I gazed at him. I gazed hard at his hand. I looked him straight in the eyes. His hand held the dagger firmly, but there was no sincerity in his actions. Isaac was in pitiful conditions, but he would most certainly bounce back from it.

“You are not going to kill him,” I stated.

The next moment I punched out. My knuckles hit the right side of his face and the force I exerted, merged with his jumping back to absorb most of the impact, sent him flying backwards. Due to the short range I could count on, I wasn’t able to accelerate my fist enough to inflict actual damage and ended up simply pushing him back.

The moment I tried to run towards him, I found several spears pointed towards my body. The voice of the enemy commander reached me as I was about to attack once again.

“Wait, wait, wait, everyone, let’s not behave rashly. Let’s move just a little bit to the side: we don’t want our friend there to be involved in the scuffle, do we?” he said cheerfully while wiping from his mouth the blood gushing from his broken tooth. The “friend” he was referring to was nobody else but Isaac.

I found myself agreeing with his proposition while everybody started walking away from the location. The subordinates kept me inside the encirclement with their spears pointed towards me and arrows ready to be shot, while the commander remained at a considerable distance several metres away.

After a few minutes of strolling, we stopped. Isaac was still visible in the distance but he was far away enough to avoid the following brawl.

Right then, mayhem ensued.

The first thing I did was to kick the ground hard and leap high into the sky, to gain altitude and study the surroundings. The spearmen were deployed to create a perfect encirclement from which one could not try to escape without meeting at least two spearheads pointed at him.

The ranged combatants had instead arranged themselves to keep a good distance from one another. They had a free view-line on the target and their shot could travel freely if thrown appropriately between two spearmen. Their disposition was such that, even if a projectile happened to miss the target and emerge from the encirclement on the other side, it would have basically zero probability of hitting a ranged ally.

Although I wasn’t a military expert it was clear at first glance that the formation, albeit fairly simple and straightforward, was a highly effective one. There was no opening. It was perfectly designed to trap an opponent and dispose of it. For the ordinary archuman, who heavily relied on mobility to avoid and absorb damage, this strategy was treacherous, as it forced the arch to remain stationary and shoulder continuous attacks coming from every side. It was designed to dispose of stronger enemies by exhausting them before delivering the finishing blow.

A volley of arrows and projectiles flew in my direction. I tried to twist my body in mid-air, but couldn’t avoid all of them and two of them hit my left bicep. The strength with which they had been propelled was barely enough to penetrate the outer layers of my skin, but their purpose wasn’t to make me bleed.

The moment the two arrowheads got stuck inside my flesh, two opposing sensations of cold and hot flowed through my body, as one of the two went up in flames while the other one got covered in ice. The ice and fire fronts travelled from the shafts to my arm and the thermal shock ensuing from their encounter made my skin crack.

It was a long time since I had felt such a sense of discomfort washing over me, as the alien aura prickled my body. I had almost forgotten about them, but now I knew where seemingly vanished “somatic types” had ended up: at the epsilon.

I sharpened my gaze and paid more attention to those surrounding me. Every single one of them was releasing a foreign energy. This power infused both their bodies and their equipment. With my now more sensitive eyes, I could recognise that the power they were discharging into the environment was pretty similar but not identical to young archs’ aura. Moreover, something I could only describe as murky was mixed within.

When, under the bounds of gravity, I returned to the ground, I found several spearheads greeting me. I twisted my body once more and fell undamaged between the fray. Every time I tried to swing my fists at one of them, two others impeded my movements, while ice, fire or electric-infused projectiles of various shapes or forms rained on me from unexpected directions. Their leader continuously spat out orders, and as they followed his instructions they were able to reach perfect coordination.

The damage was starting to pile up, especially when the occasional flaming or freezing pike reached my flesh. The strength behind their attacks was limited, still those weapons strangely penetrated further into my flesh than they should have been capable of.

I sharpened my eyes once again and concentrated them on the weapons. I could see not only the flow of false aura but also that of ambient mana, which drew out abnormally complex patterns.

My knowledge about them was limited, as I had laid my eyes only on a handful of them, but these spears and arrows appeared to be moulded weaponry. Through the mana-activating ether graphs inlaid in them, they were capable of triggering behaviours that would have been otherwise impossible, like increased piercing capability.

While entertaining these thoughts, I was about to finally land a left hook to the face of one of the aggressors, but something cut through the air like a silver bolt and wrapped around my arm, stopping it in its movements. The flow of power and mana through the whip blade was much more ordered and intense than all the others I had seen. The quality of the weapon was remarkable.

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t let you ruin the face of my good subordinate,” the increasingly irritating cheerful voice of the leader of the enemy bunch reached my ears.

The segmented blades cut into my flesh like the teeth of a beast. Suddenly I felt a tugging force and was forced to step back from my original target. The next moment the weapon was retracted. The blades slid on my skin, cutting it deep and scraping against my bones. The gushing blood tinted my forearm red, but it coagulated rapidly and I didn’t lose much of it.

And so the battle went on for some time. The formation continued to pressure me and when I thought I had leeway to counterattack, the whip blades came from nowhere to stop me in my tracks. Whenever I tried to avoid them, they suddenly changed direction and tried to wrap themselves wherever they could, cutting my skin. My attire was completely shredded, with my belt and pouches fallen to the ground.

After a while, everyone stopped moving. There was not one of them without an astonished look on their face. The leader was the one who appeared to be the most stunned, as he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“How in the hell are you still standing?!” he exclaimed dumbfounded.

His observation was reasonable at first glance. I had spilt so much blood that my skin had changed colour, becoming a dirty red. Even if I was full of cuts, I hadn’t lost momentum during the fight.

I looked at him.

“These kinds of attacks aren’t particularly effective,” I gave a simple reply.

His eyes widened, before reducing into two thin slits.

“Are you insulting me?”

I didn’t respond. I simply remained in wait while, unbeknownst to him, my deepest wounds finished to heal. Although I had sustained a lot of damage and the energy they wielded was more effective than normal archs’ aura, I was particularly resilient, and I had been since I had come into this world.

I used the temporary time out to collect my thoughts. The formation was extremely effective. There was no opening and the thermal and electric attacks which continuously rained on me made me extremely uncomfortable, due to the murky energy entering my blood flow.

My enemies could manipulate their aura-like energy to increase their physical ability, enabling them to move nimbly even while wearing bulky plate armour. Their weapons were moulded, or “enchanted” as they seemingly referred to them, and were able to cut and pierce deeper than their edge should have allowed them to, given the amount of pressure they applied.

Using their weapons coupled with their power, they could deliver energy-based attacks, thermal or electric in nature. Their leader seemed to be the only one endowed with a special power to directly exercise force on whatever he was indirectly in contact with, and he was able to change the trajectory of his whip swords at his discretion.

Although these pieces of information were quite interesting, as they would prove useful when I would inevitably have to wage war against the Epsilon Perimeter, I was starting to get tired. The prolonged battle had severely depleted the purple lymph flowing through my veins.

Even to this day, the strange substance diluted in my blood was still a mystery. I had tried to discover what its true nature was with the help of Faye but I hadn’t had much success. I had been unable to employ it any differently from how I had employed my aura in the past, which is boosting my regenerative capabilities.

For this reason, many years ago, I decided to forcefully suppress my aura, which had the tendency to drown out the lymph, to try and understand it better. I hoped that by using it in battle I would discover something new, and I could say I had been somewhat successful: I had found out that the energy of the inhabitant of the Epsilon interacted negatively with it, causing a faster-than-normal depletion.

“Don’t ignore me!” the leader of the enemies suddenly shouted out.

He raised his weapon and whipped it at me. I offered my damaged left arm to it and as a serpent it coiled around it, sinking its teeth deep into my flesh. I continued to remain unperturbed.

“Is this a joke to you?! You are going to die here today, you wretched thing!”

He swung his other whip and it also coiled around my arm, which was now entirely wrapped in metal from shoulder to wrist. Blood gushed out and stained the segmented blades, and yet I remained unperturbed. Even if it was starting to actually hurt.

I sighed. Twenty against one wasn’t fair by any means. It was a pity. This battle should have been chosen more wisely.

“Let me ask you one question,” I said.

The enemy didn’t say anything in response to my words, he simply tightened his grip on his weapons and tugged on them, making the blades sink deeper into my skin.

“Were you sent here for me, or did you simply decide to try your luck?”

He grinned at me.

“I was asked to bring back a little fleeing mouse, but once I saw where I was, I couldn’t let go of the opportunity to bring back such a big prey,” he answered with a sneer.

I looked at him and nodded. It was understandable. He was the prideful type with an overly developed self-confidence. He was the kind of person who would end up badly while trying to chew more than he could byte.

“You have been too arrogant,” I stated.

The moment I said those words, the blood gushing from my wound began to darken.