The crippled dark mage (1)

Walking through the forest is what Jack has been doing. It has been a week since the accident happened.

There was some cash reward from the guild, as the Lycanthrope race is highly valued thanks to their unique physiology and blood.

Everything from their bodies can be used and is often sellable for a high price, as they are often in hiding, making it rare to get by if you are not actively searching for them.

The lack of a left arm was quite a bother for Jack. He had, however, no money to go to a high-ranking priest or nun to pay them to regenerate a new arm for him.

He did not even want to imagine how much a potion would cost him to heal this kind of wound. He let out a sigh as he continued to look around. He had bought a new coat; it was an old one, which is why it was cheap to buy.

>I have three gold coins left with some change< Three gold coins were a lot of money, something that someone like him could not get easily.

He would have to work maybe 2 months straight without eating or sleeping to get this amount by doing quests and giving certain pieces of smaller monsters to the guild to sell them. He was slowly stopping at his truck and looking around, and he saw small footsteps that were like those of a 5-year-old child.

>Goblins are nearby< He thought of what he should do. He had only one arm, so fighting them would be harder, and sensing their life force would require him to stand still too.

>Maybe I should try to sense life force while walking too; it would be good training< The ability to sense life force while walking is a skill that would need to be learned.

Jack had learned about that skill by asking high ranking dark magicians how they sense the life force of the living, as that is a skill useful for them and can be used like a tracking skill.

Many would say that they are now doing it passively, while others said that they just have it on actively as they focus not only on sensing life force but also their surroundings.

It was not something that he could do easily, but he had to improve himself if he wanted to survive and be able to hunt better now that he was missing an arm.

He did not know how exactly it worked, so he first tried to think of how it felt when he was standing and sensing the life force. As he stood there concentrating, he first felt all the life force around him.

He stayed like that and started to walk with his eyes closed. Every time he took a step, the sensing of the life force was not well; it was hazy as the life forces of the living were all mixed.

When he took the steps, he could not see any difference in the life forces between them. He opened his eyes, and his eyes hurt.

He saw the life force with his own eyes a thing that was not part of the physical world, a metaphysical thing that could be viewed by those who trained in the art of dark magic or went into the ranks of magicians.

He walked through the grass, leaves, and trees, but also through the life force itself. He did not think that the life force was all around the air; there were a lot of small points of life force all around the air; they were small and hardly visible with the eye of a human. The air contained millions to trillions of bacteria.

He could not count the many points that were in the air, not even how many clustered to become the small points of life force that he could view more easily in the air.

Jack's eyes started to hurt. It hurt as he walked, following the footsteps of the goblins. He had to learn it the hard way.

If he did not do it, what use was there? Each step was hard, and his eyes felt like they were bleeding and being blinded by all the life forces he was seeing.

One step after another, his eyes were getting used like one would in the dark. The tool on his mind, however, was strong; it was strong as his mind had to process the things with his eyes, not only with his mind processing the things that are not meant to be seen by human eyes normally.

In the haze and pain of his mind, he would hear sounds like goblins speaking. The way they spoke was with grunts, and the sound he heard was metal hitting stone with loud grunts. Jack kneeled as he continued to walk.

He walked behind trees and some bushes that he could find. The forest was not too dense, so there were not many bushes or trees; however, there were just enough to call it a forest. He saw the goblins; there were six.

>6 goblins... I need to make sure the curse will spread equally across the six< He thought of the curse he should use, and which one would be most useful.

>Maybe a blindness curse? That would make it harder for them to hit me with their weapons even if they are not completely blind, or should I make the curse make their legs decay?<

There was a lot of life force around; he would usually use his life force to make curses, but using the life force around was also possible.

The problem was that only using the life force surrounding them required greater concentration, as these life forces are things that the dark magician does not own, while the life force of their own is something a dark magician owns.

He started to change the life force all around the air to the force of death, manipulating it, making it enter their legs through the skin, and attacking the life force at their legs. He spread them all around the six goblins but failed to spread them evenly.

In just a matter of a minute, the first goblin showed a sign of something not being right. The leg of the goblin hurt, and soon the flesh on it started to decay rapidly.

Two other goblins showed signs of their flesh decaying, but it was not as fast as that of the first one that showed symptoms.

Another two could not stand on their legs in balance as their muscles were getting damaged because of the death force, while the last one showed the least of the symptoms, only having slight leg pain.

He grabbed a big stone from the ground and ran. He ran towards the goblins. The ones with their legs decaying could not move as their leg muscles and cells were destroyed, and the death force was surrounding them.

While the ones who had a tough time standing barely stood but walked towards Jack holding their small daggers, the last one ran towards Jack, ignoring the pain in his legs as he had it the least bad out of them all.

When Jack was close to the goblin, he threw the rock at him, but the goblin dodged it.

However, what it did not expect next was Jack throwing his cloak at him. Surprised by it, it grabbed it to throw away, and Jack used this moment to grab the goblin's hand that held the dagger and kick it in the face.

The goblin felt the pain; his nose got broken and bleeding, but it was not the end. Jack was stronger than them.

These goblins were as small as five-year-old children with their strength because of their body build, and a five-year-old child is even weaker because of their lack of bone and muscle mass. He easily overpowered the goblin, twisting the goblin's arm and making it stab itself in the heart.

It pushed it deep into the goblin's heart, and when the goblin's grip on the dagger loosened, he pulled the dagger out and held it with his own hands.

>>G-GRAH! << one of the goblins roared out aloud. The curse took more effect, and the ones that could hardly stand fell to their knees.

Jack approached them, and these goblins, whose intelligence was that of an adult, accepted their fate right there. They knew they could not fight back much, so they stood there just waiting for their deaths.

Jack coldly looked at them. He put his knife at the goblin's throat and cut it with a swift. It was a rough cut; he was not good at using the dagger, so he cut the goblin again, this time killing it.

He did the same with the other remaining goblins and sat on the ground, looking at the sunny sky. The smell of blood was in the air.

He went to one of the goblins and cut their wrist. The reddish-green blood ran out of the wound, and Jack put his finger in the blood and drew first a triangle on the forehead with a star holding the triangle and a circle surrounding the star.

He spoke out words, words that were making the symbol that he created on the corpse's forehead glow, and the once-dead goblin was alive once again, but the pupils of it did not return; it was still in its back but stood there awaiting the order of Jack.