The turn of a new day led their small group back into the forest. With Morgan in the lead and under the directions of Iskandar they were able to make it back to the goblin camp in under two hours. As it turns out, Wren was underestimating their ability to get lost, and had trapped the group deep into the woods.
There wasn't much left by the time they arrived, just a few half gnawed, half burnt skeletons that littered the space.
Morgan looked over the results of his handiwork, conflicted. On the one hand he'd killed a bunch of sadistic, little green savages, but on the other, he'd burnt down a growing community of semi-sentient creatures who had their own language and culture.
Either way he considered it, the whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth, or at least it did until he looked at the three mindless people tagging along behind their group.
The goblins deserved what was coming to them.
So, he'd proceeded to rip his key chain – still with the golden pin attached to it – out of the berserk goblin's rotting skull, which wasn't his proudest moment.
He felt dirty, not just because of the dried blood covering his entire body, but because of what he'd done.
With nothing better to do, he wandered up river from the goblin camp and laid face down in the shallow brook. It took him nearly twenty minutes to wash away the feeling of filth that clung to him like a wet blanket.
As he made his way back to the others waiting near the camp, he spotted one of the round bushes the stuck-nuts grew from. So, he stopped and picked a few.
Absently, he sliced the skins off the fruits and he rejoined the group. It wasn't something he liked to think about too much, because as easy as his newer, sharper nails made the task, he would have preferred the change never occurred.
"Hold up a moment, I just need to fix my 'shoesss'."
Sitting down on a rock by the brook, he rinsed his feet quickly and turned them to look at the damage. Time had flown by, and it had been close to a week since his initial escape from the Baron's dungeon.
In that time, most of the wounds had sealed over, save for the largest, which were close to fully healing. Unfortunately, walking barefoot through any forest, wasn't a good idea, and he'd garnered a few new wounds.
He sighed as he stuck the fruit skins to his feet, again. He really had to get some proper shoes eventually.
Making his way back over to Wren and the goblin victims, he gently picked up Iskandar and strapped them to his back using ropes he'd salvaged from the goblin camp. Now, instead of tying their wrists together, he'd wrapped the rope under their armpits.
"Have you gotten heavier?"
While not the best at measuring weights, Morgan would say Iskandar had gone up from around thirty kilograms to around thirty-six. Which was great, it meant his friend was getting better, slowly but surely.
They mustn't have agreed with his sentiment however, as he felt something poke his shoulder. Turning his head, he saw them jabbing him with their bony finger. He was happy for them, while not fast, they'd started to regain some control over their limbs.
"…Rude. Are you… calling me… fat…?"
"You're literally a ssskeleton currently, some meat on your bonesss would do you some good. Anyway, are you comfortable Issy? Let me know if the ropesss dig in or ssscratch you."
"…it's fine. Thank you…"
Morgan smiled as he felt their mood improve, the taste of their joy sweet on the air.
"Nice. Well, let's get going, the road's this way."
The short journey back to the road was far simpler than the random hike they'd made earlier when looking for the goblin camp, so within five minutes they reached the worn dirt road.
Without dawdling too long, the group of six set off to the east the sound of their footsteps muted against the compact dirt.
However, Morgan quickly found himself growing bored. Once you've seen one tree, you've seen them all, and in a forest consisting mostly of the same tree, it left rather little to sight see.
He didn't even have to pay much attention to his surroundings either, because as loathe as he was to admit it, his sense of smell and taste had been boosted immensely by his change.
Which meant, even without trying he could smell – or more aptly taste – anything from ages away. It was the perfect ability for scouting in a dense forest like this, plus with the wind at his back, it would be incredibly difficult to sneak up on him.
Wren though, didn't seem to believe in his sense and insisted on remaining vigilant, which while smart, left Morgan without anyone to talk to, as Iskandar had fallen asleep.
Suddenly a thought struck him, he had only ever shot a magic spell once. Now would be the perfect time to practice. Nodding to himself, he raised his right hand and aimed it at a tree by the edge of the road. His thinking was the splint around his wrist would help his aim.
He focused his mind, conjuring the image of a ball forming over his hand, and imagining the path it would travel before it exploded against the tree trunk.
With the image in mind, he began the incantation needed to conjure it into reality. Energy was sucked forcefully from his palm, and condensed into an orb that seemed more liquid than solid. It wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind, but he supposed it would have to do.
He winced as the last words of the chant left his mouth, and the ball wobbled away sluggishly. It made it all of two metres, before something went wrong and it popped like a bubble, sending a small spray of dust everywhere.
It was cool, but definitely not worth the damage he'd done to himself. Grimacing in pain, he looked down at his smoking hand. Thin red lines traced up his wrist and across his hand before all meeting on his palm, where his skin was lightly charred.
All that effort, and in the end the spell had done more damage to him than literally anything else. He just wasn't sure if it was worth it. Perhaps he'd be better off reinventing the gun, instead of constantly injuring himself to achieve a lesser effect.
"…what are you… doing you… dummy! How'd… you screw up… such a basic spell…?!"
A grumpy voice sounded from over his shoulder as he accidentally woke his friend.
Right, he'd forgotten about Issy. They regularly cast magic, and the only time he'd ever seen them hurt themselves was back in the dungeon. There must have been something he was missing.
"I… don't know? I conjured an image of the sssspell in my mind and sssspoke the incantation, it just doesn't want to work."
"…Of course not. Form… a ball of… mana above your… hand, I need to see… how good your control is…"
He wasn't too sure how to do that, but it couldn't have been too hard. His eyes squinted as he focused on his left palm, imagining the mana flowing out of his fingers and forming a ball.
Nothing happened. Scratching his head in thought he tried to figure out where he was going wrong. There had to be a way to somehow guide the mana out of his body and hold it together long enough to create a ball.
A thought suddenly came to him. When he was first checking out his class, there was that one skill Mana Manipulation, what if he was doing it all wrong, and instead of giving an image to the mana and expecting it to carry it out, he had to shape the mana itself.
It was worth a shot. Shutting his eyes, he focused on feeling the energy running through his body, it was faint, barely more than his imagination, but it was there. It flowed throughout his entire body, from the tips of his toes to the end of his hair.
Directing his focus to the mana flowing through his left arm, he imagined himself guiding it out of his fingers so it arced between each equally.
The world around him seemed to fade away as he dedicated himself solely to managing the flow of mana around his hand, and slowly expanding it into a ball at the nexus. He felt his energy rapidly dwindling as most of the mana broke out of his control and dissipated into the air, but it didn't hurt his hand this time.
He wasn't sure how long he spent creating the mana ball, but by the time he was done, sweat poured down his brow, and his head ached so badly he struggled to form a coherent thought.
His eyes shot open, at first not recognising the terrain around him due to having walked so far, but quickly recovering.
Slowly he looked to his left hand where a ball of energy floated, it was still connected to each of his fingers by a microscopic strand of mana, but the main part, which was the size of an apple, floated freely.
[Mana Manipulation L1 -> L2]
"I did it!"
Despite his exhaustion, he couldn't help the pride he felt at achieving something so entirely foreign. He had done this, he had manipulated a previously undocumented energy with nothing but his mind, and he'd shaped it into a ball.
If anyone from his world was to see this, they'd be shocked and awed. Unfortunately for him, the only one to watch his display was Iskandar, and they weren't impressed. He could taste their displeasure on the air, along with something else that was incredibly faint.
"…it's complete shit. You… spent two hours working… on this, and lost… over eighty percent of your… mana pool. Even… now, you're barely keeping… it together and… losing mana by the second."
Their criticism was a well needed kick to his pride.
Without anything to base his progress on, he'd assumed he did well, but the expert on the matter apparently thought otherwise.
"… start again… this time make it… in under two minutes…"
Morgan's eyes bulged out of his head as he looked over his shoulder, appalled. They expected him to go from barely forming a single mana ball in two hours, to making a new one in under two minutes? It didn't seem possible.
But that just made him more determined to do it. Dissipating the ball, he grimaced at the loss to his reserves, and started to focus on making it again, when he was jabbed in the shoulder.
"…You idiot! Why… did you dissipate… your mana. Reabsorb it… next time, so… you don't blow through all your… energy. How much… mana do you have left?"
Mentally feeling out his reserves, he estimated he had a little over two percent of his total mana left, though there was some room for error. His head was throbbing constantly, and each thought felt like a sledgehammer to the skull.
"Um… I think it's a bit over two percent."
"…Two percent! Stop, now!... *sigh* Why would you… use so much mana… aren't you worried about… mana sickness? Even… children know not… to deplete their… reserves that quickly…"
He could taste their worry and frustration, along with something else of a different flavour on the air. Something told him there was something urgent he needed to remember about the second flavour, but he was busy, so he tuned it out.
How was he supposed to know anything about mana sickness, whatever that was, he'd barely had mana for a day yet.
"What'ssss mana sickness?"
"... what? I know you're… not from our planet… but how don't you… know about mana sickness…? It's caused… by a person depleting their… mana too quickly. It… places a strain on their… mind and body… resulting in severe headaches… and crippling nausea."
"Mana, didn't exist where I come from."
In an instant all their emotions changed to shock as they fell silent. He assumed it would be like someone coming to earth and saying gravity didn't exist where they were from, but his head ached too much to care.
Still, their reaction was perfectly valid.
His tongue flickered out, sampling the air as he rubbed his temples, that new flavour in the air had gotten closer, and there was something important he struggled to recall about it, but he just couldn't remember.
Feeling it was important, he sampled the air again and focused on the unfamiliar taste. Straining his senses he could make out more than one source combining to make the smell, all of which had a distinctly metallic tint to their taste.
He could also make out what tasted like sweat and… fur? No, the fur was coming from something else that was close to the smell.
It was frustrating, he just couldn't piece together why it mattered. Each time he thought he was getting close, it would elude him. His head felt like it was going to split open at any moment, and it just kept getting worse, the term mana sickness came to mind, but he wasn't sure why.
Maybe his friends would know?
"Urgh… why does mana sicknessssss matter? I can't think around thisssss headache, and there wasssss sssssssomething important I needed to remember."
His words slurred more than usual as he wobbled around, unable to walk in a straight line. He felt sick, like he could vomit at any moment, but again, the thought he needed to remember something urgently stopped him.
"Are you okay? You're looking a little- a lot pale. Maybe you should sit down?"
"…he over used… his mana… he'll get over it."
"Okay. But you mentioned something important? Can you describe it?"
Wren's voice sounded distant as he addressed him, but the unfamiliar taste was still fresh on his tongue. If he could just get his brain to spit out the words.
"Urgh… I can taste… what was it? Iron, sweat? Think brain, think. Something is getting closer, multiple somethings? I can't remember why that mattered. I taste fur near it, oh! And human!"
That was it, that was why it seemed so familiar. There was something about the new taste that was shared with Wren and the goblin victims, and he was pretty sure that meant human.
His thoughts blurred together as he stumbled to the side of the road and vomited behind a bush. It made his nausea a little bit better, but thoughts were still difficult, still he needed to do something and it was urgent.
"Issy… Urgh… why, is this bad for us? I can't remember. Urgh…"
Closing his eyes to block out the light, his brain constantly throbbed. It hurt, a lot. It was a kind of dull, constant pain you just couldn't get rid of. It felt like combining all the worst parts of getting drunk and a having a hangover together, with none of the benefits.
"…what are you saying… Morgan, you're speaking… gibberish… Wait! Is it… the Baron's men…?!"
Yes! That was it, the Baron's men. If his guess was right, the Baron's men would have been sent out on horseback to hunt them down, and armoured men riding all day long would stink of sweat and iron.
But why'd that matter again? His head hurt too bad.
"Yes, that's it! Urgh. But why?"
Bending over, he vomited again.
"…quick, off the road! Now!... get as far into… the forest as possible…"
The taste of panic cut through the haze of his mind, driving his body to heed what sounded like an order. Was it his panic? Or someone else's? All he knew was, he needed to hide before whatever was making that pungent taste got closer.
Shambling off the road, he noticed Wren dragging the goblin victims behind him. He wasn't sure when, but the red-head had wrapped a thin piece of rope around all their waists and he used it to lead them.
After running non-stop for over five minutes, Morgan was exhausted. Stopping behind a tree, he hurled the last of his breakfast up.
"…good job, Morgan… thanks for… the warning, now we… wait for them to pass…"
Shuffling away from the vomit tree, he found a well placed tree he could peek from behind and waited.