Aether Engineering

Chapter 14

Candis East Highway

The Voidlands outside Maston

A pack of ogren was a rather terrifying sight. Each monster was equipped with a pair of sharp horns above their jaw and a set of tusks at the bottom of their jaw. They looked like—as monsters did, to be based off of an animal, in this case, a wolf. The difference between an animal and a monster was clear though. Where animals are driven by their needs to survive, monsters are only driven by one thing: the instinct to hunt and kill humans.

Myles prepared himself as the pack, nine ogren as far as he could tell, charged toward his small group. The beasts charged blindly, having spotted their prey. Four of them ran right at Silas who was sitting at the base of the hill, closest to the pack. Myles started towards him, but swiftly changed stances when the fastest of the pack ran right by.

The core arcaner’s way of the fist emphasized fluidity and flexibility in combat above all else. Myles adapted to the charging monster by moving into the third step, the iron turtle. As he did so, Myles evoked a full 10% of his pure mana to cover his back.

Myles barely felt the impact as the charging monster rammed directly into him with its two horns and two tusks. The pure mana shield blunted the blow and reduced the force to a negligible level, a level that his defensive stance was easily able to disperse. The result was that Myles wouldn’t be left with so much as a bruise.

Myles pivoted from his defensive stance into the first step, a basic palm thrust. The blow landed on the side of the beast’s head, stunning it, knocking it back, and pointing those dangerous horns away from him. The moment the blow landed, Myles took a step back, gathered himself, then flung himself into the air, coming down with a vicious kick. Before his training, the move would have lacked the impact to do much, but after a month of training, Myles was able to carefully evoke pure mana, decreasing the air resistance generated from the moves, allowing him to jump slightly higher and come down with significantly greater force.

Myles felt a sickening crunch under his foot and knew instantly he would no longer have to deal with his opponent. Out of pure habit, Myles performed a sweep as he recovered. It was one of those things that Primrose had managed to ingrain so deeply in them that it was hard not to follow up by throwing a move when off balance. It was because Myles used the sweep purely out of habit and no other reason that he was so surprised when he felt his leg sweep through a set of paws.

Myles completed his move, returning to a neutral stance and taking account of the situation. He cursed himself when he found himself facing off against two of the monsters. He had been so focused on the one he was fighting; he had missed the other two approaching. One of the creatures had been tripped by his sweep, but the other came at him too fast for him to press his advantage on the one he had grounded. Myles flowed into the iron turtle stance, blocking the attack just as he had blocked the previous monster’s.

A palm thrust sent the monster reeling, but the tripped ogren had already jumped back onto its paws. It came from the side, swinging its tusks like an axe. Myles saw the attack from the corner of his eye and managed to flow into a turning sweep that took the thing’s legs out. A hastily evoked patch of pure mana poured out from Myles’ aether well, barely forming in time to prevent the thing’s tusks from taking a chunk out of his torso.

The hasty block took its toll though. In order to make a patch big enough to ensure the ogren’s attack was actually met and which was strong enough to actually block it, Myles had to use up a full third of his mana. That left him with maybe a quarter of his aether well left. This fight needed to end quickly.

Myles slammed a palm thrust down into the ribcage of the felled monster. The blow used up some pure mana to reduce resistance, but in exchange, it ended the ogren. Myles was about to turn to face the monster he had sent reeling when he felt a sharp pain in his left leg. He ripped it back out of instinct and almost stumbled when he tried to put weight on it.

The monster pressed its advantage. With one of its horns covered in blood, it looked far more threatening, especially considering it was his blood. Myles fell back in a panic, instinctively falling into the iron turtle stance to protect himself. Seeing weakness, the ogren leapt at his back. Right as it was about to chomp down with its fangs, it was stopped by an outpouring of pure mana as Myles evoked all of his remaining mana in defense.

Myles spun and delivered a palm thrust then followed behind it as it was staggered, delivering another thrust, then another, then another. Without the benefit of pure mana to help him, Myles had a hard time delivering a decisive blow, but he didn’t let the monster recover and it eventually wearied, then succumbed to the beating, going still.

Myles breathed a breath of relief and suddenly realized how starved for oxygen he was. Despite all the training, Myles still hadn’t been able to remember to force himself to breathe during the fight. At least now that it was over, he could—Myles had a horrible thought. There had been nine of the monsters and he had only killed three which meant…

Myles heaved himself to his feet to get a look around. A heavily bleeding Silas was on the ground at the base of the hill while Kate squared off against the last two remaining ogren. She used her speed to the utmost advantage, managing to keep the monsters at bay, at least for the time being.

Myles scrambled to Kate’s rescue, half running, half falling down the hill. He was nearly impaled by one of the ogren’s horn’s as he ungracefully stumbled into the fight, impeded by his leg. Fortunately for him, Kate managed to land a quick palm thrust on the thing, forcing its horns out of the way. Myles kept his momentum going, throwing his technique out the window in favor of a rough tackle, the sort that the other guys at his old job shop had used in their little after-work wrestling league.

The fight was brief but rough. Myles was in no position to use any sort of real fighting form anymore, but the ogren he wrestled with was in an even worse position. It scrabbled its paws against his stomach, trying to find some purchase, but all it found was the outfit he had been given on the first day of classes, and its padding managed to absorb the blows. The ogren had no such luck, and Myles’ blows landed squarely on the monster.

As Myles pulled himself up, he saw that Kate had managed to finish off the last ogren. At first it looked like she had been heavily wounded. She was clutching her side as if against some grievous wound. For the first couple of steps she took towards Silas, she favored her right leg, all the while grimacing as if in pain. The look only lasted a few seconds though as she seemed to recover, coming to Silas’ side in a panic.

“Hurry up!” Kate shouted as Myles stumbled over. “I need you to put pressure on his wound. He’ll be fine, but we need to stop the bleeding.”

Myles rushed over and helped her apply pressure to the wound. It looked awful. Silas’ entire side was covered with blood, and more was coming out even as they applied pressure to it. Myles could barely keep his hands steady. “Are you sure he’ll be fine? He’s losing a lot of blood!”

“He would be. If…we had the right medication that is.”

“We gave all of our medicine away though!”

“I know!” Kate ran her hands through her hair in a grimace. “Right now, we have a bigger problem though.” She pointed towards Silas’ bloody side and Myles’ left leg which was bleeding an ominous amount. “We were following ogren tracks, monsters known for their keen sense of smell. They’ll smell the blood on us if we don’t figure out a way to mask it.”

“Didn’t we just kill the whole pack of them?”

“That was…probably a different pack.” Kate paused for a moment as Silas briefly stirred, gently pushing him back down. “Even if it wasn’t, there are plenty of monsters around us that will come running at the scent of blood. We need to get out of here and find a way to mask our scent.”

Myles looked around at the hilly landscape nervously. It was almost entirely barren. They were nowhere close to the river that went through the lake back in Maston. They were in the middle of the monster-ruled voidlands, injured, and without medicine.

Myles calmed himself and looked around hopefully. There had to be something they could use. Sweeping his gaze around, Myles saw nothing but rolling hills, dead monsters, and…a rusted wagon that was missing two of its wheels lying abandoned near them.