Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Alice was awoken from her light nap with a loud bang.

Huh? Alice, still groggy, turned around, trying to figure out what was going on. Her head was still hazy, because she had just woken up.The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

“What’s going on?” Asked Alice, trying to make sense of the sudden noise in the world around her. She could suddenly hear multiple people yelling, and some part of her brain was urgently screaming at her. Alice tried to finish waking up, rubbing absently at her eyes, before she turned to Milo.

“I don’t know, but I think something bad is happening,” said Milo, frowning. “Come on, let’s get out of the wagon.”

Alice didn’t need to be urged more – she was already beginning to have a bad feeling about the situation. Milo quickly climbed out of the back of the wagon, before taking a few more steps forward and looking around. Alice gave her head a quick shake to dispel the last few remnants of muddle-headed sleepiness, before she also started getting ready to move out of the back of the wagon.

As she was doing so, she heard a strange whistling sound. Milo suddenly shot a mana tendril to the side as he turned in a certain direction, and a hint of panic surfaced in his expression as an arrow hovered a few meters away from him. Alice suddenly froze. Milo’s expression turned pale, but he didn’t seem wounded yet.

Oh, shi-

The sound of metal clashing against metal sounded in the distance moments later. The sound of men and women cursing and yelling started coming from the direction of one of the other wagons. By this point, Alice was starting to panic.

We’re being attacked. Alice had heard of the Sigmusi empire attacking people and the Society of Starry Eyes hurting people, but she hadn’t seen any of it firsthand. In her mind, violence between humans was still something that only dimly registered as a possibility. She had grown up in a first world country where violence was rare, after all.

Now, it seemed she would see firsthand exactly what it was like when humans tried to kill each other.

The four guards that had been sitting in the carriage with her burst into motion, grabbing their weapons and shields. They didn’t have time to grab their armor – the attack had come too suddenly. Quickly, they leapt out of the carriage and began scanning their surroundings, warily moving towards the wagon being attacked.

Alice’s heart was beating so heavily that it felt like it might burst out of her chest, Alice scrambled to get out of the carriage, nearly fumbling and falling as she tried to get down. Her mana was wildly roiling about, as she desperately tried to find any places where arrows might catch her unprepared. She had only trained for two weeks under Illa, and only with beans that she knew wouldn’t hurt her in a controlled environment. This was different.

This was real.

A group of six men and two women wielding spears and swords charged out of the trees and towards Alice and Milo. The guards stopped moving towards the other wagon and began quickly moving in front of Milo, preparing to meet the charge of the attackers.

And, more importantly, leaving Alice stranded several meters away from the rest of the group. One of the guards seemed to notice she was there, but it was too late.

Another arrow flew towards Alice. Luckily, Alice’s brain finally kicked into gear, and with a movement she had rehearsed over and over again under Illa’s instruction, Alice shot out a mana tendril. The arrow halted the moment it got within five meters of her, and Alice felt a huge amount of mana drain out of her seed.

She had stopped it too far away. Mages could only easily influence objects one meter away from them if they had no Perks to extend that range, and she had gone way above her range in her panic.

Before she had time to kick herself mentally for screwing up, three of the charging attackers broke away from the charge towards Milo’s group and suddenly sped towards Alice at speeds an Olympic athlete could never hope to match. They immediately spread out to surround her. The one in the lead, a man with a scar on his face and a long spear, stabbed towards her chest while the two [Swordsmen] hacked towards her.

“Give me {Patient’s Consent},” said the woman, and she wrapped Alice in a bear hug. One of her hands seized Alice’s wrist, forming skin contact, and the woman lifted Alice up and then sprinted towards Milo’s group. At the same time, Alice felt a flicker of energy digging into her body that felt familiar.

Organic Mage. Alice immediately focused on letting the woman’s energy into her, praying for a miracle to save her from her death. A moment later, she felt the massive hole in her stomach rapidly begin to close. The hole in her shoulder and the cut in her arm were left unaddressed, but the blackness eating away at the edge of her vision started to clear up.

Seconds later, the wound had stopped bleeding, and the woman roughly set Alice down on the ground. Then, she leapt towards the dying [Guard], while the other [Guards] moved to shield both her and Alice.

One of the [Guards], seeing an opportunity, shuffled over and grabbed the dead [Spearman]’s weapon. He hefted it for a moment, and then threw it into the woods. Alice watched as it swerved in midair, seemingly correcting its aim, trajectory, or both. Alice saw an arrow fly out of the woods at almost the same time, speeding towards the [Guard]. A mana tendril from Milo stopped the arrow in its tracks, and a moment later, Alice heard a gurgled scream from the woods. The remaining three attackers who had been on Milo’s group began to disengage, pulling back. Seeing an opportunity, one of the [Guards] quickly strode over to the swordsman, hefted the pommel of his sword, and slammed it into the man’s head. The man went out like a light, unconscious.

The other guards tried to kill the fleeing enemies, but whatever Perk they were using to speed up let them quickly evade their pursuers and disappear back into the woods.

“How are the other wagons doing?” Asked Milo, turning to the woman.

“Decent. Fuckers mounted a goddam ballista in the middle of the woods and tried to kill off Illa early on in the attack, but she plowed through the damn thing and then killed the people manning it. A few high level [Assassins] popped out afterwards to try to kill her while she was distracted, but she dealt with them. After that, she managed to stabilize most of the other wagons – this one was the last area. Any dead?”

The [Guards] looked at the corpse of the guard who had killed one of the people attacking Alice earlier. “One dead, two wounded.”

“I’m almost out of mana, so I’m not healing it if it isn’t life-threatening,” said the woman.

“Her stomach okay?” Asked Milo, gesturing towards Alice.

“Fine for now. Lethal if it isn’t properly healed in the next few hours, but I at least roughly patched it up. It’ll hold for now if she doesn’t move too much. Just need to deal with the blood loss and the bits of stomach acid mixed into her other organs, because I didn’t have time to finish dealing with it,” said the woman.

Milo and the [Guards] cautiously scanned the surroundings again, before Milo nodded in relief. “I think we’re fine for now. Go check on the other wagons again.”

“Got it. Pull back towards the center wagon – Illa wants to regroup, since even though we’re all pretty close this attack somehow slipped the [Shadow Guards] on the perimeter and got the drop on us. How did they even know we were coming here?” The woman said, with a frown.

“Beats me. We’ll need to talk with Illa more,” said Milo, frowning. Finally, the woman departed from the group. Milo turned back towards Alice, who was lying on the ground. Every breath was painful, but she was alive. Her leg, arm, and shoulder were all sources of incredible pain, though – it felt like someone had lit half of her body on fire at this point. Milo leaned over her.

“How are you holding up? Here, let’s get you cleaned up a little,” said Milo.

Alice’s mind turned back towards the Spearman she had killed, and she felt sick to her stomach. She raised a quivering hand towards her face, and when she touched her cheek, her hand came away covered in red.

There was still blood on her.

Finally, Alice turned away from Milo and vomited onto the grass. Then, as a result of the pain, the fact that she had killed someone, her emotions running wild after the encounter, or some combination of the three, she passed out.