Chapter 181: Wounded
Grawvor ran into no shortage of ambushers and pursuers along the way, though none of them fared well for the trouble. Bit by bit, he put more distance between himself and Solomon. Night fell, and a few still tried their luck under cover of darkness, but by the small hours, everything had gone quiet — no one could find him at all. Grawvor had already slipped into the mountains, taking shelter in a small cave.
The day had taught him a great deal, forcing him to take humanity seriously at last. He'd come out on top each time, true enough, but most of those hunting him had only been low-tier knights and mages.
A new day was coming, and it promised to be harder still. He opened his eyes. The cave mouth was small, well hidden — he'd sealed it the night before with a boulder, leaving only a few narrow gaps. He peered out through one of them.
The mountainside lay peaceful, the Furo River below flowing quietly, a thin mist rising to lend the mountain a faint air of mystery. He moved carefully — this region remained undeveloped, its terrain untouched, leaving barely a trace of his passage outside. He watched a while, saw nothing stirring, and pushed the boulder aside, climbing out of the cave. He stretched, then made his way down toward the river below.
At the water's edge, he washed his face and drank a few mouthfuls, then pulled rations from his ring and ate. He couldn't help but admire magic's ingenuity — a storage ring, built from some space-stone woven into an array, opening up an interior space many times larger than the ring itself. To goblins, technology this advanced would have seemed like pure myth; even measured against goblin civilization at its height, it would have been impossible. This had to be something developed afterward.
Human civilization had fallen into a dark age following the goblins' destruction — magical history recorded this much. It seemed the fallout from goblin civilization's end had touched humanity too, driving them to abandon mechanical development entirely, turning wholesale toward magic instead. He found himself questioning mechanical civilization's worth for the first time — had that path led the goblins astray? Perhaps if goblins had never pursued it, they'd never have been destroyed at all. Human civilization, meanwhile, had carried on for another ten thousand years since, its magical achievements seemingly no less remarkable than what the goblins had once built.
He had no idea that somewhere in this world, another person understood exactly the kind of mechanical civilization he had in mind, quietly, silently steering humanity's own path forward. A bitter irony, perhaps — though any intelligent life, in the end, might have to pass through this same stage, needing moral restraint to match its cleverness if civilization's flower was ever to bloom rather than wither before it opened.
He'd just finished his rations and was about to move on when he froze. Three enchanted arrows cut through the air toward him — one Anti-Magic Arrow, two Gale Arrows, arranged in a triangular formation. He dropped low, Mars's Shield rising to meet them. The two Gale Arrows were caught, but the Anti-Magic Arrow tore straight through the shield.
Startled, a flicker of understanding about Anti-Magic Arrows crossed his mind, and his hand shot out instinctively, a fiery glow flaring across his palm as he snatched at the arrow. It broke through that glow as well, but by then his fingers had already closed around it — catching it, though not without cost. Blood welled from his fingers where it had cut him.
This was the first wound he'd taken since fleeing. Nothing serious, but his fury flared again all the same. He unleashed Meteor Fire Rain toward the source, a wide swath of fire crashing down from the sky at once.
Just then, he felt a surge of killing intent close in from his left side. Not good — an ambush. A thought flashed through his mind: a thief. He'd let his guard down. In that same instant, an incantation rose again, and he realized he'd walked into a trap, every piece of it falling into place with practiced precision.
No time to think further. He twisted his body just as a long dagger appeared at his side, its blade gleaming with a faint blue light. Fast as he moved, it still grazed him. The moment it cut him, he felt nothing at all — no pain, not even the sense that a wound existed there, the whole area gone completely numb. Something tightened in him. Poisoned steel.
He pointed a finger, and a pillar of fire shot up from the ground directly beneath the thief. A short, choked scream, and the man was reduced to a charred husk. The incantation cut off in the same instant, and the earth itself seemed to shake — boulders the size of millstones came crashing down from the sky like rain, engulfing him in a cloud of dust and debris.
He pointed again, and a doorway of blazing fire tore open before him — a Random Door spell, a form of teleportation only legendary casters could manage. He stumbled forward and vanished through it.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Evan's group made their way toward Furo Mountain at an unhurried pace, mostly because Jenny, though technically a magic apprentice now, capable of casting a handful of zero-tier spells with her wand, remained slow going — even something as simple as Grease required a specific magical plant oil to trigger, and it took her a fair while to manage. Still, she seemed genuinely pleased with her progress.
Xiaoshuang flew overhead, then suddenly cried out and darted toward a particular spot. Evan and the others quickened their pace. They found a scene of devastation ahead — several bodies scattered about, two of them burned to charred husks. Clearly Grawvor's work, though their belongings remained untouched.
Xiaoshuang called out, "Wang, hurry and collect their things — especially the two magic rings. Don't forget, I'm the one who spotted them. I want all the gemstones too."
"Since when do you have any interest in a dead man's belongings?" Evan asked, genuinely surprised.
"Mages always have the good stuff, and I've got no real skill of my own to speak of, so I might as well pick up whatever scraps I can. Didn't you sell a dead man's weapons for over two gold coins last time? If you can do it, why can't I?" Xiaoshuang said. Evan noted, not for the first time, how her darker streak seemed to be growing more pronounced lately — whether it was Dark Xiaoshuang's influence rubbing off, or simply that even a sentient creature couldn't help but be shaped by its surroundings, he couldn't say.
Evan finished gathering everything up and checked the rings — nothing much inside, just two magic crystals, a handful of materials, and some gold coins. He collected the lot.
"Anything good?" Xiaoshuang asked.
"Nothing special. Two low-grade magic crystals and some materials," Evan said.
"That's all? How much would that be worth? Was there gold in there?"
"There was. About a hundred-odd coins."
"Mine. All of it's mine," Xiaoshuang said at once. Evan glanced at her, then pulled out the two rings and tossed them over. "There you go."
Xiaoshuang snatched them out of the air without a word, and the instant she peeked inside, dollar signs practically lit up in her eyes. With a flick of her small hand, the rings vanished. Something occurred to Evan then — whatever storage space Xiaoshuang carried within herself, it clearly wasn't a simple thing, if it could swallow a storage ring whole.
"All right, little miser. What should we do with the two wands and the weapons left over?" Evan asked, amused.
"Those go to the rest of you. One wand for Jessica, one for Jenny. The other weapons are yours," Xiaoshuang said — she clearly understood the value of taking the meat and leaving a little broth for everyone else.
Evan glanced at Jessica, both of them fighting back smiles. Jessica shook her head. "Jenny, go ahead and take both wands. Whatever the case, they're worth a few gold coins each, and being a mage is an expensive business. Don't pass up small opportunities like this."
She had no need of the money herself, her salary far exceeding what these wands were worth, and publishing papers earned her magic points besides, which bought materials money alone couldn't secure.
"Yes, Teacher," Jenny said, taking both wands.
Evan collected the weapons as well. Looking at the bodies scattered across the wilderness — well, he'd taken something of value from them, so the least he could do was see them properly buried. He pointed at the ground, and it began to shake, several fissures opening up to swallow the bodies before closing again.
They continued the pursuit. Grawvor, at the critical moment, had opened his Random Door and escaped just in time. By the time the dust settled and his pursuers cautiously closed in, all trace of their quarry had vanished.
Several miles off, deep in the forest, a doorway of fire tore open, and a figure stumbled through it, staggering — Grawvor, having just narrowly escaped death. He sat down at once, his mental power sealing off the blood vessels near the wound, then gave a small gesture and vanished from sight.
The poison began to flow back out of the wound. Sweat poured down his face as he worked to purge it with his own mental force, never expecting that a single moment's carelessness — assuming a night's passage meant safety, with no one nearby — would land him in an ambush. He understood now, in his bones, just how ruthless human conflict could be. He'd grown too accustomed to comfort — even ten thousand years ago, he'd been something of a favored son among his own kind. And here he was, wounded within a single day, and by people who, in a fair fight, wouldn't have registered as a threat to him at all.
Once the poison had mostly cleared, he drew a short blade from his ring — a spoil of war, the only trophy he'd bothered to take, its fine craftsmanship catching his eye. Some scrap of goblin pride still lingered in him, even if goblins themselves had long since abandoned such pretensions.
He used the blade to carve away the dead flesh around the wound, grunting through the pain as fresh blood welled up, then pulled a vial of alchemical potion from his ring and drank it down. New tissue began to grow with astonishing speed, the wound closing over completely within moments. He couldn't help but marvel at the potion's power — goblin science, advanced as it had been, had never managed anything quite like this.
He was about to drop his invisibility when he froze. Somewhere along the way, a substantial number of people had quietly surrounded him — none of them especially skilled, but when had they arrived?
These pursuers clearly hadn't pinpointed his exact location, though their general sense of it proved close enough. What he didn't realize was that his own grunt of pain a moment ago had given him away. Since the day before, nearly a hundred people had already died at his hands, and the survivors, no fools themselves, had studied his methods carefully beyond simply collecting whatever trophies they could. This morning, when he'd escaped by pure luck, they'd fanned out to search the area at once — and the instant they heard that stray grunt from empty air, they'd known immediately he'd gone invisible.
One by one, they settled into silent concealment of their own, waiting patiently for him to reveal himself.