Chapter 128: The Natives
"Professor, I'm Lucas. This is Bruffer. The two senior students beside you — Alexia on the left, Barbara on the right," Lucas said, offering a respectful bow, the other three following suit.
Evan gave a small smile. "Let's move. No sense lingering here. Everyone, stay sharp."
The group acknowledged him, and Jaymes took point, the rest falling in behind. They'd gone only a short way when Evan's brow furrowed. "Stop. Don't go any further."
Everyone halted. Jessica looked at him, puzzled. "Something's up ahead," Evan said.
Someone? A ripple of alarm passed through the group. In that same instant, an arrow whistled toward Evan out of nowhere. He knocked it aside with his cane, and it fell to the ground — the arrowhead glowing a sickly white, carved, he saw, from bone.
Evan gave a short grunt and pointed a hand, sending a Wind Blade shrieking off toward where the arrow had come from. A roar answered from deep in the trees, and a winged lion burst out, wreathed in yellow light, charging straight at the group. Evan's Wind Blade struck the yellow glow, which rippled violently under the impact.
Emma reacted at once, chanting rapidly, and a great flaming sword swept down to meet the beast head-on. It burst apart with a wet pop, like a punctured balloon.
Jessica cast her own spell in the same breath, summoning her Legend Beast, which shot into the underbrush like a fish darting through water, spraying silver light that stripped leaves and felled trees in its wake. Evan's face lit with genuine delight at the sight of her summon in action.
Several dark-skinned figures emerged from the trees, wearing almost nothing at all, twin horns rising from their heads. Beastmen. The group's minds jumped immediately to the same conclusion — they were in the Barbarian Continent, after all, and beastmen were its native inhabitants.
But Evan caught it at a glance — these were plainly people who resembled the Black people of his old life. The spears in their hands, the horns on their heads, weren't natural growths at all but ornaments worn deliberately. Their faces were painted in bold patterns, bodies almost entirely bare save for a loincloth, skin dark and glistening, their builds on the leaner side.
One man stood among them wearing a headdress of pheasant feathers, unlike the others left bare, a string of miniature skulls hanging around his neck. He held a bone staff, moving through some strange series of gestures, feet stepping through an odd, halting dance, muttering under his breath — clearly casting something. Evan recalled reading about this before: a beastman shaman.
A strange thought crossed Evan's mind. What people called beastmen here was really nothing more than a branch of humanity, elevated in status by the people of Tyrenese purely through their own conceit — nothing more than Black people, dressed up under a different name. At a glance, they might seem set apart from the people of Tyrenese, but different customs hardly made for a different species. At most, they counted as local natives, nothing stranger than that.
The thought passed through his mind in an instant. The two sides were already at war, whatever Evan's private feelings on the matter. He had no wish to make enemies of the local population — not out of any particular kindness, but simply to avoid trouble, given that he was a guest on their soil and they held every advantage of terrain. But since the natives had struck first, there was nothing left to do but fight.
A beastman spear flew at Jessica's Legend Beast. The moment it left the thrower's hand, the shaman raised his head, lifted a hand, and barked out something sharp. A grey mist burst outward faster than the spear itself — an impossibility by any normal reckoning — and the moment the spear touched the mist, it flared with a hazy, sickly white light.
An enhancement technique, Evan realized. Six spears, each wreathed in that pale glow, converged on the Legend Beast at once. Its own white light flared in answer, and with a crack, it knocked the spears aside — though its own glow visibly dimmed from the effort.
The shaman raised his bone staff, and a wash of pale white light rose up to shield the six beastmen within it. The Legend Beast opened its mouth and spat out a beam of silver light, like sword-force made visible, striking the barrier directly. The light rippled like disturbed sand under the blow.
The other students' fireballs, wind blades, and earth spikes poured in on top of it in a flood. The barrier shuddered several times before finally shattering apart. The shaman's face went rigid as the spells crashed down — five of the six beastmen died instantly, the sixth badly wounded, and only the shaman himself remained untouched, a fresh flare of pale light rising around him just in time.
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He let out a scream, the light around him scattering apart as his body vanished — and reappeared twenty cubits away, some blink-like technique of his own. But the moment he materialized, a cord of black smoke lashed around him. Before he could summon anything else, the smoke had already wrapped tight around his body. His head swam, and he collapsed to the ground.
Evan appeared beside him, the black cords still bound around his form. He didn't touch the man — only reached down and picked up the bone staff, carved from a single solid bone of some unknown creature, natural sigils running along its length overlaid with a Universal Sigil, the kind that let a spell fire simply through a surge of mental focus — a common enough technique in wand-crafting. In that sense, at least, this shaman's tradition wasn't so different from the magical systems Evan already knew.
Jessica, meanwhile, was already examining the fallen beastmen, two of whom had been blown apart entirely. She pulled out her notebook, recording observations as she went, even asking students to turn the bodies over so she could get a better look. After a while she said, "Looking at the physical traits, these are simply human. Aside from the dark skin and the painted markings, there's nothing here that sets them apart from any other person. Why call them beastmen at all?"
Evan shook his head at the sight of her. Ever since Jessica had learned her name had appeared in Magic, she'd developed an almost feverish interest in biology, determined to publish a paper of her own, no matter how grim or unpleasant the material got — entirely indifferent to the students' uneasy looks. It seemed, without meaning to, he'd created something of a mad scientist.
Since she'd asked him directly, he answered. "The word 'beastman' is just a slur the people of Tyrenese use for them. The fact that they can intermarry with humans tells you how close they really are to us. Whether they'd call themselves beastmen is another question entirely. They've built genuinely impressive civilizations of their own — what we've run into here is just one small group of local hunters. To see real beastman civilization, you'd have to go south, where hundreds of millions form a great empire called Ejū, with architecture and art worth marveling at. They've developed their own system of magic too, called shamanism, which overlaps with true magic in some ways. I've only read about it — never seen it firsthand. Judging from what just happened, this shaman's at least sixth or seventh tier, though I couldn't say how their own power system is structured."
Jessica let out a breath. "We really do know so little. You don't realize how big the world is until you leave home."
"Thinking that way already speaks well of what you'll accomplish, Miss Jessica. I'll offer my congratulations in advance," Evan said.
"Thank you for the kind words, Professor Wang. The world holds endless mysteries, and mages exist to uncover them. I'm lucky to count myself among them," Jessica said.
Emma had been studying the bone staff. Evan caught her looking and handed it over with a grin. She examined it closely, a thoughtful look crossing her face. "See anything?" Evan asked.
"Nothing remarkable. It's essentially the same as our own wands, just made from unusual material — looks like the leg bone of some magical beast. Judging from the sigils, an earth-aligned one. The craftsmanship differs a bit from ours, but the overall function is close enough," Emma said.
At that, the students crowded in for a look, especially the earth-aligned ones — Sher, Lucas, and Duva, each trying it in turn, casting an earth spike with it. The yellow light carried a faint trace of that pale sickly glow. After trying it, Sher said, "It handles well — better than our own wands, honestly. Though holding a chunk of bone feels a bit strange, given none of us are necromancers."
While they discussed it, the two beastmen on the ground stirred back to consciousness. The shaman, finding himself bound and a chill already sinking into his body, tried to draw on his power only to find it fully sealed off. He stopped struggling and fixed his eyes on Evan instead. The warrior beside him tried to rise, but the pain wracking his body kept him pinned, muttering something under his breath.
A faint light flickered around Evan as he cast a comprehension spell on himself, and the words became clear at once — the man was cursing them.
Seeing what Evan had done, the others cast the same spell on themselves. Hearing the curses, the three teachers exchanged a glance and let it pass, but the students couldn't stomach it. Alexia leveled her wand, chanting quickly, and a flash of red light sealed the man's mouth shut with a Silence charm. He kept trying to curse, but only managed a muffled whine.
Evan spoke to the shaman. "Friend, why attack us without provocation?"
"This is our hunting ground. You trespassed. You should have expected to be attacked," the shaman said.
Evan smiled. "That's your whole reason? We wandered in by accident — we're not looking for trouble with anyone. Tell me who you are. We're here to rescue people. Three days ago, a group like ours arrived near the lake and ran into danger somewhere southwest of it. Did you see anything?"
"We're hunters of the Antifei tribe from nearby, out on a hunt. We saw you come from the great python's territory, carrying the stink of blood on you. Was it killed, or driven off?" the shaman asked.
"You mean the Unicorn Python. If that's the one, we killed it. Now answer me — did anyone see our people three days ago?" Evan said plainly. What was done was done; no reason to hide it now.
"We saw them. There was no clash. They headed southwest, toward the Sacred Lake of Life. If misfortune has found them, it means they offended the spirits there," the shaman said.
Evan nodded. "Here's the deal. We'll heal your man and let you both go, on the condition that you guide us. If not, we'll have no choice but to kill you."
The shaman glanced at the man still alive beside him, his face flushed red, unable to speak. He nodded. "Agreed. But you heal him fully, and you return my staff, and release me."