NOVEL WEB (Chapter 19) Survival
I groaned heavily as I felt my head pounding against the insides of my skull, my ears were ringing insistently with an overwhelmingly high pitched tone. The pain only increased as I tried to open my eyes, just to feel a pressure on my chest holding me down when I tried to sit up a little.
"Stay down! You need to rest!" I heard a scream right next to my ear, I could hardly even register that it was Tulip's voice that was screaming out to me as my eyes finally opened. With a heavy groan I mumbled what words I could.
"Not so... Loud..." Looking around I could at least see why my head hurt so badly. Where I had been previously crouched next to the river I could see a sizeable crater where the water was widened substantially outwards. I tried to take in a breath just for it to turn to coughs with pain in my chest. "What... Happened?" I struggled to wheeze out.
"You lost control of your mana. That's why its called a mana burst, it explodes outwards when its not controlled. But that level of power is, astounding, honestly." Tulip sounded equally concerned and impressed at the same time.
"That was... A lot?" I asked slowly as I gradually pushed myself up to at least rest against the tree in a mildly more comfortable position. Looking myself over I was able to at least see I was miraculously fine, other than the pounding in my head. "I thought I had it under control... It didn't even feel like that much mana?..."
"That's, absurd." Tulip spoke further with her voice still utterly astounded. "That was an obscene amount of mana you let out, are you sure you're not empty now? That would have completely drained me..." She looked at me with a more serious expression than I was expecting which left me to think for a few moments.
"I really don't feel... Like much of any mana got used." I tried turning my focus inward but with my head screaming in agonizing pain I quickly gave up on that train of thought after just a glance. "Maybe... A twentieth of my mana was used?"
"You're... Kidding." Tulip gawked at my statement, sighing as she sat back after a moment. "That would put you without any practice at the same level of a fully fledged mage... At least in the amount of mana you can call forth. What I would give to have a measurement crystal right now... That would make all of this so much easier."
"Measurement crystal? And wait you can even scale mages like that? I thought there wasn't any real scaled system for them?" I was more than a little confused as I pushed myself to sit up further.
"A measurement crystal is an item that lets us measure how much mana a mage can output. its, a rough measurement based on the shade the crystal glows to dictate the ranking of a mage. It isn't a one hundred percent thing to base anything off of, but it is a universal system that people can agree on. So yes, you can scale mages like that, just not efficiently. It's more like an educated guess than anything else."
"So thats why Darek didn't mention it..." I grumbled out after a moment.
"Darek? The old guy that brought you from the prison?" Tulip asked as she offered a hand to me. Pulling me to stand up slowly, and quickly catching me as I stumbled forwards.
"Yea, do you know him?... He was the guard that always stuck around me in the prison... Honestly other than you, and maybe Levi, I think thats the whole list of people who actually, care about me to some extent." I struggled to find my balance as Tulip slowly let go of me, leaving me to try and stand on my own. It was some kind of miracle that I hadn't broken anything. My body just felt like it was ready to fall apart, but looking around slowly I couldn't help but smirk a little as I hobbled over towards a few fish that I could see flopping around that weren't so lucky. "At least it was worth it..."
"I wouldn't say it was quite worth it, if anyone is still after us they definitely know where we are now. Let's just grab these and get moving, we can cook them up once its darker out and we can't keep moving." Tulip spoke quickly as she went around to grab a stick, I wondered what she was doing for a moment before she began chipping away at the edge to sharpen it.
Using her freshly sharpened stick Tulip impaled the three fish that were on land, and still in enough pieces to be worth the effort of grabbing.
"Lets go." Tulip spoke rather firmly, not giving me any chance to argue once she started walking.
"Wait up! I can barely walk as is..." I was forced to almost shout a little as I chased after her with a sore limp.
"Yea you won't get better if you don't walk, so come on." Tulip turned and walked backwards for a moment with a smirk on her face. "At least you got us some food. And didn't die, so I would call that much a success."
"You really just went from worrying for my life to saying walk it off like that?" I replied with a bit of snark that was simply met with a sass filled smile from Tulip. I had to hold back a groan as she turned and began again with a skip in her step.
As the day began to drag on my mind trailed off, the only thing I could even bring myself to think about was how good it would feel to finally get something to eat again.
"Andrew, over here. Pair of tracks heading south." Markus spoke with keen intent in his voice as he watched the trailing footsteps circle back from the tree they had tracked them to after escaping the skirmish.
"We have a far better direction, that one we didn't put a collar on just used her magic." Andrew chuckled as he pointed in a direction that seemed utterly random, it was barely even south! But, Markus knew better than to question his partner.
"If you say so. Though I wouldn't want to risk losing these tracks for a possible lead." Markus replied calmly, reaching to scratch his chin lightly.
"Normally I would agree. But this level of mana emission... Hm, it seems we greatly underestimated that kid. We'll need to be careful. Lets get moving, barely even safe enough to move in the daylight." Andrew began forwards leaving Markus to trail behind him in gentle thought of what was to come.