Chapter 63: Twenty Minutes

Twenty minutes passed. The village was tense but the northern treeline stayed quiet like something was trying to prove Emily wrong.

But the elves didn’t sit still during those twenty minutes.

They hauled every carcass and piece of loot away from the barricade. Eren had assumed they would get a quick breather after the fight. Instead, cleaning up the mess and repairing the damaged sections of the plank wall turned out to be just as exhausting as the fight itself.

Learning that even a short skirmish like this created so much extra work was an eye-opening experience.

Movies never showed this part of battles. He sighed.

Eren used the time to check his skills because Emily refused to let him do any of the heavy physical labor. According to her, if a more dangerous attack hit the village, he was their only trump card and last resort. She didn’t want him tired when that moment came.

He asked a few times if there was anyone else hiding in the village who could actually fight. But according to his elf girlfriend and future wife, the only other real fighter was her stepfather. And based on the look on Emily’s face, if Henner was anywhere nearby he would’ve shown up during the battle already.

Emily always said that besides herself and her dead mother, he was the only experienced hunter and real warrior in the entire village.

She wasn’t even fully sure but she believed her stepfather was deliberately staying away from the Totem after handing his duties to her. There was a common theory floating around the village that the Totem could take back the combat class and the levels it had granted to someone later on.

Evon was known for both its generosity and its cruelty about certain fundamental rules.

Eren had stopped feeling good about being able to see his skills without needing the Totem a long time ago. He thought about walking to the Totem standing in the village center just ahead of him. But he was too lazy for that and just gave the mental command instead.

“System.”

His stats were in the low 40’s now and even though his mana had increased, being Level 30 didn’t feel like a massive change yet. If his math was right he was about eight times stronger than a normal man from Earth. Compared to peak athletes or fighters from Earth, probably around seven times.

“Skills.”

Three skills had leveled up during a single battle.

[Wolf Eyes – Level 4: Perception enhancement during combat increased. Side effect intensity slightly reduced]

Wolf Eyes jumped one level and he didn’t know exactly why. Maybe pushing his half-elf senses and stats to their absolute limit while shooting arrows was affecting his eyes too. But as far as he knew this skill originally came from the wolves and was meant to be shared between pack members.

It helped him see in the dark, improved his general vision and made fast-moving things appear slower. All great perks.

[Basic Archery – Level 4: Accuracy and draw speed passively enhanced. Effective range for intuitive shooting increased]

Basic Archery jumped two levels at some point. Skills that had taken days or weeks of careful practice to nudge forward normally. At least that’s what he believed. But this skill had grown more in ten minutes of real combat than in his entire time practicing in safe environments.

[Lovely Eyes – Level 5: Charm probability and duration increased. Effective range: 15 meters]

Apparently practicing this skill in a restaurant was too safe. Even using skills in a dungeon may be considered as a cheat for Evon because they went there with the information from previous runs. Most of the time he didn’t feel any real danger in the dungeon.

Apart from the skills this fight was completely random. Two elves wouldn’t have died if it wasn’t actually!

Fu*king Hell!

He didn’t want to remember those empty blue eyes.

Villagers still believed they could save that man but Eren saw his body from close and didn’t believe he could be saved. Eren personally believed he was already gone but some people were still applying healing creams and other random stuff trying to save him.

He also wondered if he had charged in with full force and both scimitars from the start, would things have been different?

But when Emily told him something she was usually thinking ahead. And Eren wasn’t a superhero or some chosen one. How was he supposed to know what was the right move?

Nobody was telling him whether his decisions would lead to good or bad outcomes.

He was trying to survive in this village completely blind, using the safest paths he could find. And it wasn’t even selfish thinking. If this village’s safe environment disappeared, he didn’t believe he and Emily could survive alone in the forest. This village was just as important to him as it was to the other elves.

And if this place was destroyed it would wreck Emily psychologically. I don’t even know if she could handle it…

That poor elf woman with the herbs and personal things in her bag was dead and the young woodcutter might join her by morning.

This is getting worse..but why?

Eren didn’t know how things were getting harder and more dangerous every day. Maybe this starter area and this whole setup was something planned. And after he arrived, he triggered some pre-organized chain of events.

After shaking off the bad and probably wrong conspiracy theories, he tried to reach a main conclusion about why his skills were leveling up so fast.

What he figured out was that Evon and this planet Aradne whose name he learned from Selena, didn’t work on a natural selection system like Earth. Something was definitely off in ways he couldn’t understand with his own logic.

It could still be a selection of sorts but it wasn’t natural with a level and skill system, right?

But the one thing he was sure about was that his skills would develop painfully slow without real battles and genuine dangerous moments.

It made a brutal kind of sense to him.

Evon probably didn’t care about his efforts. It cared about survival and kill counts. Every skill point he gained today was earned with genuine life-or-death pressure. Or why the hell this universe would push a level system…

He was so lost in his thoughts that he noticed way too late when someone sat down next to him.

Emily sat next to him on the barricade wall as her legs dangled over the edge. She changed her clothes and cleaned the blood from her face. She looked less tense and a lot calmer now.

Her kiss also tasted extra sweet with her hair up in a messy high ponytail. She looked damn sexy.

“It’s getting dark. I hope if they’re coming they come while there’s still light. In a night battle nobody has clear vision except you.”

“Yeah I agree. Also Wolf Eyes went from 3 to 4. Basic Archery is also level 4. That shouldn’t happen this quickly.” He half asked but knew Emily probably didn’t have answers beyond her own experience with skills.

“It doesn’t.” She gave him that look. The proud one mixed with concern. “This isn’t normal for normal elves. Your class is Magician of Love. A support class. But you’re using combat skills in life-or-death situations and the system is treating you like a combat class in a war zone. Maybe it’s the exact opposite. I have no idea what is going on anymore..”

“Is it because of my original world or something else?”

“Or maybe Evon sees you because your bloodline doesn’t follow normal rules. Like a Noble Bloodline or something similar.” She touched his hand and kissed his lips and conquered his mouth with real wetness this time.

They stopped talking for at least two minutes before speaking again. “Eren, this is exactly what I was trying to tell you about the elf lifespan. If real combat makes you grow this fast and you have centuries to fight…”

She didn’t finish the sentence and didn’t need to. Eren looked at the dead kobolds beyond the wall.

I may become something terrifying. No, I can definitely become a godlike existence!

Dreaming about this was exciting and deeply uncomfortable at the same time.

He pushed the delusional things because pushing uncomfortable thoughts away was basically his default coping mechanism for his whole life.

Most days he wasn’t even thinking about Earth anymore, except for the portal related things.

He almost completely adapted and accepted his new half-elf life.

..

Oldir arrived with Toris and four more villagers carrying bundles of sharpened stakes. They had been preparing winter defenses before the attack and now they jammed the stakes into the ground on the eastern and western sides too.

It wouldn’t change a thing tonight but it was something, right.

Oldir lit one of his leaf cigarettes and looked at the monster bodies. “North wall held but it showed us it’s useless in real combat.”

“After making a base defensive line all over the village we’ll upgrade it. Stone, spikes and much more.” Emily answered.

“If we can get to the mountain side I may have some ideas about a stronger and easier wall material. But we need to defend the village and finish the plank wall before that.”

Emily looked concerned. “You want to go find it yourself.”

Eren smiled and held her hand even though others were watching. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to look for. It’s called cement but I have no idea how the hell we’re supposed to create it. We need to find a connection with Earth.”

Emily didn’t say anything and looked at the elves. “How many casualties?”

“Tanith died and that young idiot Elram’s situation is critical.” Oldir’s voice was flatter than he intended. “She was near the North wall, just outside of her house. The crossbow bolt didn’t even aim at her. It was a lucky shot from too far away.”

Oldir said quietly. “She was a weaver. Good at fixing things and herbs and stuff.” He didn’t say anything else about her. He took another drag from his smoke and looked at the forest.

Toris was pacing behind the wall with a handaxe that looked too small for him.

“How long until the next wave?”

“Could be minutes, hours or even days.” Emily answered. “Kobolds probe first. If the scouts don’t return they send a stronger force or their full force. I don’t know what they’ll decide after this.”

“One rider escaped.” Eren reminded her.

“Exactly.”

Selena appeared from the village center, running faster than Eren had ever seen her move. She wasn’t carrying food this time. She had a long knife in one hand and a leather bag over her shoulder.

“The boy is stable. Poison is spreading but I slowed it with a herb compress and almost all the cream we had left.” She looked at Emily. “It’s a poison from the bears. I’ve seen it before. He’ll live if the poison doesn’t reach his heart by morning.”

“Can you stop it?”

“I would’ve done it if I could. What do you mean??” She suddenly looked pissed and this was the first time Eren saw her genuinely angry.

“We don’t have the right herbs for full purification. Those grow near the eastern swamps and I’m guessing nobody is going there tonight.” Her voice was a little challenging and a few people nearby shifted on their feet like they were thinking about volunteering.

If Emily hadn’t been standing there, some of them might have found a moment of courage and gone to collect the herbs Selena was talking about.

But elves were terrible at improvising and this was a race that preferred taking orders. Emily was the closest thing to a leader they had on this bad day.

Nobody moved.

Just as Eren was about to say he could go himself and be back in a short time, something howled in the northern forest.

Not a wolf or at least it didn’t sound like Rury or Fury. Something bigger, deeper and wild. A sound that vibrated in Eren’s chest and made his teeth ache.

Then a second howl answered from the eastern swamps.

A third came from the west but it didn’t sound like a howl at all. Something else entirely.

Eren looked at Emily. She was staring at the forest with an expression he had never seen on her face before.

Her voice was pissed.

“Trolls.”

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