The cabin in the woods.

Training arc begins.

5. The cabin in the woods

We go inside the cabin, the interior of is plain and there are only two shelves, a bed small table with one chair and a tiny kitchen. Cyril puts Marie down on the bed and takes a potion from the shelf.

“This is a healing potion for physical injuries and it will heal her completely in twelve hours.” Cyril shows the potion to us and walks back to the bed.

“Can you let me, do it?” asks Martin.

“Yeah, go for it but just to let you know it’s an expensive potion so don’t fuck it up.”

Martin takes the potion from Cyril and gently pours the red liquid in Marie’s mouth.

“Now that that’s been taken care of, we have some talking to do.”

“Thank you, Cyril.” I burst out while bowing down to him.

“I don’t mind helping you brats out but you have to go back to your mountain now.”

“I am sorry but that would be impossible.” I say while still bowing to him.

“It is not, I can just bust the gate open and let you guys go back there.”

“How do you know about the gate?” I ask while rising my head in surprise.

“This is not the first time I have seen dwarves coming from that mountain.”

“The last one to leave the mountain was hundreds of years ago, how could a normal human like you live that long?” Intercepts Luna.

“Let’s just say that I am not a normal human and the dwarves that came from the mountain mostly died within the first day.”

“Even so we won’t be going back but thank you for saving us and our friend.” I say while bowing again.

“This is exactly why I don’t like dwarves, you are all so fucking stubborn. Do you want to die that much? Wouldn’t going back to the mountain and living your life in peace be much nicer than dying a gruesome death in these woods?”

“Dying an exciting death from a fight against a beast would be much nicer end than slowly losing will to live before after years and years of unhappiness I would finally die an uneventful death that had no meaning in it. At least this way I have a chance to have a fun life and if it doesn’t work I would have no regrets.”

Martin takes Marie in his arms and carries her out of the cabin as we follow him to leave.

“Thank you so much for saving my beloved.” Martin says from the front door and bows his head a little to Cyril.

We all turn to him and bow while saying our thanks.

“Aa a, I guess I can’t make you change your minds but let me tell you this, this world isn’t a paradise and you will regret not going back to your mountain. Now get her back in the bed and listen up, I will train you myself personally to make you survive this shitty world a bit better.”

“Why would you help us?” I ask with a surprised look in my face.

“Meh, I just don’t want to clean up a bunch of dwarf corpses from my forest.”

I look at Luna and she nods her head.

“Please take care of us master Cyril.” I say as we bow our head to him.

“You guys are weird. A normal dwarf would be too proud to accept help from an outsider.”

“My pride won’t protect my friends.” I say while lifting my head up.

“Fine, I will take care of you guys for a while but let me say this, my training will be harder than anything you will experience for the rest of your life. Are you still ok with this?”

“Yes.”

As soon as I said that a kick came flying at me and I could barely see it. It hits me with a force much greater I have ever felt and hit the wall but I don’t stop there as I crash through it, I get a glance of something else flying next to me and then I hit a tree outside and I pass out instantly.

“Get up you pathetic little creatures, I only hit you once and you are already down for the count? Don’t make me laugh.”

I open my eyes and see Cyril standing outside the busted-up cabin. I try to move but a piercing pain shoots through my body and I don’t even try to move after that.

“Don’t tell me you can’t actually get up? I barely even touched you, fine, if you don’t get up I will kill your friend that is sleeping on the bed.” Cyril says that as he turns around toward the cabin.

I can hear a man shouting on the right of me and I glance in the direction and see Martin trying to stand up. I am pathetic aren’t I, I was already giving up even though I was only feeling some pain in my body.

I grit my teeth and try to ignore the immense pain, as I get up by using the tree as a support I see Martin running up to Cyril with his sword drawn.

“Good, that’s the spirit but you are just running blindly towards an opponent that is clearly stronger than you, that is essentially suicide and doesn’t help your situation.”

He dodges Martins sword effortlessly and then punches him lightly but he is still send flying in the air. I am struck by fear as I imagine getting hit by that punch in this condition. I see something moving in my left and look towards it, I see Alice walking slowly toward Cyril with her battle hammer in her arms. I forget my fear and I move toward Cyril with her, she looks toward me and I nod.

We start running and I take up my shield and sword, as we are nearing him I throw my sword by pushing it from the hilt so it flies straight at him. He turns his head a little to the left and the sword passes right next to his head, I charge him with my shield as Alice is behind me ready to smash him with her battle hammer. He throws a backhanded punch with his left arm on my shield and sends me flying and then immediately sidesteps the hammer and hit Alice with his right hand and she flies in a different direction.

I feel that my hands are completely numb from the impact and can’t move them to cushion the fall, I hit another tree and I feel tears going down my cheeks but I stand up again and I walk toward him. A fireball goes past me and hits Cyril but he just wipes it from him like it was nothing, I feel the heat from more of them flying so I run at him while he is blinded by the flames.

I try to hit him with my shield but he kicks my hand and my shield flies off, I feel like my arm would tear of from the kick and I fall to my knees as I hold my hand trying to ease the pain. An arm grabs me from the neck and rises me up in the air, I try to breath but can’t.

“What is the matter magic user? Are you too afraid to join the fight or are you thinking that you are more useful with just casting spells from afar? Well you have seen that your fireball has no effect and if you don’t come help her I will strangler her to death so you have no other choice than to come now.”

The fireballs kept flying toward him in a continuous barrage.

“I guess you are just a sheltered brat that panicked from feeling a little pain for the first time for your life, time to say goodbye to your friend.”

My lungs burn from the lack of air and I struggle to free myself from the hand, I try to push the hand away from my neck and I kick his chest continuously with my feet but he doesn’t budge. I feel my consciousness start to fade.

“Let her go!” Screams Martin as he jumps at Cyril from the side.

“I am sorry but you can’t save her.” He says as he hits him into the wall.

“At least you have great magical ability if you can keep up sending fireballs this way for all this time but that is not enough this time.” he says as he turns his head toward the place where the fireballs are coming.

“Are you sure?” Yells Luna as he stabs his head from behind the last fireball.

“Not bad, to make me think that you had given up and wait until I was distracted by the attack from the side to move closer behind the barrage from the fireballs.” he says while grabbing the blade of the sword.

He lets go of the blade and kicks Luna to a tree.

“But if I had crushed her neck instead of just choking her she would have been dead before you could have even tried to save her, you can’t trust what your enemies tell you during a fight.”

He lets go of my neck and I gasp for air.

“Ok, that’s enough for now, go run in the forest and do it fast, if I see anyone slacking I will punch you again. Alphonse will guide you and tell you your speed.”

I stand up while still breathing heavily to catch my breath, I take my sword from the ground and run to pick up my shield from where it fell. The constant pain all over my body is getting a number the more I move, I run after the others that are ahead of me.

“How have you been? Guess you don’t have energy to speak right now, well I do have an idea from the trees you all crashed. All right, I will be guiding your run now, remember that it will be a long run and I will regulate your speed during the whole run so you don’t have to think about anything unnecessary just focus on the run. I will also guide you through a safe route so you won’t meet any beasts during it either so use all your energy to move those feet. Now let us start, start running a bit faster.”

Alphonse told us to run faster and slower in set intervals and sometimes he told us to run as fast as possible and sometimes he told us to walk, once he told us to stop for a minute and start running again, it was the hardest part of the run and I was barely able to start running again. After who knows many hours of running we were finally lead back to the cabin where Cyril was waiting for us.

“Well done everyone, I am honestly amazed that you are still standing. Now come at me with everything you got.”

During the run, I was using my healing magic on my arm and I can now hold my shield again but the thought of fighting him again after all that is making me despair. My mind kept telling me to just run at him and fail fast so I could rest for a while even if I was just knocked out but I knew that he wouldn’t let that go. He would threaten to kill someone and make us go at him again and again.

 I look around the group and see the despair in the faces of the others, I couldn’t speak to them during the whole training session so I don’t know what they are thinking but since no one charged in yet, they must be thinking the same thing or are too tired to move.

I think with all my might about how we could beat him. After a brief time, I come up with a plan.

I whisper my plan to Luna quickly and then charge at Cyril.

“How pathetic, I thought you would have learned your lesson already about not fighting an enemy you can’t beat alone, you need to be educated.” Cyril says with contempt.

I swing my sword at him but before it is even close I withdraw it and try to stab him in the chest. Cyril sidesteps and punches me to the side, I fly to another tree.

“Utterly weak, you have to do better than that if you want to survive.”

The other three go toward Cyril as a group as Luna shoots fireballs at his face. I stand up and go behind the cabin I stab my sword to the walk of the cabin and climb on top of the sword and from there I climb on top of the cabin. I hear Cyril saying that they don’t stand a chance as three and should have gone as four to have a slight chance of victory. I move quietly on top of the roof so he doesn’t notice me, as I get on top of him I glance down and see Luna only one left standing as the others are already crashed into the trees. I jump on him and try to bash his head with my shield.

“Well it wasn’t the most useless plan.” He says as I am in the air moving toward his head, he holds up is left arm without looking and catches the shield and throws me into Luna.

“I did tell you to not trust your enemies in a fight, not only what they say but also their behavior and mistakes could be a lie to fool the opponent.”

“It was still a nice try so I’ll let you rest for today, those who can’t use magic put up the tents in five minutes, if you aren’t done in five minutes you will go and do another jog, Alphonse will supervise you. Those who can use magic come with me and we will do some magic training.”

We followed Cyril inside the cabin, he walked next to the bed, lifted it up in the air and put it down next to him. He then held his hand toward the floor that was under the bed and soon the planks from the floor came out and levitated in the air.

In the hole that came there were stairs leading downwards, Cyril walked down the stairs and we followed him. The stairs were long and the distance we walked already indicates that the space isn’t only under the cabin but underground as well.

As we reach bottom we can see a metal door to our left. Cyril opens the door with a key and a large underground area is shown to us. The size is ten times ten cabins and the height is two cabins. Walls are made of rock and there are all kinds of different things, weapons and training equipment. There are also weird looking tables and altars in the corner and on top of the are various kinds of crystals and rocks.

“Now let us begin the magic training.” 

Chapter four. Chapter six.