Entering the system shop, Lewis almost stumbled from the sudden sense of relief he felt, the burning agony of his broken arm instantly fading the moment he entered the space as if he was never injured in the first place. The sudden serenity was jarring, like sensorial whiplash, but he knew he couldn't dwell on it, wanting to spend as little time as possible in this shop, his body currently both injured and defenseless back in the real world.
Navigating over to the miscellaneous section, a huge window appears, listing thousands of various items. With a mental command, he willed the list to only show health potions, the list automatically recompiling based on his search, showing him several available health potions within his price range. He picked one in the middle, costing 25 TP, preferring to spend a little more on one that would actually work rather than the ones with minor or lesser in the name.
[Common health potion
Recovers denizens vitality and helps accelerate healing. Cannot regrow limbs or fix lethal damage.]
As soon as he received the small vial, he returned back to the real world, drinking the green liquid right away as he felt a flood of warm energy rush through his body, the wound on his arm feeling like it was being stung by a hundred angry bees, making the pain even worse, but it faded after a few seconds, the wound closing before his eyes as he felt the skin and muscle knit back together, the bone fusing back into place.
Holy wow, this health potion thing is crazy powerful. To heal a broken bone in seconds is beyond insane. Millionaires back on earth would have gone crazy for this stuff. He thought, getting back up and brushing himself off. He was well aware that he needed to be careful about this in the future, since defense wasn't exactly his strong suit and he had no other recourse other than buy health potions to recover, something that wouldn't be possible in the middle of battle, not to mention if something like the orc managed to land a direct hit on his head or chest then he would be instantly dead.
He felt his nullfield return to its normal state, recalling the sensation of that strange, destructive energy he could now channel, the power similar to the nullfield, although far more potent, like a more condensed version of whatever his abnormal mana is.
He could feel an almost cloudlike form within him, the origin of his anti-mana, and understood what it was as soon as he sensed it. Unfortunately, he couldn't yet reach deep enough to affect it, but every time he felt his skills pull on it and draw out its power, he felt himself get a little closer to grasping it. It wouldn't be long until he was able to connect with it, and when he did, he would finally be able to begin forming his spiritual trifecta, which would apparently help increase his toughness and regeneration significantly among other things. Until then, he just had to do his best to avoid getting injured. Fortunately, his unravelling strike was beyond his expectation, allowing him to become a true menace to his enemies despite lacking in physical strength.
"That was, amazing."
Lewis whirled around towards the voice, finding the two haggard but alive humans staring at him with wide eyes, the corpses of the much larger orcs laying at his feet. Suddenly, Lewis felt a bit embarrassed, his hand scratching the back of his head as he replied.
"Ah, it was nothing. So are you guys alright? Why were those orcs chasing you anyway?" He asked.
The two men looked at each other with worried expressions before their words came out in a flood.
"We were attacked when hunting goblins near the base. They killed the team leader and captured the others. We ran as fast as we could, but they wouldn't stop following us. They caught Sam when he tried to hide; they must have had some way of tracking our scent or something because we couldn't shake them no matter what. We've been running for what felt like hours; if it weren't for you, we would have been dead. Thank you so much, sir. We owe you our lives."
Lewis raised his hands to try and calm them down, the two men still visibly shaking from the experience, but he was beginning to piece the situation together.
"You say you have a camp, and that the orcs captured the others?" He asked, remembering that the first orc had mentioned killing him because he was too strong while capturing these two.
"That's right, sir Laurance of the royal nights has set up fortifications and is organizing a resistance, some of their scouts found us and they promised to give us the opportunity to level and grow stronger, but those orc attacked us the moment we left the base." One of the men replied, the other nodding along.
A royal knight? And they set up a fortification already? I definitely want to go see them, but I don't think Earth even has royal knights anymore.
"Were are you guys from?" He asked them.
"From the kingdom of Ellerand." "And I'm from Micheline."
Well, that clears that up, their not from Earth at all.
"Ah, you are from another world. Do you mind telling me a bit about your home world?" Lewis couldn't help but ask.
"You are one of them, the otherworlders? Yes, we have heard of this; some back at the base are like you. They say you don't have any vampires or Lycan in your world, only humans. It sounds nice." One of them said, surprising Lewis.
So there are others from Earth at their base, now I definitely need to check it out. Maybe I can even inform Patch of this other group and get them to team up. It's likely safer in numbers if these people have experience dealing with the other races. Although it makes me wonder how many of the alien races are from their planet? All of them, or only the lycan and vampires? Could there be more than just two worlds sharing this tutorial?
"Do you know your way back?" Lewis asked, realizing that he wasn't even sure where he was himself.
"I-I think so." They replied, walking off in the direction they had run from.
Lewis eyed the now mana depleted club one last time, wondering what sort of magical effect the weapon had in the end, although now that he had stripped it away with his nullfield, he would never know. He contemplated taking it for himself, but the thing was far bigger than it should be and too heavy for him, not to mention he isn't actually a physical fighter, but rather uses his powers to inflict damage like a combat mage.
The three of them wondered into the forest, retracing their tracks as Lewis asked them various questions about themselves and their world. Both were essentially peasant farmers back in their world, and lived a fairly though and physical medieval-type lifestyle. The older, Cleaver, had trained in swordsmanship in order to join the army. Pears, the eighteen-year-old old was a hunter for his village.
Lewis asked them about the different races in their world, and they admitted that they never actually saw them with their own eyes, but had heard stories about them. It seemed their world was separated into various kingdoms and continents, with lyan and vampires mostly fighting each other on the central continents while the human lands tried to keep them both at bay. But this is when they revealed some particularly shocking information. Apparently, humans on their world had access to magic before the system.
Only a handful of people were born with the aptitude to learn magic, but those who were either became knights or mages, giving enormous fame and resources to grow stronger to protect humanity, and this sir Laurance was one such person.
"But how does becoming a knight require someone to have the ability to use mana?" Lewis asked in a half whisper as they carefully walked through the woods.
"The royal knights are super human beings, blessed by the gods; they can apparently cut down lycans even in their battle form with a single swing. Of course they have to have magic in their bodies to do so." Cleaver replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which, to him, it was, having grown up in such a world.
,Ah, so they either internalize the mana to become knights or externalize it to project spells and stuff? That makes sense. But by that logic, lycan and vampires are likely some form of magically mutated being then? If that was what happened to a world before the system, then will earth also start developing mutated magical races as well? Thinking about it, hasn't it already begun? Those giant rats and huge birds definitely aren't natural after all.
Eventually, the two men started asking questions about Earth and were shocked to hear about the inventions of the internet and modern transportation, things that likely seemed like magic to them. He did his best to try and explain planes to them, but he honestly wasn't sure how they worked himself and definitely wasn't qualified to explain that sort of thing to what were essentially medieval peasants.
After about an hour, the three of them lapsed back into silence as the tracks began getting more messy, it became clear that they were getting closer, they even found blood on the ground from a past struggle. Pears, having had experience in tracking from his time as a hunter, spotted something hidden behind some bushes and waved at the group to stop before whispering his observation to Lewis.
Using his [Mana detection], Lewis scanned the area, but spotted no mana signatures in the area, so he carefully moved towards it, his fists ready for if another orc jumped out or perhaps another wolf. He had noticed that they had been suspiciously unmolested during their trek through the woods and was expecting an ambush any minute now. What he wasn't expecting, was for a black clad figure to leap out of the bushes with an arrow drawn.
"Freeze!" The dark figure called, three others popping out from around the path, all with weapons drawn.
Lewis was surprised, not having noticed them before they ambushed them, but even more so by the choice of words. After all, freeze was definitely a very earthly thing to say while pointing a weapon at someone, although it's usually a gun, not a bow and arrow.
"Easy, we mean no harm." Lewis replied, quickly raising his hands.
The black clad figure eyed him skeptically but made no move to attack.
"Cleaver, Pears, where have you guys been, we thought you died." Called one of the ambushers, lowering his sword and rushing over to the other two.
"Jerry? We were attacked by a group of orcs. Lewis saved us and helped us get back." Pears called, defusing the entire situation as everyone lowered their weapons.
The black clad figure lowered his bow and let out a deep breath. "Sorry about this, we've been having issues with people going missing and thought you might have something to do with it." The archer explained, giving Lewis a nod.
"No problem, by the way, are you also from Earth?" Lewis asked, the other two already rushing to explain their story about the orc attack.
The archer nodded, a hint of surprise in his eyes as he looked Lewis over.
"So you're also part of this sir Laurance's base then?" He asked, hoping to get an earthlings view on the situation.
"Yeah, guys super strong, managed to set up a small castle for all the people flooding in. This area seems to be a focal point were lots of people spawned in, we already got a few hundred people from both Earth and this other world. We could really do with someone of your level, Laurance is trying to raise elites to protect the base and someone capable of taking on Orcs and surviving will definitely be welcome, especially with people going missing and attacks rising." He replied.
"Come on, lets get you guys back. I'm sure you at least want some food and water after your ordeal. Come on guys, lets relay the information to the others, we might even need to lower the amount of hunting parties for now to avoid losing too many strong fighters if orcs are lurking about." He announced, the entire groups moving together towards the base, Lewis glancing at them all to identify them, but found himself disappointed to find all of them below level 5, with only the black clad archer at level 8.
I wonder how strong this knight guy is compared to me now? Couldn't my unraveling strike beat him easily? It ruined those tough orcs, after all, I don't see how anyone could survive it... Not that I plan to fight the guy, of course, I'm just curious.