Chapter 44

Dan stared at his burnt hands. His dark skin had turned into pink bare flesh. Nearly most of skin was destroyed.

'Just what was I thinking?'

"What was that thing?" Charlie asked. He could hear the fear in the child's voice.

"I do not know but most likely there is lots of those creatures."

"Why did it run away? Did it not have an advantage on you?" Crion asked.

"I don't know but my guess is that it is scared of fire for some reason."

Dan's hands ached painfully. This was the result of him doing something dumb like covering his hands in fire.

Dan scanned the two in front of him. Crion was holding Charlie up so that he did not fall. Charlie however on the other hand looked like he had just come from war.

His eyes were filled with terror and trauma, his body looked tired and skinny. But what interested Dan the most was his skin. His skin seemed to be slightly red to the point where Dan thought it was a trick of the eye.

He raised his hand and touched Charlie's neck. It seemed tougher to some extent and it felt slightly scaly. He smiled inwardly to himself as things fell into place.

'So it is starting!'

"Ok, Charlie and Crion both of you, your training will start right now."

"What..."

"Think about it, those damned elfs threw us into this place to kill us but we can use this place, instead of a curse they gave us a gift unknowingly, this is the perfect environment for training, the gravity is stronger and filled with strong creatures to fight. By the time we leave this place we will be stronger than we were before."

Crion nodded before saying, "I see."

Charlie on the other hand was confused. This was training, no! This was a death sentence! This was not a gift from the elfs but a curse!

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Two days had gone by and Charlie was able to stand up and capable of walking and running. For the last two days Dan and Crion were doing basic training exercises to get used to the gravity while he barly got used to it.

For food Dan would roast one of the corpses of the Clobi wolves and they would eat it. They lived like primitive people.

They searched around for a water source for two days but they could not find any. Dan and Crion felt like they could die from the heat. Unlike Charlie who had heat resistance they did not.

"Pant...pant... let us keep walking, we should find water somewhere around here. Even deserts have oasis's.' Unlike a normal person Dan could survive several days without water but with the amount of sweat he was shedding and the heat bearing down on him even he was at the verge of his limits.

They kept walking for several hours until finally they arrived at a swamp. The water was murky and dirty. It looked dangerous to drink but to the three people dying from thirst it was their salvation.

Before Charlie and Crion could rush to drink the dirty water Dan grabbed them.

"Do not be stupid, usually places like this is full of predators. We must be careful, understood... ok good." Dan let go of them after they nodded and walked in front of them. He got closer to the swamp and closed his eyes. He needed to focus.

Wwwssshhhhhhh!

He could hear the small sounds of water being parted as something swam through it.

Without hesitation Dan raised his hand and from his hand came a large burst of fire. The fire landed on the murky water leading to a giant steam as a result of the evaporation.

After thirty seconds of continuous fire with what seemed like no end in sight a creature jumped out of the water.

It had two front legs and no hind legs, a giant alligator like tail and a beak filled with sharp razor like teeth. It had blue furry skin and the area around its eyes seemed to be scaly.

It jumped out due to the boiling water and let out a loud bellow. It landed only a few metres away from Dan.

"Kill it." Dan said to Crion and Charlie.

Charlie had not been expecting anything like this. It was completely out of his league. He had never even fought his peers before and he was supposed to fight this.

"Your joking... right?"

Dan did not say anything, he just stared at the kid.

"STOP! STOP THIS BULLSHIT! I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!"

As if drawn by Charlie's shouts the creature lunged towards him, its beak wide open ready to eat its prey.

Just as it was about to bite on Charlie's face the creature stopped in midair and moved backwards.

Crion had managed to grab it by the tail and pulled it back from Charlie. Charlie fell down on the floor not knowing what to do.

"Is this the extent of your will to save your brother? You wanted to protect your brother like that? That is really disappointing!" Dan reached into his inventory and grabbed the giant Zanbatto sword that was in it.

Its hilt was made of well woven grass. The blade of it was huge as expected. It was basically an oversized great sword. As Dan implanted the sword in the ground he noticed its size.

From the small icon on his inventory he knew it would be big but he didn't think it would be this big. It was slightly taller than Dan who was a really tall person. Dan was estimated to be around 6 foot 3 and this sword was taller than him by at least a head.

"Here is a sword, are you gonna use it or cry about it?"

"But... I don't know how to use a sword!" Charlie cried his eyes full of tears.

Dan looked over to see Crion fighting with the two footed creature. She was easily dodging its obvious attack and hitting it in the snout and face.

"Crion, restrain it!" he shouted.

Crion didn't bother turning around as she had heard him. From her hands came out a white substance. It was a thick white silky rope. It was her webs!

It was really thick and heavy. She tied its beak with the web. Then she let out a large amount of webs and threw it at the creature. The impact of being hit with a heavy web was enough to knock the creature down.

It tried thrashing around but the web was stuck to the floor and it could not even move a muscle.

"Take this sword and kill it!" Dan ordered Charlie.

Charlie walked over to the giant sword implanted in the ground.

"What's wrong? You can't even kill a creature like that!"

"No..."

"Then take the sword and kill it!"

"I can't reach the hilt!"

"...Oh..." Dan picked up the heavy sword and laid it flat on the ground. "There you go!"

Charlie picked up the hilt of the sword. It was moderately heavy, without even noticing Charlie had gotten stronger over the past two days.

He dragged the sword across the ground holding it by the hilt and walked over to the creature.

'I just need to kill it!' Charlie thought. 'It's a monster after all, It is not human but a monster, it deserves to die, It probably killed lots of people it self. I cannot let my brother go through this! I don't want him to kill, therefore I will kill for him, I will never let him be exposed to this, that is the role of the elder brother, to look out for his younger siblings.' Charlie was standing in front of the creature that could not move.

With his strength he picked up the sword and brought it down from the sky.

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It had been nearly half an hour since Charlie had his first kill. Surprisingly Charlie did not feel as bad as he thought he would actually feel. The fact that he killed a monster and not a human or elf probably helped a lot.

"You don't seemed that bothered by killing." Charlie said to Crion.

"I am a predator, killing is what I do, I do it to preserve myself and so that I can survive."

"Do you remember your first kill?"

"No, I kill to eat, I do not remember what I killed to eat many decades ago."

"Decades ago? Just how ol-"

"The water is ready," Dan said. He was sitting in front of a giant earthern bowl that had a 90 centimetre diameter. It was underneath a giant fire and was filled with water.

The water was crystal clear compared to the murky swamp water from earlier on.With a wave of his hand the fire underneath the pot disappeared.

A small gourd made from ice appeared from thin air in Dan's hand.

"Wait...You could do that this whole time? Why did you not just create ice and then melted it so that we could drink?" Charlie asked.

"It isn't that simple, you see I don't use mana, if i used mana then i would be able to gather the water particles in the air and then melted it so that we could drink it but since i do not use mana the ice can not melt, it is just thick ice."

"Part of that makes sense and part of it doesn't." Crion said.

"It's magic, I ain't got to explain Jack shit!"

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