Shaman (Part 2)

Ace stared at the old man before him in utter confusion. This seemed to be his mentor?

He tugged at the old man's beard, making the man grimace in pain, then lightly slapped his own face. "This is real? It's made so convincingly?"

"Are you insane? Stop at once."

It really was too lifelike, Ace marveled. It seemed to be something similar to Rhonamuth Grand Theater's effects. Unfortunately, while it could create an old man with every detail perfectly reproduced, the background was full of holes. It might have worked better with the backdrop of an Earth city.

Expressionless, Ace looked at the forest, drew his shortsword, and stabbed the old man before him to death.

"What are you doing? You killed someone!"

Pfft. Another classmate fell.

"He's a murderer! Catch him!"

Pfft, pfft. Ace's years of martial training had not been for nothing. His classmates and colleagues could not withstand his roving strikes. More and more people appeared, and they grew stronger and stronger—people from his past life and this one alike. They all emerged and attacked him. He began to suffer injuries. He tried to pull out his Spellbook, only to discover that it did not exist here.

Since this was an illusion, perhaps I could break it with the power of imagination. Ace tried to imagine a Gundam, but nothing appeared. Perhaps what he imagined was too powerful. He imagined the Spellbook instead, but it still did not appear. A bead of cold sweat rolled down Ace's face.

He could confirm that this was an illusion, yet he could not defeat his enemies through imagination. This was nothing like what the novels from his previous life had said! On the brink of death, Ace did not feel particularly afraid. His mind was simply a tangled mess, frantically roasting the situation.

Stray thoughts? Calm down. This was a supernatural world; only the supernatural could break the supernatural. Ace decided to stake everything on one throw. He directly began tracing Mana Runes and meditating. There seemed to be a mysterious rhythm, distant from him and unable to respond. Closer. Closer still. At last, Ace connected with that rhythm. The crowd that had charged before him began to howl and shatter, and the illusion vanished.

Gaul panted heavily and collapsed onto the ground. The enemies pursuing him lay scattered in disarray all around him. Gaul struggled to his feet. Having undergone the sacred relic's trial several times, he knew that illusions could trap people, knock them unconscious, or gravely injure them, but it was difficult for them to kill outright. You had to finish the job.

He picked up the shortsword from an old soldier's hand, remembering what the old Shaman had once said: "To kill a man, cut off his head or pierce his heart. To strike down a group, kill the leader first."

Without question, that foreign boy in the back was the leader. At noon today, he had made him strip naked and touched him all over. He had to die.

Ace opened his eyes to see the Barbarian Slave raising a shortsword with a ferocious expression and thrusting it toward his heart. He hurriedly rolled like a lazy donkey, narrowly dodging the stab. Gaul had not expected Ace to wake so suddenly. His body faltered in fright, then he immediately chased after him, hacking and stabbing without any form or order.

This shortsword was far too awkward to use. The tribe's spiked club was much more comfortable. Thinking this, Gaul kept pace with both Ace and his shortsword, pursuing him relentlessly.

Ace frantically tried to draw his shortsword, but in his panic he could not pull it free. He could only roll like a lazy donkey again and again, dodging in miserable embarrassment. This was the life-saving secret technique Romon had taught him. According to Romon, it was the essence of martial skill he had distilled from surviving countless bloody melees.

Why was this foreign boy so hard to deal with? Gaul grew more and more agitated, swinging faster and faster, making it increasingly difficult for Ace to dodge. After barely avoiding one slash, Ace's face was cut open. He could no longer evade the second strike.

Ignoring it, he pulled the Spellbook from his pocket with his left hand, flipped open the first page, grabbed chunks of sulfur from the pocket on his right, and held them before the Spellbook. As Gaul's sword came down, his mental power activated the spell model in the Spellbook. A mysterious rhythm emerged, and the model runes on the Spellbook lit up one after another. Ace released the sulfur from his right hand. It transformed into acid and sprayed out in an instant!

Gaul watched the suddenly appearing acid effortlessly corrode the shortsword before rushing at his head. His mouth opened and closed, but he could not say a word.

"Sizzle..." The acid corroded Gaul's upper body. His headless corpse swayed, then fell to the ground.

Ace breathed deeply and hard, wiping the blood from his face with his clothes. His hands and feet trembled. The intense tension, the razor-thin line between life and death, the feeling of escaping alive in the end—it was all so intoxicating. Life was so wonderful, and victory so enchanting.

Ace stood up and reached out to search Gaul's corpse. Before long, he found the strange object Gaul had used to cast the illusion. It was a blood-red eyeball. Looking at it for even a short while made him feel dizzy. Ace wrapped up the eye and put it into his pocket.

He then took out more sulfur and tossed it onto the headless corpse. Holding the Spellbook, he flipped to the third page. Acid Conversion! The sulfur transformed into acid. Corrosive sizzling sounds rose from the headless corpse, and before long it became a puddle of pus.

Ace scraped up several handfuls of nearby dirt and covered the puddle of pus. Limping, he walked toward the fallen mercenary veterans and woke them one by one from their nightmares.

"That Barbarian Slave just now should have been a Shaman. You weren't affected by his witchcraft?" Maren, the veteran captain, asked.

"No. I was some distance away from you. When I saw you suddenly collapse, I was startled. That Barbarian Slave drew your shortsword and tried to kill you, so I rushed over to fight him. He cut my cheek. He seemed to be in a hurry to escape and didn't continue tangling with me. I was also wary of his terrifying witchcraft, so I didn't pursue him," Ace answered, looking somewhat shaken.

Maren's expression turned grave. "I owe you my life! This is a serious matter. We must report it to the city-state and hunt down that terrifying Shaman."

"I'll go back and have Kelson find a carriage. You take a few men and try to reach the city-state before sunset, then report to the Grand Inspector."

"Alright. We'll wait here."

After having Kelson prepare a carriage for Maren and the other veteran soldiers, Ace returned to his master's residence. It was already nighttime.

Marina looked at the sword wound on his face with distress. "That damned Barbarian Slave actually injured my little Ace's face. We have to catch him and hang him."

Ace dealt with Marina somewhat perfunctorily. His thoughts had long since flown to the blood-red eyeball he had just obtained. The supernatural world was so captivating. As the only spellcaster in this world, the only wizard apprentice, Ace felt that he needed to properly study and experiment with the blood-red eyeball.

By the time Marina had treated the sword wound on Ace's face and the two had finished dinner, it was nearly dawn. Ace quietly went out to deal with the soil contaminated by acid and pus, creating false traces of an escape.

Returning to his room, he stroked the blood-red eyeball and released the tiniest thread of mental power to touch it. It seemed to brush against something. His mental power was absorbed by the eyeball, which flashed with an eerie light.

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