Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Well, the next morning we learned we were just taking our training on the road.  It was 100 miles from where we were going.  My squad had 2 woodsmen, 2 instructors, and 2 mages assigned to us.  But they all rode horses while we spent our time at the fast march with heavy backpacks, leather armor, sword, and shield. 

When we stopped we were either eating or weapons training.  Sleeping outside was not fun either the temperature got really chilly.  We even had to spend 4 hours on night watch duty.  The woodsman and instructors schooled us in those duties.  I spent my free hour with the woodsmen as well.  Helena was in the other squad traveling a separate route.  The woodsmen showed me basic camping skills and some foraging skills.  There were six plants I came to identify as edible, filling, and nutritious.  Two were roots that had bulbs that could be found year-round but you needed to boil them.  Two were nuts from trees, both were a little uncommon, very bitter, and made your urine very pungent.  And the last two were sap from shrubs, both were very sugary.  You had to be careful just to drink the sap from the hollow stem on one and not eat the stem which would give you massive diarrhea.  We didn’t see any wild game on our outings but he did show me how to identify game trails and animal passing.

It took 5 days to reach a farm that had been attacked.  The mages and instructors rode out to question the farms nearby.  We got a chance to rest but I walked the nearby woods with the woodsman who had been instructing me.  We found trails with humanoid prints.  We were lucky as it hadn’t rained and washed away the evidence.  The woodsman guessed the farm had been attacked by 6 to 8 of the red goblins.  We identified the direction they had left in by the chicken feathers and prints. 

Soon the mages returned with the instructors.  The family that lived at our farm had moved to a neighboring farm for protection.  We headed out with the two woodsmen leading the way.  The going was fairly slow and I was put on the left flank, 10 yards out since I was slightly better at moving quietly.  Another soldier walked the right flank.  The two woodsmen and two of our best soldiers were the arrowhead.  The main body of the force trailed 50 yards back with the horses, mages, and our trainers.

One of the woodsman hand-signed a trap to the lead element.  We all stopped.  Then all hell broke loose.  Two goblins I didn’t notice broke from my left less than 8 feet away.  The first thing I thought is they looked more brown than red then got my wits about me.  I interposed my sword and got ready to react.

I deflected the wooden spear aimed at me and put the goblin attacking me between the other goblin.  This gave me one foe for a short time.  A tried to bash the close goblin with my shield but it had already backed away.  The other goblin began to circle and sounds of combat erupted from our center and right flank.  I figured I would need to hold out for 15 to 20 seconds for our main force to close in.  The two goblins I faced were 120 degrees apart and attacked in a coordinated lunge. 

Using my shield I cleared the spear on my right.  The sword in my left hand mostly deflected the other spear.  It cut my armor near my ribs.  But I was able to move forward past the spears.  Now between the goblins, I swung my sword in a short powerful arc clipping the head of the goblin on the right in the head and taking a chunk of the skull with it.  Using the momentum of the swing I came around quickly to face the other goblin with my shield.  I saw anger and fear mixed in its human-like eyes.  It hesitated so I pushed forward deflecting the spearhead down with a shield and using my sword to hack at its arms.  I took off one of its hands.  As the goblin froze in shock a quick slash to its neck ended its life.  This all took less than 8 heartbeats.  I scanned the left flank looking for other threats.  Seeing nothing I turned to help the center.

One of the woodsmen was on the ground with the two soldiers and the other woodsman protecting him.  At least eight goblins had them half surrounded with more goblins coming to assist.  The main force was still about 30 yards back.  My training was to fall in and support the center but looking at the circling goblins I decided to rush the flank.  I started a heavy run and used my shield to barrel into one goblin driving it into another.  Unfortunately, my feet got tangled and I went down in a mess on smelly goblin limbs.  I felt a pain in my ass and assumed I had just gotten a spear in my left ass cheek.  As I rolled away I was able to slam the hilt of my sword into the eye of a goblin on the ground but I had to release my shield or risk getting stuck on the ground in the tangle. 

Standing I backed toward my companions.  The odds were better now, 6 goblins and 4 of us.  The goblins coming to reinforce suddenly screamed, “retreat” and turned to run.  They had noticed our main force.  The 6 goblins turned and started to run.  I jumped to pursue and cut down one immediately with a slash across its back.  I took down a second slower goblin that had a limp and then paused realizing I was alone.   I turned and returned to the main force. 

The mages came and healed the injured woodsman and the minor injuries we had sustained.  I had a puncture in my ass cheek and had bled a fair amount but my pain tolerance was high from the training.  It was still a relief to get the healing from Damian and drink some fluid replacement. 

We then formed a double deep line and moved forward.  Ten minutes later we came to the goblin camp.  Twenty or so goblins were packing up what they could.  Seeing us approaching they fled.  We charged when ordered.  I killed two more in the chaos but I think they were both females.  The wizards shot lightning at a few goblins that had gotten too far away for us to engage in melee.  In all maybe 3 goblins managed to escape.

Then one of the wizards took out a large magic rune shield and tried to suck essence out of the goblins.  One out of six gave a minor essence.  In total, he collected 5 essences from 27 goblins.  I was quickly assigned to assist two woodsmen to track and kill the escaped goblins.  Two other soldiers came with us.  After six hours of pursuit, we managed to get only one goblin.  The woodsman had us return in the moonlit night.  The moon on this world was much larger than Earth and the light it gave made it feel like twilight. 

In all, we had been gone over 10 hours and I was exhausted and had multiple bruises and numerous chaff marks on my flesh.  However, I had no time to rest and was debriefed by the instructors on getting back.  I got yelled at for my reckless and undisciplined attacks in the initial contact.  After being told of all my errors multiple times I was able to retire and quickly fell asleep after some cold stew.

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I was able to sleep till mid-morning, mostly because the woodsman had asked not to be woken before then which meant the three soldiers who accompanied them got the same treatment.  I ate three breakfast portions.  While I ate I was next to one of the magicians.  We got into a conversation.  He told me about the loot they collected.  The big haul was 4 dexterity and 1 strength essence.  The goblins had about sixty copper coins and some iron tools.  The coins and tools would be given to the farmer so he could replace some of his livestock.  I asked him if that was the only way to get essences.  He said yes, condensing life force from living beings or recent corpses.  I asked if the same could be done to a human.  Yes, and there was a greater chance to get a ‘potential’ essence from higher sapient beings.  Did the being have to be dead?  No.  Using a live being usually had a higher chance to get an essence but it was illegal in most kingdoms. 

The idle conversation then turned to magic.  There were seven spheres of magic with seven affinities each.  The seven spheres were elemental, order, chaos, spirit, death, nature, and dimensional.  Both of my affinities fell into the dimensional sphere.  Although dimensional was the rarest it required a large amount mana and control to utilize.  I learned the seven affinities in the dimensional sphere as well.  Space, time, displacement, materialism, void, worlds, and convergence. 

Space was basically the ability to create pocket dimensions.  Time was limited control over time, usually speeding up time around the mage.  Displacement was the ability to teleport.  Materialism was summoning objects from nothing, breaking the second covenant of magic.  Void was eliminating something from existence.  Worlds was the ability to move between planes.  Finally, convergence was the rarest of all magics, it allowed a mage to draw mana from the environment, specifically at ley line convergences. 

He then sprang a surprise on me.  He said if I successfully completed my training I might be sent to learn a certain spell called dimensional pocket.  It created a private space a mage could put and pull items from.  If I could learn the spell I might be enlisted as a royal messenger.  But that was only a possibility and he didn’t want to get my hopes up.

It was a few more days before we packed up and headed back to the training camp.  We had no luck in locating more goblins.  The other squad had killed 48 goblins and lost three of their members.  After returning we had two days off we were tested again on the tablet.

Modest gains for myself but Damian said I was doing well and as long as I didn’t get myself killed I would graduate.  For weapons testing, I finished 11^th in sword ranking, 18^th in sword and shield, 22^nd in the dagger, and 7^th in hand-to-hand.  I realized that two of the men killed had been ahead of me in the rankings.  I learned they had done something foolish like myself, rushing alone into combat with multiple foes.

We were also tested in dual-wield sword skill which none of us had familiarity with. I fished 11^th.  I liked this style the most because I could use my quickness to utilize one blade as a blocker.  I also found from all the training I was slightly ambidextrous.  One of the trainers said I had the mentality for it if I practiced more in the two-weapon style.  Three had been after ability testing another 5 were cut after weapons testing.  Leaving 46 of us.  The strange thing is we actually started forming bonds.  Putting our unit against a common foe had broken down the walls of competition against each other.  I don’t know if that had been planned or not but it made life in the barracks more bearable.

We had light training as our instructors had to travel to the army camp.  We were not told the reason.  Forty-two of the forty-nine instructors left for two days.  Only forty returned.  During the lighter training days, I had an opportunity.  Damian said the estate had a magic sphere tablet.  They were expensive and this one was only going to be here for two days as it was on its way back to the mage academy in the capital.  He conspired to bring it to the lake so I could check my ability in the dimensional sphere. 

His offer almost sounded like a trap but I agreed.  Damian brought the tablet and said he had configured it to display rankings in the dimensional sphere for me.  I asked him if he planned to see my scores and after thinking for a second he said no.  I could keep the information to myself.  Then why was he helping me?  His explanation was a bit muddled.  Basically, he was a bit of a loner and I was the first soldier in his time here that actually befriended him.  Well, score one for me for not wanting to die. 

The tablet was much fancier than the general ability tablet.  He prepped the charge and handed it to me.  I used it the same way as the other tablet and looked at my scores.  It took me time as I barely had learned the language.  It was similar to Latin but took me time to translate in my head.

I finished and him what the numbers meant without telling him my scores.  He said true mages usually had 3-4 affinities over 60, usually all in the same sphere.  The average person only had affinities around one or two of the 49 affinities around 10.  The higher the number the more power exponentially.  Ten being base.  20 was twice as strong.  30 was 4 times. 40 was eight times.  50 was 16 times.  60 was 32 times as strong.  70 was 64 times as strong.  If you had any affinities over 70 you could usually get into a mage academy.  A score of 80 was 128 as strong as the base and very rare, maybe one in 25,000 people had an affinity over 80.  90 was 256 as powerful and leveled on godliness.  Maybe 1 in 250,000 would have an affinity at 90.  You would be conscripted to the ruling family if you had such power in an affinity.  100?  No one had ever been recorded that high. 

If a person demonstrated manifested magic then the academies would send someone to test them.  That was why this tablet was here and ready to be returned under guard to the capital.  A peasant girl was found with powerful elemental affinities. Damian couldn’t believe it but it was said she had fire, air, water, and earth all at 72!  His fellow mages believed she would be trained and then married to one of the emperor’s many sons.

I used the reset trigger to erase my results and handed him back the tablet.  I asked him about becoming a royal messenger.  He nodded and said it was in play for me.  He could even tutor me on learning the dimensional pocket spell if I wanted.  Yes, that would be fantastic.

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