards us again.

"What... the fuck."

"Is that where the other Terminate Boars went? Is it eating them?!"

The Crystaline laughed in a shrill voice and disappeared. Then a huge set of teeth raised up around me, and next thing I now I'm surrounded by hundreds of Terminate Boars, thousands of Assault Wolves, and another thousands of Treants.

"Oh for the love of..."

They all ignored me and tried climbing up. They were climbing the corpses of other monsters. At the top I could barely see a light.

"Welp. Guess it's climbin' time."

I made myself lighter with space magic and jumped up. As I got closer I could see my friends fighting as the scene constantly blurred. It must've been the Crystaline Boar moving around.

I was about halfway up when something grabbed onto my leg. I looked down and saw I was being held by the extended branches of a treant. It's leaves were made of crystals.

"Please don't throw me."

The treant paused as if it understood me, but then it whipped its branches and I shot towards the floor. Being lighter did not help. Thankfully the Akumu armor did.

"Ow. That sucked."

I tried again but got a similar result, this time thrown down by a Terminate Boar with a crystal tongue. I tried a bunch more times, but each and every time one of the monsters near the halfway point would stop me.

What's worse was every time I fell down it felt like my magic was being drained, and due to the fact my body was made of magic it was a very painful feeling.

"You know what, it's been a while since I killed a monster anyway."

If I couldn't join 'em, I'll just beat 'em.

*-Raion-*

The head of the Crystaline lurched out from the ground and swallowed Thorn whole. I got into a stance with Kajakut.

Pin and Kuroi flew upwards, and Phoebe...

"Give him back you @!?&!!!"

Phoebe raged and sent a barrage of attacks at the monster. All the while hurling insults and curses at it. Even sailors would wince at some of what she was saying.

I jumped up and propelled myself with gravity magic. I tried slicing the creature again, but it brought its hand up and a wall of stone grew in front of it. I cut through it easily, but then the Crystaline punched me back through the forest. Again.

Fuck that's annoying. I mean it doesn't even hurt, it's just that these branches tickle, and it's not exactly a pleasant feeling.

I used gravity magic to fly back.

"Did it get bigger?!"

It wasn't by much but if you looked at it real good it looked slightly taller.

"Oh great. Now what?"

We kept fighting the Crystaline. Pin nailed down its shadow to make openings for us, but eventually it got even bigger and the amount of time it stayed frozen got shorter and shorter. It was already less than a second before. Now the nails basically did nothing.

Phoebe and Kuroi were doing pretty good though, but I guess that's supposed to be expected from the third and second strongest of us all. Especially when they're both pissed at the fact their friend was eaten.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty pissed about it myself. But those two had a deeper friendship with Thorn than I did. Their neighbors, Phoebe's his fiancé, and Thorn played matchmaker for Lilia and Kuroi. He gave me an extremely powerful sword that I am really grateful for, but I don't have the same connection with him that they do. I'm mad, yes, but I can't match their fury.

Kuroi's black blades that he launched into the Crystaline were very effective. He'd launch them into its skin, and then he'd dismiss the spell. Phoebe would then jam her scythe into the holes made by the swords and would pull up to tear off some of the skin. It was slow, but we were making progress. Then something hit me.

How long has it been since I used my magic eyes? Or just Blood magic in general.

I chugged down a mana potion and stabbed my sword into the ground. I put my hands on both of the sharp sides of the blade and slid my hands down. It was a little painful but I'd had worse.

I now picked up my blood covered blade and used the gravity magic to hold down the Crystaline. I used my blood to make a spring on the ground and jumped into the air. I shoved my sword into its back, and then I spread out my blood underneath its skin. Once it covered as much area as I could manage I started jumping upwards while using space magic to push the Boar down.

With the combined forces of my insane strength and the gravity magic cracks quickly spread on its back as my blood tried to pull its back off. Then it got smaller. Then a bit smaller.

"Huh? It's shrinking!"

"It's what?!"

It got smaller and smaller until it shrunk to the size of a regular terminate boar. It summoned two stone pillars tool force itself up, and started to try and run away, but I yanked my sword out it's back and slammed the flat of the blade into its leg, and the leg crumbled immediately.

It fell backwards trying to squish me, but I dodged easily enough.

A regular hand shot up out of the hole in its stomach and Thorn jumped out. He was absolutely doused in blood and... leaves? Questions for later.

"Finally. Now that that's done with..." Thorn looked around then looked down. "Did it shrink?"

The Crystaline roared and grabbed Thorn with all four of its hands. A slimy substance slowly oozed out of the Crystaline's fingers.

"This armor is great."

The slime surrounded the Boar's hands and with the sound of shattered glass absorbed its hands.

"Alright this was fun and all, but I wanna go home."

Thorn raised his hand into the sky and Yoko appeared behind him. Rain started pouring down as thunder started roaring above us.

Thorn made the action of bringing his hand down and a bolt of lightning came down and exploded the head of the Crystaline Boar.

"Now that that's over and done with, who wants-"

Thorn stopped his sentence short as he looked at something behind us. You've gotta be kidding me.

Walking through the trees was at least 15 large Crystaline Boars, and surrounding them was about 50 Crystaline Wolves.

Thorn counted the numbers and looked at us.

"Nuke the forest?"

""Nuke the forest.""

We all flew back to Thorn's house after I pulled the blood off him. Waiting at the door was Paul, Zenith, Sylphie, and Sara. Lilia was further into the house placing a tray of snacks on the table.

"Welcome back! You all don't look to injured, did it go well?"

"Nope. We're nuking the forest."

Thorn and Kuroi raised their staffs before the others could respond. A translucent grey and purple barrier was half formed around the forest. The top half didn't form until three huge meteors flew down down space and shattered into a bunch of tiny pieces. Once it was all in the gigantic dome it fully formed the barrier. Thorn snapped his fingers and some screens appeared in the air. It let us see all the Crystaline monsters that were walking in the direction of the village.

"The barrier won't let them use their little disappearing trick. This'll get 'em."

Each time a meteorite piece hit the ground it would explode.

"I didn't know those exploded. I thought it was supposed to just be an impact."

"It is normally just an impact. I just imprinted the Advanced level fire spell Exodus Flame on them before they hit the ground."

"That's terrifying Thorn."

"If I'm marrying the Goddess of Fear then shouldn't I be at least a little terrifying?"

Thorn looked at me questioningly as Phoebe hugged his arm.

"Well I think it's endearing."

We watched the fireworks until the entire forest was reduced to nothing but empty craters. Lucky for us we didn't have to question if the Crystaline monsters made it out somehow. All the bodies were still in tact if not a little broken.

A total of 16 Crystaline Boars and 58 Crystaline Wolves.

And now there's only one thing left to do. Thorn summed it up pretty well himself actually.

"Man, I feel bad for the guy that has to fix that mess... Yeah I know! Can you really blame me for having some self pity?"

Baboom! And chapter 14 comes to an explosive ending. Had a bunch of fun writing this chapter. In one of the early drafts for this chapter I actually wrote Rudeus meeting the Crystaline Boar after evacuating Sara's village. I'm a bit sad I rewrote that part and it got cut, I was getting goosebumps writing that part. This was almost going to be a horror chapter. A beast that can disappear and reappear without making a noise and could easily kill a regular person in less than a second. We finally let the characters have some rest and relaxation next chapter. See you guys then!